On Sun, 31 Aug 2014 16:17:12 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 8/31/2014 11:46 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Sun, 31 Aug 2014 09:10:57 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 8/30/2014 10:42 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 09:57:20 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:


I saw his emotion, he was speaking from deep feelings. I saw nothing I'd
call rabid.

So, where do you draw the line? Does he actually have to bite someone
on the leg? From Webster's:

=============================================
ra·bid
adjective \?ra-b?d also ?ra--\

1)affected with rabies

2) having or expressing a very extreme opinion about or interest in
something
============================================

I'll go for 2).

I don't think that expressing an opinion that disagrees with yours makes
it very extreme.

It's easy to lose sight of this here, in a nest of gun nutz, but the
idea that the provisions of the Safe Act are in violation of the 2nd
Amendment is a distinctly minority view. So much a minority, in fact,
that I'd call it extreme.

For example, the last Gallup poll found that 83% of adults in the US
wanted Congress to pass a law requiring universal background checks.
And 56% want to reinstate the complete ban on ARs. The Safe Act is
right in line with mainstream American opinions.

Which is why our Republic was set up to protect minorities from abuse by
majorities.

First it was "his views aren't extreme," now it's "protecting
minorities from majorities." When you decide which of those nearly
opposite points of view you want to argue, David, let me know.



It's a clumsy law that was rushed through, and a few provisions have
been struck down by a federal court (loading no more than 7 rounds in
a 10-round magazine is one for late-night comedy shows), but most of
it stands.

Weiss is out on the fringe, as are many members here.

As were those who founded our country.

Nonsense.

The people who founded our country wanted democratic representation.
They couldn't vote for members of Parliament and they called that
despotism.

So now we can vote for our legislators, thanks to our ancestors'
sacrifices, fighting and dying for it, and you want what...an
oligarchy of the fringe? A Gun Nutz' Oligarchy?

Just tell us. It sounds like you don't care for what Jefferson called
"The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy
[which] has rendered useless almost everything written before
on the structure of government."





Do you you feel that the acts of an insane individual are sufficient
cause to violate the rights of the rest of a nation's citizens?

Especially when violating those rights will not effectively grant
security from other insane individuals?

Nobody's rights are being violated by NY's Safe Act. This is not an
opinion. It's a matter of fact -- both history and law.

Read Heller. It does a better job of explaining the history and law
than any of the gun nutz.

I read it. SCOTUS dropped the ball by seeing 2nd limitations that aren't
there.

The Supreme Court based its judgment on a thorough review of the
historical record. Where did your opinion come from?

Silly me, I read the 2nd Amendment. I don't see the limitations SCOTUS does.

That's because you didn't read the history of it. You don't know what
they meant. You can't discern it from the Amendment alone.

The sentence is a nominative absolute construction. By definition,
there is no known grammatical relationship between the nominative
phrase and the independent clause. You don't know what, if any,
dependency is intended by the phrase.You don't know what it means. I
don't know what it means. The Supreme Court doesn't know what it
means.

All you can do is make a serious study of its historical context and
see what it *appears* to mean. Which is what the Supreme Court did.
We're not talking about "intent." Robert Bork, the conservative expert
on original intent, told us about the intent. The intent, said Bork,
was to insure that the federal government would not disable the state
militias by disarming their citizens. That's all the 2nd was about,
according to one of the most conservative jurists of our time.

The *meaning* is another matter. What was "the right"? Where is it
explained? Where is it defined? Nowhere, explicitly. And not in the
words of politicians of the time, who were advocates for one side or
another; like politicians today, they only told us what they wanted,
as individuals.

The Founders were, in that sense, politicians. You can only discern
the historical context by a careful and thorough reading of the words
and the laws of the time. I think the Court did it quite well. I agree
that they have correctly decided the case based on the preponderance
of historical evidence.


The main weakness I see is of a system that relies on gun prohibition
signs for defense. These signs serve only to announce that there will be
no resistance offered.

Guns are not prohibited by NY's Safe Act. They couldn't be. The first
federal court would shoot it down, citing Heller.

You missed the point. I was referring to private areas that display
signs saying that private citizens can't be armed in this area.

I doubt if there were any such signs in most of those places. The fact
is, people don't usually carry guns in those places, anyway.

People with CCW licenses carry guns where there is no posting.

Overall, roughly 11.4 million people have CCW permits in the US as of
mid-2014. According to incidental police reports, no more than half
are carrying at any given time. That's 1 out of 60 people.

