Constitutional Law, Courts, Justice, Media, Politics

Second Amendment Boogey Man

Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger

 

When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy.  Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency.  Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns?  The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!!  ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday.  “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.”  “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘  Raw Story

Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy.  Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base.  ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners.  Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘

The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk.  I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above.  The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections.  I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong.  But, I digress.

As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns.  NPR  Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim?  None that I could find.  Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.

I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners!  Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims?  I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy?  I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.

If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims?  I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger

Additional sources:  Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;

 

 

798 thoughts on “Second Amendment Boogey Man”

  1. Bron said:

    Slarti:

    your idea of a feedback mechanism may be fine for a laboratory with a limited number of parameters.

    And right off the bat, your ignorance is on display – the systems that I’m modeling in the “laboratory” are HUMAN CELLS. Care to estimate how many parameters control the behavior of a cell? Or even how many parameters control just the parts of the cell division cycle that are involved in signaling DNA damage, arresting the cell cycle, and repairing the damage? My area of expertise (the focus of what I’m doing right now) is in managing complexity in models, so when I say, “you have no idea what you are talking about”, it’s my professional opinion.

    You dont have the grey matter [no personal slight implied] nor the computing power to accurately predict or control the system when you put a brake on a particular action taken by a particular organism.

    What you don’t understand is that I do have the Grey matter (the “G” should be capitalized or it should be “gray matter”, by the way) to develop the software tools and modeling methodologies to solve complex modeling problems of all sorts. I make predictive models and I can apply my ability to the economy just as readily as I can apply it to human cells. I figured out a methodology for modeling the impact of public policy on business over a year ago (as a result of an email exchange that I had with you, in fact…) – I just haven’t had the time or motivation to actually build the model. Maybe I’ll get around to it someday, but the point is that there are other people like me who have the ability to construct predictive models of complex systems given sufficient time and resources. You are negligent in dismissing the possibility of something that you in no way understand.

    Out of curiosity how many variables could you control in a laboratory and tweak [This is a word that I usually avoid – if you are “tweaking” variables in order to produce some sort magic values that give you the behavior you’re looking for, then you’re doing it (modeling) wrong…] to see what the outcome would be? 5, 10, 100, 1000?

    Actually, just this week I solved the problem of how to deal with hundreds of parameters in my protein-protein interaction model (I’m pretty pleased with my solution, if I do say so myself, by the way… 8)). John Tyson (probably the foremost cell cycle modeler) has a phrase to describe what you’re alluding to – “flailing around in a 100-dimensional parameter space”. Do you think that you are clever by bringing that up? Do you think that any competent modeler isn’t already aware of the problem and taking steps to deal with it? In the model I did for my post-doctoral research, we did tens of thousands of runs with the parameters being randomly permuted to show that the behavior we were describing was robust over a range of parameter values. The issue you raise is only a problem if one ignores it – and I never would.

    How long would it take to determine, accurately, the consequence of tweaking those variables so you could get to the point where you could, with confidence, publish a paper on your findings which could withstand the scrutiny of a peer review?

    Currently it would probably take the better part of a year of my effort before I could have sufficient research for a paper (not including writing the paper – just the research). I have reason to think the answer to that question will decline significantly in the next year or so, though… The proper question (to me) is: How long will it take to pioneer a modeling process, engineer it so that it can be done efficiently, and mass produce it so it can be profitably sold as a service? I’ll let you know how long that takes after I’ve done it a few times.

    Let me just say that the price of the pizza you had for dinner is probably dependent on, conservatively, 100,000 different variables.

    And you think all of those 100,000 variables are equally important? I think that it would be a piece of cake (or, more accurately, as easy as pie ;-)) to make a model of Sir Pizza’s (the local establishment I patronized yesterday) business – I’m currently making a model of my own business which is substantially more difficult (fortunately I have help with that – and I’ve done it before). Making a model to determine if their business plan (i.e. pie price) is viable would be pretty easy for me (and it would be much more useful than a predictive model of the pizza price).

    The change in any one could change the price of your pizza.

    And that’s a problem why? You would collect all of the information you were using in an automated way (at least that’s how I would do it…), so your model would respond to any changes in the variables you were tracking – making you aware of, say, the impact of a possible pepperoni workers strike on your cash flow as soon as union negotiations break down…

    In a similar fashion how do you know that the mechanism for feedback doesn’t actually have a negative impact somewhere other than where you intended it?

    That’s what you use your model to figure out – and why you build it in the first place.

    And how do you know the punishment is taken by the perpetrator of the bad action and not some other entity who is not even involved?

