jason-stadtlander

“One group would like to see guns outlawed completely — a pointless endeavor, as it will not prevent criminals who have no respect for the law from acquiring guns. We have another group that believes in ownership and feels that the laws are too tight to begin with for those who own guns legally. Then we have the rest of us, who would like to see some kind of happy medium. Ironically, those of us who would prefer a happy medium are the ones without much of a voice, because we do not choose to follow either extreme.” – Jason P. Stadtlander in Gun Bans a Safe Haven for Killers [at huffingtonpost.com]

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86 COMMENTS

    • Yes. Sounds like a closet gun control extremist, making it sound as if more gun control is needed to get us to ‘middle ground’

    • In the final analysis, the opponents of the 2nd Amendment would like to “compromise” by returning only some of our constitutionally guaranteed gun rights to us. It’s like having a thief caught red-handed saying he’s willing to return some — but not all — of the money he stole.

  2. The problem with a happy median voice is that it ends up capitulating to the more obnoxious side over time. The median simply keeps getting redefined. The liberals have adopted this as a viable tactic and used this time and again on many issues.

    • Indeed. This is one of the many disillusionments and disappointments I’ve had over the years, seeing how compromise really means surrender. If only they could really be satisfied with a moderate solution, and trustworthy enough to keep their end of the bargain.

      But they can’t, as history proves. So no compromise.

    • I disagree. The real median wants to be left alone and is tired of getting pulled left and right by those wishing to exert their control of others. The real median want to go to work, pay their bills and enjoy a little peace. The real median knows that their liberties ends where it infringes on anothers. Politically there is no median, it’s one extreme to the next.

      • You are confusing political left and right with what median refers to in context of the article. The right wants no law on firearms that is not compliant with the 2nd Amendment. Median views expressed in this article, which is debatable as a median view, advocates for infringement to the right to keep and bear arms.
        The Constitution, which Liberal and Conservative people in all branches of government swear an oath to uphold, is not a right or left viewpoint. And if it is a right only viewpoint, then the left can go to hell. And if the median that you refer to doesn’t adhere to the bill of rights then you can go with them. It is fundamental therefore non-debatable.

        • I confused nothing. The writer of the article to which this is refering is not in the “middle ground”. His bias leans to gun control. Control of others period. Politics always run extremes. The average or median is uninterested in politics. They have their own issues and are uninterested in the control of others. The best they can do is vote for those who infringe less on their freedoms. Following the constitution and the bill of rights is not extreme in any way. Personally I see most politics are driven by money or power.

          • You disagreed with don whom I found no fault in his statement then you defined your view of the median. I don’t disagree with your statement. I just found it to be out of context with the article’s reasoning. Maybe that was your point, but it was confusing. You seemed to be defining a Libertarian viewpoint to general politics whereas the article is referring to a middle ground compromise on gun ownership and use which seems very left of our values.
            Perhaps it was just a matter of where you placed your reply.

    • Gun Control goes in progressive waves. See how the median progressively moves and changes as more of the gun control laws are passed over the decades. Reasonable and sensible in the 1930s is very different from reasonable and sensible in 2014.

  3. So it’s extreme to believe that unconstitutional infringements on the second amendment must be rolled back? In any other case that would be seen as the reasonable position, but since we find ourselves in this demonized group called “gun owners” it is characterized as a call to kill more children. I am all for opening up NICS to the public so long as there is no registry, but remember how that went the first time? Yeah, they sunk it because the registry was all they really wanted. Those are the real “extremes,” IMO, registry and no registry, not “ban all guns” and “legalize C4.”

    • Yes, the Federal government is the extremists. $17,000,000,000,000 in debt. I can’t think of anything that extreme. Sending armed troopers to stop a rancher and kill cattle to protect turtles, allowing guns to go the the Mexican drug cartels, refusing to defend the consulate in Benghazi because it would look bad for the administration in an election year and then lie about the cause of the attack, allowing Russian imperialism to go unchecked, releasing 5 ranking terrorist for the return of a traitor, taking over the healthcare market by lying about what impact it has on the economy and individuals, and much much more are all extreme actions that pales in comparison the right to bear arms without infringement.

