THE BACK STORY: SECOND AMENDMENT CASE
WILLIAM G. MERKEL, HISTORY COOPERATIVE On April 2, 1806, Joseph Varnum, then a six-term Republican Congressman from Massachusetts and major general in the Commonwealth's militia, presented a report from the "committee instructed to inquire what measures are necessary to be adopted to complete the arming of the militia of the United States" to the House of Representatives. . . In the report itself, Varnum's committee informed Congress that, by the laws of the
The committee went on to say that the number of stands of public arms in the arsenals of the various states had not been ascertained, that there were about 120,000 fire arms fit for use and 12,000 in need of repair in the magazines of the
JOHN R. LOTT, JR. AND MAXIM LOTT, FOX NEWS - The [DC] ban went into effect in early 1977, but since it started there is only one year (1985) when D.C.'s murder rate fell below what it was in 1976. But the murder rate also rose dramatically relative to other cities. In the 29 years we have data after the ban, D.C.'s murder rate ranked first or second among the largest 50 cities for 15 years. In another four years, it ranked fourth. . .
Neither have bans worked in other countries. Gun crime in
ADAM LIPTAK, NY TIMES, 2007 - Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. "My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise," Professor Tribe said. "I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control."
Several other leading liberal constitutional scholars, notably Akhil Reed Amar at Yale and Sanford Levinson at the
The earlier consensus, the law professors said in interviews, reflected received wisdom and political preferences rather than a serious consideration of the amendment's text, history and place in the structure of the Constitution. "The standard liberal position," Professor Levinson said, "is that the Second Amendment is basically just read out of the Constitution.". . .
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - Gun prohibition has much the same effect as drug or alcohol prohibition. It would increase the price but not limit the availability of guns for those who really want them. One of the effects, for example, of banning cigarettes in prisons is to create a booming trade in contraband tobacco.
- Since 1993 the
- Culture is a far more important factor in violence that gun ownership. There are more guns per-capita in
- Forty-six percent of all those dying of gunshots in 1997 were between the ages of 15 and 34. Presumably guns work mechanically the same way for this age group as they do for others, thus something other that safety would appear to be involved.
- Treating gun laws as a national issue exacerbates cultural conflict, such as those between rural and urban, east and west, wealthy and not so well off. Telling rural Westerners to get rid of their guns is like telling urban blacks to stop reading African-American books.
- John R. Lott has pointed out that "less than one out every thousand times people use guns defensively is the attacker killed. Ninety-eight percent of the time, simply being able to brandish a gun is sufficient to cause a criminal to break off an attack and the two percent of the time when guns are fired, the vast majority of those are warning shots. It's something like less than one-half-of-one percent of the time is the gun fired in the direction of the attacker. Even when they do hit, woundings are much more frequent than times when the attacker is killed."
- A Justice Department stud, conducted from 1993-1995 tracked 4,000 boys and girls aged 6 to 15 in
Children who get guns from their parents don't commit gun crimes (0%), while children who get illegal guns are very likely to do so (21%).
Children who get guns from parents are less likely to commit any kind of street crime (14%) than children who have no gun in the house (24%) and are dramatically less likely to do so than children who acquire an illegal gun (74%).
Children who get guns from parents are less likely to use drugs (13%) than children who get illegal guns (41%).
"Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use [than boys who get illegal guns] and are even slightly less delinquent than non-owners of guns," the study reported.
RECOVERED HISTORY "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, 1776
. . . "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW The Columbine killers violated at least 17 existing state and federal weapons control laws.
In a city like
In 2002, Charlie Reese of the Orlando Sentinel reported: "A new survey involving 34,000 people in 17 industrialized countries published by the Dutch Ministry of Justice shows [that] the nations that report the highest percentage of crime victims are those that have virtually banned private gun ownership. In descending order they are
In DC, home of the gun ban in dispute, the school system spent a lot of money for metal detectors, cameras and security officers. But between 1997 and 2001, according to the Washington Times:
- Assaults with deadly weapons shot up from 66 to 127.
