Category: Guns

I Hope I Wasn’t This Ignorant in College

You know it’s a slow day when I’m linking to college papers.  This one is from King’s College, a catholic college in Northern PA.

 Of all the pronouncements made at the NRA conference, my favorite was provided by Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas . Mr. Huckabee stated, “watching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!” No, that’s not a typo, he said, “Duck hunting”. Apparently, Mr. Huckabee’s sincerest wish is that upon reaching the gates of Heaven there will be a sign which reads: OPEN SEASON , as we all know Jesus Christ was an avid hunter. I’m sure God fully supports the killing of His creatures (in Heaven no less,) whom according to most conservatives, He painstakingly created in a day. Although I must give Governor Huckabee due credit, because in a single statement he mentioned faith, God, and guns. That’s the conservative trifecta.

The gun  part of the party tend not to be the same as the god part.  No doubt many guns owners are people of faith, just like most golfers are.  But we’re a different faction of the conservative movement, for the most part.  And what’s so weird about enjoying duck hunting?

I fully realize that in many parts of this country, hunting is considered a rite of passage as American as baseball, and the second amendment guarantees that the right to own a hunting rifle shall not be infringed, but can’t we all get together on the assault rifle? In today’s world, with a professional police force in every town and city across America , is there a need for citizen militia?

What is an assault rifle?  10 bucks says he doesn’t know.  I feel safe in this bet, because clearly he doesn’t know current federal law either:

Now, I am not naïve enough to think that stricter gun control laws will eradicate violent crime in this country, but it certainly would decrease them. Would anyone argue that a mandated federal background check on all purchases of handguns could have prevented the Virginia Tech massacre? Would any of the proposed gun restriction measures, when conducted properly and efficiently, help prevent handguns and assault weapons from falling into the hands of criminals? I believe it is a place to start.

We started that in 1994 dude.  But to cut the kid a break, he was probably pooping in the sandbox in 1994.

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Threatening the Political Establishment

Dave Hardy asks an interesting question:

What I’ve always found interesting is — why is the 2nd Amendment considered a conservative issue, and gun control a liberal one? I have some theories which I am exploring. One is simply social and has nothing to do with logic. Liberals are less likely than conservatives to come from socio-economic groups that use or like guns. But why would that override consistency? (Esp. when it comes from persons who think (1) Bush is an incipient Hitler, we are tipping to a police state yet (2) the government should have the power to disarm the populace)?

I tend to think that gun control mostly happens when the established political order feels threatened. NFA happened as we were going through the turmoil of the Great Depression. GCA ’68 was spurred by the assassinations of political leaders like President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King. The Brady Act, the crown jewel of the gun control movement of the late 80s and early 90s, was spurned by the assassination attempt on President Reagan.

I’m not actually sure that gun control, at its root, is so much an issue of progressive vs. libertarian or conservative, so much as the political establishment vs. the people.

We’ve been successful as a movement because we’re all beneficiaries of a system that was intended to put the people as paramount in the political order; that all power of the political establishment to govern was ultimately derived from the consent of the people, that agreed to give up certain rights in order to enjoy the benefits of just government. But in giving up some rights, the people retained others, and among those was the right to bear arms.

I think this has always been somewhat of a threat to the political order, especially the leftist political order, which does not see itself as a necessary evil to protect the rights of men, but as a movement to shape society as they would like to see it. Seeing people as objects to be molded into thinking and behaving correctly, belies a certain intellectual arrogance and self absorption. This is certainly not limited to the left. You can see it on the right in spades as well. But many of those elements of the right also embrace gun control.

I think the attraction to gun control is rooted in a fear among the political establishment that their power is threatened by the idea of power being distributed in society; power that could be used against them. This might seem paranoid, but I think it odd that political turmoil, particularly assassination, seems to be a primary impetus for gun control measures.

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Timony Driving Assault Weapon Media Blitz?

Anyone notice a common theme in these South Florida articles is John Timony?  It would seem not much has changed since his days of crapping all over the Pennsylvania constitution when he worked for then Mayor Rendell.  Dwight Evans wanted to bring him back, if elected mayor.   No thanks.

I kind of wonder if the trend toward more police officers being shot has something to do with there being fewer police officers on the streets?  You would think with less backup around, criminals might get a little more bold, and individual officers would have to handle dangerous situations with less resources available than when there are more cops.

Hat tip: SCC 

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Preventable Tragedy

Thirdpower points to a sad situation in gun free Chicago that illustrates the problems with trying to legislate social problems out of existence; the kind of folks who have gun accidents in their household are generally the kind who aren’t going to pay much attention to the law anyway.

I think we agree with our opponents on this issue that people should be responsible about keeping their firearms away from small hands, but we believe the solution is education rather than legislation.

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