The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership

[unixronin]

Linked for anyone on my F-list who hasn't seen it yet:  The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership

"Terrierman" gets it.

[...] Rudy Giuliani never rode the City Bus at midnight either.  Neither did Mitt Romney.  Or Sarah Brady.  And all of them are Republicans.

The point here is that the gun issue is not about Democrats vs. Republicans, or liberals vs. conservatives, or even rural residents vs. urban residents.

It's about something deeper and more important than that: it’s about empathy and respect and tolerance.

It’s about recognizing that not everyone goes to nine-to-five jobs in air conditioned offices while commuting down safe suburban streets.

It’s about recognizing that not everyone can afford to have an ADT alarm system installed in their house.

And, most important of all, it’s about not living in fear of the fact that people who look different from you, who think different from you, and who pray different from you, may have rights too.

And not just First Amendment Rights, but Second Amendment rights too, including the right to protect their house and home from invasion and robbery.

An excellent point he makes, that bears repeating and considering, especially if it's news to you:  Not only do armed citizens shoot and kill twice as many criminals every year as do police — they do so with one fifth of the error rate.  To put that another way, if you're a criminal, you're half as likely to be shot and killed by a police officer as by an armed "civilian" ... but if you're an innocent bystander, you're two and a half times more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer than by an armed citizen.

Comments

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

i never really got why fourth amendment stuff was a liberal/conservative issue.

it seemed to be a sheltered privileged rich person vs. periodically isolated in dangerous situation person issue.

we have the right to use deadly force to protect lives, and, sometimes, property. there's no way around that. outlawing guns just makes it more difficult for us to do so effectively. i don't see who that actually helps, really.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

i never really got why fourth amendment stuff was a liberal/conservative issue.

Did you actually mean fourth here, or second? Though I sometimes think our elected aristocracy regard both as equally inconvenient.

it seemed to be a sheltered privileged rich person vs. periodically isolated in dangerous situation person issue.

And many of those "sheltered rich people" don't practice what they preach anyway. As perspicuity alluded to above, famously anti-gun Senator Ted Kennedy was almost arrested (would have been arrested, had he not been a US Senator) in Washington DC after he illegally armed his personal bodyguards with full-automatic AK47s (you know, the exact weapons with which he and the rest of the gun control lobby are so adamant that civilians cannot be trusted, and with which they try to confuse semi-automatic weapons to the general public at every opportunity to tar them with the same brush). Dianne Feinstein is another prize on this score, with her concealed carry permit, weapons misdirected from evidence rooms, etc, etc.

It's not that they're sheltered. It's that they're privileged, and believe to the very core of their souls that they're just inherently better and more deserving than all of us unwashed peasants out here. Laws are for them to write, and for the rest of us to obey without question. It's that whole "Being rich means you're BETTER" mentality.

"Look at 'im! 'E must be a king!"
"'Ow can you tell?"
"'E ain't all covered in shit like the rest of us."

Or as Daniel Webster put it,

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. 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.

And again,

Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

gah. foot in amendment disease hits me again. yes, i meant second.

those privileged people start out as sheltered kids. they think that nothing's ever going to hurt them because they're special and then they go out into the big big world and realize that yes, actually, things out there can hurt them, and since they already have an assumption of privilege, they assume they have the right to run over other people to ensure their personal security.

i spent the last nine years of school around kids like this (after moving in from disintegrating LA suburbs) and the cognitive dissonance in it is scary. and the adults feed them in it. because the assumption that they're special and deserve different treatment is so implicit nobody even notices it. seriously, every kid from a well-to-do-family (which predominated) in my school was expected to move on to some high class ivy league school and get polished some more before taking up some position of power and influence in the world. and it wasn't even stated outwardly, just perpetually implied.
and the kids from less well off families? well the difference in how the adults treated them (and thus the children as well) regardless of ability was horrifying in its contrast.
i had an assumption of meritocracy, and i was really burned by realizing that while my prizes and accomplishments were earned, many of those by the little rich kids weren't, and people who did deserve them, but came form, say, blue collar families, were told, over and over again, that they were "too poor to be any good" even if they were excellent.

yeah, i have some reservoir of bitter towards the money = personal value mentality. it's a powerful motivational force for the people caught in it, though. which are much of us.