Interesting, but while it seems that forming a private militia is technically not illegal (except in Wyoming, where it’s very clearly illegal), it doesn’t look like something the state government is okey-dokey with.
The insurrectionist fantasy the articles mention is something I’ve found a bit amusing and a bit disturbing in recent years - the notion that a citizen’s private gun collection is helping to keep tyranny in check. It’s like saying you’re being selfish for the greater good.
Sure, more knowledge is always good, well at least in this context. Such a study might already exist. Have you done any research on the topic? Maybe the raw data has at least been compiled and can save someone a lot of effort.
And do you have any thoughts about how the methodology for such a study would control for other factors besides diversity and gun control laws with regards to effects on gun violence or violence in general? Not to mention the complexity and multi-dimensionality of terms such as “diversity” (racial, ethnic, cultural, economic, religious, geographical etc).
Also, do you concede then that a heterogeneous population is more likely to experience conflict and a higher rate of crime victimization? And do you concede that consequently those who attack someone for simply stating that fact, or go further and imply a racist motivation for the statement, are being ignorant in the former case and quite possibly a jerk in the latter?
Since I’ve seen you do this a lot over the years I feel I should point something out. Merely citing the words of the Constitution is not a legal argument. It is evidence of exactly one thing, that those words do indeed appear in the Constitution. It is the first step in a Constitutional Law argument and not even close to the only or final one. That’s why we have a body of relevant case law, so courts can rule on what those words mean and how they are to be applied to a particular set of facts.
Is that what you think happens during Constitutional Law arguments in court? That one side stands and reads the relevant portion of the Constitution and then sits down? Followed by the other side standing and saying “No…” followed by reading the exact same thing? Perhaps with a different intonation or something?
So do you have an actual legal citation for whatever point you were trying to make? You know, besides an emoji?
Well, first we have to settle on a null hypothesis. Are Canadian cities less violent? I assume this was pretty much given. Are Canadian cities less diverse? I don’t know. Are Canadian cities less violent because they are less diverse (assuming they are)? If someone knows of a study along those lines, I’d like to see it.
Well, when I made the proposal, I stated clearly I was open to discussing other factors anyone might suggest were relevant. So… got a suggestion? I could picture trying to control for weather, i.e. are colder cities less violent, in the sense of only looking at crime statistics for the months of May to October, for example.
Indeed, it is a complex topic, hence my reluctance to just buy into a pat “we’re less homogeneous, hence more violent” explanation. There are place a lot more diverse that are less violent, and it’s unclear to me that “diversity” plays much of a role in, say, school shootings.
Well, no, that would be something I’d want to see evidence for. Further, we’d have to establish some kind of control for:
Society A: Ethnic Group 1 and Ethnic Group 2 make up the population of a city and violence occurs as a result of mere proximity.
vs.
Society B: EG1 and EG2 make up the population of a city and most of the wealth and all of the laws are controlled by members of EG1, who operate on a tacit or open policy of denying access to EG2, keeping them poor and powerless. Violence occurs as a result of enforcing this control, fighting against it and struggling to survive under it.
Further still, are we going to start identifying specific ethnic/racial groups that especially don’t play well with others? Are blacks in Seattle more problematic than Asians in Vancouver?
I’m not convinced it is a fact, or at least not in the bald sense that “more diversity = more violence” in and of itself. Until such time as that happens, it looks more like an excuse to me, a convenient way to blame the problems on race (and avoiding the issue of guns) while trying to avoid seeming racist.
The Constitution can be picked apart to make it meaningless if you want it to. But you’re then arguing *against *the meaning and intent, an act which is inherently corrosive to the Constitution and to the Republic. Is that what you want?
If you had a way to say the Constitution did not actually define militias and their purpose according to its own words, then no doubt you would do so. But all you have is bluster and gesticulation, don’t you?
To repeat, :rolleyes:
Actually there are quite a few private Militias around. I imagine a number are on a FBI watch list.
https://www.facebook.com/californiastatemilitia/
But it is totally legal to organize a armed militia. It what you do with that militia that is the issue.
Not so. United States v. Miller - Wikipedia “The Second Amendment protects only the ownership of military-type weapons appropriate for use in an organized militia.” The Second Amendment, it was held, “must be interpreted and applied” with the view of maintaining a “militia”.
The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia - civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion."
That was mentioned in the dissenting opinion. Justice Scalia, a hunter and gun owner, wrote the majority decision.
