Gun Control After Paris (strange anti-gun pro self defense editorial)

Algemeiner ^ | 1-27-15 | Jeremy Rosen

[SJackson]

For a long time, I have believed that the gun culture of the United States is dangerous and frankly stupid. So many people are killed by firearms going off accidentally or because they fall into the hands of children or madmen. Their easy availability is not just because they are a transportable and smugglable commodity, but also because there is a myth in American culture that claims that only by possessing guns were the American rebels able to defeat the British and gain independence.

Even if that were so, and it is not, what might have been true 300 years ago is not necessarily the right answer for today. The NRA spends billions buying votes (as is the American way) to ensure that anti-gun legislation is blocked. Regardless of the massacres, casualties, abuses, and misuses, almost all attempts to restrict guns in the U.S. fail. As a result, its gun death statistics are the highest in the world per capita, and America insists on believing that guns help protect people.

The other lobby, of course, is the hunting lobby. I hate hunting. I think it is cruel. Shots often miss or injure without killing. Often enough an innocent bystander or passerby gets wounded or killed. But I know I will not convince anyone of this because I will be dismissed as a culturally inhibited Englishman corrupted by my upbringing, and I will be only preaching to the “amen chorus.” And yes, I do believe that the meat industry is cruel too and needs much tighter control. Frankly I’d like to see it banned altogether, but that’s another argument.

However, all this depends on the police forces around the world being able to protect their citizens. If you live in the Wild West, then – I agree, not having a gun would be crazy, even if it might not save your life. This would be true even if having a gun and being able to use it well meant that you were more likely to be a target yourself.

There has been a lot of debate about whether the police in the U.S. and elsewhere are over-armed. But since crooks, drug dealers, and ordinary citizens can acquire the most sophisticated and powerful killing machines, it would be ridiculous and insane not to allow the police to be able to match the fire they come up against. We have all seen how the Islamic fanatics in Paris were so well armed that they could force the police into retreat by completely outgunning them. They were, thankfully, eventually cornered, outnumbered, and put out of their miserable lives.

What happened in Paris, however, has now led me to modify my opposition. What happens when the state does not protect its citizens? There have now been repeated murderous assaults on Jews in France and elsewhere. Isn’t it time for them to be armed? It is the principle of the English philosopher Hobbes that we relinquish some of our freedoms to the state in exchange for its protection.

Where they fail, the contract is void. Europe has a strong tradition of restricting individuals from having access to firearms – even the police under normal conditions. As a result, its citizens are far less likely to be killed. But if assaults on Jews are increasing in France, I believe those Jews who remain must be prepared to arm themselves.

Israel is a country where citizens have access to guns and where they are constantly under threat. Yet you might argue that having guns did not stop the massacre in Har Nof. But the proximity of civilian arms did help limit the damage. If the Hyper Cacher store had armed protection, the initial assault might have been avoided. Clearly the French police have not done enough hitherto, despite the repeated assaults on Jewish targets. We must not be afraid of taking the initiative. If the French authorities object, they know that the answer is for them to do more to deal with the problem. Yet for all the fine words, we know they have abandoned area after area in France to Muslim self-control and have allowed the hatred to fester without response.

This situation is now being repeated right across the European community. I would not want to be in France today without self-defense. And the instructions of the U.S. State Department to Jews traveling to Europe not to show any outward signs of Jewish identity in public is simply crass appeasement, capitulation, and defeatism. Just as the refusal in Britain and the U.S. to print the cover of last week’s Charlie Hebdo uncensored, because it contains a cartoon of Mohammad, is a sign that we have lost the battle for freedom already.

We need a debate about the values of modern societies. Throughout the world what exacerbates alienation is a sense of inequality – financial and political. If one puts wealth and accumulation above providing a meaningful occupation, one will be breeding discontent. This is as true in Western states as it is in Eastern states. Even where there is a generous welfare system, this alienation festers. There has been a consistent governmental failure to find work, to create public infrastructure projects, or to use tools such as micro-lending to encourage the poor and unemployed to find some pride, regardless of color, religion, or race.

