A Well Regulated Militia

Mandatory minimums are bad policy. And while that sort of policy isn't itself racist, odds are that it would be enforced in a racially discriminatory manner. Actually, one of the features of critical race theory (oh no, I mentioned the bogeyman!) is that it allows us to understand how and why that happens.

 

If you are going to impose that min man on the federal level, each of those cases is going to have to be prosecuted in federal court. You'll need to start building courthouses, a lot more prisons, hiring more AUSAs and more AFPDs. We're going to need more judges and probation officers.

To get the states to impose that min man, you're going to have to coerce every state into passing similar legislation. That's generally done by threatening to withhold federal funding, that's why 50 states have a seat belt requirement, the threat to withhold federal highway funding. The states are going to need to start building prison, etc.

 

Guns are the #1 cause of death for children. I guess if we are saying the #1 cause of death for children, and 20,000+ murders per year overall (not 10,000 as that other poster asserted) are “no big deal”, then we have very different world views.

I don’t think wanting to see those numbers drastically reduced means “state of panic”, although looking at the rest of the developed world clearly something is awry in this country, we are losing at least 2x the people to homicides that we should be. You keep worrying about saving those zygotes, I’d rather do something about these far more tragic losses. The other issue is one of directionality, under Republican gun policy i view our murder problem as likely to keep getting worse.

 

I think much of our teeth gnashing over the meaning of the 2A comes as a result of syntax change since it was written. People who dig linguistics may find this interesting:

"The Second Amendment is not sloppy or ungrammatical, as some modern analysts claim. Rather, the Amendment is written in a variety of English that no longer exists. Since none of us are native speakers of late 18th century American English, we cannot expect to have good intuitions about its grammaticality or interpretation. When we read Shakespeare, for example, we accept that we have to rely on footnotes about vocabulary and syntax. The language of the Bill of Rights is chronologically closer to Shakespeare’s English than to present-day English, so the words and syntax are not always going to be immediately comprehensible.

The Second Amendment seems especially confusing because its structure has been subject to syntactic change, not just changes to words or word meanings. Words change faster and more frequently than syntax, so they are easier to notice. As we get older, we notice young people using words in new and different ways, whereas we probably are not aware of many differences in their syntax. But when we look at Shakespeare’s English, for example, we can see that syntax does change. If something seems ungrammatical to us, that is a signal that we need to look at how the grammar was used by native speakers.

The Second Amendment consists of a subordinate clause, A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, followed by a main clause, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The main clause sounds perfectly grammatical in present-day English (if we ignore the extra comma, which does not seem to have been significant). The subordinate clause with being, however, seems to have something wrong with it. This is because the being-clause precedes the main clause, and the two clauses have different subjects. The last example of this type in the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA; a 475-million-word balanced corpus of American English 1820—2019) is from 1923. Since this type of being-clause fell into disuse around a hundred years ago, it is reasonable that modern readers would not have good intuitions about its grammaticality or its meaning."

The ‘Strange’ Syntax of the Second Amendment

 

Winsome Sears takes Bill Maher to school ...

More Fun With Winsome Sears as She Disarms Bill Maher on the Subject of Guns

 

If nut jobs and criminals followed gun laws I’d voluntarily give up all my guns.

Also note (posted once again) my wife was able to shop from being carjacked in broad daylight by having a gun in her purse that she displayed during the attempt. What you want to do may have resulted in the following. Carjacking, kidnapping, rape, murder, or all of the above.

I will never, ever advocate stopping law abiding citizens from being armed, should they decide, in public.

I worked for just under 30 years as an LEO in three different capacities. I’ve seen what people have to deal with that were victims of physical abuse and a few times murdered. My buddies daughter was Bobby Longs last victim. I had 2 fire investigations where the murderers tried to hide the crime by burning the victims bodies.

We should never take good people’s rights away due to the act of criminals and crazies.

My 2 cents

 

Actually she didn’t, and basically went off on an NRA emotional rant totally circumventing his comment in order to avoid answering. “I’m a parent! I’m going to shoot you if you come in my house.” That’s what republicans do.

He specifically noted there should be common sense gun laws, and made a comment where certain states don’t require a permit. Don’t just see what you want to see. If there was common sense on guns and mental health, this likely wouldn’t even be a discussion.

 

My gal destroyed your guy to the extent that your guy had to tap out.

 

He didn’t “tap out” he moved on. I watched the show and it was obvious he was being polite to her and merely moved on. You obviously didn’t watch the show and just read the story in red state.

Let me add this for the record. Most liberals have guns, even Bill Mahar admitted he had guns, we just don’t want the mentally ill getting them. That’s why when the right talks about civil war we laugh. Just because we don’t post ourselves holding them on Christmas cards or socials doesn’t mean we don’t have them or know how to use them.

 

I have read your story before, and I get it. Let's say for the hell of it, that we could get 100% of guns off of the street, and we could get rid of 100% of assault weapons. So, no guns or assault weapons in the hands of criminals and nut jobs. Would you support the foregoing if it could actually be accomplished?

 

Those who want safety at all costs are clamoring for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on assault weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.

A State of Never-Ending Crisis: The Government Is Fomenting Mass Hysteria

 

Not only yes but HELL yes.

However that’s not going to happen.

 

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: nobody, and I mean nobody, says that murders are “no big deal.” Absolutely nobody says that. Please do not imply that anymore.

That is a very telling comment. Guns have been available and prolific for a long time. If it’s likely to keep getting worse, as you say, then it has nothing to do with the availability of guns. It had to do with shifts and changes in our culture where too many people think that it’s OK to take another person’s life.

Until we identify the reasons for our culture changing, which probably stems from both left-wing and right-wing thought, we will never be able to solve this problem. If we identify the reasons for the cultural change, then we can stop the senseless killings.

 

Turns out trannies are home-grown terrorists the MSM can get behind.

 

We will just have to disagree here. I’m not willing to sacrifice my wife or my son to reach your ideal of no guns on the streets because criminals do what criminals do.

My father in law has been held up twice at gunpoint and my mom had an attempted rape against her in the Target parking lot on San Jose Blvd in Jacksonville - on her lunch break - and multiples of people walked right by and did nothing - until one guy intervened.

At least for women, who are generally smaller and at a physical disadvantage, can’t we agree that a firearm is an equalizer for her?

 

And criminals have guns for the same reasons you do. The more available guns are, the easier it is for the wrong people to get them.

 

Thankfully all the right people can get them.

 

Have you ever argued on behalf of gun rights based upon the rarity of shootings?

 

People imply it frequently in their gun fetish defense posts.

 

Let's be honest, when people decided after Sandy Hook that 20 dead first graders was an acceptable amount of collateral damage for their "gun rights," that made clear that there's no line (short of something bad happening to their loved one) that will make some people reconsider their stances.

It's always this rationale of "we need it for safety" (or even worse, "we need it because of the tyrannical government"). But the reason they need it for safety is because we've made so damn easy for dangerous people to get their hands on guns via the same laws these gun-rights proponents refuse to change!