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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. - MaxedOutMama I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. Kim du Toit
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. . . and so are you  Wahabism Delenda Est      Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!    "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 6 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE  Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Mystery of Government The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once The George Orwell Daycare Center This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming The Culture Trilogy Culture Hubris Weltanschauung And its follow-on: In Re: Culture Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
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PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle The Adventures of Roberta X TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Kim du Toit Personal Effects Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel Mrs. Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Gun Nuts Media Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean Found: One Troll FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hecate's Crossroad Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Live from the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET A Keyboard and a .45  
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Monday, January 05, 2004 TRUST The recent brouhaha over concealed-carry brought up a point that I wanted to expand upon: Trust. The objection of those opposed to concealed-carry is: "I don't TRUST you." And, they protest, the reason permit seekers want the ability to carry legally is that they don't trust anybody, either. OK, fair enough. It is, at first blush, a reasonable conclusion to draw. But there's a difference in the lack of trust in our two populations. My lack of trust is for the tiny percentage of the population that is willing to commit violent crime. I don't think the chance that I will be faced with violence is particularly high, but I understand that it isn't zero. Their lack of trust is in the ability of the average citizen to carry a weapon without doing something stupid or criminal. In short, they don't trust anyone (other than a government employee) to be a danger only to those who would commit crime, often even including themselves. Nor, in all honesty, is that an totally unfounded fear. As in this case, a shootout between a robber and a laundromat owner ended up in the death of a laundromat customer. The story doesn't come out and say it, but it is implicit that he was shot by the store owner accidentally. It's not worth it, opponents say. Then again, they seem willing to accept accidental shootings committed by government employees, like these two where teenagers were killed by police officers. It is worth it, I reply. Both for government employees and the average citizen. And it's worth it not only because concealed-carry allows people to exercise their right to self-defense, it's worth it because it forces the public - in some small way - to recognize the fact that protection of themselves and their families is their responsibility too. This is an important fact to recognize, because once recognized it become incumbent upon the individual to address (or ignore) that responsibility. Once recognized, it requires consideration of one's responsibilities to self and family, and to society. One can no longer claim ignorance or powerlessness. Which is why, I think, many make a point of not recognizing that fact. Although I brought up the concept of "cost-benefit analysis" in the comment thread at LeanLeft, I was in actuality baiting a hook - that wasn't taken. Tgirsch called it correctly - neither side really is interested in a true cost-benefit analysis (well, he and I are apparently, but the organizations engaged in this fight seem not.) I was baiting a hook originally set by University of Texas Law Professor Sanford Levinson in his 1989 Yale Law Journal piece The Embarrassing Second Amendment: There is one further problem of no small import: if one does accept the plausibility of any of the arguments on behalf of a strong reading of the Second Amendment, but, nevertheless, rejects them in the name of social prudence and the present-day consequences produced by finicky adherence to earlier understandings, why do we not apply such consequentialist criteria to each and every part of the Bill of Rights? As Ronald Dworkin has argued, what it means to take rights seriously is that one will honor them even when there is significant social cost in doing so. If protecting freedom of speech, the rights of criminal defendants, or any other part of the Bill of Rights were always (or even most of the time) clearly costless to the society as a whole, it would truly be impossible to understand why they would be as controversial as they are. The very fact that there are often significant costs—criminals going free, oppressed groups having to hear viciously racist speech and so on—helps to account for the observed fact that those who view themselves as defenders of the Bill of Rights are generally antagonistic to prudential arguments. Most often, one finds them embracing versions of textual, historical, or doctrinal argument that dismiss as almost crass and vulgar any insistence that times might have changed and made too "expensive" the continued adherence to a given view. "Cost-benefit" analysis, rightly or wrongly, has come to be viewed as a "conservative" weapon to attack liberal rights. Yet one finds that the tables are strikingly turned when the Second Amendment comes into play. Here it is "conservatives" who argue in effect that social costs are irrelevant and "liberals" who argue for a notion of the "living Constitution" and "changed circumstances" that would have the practical consequence of removing any real bite from the Second Amendment.Professor Levinson's argument is well illustrated in Judge Alex Kozinski's eloquent dissent to the decision not to re-hear Silveira v. Lockyer: Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet, and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths. When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.All in the name of "public safety." Gun control versus the right to arms isn't really about guns, and it isn't really about control as some have opined in bumper-stickers. At least those aren't the underlying forces behind the battle. It's about philosophy. It's about morality. It's about what it means to be a human being, and moreover, a citizen. Eric Raymond quoted historian J.G.A. Pocock in his excellent essay Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: "The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being..."This was Pocock's description of the formative belief of the Founders in relation to the Second Amendment. Raymond says later: The Founders had been successful armed revolutionaries. Every one of them had had repeated confrontation with life-or-death choices, in grave knowledge of the consequences of failure. They desired that the people of their infant nation should always cultivate that kind of ethical maturity, the keen sense of individual moral responsibility that they had personally learned from using lethal force in defense of their liberty.There it is: The question of TRUST. "I don't trust you," said Barry, speaking not just for himself but for all those opposed to "liberalized" concealed-carry and the right to arms in general. Yet, as Jefferson asked, if you cannot trust us with the government of ourselves how can you trust us with the government of others? I'll be more explicit: If you don't trust your fellow citizens, how can you trust those few who have power over you? In short, what is it about drawing a government paycheck that engenders the unthinking, unconscious trust of the populace? Bill Whittle in his essay FREEDOM wrote (more eloquently than I ever will): This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE.Yet, those who oppose the right to carry, and those who oppose the right to arms in general don't trust the people. They trust the government. They trust that the government will never become vicious and oppressive. And many of these same people protest that Bushitler and Ashkkkroft are the new Fourth Reich. Schizophrenia. Whittle continues: We can ban and confiscate and regulate to our hearts content, and we will undoubtedly save many, many innocent lives by doing so. All for the price of a little freedom.Or, as one commenter accurately pointed out: CHILDREN. I said in an earlier essay: Why don't we get rid of our guns? Because we're not subjects, we're citizens. The majority of Americans - still, somewhere deep inside, perhaps dimly - understand that we are sovereigns, that we are responsible, not government. Our collapsing schools have not yet broken us of this belief, though I don't think it exists in many of our children anymore. For the majority of us who bother to vote, however, being told that we are not responsible enough, grates. We are not willing to yeild, yet, our right to self defense, and eventually self determination. Somehow, the majority of voters sense a threat to their sovereignty.When polled, a majority of people say they want more effective gun control laws, but when the question come up on a ballot, the overwhelming response of those who vote is usually "Not THAT!" We are not children. Our government was founded on the concept of TRUST THE PEOPLE - with the full understanding that some small percentage wasn't worthy of that trust. I am heartened by the expanding number of states that have passed "lax" concealed-carry legislation as evidence that we have not yet taken Alexander Tytler's next step from dependency into bondage, and with great hope that we have not proceeded too far from apathy into dependency. I still trust We the People. | | |
