By John Brummett
Fire doesn’t burn people. People do.
That was one of my tweets as I listened to eight Republican hopefuls for the U.S. Senate engage in a debate recently. Each was trying to stay as far to the right as the other. Each was seeking to genuflect as flexibly as the other before the sportsman’s culture and the fear of crime. Each was seeking to outdo the other in rejecting the very premise of the question: Are there any restrictions on firearms that you could support?
Short answer: No way.
So I tweeted that I hoped no one had a flame-thrower on them, but that, after all, it’s people, not flame-throwers, who incinerate people.
Moments later the hotel fire alarm went off, for a reason never discerned. It turned out that several people in the room were following my tweets. “It’s the flame-thrower,” someone said, and there was laughter.
We were yukking it up about the modern American conservative fear of political repercussion for restricting any conceivable kind of weaponry.
There is no expressed federal prohibition that I can find against your possessing a flame-thrower. There are prohibitions against your possessing a weapon of destruction that would spew poison. But a flame-thrower, while availing itself of a propellant, actually emits flame, which can have a non-lethal function, like a charcoal lighter or a match.
So the Republican gun advocates, taken to their logical conclusion, defend your ability to possess a flame-thrower if you can get your hands on one, maybe surplus from Vietnam, where they loved that smell of napalm in the morning.
It’s not the owning of it. It’s only the criminally intended use of it. You see. Or not.
That’s the same logic by which gun rights extremists oppose restrictions on the manufacture and distribution of automatic assault weapons suitable for urban gang warfare to enforce the drug culture. It’s not that the gun is designed to fire in a way that enhances the multiplicity and efficiency of human killing. It’s that the gun’s function is irrelevant until a person engages that function.
So the credo becomes that we should let the gun go free, because that’s what the Second Amendment requires, and arrest the user, but only after he has deployed a weapon we made readily available to him to render a person or persons dead.
For that matter: It’s not big old jet airliners that kill. It’s Islamic extremists whom we’ve trained to fly these big old jet airliners but not land them who kill.
Again, you see. Or maybe you don’t.
Maybe a plane has valuable public use that you can’t quite equate to an old boy’s right to have flame-thrower propped up in the corner of his closet.
Maybe you understand that our founders did not know about flame-throwers, rocket launchers and automatic assault weapons when they phrased our Second Amendment.
Maybe you understand the compelling logic that the First Amendment guarantees free speech, but that you can’t yell “fire” in a theater, unless, I suppose, someone exercising his Second Amendment rights actually has propelled fire in your direction.
All of that is to call attention to the latest example of the absurdity of modern conservative devotion to, or political fear of, gun libertarianism.
Even two usually reasonable Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, were arguing this veritable pretzel of logic a few days ago: We should restrict Miranda rights to persons on a terror watch list, but we should not restrict the rights of these persons to acquire firearms or attendant gadgetry, because that, you see, would be an ominous infringement on a treasured American liberty.
You have the right to a silencer, but not to silence.
——-
John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of “High Wire,” a book about Bill Clinton’s first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:31 am
Actually it is more appropriate to note:
US Constitution 1 Socialistic Communists 0
Facts 1, Lying Media 0
Due Process 1 Anti gun fanatics 0
Or is it that words don’t lie, main stream media just make that happen eh?
Last I checked, the legal system in the US is supposed to be based on innocent until proven guilty.
The no-fly list, a list:
• Created in Secret
• Randomly changing requirements to be added to list
• The actual number is kept secret
• TSA does not keep track of who is NOT a terrorist
• TSA claims tens of thousands on list, but since accurate records kept, no number stated is valid
• Names are not connected to a physical description, birth date or unique identifier
• Includes selectee’s (those with similar names)
• Authority on who add’s to list is a politician, not a real security expert
• Once on list, supposed legal recourse exists, yet no evidence it has been applied for due process to be removed from the list
• Ted Kennedy on list, well that does fit
• 8 yr old boy on list and forever will be listed as a terrorist (one of too many examples)
Yeah we see ALL the evidence and facts that no mistakes are ever, ever made by da guberment.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 regulated gun commerce, restricting mail order sales, and allowing shipments only to licensed firearm dealers. The Act also prohibited felons, those under indictment, fugitives, illegal aliens, drug users, those dishonorably discharged from the military, and those in mental institutions from owning guns. These are categories that are guaranteed due process through our legal system of checks and balances that pro gun advocates have no problem agreeing with, as long as there is consistency across the board. That is one of the corner stones of our legal system and the NO FLY LIST does not follow that standard. Nothing you say, no matter how you spin it will change that fact.
Unless any of you have proof that those on the no fly list are legally listed in any of the nine categories listed in the Gun Control Act, then any who do not fit that list should in fact by law be allowed to purchase a firearm. Failure on the part of the government or their employees to do their job accurately and properly is no reason to ban anyone else’s rights
That is the problem of the no fly list, irrevocable inclusion of those are guilty or under indictment for what, nothing other than being the wrong race, outspoken against the government policies, a mistake by a government employee, can we say RACISM, naw that is too cliche.