  4. Japanese internment was a happy medium. Indian reservations is a happy medium. I don’t like happy mediums.

      • wait wait wait…

        Did you just f*cking blame Canada?

        When oldest daughter says,”She started it!” she gets her ass jumped. I don’t give a flying shit which dumbass STARTED it. Stupid is stupid… Don’t be be stupid…

        • I did not see anyone here “blame Canada,” nor did I. I merely pointed out the almost-unknown actual sequence of events.

          If anyone, the news media at the time (Canadian and US) should bear a considerable portion of “blame,” as they agitated the populace and demanded the internments. But anti-Japanese racism had been strong in Canada for many decades, and to a lesser extent in the US, though both countries included Germans and Europeans in the internment process.

          I had a Canadian regular reader chastise me for the US internment process. Only the US could be so evil, she suggested. She had no idea whatsoever of Canada’s involvement, and “leadership,” in this topic.

          ===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

        • Yea bud. You made excuses…

          Sorry. The internment camps are a permanent scar on our already pocked history. What we did was no better than the Germans’ final solution, we just didn’t have an end game. Whoever thought of it first, started it, or encouraged it is totally irrelevant. Evil is evil…

          Spend some time touring some of our “internment camps” that are now set up as monuments (Manzanar is visible from 395 in CA.) Not many of them are arond anymore, but if you can, find somebody who was “interred” at one of our “camps” talk to them. I’ve been to a few of the camps, and I’ve spent time with Americans who spent a couple of years in them and you’re out of your f*cking head if you have the stones to point fingers. America failed, we went full retard…

          • “What we did was no better than the Germans’ final solution”

            You wouldn’t consider this an exaggeration? Especially considering that there are/were lots of internment and concentration camps around the world to make comparisons to.

            I despise FDR and am no apologist for any of this. But the historian in me is annoyed by the whole-scale erasing of history, on this and other issues.

            And incidentally, two internees were friends of mine; one (Nao Takasugi, listed in the book The Greatest Generation) was allowed out of the camp to attend college. The Canadian versions of these camps were far worse, started earlier, and ended years later — and no one got let out to further their education. Nao passed away not too long ago, sadly. The other still sits on a bench in the Los Angeles court system.

            I agree that the US interning was terrible; pointing out facts about was is intended to educate, not defend.

            ===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

        • And it was the Commonwealth which interred Japanese nationals, following the internment of its citizens by order of the Emperor of Japan. Facts, those nasty little things people REALLY want to ignore.

  5. Ah yes, the call for “common sense” and “middle ground” gun control despite there being zero evidence any of it does any good.

    Still, an interesting article. Comments are running way pro-gun.

  6. The happy medium is a respect for the bill of rights this guy has been brainwashed by the antis and doesn’t even know it

    • I have no issues with the bill of rights, but you can’t successfully use the bill of rights as a talking point with people who don’t care about the bill of rights. It’s like saying, “but God says” to an atheist. You have to beat them with logic and pragmatism which is on our side. Then you have to use their own shaming tactics against them to reach the other illogical fence sitters.

  7. There is only one extreme on the gun control issue. That is the extreme viewpoint that it is ok to trample the rights of another. We are the moderates. We simply want to retain our rights. That this guy considers us to be on one extreme end of a spectrum shows a certain amount of success the anti’s have had in forming the debate. But make no bones about it, we are not extreme.

  9. So, basically, the idea is to average our rights into oblivion.

    Oh, wait … Isn’t that already in process?

  10. This guy reflects what a lot of people I have met think. Their reasoning is that we “license” all kinds of things, so it seems “reasonable” to license (aka control) gun ownership despite what The Second Amendment says. Even more so since “Guns are dangerous”, as are other things we license (automobiles mostly cited and marriage usually mentioned {odd conflation}).

