> In fact I said that guns can't be the
explanation because other countries have lots of guns
too, along with
a lower murder rate.
Right. And Woj is right that the causal connection between guns and what everyone except Jordon considers to be an off-the-charts high murder rate has to be something between: (1) no connection at all, and (2) deterministic, that is, the obviously false proposition that if you own a gun, you will commit murder.
Doug > But it also remains to be explained why we have all those guns.
> You say "It's none of your business" about other
kinds of consumer
behavior, but not this one? I presume that's because
you think it
impacts you in a way that someone's pornography or sex
toy purchases
don't impact you. I put it to you that: why almost
everyone in the US
buys a gun has nothing to do with you either.
Asking for an explanation isn't the same thing as demanding a justification, much less a ban. This is so obvious that it is hard to grasp why you miss it. Are you so convinced that sociological interest in guns can only be motivated by a desire to ban them?
I am also interested in the explanation for why people (and which sorts of people and how many) buy pornography and sex toys (and what sort of both). I certainly am not interested in banning, or even depending a justification for, the use of porn or sex toys either.
And I am not interesting in banning guns. (At the risk of arousing the wrath of NRA, I guess I think that requiring permits, waiting periods, and background checks are a good idea, but I won't lie down in the road over those issues.)
--- martin <mschiller at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Jun 15, 2006, at 6:46 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> In spite of the best efforts of the NRA and the
> officeholders who
> benefit from their lobby, the people can read, and
> the BOR clearly
> makes the point that bearing arms (ie - the means to
> organize a
> resistance to restrictions on human rights) is a
> responsibility of
> citizenship. It doesn't have anything to do with
> personal protection,
> property protection or squirrel hunting.
This is totally bizarre. You a right with an obligation. Even if you accept the rather strained doctrine, so far rejected by every appellate court (including the S,Ct) that has considered it, that 2A creates an individual right to bear arms as opposed to license for an armed, well-organized militia (these days generally understood to be the National Guard), the word in the amendment is "right" -- it is not "responsibility," "duty," "obligation," or any such thing.
This is clear if you grasp that BOR is supposed to create protections for the citizen against the potential incursions of the government, initially the federal gov't, since the 14A and the incorporation of many of the first 10As, against the States. It does not create duties or obligations of citizens or responsibilities for them either. This is plain on its face by the term of the language as well as by the original intent, so far as it can be determined, and subsequent judicial interpretation. (In contrast, the 13A creates a direct duty imposed on the citizens not to enslave each other.)
A right, then as now, is a claim to do or have something that others may not, without proper justification, interfere with. I need not exercise all or any of one my rights, and in some cases I should not. (For example, by right to call for "revengement" by the white race on minorities at a Klan meeting -- the facts of Branden berg v. Ohio, the basic 1A case concerning protections for advocacy of illegal activity.)
The 2A, even interpreted as the advocates of an expansive interpretation wish, would not require or even encourage me to own a gun. (Which I don't and have no interest in doing.) It does suggest that a well-organized militia is necessary to the security of a free state, but it does not say or suggest even there that any citizen has a responsibility to belong to such a militia, much less pack heat.
The protection involved in the 2A is not the protection, if any, involved in _having_ to own a gun and belong to a militia; it is the protection involved in the _right_ (which may or may not be exercised, without any suggestion of dereliction of responsibility) in the context of a well-organized militia -- something a free state ought to have, but which again is not indicated by the 2A to be a citizen's obligation.
You were
> advocating
> (hyperbolic ally, I assume) a policy of universal
> access to nuclear arms
> recently, so I think that you understand the reason.
>
> As to the fact that guns are utilized in violent
> crime, their wide
> availability is certainly connected, but the
> violence is just as
> clearly connected to anger and desperation re social
> conditions in US
> culture. The violence in Iraq seems far more
> destructive (for much the
> same reason - presence of USCG) and it doesn't
employ
> guns. I personally
> would prefer to be shot than to be cut or burned or
> bombed.
>
> Ya' can't do no thin' wrong ... !
>
> Suez martin.
>
> ___________________________________
>
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>
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