Tag: gun control

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media and media people national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Bloomberg’s Megaphone

When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not breaking his term limits pledge like a dictator, he’s outlawing soft drinks like a nanny.

Now he’s trying to undermine our Second Amendment rights, spending $12 million of his reported $27 billion net worth to run television spots in 13 states. Those advertisements aim to rile up the public and encourage folks to pressure their U.S. Senators into supporting gun control legislation.

Hey, da mayor’s just not my kind of guy. Except in one respect: His spending of $12 million … of his own money.

I admire that.

And, even with his $27 billion set against my … well, er … I’m not scared of his wealth advantage. I welcome his speech. Because my best chance to prevail politically is for all voices to be free to speak.

Plus, as National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre ably put it last Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Bloomberg “can’t buy America.”

In fact, I don’t think the mayor harbors any such illusions. Bloomberg’s savvy enough to know that his rented megaphone won’t necessarily convince Americans … who are not mindless automatons programmed by 30-​second television ads.

We make up our own minds.

Too bad he doesn’t extend this notion across the board. You know, to soda drinks and such.

So, regardless of Bloomberg’s inconsistencies and indecencies, let’s welcome folks like him who finance causes they believe in. They provide the venture capital for informed citizen decision-making.

We could use a few more billionaires giving on the side of freedom and responsibility, though. Any takers? I mean, givers?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

Sheriff Control

If you’re going to advocate gun-​backed force to violate the individual’s right to bear arms — the form of people control also known as “gun control” — why not also try to strong-​arm opponents of gun control into silence?

Sheriff Terry Maketa of El Paso County, Colorado, went on the Jeff Crank Show, a radio program, to report that Colorado Democrats are using their power to try to silence sheriffs.

Maketa and a few dozen other sheriffs in Colorado had made the trip to the state legislature to publicly testify against a gun control bill. In his view, the legislation “is emotionally driven and has no backing.”

At least two aspects of lawmakers’ conduct in the debate bother him. One is that, contrary to past procedure, only one sheriff was allowed to speak on the bill. Maketa could testify “but [many] who made the trip … never had their voice heard.”

After the sheriffs appeared against the bill, the Colorado association representing county sheriffs (CSOC) alerted members that angry senate Democrats were indicating that they wouldn’t act favorably on proposed increases in sheriff salaries unless the sheriffs “reconsider our positions.” The CSOC’s email went on to say that they didn’t believe that supporting Senate Bill 197 would violate the sheriffs’ principles.

Sheriff Maketa finds both the threat and the advice to submit outrageous. Who can disagree, except persons who think we should give up our rights without a peep of protest?

Or give up our protest if the money is right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

Ugly in New York

Part of New York State’s emotionally motivated, hastily concocted new gun control law requires persons owning ugly-​looking guns — semi-​automatic rifles — to register them with the government.

Officials may protest that they don’t intend to go rounding up the ugly-​looking guns. They may also insist that the new law makes it harder for a newsroom to publicize the names and addresses of gun owners (as the Journal News of White Plains, New York recently did).

But a registry that exists is a registry that can be accessed, and abused, despite any official’s alleged good intentions. Many advocates of gun control, including the Senate’s chief sponsor of a new assault weapons ban, admit that if they had their druthers, they’d outlaw all privately held guns. How would the registry be used then?

Many New York owners of ugly guns are up in arms, so to speak. Why? Because they don’t see themselves as criminal suspects properly tracked for exercising constitutional rights. There are good reasons why good people might refuse to voluntarily add their names and addresses to a list of targets.

Brian Olesen, president of one of New York State’s largest gun dealers, says he’s heard “from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes.”

It’s not just some guns that look ugly. Turning peaceful people into criminals by a mere act of legislation is ugly in the extreme.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Armed Mom Saves Self, Kids

“Gun violence” is supposed to be bad. Right?

Not long after the New Year, a woman in Loganville, Georgia, was working in the upstairs office of her home when she spied someone lurking outside.

The suspicious man, Paul Slater, was about to break into her home with a crowbar. Fortunately, before he could do that, the woman hid herself and her two nine-​year-​old twins in an attic crawlspace. Unfortunately, Slater found out where they were hiding. Fortunately, the woman had a gun; as soon as the intruder menacingly presented himself, she shot him.

