OK, all you anti-gun liberal types out there

[unixronin]

(Not meaning to imply that all liberals are anti-gun, by the way.  I'm just talking to the "Ew, Guns Are Icky" set here.)

Remember all the times we evil gun-totin', NRA-decal-displayin' gun nuts have said that the Second Amendment is the most important of all the amendments, because it protects all the rest?

Well, having become one of the most strictly anti-gun states in the US, Massachusetts is now going after the right of peaceable assembly.

Yeah, yeah, I know; it says it's only for use against gangs and only in "safe zones".  But as metahacker points out, the devil is in the details.  Surely you folks remember "designated free-speech zones", right....?  Remember the first rule of legislation:  Any law, no matter how clear its original intent, sooner or later succumbs to "mission creep".

"Yeah, I know this law was passed for X.  But we're already using it for Y.  Why don't we use it for Z as well?  I bet we could, especially in front of Judge J."

Speaking of which...

mazianni found these two articles on the 9th Circus's ruling that US border agents can search laptops and other personal electronic devices for evidence of crimes without a warrant or cause.  Once again, "security" trumps liberty, and another little piece of the Fourth Amendment is whittled away.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."  ...Unless we want to.

Comments

[koyote.livejournal.com]

As previously pointed out, and as recognized by some of the Great And Astounding Founding Fathers, this ain't new. Government loves to enslave.

In fact, the last 60-80 years have seen a net gain in free speech and assembly rights. But we're not at the peak of the curve and aren't making gains as fast as we're suffering losses.

Were I to bring firearms into it, I'd argue that the defense of the society against external threat AND INTERNAL tyranny is the only real abiding purpose I can accept for the second amendment. Agreed there.

Unfortunately, in my experience with the pro gun crowd I've run into a few basic types that really don't give me much in the way of positive hopes:

There's the LEO/security/outgun-the-badguys crowd that really wants to have bigger and badder weapons than The Enemy Down the Street (which apparently, according to fun stories from friends, includes holding a hidden gun on the UPS guy and pizza delivery. paranoia.....) - and these people are all for restricting gun rights in people they don't like andor disagree with. They could, in general, care less about Jeffersonian ideals as long as they have the ability to blow away the asshole down the street who let dandelions grow.

Then there's the hunter/sport crowd who doesn't care as long as tags are cheap. This isn't all hunters, by any stretch, but there's a fairly large chunk that doesn't see the gun club culture of england as bad.

Then, and we can't forget them, there's the "Every man is an island" survivalist crowd - the one that actually thinks that if things go to pot it is every man for himself without any hope of trusted "alliances between independent person states". Too bizarre, way too bizarre. But they get media attention.

And then there are Dominionists. I don't even know where to start on that crowd, but they'd happily sing hosannahs while putting me in a noose on general principle, so I'm not particularly objective on the God Hates Everyone but Me and My Preacher crowd.

These are people I deal with *every day* in what I do. They are real, and they are a real bad side to gun culture.

I also deal with hippies every day. A surprising number of them have firearms, specifically in case something happens like elections getting cancelled or the FEMA camps getting opened to long term campers. They tend to have more liberal politics, some of them are even so liberal as to Believe in the promises of science fiction.

I don't think 16 inch cannons are a good thing for people to own on their own. Not so hot on M60s, for that matter. But I'd love to see semiautomatic rifles and shotguns removed from ALL tracking and background checks by the government. Preferably with a semester of safe handling in junior high or high school, but whatever.


Anyhow, just pointing out that while it's bveen programmed into us to say "liberal" and "gun control" in the same breath, it ain't necessarily so. There's a fair amount of conservative gun control nuts out there, too.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

That's because the M60 is a worthless piece of lowest-bidder stamped trash. MAG58s are much better. Or MG3s.

Back on track, I'd argue that the defense of the society against external threat AND INTERNAL tyranny is the only real abiding purpose I can accept for the second amendment but you think we shouldn't even have basic squad level weapons, let alone anything that might let us actually win against a nearly overwhelmingly superior armed force? I'm thinking you need to spend a bit more time contemplating, at the very least, the logistics of your position.

Unfortunately, in my experience with the pro gun crowd I've run into a few basic types that really don't give me much in the way of positive hopes

Niven's Law. "No matter how noble the cause, it will always attract fuckheads."

There are people in every group who make that group look bad. Oftentimes, they're the loudest and most visible portion of that group. 40% of American households own at least one firearm. Do you really think that your descriptive groups account for a significant portion of that total?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's because the M60 is a worthless piece of lowest-bidder stamped trash. MAG58s are much better.

+5 :)

[koyote.livejournal.com]

The m60 is *logistically* much more supportable for anything more than a single use ambush in the US. And while it is a touchy beast (I'm moderately experienced with them) it's not completely non functional by any stretch.

