Posted on 07/22/2012 9:00:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Every American student who's taken a civic class has heard Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s admonition that free speech under the US Constitution doesn't give you the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater.
So the right to bear arms under the 2nd amendment - - written at a time when citizen militias might be needed to fend off the British or a foreign power intent on undermining the new Republic - - shouldn't mean someone has the right to barge into a crowded theater, open fire and slaughter people with powerful guns and ammunition obtained legally.
Yet we have allowed the NRA and allied wealthy conservative organizations with political and electoral agendas to distort legitimate gun ownership for hunting purposes into gun ownership without effective controls that jeopardizes public safety.
Bill Moyers has an eloquent essay about this, here.
The proof is the disproportionate share of the industrialized world's gun violence that afflicts the US, year-in and year-out.
These massacres bring concern for victims, but no remedial controls: the Aurora shootings came but five years after a higher death toll in a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, and Colorado did not toughen its gun laws after the Columbine school killings not far from Aurora...
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
there’s a reason this is in the smoke shack i guess
Nobody got shot by an evil gun in any of those events.
Should read:
So the right to bear arms under the 2nd amendment - - written at a time when citizen militias might be needed to fend off the British an overbearing and overtaxing government or a foreign power (muslims) intent on undermining the new Republic
A sufficiently armed presence in the theater may have served to cut a massacre like this much shorter than the perpetrator had envisioned.
I don’t read anything in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel while eating..... or picking my nose... or sitting on the toilet.... or any other time. I don’t want to read anything in that Communist rag.
They would have to have had the skills of a sniper. This scumbag was wearing protective gear. He was ready to do great harm and he did do great harm.
Even armed, the person would have had to duck and cover when he started firing. People would still have died.
That was my thinking process on this. If Lautenberg does try top bring a bill forward it needs to shouted from the rafters and shared on You Tube, Social Media sites and the like. The public must know and the media will not do their job.
Armed self defense ain’t a perfect system and heroes/heroines would probably have sacrificed themselves shooting at and/or storming the attacker. But again, someone donning a face shield (they don’t get welcomed into the theater that way do they?) should have been a giveaway to something wicked afoot.
If there is a fire, that is one of the most sensible things to shout.
I’m a female and trained to use my .357 Colt Python. It is times like this that I wish I could have been there, not for heroics sake, but to just save the lives of the innocent.
I would have done what I could. His legs, his face, any free area that would have taken him off balance and made it easier to either kill or incompacitate him, but sadly I was not there. I just wish someone had been, to atleast try.
I agree with you.
In this case I don’t think that would have helped.
Darkened theater. Filled with tear gas. Body armored wearing attacker. Gunshots and chaos on the screen. Who in costume is attacker and who is just a movie viewer? I don’t think there is anything that would have improved it at the time. Probably would have added to the confusion and made things a lot worse.
Nonsense. There are several options that would have made his body armour useless.
There was a time, not too long ago, that this writer's editor would fire him for even proposing such an asinine rape of logic - and punch him in the mouth on his way out the door.
Today, all we can do is point out that the 2nd Amendment was acknowledged, among other things, to make sure the audience of a crowded theater attacked by a madman would be able to FIGHT BACK.
And that potential madmen, knowing that crowds would all have this ability, would decrease in number, since such madmen are, by definition, cowards (crazy or not).
That's why, for example, this latest crazy bastard surrendered when the police showed up. Why? BECAUSE THE POLICE WOULD HAVE SHOT HIM OTHERWISE.
Vile Liar, thy name is Leftist.
Why attempt deprogramming of anyone?
Just institute poll tests and exclude all collectivists.
Sneaking back to illegally vote would result in a call to ALPO.
Just shoot center mass, body armor or not. Think of the bullet impacts as hitting him with a baseball bat - he might survive, but he's definitely going to lose his concentration and probably his balance. So just keep shooting.
And just imagine if only 1% of the people were armed - 400 people, would mean four people shooting at the bastard. He'd have gone down in a bloody heap long before he could shoot 71 people.
And THEN imagine this actually happened - 4 people shooting a bastard in theater, and taking him out. FROM THEN ON, how many people would pack a gun in a theater? The next bastard who tried it would be shot a thousand times before he could get off his second shot.
And after that, there would NEVER be another gun grabber political attack in America again. The next piece of crap liberal to suggest it anywhere in the country would be run out of town on a rail - as they should be.
Tell me when ANY SANE PERSON has said this is a right!
Why is it that when talking about gun ownership, the sport of hunting and home protection are assumed to be the only purposes for owning weapons?
The most eloquent explanation of the Second Amendment, I’ve ever heard is that, “The Second Amendment is the reset button of the Constitution.”
Where I went to school and my personal readings of the Federal show that the Founding Fathers included the Second Amendment because of their justified distrust of large, central governments; so they included the Second Amendment to allow the American to face a large, central government, hostile to the wants and demands of the people, much like we have today.
I forget the name of the Senator, who said they had no problem with people owning weapons used for hunting, but felt rifles, as the AR-15, AR-10, etc, should not be allowed.
I personally owned both of the aforementioned rifles and must say that they are both my favorite rifles to fire, with the exception of my Savage 10, when shooting from the 500 meter line.
An education program is much overdue to let the American people know what the intent of the Founding Fathers were and to never allow ourselves to be lulled into thinking that our government is a benign, benevolent government, whose only purpose is to help us.
Ma’am, more (fire) power to you. I’m a fellow, but I think I know how you feel. Women can be very very protective. As Rudyard Kipling put it, the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
I’m musing on how the attacker got all that junk, armor and arms and tear gas bombs, in the theater. I’d guess it was the custom at Batman premieres to dress up in costume, so an odd looking get-up and a big shopping bag full of stuff wouldn’t draw too many odd looks from the doormen. Methinks that policy will probably change. It’s a shame since one ought to be free to dress up like Halloween in a movie if he or she wishes. I’d never celebrate a Batman movie that way, but others might.
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