16 December 2012

Ban Guns? No, eliminate the causes

In the wake of the horrific mass murder in CT, it amazes me how many people are again singing the "ban assault weapons" song. That's just plain ignorant. And I'm still amazed that NONE of the Sunday morning Talking Heads of the news/talk shows still can't step away from, "People don't need assault weapons to hunt." It ain't hunting, people. The Second Amendment is about giving the citizenry the means to fight off (defend themselves) from despots and groups of nuts who have designs on the country's freedoms -- and deer rifles are not at issue because you ain't going to fight off a rogue general, with a battalion of military grade weapons. You better have as many assault weapons as you can muster.

I know that I've written this so many times that it makes some of your heads hurt, but I think the Congress needs as many public reminders as possible.  For the security of a homeland, to the general population, a mess of excellent weapons, scattered all over a country, means more for that homeland's security, than any number of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Predator Drones in the hands of an organized army.

Again, (you knew this was coming, didn't you) a history lesson.

Hitler did not invade Switzerland because he knew every single damn house in the country had a male head of household with the latest military grade rifle then in existence and knew how to use it.

Many of Japan's military leaders were similarly reluctant to entertain attacking the USA mainland because they knew that the citizens would fight them from every doorway and rooftop and that the weapons were not only "out there" but a big chunk of the population (WWI vets and rural hunters) knew how to use them.  Yamamoto even wrote a letter cautioning:

Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. [emphasis added]

He had studied at Harvard for over two years and had done two Naval Attaché hitches in Washington, DC.   The reader may think that a country full of serious war weapons is a danger to them when in reality, it might be the reason they aren't speaking Japanese or German today.

Ban assault weapons?  Nah.

Every time government tries to legislate a problem from the back end, the problem gets worse or the "cure" goes out of control. 

Stop the drunkards:  The 18th Amendment -
"The manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."
 What did that get us?  Highly enriched organized crime; blind and dead people from drinking bad liquor; and, maybe the worst effect, a general public disregard for a constitutional law.

The war on marijuana:  Millions of dollars spent against the horrors of our children becoming crazed zombies under the psycho effects of the devil weed, positively leading to addiction to opium, heroin and, oh, yeah, "sex, love, & rock and roll."  Tens of thousands of law enforcement, judicial & penal assets pissed away, resulting in a massive population of citizens with arrest records and subsequent meaningless incarcerations.

What did that get us?  Same thing as the first example.  Highly enriched organized crime and a lot of citizens "wounded" by the stigma of being criminals and (now) at least two generations of the general public with a disregard for a national law. (And, oh, yeah, probably 0.0000001% of the users ever graduated to heroin.)  [I just made that number up.  Go ahead and get me the citations to prove it wrong.  I'd appreciate your efforts.  Thanks.]

And, how's that knee-jerk Homeland Security thing working out for you?  Do you feel more secure now or are you amazed at how your freedoms have been impacted?  Have you traveled lately?  Tried to directly ship something by air lately, via air freight?  Visited a sea port lately?

So, should you stick your head in the sand ... business as usual?

Hell no.  Attack the problem.

Is the problem pervasive gun ownership?  While I'd say, "clearly not," if you want to legislate away assault weapons, and large magazines (they're not "clips" newsboy!) and anything else, please see above.

How about you get to know your neighbors so that you know if the young man down the street with the mom railing against the local school administration is bordering on being unstable?

How about if you speak up when you see or hear something disturbing developing?

How about if you raise your kids off of and away from the X-Box and absolutely know what they're doing for how many hours on the Internet?

And, even, how about if you quit being so damned "enlightened" about mental health because you saw the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and bring back mental institutions?  There has to be a place to put the wackos because you can't fix wacked with medications and/or touchy-feely halfway houses all of the time or nearly fast enough.  [Plus I might need a nice warm place to stay after the family reads this.]

How about if you all shun violent movies and video games?  They ARE an effing problem, whether you like to think so or not.  Just ask yourself, would you take your 5 year old or your 80 year old mother to the latest splatter movie?  Exactly why not?  Yeah.  Those are the reasons that you shouldn't be taking/letting anyone do that.  Free speech?  Let 'em speak all they want.  Just don't buy into it, thereby enriching the speaker and encouraging further such behavior.

That's enough hammering for now.  I hope you see my position.  

Good luck with this.  I'm down here in the Wild West watching.  .

6 comments:

  1. Well, I thought I was a better communicator than I clearly must be. My buddy, Mark, who is at least as anti-gun as I am pro-gun linked to this blog, over on his blog, Going Like Sixty http://tinyurl.com/crea4kc and took me to task.

    Love ya man, but there are a few talking points here:

    You said, "Most of the long guns are for hunting animals, the handguns are used to harm people."

