# No ma'am - A Marine's Letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 4, 2013, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100 "2013-01-04T20:47:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/161 "2013-01-09T18:29:02Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > That’s a problem of education in the face of ideologuism, which is a problem not constrained to the gun topic. There are \*no \*unlimited rights in the Constitution; there can’t be when they conflict with each other everywhere you look. The “right” to bear arms conflicts with the right to life, among others, for instance. Those conflicts are resolved by limiting rights, via the democratic process. This is a bit equivocal. You have a right to your life, and I have a right to own a firearm, and these two rights don’t conflict; I have no right to shoot you, after all. At the very least, we can both agree that these two rights exist. What is less clear, at least to me, is that there exists any right to “safety,” where safety is defined as some particular statistical probability of death or injury. And I don’t know why you put “right” in scare quotes when referring to bearing arms but not to life; last time I checked, only one of those things is a right enumerated in the Constitution. ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/162 "2013-01-10T00:41:17Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Yeah, but who cares what that pussy thinks? He let a _black_ man order him around. and he’s a general in THE MAN’s army to boot! ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/163 "2013-01-10T01:23:08Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Retired General Stanley McChrystal, former commander in Afghanistan and longtime Special Forces soldier, takes the opposite opinion of the Marine who wrote that letter: > > [McChrystal says ‘serious action’ needed on gun control](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/mcchrystal-says-serious-action-needed-gun-control-174328785.html) As has another former Marine, Nick DiOrio, who responded to former Marine Joshua Boston’s letter to Senator Feinstein: [http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-907167](http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-907167) > [@](#): > > When I read about the open letter that former Marine Joshua Boston sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein regarding his gun rights, I couldn’t help but feel temporarily ashamed of also sharing the title of former Marine. Boston defiantly refuses to register his guns even if laws are passed requiring him to do so. In this refusal, he comes off as tone-deaf and unsympathetic to the victims of mass shootings in Newtown, Aurora, and so many other places. His ranting letter is paranoid exhibition of one concerned not with preventing the deaths of more innocents, but of maintaining his rights to own devices of war. I want to set the record straight, not all Marines are so insensitive to the recent tragedies, or ignorant about the need for arms restrictions. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/164 "2013-01-10T13:04:16Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > This is a bit equivocal. You have a right to your life, and I have a right to own a firearm, and these two rights don’t conflict; I have no right to shoot you, after all. You’re not addressing the increased risk to life that guns’ \*mere existence \*poses. We do have laws regarding unreasonable dangerousness of other objects, so why not these? > [@](#): > > And I don’t know why you put “right” in scare quotes when referring to bearing arms but not to life; last time I checked, only one of those things is a right enumerated in the Constitution. The right to bear arms is bounded by its very text, the part that the gun fetishists either handwave away or simply pretend doesn’t exist - it’s in fact the only \*explicitly \*limited right in the Constitution. Not all quotes are “scare quotes”, btw - the mark is generally used to set off a multi-word term, not necessarily to denigrate it. > [@Lumpy](#): > > We were fine with guns up until maybe the end of the 1960s- what changed? Nothing, because we’ve \*never \*been fine with guns. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/165 "2013-01-10T13:56:52Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when did private possession of firearms become such an existential threat to the population at large that allowing guns became contradictory to the right to life? We were fine with guns up until maybe the end of the 1960s- what changed? > > As to limiting rights, I’d like a straight answer to the following questions: give me an objective standard for limiting the right to own weapons that does not allow the limit to be set at zero. “Assault weapons” are “too dangerous”? Ok, since guns are by design supposed to be able to kill people, what makes assault weapons categorically different from revolvers or hunting rifles- what’s the qualitative difference rather than a quantitative difference? Explain the principle by which they could be banned that couldn’t be applied to all guns. > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Nothing, because we’ve \*never \*been fine with guns. I call bullshit. So since the removable-magazine handgun was invented at the _end of the nineteenth century_, Americans have been pleading for over a century to have these terrible threats banned? That gun control advocates have been crying in the wilderness all that time? If so, it would be one of the best kept secrets of modern history. How about, I don’t know, quotes from the New York Times or Time magazine decades ago on how guns are a terrible threat to us all that must be banned? The sole cite you’ve provided is a poll from the 1950s asking people whether, as a hypothetical, they would like to see handguns banned. And if you have an answer to the second part of my post above, I’d like to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/166 "2013-01-10T16:28:22Z")
You said “We were fine with guns up until maybe the end of the 1960s”, despite the contrary having \*already \*been demonstrated to you, and _you’re_ calling bullshit? 😃 Either explain and support your claim or drop it. . ---
