That period saw the first wave of gun control laws, for obvious reasons. (You ever try to get bloodstains out of white sheets? It’s a bitch!)
Study the cites in Message#15. Come back with a bit less ignorance (and pie).
What if I am the local warlord? I like that better than “gang leader,” which implies a kind of anarchistic aimlessness, while “warlord” has a definite ring of purpose to it.
…You probably couldn’t miss my point any wider if you were trying.
Governmental police forces protect communities (ostensibly) by reducing crime rates through patrols and enforcement actions. They do not and cannot protect individuals from specific acts of crime, except by coincidence or, occasionally, a speedy response to a 9-1-1 call. They have no obligation to respond to all 9-1-1 calls (even to life-threatening situations), and if they ignore your cries for help, they cannot be held responsible for any harm you may suffer as a result.
That’s not to say most cops don’t want to protect people from crime; certainly, I would expect most of them to intervene on behalf of a victim given the opportunity, just the same as any other decent citizen should. But they can’t be everywhere: when a mugger assaults you with a knife on some dark street, you are responsible for extracting yourself from the situation safely. When a possibly armed burglar forces his way into your home late at night, you are responsible for ensuring that you and your family do not come to harm. When an abusive ex is threatening you, you are responsible for defending your own life. Chances are, the police can’t help you in any of these situations, even though they would undoubtedly want to.
The function and duty of government to protect the society as a whole simply does not compass such situations, and it’s sheerest fantasy to imagine that any other than an oppressively omnipresent government could ever do so. But even that I doubt: if the government is all-powerful, how can we possibly protect ourselves from the same selfish influences that produce the rapist and the robber when they are introduced to the very authority responsible for our care? The fallibility of institutions, even those justly instituted, is the very reason a balance of power is desirable, and it carries with it a balance of responsibility.
I’ll second Steve MB’s suggestion: try reading up on the list of United States state and federal court cases that I provided. If you can’t grasp why it is not practical for government agents to act as a personal bodyguard to every individual at all times, perhaps you can at least recognize the limitations on the responsibilities of police as established by our judiciary and our common-law history.
Ok, multiple replies:
Certainly the Framers would think citizens should possess an infantryman’s main weapon, which today would be a select-fire assault rifle. Weapons of demonstrated military utility would also include submachine guns, sniper rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and sidearms. As I said in another thread, grenade launchers and RPGs gets into the question of whether you can reasonably exclude explosive ordinance.
To get drafted as cannon fodder in the next declared war, since for purposes of a draft the “militia” is every able-bodied male of military age.
As I said in another thread, the purpose of the Second Amendment was to guarantee that the states couldn’t be made helpless against a federal tyranny by having their citizens disarmed. As a side issue, the existence of a civilian militia was supposed to provide adequate defense so that we wouldn’t need government forces strong enough to impose a coup.
Agreed.
I was unaware that anyone was claiming that the RtK&BA was an absolute, limitless right. The Constitution protects freedom of assembly; no one claims that that means that police can’t order an unruly crowd to disperse, or even that cities can’t require parade permits for protest marches. It does mean that the right of public assembly is a right- not a privilege that the government can grant or withold at will. And to continue the analogy, we don’t want cities to be able to enact crowd-control ordinances that predefine all unauthorized public gatherings as riots.
“Should be” has nothing to do with it. It’s simply how the world works.
No; societies build governments, which in turn allow those societies to grow and develop and prosper to a degree they otherwise couldn’t. They build each other; without society there wouldn’t be a government at all, and without government society would ( and does ) collapse. Failed states aren’t paradises, but hellholes; as are pre-state societies. The sort of places where the leading cause of death is murder, and people will accept even a tyrant taking power, because even the vast majority of tyrants are better than life without government.
That just talks about official legal positions; not reality. And the REALITY is that you are dependent of the government for your safety, freedom and welfare, like it or not. Those things exist primarily because of it; if it vanished, you wouldn’t have them. You’d be under the thumb of the nearest thug with a gun, or dead, or be one of the thugs; and you’d live in a massively impoverished and insanely dangerous society to boot.
Seriously. Although most anti-gun clowns don’t know the first thing about the actual guns they’re condemning, so they’ll never realize this - but a hunting rifle and a sniper rifle are, for all intents and purposes, the same exact thing.
The great Carlos Hathcock of Vietnam used a Winchester Model 70 as his sniper rifle.
Of course, these lambs don’t know what that means, so it doesn’t matter. The point is, your grandaddy’s hunting rifle is way more powerful than an AK-47.
No, I simply don’t buy it. YOU don’t protect yourself, because you can’t. You don’t have the power, armed or not. When the government’s protection fails, you’re most likely screwed, simple as that; if someone, say, decides to kill you they will almost certainly succeed regardless of you being armed. The guy who shoots first, or from behind, wins, Wild West movies notwithstanding.
Der Trihs, I always pictured you as an Abbie Hoffman type radical who would be the first to hit the barricades and fight as a guerrilla against the government if it came to that. When I think of you in my mind, I get an image of a young Fidel Castro. (I don’t mean this as an insult.) I’m surprised you of all people, who are so insistent about your independence and your rights and everything, would follow the establishment party line like such a lamb on the issue of being armed.