Maybe you people have the evidence to support that those 1,116 people on the no fly list who bought a firearm then committed a crime with that firearm eh? Nope, no evidence, and if they did, does the rate of crime any different than current levels in the US, doubt it, unless you have the hard facts to prove otherwise. Problem is for gun control advocates, they have a really hard time producing anything other than lie based rhetoric.
Did you know that one of the several cases where the FBI has written their own warrant, attempted to file it, specifically against a 80 yr old librarian? The FBI arrested her and the 78 yr old assistant Librarian she gave the warrant to (illegal under the Patriot Act to divulge the existence of the warrant). They were arrested, yet such a supposedly good thing as the Patriot Act, why then were the FBI told to drop the charges by the AG? Because to allow the Patriot Act to go to legal binding court would lose the case as the GOVERNMENT KNOWS the Patriot Act is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Just because it has happened before doesn’t make it right or allowable! Unless of course you fully subscribe to government might makes right, then you are truly an anarchist!
It really is simple, have the politicians apply the guaranteed constitutional protections to the no fly list and you will get gun owners to agree, don’t include our guaranteed constitutional protections on the no-fly or any list for that matter, and any who support such an unconstitutional law can frankly stick it where the sun don’t shine. It isn’t the pro gun advocates being stubborn in this instance, it is the POLITICIANS wishing to establish an unconstitutional abuse of their power that are being stubborn, prove otherwise
May 10th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Wow, Jarhead1982 should write professionally. He/she just seriously owned Brummett. Bigotry never pays.
May 10th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
What you call “fully automatic assault weapons” have been regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934 before the term “assault rifle” even existed. The government requires a background check, fingerprints, paperwork, plus a tax stamp to own a fully automatic weapon..a machine gun. Before then, you could go to your local hardware store, and pick up a tommy gun if you were so inclined, no waiting. Since 1986, newly manufactured fully auto weapons have been banned for the civilian market. You are confusing a semi-auto rifle that looks like a military rifle for one that is an “assault rifle.” Just for your information, an “assault rifle” is capable of either burst or automatic fire. You can’t go down to your friendly gun store and pick one up today. For many, a politicians view on gun laws are a litmus test. Either you are a peasant who needs the firm hand of government guiding you, or you are a free person who knows his or her rights as declared by the Constitution.
May 10th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Nah, Brummett made it too easy, he wrote an opine with no facts to support his flawed position.
Doubt Brummett remembers or knows that only one time in the last 80 plus years has a true full auto weapon been used in a crime, it was by a police officer no less. Guess ALL police should have their full auto and assault weapons taken away as there must be the absolute NO mistakes or errors as determined by the anti gun crowd eh.
Then the straw-man argument of first amendment restrictions, ROTFLMFAO, it isn’t illegal to yell fire, otherwise fire drills and fire alarms would be illegal based on that illogic. However if you yell fire, and there isn’t a fire and people are injured, cost incurred for fire department response etc, etc then there are consequences for filing a false report. Just as there are consequences for brandishing a firearm needlessly and carelessly when it is no danger from an attacker which unfortunately for Brummett, just doesn’t happen that often, and drum roll, the recurring theme is, he just cant prove otherwise.
As for full auto being banned that is manufacture, not possession. The process for acquiring a full auto weapon is a tax stamp, and sign off’s by your local sheriff and ATF visits at their unannounced discretion. Of course if you are good buddies with the sheriff, chances are ya have enough money to afford a class 3 weapon.
May 12th, 2010 at 9:55 am
this is why the genuflecting, ey?
enthusiastic hobbiests hogging political discussions.
neither comic book collectors nor horseshoe throwers
could waste more political energy on anything as irrelevant.
it would be funny if it weren’t a ball and chain
that prevents progress on real issues.
May 12th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
My, my, how we reflect on the ball and chain, that is the stubborn refusal of the antis to acknowledge facts, thereby crippling any and all abilities to truly focus on that which could be truly relevant to truly addressing the factors from which violence originates.
Rather we listen to repeated fairy tales of how the Golden Goose lays the rotten egg and violence continues on and on and on and on. But low and behold, the Golden Goose laid another, different color egg, but it was just another rotten egg, which in the end did not accomplish anything to prevent or reduce violence. Amazing how that Golden Goose has laid those multi colored eggs over 20,000 times in the US alone, yet violence continues even with all the stench (writings and words of dictators) from those rotten eggs, whom those that believe the stench alone from the eggs will prevent violence!
May 13th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
a colorful, paranoid egg rant?
who passed the pipe to john wayne?
anyway, humanity hasn’t been more peaceful in a hundred years*
–probably 2000 years and maybe ever.
the real problems now are more insidious…and less shootable.
*http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/ud/kampanjer/refleks/innspill/engasjement/mack.html?id=492750