BBC hd an interview with a Black Lives Matter guy in Dallas. He belongs to some defense league. He says they are at war with the police because the police are at war with them. The BBC showed footage of a couple of dozen, maybe more, black men and women marching around carrying automatic rifles. In Texas it is all right for a group to form a little military unit and parade on the public street carrying their arms.
The guy was talking of the right to overthrow the government when it becomes oppressive. He said they are up against the biggest gang in America, the American police, and have to be armed like the police to protect themselves. One woman sitting with this guy said something to the effect: “During the Civil War the North didn’t fight the South without guns, did they?”
Then the BLM guy showed the BBC reporter his weapon. It looked like a .45 caliber weapon I had in the military. He pulled back the hammer to show that there was a live round in the chamber; he said that the safety was not on; and told how he was ready to defend himself from the police because as best he knows he could be pulled over and murdered driving back to his home.
The BBC program referred to the Black Panther movement. Huey Newton and friends paraded into the Capitol Building in Sacramento carrying military style assault weapons. They scared the beegeesus out of all the white folk. They were not breaking any laws.
By the way the history of the National Rifle Association (NRA) asserting the great supremacy of the Second Amendment did not come about until 1977. When the Black Panthers hit the California capital it was in the late 1960s. Ronald Reagan was governor. He signed the Mulford Act without any NRA opposition which restricted citizens from carrying guns in public and instituted one of the country’s most strict gun control legislation.
When Reagan was running for president the NRA changed and so did he. As the article on this noted, Reagan “would begin to actively encourage 2nd amendment rights to keep citizens safe from the despotism that could be enacted by government, just what African-Americans had been hoping to achieve in the 1960’s when he had instead endorsed the Mulford Act. The post 1977 NRA endorsed their first presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, after both had switched to a more strict 2nd amendment rights defense.”
Now thanks to the NRA and the Supreme Court’s erroneous interpretation of the Second Amendment we see that we have gone back sixty years and the rights claimed by the Black Panthers that were taken away from them but reinstituted after their danger passed are coming back to bite our police officers. The abundance of guns made police officers kill two black men because they were carrying them, at least one legally. The abundance of guns gives people who are of the mind of the BBC guy that they better be prepared because the police are out to kill them.
The last three weeks has brought about the deaths of at least eight police officers from gun shot wounds. We feel bad but pretend it is not a gun issue. Even Obama did not mention guns as he usually does. The TV commentators said that was good. He did not want to politicize the issue.
Why is mentioning gun ownership a political issue? It is a human right issue. It is a police life issue. It is a human life issue.
We want to forget the Second Amendment language about militias and the security of a free state. We want that everyone should have guns even though militias no longer exist and the security of the state is based on its armed forces. How are we making America secure when we see people with guns killing our police officers?
I know you don’t need guns to kill people. We saw it in Nice, France, where a down-and-outer murdered 84 people with a truck. There are terrorist attacks with bombs (the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in May 1886 where seven police officers were murdered) and planes as we saw on 9/11.
True, there are other was to kill people but, “For most of the last 35 years, the number of police officers who die on the job in the U.S. declined, but one grim statistic held steady: The most common cause of death was gun homicide.” There are five dead police officers in Dallas who were murdered with a gun; and three more in Baton Rouge.
The worst prior gun murder of police officers was in January 1932 when six were murdered by gun shot. Five police officers were murdered in 1972 by a Black Panther shooting them over week. And, I need not remind you it is not only police officers. We had our worst mass murder in our history a month ago when 49 civilians were murdered in Orlando.
Please explain to me how the unfettered right to own guns makes sense? Do you think we needed the guns of any of those people shooting cops to keep our country secure? How is it we are unable to make reasonable laws to benefit the law-abiding citizen and the police officers who keep us safe.
A long time ago I used to get frustrated at the inability of people to tell a bad guy from a good guy. Now it is because we are unable to decide who should have guns and who shouldn’t and what type of guns an individual can own. It is time for people start thinking and stop being scared and lied to by the NRA.
This is not a poliical issue. It is an issue of whether a police officer can return safely to his family after doing his duty protecting us. It is an American issue which should unite and not divide us.
