Civil Disobedience is only OK sometimes
A guy sent a letter to San Francisco politicos that says in part:
I am a gun owner and I live a gun owner life style.
I don’t know if I was born with a tendency to be this way, or if it was an acquired disposition. All I know is, I don’t see why I should be forced to change. Truth be known, I like owning guns, and am happy with who I am. I hope I suffer no repercussions by “coming out of the safe,” but I just can’t hide the truth any longer.
We gun owners have been living and working among you. Our kids go to school with yours. We may be your doctor, or minister, or your child’s teacher. We may even work in city administration, or the courts, or on the police force. And we are sick of being abused for simply being who we are, all because of hoplophobic prejudice and fear. We don’t see any reason why we should have to put up with it any more.
Which brings me back to my dilemma and the reason I am writing you.
You have shown progressive thinking and tolerance for that which the majority condemns. So I was thinking of coming up to San Francisco and exercising my right to keep and bear arms, maybe showing up at City Hall with a state-banned AR-15 and a couple 30-round magazines, and also carrying several pistols concealed without a permit.
He’s referring to the gay marriage licenses. For his troubles, he’s under investigation by the police. One thing, I don’t like the authors after the fact defense that the letter was satirical. Stick to your guns, man.
February 20th, 2004 at 12:21 pm
I like it. However, I do feel compelled to point out that it would awfully difficult for somebody to kill me with their homosexuality, so it’s not exactly a valid comparison…
February 20th, 2004 at 2:34 pm
That guy made the classic apples & oranges mistake, so no wonder someone cried foul fruit.
(heh).
February 20th, 2004 at 2:39 pm
No, he didn’t. The mayor of SF is allowing illegal activity (mind you I agree with it) to occur because he disagrees with the law. The situation the guy above described is the same thing.
I could even argue the gun guy has more of a case. After all, you don’t have a right to keep and bear your homosexual marriage spelled out in the constitution.
February 20th, 2004 at 3:54 pm
Let me clarify. My comment was not based on the legality of the actions described. My comment, rather, concerned the justifications for banning those activities. Constitutionality and current law aside, it’s very difficult to argue that homosexuality poses anywhere near the sort of public safety risk that guns potentially could. And whether or not they do a good job of it, protecting public safety is a valid function of government. That, to me, is where the comparison falls flat.
February 24th, 2004 at 5:30 pm
So should discrimination against blacks be OK, then? After all, if people with guns are a “public safety risk,” then consider this:
PERCENTAGE OF VIOLENT CRIMES COMMITTED BY:
PERSONS USING A GUN: 8%
There are 45 million to 90 million gun owners in the United States (15% to 30% of the U.S. Population),
with over 200 million privately owned firearms.
AFRICAN-AMERICANS: 25%
There are 35 million African-Americans in the United States (12% of the U.S. population).
source for crime statistics:
U.S. Department of Justice. National Crime Victimization Survey.
Criminal Victimization in the United States. (1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 Statistical Tables).
Table 40: “Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, by type of crime and perceived race of offender”
Table 46: “Percent distribution of multiple-offender victimizations, by type of crime and perceived race of offenders”
Table 66: “Percent of incidents, by victim-offender relationship, type of crime and weapons use”
Available on the internet at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst.htm
February 24th, 2004 at 5:53 pm
Violent crime figures above exclude homicide. The NCVS does not measure homicide (because murder victims don’t answer survey questions). While homicide figures are different (65% gun : 50% African-American), their relatively small number ( 17,000 total homicides compared to 7 million total violent crimes per year) does not change the overall violent crime rate figures.
Some activists compare crime in the United States (290 million people) to countries such as Canada (30 million people) and Great Britain (60 million people), and credit those countries’ strict gun control laws. But they ignore the demographic differences. Only 2% of Canada’s population and 4% of Britain’s population are black.
Case in point: In a 1988 study, the New England Journal of Medicine claimed that gun control laws in Vancouver resulted in lower murder rates than in neighboring Seattle. What they didn’t point out — even though the data was in the study — is that the murder rates among whites in Seattle was lower than in Vancouver. The overall higher crime rates was a result of the higher crime rates among minority groups in Seattle.
As Dr. Edgar Suter wrote (at http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Suter/med-lit/seattle.html):
Dr. Edgar Suter, MD
“Guns in the Medical Literature — A Failure of Peer Review”
Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia
March 1994
February 20th, 2004 at 1:07 pm
Two Amendments Violated for the Price of One
Spread the word. David Codrea wrote a letter to certain San Francisco Officials in which he attempted to redress a grievance against the government. You see, I also belong to a group that is forced by social prejudices to keep…
February 24th, 2004 at 1:01 am
Apples, oranges, and other fruits of licensing
Here’s a story which isn’t going to go away, nor should it. The right to arms is constitutionally guaranteed. The right to keep and bear your homosexual marriage is not. Of course, I wonder what the opinions of gay gun…