I was unable to read this nice lady's column because of the title.
I say "nice lady" because I'm fairly sure she is. Most people are nice, in a general 'pets-dogs-and-keeps-their-elbows-off-the-table' sort of way, even if I can't stand being around them for more than twenty minutes at a stretch because they're no more capable of holding up their end of a conversation than is a ham sandwich.
Anyway, the title told me everything I needed to know about the difference between the nice lady's worldview and my own:
...and thus, before I could even read the nice lady's column, my mouth was off and running, yelling things at the laptop monitor like "Of course the law is reactive, you drooling moron! This ain't Minority Report! Laws have to be reactive! We can't just lock people up for what we think they might do, you paste-eating simpleton!"
Anyhow, dunno what the column went on to state because I didn't read it. I'm sure the nice lady wrote a nice column, though.
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19 comments:
Obviously she means that the gun laws don't exercise enough prior restraint, which is the gun grabber's solution to the problem.
She's merely following the pattern. Consider three of the most high-profile law enforcement efforts in our country over the past few decades:
1. DUI
2. War on Drugs
3. TSA patdowns
What are these but efforts to stop a tragedy happening in the first place? What, then, could be more sensible than making gun laws PROactive: get the guns away from people BEFORE they go on killing rampages? It's worked so well in Britain.
O' course, one has to toss that whole "innocent until proved guilty" thing right in the dumper, along with the concept of mens rea. One also has to build a LOT more prisons to house all the people who become criminals by possessing something that they MIGHT abuse or doing something that MIGHT cause somebody else to get hurt.
But it's For the Children(TM). You want to keep children safe, don't you?
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I suppose that I should say that I'm NOT in favor of people driving drunk or stoned. On the other hand, I'm not in favor of punishing people whose only "crime" is making a little gizmo go BEEP-BEEP-BEEP when they blow in it.
It's actually an excellent article.
Says that the issue is criminals, not lax gun laws.
I should go back and read it! :)
She's quoting people who say it's criminals not the laws, but that's much better than we normally get.
Well Bless her nice little heart .
"A Gannett Company" in the letterhead tells me what I need to know.
Her article says, to me, that more folk with prior criminal convictions (firearm ownership "disability") need to be rousted out, searched for firearms they shouldn't have, and be sent to prison for having those firearms they shouldn't have.
The article reiterates what everyone should know -- that gun control regulations, like Prohibition, the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on poverty, and other attempts to legislate "morality" -- just don't work. Criminals get guns, suicides and others get guns. What government "wars" and vendettas do accomplish is to create industries invested in harvesting flows of government spending, creating criminal empires that flourish on the banned article, and tie the hands of honest, law-abiding citizens.
So, the poor lady doesn't advocate more gun laws. Just violating the rights of selected classes, accepting any "spillover" intimidation and harassment of *legitimate* gun owners and non-weaponed "disabled" folk as acceptable breakage, I guess.
Actually, for the most part, I think repealing prohibition is the right approach, that gun ownership is a matter of a person's thoughts, arresting anyone for possession, or even for using a weapon in a crime, is a matter of arresting for *what you are thinking*, and unconstitutional. The crime you use the gun for is a crime, and is sufficient to protect Americans.
http://bradsworldview.blogspot.com/2013/02/tam-at-view-from-porch-found-article.html
Headlines are usually written by people other than the author. In some case they call those people editors. In other case, idiots. In many case they are both.
See, if we could just get all those criminal guns to quit effin' it up for all the good guns, we wouldn't be havin' all this gun violence.
Says that the issue is criminals, not lax gun laws.
What?! It said the real problem is crime?!
Where was the spoiler alert?
Sometimes, it's more pleasant to speak to a ham sandwich. Even if it makes the other restaurant patrons stare.
Yes. That largely reactive gun law is criminal.
Oh. When that ham sandwich starts talking back to you, let us know, OK?
It would appear that Gannet's Ohio division does not attract the best and brightest. Imagine the question that was posed that would elicit this answer from the prosecutor, "It's not where we're going out and pulling people over just to see if they have a gun on them."
The article seemed to conclude that the problem is that crimals do not have the good sense to obey the law, and we don't catch them until they commit more crimes. The solution, of course, is to go door to door and catch people breaking laws before they hurt somebody. More 1984 than Minority Report.
I wonder how many gun control advocates supported the rationale for declaring a constitutional right to buy and use contraceptives [Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird] -- namely, that anti-contraceptive enforcement efforts would necessarily intrude on people's rights to privacy.
Jeff Deutsch
Alternative translation: "Law X is reactive" means not "law X reacts to action Y with punishment Z", but "Law X was passed in reaction to observed problem A".
(Whether or not it actually affects/remedies/exacerbates A is another issue.)
The alternative - not that it's a great one, necessarily - is a proactive law.
Not, again, "Pass a law X to punish people for Y before they do Y.
Rather, "We think B might become a problem soon due to changing technology/social structure/being high as loons, so we're passing law X to address that in advance".
See nutbag Kucinich's attempt to ban "psychotronic weapons", or whatever the specific was.
Or more realistically the "security examplar" requirement in 18 USC 922 based on a Hypothetical Plastic Gun.)
Nice is over-rated.
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