Well, the usual suspects are talking about "gun control" again. This time they're tying the "need" to a tragedy that occurred last month in Connecticut. But it turns out that Feinstein started working on her bill a year ago. What gives?
I've known since I was nine years old about the history of gun registration leading to confiscation in totalitarian countries. Matter of fact, all of the countries that severely restrict gun ownership are at least largely totalitarian, except two. More on that later.
We hear that the target of an "assault rifle" ban is guns that were designed for soldiers to use in battle. But that's bunk. The target is most of the rifles, and for that matter, most of the handguns and many of the shotguns, that are widely used by law abiding people today.
We hear, but we are not convinced, that the second amendment rights of hunters will be protected. But the right to own guns has absolutely nothing to do with hunting, any more than it did when the British confiscated the muskets of the colonists in Boston. And that's what led to the second amendment in the first place.
No, the main purpose of having an individual right to bear arms is self preservation--the natural right of self preservation. The concept goes back through English law and the Napoleonic Code and through Roman law and Judaic law and through the Code of Hammurabi, and we know that it stems at least from the Code of Ur-Nammu. Few dispute the right. It's just that some would deny citizens the means of self defense.
That has happened in England. We hear people quote the lower gun crime rate there, but they conveniently overlook the much higher overall rate of violent crime. There is now a move afoot to outlaw sharp instruments across the pond. But why discuss England, and not Mexico or Brazil, to name two examples? Are we otherwise just like England? I contend that the only thing that Chicago has in common with Stratford-on-Avon is that a river runs through it.
Should one somehow expect the police to protect one, as Mr. Biden suggests? Well, there is a reason why the courts have ruled that police departments cannot be held responsible for protecting individual citizens: they cannot do so. Consider the following scenario: you are getting into or out of your car outside your favorite organic foods store, and two armed, violent criminal actors decide that you are their game; two is the most likely number. It would take the same amount of time to pull out your cell phone and press speed dial or to draw and, should it still prove absolutely necessary, fire a concealed weapon. Which do you think would save your hide?
The subject of magazine capacity has been raised by people who know nothing about reality. Every competent training organization in the country recommends firearms that the Administration wants to forbid. I started out with a five shot revolver; but surviving an attack by two assailants with one of those is by no means assured. Bullets don't stop people like lightning, and if the assailants aren't moving very fast, you probably have no business shooting.
Yet the asinine arguments continue in support of a plan which cannot work and which will have unintended consequences with more harm than good. I am reminded of the closing line in David Lean's Bridge on the Rive Kwai, as the Army doctor watches Col Nicholson try to save the Japanese bridge: "Madness! Madness....madness."
I've known since I was nine years old about the history of gun registration leading to confiscation in totalitarian countries. Matter of fact, all of the countries that severely restrict gun ownership are at least largely totalitarian, except two. More on that later.
We hear that the target of an "assault rifle" ban is guns that were designed for soldiers to use in battle. But that's bunk. The target is most of the rifles, and for that matter, most of the handguns and many of the shotguns, that are widely used by law abiding people today.
We hear, but we are not convinced, that the second amendment rights of hunters will be protected. But the right to own guns has absolutely nothing to do with hunting, any more than it did when the British confiscated the muskets of the colonists in Boston. And that's what led to the second amendment in the first place.
No, the main purpose of having an individual right to bear arms is self preservation--the natural right of self preservation. The concept goes back through English law and the Napoleonic Code and through Roman law and Judaic law and through the Code of Hammurabi, and we know that it stems at least from the Code of Ur-Nammu. Few dispute the right. It's just that some would deny citizens the means of self defense.
That has happened in England. We hear people quote the lower gun crime rate there, but they conveniently overlook the much higher overall rate of violent crime. There is now a move afoot to outlaw sharp instruments across the pond. But why discuss England, and not Mexico or Brazil, to name two examples? Are we otherwise just like England? I contend that the only thing that Chicago has in common with Stratford-on-Avon is that a river runs through it.
Should one somehow expect the police to protect one, as Mr. Biden suggests? Well, there is a reason why the courts have ruled that police departments cannot be held responsible for protecting individual citizens: they cannot do so. Consider the following scenario: you are getting into or out of your car outside your favorite organic foods store, and two armed, violent criminal actors decide that you are their game; two is the most likely number. It would take the same amount of time to pull out your cell phone and press speed dial or to draw and, should it still prove absolutely necessary, fire a concealed weapon. Which do you think would save your hide?
The subject of magazine capacity has been raised by people who know nothing about reality. Every competent training organization in the country recommends firearms that the Administration wants to forbid. I started out with a five shot revolver; but surviving an attack by two assailants with one of those is by no means assured. Bullets don't stop people like lightning, and if the assailants aren't moving very fast, you probably have no business shooting.
Yet the asinine arguments continue in support of a plan which cannot work and which will have unintended consequences with more harm than good. I am reminded of the closing line in David Lean's Bridge on the Rive Kwai, as the Army doctor watches Col Nicholson try to save the Japanese bridge: "Madness! Madness....madness."
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