Alas, after shooting six times and hitting Slater five, the woman ran out of bullets. But she had the presence of mind to tell the would-​be assailant that she would fire again if he moved. Then she took the kids to a neighbor. The thug tried to escape in his car, but was too seriously injured to get far.

“My wife is a hero,” her husband told WSB-​TV. “She protected her kids. She did what she was supposed to do as a responsible, prepared gun owner.”

Responding to the fact that the invader was only partly subdued before the gun owner ran out of bullets, Glenn Reynolds (“InstaPundit”) says: “See, this is where one of those ‘assault weapons’ might have come in handy.”

An InstaPundit reader expands upon the point: “What if there had been multiple attackers? Then that 30-​round clip suddenly seems appropriate.”

Indeed. And disarming the just sure seems like a poor way to reduce gun violence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency national politics & policies

The Latest Legislative Land Mine

The most prescient thing ever said about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, was articulated by then-​Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

The medical reform package is quite the hodgepodge. Actually reading the whole thing makes taking on Middlemarch, War and Peace, and In Search of Lost Time a course of light entertainment.

The latest revelation from its thousands of pages? A passage prohibiting doctors from asking their patients questions about guns in the home.

The Washington Post reports that many gun control groups are incensed at the power of the NRA to limit their ability to “collect information”:

Physician groups and public health advocates say the cumulative effect of these restrictions undercuts the ability of the White House and lawmakers to make the case for new laws, such as an assault-​weapons ban, in the face of opponents who argue that there’s no evidence such measures are effective. Advocates for regulating guns lament that reliable statistics are limited in part because physicians and health researchers who could track these patterns are being inhibited.

Considering the quality of previous doctor-​led sociological studies into gun usage — and really, this is not a medical problem but a complex, society-​wide issue far beyond the competence of medical training to comprehend — the prohibition might really best be described as a defense of scientific method.

But the big issue here is not the politics of “research.” It’s that a health care reform package passed nearly three years ago contains hot potatoes such as this, and we are only discovering them now.

Nancy, you were all too disastrously correct.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

Magazine Misfire

David Gregory, of NBC, is one of those folks who wants to prohibit not merely criminal acts, but also objects and products that can be used as aids in some of those acts.

It’s not an uncommon attitude. I know conservatives who want to prohibit smoking utensils such as bongs, because their main use tends overwhelmingly to be for smoking illegal substances. To find someone in the “main stream media” supporting a similar ban on objects — such as certain guns and types of ammunition — is hardly surprising.

On Meet the Press, December 23, Gregory interviewed the head of the NRA, pressing the spokesman to concede, “if it’s possible to reduce the loss of life, you’re up for trying it.” The man took the bait. Then Gregory switched the topic away from the NRA’s notion of placing armed guards in every school to …

Well, Gregory retrieved and held aloft a “magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets.” He hazarded that prohibiting such devices, leaving legal only smaller-​sized magazines, might reduce loss of life.

“Loss-​of-​life reduction,” though, proves to be not much of a standard. There are many ways to reduce crime: imprison everyone in a criminal risk category, without trial, might do that very well. Perish that thought, though.

Many other innovations might seem plausible, as well, but nevertheless unleash counterproductive side effects.

What’s interesting about this case, though, is that Gregory held up a magazine that turns out to be illegal in Washington, DC, where Meet the Press is shot.

His “crime” is now under investigation.

I’m conflicted: On the one hand, he did nothing wrong. On the other hand, he supports such unprincipled laws, so … book him. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Let Teachers Bear Arms

We have no sure way to prevent such horrors as the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. We can’t predict which very few of the very many persons with grievances will choose to vent their rage by loosing a hail of bullets at innocents. And schools would be unable to function if they were so locked down as to eliminate the possibility of a gunman walking through the door.

We can, however, take measures to reduce the likelihood and severity of such an attack. We can also prepare to defend ourselves if the worst happens. When someone is shooting at you and the students in your care, the best chance of stopping the shooter within seconds — when the police are minutes away, at best — is to shoot back. The more persons able to shoot back, the better.

