Not Doing This "Debate" Today

I think we've all made up our mind about gun control, mass shootings, etc. I haven't got anything new to say on the subject, and there's no reason to repeat myself when 15 years of previous responses are available in the archives. Only tyrannies disarm their populations. Free men are the best defense of a free state. You get bad things sometimes in both free states and tyrannies, but the bad things in tyrannies are worse; and the freedom is worth defending for its own sake. I won't stop believing any of that.

Also, though, I realized as I saw this debate spiraling up again last night that the fight is really over. We won.


There are only 8 states that are not 'shall-issue' states for concealed carry permits. That means there are 42 states whose legislatures believe that the right to keep and bear arms must be respected, barring a clear and obvious disability such as a felony conviction or involuntary hospitalization for mental health reasons. It takes only 34 states to call a Constitutional Convention, and only 38 to ratify new Constitutional amendments proposed by such a convention.

They don't realize it who live in coastal enclaves, but they've lost this fight. Even if they should manage to pass a restrictive Federal law, there are enough state legislatures out there simply to remove the issue from Federal authority. "No law shall be passed by Congress respecting the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms; no Federal agency may regulate the possession of arms by citizens. All such authority is reserved to the states, or to the People."

12 comments:

E Hines said...

No law shall be passed by Congress respecting the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms....

We already have that in the 2nd, 9th, and 10th Amendments. The problem is courts manned with judges who won't honor their oaths of office and who insist on imposing their own personal agendas on the Constitution and on existing statutes and who therewith rule IAW what they want those documents to say rather than what those documents do say.

Eric Hines

Ymarsakar said...

About time, DS, that you all figured out how to put a patsy in charge with MAGA hat and all, in the false flags. What took you all so long, not enough pedo targets left...

False flag dry run.

douglas said...

If I may- We are winning. It's a Sisyphean battle.

douglas said...

I will add though that my new approach to those proposing more gun control is to never mind debating the effectiveness of any proposed law, but rather to point out that it's futility for them and they are better off looking in other directions for a solution, strictly on a practical basis.

Grim said...

I mean, there were so many easier roads to stopping this guy. If law enforcement is going to miss every single signal a person can send up short of actually shooting up a place, as well as all the attempts to warn them by friends and family members, it's not clear what you can do to stop this stuff. Trying the impossible when you've ignored the easy and obvious is a fool's errand.

Anonymous said...

Great. “You won.”

17 plus people lost this week so you could be glib.

-G

Grim said...

They didn't die for me, and it was neither my responsibility to save them nor was it within my power to do so. The world's hard enough without picking up weight that doesn't belong to you.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@Anonymous - so you still think that there is some legislation out there we could have passed in theis lad's lifetime, that would have prevented this tragedy. Mind telling us what that magical legislation is?

Oh, right. It's "commonsense" legislation. Silly of me to forget that.

Or perhaps you don't actually have any ideas, but just find it fun to accuse people of being accessories to murder. I'm not seeing other possibilities on the table, here. Which is it?

Grim said...

Likely as not he was just dropping by.

He's wasting his fire on me in any case. I've been to war three times, once as a correspondent and twice as a participant. I've been rocketed, mortared, machine-gunned and shot at with AK-47s. I've been to Iraqi homes where the floor was still wet with blood from where the sheikh's nephew blew himself up trying to murder members of his own family. I've been refused water in the summer heat, the very next thing in Iraqi culture to trying to kill us. I've feasted on roast lamb and chicken with men who actually were trying to kill us not very long before.

I have learned that there are bad people in the world. There are also good people who just happen to be your enemies for a while. There's no answer to the first kind but to kill them. The second kind you can make peace with, sometimes. I didn't make the world this way, and it's not my duty to feel bad about the fact that this is how the world happens to be.

As for solutions, well, this kid threw off every signal that he could send. Telling me that none of the responsible government agencies can be counted on to respond to such clear and obvious signals is hardly the best way to convince me that it would be wise to disarm my family. I wouldn't be inclined to do it even if the agents of the state were perfectly effective, but I certainly can't hear any power in the argument while they prove incompetent in the face of clear and obvious evidence. Best solve that problem before you come to me telling me about how great it would be if we all just trusted the government to keep us safe.

Ymarsakar said...

The FBI was most likely not incompetent on this issue but just as with previous incidents, they were ordered to Stand Down.

Eric Blair said...

The school thought he was a threat; they expelled him and told him not to come back and warned the teachers to be on the outlook for him.

Reports say that the police had been to the home where he was staying 39 times in the last several years.

Reports also say the FBI got warned not once by twice about this guy and didn't bother to 'follow protocols' according to the FBI director.

More laws are not going to fix the above lack of action.

E Hines said...

The school thought he was a threat; they expelled him and told him not to come back and warned the teachers to be on the outlook for him.

By itself, that doesn't mean much. We had bad guys expelled from my high school, too, more than a few of them. None of them came back and shot the place up.

While the FBI's failure here is egregious, and I think the MFWIC for the Florida section that got the actually actionable tips and chose not to pass them on to the Miami office ought to be fired for cause, along with his Ops deputy and possibly the person who took the actual tip, if he can't show that he followed protocol and passed the tip(s) along within his office.

This sort of failure may be systemic, too, but I can't tell just from what the NLMSM chooses to publish.

Mr Blair is right, in any event: more laws aren't the answer; enforcing the existing ones and following existing protocols are. Along with, to encourage that, firings for cause, heads being used in Buzkashi contests, skulls as drinking cups would be in order. Or, in addition to having been fired for cause, force these persons to face, unescorted, the parents and spouses of the dead, if those victim survivors are willing.

Eric Hines