Afternoon read: guns, guns, guns, guns, guns
Detail, front page of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association’s claim.
I was really hoping not to post about this today, but am behooved.
The horrible school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last December, provoked a nationwide discussion about guns and gun control that many had thought unlikely given the high levels of polarization that surround the issue. In New York state, that discussion quickly resulted in the passage of a new gun law, the NY SAFE Act, that is one of the nation’s toughest.
But of course we know all this — guns, gun control and the constitutional and other issues they call to mind have been all over the news for weeks now. Brian Mann filed an excellent story this very morning about how gun owners and dealers in our area are dealing with the new law (or refusing to engage with it). And that’s far from the only coverage NCPR has done on the issue. Tomorrow, David Sommerstein will file a story on a Potsdam man who bought an AK-47 from a local classified ad to make a statement about assault rifles.
The ongoing guns/gun control story isn’t one I relish — the gun control dialog is frequently one of America’s least functional (it’s right up there with abortion and the national debt), and every new story reminds me of the Newtown shooting and others. But on we must go, because it’s incredibly important.
This in mind, I draw your attention to two stories in the news. First, Your News Now reports that the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association has filed the first legal challenge against the new law, claiming (PDF) it violates the US Constitution’s commerce clause, among other things (this happened yesterday). It also describes the legislation as “impermissibly vague and overboard.” This isn’t a lawsuit, yet, but it may well become one. We’ll see what happens with that.
Also, the Albany Times-Union reports that Gov. Cuomo’s approval rating has dropped 15 points since the new law. It’s still quite high, though — it was at 74 percent, now it’s at 59 percent. That’s according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.
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Knuck you can add one more to your list I see a 14 year old was shot today at a MS in Georgia. Like I said I hope some of the drastic measures suggested by the NRA are gonna start looking pretty good to some parents if this keeps up.
Should read “are not gonna start looking”
“Dave, take it easy. I saw a story that said his neighbor said he was anti-government type also after I posted that.”
Paul, so if you hadn’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with the facts yet, why on earth would you think it is ok to post a comment challenging my understanding of the facts? Actually, you even took it a step further than that… you suggested that my understanding was somehow a product of the media “working on me.”
Maybe it is just the way I was raised, but if I did that to someone, and it turned out they were right after all, I’d feel embarrassed and would apologize.
It is pretty infuriating to try to have productive conversations with people when they continually do what you tend to do… which is make statements first, look up the facts later.
I doubt decaf would help me find that any less annoying.
Maybe we just have different ideas about what we are looking to get out of discussions on this site. I participate hoping for a productive exchange, to understand the topic better, and to occasionally get my head around different points of view.
That is increasingly difficult, if not impossible, when someone (intentionally or otherwise) poisons the well – so to speak – by inserting statements, or challenging people on their statements, without taking a few minutes of time to make sure what they are saying is even remotely accurate.
Okay Paul, apropos of nothing this is just for you because of your interest in Baltimore, history and crime:
http://www.baltimoreorless.com/2011/03/police-x-ray-snake-dance-diagnosis-acute-indecency/
Dave, since you took offense I apologize for insinuating that you were supplying us with bad info. Like I said I stand corrected. I also think that if you look back you will notice that every one of your comments on this post are partially or entirely directed at the people making comments rather than specifically on the topic. If you avoided some of that you might get more of what you want out of these discussions.
My conclusion from discussion here and in other places is that we will spend the next few years arguing about things that will have almost no effect on the type of gun violence that we are now talking about. Just a few weeks back the focus was on mass shootings now it has shifted to other gun violence. It sounds like we are unable to stay focused long enough to accomplish anything. As far as I can tell the only effect so far appears to be a wash of guns off the shelves and maybe later into the streets. Knuck, keep the counter at the ready.
Knuck, interesting. My wife swears that she one time saw a cop in Baltimore beating a snake to death on the side of interstate 83. I thought it must have been something else on the ground but maybe she was right.