    The idea is to make business plans that include undesirable actions (like polluting) unprofitable – then the businesses can either choose to adapt to the new reality or go out of business. The only thing necessary to accomplish this is putting a price on the behavior you want to eliminate and slowly increasing it. The (regulated) free market takes care of the rest…

    As I have said many times before, the tax you want to levy is not paid by the company but by consumers.

    The tax will eliminate the behavior – if one company eliminates their pollution (and thus doesn’t have to pass along the cost of the tax to their customers) and another company just passes along the tax to their customers then they will go out of business and the first company will thrive – I call that an ideal outcome. You encourage that outcome by offering additional incentives to research green technology. In the end you not only have a green industry, but you’ve developed technology which can then be sold to other manufacturers. It’s called a virtuous circle – it’s similar to the viscous circles which you are advocating, but delivers MUCH better results.

    Also how do account for people who would not behave ethically in the application of the feedback mechanism since you seem to believe people in business do not behave ethically what makes you think regulators would behave ethically?

    I would base the tax on measurable quantities (like carbon or other emissions). As for regulators (which are separate from what I’m talking about but also important), I would hold them to the highest conflict of interest standards possible (unlike the Bush administration who believed that industry lobbyists were the best ones to write and enforce regulations…).

    Some people are motivated by ideology, some by money, some by sex, some by selflessness, etc. How do you objectively apply a feedback mechanism?

    Kilograms of carbon emitted (as an example – there are other metrics and a combination of many of them would be best). You objectively apply a feedback mechanism by using a quantitative algorithm.

    Through objective, rationally developed standards? I think I mentioned that above.

    Your standard may be objective, but it’s far from rational – I, on the other hand, want to use the scientific method. I’m thinking that I will get far better results.

    Do you really think that I’m so bad at what I do that I could be tripped up by your naive analysis? If so, you are sadly mistaken…

  2. “You need to quit reading Rousseau and Marx and start reading some thinkers who actually believe in human liberty.”

    Why do you keep making assertions like that? You don’t know anybody’s reading material or heroes, unless they say so.

  3. Bron,

    “there is no common good, there is only individual good. The founders created our country with the individual in mind, not the common good.”

    Wrong.

    Of course there is a common good (something you’d realize if you weren’t an Objectivist) and our founders not only knew this, they incorporated it into the wording of the Preamble.

    “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

    This once again shows you have absolutely no idea how the social contract works by any standard. Social contracts are entered into to gain mutual benefits. Our social contract is the Constitution as informed by the Declaration of Independence. Not only do you not know how a social contract operates, you apparently don’t know the meaning of the word “mutual”.

    mutual \ˈmyü-chə-wəl, -chəl, -chü-əl; ˈmyüch-wəl\

    1a : directed by each toward the other or the others
    b : having the same feelings one for the other
    c : shared in common
    d : joint

    Directed by each toward the other or the others? Why that sounds suspiciously like “me and we”, doesn’t it?

    Without a common good, there is little or no reason to enter into a social contract. If the social contract didn’t provide mutual benefit, you’d simply be limiting your absolute liberty under the state of nature for no reason at all.

    You should learn to comprehend what you read instead of focusing on building straw men, engaging in “I know you are but what am I”, making up definitions to terms you clearly do not know the actual definition of and butchering concepts you clearly don’t understand.

    As to propaganda? Well maybe if you understood it better, you wouldn’t be such a sucker for it in the future, Randy von Mises. You’d also know the difference between propaganda and counter-propaganda. I engage in the later. You consume copious quantities of the former.

    This above post could have been entirely avoided if you simply knew what you were talking about. You have two ears/two eyes and one mouth for a reason. While the later gives you the means to express your opinions, the former gives you the means to inform your opinion if you process that information with your brain.

    In your case, clearly only the mouth is in working order.

    Or maybe it’s just a case of garbage in, garbage out.

    Remember: reading without comprehension is a monkey chasing its own tail.

    Run, monkey, run!

  4. Slarti:

    your idea of a feedback mechanism may be fine for a laboratory with a limited number of parameters. You dont have the grey matter [no personal slight implied] nor the computing power to accurately predict or control the system when you put a brake on a particular action taken by a particular organism.

    Out of curiosity how many variables could you control in a laboratory and tweak to see what the outcome would be? 5, 10, 100, 1000? How long would it take to determine, accurately, the consequence of tweaking those variables so you could get to the point where you could, with confidence, publish a paper on your findings which could withstand the scrutiny of a peer review?