Channeling Professor Duke, again?
The meaning of the Second Amendment has gone up to the Supreme Court multiple times. Gun rights of individuals and militias are settled law. Opponents have the option of a Constitutional Amendment. Go for it if your values conflict those of the Founding Fathers. Any other course is dishonest and displays a totalitarian disposition that holds both democracy and the rule of law in contempt.
If America appears to be on the brink of a civil war it is the result of decades of lies from liberal/leftist/communist media. The Negro population believes that the police single out them. This position cannot be supported by facts. Screaming headlines selectively chosen by Hollywood, Washington and NYC elites have been selling hatred of this White Christian nation for a hundred or more years. There is your problem. It is a cultural difference, one culture attempting to overthrow another culture.
BLM is a pawn in the hands of a hostile elite that hates traditional America. There is in place an immigration policy designed replace the White working class. It uses many tools to do this. It rewrites laws by twisting words to bypass the people. It refuses to enforce laws on the books. It provokes racial discord with false narratives about history and today’s reality.
Obama’s first Attorney General Eric Holder called for an open conversation on Race. It is truer today than when he spoke. The approach should be based in science not theory. The reasoning should be inductive not deductive. It is time to examine the differences between the races as step one and decide how we can live with those variables to the benefit of all. Calling people names because facts disprove theories should not be part of the conversation.
Theories are airy-fairy and blow in the wind. Words can be made to morph. But facts are stubborn things. They need to be respected. America’s present unhappy condition is also in part a consequence of this daft notion that people are equal in all ways. That silliness has to be faced down to restore civic concord.
Tadzio:
You missed your time. You would have been quite happy back about 100 plus years ago. So it is a “daft notion thst people are equal in all ways.” Tell that to the writers of the Declaration of Independence. “This White Christian nation” I suppose means all those who are not of that group should do what? Perhaps along with the illegal immigrants that Donald Trump is going to kick out we should kick all of them out; or, perhaps have a two class system where the white Christians are on top and everyone else has some lesser role. Talk about Constitutional amendments since the Constitution provides there will be no religious test for holding public office we will have to change that to keep all those others out of office. Yes, facts are a stubborn thing and you seem to overlook a lot of them.
Matt,
I was along the same lines as you with your thinking about banning some weapons and creating some new and putting some teeth into some existing gun laws.
Now,…to skip over the religious debate and play devil’s advocate for a moment on the first thing you said about a “daft notion” of equality and “the writers” of the Declaration of Independence…and “those who are not of that group.” I am pretty sure Jefferson wrote the document by himself, but had a committee to review his work….”Over the course of seventeen days, in between meetings and other governmental affairs, Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence under the advisement of the Committee. It was an act that secured Jefferson’s name in history forever.”
What I want to point is that Jefferson WAS referring to white landowners, because although he used the terms “all men are created equal,” he conveniently ignored Native Americans and Negroes.
Jefferson was a brilliant statesman, but also a known hypocrite.
Rather:
I really do not buy into the idea that those who signed the Declaration were referring to white landowners. You may be correct because those were the people who were associated together at the time but there is nothing else to show that construction nor did any court decisions limit the application of the Bill of Rights only to white landowners. Where do you find something that says he “ignored Native Americans and Negroes.” Do you think he also ignored Asians and white men who were not land owners?
As for Jefferson being a hypocrite so are many of us. But coming to the present the idea of equality among all men is a fact as we have seen in our everyday experience. There is no group of people who lack the ability to do with any other group can do.
Rather Not: Even in cities and states with the strongest gun control laws, the felons find ways to arm themselves. What’s needed is better enforcement of existing laws. Look what NYC did with community policing to reduce the murder rate from 2,500 annually to 300 annually. So, more effective law enforcement seems warranted.
Also, communities must cooperate with the police. If you live in a high crime area, expect more contact with police officers. NYC Mayor Rudy G. always touted the effectiveness of increased “stop & frisk” policies in high crime districts. Civil libertarians object. Are cries of “racial profiling” handcuffing the police? Should police have freer reign to stop and frisk in high crime areas? It worked in NYC. Ask Rudy!
Bill,
Great argument supported with facts.
