The confusion is contemporary. (And, let us hope, temporary.) It rises from the younger-than-springtime decision D.C. v. Heller, from 2008, when Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a 5–4 majority, insisted that, whether he wanted it to or not, the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own a weapon. (A certain disingenuous show of disinterestedness is typical of his opinions.)
This was an astounding constitutional reading, or misreading, as original as Citizens United, and as idiosyncratic as the reasoning in Bush v. Gore, which found a conclusive principle designed to be instantly discarded—or, for that matter, as the readiness among the court’s right wing to overturn a health-care law passed by a supermajority of the legislature over a typo. Anyone who wants to both grasp that decision’s radicalism and get a calm, instructive view of what the Second Amendment does say, and was intended to say, and was always before been understood to say, should read Justice John Paul Stevens’s brilliant, persuasive dissent in that case. Every person who despairs of the sanity of the country should read it, at least once, not just for its calm and irrefutable case-making but as a reminder of what sanity sounds like.
They wait for verified sources when it is a possibility that NATO did something, but when it is Russia, Syria, Iran etc. they go with the spin headline first, which was rather my point.
Two weeks after a US general admits there are no moderates in Syria worth considering, the BBC happily reports that the Russians are bombing “Syrian moderates”. (In fact it looks as if they were probably bombing Chechens - the primary Russian goal is its own security). If they were consistent they would say something like “An unnamed source in the US State Department alleged that…”
The Middle East is a gigantic mess made by just about everybody involved in the region, and what we need is objective reporting. We aren’t getting it. We get spin. At one time the BBC was fairly trustworthy, but the present Government is threatening, in effect, to reduce it to a shell unless it does what it is told. How we get out of the downward cycle of creeping neocon in the UK I do not know.
Congress has repeatedly passed bills designed to block its closing, with wording entwined into things like funding bills and such that are essentially un-veto-able. They have forced Gitmo to remain open despite Obama repeatedly calling on its closure, setting out a closure timeline with specific steps to meet, etc. Not sure what else you’d want for “further actions” without a line-item veto and Democratic control of Congress.
So, you’re saying the president, commander in chief of the US military, is helpless to close Gitmo and he’s done all he could to fulfill his campaign promise there?
I think he did a couple of visible things, got blocked, and decided it wasn’t worth fighting for and gave up. Meanwhile, we’ve had people with no terrorist connections held for over a decade without a trial.
I’m saying he’s not a dictator nor a monarch. The way our system works, Congress can make and alter laws and obstruct his direct executive orders, which is exactly what they’ve done for the last five years. Given that just this past summer, Obama announced a timeline for the final stages of closure, it’s a bit silly to say that he “gave up”. But it sounds like your opinion is pretty set in stone despite the facts, so, okay.
All I know is that he hasn’t closed gitmo, hasn’t ended drone strikes (has expanded them, actually), has expanded NSA spying on US citizens, and generally increased and widened the “War on Terror” despite glib promises of “Hope!” on the campaign trail. He’s basically a more intelligent version of Bush with the same policies.
The other thing it can do is create a culture where people’s minds don’t immediately jump to guns as the solution to their problems. There are people in India who hear voices that tell them to do disturbing things like drink out of the toilet. There are people in America who hear voices that tell them to do disturbing things like shoot the people at work. When some is a really dedicated nutjob, their actions are still based on their culture.
The UK has the problem of the still unelected House of Lords; the US has the problem of the Supreme Court. Whoever thought it was a good idea to hand over the final decision on major political matters to such a politicised organisation really either wasn’t thinking, was a lawyer, or both. It means a few elderly conservatives can interpret the law against the wishes of a majority of the population, and there is no appeal because a simple majority of the Supreme Court gets to make the ruling, but the Constitution cannot be changed without a super-majority.
Interesting point. And a good one. The means for mass shootings have been around since at least the early 60s. The laws to obtain them have only become more and more restrictive since then.
So why are these becoming more common when they used to be basically unheard of? Are people getting nuttier? I know the mental health care system was hit hard with defunding in the 80s, but is that the only reason? I think you are on the right track with some sort of cultural effect. I think the national attention, the celebrity, the macabre fascination, the ability for a nobody to be heard plays a role in it. Maybe something can be gleaned with the shooters who lived like the guy in CO.
