Letter: The nation’s assault rifle cult must come to an end
It’s going to be one of those posts readers… here we go. Fisking another LTTE.
In a recent CBS – YouGov poll, 44% of the Republicans agreed that mass shootings are “unfortunately something we have to accept” in a free country.
It is. Freedom is not safe. We don’t have ‘accept’ it in the sense of doing nothing and letting people destroy at will, but accepting in the realistic facet that there is a hard limit to what we can do that will have any positive effect without a severe negative effect.
In other words, our politicians on the right “think that gun carnage is acceptable “
In your words, you mean. Accepting that the free will of mankind also allows them to, on rare occasion thankfully, act in horrific manners is accepting reality. They do not endorse it, but they do not futilely and erroneously promise over and over to “solve” the gun violence epidemic or whichever favorite panic buzzword is in use at the moment.
– even when as of recently , more than 240 “mass shootings” involving four or more victims have occurred in just (roughly) 155 days of 2022. Are they delusional? I think so.
Are you?
Delusional that is. What obvious solution do we not have in place that would make 330 million people suddenly behave harmoniously to each other?
The Republican Party – pretending to be “the Party of law and order,” has become so radicalized that they cannot acknowledge any circumstance in which, perhaps, weapons only designed for human carnage should be restricted.
That is all weapons. Literally all of them. Weapons in all of human history were designed to inflict casualties either on game for food or other humans to impose a will and desire upon them. That desire might be leave me alone and get out of my house, it might be ‘Not today, Third Reich.’, and it might be Putin f*cking around in Ukraine and doing a whole lot of finding out. The weapon gets no say in its use, it simply works or it does not.
It has become a refuge for absolutists who would rather tolerate mass murder,
There’s the implication again. Tolerate, as if murder is legal and unpunished. That we tolerate it because it exists as an action, and always has, and people (including governments) keep doing it, so therefore we somehow encourage it.
including the massacre of children, than even consider “reasonable” measures
I’m glad you put reasonable in quotes, it helps acknowledge that reasonable requires agreement, and we do not agree.
like waiting periods,
A right delayed is a right denied. Imagine a waiting period after registering to vote, or a waiting period on attending a religious service you wish to attend or a petition to the government required a waiting period before being processed. Justice Thomas was right, we do actively treat the 2nd Amendment like a 2nd Class right… oof.
background checks,
We have those.
permits,
Like voter IDs?
gun training,
Actively encouraged by the 2A community with a whole vibrant niche in our culture.
a ban on assault-style weapons.
Why? How many deaths do rifles account for?
Ah, gotcha. Handguns are used to kill people at better than 20:1 over rifles according to the FBI but let’s ban some rifles.
Cool.
Continue.
Are we nuts by allowing this to continue;
There it is again. Are mass murder and terrorism being capital crimes not disallowal enough? I don’t think we can disallow more than, ‘If you do this we will kill you.’ We don’t ‘allow’ anything. Inability to prevent is not allowing. Allow implies we have the realistic power to stop. We can’t stop speeding. We do not allow earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes, they are forces beyond our ability to control.
The thoughts and actions of an individual who is outside our total physical control is also something we do not allow, it is something we cannot control. We may influence, but we cannot control. It is impossible. When we are talking about gun control, we are talking about influencing the actions of the most non-influenceable and radicalized members of society by attempting to compel the actions of the reasonable members of society to a variable degree of success.
Again, I repeat, we cannot stop speeding.
or are they nuts when supposedly persons in positions of responsibility (our legislators at all levels) continue to act so shamelessly, so irresponsibly, and so hypocritically? These people are unfit for high office, low office , or any office at all – considering we have succumbed to becoming a “gun loving country,” in which there are way more guns than people.
Are we also a car loving country?
There are also more registered cars than there are drivers in the United States, by almost 50 million.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “a true Conservative’s conservative,” wrote that “the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.
Which doesn’t mean you get to pick what it means. It isn’t unlimited, but it isn’t limited to your preferred and nonsensical limits just because you think they’re “reasonable” and I do not. I have data and evidence on why they aren’t reasonable in a free society, you have thoughts and prayers wishing bad things wouldn’t happen.
It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” During his tenure as Chief Justice, Warren Burger (a Conservative appointment to the Court) stated in an interview that as currently interpreted, the Second Amendment “is a fraud.”
And in perhaps the defining 2nd Amendment case of our time, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurrence,
Heller correctly recognized that the Second Amendment codifies the right of ordinary law-abiding Americans to protect themselves from lethal violence by possessing and, if necessary, using a gun. In 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted, there were no police departments, and many families lived alone on isolated farms or on the frontiers. If these people were attacked, they were on their own. It is hard to imagine the furor that would have erupted if the Federal Government and the States had tried to take away the guns that these people needed for protection.
Today, unfortunately, many Americans have good reason to fear that they will be victimized if they are unable to protect themselves. And today, no less than in 1791, the Second Amendment guarantees their right to do so.
So what’s your point? Burger got quoted in an interview but I just quoted a concurring Justice in the actual opinion of the court. Which carries the weight? Which is in concurrence with such terms as “keep and bear” and “shall not be infringed.”
You act as if the government is being solicited to subsidize privately held nuclear weapons instead of common single person portable and usable firearms eminently useful in defense of themselves or, if called to, their communities. Ukraine might be able to give us some relevant viewpoints upon both of those subjects from a modern perspective.
Keeping these thoughts in mind, how has “American Exceptionalism” become the realization that we are the most heavily armed nation on earth – with by far the most deaths by guns – in our allegedly civilized status as “the leader of the free world?”
The United States ranks 59th in the world for homicide rate. We are the 3rd largest country in the world but only the 5th in total homicides with only India ranking higher in both total murders and population above us. Don’t give me any crap about the “civilized” world either, that’s a garbage lazy excuse that we somehow can only expect civilized behavior from ‘westernized’ societies of wealth. Pathetic viewpoint. Like they don’t know murder is bad so it’s just “allowed” there, huh?
Michael Gerson stated it unequivocally in a column last week – “It is past time for Republican politicians to embrace some risk in the cause of life – and end their dance with death.”
Very poetic. Utterly meaningless but very poetic.
So yeah, ban assault weapons for all of these easily debunked and poorly substantiated opinions posing as reasons.
Larry said so, and if we don’t Larry will be sad.