I was wrong about assault rifles, thank you for the correction. I should have said handguns.
I agree with you about the drug problem also, but the gist of my post was the escalation of shootings of all types, especially against police.
Given your statistics on handguns being the dominant type of gun used, do you have any opinion on strengthening, weakening, or not changing current ownership and penalty laws?
Thank you in advance.
Matt: We’re all horrified by the recent shootings of police officers.
Attacking the 2nd Amendment is not the solution. Countering hateful anti-police rhetoric is part of the solution. The remedy for bad speech is good speech. Condemn the hate groups, like the Black Panthers. Condemn those in the BLM movement who resort to hateful rhetoric. Counter the radicals’ exaggerated rhetoric with facts.
President Obama bemoans the high arrest rate of blacks, but never mentions that blacks commit 50% of murders, 50% of armed robberies, and 50% of weapon-carrying violations in America. See FBI crime data. If blacks commit more crimes, of course police will disproportionately encounter black offenders. How do we lower the crime rate? Better education, more jobs, eradicate illegal drugs, community policy, social programs, sports, ymca—a few approaches. It’s a societal problem requiring manifold solutions: the police are an integral part of the solution. Keeping guns out of the hands of felons (enforcing existing laws) is part of the solution.
What new gun laws do you propose? Of 12,000 murders in America in 2014, 8,000 were by firearms; (in 2,000 cases the firearm was not specified in FBI data) in 6,000 cases the firearm was known: 5,600 were handguns (93%); 260 shotguns (4%); 250 rifles (4%). So, rifles represent 4% of KNOWN firearms used in murders (assault rifles obviously less.) Of all murders (12,000) rifles represent 2%. If you ban all rifles, 98% of murders still would occur. Incidentally, knives account for 1,600 murders, clubs 435, fists and feet 660, according to 2014 FBI data.
SUMMARY: two-thirds of total murders are committed by guns. NYT says 80% of these are committed by handguns, but if you look closely at the data, you’ll see as stated above, where the firearm is known, 93% are by handguns, 4% by shotguns, 4% by rifle.
What do the data show? Killers will find the means and instruments to kill regardless of the law.
Remember, assault rifles were banned from 1994 to 2004, and the NYT reported in 2014 that the effect on the murder rate was zilch.
Matt, “our worst mass murder” was not Orlando, it was 9-11 (3,000 dead), followed by Oklahoma City (170 dead).
If our concern is deaths alone, Drugs are a bigger killer. One area we need better law enforcement is with Drugs. We have strict laws against drug possession and distribution, but about 50,000 Americans die annually of drug overdoses.
Bill:
I was speaking of mass murders with guns which was the subject of my post – yes, 9/11, Oklahoma City, Pearl Harbor I know about but I was talking about guns.
That drugs or automobiles might also kill Americans it does not mean we should throw up our hands and say there are other ways people can be killed so lets not do anything about any of them. We did by the way have a “war on drugs” but that proved to be a huge failure. The difference between drug deaths and gun deaths is one is done to oneself where the other is imposed on you.
I am not only talking rifles, assault or otherwise, but all guns. It is easier to kill with a gun than by any other means and guns are more fatal than other means. The Second Amendment is the culprit because our Court makes it impossibe to place reasonable restrictions on the ownership of guns.
Gun control/ownership is touchy. Like Matt says, the founding fathers did not, and could not have foreseen technological advances, over-the-top elements of “gun culture,” domestic terror, civilian mass shootings, or the recently flourishing practice of citizens killing law-enforcement (government) agents.
The essence of “the right to bear arms” must be preserved, but the law needs to change in light of current crisis conditions. The only solution, in my opinion, is to adopt new national blanket gun laws outlawing assault-type weapons entirely, stricter licensing requirements for law-abiding citizens, and stiffer gun-possession penalties.
On another note…..
Republican National Convention starts Monday.
Washington Post today:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/8-years-after-hope-and-change-voters-are-angry-anxious/2016/07/18/7b912864-4cbe-11e6-bf27-405106836f96_story.html
The article touches on some of what we have talked about here and gives some average American’s feelings on the current election and America’s future.
Buckle up everyone, it’s gonna be a wild ride.