13 hours ago
Monday, April 16, 2007
Violence
I was going to write something on today's events at VA Tech, but my words would have paled in comparison with Shawn's at Cheese is Moldy Milk:
Violence
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16 comments:
Wow...thanks for the compliment. I wish it was something fun or funny though. I wish there wasn't anything awful to write about at all.
From over here your culture seems to be clearly insane.
That was a powerful post. Thanks for drawing attention to it.
Yes, awful. awful.
Cyber: yes, but we have to continue the right to bear semi automatic weapons just in case you Brits ever get that colonial itch again, ya know?
I have spent the last hour relistening to Harry Chapin's song SNIPER, about the Texas Clocktower Shootings. It is one of the most haunting songs I have ever heard.
Do yourself a favor, drop the 99 cents on iTunes and listen closely to this song.
Tell me it doesn't haunt you!
Let me begin by saying that I think that anyone that glorifies the god-given-right to have guns is a knuckle-dragging neanderthal. That being said, I don't believe that anything could have been done differently yesterday to prevent the tragedy. Crazy people will happen. Crazy people will get guns if they really want them. I think guns should be banned on campuses, but I don't think that you can have metal detectors in every single building of a huge university. Besides being a logistical nightmare, it's getting into the realm of a police state. In a free society, things like this will happen occassionally. That doesn't make them any less tragic, it just puts it into perspective.
- Do I think that the fact that guns are legal caused this event? -- NO
- Do I think that our society's glorification of violence and guns creates an environment where something like this can happen? -- YES
- Do I think that everyone having guns would have helped prevent this? -- Not no, but hell no. Anyone who suggests this should be put into a padded room. People like this say they are for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But they are the exact opposite. They are for a society of vigilantes that disregard the rule of law. I don't believe that we'd be a better society if every time someone felt threatened, they pulled out their gun.
Again, my problem is not so much with the freedom but more with the attitude that freedom seems to foster in the lowest among us. Why is it that the very people that are most for the right to bear arms seems to be the first ones to criticize freedom of speech and freedom of the press?
I was watching CNN yesterday and Jack Cafferty was reading some of the emails pouring in as he does and one of them was a guy from Texas spouting the line that if all students were allowed to carry concealed weapons it would have prevented the whole thing. That was bad enough...but then he went on to say that that's why this kind of thing would never happen in Texas. Apparently the whole Texas clocktower must have been in Oklahoma.
Let me begin by saying that I think that anyone that glorifies the god-given-right to have guns is a knuckle-dragging neanderthal.
It's primitive now to say a person has a right to defend themselves?
When did progressive come to mean only the physically strong can protect themselves? That's not anti-female? That's not anti-minority?
"... anyone that GLORIFIES the god-given-right..." -- Scott. I'm not talking about people that talk about the right to bear arms on an even level with the right to free speech, freedom of religion, etc. I'm talking about those that elevate the right to bear arms (NRA) above all other rights and who fail to see that any of those rights also come with great responsibility and consequences.
I honestly don't know (or care I guess) all that much about the NRA. I'm sure you're right in claiming it's a group that cares more about there own financial interests than natural rights. However there is good reason to elevate the right to protect oneself over the others, as it is the means to preserve the other rights.
There's a difference between guns you have for protecting yourself and/or your home and the type of guns that allow you to mow down a room full of people... For home/personal protection a standard revolver with 6 shots is sufficient IMHO, or a shotgun even. Semiautomatic firearms? not so much.
Scott said, "... there is good reason to elevate the right to protect oneself over the others" - But there's the rub. The Constitution doesn't say anything about the right of self defense. It confers a right to bear arms in defense of one's country. There is a legally distinct difference between the two. A lot of people have assumed a connection between the two but there is none stated in the Bill of Rights.
Sure it's in the Bill of Rights, it's in the 9th amendment.
The Bill of Rights also doesn't enumerate the right to travel, have a family, to trade, or go to the movies, are we to assume that these rights are also not natural simply because the Bill of Rights didn't list them? Furthermore, we don't get our rights from the Bill of Rights anyway, we get them naturally. If we got them from a piece of paper, or from a governing body they wouldn't be rights at all, they'd be privileges.
"Sure it's in the Bill of Rights, it's in the 9th amendment." - Guns rights advocates are the only ones that think that. The 9th Amendment is by far the most opaque amendment in the Bill of Rights and could be used to confer just about any right in the world if one chose to do so.
Now, I'm going to cite someone that I disgree with in about every way manageable but in this case I agree with (from Wikipedia) --
Robert Bork, sometimes styled an "originalist", has likened the Ninth Amendment to an inkblot. Bork argued ... while the amendment clearly had some meaning, its meaning is indeterminate; because the language is opaque, its meaning is as irretrievable as it would be had the words been covered by an inkblot. According to Bork, if another provision of the Constitution were covered by an actual inkblot, judges should not be permitted to make up what might be under the inkblot lest any judges twist the meaning to their own ends."
Guns rights advocates seem to be twisting it "to their own ends".
The 9th Amendment is by far the most opaque amendment in the Bill of Rights and could be used to confer just about any right in the world if one chose to do so.
Well yeah, that's the point. That was the point anyway. The people were suppose to be swimming in a sea of rights and the Federal Government was suppose to be bound "by the chains of the constitution" as Jefferson said.
Your line of reasoning, that we only should have the rights listed in the Bill of Rights and the rest should be left up to the Federal Government to decide is exactly why many of the founders didn't want a Bill of Rights at all. They feared that listing the rights would limit them. That's why they included the 9th amendment, to make sure people knew the people had the rights, not government. Then just to double check they made sure the States had more rights than the Federal government with the 10th amendment so the States could be a check on Federal tyranny. (so much for that, meh)
Read the 84th Federalist papers for Hamilton's reasoning behind this. It appears he was right.
I DON'T think that we should only have rights that are explicity listed in the Bill of Rights. I believe it is a fluid document and I think that is how the framers intended it. I just disagree with you on which are the inherent, inalienable rights. There have to be limits. Couldn't some people justify having a cannon in their yard to "defend themselves"?
But I do respect where you are coming from and you are consistent. You are an anarchist, after all. lol
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