Admitting Defeat RE: Evil Cal Gun Law Thread

[mtravinski]

I just wanted to thank Jon Snow and the others that didn't get too worked up over my post about California gun laws. I now understand, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. I was wrong. But I had to hear some arguments to help work it out in my head.

It's unfortunate that so many people are anti-gun. I guess the fear is bread of ignorance. Those that do not own a gun have probably never even touched one. They only see them on cops or on TV, and much of what they see on TV is negative or otherwise criminal activity.

I think our only hope is to turn things around at the grass roots level. And as I said in my first post on THR, anti-liberal or anti-California, aggressive rhetoric is not going to help win over the liberals, and trust me, we need them on our side. There's no fundamental reason why a liberal can't be pro guns and pro 2A, so please minimize the comments that will only serve to alienate those people.

 

[Sam1911]

Thank you for having patience with us. I was concerned from the get-go that a question like yours becomes an instance of "drinking from the firehose" (information overload) -- at best -- and can take on very hostile tones.

The hostility -- while inappropriate and destrictive -- arises because these fine folks who are trying to answer your questions are also quite afraid of falling prey to what has happened in your state. As a wise man once said, "Fear leads to anger..."

Take nothing personally and welcome to the community. We're all learning...

 

[NavyLCDR]

I applaud you, mtravinski, for having an open mind and being willing to look at facts and make your judgements based upon those facts. If you look at what America's founding fathers actually intended to accomplish with the Constitution and their other writings, it really is amazingly different than what is presented to us by - imagine that - our governments! The founding fathers' intentions were not to allow the government to control the citizen. Their intent was to create a government that served the citizen.

And in return for the government's service to the citizen, it was the citizens' duty to provide for the protection of the government. If you look at the wording of the Second Amendment in that light, it's pretty darn clear:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

What was the purpose of the well regulated Militia? To provide for the security of a free State. Who was the Militia to be made up of? Armed citizens! It is actually the duty of the government to ensure that the citizen remains free to be armed!

The founding fathers' also intended that it was the right and the duty of the citizen to protect themselves from the government, should the government become one which sought to control the citizen, vice serve the citizen; even up to and including an armed overthrow of that government, if necessary.

Look at the oath that military members take: in part, "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic".

 

[Phatty]

There's no fundamental reason why a liberal can't be pro guns and pro 2A, so please minimize the comments that will only serve to alienate those people.

I agree with you. Part of the problem is the many different definitions of "liberal." Also, the vast majority of people have opinions ranging from conservative to liberal depending on the specific issue.

 

[harmonic]

I think our only hope is to turn things around at the grass roots level.

If you're referring to California, you're wrong. California "grass roots" is brainwashed and the state legislators, including the RINO, arnie, are hard core socialists.

Your only hope is for gun owners associations to overturn the draconian gun laws at the SCOTUS level. But that's going to be really "iffy" w/the newest socialist coming on board. Yes, she's a socialist.

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/05/13/breaking-we-have-elena-kagans-college-thesis/

 

[basicblur]

What was the purpose of the well regulated Militia? To provide for the security of a free State. Who was the Militia to be made up of? Armed citizens! It is actually the duty of the government to ensure that the citizen remains free to be armed!

While I may agree with all the discussion 'bout Militias etc, I don't think we have to go that far (that quickly). Save the Militia argument as point #2, since I think by going directly to the Militia argument, we're ceding the first point to the anti-2nd folks. I'd like to see more folks discussing the meaning of the 2nd first start with this (one of the simplest, most accurate I've seen):

From Professor Nelson Lund of George Mason University-perhaps our foremost Constitutional scholar on the Second Amendment.
Below is taken from the link-in the "The Original Meaning of the Second Amendment" section of his article.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/wm1851.cfm

The text of the Second Amendment does not imply that the right to arms is confined in any way to militia-related purposes. The most significant grammatical feature of the Second Amendment is that its preamble ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...") is an absolute phrase. Such constructions are grammatically independent of the rest of the sentence and do not qualify any word in the operative clause to which they are appended. The usual function of absolute constructions is to convey some information about the circumstances surrounding the statement in the main clause.

Another very significant grammatical feature of the Second Amendment is that the operative clause ("...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed") is a command. Because nothing in that command is grammatically qualified by the prefatory assertion, the operative clause has the same meaning that it would have had if the preamble had been omitted or even if the preamble were demonstrably false.

Consider a simple example. Suppose that a college dean announces: "The teacher being ill, class is cancelled." Nothing about the dean's prefatory statement, including its truth or falsity, can qualify or modify the operative command. If the teacher called in sick to watch a ball game, the cancellation of the class remains unaffected. If someone misunderstood a phone message and inadvertently misled the dean into thinking the teacher would be absent, the dean's order is not thereby modified.

 

[wishin]

The founding fathers' also intended that it was the right and the duty of the citizen to protect themselves from the government, should the government become one which sought to control the citizen, vice serve the citizen; even up to and including an armed overthrow of that government, if necessary.

Look at the oath that military members take: in part, "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic".

Very true. I believe the military oath, however, was changed to include the domestic reference during the Civil War.

 

[Jon_Snow]

mtravinski,
Glad to see you didn't give up on the forum. I know exactly how you feel though. When I first became interested in shooting I thought the same way. I thought that the AWB and 10-day waiting period made sense. But as I learned more about shooting and the more I started to really think of how the laws actually work as opposed to how they are supposed to work, I quickly realized my mistake. And I have this forum to thank for most of my education.

It's unfortunate that so many people are anti-gun. I guess the fear is bread of ignorance.

I think you've really hit the nail on the head here. With a relatively small gun-owning population and a very vocal gun-grabbing population, there aren't a whole ton of opportunities for people to learn how guns and social policy REALLY interact. Instead we're fed a bunch of bull from the Bradys and the like about how guns will jump up and eat our children. The worst part is that that mentality feeds itself. People are generally uneducated about guns which I believe contributes to a large number of gun accidents, providing more 'proof' that guns are dangerous. That's why I think that one of the best things we can do to ensure the future of the 2A is to take new people shooting at every opportunity. It'll go a lot farther than yelling at someone for supporting gun-control.

 

[danez71]

Jon, you put together a couple of realy good posts with out bashing out of emotion. Especially the one in the other thread. Well done.

For me....
When CA decided that a mini 14 was ok but if you put a stock on it that you could buy from Turners and Big 5 then that suddenly made it into a banned assult weapon..... it made me realize how much of the laws were based on emotion rather than logic.

 

[carebear]

It's not an excuse, but I know I have to remember that while gun issues are old hat to me, that for the person actively seeking knowledge it's all new.

It's too easy to get frustrated at hearing the same old arguments for gun control, often presented as if they are somehow novel because they are to the asker, and having to go through the same old explanations as to why those arguments are wrong. If I'm otherwise having a bad day the snark level can be high.

Correcting Brady-driven tripe gets old but if we want to make things easier on our side in the public arena we need to remember to do it politely and gently, at least for those genuinely open to reason.

Thanks to the OP for taking the good from the bad with grace.

 

[Art Eatman]

Nuff fer now...