26 thoughts on “Stop Demanding Gun Control In Response To Mass Shootings”

  2. So you recognize institutional racism, but only when you think it supports abolishing gun regulations. If blacks are shown to be disproportionately pulled over for traffic violations in some parts of the country, should we abolish the vehicle code? Or does it actually still serve a purpose in maintaining safe roadways?

    1. Where do we have institutionalized racism these days … outside of democrat endorsed policies?

      2. Where do we have institutionalized racism these days … outside of democrat endorsed policies?

        Did you read the article Rand linked to? The whole point was that the police racially profile blacks re: gun possession. It then makes the interesting argument that more liberal gun possession laws would help blacks. I’m arguing that the unfair enforcement of laws doesn’t have anything to do with the laws themselves.

        1. Dave, your point ignores the “terrain” over which laws are laid. Rule of law’s great contribution to society is to prevent rule by feud. That can only work when they have a purpose that is not to constrain a particular recognized group of people beyond where others are constrained. Just that situation is the case in gun-control laws. Everyone in favor of them sees them as something to be used against someone else.

          Oddly enough, that varies from group to group with gun-control laws. Police want any people they most often arrest to be constrained from having guns. Progressive friends here in the Portland Metro area admit openly that the people who they want to see constrained from having guns are their non-progressive neighbors. They admit that the closer they get to their version of a “decent” society, the more likely those neighbors are to resist with violence.

          The simple truth is that gun-control is about not trusting your fellow citizens. Fantasies about the police arriving in time to keep incidents like the Charleston massacre from happening could not be accomplished, and trying would create what I experienced in the early 1970s, in Spain. I went to a course in La Antilla, Spain, and was surprised to see guys in the funny plastic hats of the Guardia Civia standing all around town, and all around the tents we were gathered in for classes each day. They were polite (we were bringing money into town), but omnipresent. They were the effector arm of a fascist police state, after all.

          That is the degree of omnipresence you would need to keep a Charleston massacre from happening *without* making sure people were protected by *point*defense*. Sure if 2-3 people had been armed in that church, they could still have been overwhelmed if an entire mob of these racist crazies showed up. But them, such a mob is far better trackable by police than the lone fool who knew where he could find a “gun-free-zone”.

    2. I’m simply pointing out that the explicit reason for gun control measures in the past has been to keep them out of the hands of black people. I think that it remains an implicit reason now. “Disparate impact” is a completely separate issue.

      2. I’m simply pointing out that the explicit reason for gun control measures in the past has been to keep them out of the hands of black people.

        I don’t think that’s the implicit or explicit reason for gun control in the past. It’s more about keeping firepower out of the hands of crazy people and criminals. For the same reason that we control driving licenses by denying them to repeat offender DUI drivers, or the mentally impaired, or whoever. Or should we just open up the roads to anyone with access to a car?

        1. I don’t think that’s the implicit or explicit reason for gun control in the past. It’s more about keeping firepower out of the hands of crazy people and criminals.

          Well you certainly didn’t read my link. Further it is already illegal for crazy people and criminals to own guns. The later often can’t vote either, but Hillary is arguing that murders should be given back their right to vote. In Sandy Hook and in Charleston, it was someone else that purchased the gun. Straw purchases are illegal too unless done by the Obama Administration to help arm Mexican Gangs. So the gun control you advocate, Dave, already exists. We are often told by people like you that gun control is only about keeping guns out of the hands of crazies and criminals, so if that control already exists, what else is implied by further gun control? Again, you should read my link above.

        2. You don’t think it is? Read the link I provided below. You are explicitly and provably wrong, it’s a historic fact.

        4. “It’s more about keeping firepower out of the hands of crazy people and criminals. ”

          The problem is that Democrats too often apply the adjectives of crazy and criminal to people who are neither but happen to disagree with Democrats on taxation or some other issue.

          How do we know you guys want to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, who are a risk for violence and not just everyone in the country with anxiety or SADS, and not create a marginalized, criminalized, and persecuted underclass of people who believe in the 2nd amendment?