“I also think that if you look back you will notice that every one of your comments on this post are partially or entirely directed at the people making comments rather than specifically on the topic.”
Paul, that is the definition of a discussion. You talk with people. You don’t talk with topics. I engage the people who make comments, about their comments. If I could figure out a way to get a blog post to engage me in a conversation, I’ll do that.
Paul, right even within Baltimore or Chicago, kids will have radically different experiences depending on what neighborhood they live in. Which is even crazier.
But if you look at gun violence particularly in Chicago this year and the past couple of years; it is really focused on these particular places in the city and the fact is the kids are really in danger in those particular places. Many show all of the PTDS symptoms that our soldiers show after being in a war zone.
Like you I feel it is too bad that now the discussion has moved and shifted from the insanity of mass shootings using assault rifles to tracking every shotgun shell a hunter buys and putting him or her in a database if they do buy some shells. That response has nothing to do with assault rifles, it has nothing to do with inner city violence and hand gun availability for teenagers in those inner city areas.
Here is what i think this will boil down to. The need to find ways outside of gun ownership restrictions to try and curb this issue. Like I said I support some of the things like banning assault weapons and large clips. But is this seriously constitutional? I think that it probably not. That could be the fundamental difference between some of these other countries Knuck mentions and ours. Here gun ownership and possession is a right. In some of these other countries it is more of a privilege, like hunting is here in the US. We don’t have a constitutional right to hunt we get a license and we have that privilege and it can be taken away if we screw up. Like I said before I think that the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting like lots of us (maybe me included) keep saying. “YOU DON’T NEED 10 BULLETS TO KILL A DEER”!!!! Is that really the issue? We need to figure out how to keep the country armed and not dangerous. One problem is that many Americans now feel that is not possible.
“My conclusion from discussion here and in other places is that we will spend the next few years arguing about things that will have almost no effect on the type of gun violence that we are now talking about.”
And because I don’t say this often enough… even though it does occasionally happen… I agree with you here Paul. Although, universal background checks may have some effect.
These federal proposals in particular (aside from the background checks) seem to lack the teeth it would take to prevent – in any substantial way – any of this carnage. So on some level I wonder if it is just counter productive to continue to propose things that upset the gun nuts (of which I do not consider you), send them running to Walmart in a blind panic to buy even more guns, divide the country, and then not even prevent the things we are trying to prevent.
If you are going to cause this amount of political and social ruckus and turmoil over a topic you better make sure it is worth it and you actually address the problem.
Don’t misread my comment above. You don’t have to be armed if you don’t wish to. I choose to only carry a gun when I hunt (mostly).
“Like I said I support some of the things like banning assault weapons and large clips. But is this seriously constitutional?”
I guess that depends on if you think the constitution grants you the right to bear arms… or if you think it grants you the right to bear any kind of arms you want.
Taking away your assault rifles, and allowing you to keep a shotgun, is not taking away your right to bear arms. You still own a shotgun. What it did was take away the right to own any kind of weapon you want. Fact is, though, we already do that for lots of different kinds of arms.
Dave I often agree with you. Here I agree entirely. Universal background might move the needle but with the numbers of guns in circulation I doubt it would do much. As far as a creating a ruckus goes that is already done. But we heard it everywhere that if we did not act while “the bodies were still warm” nothing would have happened. Personally I think that reasonable people could have tried to work things out without the ruckus but maybe I am foolish to think that. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“I guess that depends on if you think the constitution grants you the right to bear arms… or if you think it grants you the right to bear any kind of arms you want.”
Right this is the question. I hear this argument that when the constitution was drafted arms were probably considered to be things like a muzzle loading rifle or pistol. These are not the modern killing machine we have today. But weren’t those guns the state of the art killing machine of their day (just ask some of the poor native Americans at the other end of the barrel holding a bow and arrow). Why now do we think that the second amendment does not allow us to arm ourselves in a similar manner. That is why I say for sure the second amendment was not drafted to protect a guy like me hunting birds and deer. I am glad that so many people think it does but I don’t know if they really have it right.