In a battlefield scenario, with stable lines of supply and matching air power, the SAW and "serious" hardware is possibly necessary. (Proven in conventional warfare where all sides follow similar military theories, but other systems of fighting are possible, so who knows for sure until tested?)

However, we are dealing with the prevention or overthrow of tyranny within the US. That suggests, strongly, two possible scenarios.

One involves a large scale defection of military personnel and material. Civil War. In such a case, having a SAW in your closet is perhaps moot, at best a minor addition to forces.

The other scenario involves guerilla warfare, almost exclusively, at least in the first stages of conflict. In such a case you DO NOT HAVE and cannot gain and maintain artillery and air supremacy. In such a case, the SAW is logistically untenable in comparison to partisans with rifles and IEDs. a SAW becomes a hot target that is disproportionally valuable in comparison to the dozen odd rifles you could supply with similar ammunition and maintenance requirements.

"Overwhelming force" becomes a thing not of Rommelesque battle field superiority, but ambush capability, sniping, willingness to kill your neighbor's kids to support tyranny, ability to hunt down all of a couple million armed citizens in a LIC environment, acceptance of destruction of your OWN infrastructure, etc. Dirty, ugly, and not nice. uniformed armies facing each other down on a battlefield is much more gentlemanly.

I would counter your charge by saying that you need to spend some time contemplating the logistics of insurrection. :)

This is probably a fruitless debate, because it seems to come from two radically different views on warfare. And I'll readily admit that my only actual field experience is in the conventional theatre. However, I have been trained in some aspects of LIC, and have given a lot of thought to the possible eventual necessity- it's my duty as a responsible gun owner in this nation.


Oh- and yeah- I think my descriptive groups account for a large enough portion of the total of gun rights activists to matter. To flavor and even control the debate. Ignoring the people who want to take MY gun away while protecting the rights of "proper" citizens just because I have long hair, live in a collective household, am not a christian, or vote wrong- that's insane.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

These are people I deal with *every day* in what I do. They are real, and they are a real bad side to gun culture.

The problem with this line of thought is that it basically comes down to "Some (or many) bad people like X, therefore X is bad." The absurdity of this reasoning is apparent at a glance:

"Bad people like guns, therefore guns are bad."
"Bad people like fast cars, therefore fast cars are bad."
"Bad people like big houses, therefore big houses are bad."
"Bad people like medical care, therefore medical care is bad."
"Bad people like money, therefore money is bad."
"Bad people like pretty girls, therefore pretty girls are bad."

The flaw in the reasoning is that there's no reason on earth that a "bad person" can't like a good thing for bad reasons. It's not about the thing. It's about the reasons.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

Not at all. I'm not positing that gun ownership is bad because some of the pro gun crowd are anti-liberty, nutjobs, or bad.

What I am saying is that I don't see the (IMO) prime reason for the second amendment as ascendant in the minds of much (how much? who knows?) of the "standard" pro gun crowd. Obviously, this is more than a simplistic binary issue. Nonetheless, I won't ally myself with so called conservatives who promote a fascist (or ragbar redbeard) trend in our country. Said trend being observable to me in a lot of segments of the polarized gun debate (on both sides).

That DOES NOT mean I favor gun cuntrol legistlation. As stated, I'd like to see an end to ALL paperwork and tracking on semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Not at all. I'm not positing that gun ownership is bad because some of the pro gun crowd are anti-liberty, nutjobs, or bad.

I didn't think you were; I'm just saying that's where that kind of argument leads.

What I am saying is that I don't see the (IMO) prime reason for the second amendment as ascendant in the minds of much (how much? who knows?) of the "standard" pro gun crowd.

Yeah, true. There's an awful lot of people out there who couldn't care less about handguns or "them ugly black plastic rifles" as long as their 'huntin'n'fishin'" is secure. And trying to explain that to a gun-grabber liberal, their scoped deer rifle (or their varmint rifle, or their beanfield rifle) is an Evil Sniper Rifle With No Use Other Than To Kill People From As Far Away As Possible is just like talking to a wall.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

or my bench target rifle. (which you recall) which IS an easy step away from reclassification as a sniper rifle.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Did you ever get that sorted out and shooting decent groups again, BTW? I was really pissed off at the guy in Sportsman's Supply screwing it up, but couldn't have proved anything. :p

[koyote.livejournal.com]

pretty much, yeah. complete disassembly and reassembly by a gunsmith up near oroville seems to have sorted it out.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, that's good news at least. I'm glad it wasn't permanently ruined.

I still miss that rifle and the insanely right groups it'd shoot. But I think when I finally get another rifle capable of that accuracy, I want one that does it with a fluted barrel, rather than a solid bull barrel.

Did you have him drop a better trigger in while he was at it? Or at least lighten the existing trigger?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

And then there's Blackwater (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/057), whose founder and CEO is a radical-right christian. I wish that lot was shut down.