**Author:** ![getitrite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@getitrite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/getitrite)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/167 "2013-01-10T19:38:59Z")
This question has been buzzing around in this head of mine and as it is on subject, well here goes. Why aren’t there more angry mothers protesting the death of children in this? If it were something to do with MADD, there would we all kinds of pushing back, do children not matter, are they less important than your guns, has anyone thought what arming the schools mean - prisions, there I said it. What do you call an instution with armed security patroling the grounds, not school. Why cant people who want to have guns, protected by the constitution, have as much respect for then as there car? Get a learners perment, then when profecient with the weapon a license, but you cant own one until you have a license. You must past a sight test, have your picture taken, give information and if you move then the information must be updated, and if there is any history with the police any at all your license is revoked and all arms must be relinquished period. Then while you have the ability to hunt or target shoot, your aware of how important being a good person really is. and how you really care about the children. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/168 "2013-01-10T21:05:50Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > You said “We were fine with guns up until maybe the end of the 1960s”, despite the contrary having \*already \*been demonstrated to you, and _you’re_ calling bullshit? 😃 > > Either explain and support your claim or drop it. . The only support I have for my claim is the deafening silence on the subject before the radical era of the late 1960s, when suddenly white America thought the Black Panthers were going to start shooting white people on sight. So yes, _I_ call bullshit on _you_. I asked for **one** other cite beside the single one you previously gave, in which a poll asked people who may have never spoken out or organized at all what their personal preference on a hypothetical was. > [@getitrite](#): > > This question has been buzzing around in this head of mine and as it is on subject, well here goes. Why aren’t there more angry mothers protesting the death of children in this? If it were something to do with MADD, there would we all kinds of pushing back, do children not matter, are they less important than your guns, has anyone thought what arming the schools mean - prisions, there I said it. What do you call an instution with armed security patroling the grounds, not school. Why cant people who want to have guns, protected by the constitution, have as much respect for then as there car? Get a learners perment, then when profecient with the weapon a license, but you cant own one until you have a license. You must past a sight test, have your picture taken, give information and if you move then the information must be updated, and if there is any history with the police any at all your license is revoked and all arms must be relinquished period. Then while you have the ability to hunt or target shoot, your aware of how important being a good person really is. and how you really care about the children. Probably because, at least so far in history, the first step toward regimenting the populace under a dictatorship has never been confiscating their cars. ---
**Author:** ![Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/169 "2013-01-10T21:11:29Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Probably because, at least so far in history, the first step toward regimenting the populace under a dictatorship has never been confiscating their cars. In my state at least, if you are arrested for DUI, the car you are driving is immediately confiscated. It doesn’t matter if you own it, your mom or your company. You don’t get it back until you are acquitted of the charge. That can be six months. If you’re found guilty, they keep it. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/170 "2013-01-10T21:16:13Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > The only support I have for my claim is the deafening silence on the subject before the radical era of the late 1960s To repeat, the contrary has already been pointed out to you. C’mon already. > [@](#): > > Probably because, at least so far in history, the first step toward regimenting the populace under a dictatorship has never been confiscating their cars. Do the examples you no doubt have in mind come from that same history book? ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/171 "2013-01-10T21:17:05Z")
> [@getitrite](#): > > What do you call an instution with armed security patroling the grounds, not school. A bank? > [@](#): > > You must past a sight test Why? Is somebody who can’t hit the broadside of a barn/target more dangerous? Although there is something to be said for training gangstas, often drive-bys hit everyone nearby except the target. > [@](#): > > and if there is any history with the police any at all your license is revoked and all arms must be relinquished period. That sounds very similar to the right wing’s beloved three-strikes laws. Where a murderer is treated the same as a guy who had some pot in some places. > [@](#): > > Then while you have the ability to hunt or target shoot, your aware of how important being a good person really is. and how you really care about the children. Does not compute. Does having a DL make people less likely to DUI or drive crappy? > [@Lumpy](#): > > The only support I have for my claim is the deafening silence on the subject before the radical era of the late 1960s, when suddenly white America thought the Black Panthers were going to start shooting white people on sight. So yes, _I_ call bullshit on _you_. I asked for **one** other cite beside the single one you previously gave, in which a poll asked people who may have never spoken out or organized at all what their personal preference on a hypothetical was. The BPP was the impetus for banning public carry in Oakland. I recently handled a rifle that I am told was given as a gift for subscribing to a newspaper way back. Not just any newspaper, but the San Francisco Chronicle! Things have changed… ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/172 "2013-01-10T21:36:09Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > To repeat, the contrary has already been pointed out to you. C’mon already. Humor me; Just for discussion’s sake, identify what cite you’re claiming. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/173 "2013-01-10T21:55:27Z")