    Many people say (and I think rightly) that it should be a person’s choice to own a gun or not, but if you own one there should be licensing and control (I think, not rightly), It is usually mentioned that one gun is sufficient and multiple guns “seems excessive”, as does large amounts of ammunition.

    Finally, these same people do not agree with banning guns, nor repealing The Second Amendment and regard it as a “right” specified in the Constitution. However, most have confusion over the two parts of the Amendment and many do not recognize that it is a natural right, but somehow “granted” by the Constitution.

    My point is not to defend this point of view, but merely to advert to the fact it exists, and probably represents a larger number of people than we would like to acknowledge. I think it also points-up areas of failure on our part to articulate our point of view and, as others have stated above, the success of the anti’s at infusing the issues with misleading memes and confused interpretations.What he is saying is “closet gun control”, and likely he’s exploiting it deliberately, but I think a lot of people get there, honestly, albeit unwittingly.

    • Let’s take this all the way to the ridiculous extreme for a moment. Licensing exists for two general reasons, to prevent a ‘tragedy of the commons’ situation by organizing the use of resources that could be considered communal, and to generate revenue for the government. Focusing on the first one, you could look at it as limiting the amount of destruction or negative influence an individual person’s actions can have on society.

      I would argue that the most significant and far reaching thing anyone can do in terms of impact on society is to create and raise children. Do it wrong, and the results echo down through the generations. I’m not going to even try and give an exhaustive list of the social ills created by bad parenting, or the complete lack of parenting, everyone here can fill in those blanks from their own observations.

      Should we have licensing requirements to have children? Training requirements, background checks, mental health evaluations? I long ago lost count of the so-called families I’ve met at work where either both parents were present, but the father regularly beat the mother senseless, one or both parents allowed their drug addiction to dominate their lives, or where one parent was present but a never ending succession of dating partners filled the same function, or where one parent was alone and almost but not quite criminally neglectful. Parents with serious mental health issues, suicidal parents, parents who actively encourage children to engage in criminal behavior because that’s the only life they know.

      It’s depressing to see, most of the children in these situations act almost like normal children up until the age of five or so, but after that, they internalize more and more the lessons they learn from their surroundings. From that point on, the chances of having a normal, successful, and peaceful life drop so close to zero it almost makes me want to cry. When I took philosophy classes many years ago, the ‘tragedy of the commons’ was explained in terms of shepherds allowing their sheep to overgraze a meadow used by all, until it was destroyed. The real tragedy is played out countless times in broken homes all across this country. The destructive effects on society are immense. And for all of that, government deciding who is allowed to have children would be a far greater evil.

      So… why should I stand for infringements of my rights when I’m not hurting anyone?

      Edit- not attacking you personally, just countering the viewpoint you have seen from others.

      • Understood, you may have seen my initial Reply, which was pretty irritated, so I deleted it. I found that if the parenting license argument is brought up by either party that pretty much takes the middle of the roaders to instant alienation because they recognize how extremely ludicrous it is and you lose their attention. I cannot explain why the idea of licensing child-bearing is clear to them as unacceptable, but the idea of being able to defend oneself by the efficient means of a firearm as a natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right is not at all clear to them. What good is it to have all the children you want if you cannot protect them?

        BTW, your Satirical rant on the parenting subject was one of the better ones I’ve ever read, or heard. It sucked me right in and I replied harshly. Only after the comment was posted and went to the actual page location did your “edit-..” show up. I kind of don’t like this newer format where you are replying in a space separated from the final actual comment. Those things seem to go out immediately to e-mail messages before you get a chance to see everything that might have been amended in the five minute “Edit” window. Sorry if you saw my rather nasty initial reply, and apologies if you were offended.

        • Didn’t see it at all, I hit edit a few seconds after posting because I would be angry too if I thought someone attacked me for relaying someone else’s argument. Completely understand.