There is a constant flow of refugees and immigrants. In Europe every year some 300,000 come in from Muslim countries around the Mediterranean. In the U.S. there are just as many illegals crossing the borders. Most are peaceful and want only to find a better life. But inevitably amongst them, as with all such waves in history, there are gangsters and fanatics. Most societies have failed to integrate immigrants or the socially deprived. The problems are both social and, increasingly, religious. Muslim countries send thousands of primitive, hate-mongering imams around the world to cater to the spiritual needs of these disadvantaged and vulnerable wanderers.

On one level a society is to be judged by how it treats its weakest and poorest citizens. The Left believes that only a strong welfare system can help solve the problems of inequality. The Right believes that only by encouraging people to take care of themselves and find ways of creating wealth can the poor and disadvantaged raise themselves out of their disadvantages.

To be fair, most Western societies seek some sort of compromise between the two extremes. But clearly generous welfare in Europe has done nothing to ameliorate this. It is argued that American Muslims are less alienated than European Muslims because they feel better integrated.

But this is so in Europe too: those Muslims and other immigrant minorities who do well are better integrated. Those who are not are the breeders of violence. The European way has been to ignore the problem or simply throw money at it. Until this changes I see no alternative other than for us to strengthen our defenses. Because the jihadis are only showing that they can get more and better means of attacking what they regard as their eternal enemy.

[SJackson]

One sentence, But if assaults on Jews are increasing in France, I believe those Jews who remain must be prepared to arm themselves. amongst paragraphs of anti-gun canards.

Jews should be armed, but so should Christians, Muslims and everyone else.

Of course it won't happen in France or anywhere in Western Europe, because they lack both the 2nd amendment, which protects us from most of the nonsense in the article, and the "gun culture" of the United States. The lack of which argues against loosening restrictions on individual ownership.

French Jews who fear for their lives should leave. For a small minority, whether Jews today in France or Germany in the 1930s, the benefit of being armed is to facilitate that flight, as well as surviving long enough to escape.

Since we're talking France, I'm reminded of the controversy over the unpolitically correct description of Muslim enclaves as no go zones. We're ahead of France, we have official no go zones, on public land. They need signs

[cripplecreek]

Even if that were so, and it is not, what might have been true 300 years ago is not necessarily the right answer for today.

?

[Talisker]

Hypocrisy is an ugly thing.

[Paladin2]

"there is a myth in American culture that claims that only by possessing guns were the American rebels able to defeat the British and gain independence.

Even if that were so, and it is not,..... "

Repeat as your mantra leftists.....

[SJackson]

I didn’t get that either. Ignoring the 300 years error, the Continental Army wouldn’t have prevailed without firearms and more important the ability to use them.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

The writer is finally waking up after years of being in a typical liberal/leftist mental stupor about the real world around him.

If he continues to drop his infantile leftist worldview, he might actually become a rational human being.

Not all Israelis have guns because there is some gun-control in effect. Now, it is being debated and will be changed.

It might even happen in France, unless they surrender to the Islamists during the debates. Je Suis Charlie could be forgotten in a few weeks of cheese eating and singing Vichy songs.

Rosen, however, has a totally warped sense of what is going on in America so I hope that he comes over the pond and spends some time with real Americans who live outside the “DC Beltway” where sanity is still in vogue in most places outside of liberal hellholes called Boston, NY, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Atlanta, Austin, Houston, and any major shitty in California, Oregon and parts of Washington State. (SORRY FOR THE LONG SENTENCE. I HAD DREAMS OF MAKING THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS BUT TOOK PITY ON YOU, THE READERS).

Oh, can’t forget Chicago, the cesspool of the Midwest. Will throw in Cleveland too - another wasteland of leftist liberalism and black ignorance.