Paul Merkel of _Shooting Illustrated_ says, "I’ve encountered dozens
of citizens who obtained a permit but don’t carry because they do not
feel comfortable or capable of actually using a gun for personal
protection....I am certain my face shows distress when I hear someone
say they have a CCW permit but they '…only carry it when I think I
might need it.'”

I don't doubt those circumstances are quite common. I talked with some
friends in northern IL late this summer, who are eager to get their
new permits. "Of course, I'll only carry it in Chicago or some of the
suburbs," they said.


The killer in Aurora, Co, bypassed at least one theater to attend one
that had such a sign posted. The killer here in Brookfield, Wi, entered
a beauty salon that was posted. Sandy Hook was posted.

You're the one being silly, now.

Not at all. Again, if you want a list of mass shootings that occurred
in places where there were no such postings (because there couldn't
be), just let me know.



Of course, we now have a lot of gun nutz who say they *should* carry
guns in those places. They want something like a paramilitary state.
Even Israel knocked that off some years ago, and their statistics were
much more supportive than ours. See your note about an "insane
individual," above.

The Israelis arm their teachers.

No, they don't. Their schools, in areas where there are more than a
few Arabs, have, typically, one armed security guard. They don't arm
teachers.

Try getting your facts on this from Israeli security officials, rather
than right-wing propagandists.



The chances of a school shooting taking place in a US high school in
any given year: 1 in 21,000.

The chances of a school shooting taking place in a US elementary or
middle school in any given year: 1 in 141,463.

Exactly, posting the signs is nothing but "feel good".

I wonder what those numbers would be without the signs.

Well, you said they're already just a statistical blip. What would it
matter?



So, for that, the gun nutz want to arm the teachers in 93,000 schools
-- and they assume that the teachers will be competent, and not wind
up shooting each other.

Putting guns in untrained hands is almost as bad as telling killers that
there will be no one to oppose them, which the signs do.

I'm in public schools several times each week; I'm not so sure. d8-)

I find that position ironic in light of Weiss's comment that the dead
kids at Sandy Hook "don't matter," and your comment below, that they
are "an insignificant statistical blip." If that's true, what are we
arguing about? Any lives that armed people in those places might save
are an insignificant blip, right?

So you'd rather those lives WEREN'T saved?

I'm the one who believes ALL of those lives are important. Weiss is
the one who says dead kids aren't important. You're the one who says
they's a "statistical blip."



How many mass shootings in areas where there are no gun prohibitions?

There are no mass shootings in the US *anywhere* there are gun
prohibitions -- because there are no gun prohibitions. Guns are
legally owned in every jurisdiction and municipality in the United
States.

Most of the mass shootings have taken place in private areas that
prohibited armed citizens. The only exception I can think of is the
Gifford shooting which took place in a parking lot.

There were many others. I can supply a list upon request. d8-)

Nah, not interested in a game of "you show me yours, I'll show you mine".

'Getting tired of realizing that your myths and canards don't stand up
to the facts? You won't be the first.


I know you're better at data mining. If you found 10 shootings in posted
areas and 5 that were in unposted areas, you'd show me the 5 and not
mention the 10.

Maybe. It would depend on what your claim was. When you say "most of
the shootings occurred in places where there were no-gun postings,"
and then point to one exception, I'm going to show you the list of 5.
Or 10, which is more like it, that happened in places where there
could have been no such signs.

If you said "many of them," I'd probably show you the list of both.
But that isn't what the issue was.

Actually, I think the no-guns postings had absolutely nothing to do
with anything. You're imagining what was going through the heads of
those shooters, and those shooters were psychopaths. I don't think you
can project your thinking into the mind of a psychopath. Trained
shrinks can't do that; you don't have a chance.

As for the statistics, they tell us a lot. We know, for example, that
something like 1 in 60 people in the US are carrying at any given
time. That's one in 45 adults. That's not a deterrent. That's a joke.

The one in 45 are entitled to be carrying, IMO, and the issue is their
individual protection. But when you try to extend that to some
cockamamie theory of deterrence, the statistics shoot it down.





The NY "Safe" act he was arguing against does those things. He was
resentful because he knows the result he wants, and he has nothing
much to argue against his opposition. Most rational people want those
very kinds of regulations, except possibly the registration, and it's
born out in poll after poll. They don't want to prohibit guns; they
just want gun owners to be checked out.

Inevitably, when he argues the way he did, his argument becomes "those
dead kids don't matter." And that, essentially, is what he wound up
saying. That's the voice and the attitude of gun nutz, as most people
perceive them.

They matter because they demonstrate the failure of gun control to be
effective, and that proposing MORE gun control will not be more effective.

