Debate about Gun Control

[Eric the Green]

(05-22-2017, 07:28 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-22-2017, 12:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Those on the "blue" side of the debate disagree, quite strenuously. They (we) are convinced that guns are a threat to public safety, or that at least they are if unregulated or military. So, it's not a values question at all. It's a different view on what fulfills the value that both sides have. So, neither side is values locked, since the same value is at stake on both sides. The question then is why sometimes (as in your case in your statement here) one side does not acknowledge the concern of the other. I'm not sure, except that views on guns have become part of the divide of the country. Some people who value guns do advocate violence and killing, if not murder. They may be revolutionaries on the right or the left, or terrorists, or gang members, criminals, etc. Others have vested interests in the gun industry (especially leaders of the NRA). But many do not; they just disagree with folks like me on the means of keeping the peace instead of allowing violence to prevail.

There might be a common value there.  Both sides value life.  I think many would agree that the good guys should out gun the bad guys.  Some might want to disarm bad guys.  Some might want to arm good guys.  I for one would like to see both.  I don't see either as irrational or difficult to understand.

We might be disagreeing more on what is a value, or what is the meaning of 'values lock'.  On the red side it is often a question of whether individuals have the right and responsibility to defend themselves, their family, and their community.  The increased concern with individual rights, responsibilities and decision making exists at a deep values level and is not lightly let go of.  As you say, the opposing position is also strong and not easily let go of.  I see both perspectives as highly subject to values lock.  Nobody is apt to move.

(05-22-2017, 12:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The history seems clear that, although there had been debates for decades, the Supreme Court decision came about because the right-wing seized control of the country and put its man on the Supreme Court. The Heller would not have happened otherwise. The charming actor beat the malaise of the peanut farmer, and that's it.

There is a strong difference here.  I see a conflict in values, race issues creating the bad Jim Crow law, a modern trend started by Thurgood Marshall to get rid of bad law created by Jim Crow, and a long string of Standard Model academic papers that cast a dubious light on the Jim Crow interpretation of the 2nd.

There is a lot more to it than Scalia and Reagan.  There are deep forces at conflict in our culture that existed before those two came to the fore, and continue after they are gone.  They were players in the long struggle, but the problem is much much larger that two men.

This is part of the divide between us.  What is important to the discussion?  I'm into history, law, values, and culture.  You're trying to turn it into conflict of money and personalities.  In a partisan discussion like this, it is natural to put an emphasis on an aspect of the question where one might have an upper hand.  "Reagan, Scalia, ick" is sort of an area where the blue folk see themselves on the high ground.  This is based entirely and their perception of the two men.  The argument won't be decisive to red folk who have a different opinion of the two men.

I respect Reagan's understanding of the mood of his time, though folks have taken his perspective far far beyond the point of diminishing return.  I also like Scalia's defense of the law as written, of respecting the intent of the authors of the Constitution.  "Reagan, Scalia, ick" is not an argument that moves me at all.

There is a heck of a lot more to it than the personalities of two people.

Come on, I said nothing about two people. The right-wing extremist movement that took over the country is what created Heller. Reagan was the leader who was able to put it into office, because he was ruggedly handsome, articulate, and a better candidate than Carter; that's all. If Carter had been the better candidate, then the right-wingers might not have been able to take over the country and put their man on the Court, that's all. Just as if Hillary had been better than Trump as a candidate, Trump would not have been able to appoint a Scalia clone to take his place. No, I had no respect for Scalia. It isn't about us either, of course. And those who want gun control are usually on the same side as those who want civil rights for blacks and others. They are both blue. Jim Crow is red. The lingering racism in the country is of course a prime component of trickle-down free market economics. IOW "I don't want my taxes going for those people who don't work" etc.

(05-22-2017, 12:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think the framers probably thought men (or at least enough of them) should be armed as part of the militia to protect the security of a free state. It has also been suggested that the 2nd was a means of arming slaveholders against slave rebellions (just the opposite of the Jim Crow accusation). In any case, the framers and their people did not have military weapons of the kind that were banned in my senator's bill in 1994, or the kind used in mass shootings since the ban was lifted.