          • Great! I was mortified when I realized what had happened and have resolved to make sure I always look at the actual comment going forward. Thanks for your understanding. All Best!

    • Exactly. When you start talking about “licensing” a right, it ceases to be a right and becomes a government granted privilege. Most people who think in terms of licensing gun-rights (Dick Metcalf notwithstanding) do so because because guns aren’t particularly important to them. It’s always easy to ban something you don’t particularly like. But, they are brought up short when you shift the focus and start talking about licensing free-speech. The discussion ends when they’re faced with losing a right that’s important to them.

  12. The dangerous thing about a middle ground is that it never really exists. We see this with all the broken gun control laws that get proposed. Its as if they are deigned to fail so that the only way forward appears to be more gun control. Heck leave guns out of it, this is the Progressives’ “bread and butter”, they do it with health care, they do it with government spending/handouts, gun control, speech control, energy control. Like a thieving mouse they eat the entire block of cheese one bite at a time. Today’s middle ground become’s tomorrow’s extreme and the call to look for a middle ground is continually renewed until one day the two side have practically no distinguishing factors between them.

    I have no problem with looking for a middle ground, and then stay there once you get there, but in practice that doesn’t exist.

  13. I think this article being on Huffpo speaks for itself. He is in the middle ground of liberals and is at best left of center.

    Like most things this is another attempt of soft pedaling things to chip away at our rights. If they can’t get it fast they will work slowly over time.

  14. Here’s my take on middle ground. If you’re not a nutter or a criminal you should be able to buy and carry a gun. Period. On your 18th birthday, again if you’re not a nutter or crook, the .gov should give you an m16 and ammo as you’re a part of the militia. At whatever age is the upper end for militia service you should have the option to purachase your issue weapon or turn it back in.

    See how reasonble and common sense I can be.

  15. This is the kind of person who says, “I support the 2nd Amendment, BUT…..”

    Why doesn’t anyone say, “I support the 1st Amendment (or 3rd, or 4th, or 5th, etc.), BUT…..”???

  17. The post was actually fairly pro-gun for a HuffPo piece. He acknowledged that gun crime went up after they banned guns in England and that ‘gun free zones’ are safe havens for criminals. Granted he wants to make sure that he gets a say in who does or does not get the privilege of constitutionally protected rights, but this was HuffPo. More surprising was the comments section where almost everyone was taking a pro-gun stance, most of them claiming they’ll never eat at Panera again. I can see why gun control is going nowhere, if this is the response they get on a site as far left as HuffPo.

    • Yeah, HE acknowledges that NOW, after they get to “the middle”, they’ll shift the middle and on and on until we become the U.K., no thanks.

  18. “A ban on guns is not gun control. I am for gun control — that is, controlling who can have guns and who cannot.” – Jason P. Stadtlander in Gun Bans a Safe Haven for Killers

    The central claim in Little Jason’s Huffington Post propaganda piece is the existence of a “silent majority” given voice by the Hysterical Mothers. I suspect drugs and alcohol have seriously degraded his cognitive functioning. He claims Starbucks did not ban guns in their establishments by issuing “a statement that guns are “unwelcome”. He then asserts that Panera, Target and Kroger did ban guns in their stores. His inability to keep the lies consistent makes him a less than useful idiot.

  19. HuffPoo. I clicked on it. I wish Dan or RF expanded their posts a bit. I don’t need to see a “I support the 2A BUT…” doofus. Heck I’d rather see Dick Metcalf quoted 🙂

    • That said, it is good that he appreciates the usefulness of carrying a handgun. This is one barrier most gun control advocates are incapable of crossing.

  21. But that’s the problem Jason – there is no middle ground on protecting your rights. Perhaps you would like a middle ground on the 1st Amendment? How about the 14th?

    The issue is rather simple: Placating opposition doesn’t work. Just ask WW2 era Europe.

