With the Bush administration casting aside the Constitution to eavesdrop on telephone conversations and hold suspected terrorists for years without access to lawyers, it's easy to see why civil libertarians on the left are finding a lot to like about the right-wing critique of expansive government power. This distrust and distaste for government authority has even made some liberals receptive to arguments advanced by gun rights groups, who suggest that private ownership of firearms is a healthy check on government run amok.
Before we get carried away with the idea that guns are the ultimate guarantor of our civil liberties, however, we should consider what maintaining the capability to resist the decisions of a democratically accountable government really means. The question of whether armed citizens should be entitled to challenge the government with force is at the heart of the current debate over the Second Amendment in the Supreme Court case of District of Columbia vs. Heller.
On March 19, 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made national headlines when it struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This marked the first time that a federal court had overturned a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. In its decision, the Court of Appeals asserted a broad range of purposes for the Second Amendment, including hunting, self-defense and, most notably, to defend against the "depredations of a tyrannical government." After the ruling was successfully appealed to the Supreme Court by the District of Columbia, the National Rifle Association made a similar argument in their brief to the Court, affirming that the "very existence of an armed citizenry will tend to discourage would-be tyrants from attempting to use paid troops to 'pacify' the populace."
Such "insurrectionist" philosophy is common among a small but vocal group of gun rights supporters. Insurrectionists assert that unrestricted access to guns of every kind is an essential element of freedom. Government is seen as a likely enemy, and gun regulation is viewed as a plot to monitor gun ownership and, ultimately, to confiscate all private firearms.
If this insurrectionist logic were to be embraced by the Supreme Court, however, our democracy would be severely degraded. Such an interpretation of the Second Amendment would make even the most modest gun control legislation unconstitutional. If the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow individuals to stockpile firearms to protect against government "tyranny," then laws like owner licensing or firearm registration (and maybe even the Brady background check) could be found unconstitutional because they allow the government to monitor and regulate gun ownership. Future Timothy McVeighs could claim constitutional protection for their crimes. If every American armed up to vindicate their private grievances (the Court of Appeals gave absolutely no guidance on how to tell, or who should decide, what constitutes government "tyranny"), the government's monopoly on force would be infringed and our society would gradually slide toward anarchy.
There was actually a time in our history--when America was governed by the weak and decentralizing Articles of Confederation--when private mobs exercised as much power as legislatures. Incidents like Shay's Rebellion triggered great fear among America's leading citizens and led to the framing of a Constitution with enhanced federal power. Since the ratification of that document, our nation has been through much travail, but through some of our biggest challenges (i.e., the Civil War, World War II, and the civil rights movement) it was ultimately America's ability to mobilize both a federal bureaucracy and military power that kept us free. From General Washington to General Grant to General Patton to President Eisenhower, professionalized peacekeepers have safeguarded liberty and freedom in this country (and, in the case of WWII, on the entire planet). Our strong yet democratic state--which maintains a monopoly on force--has allowed us to walk the fine line between anarchy and totalitarianism.
The concept of a "monopoly on force" might sound foreign or even frightening to Americans that take great pride in our revolutionary beginnings, but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any political entity, including the United States. In 1919, German political economist and sociologist Max Weber defined the conditions required for a political entity to be termed a "state." Weber said, "A compulsory political association with a continuous organization...will be called a 'state' if and in so far as its administrative staff successfully upholds its claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order."
Nonetheless, most Americans today would associate the idea more closely with the struggle for democracy and stability in Iraq than with our own political system. Indeed, the current situation in Iraq should be a cautionary tale for all democracies: If a state cannot guarantee the political and civil rights of its citizens, if it cannot enforce judicial or administrative rulings because it is outgunned by individuals or factions, then it is not functioning as a democratic state.
In Iraq, the state's lack of a monopoly on force has produced obvious negative consequences. Let's face it--isn't that really what "the surge" is all about? George Will has written that, "A defining attribute of a government is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence. That attribute is incompatible with the existence of private militias of the sort that maraud in Iraq." Researcher Herbert Wulf, commenting on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, stated, "[t]he present situation in Iraq illustrates that even the most powerful military nation of the world runs into difficulties in trying to re-establish the monopoly of violence."
