Submitted by Guest Blogger, Lawrence Rafferty
In light of the tragic shooting today in Arizona, I have to wonder aloud if automatic weapons should be banned by this country. I realize that the 2nd Amendment right to own a gun is strongly defended by the NRA and other right-wing groups, but I am sick and tired of reading about all of the shootings the past couple of years. Whether it was the shootings earlier this year at various United States Marine sites around the country or the California shootout in July with the guy who was trying to attack the ACLU and the TIDES non-profit organization; the vitriol seems to be on the rise. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40978517/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/ And with politicians fanning the flames, this vitriol is not bound to be diminished anytime soon.
The Second Amendment is a very concise Amendment. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am2 We have seen various attempts over the years by the Feds and many States and municipalities to restrict gun ownership. The recent Supreme Court case of McDonald , et al vs. City of Chicago, Illinois, et al affirmed the fundamental right of Americans to own a gun by a 5-4 decision. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf The McDonald decision did not give us any guidance on what kind of restrictions to that fundamental right the Supreme Court would allow. However, how can automatic weapons or high-powered rifles be exempt from an outright banning of their ownership or at least significant restrictions on their use? Can a good faith argument really be made that an automatic weapon is necessary for personal protection?
The Supreme Court Justices do not live in a bubble and they must see what damage these weapons have already brought to families across the nation. Don’t they?
That was ok Elaine….he was a Real Estate attorney….and part time bank owner….he owns a lot of the Austin landscape….so one wouldn’t be missed…then again….Cheney does not quite have the style that LBJ is remembered for in Austin….sometimes people went golfing at midnight and that was one powerful shot on the 9th hole….this was long before lighted golf courses….
Blouise…I hope all turns out well….keep me apprised…
Elaine M.
1, January 9, 2011 at 9:58 am
Carlyle,
“…but the 2nd is still allowing right r[w]ing crazies to whack Jews and Democrats.”
And right-wing politicians like Dick Cheney to nearly take out one of his own!
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Oh yeah … all Second Amendment lovers line up behind Dick (pun intended)
AY,
I’ll send you an email on Tues when I have all the doctors’ opinions and a decided action plan.
Carlyle,
“…but the 2nd is still allowing right r[w]ing crazies to whack Jews and Democrats.”
And right-wing politicians like Dick Cheney to nearly take out one of his own!
Thank you….I have gotten hooked on “Words with Friends” like I have any….lol….and truly anonymous phone scrabble….its been a pleasant diversion….
I hear tell you have had some recent family matters to attend to…I hope all is well…email and tell me what you wish…
thank you, carlyle moulton. your point about the state of arms technology back at the time the second amendment was passed may not sway modern originalist minds, but it should.
AY,
You are usually here too early in the morning for me to say “hey” … so I took this opportunity … just know I’m sayin’ it every morning!
Good Morning to all….
and to Blouise a Texas A Dew to you…..how is it going…….I saw the shoot out at the OK Corral….Apparently someone was pissed that Billy didn’t get pardoned….I am too…seems that he was just misunderstood….but then again…the people had to do something after the conflict between the states….really not much different way of life…for those Yankee plunders…..and probably just taking away from the Jewish bankers…you know they have all of the money…..or at least thats what I have heard……(attempt at humor)
Elaine M.
1, January 9, 2011 at 9:34 am
Blouise,
Good morning to you. I hope your “emotionalizer” is well rested and raring to go today! 🙂
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That was a lot of fun. Testosterone and guns … no emotionalism there! 🙂
I read you have a bad cold. There is some nasty stuff going around. I’m just getting over the worse cold I’ve had in years. Take care of yourself.
I was just pondering this Sam….are you as smart as you will ever be? The public library is still available in most city’s…depending on the area of the country…hours may be limited due to republican economic….but then again….be careful of what you ask for….you might just get the opportunity to stop thinking for yourself….
Blouise,
Good morning to you. I hope your “emotionalizer” is well rested and raring to go today!
😉
At last … the Second Amendment is being put in perspective and rationally discussed …
Buddha …. mission accomplished
Morning AY
You missed the gunfight last night … bullets everywhere!
I’m with Patric, Karl, and Carlyle. The societal/institutionalized violence of American culture is what makes the usual “defense against tryanny” interpretation of the 2nd amendment appear rational rather than emotional itself. The situation is contextual, not unlike the Adelson squares post by Nal.