Hey Rosen. There are “real Americans” who are responsible gun-owners (black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc). Come on over and meet them for yourself.

[bunkerhill7]

"but also because there is a myth in American culture that claims that only by possessing guns were the American rebels able to defeat the British and gain independence."

He`s a moron,

1794 EVEN THE BRITISH IN 1794 ATTEST TO THE EXERCISE AND PRACTICE OF THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS BY AMERICAN KIDS PRIOR TO THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR 1775 “Events which served to shew [sic] that if the Americans were yet unacquainted with military discipline they were not destitute of either courage or conduct but knew well and dared to avail themselves of such advantages as they possessed. The people of the colonies are accustomed to the use of fire arms from their earliest youth and are in general good marksmen. Such men placed in a house behind a wall or amongst trees are capable of doing as much execution as regular soldiers. And to these advantages which they possessed during the greatest part of the nineteenth of April we may attribute the inconsiderable loss sustained by them compared with that of our detachments.”

Stedman,p.120 [The History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the .American War,” Stedman, C. 1794, Volume 1]

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The right to shoot tyrants, not deer. By Andrew P. Napolitano; Thursday, January 10, 2013 The full article can be found here: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/10/the-right-to-shoot-tyrants-not-deer/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The principal reason the colonists won the American Revolution is that they possessed weapons equivalent in power and precision to those of the British government"

"But what is meant of our militia? Why, when he spoke of them, he meant American citizens, accustomed to the use of arms; not in the camp or in the field, but American citizens accustomed to use THEIR ARMS, and to all that manual dexterity which could only be gained by long practice; not field maneouvering and marching, but a perfect knowledge of the rifle and the musket. Such a use of the rifle that you could take the eye out of a squirrel on the highest tree. This was in all, and beyond this there was no necessity to go in this country. In this the soldiers of our country had a superiority of those of any other. Ask the British officers who were engaged in the last war whether there was no superiority in our troops in this respect."

"Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" , Vol. 4, by the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 1837-8

[Redcitizen]

” Stay away from backpacks and abandoned vehicles”

Sounds like a scene from the movie “no country for old men.”

[meadsjn]

almost all attempts to restrict guns in the U.S. fail. As a result, its gun death statistics are the highest in the world per capita, ...

I don't think this is even close to the truth.

[SampleMan]

Every time a Leftist opens their pie hole, they confirm why citizens must be armed to remain free.

[bunkerhill7]

As a result, its gun death statistics are the highest in the world per capita,”

A lie-; Phils has more strict gun laws than USA.- Honduras and the Philippines have much higher per capita than USA

“The Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, tops the list of the world’s most violent places on earth.”

Uruguay, Swaziland, South Africa,Panama, Mexico, Jamaica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil all have higher per capita rates than USA-

Sources[edit]
(Krug 1998) EG Krug, KE Powell and LL Dahlberg. “Firearm-related deaths in the United States and 35 other high- and upper-middle-income countries.”, International Journal of Epidemiology 1998.[72] Statistics among 36 countries between 1990 and 1995.
(UNODC 2002)The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2001–2002). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2005.[73] This report provides more updated information on homicide by firearms, but not on suicide by firearms.
(UNODC 2000)The Seventh United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1998–2000). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2002.[74] This report provides more updated information on homicide by firearms, but not on suicide by firearms.
(Barrow 2000) Greg Barrow. “SA gun deaths rise”, BBC, 2000-02-15.[75]
(Kaiser 2004) Deaths Due to Injury by Firearms per 100,000 Population, 2004. StateHealthFacts.org, 2008-04-08 [76]
(GunCite 2008) International Homicide Comparisons. GunCite.com, 2008-04-08 [77]
(CDC 2012) Fatal Injury Mapping (2004–2006). CDC.gov, 2012-02-05 [78]
(GunPolicy 2012) Global Impacts of Gun Violence. GunPolicy.org, 2012-02-10 [79]
(UNODC 2012) UNODC Homicide Statistics 2012 [80]
(Victims of crime survey 2011) Victims of crime survey 2011 – 9.7 The use of weapons when crime is committed [81]
(WHO 2012) European Detailed Mortality Database [82] ICD-10: W32-W34,X72-X74,X93-X95,Y22-Y24
GunPolicy.org. 2011. ‘Calculated Rates – Australia.’ UN World Population Prospects – Total Population (both sexes combined)

