Posted on 09/14/2014 5:01:15 PM PDT by marktwain
Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquillity of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today.The column came to mind because even the Bloomberg funded Moms Demand Aciton has decided to step away from the idiotic "Assault Weapon Ban" for much the same reasons that Charles Krauthammer mentioned:
Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic -- purely symbolic -- move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation. Its purpose is to spark debate, highlight the issue, make the case that the arms race between criminals and citizens is as dangerous as it is pointless.
De-escalation begins with a change in mentality. And that change in mentality starts with the symbolic yielding of certain types of weapons. The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first, and even then not for decades.
While many gun control groups still officially support the assault weapons ban "we haven't abandoned the issue," as Watts said they're no longer actively fighting for it.Krauthammer has changed his thought a little bit since then. This is from his column "The roots of mass murder" published in December of 2012:
I have no problem in principle with gun control. Congress enacted (and I supported) an assault weapons ban in 1994. The problem was: It didnt work. (So concluded a University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the Justice Department.) The reason is simple. Unless you are prepared to confiscate all existing firearms, disarm the citizenry and repeal the Second Amendment, its almost impossible to craft a law that will be effective.But Charles has never really explained why he thinks that gun bans are necessary for domestic tranquility. They have never reduced the homicide rate anywhere else. The homicide rate in England increased with increasing gun control, including homicide with guns. Nowhere have gun bans been shown to decrease homicide rates. The closest place is Australia, where a massive, intrusive, gun control scheme was pushed onto the public in a rush after a mass shooting in 1996. The legislation had been planned in advance, just waiting for the right trigger.
The founding fathers got the idea from Jesus (paraphrased by Ravi Zacharias) “All the Evil in the world comes from the heart of man.”
You wrote:
1) Bad guys shoot bad guys.
2) Bad guys shoot good guys.
3) Good guys shoot bad guys only when it’s necessary.
4) Good guys don’t shoot other good guys.
Bad guys don’t obey gun laws, only good guys do.
Therefore, gun laws will have no effect on 1), they will increase 2) and reduce 3). 4) is not a problem either way.
3) is the only category Liberals care about. That’s why they want gun control.
*****************
Nice list and analysis. But you left out the most important factor in ruling class thinking. Good guys might shoot members of the ruling class. That constrains the ruling class, even if a shot is never fired. Constraining the ruling class in any manner is unacceptable.
There’s a reason only nobles were allowed to have armor and swords and why peasants had to use pitchforks.
Isn’t Eastwood pretty much a down the line liberal Republican otherwise?
Pat Buchanan used the “pitchforks” analogy but the American people were not impressed.
Clint has called himself a liberterian, at times.
I would hesitate to ascribe it to a single source, as these were to a great extent very learned men, well grounded in not just religion, but philosophy, politics, history science, warfare, the technology of the time, agriculture, etc.
Even their own attributions of the basis of their thoughts should be looked at in a guarded manner. But, if anything, the KJV Bible was an almost universal, concise, poetic reference appreciated by all, so made for good attribution of principles.
Rather ironically, an *absence* of influence is noteworthy, that of Shakespeare. Scholarly editions of his work, by Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, came too late to have a linguistic impact on the founding fathers. But had the revolution come about 20-30 years later, almost 200 years after Shakespeare’s death, their writings would have likely been peppered with them.
However, it would be worth it to have a scholarly examination of the language of two contemporary authors of Shakespeare, who were far more popular in the formative years of the founding fathers, John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. The founding fathers were likely familiar with their writings.
Other writers of the time that clearly influenced them were Adam Smith, David Hume, John Locke, William Blackstone’s commentaries on the laws of England, Charles Louis de Secondat-Baron Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, the Italian legal reformer Cesare Beccaria, Francis Hutcheson’s A System of Moral Philosophy (a big religious connection here), huge amounts of ‘classical’ Greek and Roman writings and histories, and many others, including each others writings.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.