I believe that universal background checks without exception WOULD make a difference. Yes there are many guns out there but most are in the hands or responsible gun owners.
Criminals who are in possession of guns tend to get rid of them if they believe they are going to be arrested or searched. Then if they try to replace that weapon they will be competing for a rapidly diminishing pool of illegal weapons from other criminals. Add to that the chance for criminals to turn each other in or to do stupid things like calling the police to report their pot pipes were stolen at the same address they have a marijuana growing operation…
Add to that an honest effort by all agencies to enforce existing laws, prosecute “accidents”, straw purchases, dealers who sell unusual numbers of guns that end up being used in crimes, we might turn things around in a couple of years.
“But weren’t those guns the state of the art killing machine of their day”
They were. But that is not how I’ve taken that particular argument.
I don’t think the state of the art’ness of the machine is the issue they are bringing up… after all, no one has any problems with people who want to own a state of the art hunting rifle.
What I think that argument attempts to point out is that the actual functionality of guns has changed substantially since the amendment was written. It was written for a machine that could do X, and people are now applying it to machines that can do Y. It is like trying to rationalize the application of old laws about horse and buggies to modern cars.
At least, that is how I always take that particular argument.
But the amendment was written to cover “arms”. There appears to be no attempt at limiting anything. I think that maybe (having just been through a successful armed insurrection) you can easily argue that the purpose of the amendment was to allow the citizenry to arm themselves in anyway necessary to be successful at a subsequent insurrection if it became necessary. Like I said it seems to have nothing to do with hunting so a “state of the art”hunting implement may not be a right granted under this amendment anyway.
“Like I said I support some of the things like banning assault weapons and large clips. But is this seriously constitutional?”
Of course it’s “seriously constitutional.” It’s been settled law since they outlawed machine guns, silencers, hand grenades and sawed off shotguns 79 years ago. (Technically they aren’t banned, they’re taxed and highly regulated.)
” I think that maybe (having just been through a successful armed insurrection) you can easily argue that the purpose of the amendment was to allow the citizenry to arm themselves in anyway necessary to be successful at a subsequent insurrection if it became necessary.”
Maybe not…
i don’t think the founding fathers wrote the second amendment with the rate of fire of a weapon in mind.
they could not have imagined a machine gun any more than a single sane individual turning one (or any other weapon) on a peaceful crowd to slaughter them.
i feel they thought they had the larger fished fried (mass murder) than to fret over whether or not the second amendment would hold if the single shot rifle evolved or not.
it’s silly to argue from that standpoint.
clearly, more items should be added to the 1939 banned list. who’s willing (qualified) to put forth that list? NRA? feds? citizens?
Its like nuclear weapons, the gini is out of the bottle it will never be stuffed back in. Pass all of the laws we want; it won’t be any more successful than our war against drugs or passing laws against any thing else that people really want to do.
“Pass all of the laws we want; it won’t be any more successful than our war against drugs or passing laws against any thing else that people really want to do.”
Mervel, do you see a lot of machine guns, hand grenades and sawed-off shotguns being used out there?
“i don’t think the founding fathers wrote the second amendment with the rate of fire of a weapon in mind.
they could not have imagined a machine gun any more than a single sane individual turning one (or any other weapon) on a peaceful crowd to slaughter them.
i feel they thought they had the larger fished fried (mass murder) than to fret over whether or not the second amendment would hold if the single shot rifle evolved or not.
it’s silly to argue from that standpoint.”
Not arguing from that standpoint just thinking about this. Like I said the rifle was really quite an amazing weapon at the time. Not unlike the machine gun when it was invented. As far as turning a weapon on a peaceful crowd that was nothing new even back then. The Boston Massacre left only three dead but they probably had a good idea of what a gun could do. They were throwing stuff at the red coats so I guess maybe they were not so peaceful.
