At the bottom of his editorial on delaware.com, we learn that Michael P Kelly is a Washington lawyer. In fact, the author of Control guns for the ‘common good’ and McCarter English partner specializes in Business & Financial Services Litigation, Product Liability and Public Strategy. The perfect guy to tell us why gun control is a must, then. “Those who advocate the deregulation of handguns enjoy a benefit enjoyed by a few at the expense of the majority and to the detriment of the common good.” You talking to me? You calling me an elitist? Who are you talking to? Anyway, at least the gun control advocate admits that his position paper is a minority report . . .
Urban citizens, such as myself and a four-out-of-nine Supreme Court minority, arguing that Americans in high-crime areas should be able to democratically request gun control legislation as a logical means to prevent being murdered, have been thrown into full retreat.
Hoo-ray!
Municipal attempts to curb gun violence by limiting access to guns, successful throughout Western Europe, appear to be over.
Huh? That’s it? The Supreme’s McDonald and Heller decisions mean that D.C. cops have thrown in the towel in the [now former] fight against illegal weapons and the criminals who use them?
I think Mr. Kelly should check the gun crime stats in, say, the UK. Not to belabour the point, check this from telegraph.co.uk on ’09 gun crime stats in The Land of Hope and Glory:
There were 9,865 firearm offences in 2007/08, a rise of 89 per cent on the 5,209 recorded in 1998/99.
Lancashire Police saw a 598 per cent increase from just 50 to 349 over the period while Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Essex all saw five fold increases.
In total, 21 forces saw offences at least double over the decade while just four, Cleveland, Humberside, Cambridgeshire and Sussex, saw the number fall.
While provisional figures for 2008/09 suggest overall firearm offences may be down on the previous year, they point to a doubling of the number of people injured or killed.
Some 1,760 gun related injuries or deaths were provisionally recorded for 2008/09, compared with 864 in 1998/99.
Anyway, Kelly’s got bigger fish to fry.
In this time of New Year’s reflection, I pose an honest question to my friends who heralded McDonald as a victory for the American way:
How do you feel about all those newly deregulated handguns being turned on our law enforcement officers? Because that is what the Second Amendment is actually for.
To quote Alfie, not a lot of people know that. Or care. But maybe they should!
Do you, as an American citizen in 2011, support the right to gun down police officers violating someone’s Constitutional rights by, say, kicking in the door of the wrong house in a nighttime SWAT raid?
The Supreme Court in Heller rather glibly stated that “reasonable” restrictions on machine guns and heavy weaponry should still survive Second Amendment scrutiny.
Why?
Presumably, extremely deadly weapons will further the right of citizens to resist the police more than handguns. Just applying the precedent cited by the court itself shows that any law restricting a person’s right to resist the police with his gun would unconstitutionally violate the Second Amendment . . .
In addition to the fact that gun control reduces gun crime — Western Europe presenting the conclusive evidence — one may logically reason that police officers would prefer not to be shot while doing their jobs in good faith.
The most famous recent example espousing the contrary argument, that Americans enjoy the constitutional right to resist federal government misconduct through force of arms, was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Apparently, the only way around this problem of Second Amendment-enabled domestic terrorism is to re-write the Amendment “to make its application crystal clear and sensible.” I would have thought that it was both. But then I’m one of those right wing nutcases who fears his own government and the elitists who would change its founding principles to suit their philosophical myopia and experiential naiveté for the “common good.”
“The most famous recent example … that Americans enjoy the constitutional right to resist federal government misconduct through force of arms, was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.”
Federal government misconduct? A pretty bland term for murder. And what does Timothy McVeigh have to do with gun control? Last I checked, he used a fertilizer bomb. The McVeigh story makes a good case for bullshit control, but that would violate Attorney Kelly’s First Amendment right to publish his bullshit screed.
Lookit, McVeigh was a baby killer in the same mold as the federal goons at Ruby Ridge. The only difference was in degree, not in kind. The feds used rifles to kill an unarmed woman and her baby and the federal checkbook to buy Randy Weaver’s silence. In a way (not in every way), the feds were worse than McVeigh. They specifically focused their sights on Vicki Weaver’s head. I know, I know, they thought her infant was a gun. They invaded Weaver’s homestead under color of law with the full power of the warmaking apparatus of the federal government behind them. And they knew they could get away with it.
Thankfully, McVeigh is dead. Unfortunately, tyranny never dies, it just masquerades as something else. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Know your rights, stay armed, and recognize sophistry when you read it.
Do you, as an American citizen in 2011, support the right to gun down police officers violating someone’s Constitutional rights by, say, kicking in the door of the wrong house in a nighttime SWAT raid?
In a word: yes. But I also think that no-knock raids are both unconstitutional and do more harm than good anyway.
FLAME DELETED
That is the whole point of what Jefferson wrote. If the government is getting too heavy handed and not following the laws that define them, the people have the right to defend against that. While I am not advocating shooting police officers in their “stop and frisk”(which I feel is totally against the law and an abuse of authority), if I am able to grab my gun from the nightstand when I hear the front door come smashing in and gunshots as my dog goes to defend his and my home, I can guarentee that lead will be flying in that direction.
A no knock entry, one with no one identifying themselves would be very frightening. I think anyone who could would do the same.
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