- Simple assaults in the school system rose from 384 to 475.
- The number of children caught bringing concealed weapons to schools swelled from 329 to 423.
- Robberies rose from 18 to 35.
- Threats against students and staff increased from 156 to 225.
The number of incidents reported to the school system are as bad or worse than those of school systems with twice the number of students, all in a city with a handgun ban.
STEPHEN HALBROOK, AUTHOR OF TARGET
When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Swiss feared an invasion and began military preparations like no other European nation. On Hitler's 1938 "Anchluss" or annexation of
When the Fuehrer attacked
WASHINGTON TIMES, 2006 - Figures released by the Treasury Department show that retail sales of firearms and ammunition rose almost 3 percent in 2005. All told, 4.7 million new guns were sold during this past year. Yet government figures and independent statistics reveal that firearms crimes, suicides and accidental fatalities, including among youth, all trend downward. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the estimated number of privately owned firearms in the U.S. now stands at more than 290 million, while American households with at least one firearm is estimated at nearly 110 million.
5 Comments:
It is so good to know, from long experience reading the Review, that there is at least one man on the left who is not an idiot. Keep it up, Sam. Who knows, the truth may win out yet.I very much appreciate your consistent publication of the truth, without regard to the privileged toes on which you trod. Best, a libertarian.
Sam... You should know better than to use John R. Lott as a reference source. Not only are his analytical abilities questionable..
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/we_590_01.html
... but a quick Google on the name ' Mary Rosh ' will give some insight into his ethical standards. Lott created a fictitious correspondent to bolster his claims and is an absolute tool of the gun lobbies.
http://www.whoismaryrosh.com/
and
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28771.html
If more gums = less crime, Sadr City should be the safest place on the planet.
There's clearly more to it than just gun ownership. Canada, like the US has a high rate of gun ownership, yet has very little crime. The same can't really be said about the US.
Everybody knows that you start with the outcome you want and then you pick the "facts" you want. That's what propaganda/journalism is all about. The John Lott stuff sounds too good to be true, and it is, but the fantasy is just as useful to the argument, even if it misleads the reader. The idea is to de-legitimize government and democracy itself, by promoting public cynicism in the guise of interaction: "Everything the Clintons do is corrupt." "No it isn't." "Well, all politicians are like that so it doesn't matter if I'm wrong in some details, and it's their fault they've debased humanity."
What I can't understand is how the proprietor is unable to see that his convictions have led him to oppose his principles and abandon his ethics.
Thoughtless and panblind human acquiescence to extremely unjust unlimited-personal-fortunes capitalism (as opposed to pay-justice capitalism) is what drives the vast majority of violence:
Here is Ruth Benedict, pioneering anthropologist, mentor of Margaret Mead, speaking of primitive economic orders, which "fall into two main types":
The first of these I shall call the funnel system. All that the community produces you are to imagine going into the large end of a funnel, which collects everything and channels it toward the richest persons. The collective wealth has only one prime destination, the person who already has valuable possessions. This system depends upon certain men's claims to the labor of others, or upon ownership and the right of favored persons to corner certain articles of wealth. It reaches its highest development where there is interest and where wealth can be used to obtain forced labor.
The second great pattern of economic orders is one I shall call the syphon system. This is the economy where wealth is constantly channeled away from the point of greatest concentration - from any point of concentration - and spread throughout the community. The syphon system ensures great fluidity of wealth.
Since everyone is provided for, poverty is not a word to fear, and anxiety, which develops so luxuriantly in funnel societies, is absent to a degree that seems to us incredible. These are preeminently the societies of good will, where murder and suicide are rare or actually unknown. If such societies have periods of great scarcity, all members of the community cooperate to get through these periods as best they can.
When one is studying aggression in different cultures, therefore, one of the things one looks for is the degree to which economic distribution is set up according to the syphon method or the funnel method.
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