  23. Nice cherry picked quote…the actual article is pretty level headed and well written and :::gasp::: echoes many of the points POTG have been screaming from the rooftops.

    Guys like this are the ones we need to engage with and bring over to our side; he appears open to rational thought and discourse, vice knee jerk, emotional reactions.

    • Nice cherry picking of the Constitution. No citizen of a republic should be ruled by the desires of the majority. And the majority opinion from POTG does not influence my trust in the bill of rights. That is common sense…not that garbage you are advocating.

    • So you believe that his clearly erroneous statements about the policy announcements by the various businesses mentioned are “level headed”? I’d call those “wrong headed”, or just plain wrong. So are other of his “facts” and premises. You think it’s “level headed” to require medical examinations prior to licensing for firearm ownership? Who determines which doctors (“government approved”) do what kind of examination? Etc.

    • The majority of the POTG don’t believe in open carry either. Thankfully my right to carry a sidearm however I choose is a natural right, not one that requires a quorum.

      Get bent, fascist.

  24. “Then we have the rest of us, who would like to see some kind of happy medium.”

    I really, really, REALLY hate the “happy medium” and compromise schtick when it comes to infringements of our rights.

    So Mr. Stadtlander, when a man has intense, all consuming feelings of lust for your wife and daughters — and demands (with threat of deadly force) to have sex repeatedly with all of them — what is a “happy medium”? Does the man get to rape your wife but not your daughters? Does the man get to rape your wife once rather than repeatedly? That sounds like a “happy medium” to me. Let the man rape your wife just once and move on with your lives. After all, it will only take the man five minutes … what is the big deal?

  25. These kinds of people frustrate me to no end. It has gotten to the point where sitting in the middle is impossible. You are either 100% for the Bill of Rights or you are against it. You are either for freedom or tyranny. Supporting any measure that leads the US further toward tyranny is inexcusable, and being ignorant of what leads to tyranny is inexcusable. The evidence of what is happening to the US is known, and the historical cause and affect of what happens to a country that does what the US is doing is well documented in history books. I am really tired of these people who cannot be men/women, who on their own cannot analyze the facts to determine what is righteous, take a side, and stand by their decision.

  26. I would recommend reading the entire post from which the quote is taken. The author’s primary point is that disarming law-abiding citizens only serves to embolden criminals, and to make law-abiding citizens less safe from criminals. This is a person with whom I would love to have a sincere conversation, because fundamentally, he recognizes that criminals don’t obey laws or the policies of private businesses, and that armed law-abiding citizens are an appropriate deterrence to those criminals.

    My first question to the author would be: how do you define “happy medium?”. That is: what measures would prevent guns from getting in the hands of those that should not have them, while not infringing on the rights of the law-abiding?

    • For a start, he wants you to undergo a medical (psychiatric?) examination by a (likely) government-approved physician in order to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. What else do you need to know?

      • For a start, he wants you to undergo a medical (psychiatric?) examination by a (likely) government-approved physician in order to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. What else do you need to know?

        Obviously, that would be a point of disagreement. I would ask him how that meets the due process protections afforded to law-abiding citizens, and what other constitutionally protected natural rights should have licensure, training, and medical evaluations before being exercised. I would also ask him what evidence there is that any of those measures have accomplished his goals of keeping guns out of the hands of those who should not have them? I would ask him to compare the states with constitutional (i.e. un-licensed) carry versus the states with the strictest carry-licensure measures. I would ask him to compare the states with training requirements for carry licensure versus those states without training requirements. And I would ask him what medical evaluations would accomplish, that the current adjudication processes for determining mental incapacity do not.

