Guns & politics. Politics & guns.

I suppose that someone not related to me might stumble upon this page someday. For that person's benefit I should probably clarify my stand on the second amendment. Here goes:

It's the only amendment that counts. All of the other "civil rights" are really "civil privileges" unless someone is armed. Go ahead and fool yourself that the reason your "civil rights" are not routinely infringed is because the folks in power respect you. Without an armed populace we'd hear a lot about something called "civil rights" in school, but we'd never actually experience them.

If you choose to be unarmed, then you enjoy your civil rights only because I and 180 million other gun-owners scare the ruling elite into moderately acceptable behavior.

You're welcome.

One of the highest profile gun-related incidents to capture recent national attention was the Virginia Tech shooting. This particular episode has been a catalyst for all kinds of ideas about how we as a society can halt or at least mitigate school shootings. The ideas fall generally into to polar opposite positions.

One position states that people who already legally carry weapons for protection at the mall, or in church, or on a city street ought to be "allowed" to carry at any school. If they are responsible everywhere else, its a pretty good bet that they'll be responsible at a school too. I like this position.

The opposite position states that private citizens should not be "allowed" to arm themselves for defensive purposes, but should instead rely upon police for protection. Usually this position is not limited to just schools, but to everywhere. Guns are bad... everywhere. I vehemently oppose this opinion.

The flaws in this logic it are legion. First, we're Americans dammit... That means that we're "allowed" to keep and bear arms (along with our freedom of speech and other civil rights) simply because we exist. Self-defense, and by extension the keeping and bearing of the tools necessary for effective self-defense are a natural right.

Second, this position requires us to disarm because we "might" use guns for an anti-social purpose. This is called "the doctrine of prior restraint" and limits, restricts or cancels a civil right because someone somewhere might use that right in a way that we wouldn't like. Americans don't like prior restraint. We only punish the people who break the rules, not the people who might break them.

Third, the opposition tries to make the argument that private citizens are incapable of using firearms effectively for protection. They think that a private citizen should sagely recognize his or her limitations, resign themselves to being the victim of some equally untrained but more aggressive attacker, and hope that the police aren't busy. Even a very pro-police guy like myself has to snicker at the anyone who agrees with this plan.

Exactly who are we depending on to come to the rescue of people without guns? Cops, that's who... i.e.: people with guns. Isn't that exactly what these knuckleheads are against? Aren't people with guns the problem? Won't a lot of poorly trained* people with guns be a problem no matter how snappy they look in uniform, or how cool they sound on radio?

I digress. Anti-gunners, fools, Chicagoans, Bostonians, New Yorkers, residents of Washington DC, San Franciscans, the NEA, most liberals, the ACLU (inexplicably), most of Hollyweird, and criminals all agree: guns in the hands of the average citizen is a threat to their way of life. Any other rhetorical position is simply an excuse.

I'll leave you with this thought: If the presence of guns is dangerous, and it's such an effective safety-measure to require people on school campuses to be unarmed, why are we always hearing about "school shootings"?

If the presence of guns really DOES promote shootings, why don't we hear about soldiers and policemen and recreational shooters hosing each other into big bleeding piles? Hell, the guns are right there, all over the place-- It's a massacre waiting to happen. Surely shootings will naturally follow. What anti-gunners don't take into account is that cops and soldiers and recreational shooters are NOT DANGEROUS CRIMINAL SCUMBAGS. In fact, they are generally the farthest thing from it. Anti-gunners somehow miss this reality, and it is the fatal flaw in their reasoning. To them, gun possession = criminal. So, gun possession must surely lead to crime. Could anything be further from the truth?

Yesterday 180 million gun owners DID NOT rob a bank, kill a kid, shoot at a driver who flipped them off, accidentally shoot somebody, wave a gun around to intimidate people, or . Clearly, guns are only tools, not causal factors in any of those acts.

Since the polarizing effect of politics tends to muddy the issue, let's boil it down to it's most basic form: If you were a homicidal scumbag bent upon racking up a body-count so you could get your face on TV (which is clearly the case in many school shootings), where do you think you'd score the most points-- a school or a police station?

The answer is clear and simple. The legal doctrine for such obvious logic is "Res ipsa loquitur" which figuratively translates as "the thing speaks for itself".

* Like I said earlier, I'm very pro-cop, both on a public policy level, and (especially) at the personal level. I have a lot of respect for the professionalism of the American Law Enforcement professional. Having said that-- Cops can't shoot. Okay, that's like saying white men can't jump-- a major generalization, I know. Some cops can shoot pretty well, but they're rare. Most cops probably have spent their time training on more useful occupational skill-sets than shooting. But, having shot with LOTS of cops, I can tell you that the only salvation for the rank-and-file policeman in a gunfight is that the average scumbag's skill with firearms sucks.