Thank you. As I remarked in my earlier response, one of the problems liberals and Democrats (not the same thing) face in forming a coalition with firearms advocates is that the a great many of the most vocal firearms advocates are in fact hard right and are badmouthing us all over. I think my "don't care much one way or the other" position is more typical of liberals than strong anti-firearms positions, but the way in which firearms advocacy has developed has alienated many of us.

Finally, the theory that widespread firearm ownership is going to protect us from the loss of our rights so far doesn't seem to be passing muster.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

"Finally, the theory that widespread firearm ownership is going to protect us from the loss of our rights so far doesn't seem to be passing muster."

Well, I think that a lot of that is a fairly direct result of the way the 2nd amendment debate has been propagandized and how we are educated on the issues of liberty, government, protection of rights, and citizen duties.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Perhaps so. The fact remains that so far--and it's been six, seven, or 27 years depending on how you count--widespread personal firearms ownership does not seem to have prevented the erosion of our civil liberties.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

One could argue that it's possibly delayed it. But it's perhaps more to the point to discuss what's enabled it.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Probably. But I think that's already known. A number of radical reactionary constituencies: religious, nationalist, racist, sexist, and the corporatists formed a coalition and took over. The specific path was through the Southern states--the "Southern strategy"--and the main reaction there was due largely, though not exclusively, to the outlawing of the system of segregation. The attack exploited a number of flaws in our system: the undemocratic character of the US electoral system, the tendency of a centralized mass media to focus attention on one figure, giving the President imperial authority, and the weakness of our anti-trust and, especially, anti-media centralization laws.

I suspect conservative and libertarian readers are gnashing their teeth at this point, and wanting to complain about liberalism, or even socialism. But US liberalism doesn't seem to have had much to do with it. The complaint that liberals worked to expand central government authority seems to me unreasonable; the main things which led to that were, in succession: a major depression, a major war, and the conflict with the Soviet Union.

In any event, I think we know enough about what went wrong. I badly want to know what to do about it, and that answer is a much harder one.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

In any event, I think we know enough about what went wrong. I badly want to know what to do about it, and that answer is a much harder one.

Yes, I agree. In part it's much harder because I think an essential first step in fixing it has to be a change in the electoral system to correct that "undemocratic character" you note. But any such change, under the present system, would — to my understanding — have to be initiated by exactly the people who benefit from keeping it the way it is.

Interestingly, there was a recent article on exactly this subject in New Scientist, which had a substantial sidebar talking about one particular vote-reassignment system that is apparently being pushed fairly hard by the group backing it. But I found it interesting that even that system was slanted; I believe its design criteria are wrong. The creator of the system proudly stated that "It will never elect a candidate who doesn't have broad popular support", by which he meant that it won't elect a candidate who isn't the first choice of a large number of the voters. But given the choice of electing a candidate who's the second choice of eighty per cent of voters, out of a pool of say six candidates, or one who's the first choice of forty percent, I'd say the second choice of eighty percent was the better choice. But his system will almost certainly pick the person who's the first choice of forty per cent. (The sidebar also pointed out that the system can yield paradoxical results where voting for your preferred candidate can actually reduce his or her chances of winning.)

Don't know if it'll ever get published, but I wrote them back a letter pointing out that the criterion of selection should not be to pick the candidate favored by the largest percentage of voters, but rather to pick the candidate least unacceptable to the largest possible percentage of voters. Better to pick a candidate that 90% of the electorate are OK with but not necessarily overjoyed about, than a candidate who leaves 60% of the electorate cheering and the other 40% feeling disenfranchised.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I recommend (you may already have seen this from me) Poundstone's book, Gaming the Vote (http://us.macmillan.com/gamingthevote). He ends up advocating range voting, a weighted ballot system. It's hard to say, really, what system would work best in practice without experimentation, and any system can be gamed. But I'd place choice of voting system below media reform (decentralization and requirements of non-partisanship on the part of centralized media) and raising turnout. If people aren't informed, no amount of work on the voting system will help. I have also come around to the view that we need to make voting a duty of citizenship--a situation in which one gets the votes from a self-selected sample of a minority of citizens is inherently undemocratic. The candidates pick many of the voters, the media pick more, and the rest are the minority with strong policy opinions. We would not accept that for an opinion poll--why do we accept it for the poll that picks the actual officials?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I am generally in agreement with decentralization and required non-partisanship of the media, although I question how feasible a requirement it is. I am entirely in agreement with making voting a duty of citizenship. I also tend to agree to a large extent with Heinlein in making voting not only a duty, but a privilege that must be earned — before you get a say in the future course of the nation, you should demonstrate sufficient sense of responsibility to serve your nation in some tangible manner. It would tend to be another protection against the masses voting themselves bread and circuses.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

[...] and how we are educated on the issues of liberty, government, protection of rights, and citizen duties.

Or, more to the point, how these days our kids are conspicuously not educated on those things....