Walker, yes I understand that limits have been put up.
I am curious why we keep hearing this stuff about people having a right to own a gun for hunting etc. do they really? Again, there is zip in the second amendment regarding hunting. How can we say that it allows that based on the text? My guess is that the lean is toward a self defense argument. The recent supreme court decisions (as knuck would say judicial activism!) have clarified that. Perhaps it is about “slave insurrections” but since we have the 13th why do we need the second if it’s that?
You would probably see more sawed off shotguns if you banned handguns federally. Grenades I’ll give you that one. Machine guns… They sure have a lot of those in Miami Vice!
Walker were machine guns and grenades as ubiquitous when they were restricted those as these other guns are now? I think that is part of Mervel’s point.
I wasn’t around in the ’20’s but from the movies I’ve seen there were lots of gangsters running around with machine guns. Then they were banned and they just aren’t around anymore. Seems like the laws worked.
Like I said the drug guys in Miami seemed to have them in the 1980s based on those TV shows!!
Walker, so based on the slave insurrection thing do you think that the second amendment does not give an individual the right to a gun for something like hunting or self defense or some other type of defense? If that guy is correct that is a fair assessment. If some people feel that way they should just come out and say that they think that people do not have these rights no matter how sophisticated or primitive the gun is.
I am a pretty avid hunter and I think that the second amendment does not probably give me the right to own a gun for hunting. I do think that it gives us the right to own a gun for some kind defense, so if I am properly licensed to hunt I can also use it for that.
If the (unfortunately named) Carl T. Bogus is right, then we really shouldn’t have need the 2nd amendment after the 13th was passed 73 years later. But that’s not to say that people don’t have the right to own hunting rifles, or anything else that state and federal governments allow. And given SCOTUS recent rulings, the 2nd has been given (possibly) new meaning, and largely thanks to so-called “originalist” members of the court. Irony anyone?
But not a right enshrined in the constitution right? So one that could much more easily be taken away if necessity warrants.
Right. If Dr. Bogus is correct.
The source is the University of California at Davis Law Review, “The Hidden History Of The Second Amendment”
It’s a mere 97 pages in length, so it will take a bit of time, but the introduction (10 pages) is quite interesting, laying out the history of the “insurrectionist” theory of the 2nd.
Well this is good. We are finally getting to a conversation where someone has finally admitted that he (maybe only Dr. Bogus) at this point says that no one has a right based on the constitution to own a gun for self defense or hunting. Even if the gun is a single shot muzzle loading rifle.
I hope that some people bring this idea up during the conversation on capital hill.
Read the piece. It’s very interesting.
Here’s an interesting excerpt:
We think of men as having grown up with guns in colonial America.[169] We assume they were sharpshooters by necessity. Did not men have to become proficient with muskets to protect themselves from ruffians and Indians or to hunt to put food on the table? Contrary to myth, the answer, in the main, is no. In reality, few Americans owned guns.[170] When Michael A. Bellesiles reviewed more than a thousand probate records from frontier areas of northern New England and western Pennsylvania for the years 1765 to 1790, he found that although the records were so detailed that they listed items as small as broken cups, only fourteen percent of the household inventories included firearms and [Page 342] fifty-three percent of those guns were listed as not working.[171] In addition, few Americans hunted. Bellesiles writes: “From the time of the earliest colonial settlements, frontier families had relied on Indians or professional hunters for wild game, and the colonial assemblies regulated all forms of hunting, as did Britain’s Parliament.”
That is one of many myths of colonial America, the idea that everyone owned a musket. In truth it was a very hard life trying to clear a lot, plant and harvest a crop and most colonists hadnt the money to buy a musket or the time to maintain one in working order. Metal parts and powder were both susceptible to deterioration through dampness. So they had armories and militias which were socialist forms of security for the colony.
Sorry, I had to throw the socialism in there.