This doesn't mean that Saddam Hussein's regime, or other totalitarian states, should be accepted. These regimes lack legitimacy, which is the key to Weber's definition of the monopoly on force. Nor does it mean that a democratic government must disarm every citizen or prevent armed self-defense. However, it does mean that a democratic state must be able to prevent the accumulation of military arms for insurrectionary purposes, and it must have enough strength to enforce its own laws. Without this monopoly of force, rights are only abstractions, because they cannot be enforced. This is not to say that government is the source of all rights, but rather that the only hope of vindicating individual rights over the long term is through democratic government that has both the will and the means to protect them.
The bottom line is that our Constitution is not a suicide pact. It can be amended and modified, but it does not sanction its own violent demise. As the eminent jurist Roscoe Pound concluded, a "legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted [because it] would defeat the whole Bill of Rights." If we value our democracy, we should hope the Supreme Court agrees and explicitly quashes the D.C. Circuit's assertion that there is an insurrectionary purpose to the Second Amendment.
[This editorial was co-authored by Josh Horwitz and Casey Anderson.]
A carbine sized individual weapon with provision to fire from the shoulder.
Capable of selective fire.
Intermediate-power cartridge between pistol and traditional rifle.
Ammunition is supplied from a large capacity detachable box magazine.
The term "assault weapon" in the context of civilian rifles has been attributed to gun-control activist Josh Sugarmann.....
Large capacity ammunition magazines
Folding or telescoping stock
Conspicuous pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device which enables the launching or firing of rifle grenades) "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_Weapons_Ban#Definition_of_assault_weapon
Grits, even Josh Sugarmann couldn't classify the SKS as an assault rifle, unless it is of the Yugo M59/66 variety. And wasn't this one a Chinese SKS?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Norinco_SKS.jpg
Just like the CA AWB used pictures from a catalog to define "assault weapons" including typos hence banning non-existent firearms.
On February 7, 2008, Charles Lee Thornton killed five people and wounded two at a city council meeting in Kirkwood, Illinois. He shot a police officer, a public works director, two council members, the mayor, and a reporter. His attack was motivated by an eminent domain dispute with the local government (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwood_City_Council_shooting).
Thornton HAD sought to address his grievances through the courts and had not received the relief he sought. In your mind, was his subsequent killing of these people justified under the terms of the Second Amendment?
And as for Timothy McVeigh, if he had filed a lawsuit to address his grievances in our courts (and failed to find the relief he sought) and THEN blown up the Murrah building and killed those people, would his actions have been justified in your eyes under the Second Amendment?
A simple question, really. Could you condone murder or not? Any sane American could answer either question immediately.
Here's the text of the '94 AWB.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c103:1:./temp/~c103GdpxDH:e643897:
He's claimed, off of newspaper accounts, that the SKS is an "assault weapon. Will he ever show where it falls under the 'ban"? Will he ever answer whether the pictured firearm is an "assault weapon" under the federal law?
As for the SKS, here' s a quote from a recent article that I will let do my talking for me:
"Nobody knows more about the gruesome carnage caused by five blasts from a Chinese-made SKS assault rifle than Thomas Krajewski Sr., the Port Richmond man who cradled Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski as the cop lay dying outside his home Saturday.
That's why Krajewski can't believe that the gun is not outlawed in Philadelphia.
'There is absolutely no reason that anyone should be carrying around military-style assault weapons,' he said. 'I mean, we saw what a weapon like that did to a human body. I mean, I own guns and my sons and I hunt as well, but I don't have assault rifles or anything. There's no need for it.'"
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20080506_Officer_s_death_reignites_fuse_on_gun-control_debate.html
Looking at the national press' evaluation of the Athens incident, I think they were right on:
The New York Times: “Corruption, when and where it exists, demands reform, and even in the most corrupt and boss-ridden communities, there are peaceful means by which reform can be achieved. But there is no substitute, in a democracy, for orderly process.”
Syndicated columnist Robert C. Ruark: “There is very little difference, essentially, between a vigilante and a member of a lynch mob, and if we are seeking an answer to crooked politics, the one that the Athens boys just propounded sure ain’t it.”
Commonweal: “Nothing could be more dangerous both for our liberties and our welfare than the making of the McMinn County Revolution into a habit.”