          There is no good faith here, the Democrats have been too duplicitous. There is no trust left, Lucy pulled the football away too many times.

    3. No Dave, we support getting rid of all bad laws, motor vehicle or otherwise.

      A Common Sense approach to Gun Safety would be to abolish any unsecured Gun Free Zone.

      If you want to declare a place, pen to the public, ‘Gun Free’ you must have controlled access with metal detectors and armed security or not be allowed to declare one at all.

      1. No Dave, we support getting rid of all bad laws, motor vehicle or otherwise.

        So some regulation is good, other is bad. Give me an example of each. So I think there’s a place for some regulation. I also think people can own firearms. I also don’t think that “anyone, anytime can own any amount of firepower” is good policy for a decent society. Why is this hard?

        1. Dave, I suspect you want to be taken seriously despite your logical fallacies, so I’ll give you this thought, we can recognize Roof was crazy, and we can call him a racist. Neither is illegal. We could try to make racism a criminal act. I say try, because the Supreme Court has many times weighed in on these attempts and found them unconstitutional. Example, in Texas vs Johnson, SCOTUS declared laws that banned the burning of the US flag to be unconstitutional as flag burning is protected speech. If that decision made in 1989 had gone the other way, Roof would have been in jail. South Carolina has laws against desecration of both the US and Confederate flags.

          So you ask the question to Puckett about some regulations being good and others being bad. Well the gun control on the books didn’t stop Roof. But if Roof could have been jailed under South Carolina law for flag desecration, he might have been stopped. Oddly, no one is calling for a national flag burning amendment, but instead are demanding regulations that would do nothing to stop the next Roof.

          BTW, if you carefully read me statement, you will not find me advocating for more regulation to free speech. I agree with Puckett, bad laws are bad laws.

        3. “So some regulation is good, other is bad.”

          No shit sherlock, did you really think your friends to the right want zero government, rules, and regulations? That would be more like anarchy and the Anarchists have been rioting for more government through socialism with the rest of the militant Democrat activists.

    4. ” If blacks are shown to be disproportionately pulled over for traffic violations in some parts of the country, ”

      That merits looking deeper into the situation but is not itself evidence of systemic racism.

      You also have to look at minorities as human beings that are capable of making their own decisions.

  3. The argument about the police and racism only applies to gun possession, and does not apply to regulations on gun manufacturers and vendors.

  5. See also NYC’s ridiculous knife laws.

    An inlaw relation of mine in the city ran into a cop a while back while carrying a large pocketknife clipped visible inside a pocket (he’s an electrician); if he’d been a black kid in a hoodie with a prior and not a 50-something Italian he’d probably have been looking at jail time.

  6. The real reason they don’t want to call for gun control after events like this anymore is that it doesn’t work. Using dead people as political props has been backfiring on Democrats. But people do feel sympathy for the victims and there is a human desire to do something, anything, to try and help in order to make themselves feel better. (Not to actually help the victims or prevent similar events from happening but just to beat their chest to show they care)

    So, lower the bar. instead of reaching for something divisive like banning all guns, set the sights a little lower and go for other issues Democrats find important, like banning flags.

  7. I call it “the A attacking B giving C the right to attack D” fallacy. (“A” being some crazy shooter, B being his victims, C being “liberals” and “D” being peaceful, non-aggressive gun-owners–that is, the vast majority of gun-owners.”) There should be some fancy Latin word for it, to go with the Tu Quoque, the Ad Hominem, the Argumentum ad Misericodiam, and the other fallacies in the “liberal” arsenal of stupid arguments..

  8. In 1993 the Clinton administration instituted tough gun control policies on American military bases.

    In 2009 a Muslim Army psychiatrist who other Army psychiatrists had warned the Army about and who had been investigated by the FBI for ties to terrorists ran wild at Fort Hood, killing many before being stopped by being wounded by a civilian woman deputy sheriff.

    There’s more, but I think people get the point.

    I don’t own any guns and never have. But I am very tired of crazy control freaks claiming they can protect us from all sorts of bad things with their crazy controls.

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