    • I just bought one recently, I’ve run Nato Spec, some sort of lilght target load from Federal, and 100 gold dots through it, grand total 550 rounds without even the slightest hiccup. So far so good. It does need a good lubing before you try to use it. I say this because of some other experiences I’ve had with RAMIs where they weren’t properly lubed. I had a range rental one in .40 fail on round #37 (and nearly fail on a bunch of others in one box–when you feel the slide go into battery separate from the recoil, pr (worse) can watch it, it’s borderline fail) because they hadn’t lubed it. Another 9mm rental I shot back in 2008 jammed in less than ten rounds. It was filthy and probably not lubed either. They made SURE to lube the one I bought before I tried it (I was the first to rent it), the implicit promise being if it went through a hundred fifty rounds with no failures, I’d buy it. It didn’t and I did, and it still hasn’t. I think you can buy with some confidence (though there’s always the possibility the other two were “normal” RAMIs and I just happened to get an exceptional one). Obviously, if you have the opportunity to shoot the individual gun first, before buying, you should take it.

      My one ergonomic gripe with it (other than no place for the pinky) is that the safety is low-profile enough that it’s a bit more difficult to engage than the norm. But I’ve gotten used to it already.

      The ten round magazine has a bit of a forward projection on it that may help your two fingers control the recoil better. It also comes with a 14 round extended mag (it’s basically a compact mag with a removable plastic sleeve to bulk it out where it sticks out of the RAMI’s magwell).

      I’m a LOT more accurate with it than I ever was with that Beretta Nano (that jams a lot); unfortunately the RAMI is thick as a brick so it doesn’t really replace the Nano. I would love to see CZ offer a single stack, even though I’d have to buy all new mags for it.

  30. Although I’m not happy with his “control access, not guns” nod to state control, the body of Stadtlander’s article does a pretty good job making the case for legally carried guns. It’s nice to see someone injecting some sense into the Puffington Host’s usually anti-gun milieu.

    Unfortunately, the “happy medium” is an insidious logical fallacy. Sometimes two ideas are so completely opposed that it’s one or the other.

    Comments above me have also pointed this out, but there can be no happy medium when the other side isn’t negotiating in good faith. True compromise involves BOTH sides giving a little in order to reach a solution that benefits everyone.

    When has the anti-gun side ever been willing to offer a true concession? “Hey, we don’t want to take all your guns” is more of a taunt than a compromise. Every gun control proposal I’ve ever seen is designed to make life more difficult for everyone who owns guns (and in fact, assumes all of them are closet criminals). What do gun owners get in return for those indignities? Hey, let’s compromise: you hand over your wallet, and I won’t beat you up.

    So although I appreciate most of the article, I have to disagree with Mr. Stadtlander. There is no happy medium here. Having looked at the debate from both sides, it looks to me like there’s only one possible response for any gun owner who values his constitutionally protected human rights: Molon Labe.

  31. OK, he starts off with the common erroneous statement that Target, etc have “banned guns” (but somehow manages to note that Starbuck’s really hasn’t). But really, the main point of his article can be summed up thusly: “Gun bans don’t stop criminals from using guns and only make law-abiding people less safe”. Surely all righteous POTG can agree with that. And OK, he reveals some attitudes that I suspect most of us don’t agree with, but he is open to the application of real facts and logic. I’m amazed he was published in HuffPo.

  32. You can’t escape geometry – The people standing between the left and the middle always think they are the middle.

  33. Don’t be so hard on this guy. Of you actually read the entire article cited, you will see that he is not advocating for additional restrictions. He is actually agreeing that banning guns means only criminals will have guns.

    Unfortunately he is a little naive and believes the government can and does do a good job at determining who should be allowed to own guns, but he’s not calling for bans.

    • Actually he is. His point is the government should be in total control of firearms and who has them. Thats a ban, because once they have that authority they will attempt to take all weapons from every one. And that ain’t gonna work.

  34. I think that most of the current laws are excessive, and no that is not any extreme position on my part. They really ARE excessive.

    • Many of them are. And a major part of the problem is instead of removing old, non-functioning laws on weapons the antis and the FUDs just want to slap another layer over top, and then try to enforce, or ignore as they choose, the entire mishmash of crap they have created.

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