Sam Colt,
….
“To paraphrase “guns don’t kill people, leftists or the mentally ill do” but then leftist and mentally ill is a redundant expression.”
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uh huh … another gun lover speaks … the Second Amendment serves him well.
Learn your History…new Nome de plume….eh?
The old republican party is the new democratic one…read the history of both….that’s the problem with generalizations of labels….but propaganda is easier to sell when you can classify what is good, bad and evil….the best criminal defense attorneys that I have ever come into contact with were great profiler’s, they knew the target and went after them…
But then again…most would never work for a corrupt system as they are trying to right the wrong…it is like coming to the conclusion that people that have a certain “Classic Rock” bumper sticker on the vehicle makes them more likely than not to smoke weed…..labels are good…just remember “No Child Left Behind”…..the final assault on the public school education….they work well…don’t you think when you are trying to achieve a certain political identity…
Take for example people that support abortions….are they the same ones that support the death penalty? My experience says no….
SwM,
Great story … a true hero …
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/09/20110109daniel-hernandez-gabrielle-giffords-arizona-shooting.html Intern probably saved her life.
Wonder why these guns end up on the news always featuring inner city shootings.Or if there is a raid on a so called drug den.
It is not time to ban semi-automatic weapons, it is time to ban the leftists that use them to commit crimes.
The shooter in Arizona apparently is a member of some group that is anti Jewish and the shooter is a follower of Hitler and Karl Marx at least in regard his reading material.
So it would seem from the Holocaust shooting to this shooting the common denominator is Mien Kampf and the Communist Manifesto.
Which makes perfect sense since most politically motivated shootings have been undertaken by leftists:
“In the interests of time, I have chosen to use Wikipedia as my first source. Wikipedia has a few problems with both bias and reliability, but if you know how to navigate and use their list of citations, you can usually get relatively decent information.
So let’s just proceed down the list together. I am doing this as I write, so I do not know what the final results will be. Let’s get started.
Assassinations:
President: Abraham Lincoln (R)
Assassin: John Wilkes Booth
Political identity and motive:
Booth was a Democrat, angry that Lincoln had freed the slaves and preserved the Union.
President: James A. Garfield (R)
Assassin: Charles J. Guiteau
Political identity and motive:
Guiteau was frustrated that he did not receive a political appointment in the Garfield administration, and he believed “that God had commanded him to kill the ungrateful President.” Since we can assume that God did not, in fact, command him in this way, we must deem Guiteau mentally unstable.
President: William McKinley (R)
Assassin: Leon Czolgosz
Political identity and motive:
Czolgosz was an anarchist who believed that “there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality which allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor,” and that he had to do something about it. Mimicking the assassination of King Umberto I of Italy, done for similar reasons, he shot and killed McKinley. Oddly, Czolgosz had earlier voted Republican, but the assassination motive was clearly as described above.
President: John F. Kennedy (D)
Assassin: Lee Harvey Oswald
Political identity and motive:
Defector to the USSR. Earlier attempted to kill General Edwin Walker, who was “an outspoken anti-communist, segregationist and member of the John Birch Society.” Controversy about the assassination continues to persist, and Oswald was killed before any real digging could be done, so we are primarily left with his identity (as a defector to the USSR) as the prime indicator.
Attempts:
President: Andrew Jackson (D)
Would-be assassin: Richard Lawrence
Political identity and motive:
Lawrence was mentally ill, suffering from polymorphous delusions.
President: Theodore Roosevelt (R and Bull Moose)
Would-be assassin: John F. Schrank
Political identity and motive:
Schrank was mentally ill; he claimed “that it was the ghost of William McKinley that told him to perform the act.”
President: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
Would-be assassin: Giuseppe Zangara
Political identity and motive:
“In the Dade County Courthouse jail, Zangara confessed and stated: ‘I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists.'” From Zangara’s own words, much can be taken. However, he may also have been mentally ill. (Perhaps anyone who wants to kill a president is a touch deranged.)
President: Harry S Truman (D)
Would-be assassin: Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola
Political identity and motive:
Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola were members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Puerto Rican Nationalists, represented by Marxist terrorist groups such as FALN, who were responsible for scores of bombings in the U.S.; they were arguably the most active terrorist group in U.S. history. (Interesting side notes: President Carter freed Collazo in 1979, and President Clinton pardoned several FALN terrorists. Il nn’y a aucun ennemi du cote gauche?)