What is also interesting is what happened elsewhere in Tennessee during the summer of 1946, but peacefully. Two new lawmakers were elected, Governor Gordon Browning and Senator Estes Kefauver, which did far more to put an end to E.H. Crump's corrupt reign than the exile of Athens sheriff Paul Cantrell through violent means.
I believe corruption should be opposed wherever it is found, but I do not support vigilantism or violence in our democracy. The events of the summer of 1946 in Tennessee demonstrate that Crump's machine was on its way out democratically, and that violent means were not necessary to overthrow, much less legal of constitutional.
This is little different than African Americans' just struggle for civil rights in our country, which succeeded because of a philosophy of non-violence.
Do I believe that the veterans and other townspeople who stole weapons from a National Guard armory and then shot corrupt local elected officials (and in one case, slashed a man’s throat) were justified—either legally, constitutionally or morally—in their actions?
My answer is no.
First off, the author makes it clear that the GIs knew that “they had violated local, state, and federal laws that night.” Secondly, it makes it clear that it was a miracle that no deaths resulted from this violence, given the number of people that were shot and stabbed. Equally disturbing, he describes how the GI’s actions nearly “spawned anarchy.” In the wake of that violent night, the author describes a scene resembling (unauthorized) martial law, with armed veterans patrolling the street and men manning machine gun nests on the top of buildings. He also states that “Several times groups of veterans rushed to barricade roads and occasionally they terrorized innocent travelers in their attempt to thwart an invasion that never came.”
This is not a place that I would want to live in in America, ever.
Good to know.
As I noted above, I find the denial of voting rights (to African Americans or any other group) abhorrent, but I do not condone violence or murder as a legal, moral or constitutional response to political corruption. African Americans like Tom Gillespie eventually gained voting rights not by killing government officials, but through a campaign of non-violence that demonstrated the justness of their cause.
Clearly, you do condone such violence. It is obvious from your refusal to unequivocally state that Timothy McVeigh and Charles Thornton were wrong in murdering government officials and private citizens in their attacks.
Moorhouse: I found absolutely no support that gun control laws reduce crime rates. And crime rates, we looked at property crime, violent crimes — ten categories of crimes — and in not one of them did we find any impact of gun control, nor did we find that there was this contagion effect. That is, that a neighboring state with weak gun control laws seemed to have no effect on crime rates in the primary states. So, we found no evidence that gun control, or its absence, had an effect on crime rates. But if I may go on, what we did find was kind of the reverse. In areas that had high crime rates, there seemed to be political support for more stringent gun control. And so we looked at using crime to explain the gun control index. We took into account some other factors, and we found very strong evidence that high crime rates lead to more stringent gun control laws. But subsequent to that, there was no impact on crime rates.
...There is just no support for this contagion effect. But you —continually hear people talk about good gun control laws being undermined by the laws of an adjacent state. I had not seen any studies that really explored that in a systematic, statistical way. And our study, again, found no support for that hypothesis.
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=3628
Last year, ATF released 2006 trace data for all 50 states that showed exactly which states in the U.S. are source states for illegal guns:
http://www.atf.gov/firearms/trace_data/index.htm
Someone also might ask Moorhouse how he would explain the fact that states with weak gun laws have high rates of gun death per capita, or why states with tough gun laws have low rates of gun death per capita?
That's ok though, many anti's who have argued the same assertion based on the same ATF statistics also neglected to consider the time-to-crime statistic. You are not alone.
Can you provide any actual studies to support the contagion theory like I have to refute it? I'll even consider any Joyce Foundation funded studies and pretend that they are unbiased, just for arguments sake. Of maybe you'd like to kick around your African American's are responsible for all crime strawman some more?
-New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.
-In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.
-In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent
.
-When Morton Grove, Ill., outlawed handgun ownership, fewer than 20 were turned in.
-After Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982, it experienced no decline in violent crime.
-20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.
-New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation - and 20 percent of the armed robberies. Even more troublesome is the fact that the places where gun control laws are toughest tend to be the places where the most crime is committed with illegal weapons:22
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st176/s176c.html
New Jersey (47th), New York (46th), Hawaii (50th), Illinois (39th), Michigan (27th).
Not a single state you mentioned is even in the top 25 states in terms of gun death per capita. Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, and Alabama rank as the top five, all states with very weak gun laws.