It must be remembered that the Bill of Rights were enacted to protect the states’ rights from the federal government. The Constitution would not have been ratified if those rights were not specified. They were restrictions on the federal government. “Congress shall…” The Heller case was against DC, a federal government. A subsequent case (against Chicago) extended it to the states, and their political subdivisions, too. This was by virtue of the 14th Amendment, which incorporated the Bill of Rights to the states, if such amendment. or a portion of the amendment, is consistent with the inherit rights of the individual. (This is sometimes referred to as “substantive due process.” It must be noted that not all of the Bill of Rights applies to the state governments, as yet.
Altho Heller did rule that the weapons had to be suitable for Militia use, it never ruled on whether or not you had the right to own a gun for personal defense. However, Militias are composed of men who supply their own weapons.
The militias have been the National Guard for over a century, and the taxpayers provide the Guard’s weapons.
What you’re describing are gangs.
Miller was not the win that the dissent and the anti-gun people believe it was. They always get the case confused. It did not stand for the proposition that because Miller was not a member of a militia, that he could not own guns.
It held, that as there was no evidence presented to any court that a short barrelled shotgun was a weapon appropriate for militia use. Of course that is not surprising as Miller was dead and not even represented before the Court. So, Scalia argues (in part) that weapons which are suitable for militia purposes are protected, but then goes on to use the “commonly held by the people” test and the “dangerous and unusual” test and as I said above starts going off of the rails.
First, the weapon at issue, handguns, are IMHO very poorly suited for militia purposes. There is an old adage that when you know that there will be trouble, you carry a rifle; if you think that there might be trouble, you carry a pistol. A militia would be sent into troubled areas and like our frontline infantry would be carrying rifles and not pistols.
And then he argues that something like the M-16 rifle, one of the best types of weapons for a militia situation, is not protected, because he says that unlike handguns, M-16s are not in the common use.
What if different data showed that handguns were not in common use in Washington in 2008 because they had been banned for 32 years? An analysis was not done to see if:
The Court has held in other contexts that simply because something has been banned for a long period of time, like homosexual sodomy, abortion, or same sex marriage that is not the end of the analysis as to whether this long time ban was valid in the first place.
And I hope they continue to stay somewhat-comically benign. They’re certainly free to call themselves militias, but as soon as they start doing actual militia-type stuff like getting into battles, I don’t predict the constitution will give them much cover.
First point: The National Guard is only a part of the militia under the law. We still have the unorganized militia.
Second point: In any event, the government cannot remove a right, like forming a citizen militia, by legislating it out of existence.
If the government enacted the Department of the Free Press that acted like TASS, controlled all media distribution (or alternatively, actually did quite a good job), and declared that private journalism was an anachronism, and indeed dangerous because of heated rhetoric and people publishing lies, would you or anyone seriously suggest that would be an acceptable substitute for a free press?
But that is exactly what you are doing with this issue. You are saying that We the People just cannot be trusted to form citizen militias, with the underlying requirement of owning and carrying arms, because we will just do stupid things.
You argue the point by setting up a strawman that my point suggests that the government would be powerless to stop insurrection or to stop any random five drunken idiots from walking down the street with M-16s and terrorizing the population by calling itself a militia. It can say that those five guys cannot carry and RPG because that is not a standard militia weapon. See Miller. You can say that two of those guys are convicted felons and that their character is such that they are unfit for militia service. See Heller. You can also say that they cannot drill or even carry any weapon at all in a school because of time, place, manner restrictions that are reasoned to the purpose and not a pretext to banning the right, as opposed to a regulation like you cannot carry a gun anywhere at all except maybe your own home.
As I said before, the militia clause, like any of the other enumerated rights in the BOR allow for reasonable regulation, except that regulation that is a pretext and designed to strike at or hamper the right itself.
The government can say that a newspaper must have a local business license, or it must pay taxes that other businesses pay. It can say that you have to have fire sprinklers installed in the building. It can say that if you are a blogger who publishes good stories but only does it as a hobby, then you do not get to write off business losses like the New York Times does.
It can say that a church, for example, is not five drunken idiots who worship a dog and they do not qualify for a tax exemption.
But the regulations you propose strike at the right itself. You could not say that only people with a high school degree can speak because any other speech could result from poor education and be dangerous. You cannot require four years of journalist school in order to publish a newspaper or a blog.
