Posted on 10/13/2002 11:39:57 AM PDT by dennisw
Wars of Nerves By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Living in Montgomery County, Md., these days with a sniper on the loose is an unnerving experience. We've all gotten to know our police chief, Charles Moose, through his news conferences during the past two weeks of random shootings. We've also gotten to know our pizza deliveryman better. Last Monday night my wife ordered pizza from the California Pizza Kitchen. When the deliveryman arrived, I was in the living room watching President Bush address the nation about Iraq. As my wife paid the pizza guy, she remarked to him that the pizza smelled great, "but I don't think my husband will get up because he's watching the news conference."
"Oh," the deliveryman said, "has there been another shooting?"
No, no, no, my wife explained, my husband is watching the president speak about Iraq.
But who can blame the deliveryman for assuming that I must be watching a news conference about the shooter. If you had to drive around here at night, standing on people's doorsteps with your back to the street, all you'd be worried about would be the shooter, too. But he's hardly alone. There is something about these shootings that is touching deeper nerves in us all.
The fact that the president speaks only about Iraq, while his neighbors down the street speak only about the shooter, reinforces the sense that this administration is so obsessed with Saddam it has lost touch with the real anxieties of many Americans. Mr. Bush wants to rally the nation to impose gun control on Baghdad, but he won't lift a finger to impose gun control on Bethesda, six miles from the White House.
Personally, I'm glad Mr. Bush is focused on disarming Iraq's madman and tracing Iraq's Scud missiles and weapons of mass destruction. It's a worthy project. I just wish he were equally focused on disarming America's madmen, and supporting laws that would make it easier to trace their .223-caliber bullets and their weapons of individual destruction. A lot of us would like to see more weapons inspectors on the streets here, and in the gun shops here, not just in Baghdad.
What's also frightening about this shooter, with his high-powered rifle, is that he could be the first real domestic copycat of 9/11, in terms of technique. That is, this shooter doesn't seem to be a serial killer with a political agenda or the perverse lust to look into the eyes of his victims before he snuffs out their lives.
No, like Osama bin Laden, this shooter seems to get his thrills from seeing the fear in the eyes of the survivors — after he randomly kills his victims as if they were deer. And like bin Laden, this shooter is a loser who combines evil, cunning, technical prowess, a world stage and a willingness to kill everyday people doing everyday things to magnify that fear. By gunning down people pumping gas, mowing lawns and walking to school, the shooter is making America's capital area squirm. That's power. No wonder the note he apparently left said, "I am God."
And no wonder the Bethesda Gazette, which normally covers school board meetings, carried a big headline that I never thought I'd see in my local paper. It said, "In the Grip of Terror," and the article included little bios of all the people killed. It could have been The New York Times on 9/12: "A County Challenged."
Finally, whether or not this shooter is a twisted copycat, he is part of a larger post-9/11 trend. That trend is the steady erosion of our sense of security, our sense that while the world may be crazy, we can always crawl into our American cocoon, our sense that "over here" we are safe, even if "over there" dragons live.
Well, "over here" is starting to feel like "over there" way too much. Over there, they just shot up U.S. marines guarding Kuwaiti oil fields, but over here, when I filled my car with gas the other day, I ducked behind a pillar so no drive-by sniper could see me; others hide in their back seats. Over there, Saddam terrorizes his people, but over here, my kids are now experts in the fine distinctions between Code Blue and Code Red. Code Blue means they're locked in their public school building because a potential shooter is in the area, and Code Red means they are locked in their classroom because there may be a gunman in the building.
Frankly, I don't want to hear another word about Iraq right now. I want to hear that my president and my Congress are taking the real steps needed in this country — starting with sane gun control and sane economic policy — to stop this slide into over here becoming like over there.
It's the NY SLimes, so being a whiny titty-baby (LOL, never heard that one) is a requirement to be hired there.
The sad part is that for a gun grabber, this is mild compared to Fox Butterfield and especially that piece of crap Nicholas Kristof.
Agreed, it's just a bit over the top for the occasionally sane Friedman.
Probably for the same reason why he doesn't want to disarm the UK of it's weapons of mass destruction. Idiot.
I heard that the Assault weapons ban is going to expire next month some time if congress can't renew it. I guess it has a time limit similar to the Bush tax cut. Can anyone varify this? If it's true, then that'll really chap this crowd's hide.
Well before the 14th Amendment. It's no longer good law. Of course there are other cases, from about the same time, in state supreme courts no less, that the 2nd amendment in particular was even then applicable against state governments.
Ignorant right wing fanatics like Hubert Humprey?
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. ... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safegaurd against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be possible.
Hubert H Humprey, United States Senator (D-Minnesota) 1960
Which delt not with government infringement, but rather the failure of government to protect the right from infringement by private parties. The ruling indicated that the second amendment does not require, nor allow, the federal government to protect citizens from such infringements. It also indicates that the power to do so rests with the states at the discretion of their legislatures, not with Congress.
This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national Government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the"powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was,perhaps, more properly called internal police," "not surrendered or restrained" by the Constitution of the United States."
Wether the second amendment protects against actions of state governments was not at issue in this case.
The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another. It simply furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the States upon the fundamental rights which belong, to every citizen as a member of society. As was said by Mr. Justice Johnson, in Bank of Columbia v. Okely, 4 Wheat. 244, it secures "the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government, unrestrained by the established principles of private rights and distributive justice." These counts in the indictment do not call for the exercise of any of the powers conferred by this provision in the amendment.
You think Hubert Humphrey was "right wing?" How strange.
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. ... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safegaurd against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be possible. Hubert H Humprey, United States Senator (D-Minnesota) 1960
No mention of the Second Amendment there.
Well before the 14th Amendment.
"The Second Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress." -- US Supreme Court, U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875), Presser v. State of Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886)
Well after the 14th Amendment.
Since its already been taken care of. I haven't heard that anyone squeezed off a few rounds at the sniper.
At least in Chicago we have street gangs to protect us. A sniper here would be shot because they would be mistaken for a rival gang member invading turf.
You should have read your quote before you posted it.
Well, he does have a point. But it seems to me if GWB shows up unannounced one day in a Bethesda school or shopping mall and demonstrates some concern a la 9/11, Friedman and NYT and the Democrats (but then I repeat myself?) would be left hanging again.
I wonder if GWB would ever have the cojones to call out the unorganized militia to help protect from the shooter(s). Probably not, but a nice thought anyway.
Bizarre. You cannot repost anything of mine as being even vaguely 'socialistic or gungrabbing'. Here is your post, - the one at issue:
"The Supreme Court can decide that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms only as part of the militia; in other words, the judges decide what the Constitution means. Further, the Constitution provides a way for the Constitution itself to be changed by amendment. A constitutional amendment through the elected (where numbers count) Congress and a vote of 3/4 of the states or through a Constitutional Convention (membership appointed by the state legislatures, where numbers count) could remove the Second Amendment and replace it with "no citizen has the right to keep or bear arms." That would be devastating, but it still would be "legal" and within our constitutional process." - whilom
Obviously, like roscoe, you have a very skewed, communitarian view of constitutional process.
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