Tell that to Weiss. He said the dead kids don't matter.

In one sense, he's right, they were an insignificant statistical blip,
like all mass shootings are, but media coverage tend to make them prominent.

See above.

No comment on the media frenzy in spite of them being as uncommon as you
pointed out?

Here's the story on the media frenzy: The vast majority of people in
the US, unlike officer Weiss, don't believe that 23 dead school kids
"don't matter." Neither do they accept the idea that they're a
"statistical blip."

Most people, except for sociopaths and people blinded by self-induced
rage, see them as a horror and a symbol of how perverse our gun laws
have become, particularly in their absence. To require background
checks at gun dealers is a very good idea. But to have such a law and
not apply it to private sales is not only perverse; it's psychotic.

So when 23 elementary school kids are killed by a loon with a
high-capacity AR, most people are able to make the connection. His
mother was nutz for having the gun. The kid himself was nutz and
shouldn't have been allowed near a gun. The fact that she had it, and
he got it, can be traced directly to the failure of Congress to
re-instate the AR ban.

Most people realize this without argument. Gun nutz will flop around
like a flounder to deny and evade it. They aren't convincing.

So there you are. That's why the polls so sharply contradict what gun
nutz think the issues and their conclusions are. Again, the last polls
show that 83% of people want universal background checks, and 56% want
to ban ARs.




I've read Heller and I disagree with its explicit and implied
limitations on the 2nd Amendment.

Great. Put yourself up for the next open Justice position. Tell them
that you think Scalia is too liberal and not as smart as you are.

He's not too liberal, he, like all Justices of SCOTUS, has a political
agenda.

And he probably isn't as smart as I am, but he does know about different
things.

Oooh...OK, then, if you're that smart, what is the history that you
think mitigates against the Heller decision?

The narrow decision supporting Hell against DC is supported by the 2nd
Amendment. The 2nd Amendment mitigates against the limitations that
SCOTUS tries to impose.

No it doesn't. Nowhere in history is such a conclusion supported. The
Court cited the common understanding at the time of our founding about
"rights." I qouted Jefferson on it just today. There is nothing to
support your point of view except your own wishful thinking.





From a man wiser than me, you or SCOTUS:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Benjamin Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its Reply to the Governor

David

No one has to give up an essential liberty. You have a S.C. decision
to protect it.

A decision intended to protect the state at the expense of the rights of
citizens. Ironically, it recognizes part of a right while outlining
restrictions on that right that don't exist in the 2nd Amendment.

David

Hardly anything exists "in the 2nd Amendment." It's a thoroughly
ambiguous nominative absolute sentence.



In Heller, the Court based the
individual right on a supposed pre-existing right to keep arms in
"common use" for ordinary civilian purposes, which is alluded to in
the independent clause. (Or not, depending on your point of view. I
think that the Court got it right.)

They provided a lot of support for that conclusion. How about you?
What do you have that contradicts it?

My reading of the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers and many of
the other opinions of those who later ratified the COTUS. They were
aware that they had fought a hard battle that would have been impossible
to start if they had allowed the British to disarm them. Many believed
that there may be future battles to be fought because, without
vigilance, tyranny was always around the corner. Of course, as we've
seen too often, they were right.

Never. You just come up on the short end of voting and elections, and
you call it "tyranny." The Founders would laugh at you, and chew you
out for undermining the principle they fought so hard for, and gave
lives for.


Sorry, Ed, by default I choose to protect the rights of the citizen
against the authority of the state.

I'm not sure who or what you are trying to protect, but it's not the
rights of the citizen.

David

What I want to protect is the rights of the people against despotism
by a small minority of crackpots who want to rule by oligarchy --
Gunner and his "cullers," Larry who wants to threaten (or have someone
else threaten) elected officials if they don't do the bidding of that
minority. And anyone who doesn't like the result of an election or a
vote, in which they come out on the losing side, and rattle swords
about "spilling blood" and "tyranny."

My ancestors fought and died so we can have a representative
democracy, as Jefferson explained it. I won't let it be usurped by a
group that thinks that voting doesn't matter, that dead kids don't
matter, or that mass killings are just a "statistical blip."

"The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis
is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal
rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority
of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons
in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once
disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends
necessarily in military despotism." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander
von Humboldt, 1817. ME 15:127

It was the minority that rejects this fundamental law of equal right
-- the gun nutz who scream "tyranny" when they don't get their way,
like children told they can't have a toy -- that Jefferson was saying
will lead to military despotism. He was right.

--
Ed Huntress