Costas, Whitlock and gun control

History repeats itself.

We like to pretend we've evolved beyond certain things. Yet, Governments across the globe are cracking down on their citizens/residents/subjects in the harshest possible ways at this very moment.

Would Bahrain be able to crack down on its citizens if they had firearms?

Would the China's crackdown in Tienanmen Square have played out differently?

We're in an age where we are turning over more and more control to our government. We're granting them the power to control healthcare and education (school loans). We're allowing them to tax more, and spend more. Privacy rights are being eroded.

You don't have to be a science fiction writer to imagine a very different society taking hold in a future generation.

 

How is that different than what goes on now?

Oh, and not to be lost in this tragedy, gun violence and violent crime in general in the United States is way, way, way down from its peak decades ago. Did you even hear crime mentioned during the recent presidential campaign? Could you imagine its absence from the conversation in 1988 or 1976 or any time in between?

I'm no gun rights advocate. But I don't want this incident, or the Colorado incident or the Arizona incident, to give us the false impression that this is a problem that is getting worse. It's not.

 

You're argument is fine. It's relatively sound.

But it's not an originalist argument.

It's a Living Constitution argument.

 

Even if you accept the NRA - "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" propaganda and, even if you accept the guns are a deterrent to crime (I think you are more likely to be killed from your own gun than to save your own life or that of a family member), fewer guns would reduce the number of family killings and murder-suicide killings. There is a higher level of effort and knowledge required to kill somebody with a knife compared to a gun.

To say Costas is hiding behind Whitlock is ridiculously stupid. Costas credited Whitlock's words, acknowledging he didn't always agree with Whitlock, and brought them to a far larger audience. Costas could have taken an easy road, talked about the tragedy and given the cliched, "this puts things in perspective" argument. Instead, he put it up to everyone watching to question their beliefs.

I remember Costas talking in the 1980s about the dearth of black managers. He didn't rant or rave. He thoughtfully made the point by noting a simple fact that from 1947 until the 1980s (I don't remember the exact year) that, with all of the blacks who had played in major league baseball, there were over 400 managerial changes and only four African-Americans had been named as manager. Costas uses well-reasoned logic instead of taking the easy way out.

 

You can regulate speech, or gun rights, or voting rights, or the right to abortion in various ways.

You can't effectively ban something, that is Constitutional, simply by having it masquerade as a "regulation".

 

Good post. What has the populace got to fall back on if it doesn't have arms? But then again, comparing the handgun to the defense department's weaponry, we haven't much of a chance against it.

 

I didn't write that they should be banned.

 

Yes.


No.

 

Citizen militias remain in the realm of survivalist's late-night wet dreams because they are not currently necessary.

They are not necessary, in part, because of the 2nd Amendment.

That's not to say they won't be necessary one day.

Look, if you wanted to install a totalitarian government, some of the things you'd do would be to restrict speech, gun rights, voting rights, and the right to bring cases to the Courts.

And, you'd probably have a lot of journalists, lawyers, college professors, religious leaders, etc. imprisoned or killed.

We would all fight against each of these steps -- except for the right to bear arms. Doesn't make sense to me.

The 2nd Amendment keeps everyone honest.

As the saying goes, "God created men Sam Colt made them equal."

 

No.

They are not necessary because we have the communication and transportation technology now, along with federal revenue-raising power, to have a centralized armed forces.

The militias of the Second Amendment were not those that would rise up against the U.S. government.

They were those that would fight FOR IT, as in against Great Britain.

 

Yeah, because we could never have tyranny again.