> [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](#): > > In my state at least, if you are arrested for DUI, the car you are driving is immediately confiscated. It doesn’t matter if you own it, your mom or your company. You don’t get it back until you are acquitted of the charge. That can be six months. If you’re found guilty, they keep it. Hijack: I’m not calling bullshit on you, but that doesn’t sound right. I looked it up and it says: they **may** auction it off, not **will**. Maybe someone convicted in the worst category. Also, aren’t impound fees like $100 a day? They’re charging people ~$18,400 at the end, or does the state not elect to collect the fees (and I can’t imagine a private impound yard holding it for free). One place says up to 10 days, the NC DMV website is not very easy to navigate but doesn’t seem to have much info. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/174 "2013-01-11T20:29:48Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Humor me; Just for discussion’s sake, identify what cite you’re claiming. Scroll up. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/175 "2013-01-12T01:35:09Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Scroll up. :rolleyes: We’re on post #175; can you narrow it down a little? ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/176 "2013-01-12T12:54:12Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > You’re not addressing the increased risk to life that guns’ \*mere existence \*poses. We do have laws regarding unreasonable dangerousness of other objects, so why not these? A risk doesn’t infringe on your right to live. It’s not unreasonable to try to reduce the risk (though it’s by no means dire), but certain attempts to reduce the risk definitely do infringe on civil rights. > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > The right to bear arms is bounded by its very text, the part that the gun fetishists either handwave away or simply pretend doesn’t exist - it’s in fact the only \*explicitly \*limited right in the Constitution. This argument is dead, dead, dead as a doornail that has rung down the curtain and joined the door invisible. If it weren’t enough that anybody could see that the framers explicitly wrote “the right of the _People_,” and that at any rate P -\> Q doesn’t imply ~P -\> ~Q, the Supreme Court went and affirmed the obvious after all. It is a settled fact, of text, of context, of tradition, and of jurisprudence, that the second amendment secures an individual right. ---
**Author:** ![gms453](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@gms453](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gms453)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/177 "2013-01-12T17:34:23Z")
> [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](#): > > In my state at least, if you are arrested for DUI, the car you are driving is immediately confiscated. It doesn’t matter if you own it, your mom or your company. You don’t get it back until you are acquitted of the charge. That can be six months. If you’re found guilty, they keep it. What is your “state”? ---
**Author:** ![artemis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/91b2a8/32.png) [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2013, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/178 "2013-01-13T00:06:27Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > You’re not addressing the increased risk to life that guns’ \*mere existence \*poses. We do have laws regarding unreasonable dangerousness of other objects, so why not these? A gun’s mere existence poses absolutely no increased risk to anyone’s life - only it’s improper use does. And the last time I checked, we DO have laws regulating firearms usage. Which is why I have to take my pistols to a range to shoot them rather than simply plink at cans in my suburban back yard, and why I didn’t ring in the New Year by going outside a’whooping and a’hollering while shooting off a few dozen rounds up into the air. And I’ll be in big trouble if I ever point my guns at a person without being able to show that I had reasonable cause to believe I was in immediate danger ( and it only gets worse for me if I pulled the trigger). It’s also illegal to deliberately manufacture a gun which is defective (say, one that explodes in the user’s hand when he trigger is pulled) or (for handguns at least) isn’t drop-safe. So the sorts of laws you want are already on the books. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100/179 "2013-01-13T03:21:59Z")
Actually, there are dead kids that would disagree with the premise that a “gun’s mere existence poses absolutely no increased risk to anyone’s life.” That risk may be very low on average but the risk is not zero. IMHO, I’m sick of hearing about legal gun owners and proper use of firearms. Legal gun owners’ guns do end up in criminal hands. Proper use of firearms is subject to accidents. The risk is not zero. I have an autistic child. The only way I can possibly guarantee that there won’t be a gun accident in the house is by not having guns in the house. Now I do realize that there is some kind of risk of a gun invasion, but I’ll take those chances. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-maam-a-marines-letter-to-senator-dianne-feinstein/646100.md?page=8)