As for DC, the district is a city, not a state. It does have a very high gun death rate, but then again, 96% of its crime guns are trafficked in from outside states with weaker gun laws (http://www.mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/frames.asp?doc=/mpdc/lib/mpdc/publications/2006_AR_Guns_in_DC.pdf).
There was no source for that "20% of homicides occur in four cities" stat on the page you linked. Can you provide a primary source for that data?
As for the trafficking, you may want to look at the fact that MD, a strict gun control state, provides half of them. So we have DC. W/ an effectively complete on bans on firearms, w/ one of the highest rates of "gun crime" and homicide in the nation. So much for strict gun laws effecting crime.
"..but then again, 96% of its crime guns are trafficked in from outside states with weaker gun laws."
I have one to debunk that one too....
Kokai: So, how did you go about trying to test just how good the correlation was between gun control laws and the amount of crime?
Moorhouse: Well, as I said earlier, I'm looking at, or looked at, crime rates by state. And there are a number of factors: demographic factors, economic factors and law enforcement factors. And I took those into account. Then I had an index of gun control, which was constructed out of 30 facets of gun control put into six categories and weighted...
Kokai: So, putting together this study, seeing this index of gun control, comparing that then to the crime rates in the 50 states, did you find any relationship?
Moorhouse: I found absolutely no support that gun control laws reduce crime rates. And crime rates, we looked at property crime, violent crimes -- ten categories of crimes -- and in not one of them did we find any impact of gun control, nor did we find that there was this contagion effect.
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=3628
Grits, still with me?
In Chicago (where handguns and "Assault Rifles(tm)" are banned), and no concealed carry:
"Since the beginning of the year through March, 70% of the murder victims had prior arrest records and 97% of the offenders had prior arrest records."
Approximately 81% of murders involved firearms with the most common motive being gang-related. Almost 30% of the murders were gang-related..."
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_EDITORIAL/March08CrimeStats.pdf
Do you think that a 97% recidivism rate in the above example is greater than, less than, or equal to the "Assault Rifle" issue which accounts for slightly greater than 1% of "gun crime?"
And what is comparing a lone city's quarterly recidivism rate with an unsourced assault weapon statistic supposed to prove?
I recommend you do not seek employment in the field of research.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0424chapmanapr24,0,5799683.column
So you have no problem w/ a 97% recidivism rate then? I'm sure you'll just attack the source instead of responding. Guess what kind of a logical fallacy that is?
Haha! Nice to meet you, Pot.
Illinois Factoids according to the 2006 IL UCR.
Illinois had a population of 12.8 million w/ a murder rate of 6.1/100K (780)
Chicago had 22.2% of the population of Illinois yet accounted for 60% of murders w/ a per capita rate of 16.4/100K
Cook County had 41.4% of the population of Illinois yet accounted for 73.6% of murders w/ a per capita rate of 10.83/100K
The Cook County murders in raw number/per capita increased 4.4% and 4.9% respectively while arrest numbers and rates dropped over 18% from '05 to '06.
If Chicago were to fall into Lake Michigan, the Illinois murder rate would drop to 3.14
Were the rest of Cook County to follow suit, the rate would drop to 2.74.
Guess where the strictest gun control is?
But Grits et al only care about banning guns in some misguided belief that it lowers crime.
Illinois is actually quite safe as a state. Including Chicago, the state ranks 39th in 2005 in terms of gun death per capita. That makes a citizen in Illinois less likely to die from gun violence than residents of all the following states:
Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, Alabama, Nevada, Arkansas, Arizona, Mississippi, West Virginia, Wyoming, South Carolina, New Mexico, Idaho, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, Indiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan, South Dakota, Florida, Ohio, North Dakota, California, Kansas, Utah, Washington, Delaware, Wisconsin and Maine.
Hmmm...and many of those states don't even have major cities!
Illinois is safe. Chicago isn't. Unless you consider a 16.4% homicide rate "safe".
Guess where the gun control is?
"As of March 31, there had been 87 homicides in the city. When I asked the Chicago Police Department how many of the murders are known to have involved assault rifles, the answer came back: One."
"Since the beginning of the year through March, 70% of the murder victims had prior arrest records and 97% of the offenders had prior arrest records."
Approximately 81% of murders involved firearms with the most common motive being gang-related. Almost 30% of the murders were gang-related..."
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_EDITORIAL/March08CrimeStats.pdf
Chicago has 22% of the states population yet accounts for 60% of state homicides according to the FBI and IL UCR's .
