Today, the amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it.
If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.
But we might not have lost a federal judge, a 76-year-old church volunteer, two elderly women, Giffords’s 30-year-old constituent services director and a 9-year-old girl who had recently been elected to the student council at her school and went to the event because she wanted to see how democracy worked.
Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is “not suited for hunting or personal protection,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. “What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.”
America has a long, terrible history of political assassinations and attempts at political assassination. What we did not have until now is a history of attempted political assassination that took the lives of a large number of innocent bystanders. The difference is not about the Second Amendment. It’s about a technology the founding fathers could never have imagined.
--Gail Collins, The New York Times
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10collins.html?src=me&ref=general
Posts
Kansas City Mayor Q 2024 Year In Review
45 minutes ago
8 comments:
The founding fathers could never imagine an internet, where a blogger can expose his views to people all over the world in moments. Free speech and free press still applies.
The specific Glock used is extremely suitable for self defense--That model is carried by thousands of police departments nationwide, and minor variations are carried by thousands more, in addition to tens of thousands of licensed civilians. Virtually ANY semiautomatic handgun is capable of accepting a 30 round magazine and is capable of firing over and over.
What arbitrary limit on a right should we set--10 rounds? 6 rounds? Or do we limit the constitution to technology available in 1800?
And the 10 round magazine limit was the only part of the assault weapons ban that would have any relevance to misuse. The rest of the ban was about things like bayonet mounts, adjustable stocks, grips and covers, nothing that affected the function of the guns involved.
How about something just decidedly lower than rounds?
For starters.
And your mention of the Founding Fathers and the internet--how does free speech kill anyone? I don't get the connection.
How about something just decidedly lower than rounds?
Not sure what you are saying here
And your mention of the Founding Fathers and the internet--how does free speech kill anyone? I don't get the connection.
What does that have to do with the constitution? Either arms are protected, or they aren't--it is pretty obvious that the founders didn't meant to exclude 'arms that can kill' from the second amendment, that would be pretty useless.
If ammo limits are constitutional, where's the cutoff point--could we be limited to single-shot weapons?
Oh, good God.
Yes, I'm saying ammunition limits are Constitutional.
This kills me. Your logic astounds me. What seems so obvious to you--that speech can't be limited so, naturally, ammunition can't be limited, either just bowls me over. What you--and other gun enthusiasts--have no doubt equated long ago, never even occurred to me.
I truly believe the "pen is mightier than the sword" but Jared Loughner wouldn't have killed people in Arizona with the written or spoken word.
I now realize far better what we're up against with gun enthusiasts.
Holy cow.
So where is the permissible limit on ammo capacity, and how do you arrive at that number?
One of the problems is that we are looking at this from different perspectives. Hunting isn't part of the second amendment, and individual self defense is only a secondary justification--the primary justification is in case revolution becomes necessary again--as the authors felt it had been necessary just a few years earlier.
Clarification: it isn't a "limit on ammunition", it's a limit on the amount of rounds one weapon can accept, particularly handguns but all weapons, really. This type limitation would make it much less likely one person could shoot and kill 6 people and wound 14.
In answer to your question, see above. I don't know what the amount of rounds should be set at-- I'm not a big gun enthusiast or researcher--but I know it should be far less than the 30 rounds available in this Glock, as an excellent example, specifically.
"I'm not a gun expert"--common cop-out among people wanting to restrict gun rights.
If the second amendment lets you place arbitrary restrictions on guns based on magazine capacity, caliber, method of operation, what does it actually protect? If you can restrict the second amendment like this, what other arbitrary limits can the government put on other rights? We've had calls to restrict political speech that might incite nutjobs to violence--that's not constitutional either.
This is more important to me than whether or not I can have 30 round magazines.
Post a Comment