The Constitution lists three reasons the Federal government can call up and take charge of the militia: to enforce the law, to repel invasions, and to suppress insurrections.  Yes, slave revolts would be one form of insurrection that might have been suppressed.  Before the Civil War suppressing slave revolts was part of the picture.  With Jim Crow, preventing the federal government from protecting the rights of blacks and preventing the blacks from taking action on their own behalf was a great deal of the picture.  Yes, the abolition of pure slavery made a difference in tactics, but in both eras suppressing the black population was a key motive.

Quote:

(05-22-2017, 12:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Since the militia today is never called up, the 2nd is outdated. Folks like me think it was outdated almost from the start. We have the police and the national guard today, so we don't need the militia. I think police as we know them today were invented in England in the 1820s. So yes, the language of the 2nd is confusing and archaic. That's why strict originalism fails. Language and meaning changes, as do the conditions and needs of the country and its technology.

The right and duty to protect one's self, one's family and one's community is not out dated. 

Yes, to a great degree a larger number of professionals makes the use of amateurs by the government extremely uncommon.  The are no longer common problems that require the entire male population to be trained, equipped and ready to handle them in mass, now or sooner.  There are no natives lurking in the woods, or British frigates cruising off our coast.  With larger professional forces, better transportation, much faster communications and ways to gather information about threats, the tactical situation is very much changed.  We don't need the local population everywhere to be able to meet big threats with little notice. 

This does not mean there are enough professionals to be everywhere, to respond to small threats in a timely enough fashion to make a difference.  In rural areas, with more land and fewer professionals, this is obvious to a large number of people.  A good part of the cultural divide is just population density.  One solution to small threats is not ideal everywhere.

There are a very goodly number of people with values that conflict with the founding fathers.  There are not so many of them to allow the sort of constitutional amendment that it ought to take to change the Bill of Rights.  Many consider the Bill of Rights very important, a bedrock of the culture, not to be changed unless there is a very clear change in the country's values.  That change just isn't there yet.  The conditions that created values have changed considerably in urban areas, but remain essentially the same in rural areas.  Urban folk want to break up the bedrock before they have the sort of super majority they are supposed to have before the bedrock is broken up.

The part of it that you haven't responded to is how you expect to make prohibition work.  In the United States, if the populace wants something, a criminal underground will develop whatever it takes to provide it.  Violence often escalates as criminal gangs fight for market share.  This happened with alcohol, has happened with other drugs, and has happened when various levels of government have attempted to control access to guns.  While a lot of folk will agree that disarming bad guys is a neat idea, how does one achieve it?  It is much easier to get laws through legislatures than to enforce them.

In any such partisan debates, the partisans will ignore those parts of the debates that they know they will lose badly.  The practical concern of how to make prohibition work is the big hole in the blue side of the story.  There were and still are successful militia cultures, where a heavily armed and trained populace discourages the bad guys.  There were and still are successful disarmed cultures, where a lower amount of firepower and willingness to use it reduces violence.  To me, either style of culture is plausible and achievable, but the question is how to get to either place from where we are now.  How does one induce rural folk to disarm, or how does one convince urban folk to proactively defend themselves.  I don't see either happening any time soon.  The country is a muddle of conflicting values and cultures.  Either culture forcing the other to change significantly is unlikely.

I haven't ignored things, but this debate is very tiresome and goes over the same ground over and over. Again, what's being proposed is not prohibition, except with respect to military weapons, which have nothing to do with self-defense. And no, guns do not work for that purpose anyway, but since people believe it does, and because Americans have a perceived need for guns, total prohibition is off the table for the foreseeable future. So the conflict is not over the value of self-defense, since on the pro gun control side, guns are not perceived as a reliable means for it. They are a means for people to kill people, and that's it. I don't know when rural folks might learn to see this fact. The right-wing/libertarian (or revolutionary left wing) American point of view on guns is purely an American one among developed countries; our gun obsession is unique.

In a 4T, one side emerges victorious. Values changes happen to an extent, but the victory is only partial and the cycle continues until the next 2T and 4T when values may change further. Based on the statistics I have seen, it's clear that gun control works. What is also clear, is that gun possession is becoming increasingly concentrated among an ever-smaller group of people who have this obsession.

As I said before, though, if the constitution becomes moot due to the tyrannical and unconstitutional conduct of our government, then the 2nd amendment and the entire constitution becomes irrelevant, and so probably does gun control or prohibition. Revolution and/or civil war means that the people need an army to overthrow the regime, and sometimes this might include a peoples' army. Gun control is irrelevant for the people of Syria, for example.