There’s a good post above about the PR from the NRA. They relentlessly preach that the only solution to violence is for everybody to become potentially violent, and that the first resort of self defense should be the gun. Isn’t that how Canada differs from the US? They don’t have the constant propaganda that the solution to all perceived threats is to carry a gun and be ready to shoot people.
Er - self defense is self defense. It is people wanting to protect themselves. I don’t think that has anything to do with crazy shootings. Just like owning a fire extinguisher doesn’t make me more likely to go out and set fires. Nor owning knives or swords makes me want to go stab someone. That line of reasoning just doesn’t jive.
Exposure wise, we get a to of exposure of gun violence in media. But repeated studies have shown fantasy violence such has TV, movies, games, etc doesn’t translate into the real world - though perhaps it does for a small percentage not wired the same way most people are.
OK - fair enough. Lighters don’t make me want to start fires either. Not even the cool blue flame butane ones.
The point is pinning this issue on NRA propaganda is absurd. No one is connecting dots from, “I should have a gun for protection.” to “I should go out and kill other people.”
Any one who did do that, also has dots connected to the government recording their dreams and the president is really a Reptilian.
Well, if we are comparing to the 1960’s then it can’t be because we have worse mental health care. Psychiatry in the 1960s was not the best (though I guess if you respond to deviant behaviour by cutting out half of someone’s brain they probably won’t go on to do any mass shootings!). I’m not saying better mental health care wouldn’t help, just that you can’t really pin it on that.
I usually pooh-pooh the media issue, but I think I do that unfairly. The fact that public shooting-spree + manifesto (wow the bar is pretty high for getting noticed) is a kind of guaranteed fame in a culture obsessed with fame could really have something to do with it. I remember reading the CDC guidelines to prevent suicide contagion after Robin William’s death. I guess the CDC isn’t allowed to issue guidelines to prevent mass-shooting contagion (which you would think is just as real a thing) because of paranoid anti-gun-control laws, though - and I’m not sure the media would voluntarily follow the guidelines anyway if it meant losing clicks.
Self defense is self defense, I totally agree. But you get the feeling there are people out there just itching for a chance to do some self defense. I mean, stand your ground laws are like a legal enactment of an insane fantasy. If there was an honest debate somewhere about how different laws would reduce gun fatalities (whether accidental, suicide, homicide; spree-killing, gang violence or domestic violence) then I think just showing the capacity for that debate would be a sign of a culture that would have fewer shootings. But “from my cold, dead hands” is a slogan that basically throws any possibility of trying to balance rights vs. responsibilities out the window.
Or what about “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” People actually say that. While the rest of us ask, “How could we do things so that there are fewer bad guys with guns in the first place.” Sandy Hook made everyone else wonder how we could let a tragedy like that happen, and it made gun rights activists wonder how quickly they could hold a rally right next to the school, right in the face of the parents who lost their kids.
In America, if you are in trouble, a gun is the solution. In most other developed nations, if you are in trouble, emergency services are the solution. It just seems like “kill-em-all” is on the menu for people who are irrationally and/or delusionally angry.
Well I disagree with both of your assessments on people itching for for a fight and that “stand your ground” is insane. Yes it is rare people have to use lethal force for protection. But it does happen. The law gives the victim rights over the aggressor - as it should be IMHO. Guns are also used in non lethal means to stop aggression. The people buying guns for protection in their homes are not the ones generally killing other people with them. I don’t think you can fairly call most gun owners “irrationally and/or delusionally angry”. Honestly that sound either like stereotyping or projection.
The bulk of gun crime is localized and perpetuated by people involved in illicit activities. So I don’t quite understand why people want to make out self defense gun owners as the problem. By and large they aren’t.
I do agree the “cold dead hands” rhetoric gets old. That is one reason I don’t often beat the “defense drum” even though it is a very hard argument to counter.
But they are killing people: either themselves, or their children. The kind of person who thinks they have to have a loaded gun at the ready in their home “for self defense” is setting themselves up for that gun to be used in their home.