President: John F. Kennedy (D)
Would-be assassin: Richard Paul Pavlick
Political identity and motive:
Pavlick was anti-Catholic, and he was also upset by “the close 1960 U.S. Presidential election, in which Kennedy had defeated Republican Richard Nixon by 118,000 votes.” However, “Judge Emmet C. Choate ruled that Pavlick was unable to distinguish between right and wrong in his actions.” He was kept in a mental hospital for three years. Will this be the closest we get….?
President: Richard M. Nixon (R)
Would-be assassin: Arthur Bremer
Political identity and motive:
Bremer is an interesting case, one that would require more research than we’re doing in this admittedly surface analysis. He hated Nixon, but apparently, he also hated segregation and bigotry, and he did shoot Democratic candidate George Wallace. He also clearly had mental instability. Why did he hate Nixon, and also Wallace? He stated “It is my personal plan to assassinate by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace,” and that his purpose was “to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see.” These are deep waters, and we’ll have to give this one a pass for now.
President: Richard M. Nixon (R)
Would-be assassin: Samuel Byck
Political identity and motive:
Byck “began to harbor the belief that the government was conspiring to oppress the poor.” He attempted to join the Black Panthers. However, he was also “diagnosed with manic depression, a mental disorder characterized by both depressive ‘lows’ and (less frequently) manic or euphoric ‘highs.'” He had left-wing motives, but he was also mentally unstable.
President: Gerald R. Ford (R)
Would-be assassin: Lynette Fromme
Political identity and motive:
Insane member of the insane Manson Family.
President: Gerald R. Ford (R)
Would-be assassin: Sara Jane Moore
Political identity and motive:
Revolutionary leftist political activist.
President: James E. Carter (D)
Would-be assassin: Raymond Lee Harvey
Political identity and motive:
Harvey was possibly mentally ill, but also, charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. This one doesn’t count.
President: Ronald Reagan (R)
Would-be assassin: John Hinckley, Jr.
Political identity and motive:
Mentally ill, no apparent political motive (despite some absurd references to his connections to the Bush family).
President: George H.W. Bush (R)
Would-be assassin: Operation of sixteen men working for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
Political identity and motive:
Geopolitical attack/act of war.
President: Bill Clinton (D)
Would-be assassin: Francisco Martin Duran
Political identity and motive:
From Wikipedia:
“Duran pleaded not guilty and mounted an insanity defense, claiming that he was trying to save the world by destroying an alien ‘mist,’ connected by an umbilical cord to an alien in the Colorado mountains. He also claimed to be incited by conservative talk show host Chuck Baker, who spoke on air about ‘armed revolution’ and ‘cleansing’ of the government.
In both cases, these are claims made by Duran. We would need more external information to make a judgment.
President: George W. Bush (R)
Would-be assassin: Vladimir Arutyunian
Political identity and motive:
Georgian national who threw a grenade towards President Bush. Not quite sure yet what his motivation was. Pass for now.
Totals:
Clearly mentally ill (5)
Guiteau
Lawrence
Schrank
Fromme
Hinckley, Jr.
Anti-catholic (and possible Republican) motivation, coupled with mental illness (1):
Pavlick
Left-wing motivations, coupled with mental illness (1):
Byck
Unclear/more info required/weak evidence–pass (4):
Bremer
Harvey
Duran
Arutyunian
Left-leaning political motivation (7):
Booth
Czolgosz
Oswald
Zangara
Collazo
Torresola
Moore
Remove the people who are clearly mentally ill, to leave the people who had a political motivation. That gives us an eight (left) to one (right) ratio of political motivations behind presidential assassinations and attempts.
To be fair to the two among that number who also suffered from some mental illness, one from the left and one from the right, we can remove both of them from the figures.
That leaves us with the following:
Of the successful and attempted assassinations of U.S. presidents where there was a political motivation and no blatant mental illness, the political motivation behind the act was left-leaning 100% of the time.
We will grant that this is a somewhat surface analysis, and that detailed research and nuanced analysis may produce slightly different results. But still, don’t you find the conclusion of even this surface analysis somewhat striking? It’s 100%, after all.”
To paraphrase “guns don’t kill people, leftists or the mentally ill do” but then leftist and mentally ill is a redundant expression.