I thought you were a free-thinker and a freedom fighter.
[John McLean]“Thanks for the advice.”[/John McLean]
:rolleyes: And as I said elsewhere ( and I think to you; to someone who used the same lines at least ), I’d be using bombs and RPGs and mortars and other serious weapons. And try to convince some of the military to come to my side - without that, my defeat is pretty much certain in a pure military situation. Or, nonviolent resistance, depending on the nature of the government. I wouldn’t be silly enough to expect rifles and pistols to do much; how do you think Saddam held onto power in an armed society ?
And if I won, I’d promptly set up a replacement government, not expect Peace and Love - or private gun ownership - to keep the country from falling apart.
Wait, I’m posting in two threads, let me check… Ah, yes, my added-in-edit to post #11.
As I said above, I really hate the business of hiding behing hunting. The 2nd has jack-all to do with that. So spare me that particular bait-and-switch.
But I take the larger point that the penetrating power & destructive power of a shot are derived from several factors–including the ammo used–& simply regulating guns by say, caliber, is not going to be perfectly “fair.” It’s still a good guideline. A lightweight .22 isn’t going to behave like a 9mm Glock isn’t the same as a elk hunter’s rifle. (And those hunting rifles, in the interest of public safety, should be treated as what they are: highly dangerous weapons designed to kill something much bigger & faster than a man.)
How are you going to guard the safehouse where you build the bombs and RPGs? Are the sentries going to be armed with water pistols?
Der Trihs, how does an argument that governments have limited liability for individual safety become in your mind an argument for anarchism? Do you really advocate unlimited government, or are you just being disingenuous?
Please. The government can’t protect me either if someone decides to shoot me in the back, or get together a gang of friends to beat me to death, or run me down with their car on the street. But there are innumerable situations in which I would have an opportunity to act in my own defense, while agents of the government would not. I have been in such situations. In fact, I’ve also been in a situation where the extremely fortuitous and entirely coincidental appearance of a police officer saved my sorry ass from being either beaten and robbed or forced to shoot another person. (And frankly I wouldn’t have liked my odds - I was outnumbered and, stupidly, outmaneuvered.)
You say we should speak of reality. Alright, let’s talk about reality. The reality runs thusly: if a pair of thugs break into your home and assault you, and you call the police, and the police drive by your house without even bothering to look in the door or listen for screams, they are not in the least bit liable for the fourteen hours of rape and assault you suffer as a result. You can sue them if you want: you will lose. Think this isn’t realistic? It’s exactly what happened to the three women in Warren v. District of Columbia.
Do you not think that, had one of the women in that ill-fated house possessed a firearm and known how to use it, the situation might have ended much differently? If not, I must accuse you of being unrealistic.
Mostly, they’ll hide. And ideally, there’ll be no one there most of the time. As for sentries, they’d just die when the government blew up the building, if it was discovered; they’d never see anything they could hurt with a rifle, if they saw anyone at all. If anyone IS there, they’d be better off without weapons, which would just identify them as targets.
Neither. I’m saying that government is the only reason we DON’T have anarchism; that whether we as individuals own weapons doesn’t restrain other people from violence towards us at all.
Yes, it can, and yes it does. People don’t DO that normally, because they know they government will try to find them and punish them if they do. Just because a cop isn’t there at that moment doesn’t mean it’s not protecting you just by existing. Without a government, you just have an anarchy where the best killers take whatever they want. The only reason that the most successful people aren’t the most ruthless and murderous, is because of the government; that’s what societies become, without governments.
Not really; the thugs in question would’ve probably just have ended up with an extra gun, and the woman dead. Possibly taking a thug with her, but there’s never been a shortage of those. And I didn’t say a thing about “liability”; I simply said that to the extent we are safe, it’s the government that keeps us so.
They don’t do it normally, maybe, but tell that to the families of all the people who it happened to abnormally.
For this topic, this thread has been remarkably free of personal vitriol.
Let’s leave the denigrating references outside, please, before some poster decides that your insults are directed at him or her.
[ /Moderating ]
And if the subject came up, I’d tell them that without the government what happened to them would be the norm, not the exception. That they probably wouldn’t be mourning dead relatives because they’d already be dead themselves, or thinking of the dead as the lucky ones.
You seem to be using the standard, bad anti-government argument that since the government is imperfect it’s useless. The whole reason that governments exist pretty much everywhere these days, is because they make most of what makes life worth living possible. Governments are necessary to modern society the way bones and nerves are to vertebrates. A vertebrate without those will collapse, and soon just be rotting meat; a society without government will collapse and become a decaying hellhole.
Let me point out the obvious; societies without private gun ownership DON’T collapse into Mad Max dystopias. Nor are they especially likely to be tyrannies; you can have a tyranny full of gun owners or a gunless free society. There’s simply no evidence that private gun ownership has any particular connection with personal safety or freedom.
Fair enough. Sorry about that. (What’s wrong with being a lamb? Lambs are nice and soft and fuzzy. They also taste really good.) I think all the slinging around of the term “gun nuts” and the like was also uncalled for so I assume that your note also refers to that as well.