Saturday Rate of Exchange:
Gun Safety, More on Moore

from Raymond

 

When Glenn Beck program on Fox got so far past what even conservatives think of as conservative, he began to lose advertisers. He and Fox parted company and he started a new far right enterprise in 2010. It was a subscription on-line video site, appropriately called Insider Extreme. It pretty much petered out a few months later in 2011. You can still find the remnants here.

Beck started TheBlaze as a broader network to replace Insider Extreme, continuing the far far right, conspiracy oriented, tradition in a number of internet based media. It is not widely considered a credible source of reliable fact.

Our friend T. Paine is a 2nd amendment enthusiast. Oddly, he bases his latest effort on what he read in TheBlaze, attacking thoughts about the 2nd Amendment by Michael Moore. According to TheBlaze, Moore wants an amendment to the constitution that would enable more gun regulation.

We linked to T. Paine at Saving Common Sense where he focuses on what he sees as Moore’s distortions of original intent.

Of course he misses the entire purpose of why our founders insisted that citizens must have the right to keep and bear arms, and it has nothing to do with sport or hunting. I suppose it would have been more astonishing if he had understood that fact.

Reaction here was intense and largely unified.

From Trey:

Another rousing defense for maintaining the status quo! Another idea put forth to deal with our gun violence. Not saying it’s a good or a bad idea, but it’s an idea. So let’s answer that idea by not countering it with a different idea… but by waving around an opinion of what we think the founders’ original intents were and off no ideas of your own.

As an aside; I do not know what was bemusing about Michael Moore’s facebook post… his intention seemed pretty clear.

From Burr Deming:

Let me propose a hypothetical: If T. Paine became convinced that innocent lives would best be saved with more gun regulation, would he favor that regulation as a God given duty?

I’m thinking of these words of wisdom:

At the end of the day, we have a God given right, and I would argue a duty, to protect innocent lives from evil as best we are able.

I also wonder about this:

Of course he misses the entire purpose of why our founders insisted that citizens must have the right to keep and bear arms, and it has nothing to do with sport or hunting.

If I read the beginning of the amendment correctly, the entire purpose is explicit. Has to do with well regulated militia. That entire purpose would not involve any other God given right.

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From Ryan:

I don’t encounter much in the way of rational debate over gun control.

Conservatives seem mostly concerned about repeating stupid slogans (“Guns don’t kill people, people do!”/”Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun!”), mocking big cities whose gun-related crime rates defy their stricter gun control laws, and attempting to apply their understanding of the country’s founders’ intentions regarding guns to modern weaponry. The first two behaviors are typical in politics: repeat the catchy lines you’ve heard and misunderstand the data. But the last is particularly egregious to me because of the way conservatives present the problem.

They insist that our right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed, per the Second Amendment, but they are rather dishonest about it. Not even they think that every citizen is entitled to nuclear weaponry or other arms understood as “massively destructive.” This is a very clear restriction on our freedom regarding arms, but it’s treated as irrelevant, probably because the thought of any of us owning a nuclear missile and the means of launching it seems so absurd. What about something less destructive, like tanks, RPGs, and other weaponry unnecessary for hunting or typical self-defense scenarios? Some people believe that we should have access to them, but not many. This is also a very clear restriction. The point is that conservatives and liberals are both willing to draw lines on the matter of infringing this right, but conservatives refuse to actually see it this way, preferring instead their self-serving narrative that liberals hate the Constitution and want to rob us of our freedoms and that conservatives are loyal defenders of everything for which the country’s founders stood.

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From Trey:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Seems a lot of people forget about insuring domestic transquility, providing common defence, promotion general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty. We can never have this discussion because one side talks about doing something, anything about the violence and the other side immediately leaps to ‘WE’RE GOING TO BE DISARMED’.

I’m still waiting on Obama to come knocking on my door to take my guns.

From Dave Dubya:

The fact those “good guys with guns” in Vegas saved nobody with their guns directly contradicts the NRA’s master plan.

If we didn’t have an industry of military-style weapons flooding the country, the death count would be lower in many mass shootings. This is simple reality. So much for wanting to “save innocent lives”.

Their entire argument is, “More weapons of death mean more lives saved.”

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5 thoughts on “Saturday Rate of Exchange:
Gun Safety, More on Moore”

  1. One addition to my comment, falling on the side of criticizing liberals:

    I occasionally hear talk of wanting to hold gun manufacturers liable for the harm that others cause with their products. I don’t know how widespread this desire is, but it’s troubling for the same reason that it would be troubling to hold knife manufacturers responsible for what people do with their knives, car manufacturers responsible for what people do with their cars, drill manufacturers responsible for what people do with their drills, farmers responsible for what people do with their food (one could feed peanuts to someone fatally allergic to them, after all), etc. This sort of policy goes against basic moral principles regarding responsibility. It even comes across as a dishonest attempt to ban guns indirectly by putting gun manufacturers out of business.

    Does anyone here support this policy? If so, can you defend it?

    1. Heroin dealers should be held accountable for selling heroin, not for what junkies do.

      Gun manufacturers shouldn’t be held accountable for what people do with the guns. They should be accountable for manufacturing and selling weapons of war to civilians. As long as these weapons are legal and pumped into the population more deaths will result. It has become a clear and present danger to the public.

      This is why law makers need to be held accountable for the deaths resulting from effectively legalizing weapons of war for civilians.

      I won’t hold my breath for accountability on that front.

      The propaganda of the NRA and GOP has been more effective than the message of the opposition. While opponents of such weapons proliferation employ facts, reason, and compassion, the NRA and GOP simply wrap the issue in fear, the flag, and freedom.

      We know who always wins with this strategy.

      We may always be free to salute the flag and invoke freedom, but we will never be free from the threat of mass killings by enraged Militia Amendment enthusiasts. Even the gun-totin’ Good Guys were terrorized and helpless in Vegas.

      We will always live under the gun in the “land of the free”.

      1. You clearly don’t support the position I described, so I don’t have much to say in response. But I am curious about how you define “weapons of war” and thereby distinguish them from other guns. What factors come into play besides rate of fire?

        1. Ryan,

          I’m not sure where we disagree. I thought I was expanding on your position that gun manufacturers shouldn’t be held accountable for what people do with the guns.

          They are operating within the law, therefor I say lawmakers are ultimately accountable.

          Both rate of fire and volume of fire are the factors. Bayonets used to be a factor but are antiquated and not relevant in mass killings.

          Machine guns are weapons of war. Automatic rifles, essentially machine guns, are weapons of war. They are intended to be effective human-killing machines. The M16 was developed as a weapon of war. An AR15 is essentially the same rifle, and is easily converted into an automatic rifle, thus a weapon of war.

          Magazines holding 30 or more rounds are also features of weapons of war.

          These weapons are not used for hunting or needed for self defense.

          It is not a society’s duty to keep gun manufacturers in business. Their duty is to public safety and public health. Proliferation of weapons and their destruction of life is very much a public safety/public health issue.

          Humans are far too often not emotionally stable or morally grounded enough to have such weapons of war.

          Confiscation is out of the question, but opening the floodgates wider is not the solution.

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