The machine gun thing is a good point to look at I agree. We now are trying to get these efficient guns off the street. When we had these super efficient guns out there and pretty handy what was the mass shooting situation? I would assume that relative to the population at the time it should have been a big issue? This would be strong data to show that guns are the at least one key solution. Anyone know what was going on when these guns were all over the place?
“few Americans hunted.” I also figured that these folks were mostly subsistence farmers and not hunters. More evidence that these politicians, our Governor included, are off the mark when they keep saying that hunters should rest assured the second amendment has them covered.
But we are talking about guns, about shotguns, rifles, assault weapons, yes machine guns and sawed off shotguns. I can make a sawed off shotgun right now, how are you going to regulate that? People can make their own ammunition, how is that going to be regulated? No I don’t see hand grenades that is true.
I think we can and should outlaw assault weapons and machine guns (which are already outlawed), and background checks are ok for most guns. But none of those things are going to do much of anything to reduce gun violence in the US. You might stop the lone freak from buying a gun so in that regard you may stop a couple of the mass murders and that is a good thing. But the vast vast majority of gun violence is not done by these screwed up people who kill children in mass killings or walk around campus or theaters killing people. The vast majority of gun violence is because we are violent, we have a lot of crime and we have a lot of people who think it is ok to settle scores by killing someone. We are a macho culture we are much more like Mexico or South America than we are Europe. Latin American countries have much stronger gun regulations than we do and they have even more murders then we do.
It is a function of who we are as a people, not some stupid mechanical devices we call guns.
Paul is correct I have been shocked how fast this whole gun control debate moved from assault rifles to hunters. For the first time I actually have to believe the NRA, who have always said they will in the end want to confiscate all of your guns, I always thought it was more paranoid fantasy. Then we pass a law that puts me in a “database” when I buy a box of shotgun shells. Its not about assault rifles at all, its about attacking all gun owners and all hunters, at least in NY. Thank goodness for our federalist system.
Despite what I think many folks here think of me I am a pretty moderate guy. To me it sounds like Mervel is also. Certainly I doubt that either of us is what you could describe as some anti-government gun slinging nut job (at least maybe?). These regulations are missing the mark. They will alienate a large number of people who’s support is needed to make a difference if you ask me. I have many democratic friends that I am afraid will also begin to be alienated if things continue on this trajectory. To do things that maybe even Dave thinks will have little impact but will probably continue to put extreme folks on edge and, like I said, wash guns into the street does little to protect my children.
Mervel, you hit it on the head with that next to last post. And that’s what bothers me about some provisions of New York’s law — it’s not going to do anything to reduce gun violence. Have you ever read about a murderer who missed on the first seven shots but killed his victim on the eighth or ninth? And the expansion of the definition of an assault rifle, it’s made thousands of legally owned guns illegal, when they were used in less than 10 shootings in New York last year. I’m not opposed to gun control in principle; things like better reporting of mental health data, and restrictions to further discourage straw purchases, are good, because those might actually work. But this law infringes on the property rights, recreation rights and self defense rights of tens of thousands of people with next to zero trade off in lives that will be saved. It’s unfortunate.
The past couple weeks, as this whole debate’s been heating up and we’ve seen the laws that New York passed and that are being considered at the federal level, I’ve started to come around to the NRA’s and Rancid’s view too. There are too many people on the left who are motivated by an ideological belief that people shouldn’t really have guns. Not by consideration of what the problems are, where the gaps are and how to address them. It’s tragic, because gun violence is a huge problem in this country that we haven’t addressed well, and we have a historic opportunity to do something. But instead we’re all just retreating to our ideological corners, both sides are spouting ridiculousness and I’m not optimistic that anything will really get better.
Calm down guys! Who is calling for an end to hunting. Pointing out fallacies in other people’s reasoning doesn’t imply rescinding 100 years of custom. And I think you will find that the type of hunting that is done today is really only about 100 years old. Let’s face it, todays hunters are trying much more to be like the “sports” of the Gilded Age than they are trying to be Hawkeye of the Leatherstocking Tales. That’s fine with me. If it makes you feel like you’re more of a man, have at it. But dont confuse your fantasy ideas and Hollywood images with reality.
