Petey puts on his southern accent
At Tricities.com:
“It’s not a Democrat vs. Republican issue,” Hamm said. “It’s a rural vs. urban issue. And the urban people don’t do a good enough job of saying ‘Look, we need some help, people are dying here.’ And the rural people don’t do a good enough job of saying, ‘Look, I live in the country where the closest police department is 40 miles away. If someone breaks in my house, I need to be able to protect my family.’ ”
And:
“What could really change the gun issue in America is that the Supreme Court made it clear that there is no secret conspiracy to take away guns,” Hamm said. “I think it’s great progress. Now we can talk about gun control that works.”
Well, once you find some, let us know. So far, your average isn’t that great.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
That should apply in the city as well as in the country.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I agree with Rustmeister, but I think the writer basically meant drug/gang violence. As tempting as the “Darwinism-in-action” explanation can be, it’s not usually regarded as legitimate. Essentially, it boils down to “how do we keep guns away from criminals without taking them away from law-abiding citizens as well?”, with perhaps a little “guns need to be kept away from careless children” thrown in as well.
It’s a problem that’s hard to solve. In criminal law, we take the view that it’s better that a guilty person go free than an innocent man be imprisoned; it seems like the same logic should apply. However, I doubt you’ll find many who would ban guns who also want the burden of proof in criminal cases reduced to a lower standard.
Of course, the problem with this scorched-earth strategy of making a wasteland and calling it peace is that it doesn’t work. If it works as intended, you leave the weak at the mercy of the strong. If it doesn’t, and this is more likely, you wind up with our current situation of criminals having guns and decent people not.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I love how liberals can reach for localism when it is something that they do not want (gun ownership) but reach for federal control when it is something they do want (abortion).
I say we call Brady’s bluff: “Ok, since you openly admit that national gun control laws don’t make sense, why don’t you spend all your time and money lobbying state legislatures instead of Congress?”
December 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm
GB,
You need not reach outside the gun issue when pointing out the hypocrisy of the gun ban movement–when they were winning in the early 90s, they were happy to tout the importance of the Feds stepping in to pass the AWB. When DC didn’t want to give up its gun ban, they decried federal intervention at the state level. Which is it?
I’ve met Petey. He’s not a bad guy; I sometimes wonder if he really believes the crap he’s selling–but I have to wonder about his sanity when I read that sentence about there being no secret conspiracy.
We never said it was a secret. Their campaign to end gun ownership was wide open for anyone to see and was never anything but an openly stated goal. What Heller said was that that in plain view campaign wasn’t going to be allowed.
You say dumb shit like that when your cause and raison d’etre is eliminated and gutted utterly in one stroke of the pen by the men in robes.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
“It’s a rural vs. urban issue”–Peter Hamm
Um, No, it’s an inalienable rights issue.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
This is not entirely true. While some members of the anti-gun movement have been open and honest, other parts are deliberately deceptive. Just look at what the Joyce Foundation did behind the scenes to fundamentally undermine 2nd Amendment legal scholarship for one example.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:26 pm
The main problem is that gun control people think that they can take guns out of the hands of criminals by passing laws.
The way you disarm criminals is by searching them for weapons when they enter prison. And you can’t do that without knowing what crime they have committed and then arresting and trying them for it. It’s hard work but it’s the only thing that has any effect.
Without prison type levels of control, you can’t effectively disarm people who don’t want to be disarmed. And even then, you are not going to have a foolproof success rate.
And if these measures barely work in prison (which is enormously expensive and the residents have no rights at all) it sure as hell isn’t going to work in a society where people have rights to privacy and not being searched, etc. You can’t have effective gun control in a free society.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Quoted, linked, and expounded on.