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2837711/Police-hunting-missing-Miss-World-contestant-vanished-days-fly-London-year-s-competition.html#ixzz3JLOt1Q7r

[Billthedrill]

A fascinating piece. I think the author gets it, and would have gotten it earlier had he not been burdened with certain stereotypes and misconceptions courtesy of a biased, manipulative, and nearly omnipresent media campaign.

The NRA spends billions buying votes (as is the American way)...

Well, no it doesn't, either spend "billions" of dollars (there are 4 million members at $35 a pop - do the math) or "buy" votes - I wonder how the author imagines they'd do that anyway? They are, in fact, a successful lobbying organization, nothing more, and if certain of its members, myself included, expect more now and then we are brought back to earth pretty quickly.

He invokes Hobbes - yes, it is precisely the case that the citizen authorizes a primacy of violence to the state in return for protection. That is why one is not empowered to murder the murderers oneself. And the author takes that to the next, proper step: where the state fails to offer that protection, "the contract is void". Where the state fails to protect, the citizen is absolutely empowered to take steps to protect himself or herself. And - this is significant - where the state fails to punish the guilty on the basis of some overriding social concern, the contract is also void. We are never that far away from vigilantism, either in America or anywhere else, and we're getting closer by the day.

I believe those Jews who remain must be prepared to arm themselves.

The author is almost there. Because he does realize that although possession of the means to fight back cannot prevent violence altogether, it can and does ameliorate it. Only where the monster is the only one armed can he pick and choose his victims at will.

Almost there, but not quite, because I infer from the finish of the piece that the author is willing to grant citizens the right to defend themselves but not yet as a thing divorced from the state. Reason it through. The state has failed. It no longer has a right, nor did it ever, to control the citizens' possession of the means of self-defense.

One final quibble - the author has, as I mentioned, apparently swallowed the anti-NRA propaganda rather uncritically, as well as the notion that somehow European societies whose citizens are shorn of the right to possess firearms actually have achieved any relief from violence. That doesn't really stand up under scrutiny. Treating "gun violence" as a category separate from other violence, and lumping cases of self defense with a firearm under that category falsely has created a wildly inaccurate picture of the realities of American society. The author might profit from looking into that a little more closely.

[Blood of Tyrants]

“As a result, its gun death statistics are the highest in the world per capita,”

Wrong! The US is 111th in gun deaths per capita. There is so much wrong with this article, that I stopped reading there.

[Travis McGee]

[Inyo-Mono]

Lot of incorrect information in the article but I read it anyway.

[Lake Living]

Bill Whittle has a great video on this. He totally destroys this article and it’s arguments.

[elcid1970]

Stupid Europrick, go sip some absinthe & curse the evil Yankees. Then welcome your new Muslim masters whom the Koran says that only they may possess weapons.

[Raycpa]

The author is backing into the importance of the first two amendments and why they go together.

[apoliticalone]

There was a recent news article from NRA-ILA, that suggested how some Jewish institutions were writing letters to EU officials that Jews in Europe need to be armed.

All citizens need the right to be armed and to self defense as we’ve sen from ISIS.

[apoliticalone]

Too many of those in the media and in Congress that shrilly tout their anti-gun nonsense and Harvard diplomas are of the urban elite culture. Many are relative newbies to what is our multi century American culture that has always treated guns as commonplace as back scratchers.