I checked out the NFA of 1934 (with it’s many changes through the years). It is pretty interesting. It looks like owning a machine gun requires basically what we have here in NYS for handguns plus a 200 dollar transfer tax. There have been several guns that fell under the rules that got or have been given what they call “legitimate sporting purpose” exemptions. How could these guns that fall under assault style definition not eventually also get an exemption under these new rules? For sure the vast majority of the folks (basically everyone except a few nut jobs) that own them are using them for some kind of legal sporting activity.
Knuck, 100 years of custom is no kind of protection right?
On the shooting I noted in GA today:
“After the shooter opened fire in a campus courtyard, the school’s armed officer jumped in, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said.
“That particular officer was able to subdue the individual and have him … drop his weapon,” Turner said. “And he was able to take him into custody at the time of the incident.””
thank goodness. Like I said above I don’t support this in all schools but maybe here it was a good idea.
Can’t argue with the result. The victim is apparently out of the hospital and back at home.
“Have you ever read about a murderer who missed on the first seven shots but killed his victim on the eighth or ninth?”
What we have heard about is a killer who put X amount of bullets into someone, stopped to re-load, and at that time they were subdued.
This is what happened in Tucson. That carnage stopped when the guy went to change his clip and was tackled. It is really horrible to think in these terms, but he used a 33 round magazine and if his clip had been limited by even a few bullets, a life would have been saved… and that life would have been the 9 year old girl.
If he only had access to 10 round clips, it is possible that even a few more lives would have been saved.
That is part of the rationale behind limiting clip capacity.
knuckleheadedliberal says:
January 31, 2013 at 2:14 pm
“Call it whatever you want, Paul. If you want to call 55 school shooting incidents in 17 years a “problem” I will agree.”
I think we can all agree it’s too high, 1 is too high. The larger question is, ” Why are people focusing on shooting at a school?” What is it that makes them go to a school to do their crazy murder spree?
Jim Bullard says:
January 31, 2013 at 8:40 am
“I have no problem with the 2nd amendment but I have a big problem with the way the gun rights groups groups interpret it. Claiming that it gives the right to own any type of firearm, including semi-automatic weapons that did not exist and therefore could not have been part of the founders thinking”
Right Jim, and they couldn’t possibly have envisioned the computer age the internet so we’d better shut that down and mass transit too and air travel and immunizations and……..
That’s a good question, RC, and I will enjoy all the speculation.
Mallory climbed Everest because it was there.
Dave, re- your 2:59 post where you blather on about how scary all your neighbors are- Perfectly obvious that you are using selective recall here. I’ve seen people here going on and on about left wing conspiracies that had little basis in fact. And those conspiracies, from 9/11 to Bush not caring anything about what happened in N.O. to Republican voter intimidation, are very much in evidence and embraced by the the left on this site and by the majority of the media.
Pete Klein says:
January 31, 2013 at 3:04 pm
“…coward.”
Still waiting to hear what medals you won in which branch of the service you served in that qualify you to judge anyones courage Klein. You feel rather free to toss around insults but I don’t know that you have any basis to be able to judge.
dave says:
January 31, 2013 at 3:29 pm
“Dave, take it easy. I saw a story that said his neighbor said he was anti-government type also after I posted that.”
“Paul, so if you hadn’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with the facts yet, why on earth would you think it is ok to post a comment challenging my understanding of the facts? Actually, you even took it a step further than that… you suggested that my understanding was somehow a product of the media “working on me.”
Maybe it is just the way I was raised, but if I did that to someone, and it turned out they were right after all, I’d feel embarrassed and would apologize.”
Dee Dave, I’ve pointed out gross errors you’ve made numerous times and I have yet to see you even address your mistakes, much less apologize.