I can understand that it is frustrating for Second Amendment absolutists that every time someone goes on a killing spree with semiautomatic weapons that some people try to use the example of senseless, wanton violence to call for some increased efforts at gun violence control. But it probably isn’t a good idea to compare your constitutional rights with the grief of mourning parents.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Could not believe my eyes as I read his comments.
Pure class in every way.
It may be the law currently, but the idea that this is a “constitutional” right is bogus anyway. Better not to repeat that BS claim even when we are pointing out its evil consequences, since it confers undeserved respectability on the position and makes the job more difficult.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/opinion/nocera-right-to-bear-arms-means-this.html
Nocera ends this piece with :
“Elliot Rodger’s individual right to bear arms trumped the public good. Eight people were shot as a result.”
But of course thousands of people have been shot as a result of this so-called “constitutional” right.
Was going to say the same damn thing. It’s completely made up law out of thin air by the men in black masquerading as justices.
I only gradually figured it out over the last few years, by doing a bit of research. At first the issue seemed complicated, but actually it isn’t.
If ever there was a message for public education, it is this. Then vast numbers of people would realize these people are crackpots pure and simple. Unfortunately they are backed by the men in black, as you say.
The best way to keep this insanity going is to push to “abolish the second amendment”. Then they can keep up the patriot pose ad infinitum.
No, aside from being a tad obsolete, there is nothing wrong with the second amendment. In fact, the campaign really ought to be, “RESTORE the second amendment”.
do you have some good resources that you found?
I know you’re asking for Prisjr’s sources, but a good starting point is Justice Stevens’s dissent in the (5-4) Heller case–which was joined by the other three objective justices who don’t see the realization of the conservative wishlist as their national function.
Thanks, Jim and Euzolus.
Turns out I started reading about this at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre, December 2012. I posted comments (some with links) on various blogs, including here, around that time and on other occasions since, when, all too often, because of various massacres and suicides the topic came up again.
First of all, let’s start with this: An understanding of plain old GRAMMAR is vital to our democracy. The second amendment is a case in point: it contains an “absolute construction”, and that is a key to understanding it:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/opinion/2013/02/12/a-grammar-lesson-for-gun-nuts-second-amendment-does-n
ot-guarantee-gun-rights/33796/
Here’s a commentI posted here April 12, 2013. It also contains a link at the end.
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2013/4/12/83137/5766/3?mode=alone;showrate=1#3
Here’s a newspaper from Colorado making a similar point:
http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20140512/OPINION03/140519865/0/opinion01/NRA-is-not-a-well-regu
lated-militia
More on “well-regulated militia”:
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/01/14/more-second-amendment-madness/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/25/1173770/-What-IS-a-well-regulated-militia#
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/26/1182359/-NRA-Gun-Anarchy-vs-The-Constitution-s-Well-regulat
ed-Militia
A sneak preview of Waldman’s new book:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/nra-guns-second-amendment-106856.html?hp=pm_1#.U4dF4C
-NDFe
Saul Cornell:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/amendment-don-article-1.1223900
For reviews of Cornell, there is a good page, but for some reason the URL doesn’t copy, so you can just google : “lacroix on cornell networks”
The NRA is a criminal enterprise. I was taught not to hate, but I hate them. They’ve had their chance to choose sanity and they chose fear instead. They are illegitimate and deserve nothing but contempt.
As for Sam, he should come out to I.V. and say that shit to our faces. Coward.
Todd Kincannon was still way worse IMO:
http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/blogs/politics/todd-kincannon-christopher-martinez-ucsb-killings-0527
14
Well, yeah, but how else is a zero like Sam “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher going to get people to pay attention to him?
Ah yes, the yapping conservative white male dummy and his newly created (completely bogus) constitutional right to own a home arsenal, lovely. Water that Tree o’ Liberty and wipe your bloody hands on your Second Amendment charade.
But of course conservative religious sensibilities over the “unborn lambs” trump the constitutional rights of women over reproductive choice. One sees very quickly how this works, Joe the Conserva-turd.
Now crawl back into the reeking Rightwing cesspool, Joe, and we’ll see you the next time you can make a spectacle and a nuisance of yourself…
Yeah, because the Right to ‘Life, Liberty and Justice for all’ is so very inferior a premise to ‘the right to bear arms’.
hellsbells.
& the pursuit of happiness. (shouldn’t write when I’m angry)
And then there’s the great sadness that Maya Angelou has passed.
Whaddya mean? It got the Presidential candidate for the “Nation of Assholes Party” attention and likely boosted contributions to however his grift works.
Mission Accomplished. The new Fred Phelps.
I implore everyone in the media, PLEASE STOP REPORTING ON THIS GUY!!!! No on gives a shit what this imbecilic fool thinks about anything. The day cannot come soon enough when the “Plumber From Ohio” has vanished from our media landscape. As a Buckeye, I beg you, LET MY PEOPLE GO!! I don’t want my state associated with this jackass any longer.
There are no words harsh enough. Banishment from the human race seems appropriate.
Our country is insane. Fear and hate walk triumphant across the land while the CEO class feasts upon the body of our society with the Darwinian order of predators and scavengers hastily consuming a carcass on the Serengeti.
Why is it not a good idea? The non-plumber whose name is not Joe understands his audience perfectly.
You (and many others) consistently make two serious mistakes.
First, you mistake folk literature for serious discourse. Ask the ogres how that worked out for them. (Who, you ask, were the ogres? …thereby showing that you still don’t get it.)
Second, even if you faintly get the idea that what is going on is storytelling, you watch the storytellers instead of watching their audiences.
Please stop making these two mistakes. They are failures of situational awareness.
Can you unravel the riddle wrapped in an enigma you just said so that us rabble can see RealTruthTM?
‘Cause I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, except that we’re not getting it.
How about you help us get it, instead.
No, I can’t unravel it, because it’s already unravelled. I can reiterate it.
“Joe the Plumber(TM)” is telling stories. He is not “saying” anything in the rational-discourse meaning of the word “say”. He is creating an oral tradition of folk literature. It has concrete topical political referents that give it the papareance of discourse, but it is not discourse, it is literature.
The same can and must be said of (essentially) all other right-wing propagandists in (essentially) all other circumstances.
Stories are neither true nor false. They do not live on that continuum at all. Their nature and their purpose is completely different. If they have concrete referents, those may be falsifiable; but their falsity does not impinge upon the purpose or effectiveness of the story.
When we point at a right-wing storyteller and squeal, “That’s not TRUE!!!”, we are committing a category error that has serious consequences. The nature of the error should be clear from what has been said above. The consequences (aside from just, you know, total confusion) include false validation of ourselves to ourselves and of the storyteller to his audience.
So much for my first point of two. Here is the second.
When we point at a right-wing storyteller and squeal, “He’s telling BAD stories!!!” (not that we have ever done this, it is always with the category error) we would still be misdirecting. The fault is not the storyteller’s; it is the audience’s fault, for wanting to hear bad stories. And it is the audience who are going to go away and act out, while the storyteller watches from a deniable distance with his nose in the air. So, don’t look at the storyteller; he is only fulfilling a demand and if he were to slack off, someone else would spring into his place without pause. Look at his audience.