Maybe.
I wonder how he'll justify the fact that a larger percentage of firearm crimes are committed in an area where guns are effectively banned than is the national avg. I'm sure it will involve some passing the blame.
On February 7, 2008, Charles Lee Thornton killed five people and wounded two at a city council meeting in Kirkwood, Illinois. He shot a police officer, a public works director, two council members, the mayor, and a reporter. His attack was motivated by an eminent domain dispute with the local government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwood_City_Council_shooting
Thornton HAD sought to address his grievances through the courts and had not received the relief he sought.
In your mind, was his subsequent killing of these people justified under the terms of the Second Amendment?
You suggest below that you feel he would have been justified because he had previously sought to address his grievances through the courts. I now give you every opportunity to state the opposite if that is indeed your belief, and explain why.
SInce you can't you will continue to resort to lying by omission.
“Congress ought to have the power to establish a uniform discipline throughout the states, and to provide for the execution of the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions: these are the only cases wherein they can interfere with the militia; and the obvious necessity of their having power over them in these cases must convince any reflecting mind. Without uniformity of discipline, military bodies would be incapable of action: without a general controlling power to call forth the strength of the Union to repel invasions, the country might be overrun and conquered by foreign enemies: without such a power to suppress insurrections, our liberties might be destroyed by domestic faction, and domestic tyranny be established.” (James Madison, June 6, 1788, Virginia convention on ratification of the Constitution)
The possibility that Madison would have reversed himself and drafted a Second Amendment to facilitate insurrection seems less than nil.
And yet he did feel the militia, made up of private citizens was necessary to prevent or defeat a tyrannical gov't should one occur.
No reversal.
The kingdoms of Europe, on the other hand, didn’t have constitutions like ours. They didn’t have states with their own armed militia organizations. And they kept themselves in power relying exclusively on standing armies.
Madison drafted the Second Amendment in support of the American systems of government and defense.
"Actually, what stops private sales from being subject to background checks is a 1986 law passed at the behest of the National Rifle Association (the "Firearm Owners Protection Act") that placed these sales into a different category from those of federally licensed dealers (for those "not engaged in the business" of dealing firearms)."
Actually, what prevents private sales being subject to FEDERALLY MANDATED background checks under the Brady Law (which established the universal checks) is the SCOTUS case Printz v. United States . Local and State mandated and voluntary checks are perfectly legal.
Sorry Charlie.
The private sales loophole, however, was created in the 1986 law I cited above, and anyone can go into the text of that law and read the exact language I quoted.
There was no "loophole" as there were no background checks at the time except for Class III firearms.
So much for your knowledge of the law.
"so like your friend Thirdpower2, you're implying that gun suicides are meaningless?"
So show where I said that Grits? You keep saying it but have yet to prove it. Can you provide the quote in full? We've all seen how you only partially quote people in order to misrepresent what they originally said.
"...all you have is a VPC document that is forced to include suicides and exclude all other factors to make that claim."
So I ask you again as I did below...why do gun suicides not matter in your mind? Are you judging the value of these lives? 17,000+ people a year and that is not relevant to you? Please, explain.
Then, in that same post, you said something even more foolish, which proves your claims on this blog are not driven by data or sourced information:
"When you look at actual homicides per capita, it paints an entirely different picture."
Actually, it doesn't, as I pointed out below. The top 10 states in terms of gun HOMICIDE per capita in 2005 were (in order): Louisiana (still on top), Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas, California and North Carolina.
Your dishonesty about homicides is continued to be shown by having to constantly resort to "gun homicides" when I'm talking about total homicides. Unless you're now claiming ALL homicides are committed w/ firearms? Is that what you're saying?
#3 Louisiana: 0.099 per 1,000 people
#4 Maryland: 0.099 per 1,000 people
#5 Nevada: 0.085 per 1,000 people
#6 Alabama: 0.082 per 1,000 people
#7 Arizona: 0.075 per 1,000 people
#48 New Hampshire: 0.014 per 1,000 people
#49 Maine: 0.014 per 1,000 people
#50 Iowa: 0.013 per 1,000 people
#51 Vermont: 0.013 per 1,000 people
#52 North Dakota: 0.011 per 1,000 people
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_and_non_man_percap-murder-nonnegligent-manslaughter-per-capita