It makes sense for appropriately trained teachers and other school personnel to be armed and ready to confront an assailant. This isn’t just a theoretical proposal. In 2008, the Harrold school district in Northwest Texas introduced a “guardian plan” under which some teachers and other staffers carry concealed handguns. A few other school districts have followed suit. But the practice is far from common in Texas or in the nation at large.

Says Harrold’s superintendent, “Nothing is 100 percent. But what we do know is that we’ve done all we can to protect our children.”

The Harrold district’s provisions for self-​defense are controversial. They shouldn’t be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

A Terrible Accusation

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, much of the self-​righteously impassioned rhetoric about gun control carries an accusation: those who oppose further gun curbs are “allowing” children to be murdered.

Ridiculous.

None of the newly proposed gun and ammunition bans — all of them old proposals, of course — would, if put in place long ago, have prevented the atrocity in Connecticut.

A more cogent indictment spotlights supporters of gun control. For politicians who have long believed they can halt all acts of violence and save lives by outlawing this weapon or that or limiting ammo clips, what does it say that they did nothing?

“The first two years of the last Obama administration,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told NBC News, “Congress and the Senate and the White House were all in the hands of the Democrats and they did nothing.”

According to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Bloomberg’s “point is well taken.”

Connecticut Congressman John Larson argued that, “To do nothing in the face of pending disaster is to be complicit.”

President Obama first suggested that elected officials, afraid of the gun lobby, put their own positions ahead of the safety of six and seven year old children, stating, “[W]e’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

In short, even when politicians believe their gun grabbing will save lives, they won’t act to protect those lives if it might risk their political position. They act or fail to, not on principle, but on their own political benefit.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a rational, constitutional step toward reducing the risk of a future massacre.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights too much government

Out of Control

Economist George Reisman, author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, supports strict gun control. So do I.

Not gun control directed against the weapons of peaceful gun owners. Gun control directed against armory-​facilitated violations of our rights by government and criminals.

In his essay “Gun Control: Controlling the Government’s Guns,” Reisman assures readers that he too believes in gun control. “However, I do so in the light of the knowledge that by far the largest number and the most powerful guns and other weapons are in the possession of the government.”

By its nature, everything the government does, good or bad, relies for its effectiveness on the threat of deadly force — otherwise people would be free to ignore its laws and rulings. Therefore, a meaningful program of gun control “must above all focus on strictly controlling and regulating the activities of the government.”

When government uses its powers against actual criminals — those who kill, rape, steal — this serves as a “control on the use of force, including the use of guns,” insofar as it deters such criminal acts of coercion.

The Constitution is a form of gun control directed against the government. To control the government’s use of force, such protections must be enforced and illegitimate uses of government power must be curtailed. Guns owned by a peaceful citizen are also a form of gun control — they can deter or counter wrongful acts of force by both private criminals and public officials.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Swiss Gun Control

In mid-​February, Swiss voters rejected stricter gun controls.

No one knows how many guns the Swiss own. There’s no national registration system, yet the Swiss do not suffer a high crime rate, like America does.

But the country does have the highest gun suicide rate in Europe.

The stranger issue, though — and in contrast to most countries around the world — is the number of semi-​automatic rifles belonging to the army that soldiers and ex-​soldiers store at home. It’s part of the Swiss defense plan. The army can quickly rise up in case of an attack.

The gun control proposal would have required solders’ firearms to be locked up in armories. This, it was argued, was to help reduce suicide rates … though a few high-​profile shootings also gave impetus to the gun control measure. During the debate much was made of the country’s long history of firearm expertise and unique military heritage. 

The measure was defeated in 20 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, with over 56 percent of voters rejecting it, nationwide. 

Does the Swiss system seem strange?

It’s certainly different.

Switzerland still uses conscripts, while the U.S. rightly recruits an all-​volunteer military. But their method of decentralized governance, borrowed more than 150 years ago from us and today far more decentralized than ours, is wise not only for the firepower of national defense, but for more bang for the buck in all areas of government. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.