    Are the handguns, openly on the hips of every police officer "to harm people"? I think they're vastly more likely for keeping some dope from doing something stupid, lest he come to harm. Yes, there are a lot of stupid people with guns but we, the general mainstream public, only own handguns to stop stupid people from continuing in an attack on ourselves or family.

    And how did we get off on handguns? This was about "assault weapons" (which is a loaded terminology created by the anti-gun lobby.)

    You also said that I am, "convinced that the U.S. will have a ground invasion by a despot or a group of nuts."

    Nah. Not "convinced." Just prepared if any of this instability goes past the tipping point. We're not envisioning D-Day here. Only pockets of the "doo-doo hitting the fan."

    (By the way, imagine CR if the Fuerza were ever confronted by, for instance, a real drug cartel. Yikes!)

    And I didn't "forget about recent history" regarding modern terrorism tools and tactics. But, let's spin a scenario:

    Since the plan probably always was to keep up such terror tactics until the U.S. spent itself to death (which seems to almost have come to pass) what is the next logical step?

    Nothing! They don't have to do anything if the country implodes, the economy collapses and the military doesn't get a paycheck anymore. In many areas of the country, that lack of "government" leaves a vacuum of authority and who better to step right up to fill that void? You can fill in the blanks for your own particular geographic area.

    I don't see wholesale anarchy but if there were a breakdown of a central government organization
    a family's security would be more like 1870's frontier life, except the Winchester over the fireplace better be an AK because that's what the bad guys have.

    I think you missed the entire end of the post where I try to lead people to see the futility of legislating morality. It has never worked. It never will work.

    The stupid "10 round magazine" rule in CA after the 1997 North Hollywood bank robber shootout was almost, well, a crime!

    * They were convicted felons.
    * They could not legally own ANY gun, by law.
    * The semi-auto rifles they had had been illegally modified to be full auto, against the law.
    * They had silencers with them which also cannot be owned by felons, by law.

    And blah blah blah. You know the details.

    How'd the law work there?

    It won't EVER work.

    What will work?

    Since I wrote the above main post, the consensus seems to be a). a wholesale overhaul of the mental issues system, as appealed for here: http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother and, b). stop the news coverage, as appealed for in that miss-attributed piece (which was not written by Freeman) where whoever wrote it opined that the typical, mentally ill, lost, angry losers who commit these atrocities are looking for a stage. "I'll show the bastards!" -- the operative word being show. Do we really think their sick little minds would dream up these things if there were no audience to "show" their handiwork to? No name mentioned = no recognition for their performance = why bother. [Yeah, I'm sure there are wacks that are so far gone that they would do it in a vacuum but hopefully we'll come to our senses and do something about a)., above.]

    Hey, Mark, you know the news biz. Maybe you can make this happen!

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    1. Yes, the handguns on the hips of cops are there to harm people. They don't hunt with 'em. :-)

      Of course the every bad guy has multiple guns at the ready to outnumber the good guys.

      It's still a stretch to think that any scenario of the U.S. government to fail to the extent you spin.

      I'm glad the focus is changing to treating mental health. I'm concerned about all the troops returning after killing folks overseas. Looks like the program to treat these warriors will be cut during the coming crisis.

      The news coverage has been pathetic. But it's easy to do these kinds of stories - and popular with readers/viewers too. It's too hard and too expensive for main stream media to do any in depth analysis of mental health issues. Plus it's not sexy or scary enough.

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    2. PS: I didn't miss the legislating morality points, I just ignored them. Har.

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    3. @Going Like Sixty: Perhaps not an invasion or collapse of the U.S. government, but other instances should be of worry. Natural disasters, such as Katrina, left many of us citizens without proper protection and desperate people willing to do desperate things. I was 6 months pregnant with my twins, living in south Louisiana, post Katrina. It was scary. The ONLY safegaurd we had was a gun. The police and National Gaurd were outnumbered by refugees. In the darkness, desperate and dangerous people roamed the streets trying to take what they could.
      There was never adequate help for PTSD troops returning from war (I have personal experience with this one as well), so that is nothing new. The mental health system needs to be overhauled. It's failed...all of us. People have nowhere to turn when a family member (especially an adult family member) is having mental issues. There is no help unless they DO something. This is not the way to help anyone.
      If my neighbor's schizophrenic brother finds her and attempts to carry out his promise of killing her and her children, I'm certain he'd find another weapon if a gun weren't available. Take away the gun, he's still violent and capable of great bodily harm (problem not solved). He'll have a helluva time, however, as both her household and my own, are armed.

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  2. I just responded on the sixty blog (great name) with my post on the topic: http://bit.ly/schoolshootingcause.

    The feds did ban assault weapons. The ban expired in 2005 because it didn't affect crime... the dems could not get enough support even in their own ranks. Feinstein will introduce again. We'll see where it goes.

    We have guns for self-defense, not for hunting. SCOTUS just ruled that cops are under no obligation to respond to a call for help. Keeping my guns :)

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