Rethinking gun rights

[SecularMotion]

Most people who knew Jared Lee Loughner prior to Jan. 8, 2011, would have characterized him as a caring and ordinary young man. He worked at fast food restaurants and attended community college. His track record was not without incident, though. It was tainted with blemishes not atypical for a youth, namely things like possession of marijuana paraphernalia and vandalism. Then, on one direful January afternoon in Arizona, after staying up into the early hours of dawn perusing websites about famous assassins, he loaded his Glock 19 with a 33-round clip and headed for a Tucson supermarket where a congresswoman was holding a meet-and-greet with constituents. Shortly after, the congresswoman was shot at pointblank range above the eyebrows, six people were dead and 13 were wounded. Many were also gunned down at pointblank range. If you took away the last several months leading up to the shootings when he began to form radical thoughts and exhibit obscure behavior, would you not have considered Loughner to be an ideal candidate to responsibly own a gun?

The same question can be posed about the killers in Colorado and Virginia Tech. One was a neuroscience doctoral candidate and the other an undergraduate English major. Both were presumably of above average intelligence and had attained some level of scholarly success. Neither were certified criminals who had spent their lives in and out of the penal system. Their public lives up to the point when they snapped had earned them the right to possess firearms by most people’s standards. But when they do snap, it is too late  —  their murderous weapons have been amassed and their delusions crystallized.

Here lies the blatant problem with gun proponents arguing that the few insane people who commit these massacres ruin it for the rest of them. Is it so implausible that someone can be sane his whole life, demonstrate responsible ownership of a gun and then spiral awry mentally and emotionally beyond the brink of rationality, to a point when his ownership of a gun no longer becomes either responsible or safe for those around them?

In Arizona, if you are over the age of 21, you can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Imagine being in an Arizonan bar on a regular Friday night. I have been to Arizona bars and many of them have signs urging patrons to leave their firearms outside of the bar, but I assure you that it is not much of a deterrent to anyone who has a strong desire to bring one in. After several drinks, an argument ensues between you and another drinker. Neither of you had any intentions of getting into an altercation the moment you stepped out of your front door. Neither of you consider yourselves to be irrational or insane, but after several shots and drinks, no one is immune from the lack of inhibition and clouded judgment that alcohol renders. The difference between ending up with a recoverable broken nose and a fatal wound to the aorta is that concealed gun  —  that concealed gun that was brought in by a law-abiding, normally mild-mannered man who, up to that moment of intoxicated rage, may have lead a pristine life. But none of his history matters once the gun is fired and a person is left dead. The mere possibility of such an irreversibly pernicious event should be taken seriously and they are not a figment of the paranoid imagination of those who do not own guns. Think of other instances that have the potential of a similar fate  —  a driver who was cut-off or a man wrongfully fired from his job of 20 years.

http://www.dailytargum.com/article/2016/01/rethinking-gun-rights

[Press Virginia]

1. We have to imagine the bar shootout because it's not something

that seems to happen with much regularity.

[Oneka]

2. Lets sum up this opinion piece. Shall we?

Last edited Fri Feb 5, 2016, 11:30 AM - Edit history (1)

Background checks do not stop mass shootings. So.....

OMG,OMG, OMG!!!! Rivers of bloods flowing out of bars, right down mainstreet!!!!

So lets restrict gun ownership for ALL to satiate MY perceived right to not be near tools that make me pee myself!!!!

Does that pretty much cover the gist of it?

[GGJohn]

3. Don't expect an answer from SecMo,

he likes to post cut and paste threads without commenting on them, it's his M.O.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

4. The author, Matthew Man, a Rutgers alumnus, and The Daily Targum, a Rutgers student newspaper...

...should consider the opinion of an outstanding (former) member of the Rutgers faculty. I'm referring to Professor Albert Blaustein.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/23/obituaries/albert-p-blaustein-a-drafter-of-constitutions-dies-at-72.html

Professor Blaustein considered the US Constitution the country's most important export and wrote:
"...he said that if he were asked to revise it, he would make the right to privacy and freedom of travel explicit provisions."
"America's Founding Fathers believed in a constitutionally limited republic and they succeeded in constructing a regime that balanced order and liberty."
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2004/04/20040402110801maduobba0.7845575.html#axzz3zIuDQrZE

That balance of order and liberty exists today. It depends on, rather than survives despite, the whole of the Constitution in its recognition of human rights.

Please take all this stupid crime focused crap about flushing what has been acknowledged as a right and consider pursuing the idea of liberty as described by the Founders. Einstein said, "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." The ACLU regards gun registration as an invasion of privacy. Who can be free without having privacy respected? The idea of "the pursuit of happiness" respects that the just individual exercise his free will to best benefit himself and those dependent on him. Sixteen centuries ago Augustine of Hippo wrote, "Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."

[Eleanors38]

6. The Gun-Control issue has become journalism's "Louie, Louie"...

Anyone who expects to pursue a writing career (or rock star) must learn to "play" that tune to see if you got the chops.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

9. Just a case of those who know nothing...

...praising the ideas folks who also know nothing.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. Oh brother. Now they're reduced to publishing outright lies --

Most people who knew Jared Lee Loughner prior to Jan. 8, 2011, would have characterized him as a caring and ordinary young man.

In retrospect, it's easy to see the evidence that Tucson, Ariz., shooter Jared Loughner was mentally unstable. In his community-college classes, he would laugh randomly and loudly at nonevents. He would clench his fists and regularly pose strange, nonsensical questions to teachers and fellow students. "A lot of people didn't feel safe around him," a former classmate told Fox News.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2041733,00.html

Emphasis added.

[DonP]

7. "caring and ordinary" as in, asked to leave the Community college visited by the sheriff?

He scared students and teachers with his acting out was asked not to return to the school and was visited several times by the sheriff based on his acting out, just like every other "caring and ordinary" student. Trying to claim another gun owner "just snapped"?

Nothing like rewriting a little history to suit your agenda. Or to be honest, lying through your teeth and assuming no one will notice.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

8. You know who shouldn't have access to guns?

People who rely on desperate fabrications to seize political agendas against the informed consent of the governed.

[beevul]

10. If the nra is a 'terrorist organization"...

If the nra is a 'terrorist organization", these people:

People who rely on desperate fabrications to seize political agendas against the informed consent of the governed.

They're no less terrorist.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

11. The real danger

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy."

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."

...from Daniel Webster.