Like I said, there are actual criminologists and other social scientists who are continually performing research like the study you propose. Their work produces useful data and credible evidence of their hypotheses. So why don’t you see if this hasn’t already been researched by someone with the appropriate academic credentials and post that information?
And I never stated that a heterogeneous population is the sole factor in determining the cause of increased conflict and crime victimization within a population group or when comparing two or more such population groups. What I said was there is a known strong correlation between a more heterogeneous population and an increase in conflict and crime victimization. And I gave three examples of actual academic cites for that fact, and there’s a lot more out there. So that rebuts your statement in post #209 that it is a “handy thing” to blame differences in crime victimization rates on, since such a strong correlation can hardly be dismissed so easily. It is certainly not the only factor, or necessarily the most causative one, but it in all likelihood plays some role. The extent and degree of its effects is the kind of question answered by actual social scientists conducting actual academic research.
So when you accuse others of citing a more heterogeneous population as a cause of increased crime to avoid talking about guns you may be correct. They are likely correct that it has some effect but they may be too easily dismissing other factors, in this case guns and gun control laws. But when you yourself so readily dismiss a factor which is both well-known and such strongly correlated with increased crime you are doing the exact same thing.
You really don’t see the difference between the Constitution being “picked apart” by actual judges and legal scholars as opposed to random laypersons on the internet do you? And I’ve provided actual credible cites in support of my view of the intent and meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Quotes from respected Constitutional scholars dating back to 1803, within 15 years of ratification. If you’ll remember, I chose cites from that time period to disprove your other false claim about the NRA rewriting history.
You, on the other hand, have provided exactly zero evidence for your position beyond your opinion, that of a layperson with no relevant credentials and an obvious lack of relevant knowledge. So I’ll add “bluster”, “gesticulation” , “cites”, “evidence”, and “irony” to the growing list of things you don’t seem to understand.
Yeah… you’re saying it’s well-known, and I can certainly buy that it’s widely believed but your cites don’t have links and one of them is from segregation-era 1938, so I’ll decline to accept the assertion for the moment. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that diversity plays “some role”, Canadian cities are simply not that homogeneous. Regarding my own home city, if a wiki cite is acceptable; “Some 26% of the population of Montreal and 16.5% that of Greater Montreal, are members of a visible minority (non-white) group.” And the source for that also reports that Montreal has (or at least had in 2006) just the third largest visible-minority urban population, after Toronto and Vancouver. However “homogeneous” is being defined, it sure doesn’t seem to apply to those three cities at least, and these are not sleepy little towns. Vancouver barely misses the cut for largest 30 cities in Canada and the U.S. I cited earlier, but Toronto and Montreal are #3 and #6.
If it turns out that “diversity” plays some role but access to guns plays a much larger role in predicting incidence of violent crime, will you follow the advice DrDeth kindly offered in post 261 regarding Problem Prioritization and “really shut up” about diversity?
Access to gun certainly isn’t a major issue for predicting incidence of violent crime.
Okay, so we could theoretically take that as a null hypothesis and compare major North American cities for violence levels and gun-access levels. Will the top thirty cities listed earlier be a sufficient sample size?
You keep saying “your side” as if I’m 100% with Cheesesteak, as is everyone that wants any regulation of firearms at all, in an attempt to portray anyone that wants any sort of increased firearm safety as gungrabbing crazies that will stop at nothing until the police are busting down gun owners doors to seize their weapons, opening fire on anyone that so much as asks for a warrant. I’m just pointing out that is a ridiculous assumption, as it would be should I assume you like to grab 'em by the pussy like Trump.
DirkHrdly: Yeah, I didn’t think you could. :rolleyes:
Wanna join UltraVires in his Pit thread? You’re headed that way.
But I’m not just saying it, I provided actual academic cites. I spent all of a few seconds Googling “heterogeneous”, “conflict”, and “crime” in a single search that brought up those cites and quite a few others. Seems like you could’ve spent a few seconds doing the same, either before you ever first posted doubting its existence or in all the time since. Or cut and pasted the titles of those articles into Google. In fact, kinda feels like if you really care about the issue or engaging in real debate that sort of minimal effort would be a good idea. And dismissing a cite based entirely on its publication date without knowing anything about it’s actual content? Wow. Just wow.
I mean the mission of this board is “Fighting Ignorance” right? And this is “Great Debates”? Because that’s how both of those things work. So here’s your links, but you’ll still have to actually read them. Because once again…
This second one is a PDF download.