    Let me just say that the price of the pizza you had for dinner is probably dependent on, conservatively, 100,000 different variables. The change in any one could change the price of your pizza. In a similar fashion how do you know that the mechanism for feedback doesnt actually have a negative impact somewhere other than where you intended it? And how do you know the punishment is taken by the perpetrator of the bad action and not some other entity who is not even involved?

    As I have said many times before, the tax you want to levy is not paid by the company but by consumers. Also how do account for people who would not behave ethically in the application of the feedback mechanism since you seem to believe people in business do not behave ethically what makes you think regulators would behave ethically? Some people are motivated by ideology, some by money, some by sex, some by selflessness, etc. How do you objectively apply a feedback mechanism?

    Through objective, rationally developed standards? I think I mentioned that above.

  5. Gene H:

    there is no common good, there is only individual good. The founders created our country with the individual in mind, not the common good. You know the rights of man and the enlightenment? Individuals pursue happiness, individuals have a right to life, individuals have liberty. The common good is nothing but a way to control and take away individual liberty. Freedom is the common good because it is the individual good.

    You need to quit reading Rousseau and Marx and start reading some thinkers who actually believe in human liberty.

    You should know a good deal about propaganda, you engage in it on a regular basis.

    By the way, big corporations in bed with government is fascism or socialism.

  6. “I am probably violating some law sitting in my chair.”

    You know that isn’t true – unless you have a naked minor on your lap.

  7. OS,

    Sadly, I realize what you (and the article) say is true. Some people are simply more susceptible to manipulation than others even when that manipulation is against their best interests. The best puppeteers let the puppets think they are free and the Jedi mindtrick is real. There is no better way to get someone to do something than to make them think it’s their idea in the first place. That’s the dirty core secret of all propaganda. That is why I am so interested in the topic. To expose its dirty little secrets is to shine the light of truth on what is essentially a form of deception. Say what you like about the truth, but it will set you free unlike anything else.

  8. Gene, if you read the story from NPR I linked to above, you will note that it has nothing to do with understanding. I think Bron and his kind understand just fine. It is a simple matter of having a point of view to sell. As the story from NPR interview reflects, the state of North Carolina is now a wholly owned subsidiary or Art Rose and his family. And who is Art Rose? For starters, he is an obscenely rich asshole buddy of the Koch brothers; aka, the Koch Crime Family.

    And when you have the kind of money they have, you can buy folks like Bron by the metric tonne. They are nothing more than online pamphleteers for the cabal.

  9. Bron,

    If you don’t chafe at regulation, then you should quit whining about it.

    At to this?

    “What you want is carte blanch to control the behavior of business operating in an ethical and legal manner. You do this for the sole purpose of control so that you can determine social outcomes.”

    That only further illustrates that you don’t understand the role of law in the social contract nor do you actually read what I post. Law is a corrective and influencing mechanism required by the social contract and according to our Founders it should work for justice and equity of ALL – not just those who make money. Control? How many times do I have to tell you that control is an illusion before it gets through that Objectivist brainwashed skull of yours? Laws and regulations don’t prevent bad actors. They provide ideally just remedies when bad actors hurt others and deter the casual criminal. What I “do this for” is for influence to attain positive social outcomes. Because if the law doesn’t work for the common good? It doesn’t work for good at all. You think I’m “doing this” for tyrannical control and you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. Transparent? Here’s the crystal clear version:

    I do what I do in pursuit of equity and justice for the common good.

    You do what you do in pursuit of ego gratification and money – which gives you the illusion of personal power and freedom.

    Until you realize you’re not the center of the universe and money isn’t an end that justifies the means? You will always be part of the problem and not the solution. You have built a small world for yourself with your poor philosophical choices. If you don’t like how other people see you – namely selfish and uncaring – the problem isn’t with the other people not understanding your ideas. It’s your ideas that influenced that negative opinion of you in the first place. You will always be dissatisfied with the world because you don’t realize the fatal flaws that drive your dissatisfaction lie within yourself, not in the world’s myriad imperfections. If you want others to be more accepting to your ideas and by relation you and you clearly aren’t getting that with your current (and quite rigid) ideas, then you have to learn to change your ideas until you get better reception. You cannot change your ideas if you are not willing to change yourself.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t hate you. I’m largely indifferent to you and when I feel anything at all it is pity. I do, however, hate most of your ideas. The reasons why are quite obvious.

    There is nothing wrong with the mirror.

  10. Bron,

    You say that lawyers don’t understand how to write regulation so we should just do without regulation. If you had actually read and understood what I’ve been saying in my comments here (and in emails to you), you would know that I’ve been advocating a different way of designing regulation – viewing it as a feedback mechanism (which is exactly what it is) and applying the scientific method. Instead of actually addressing the merits of ideas like this, you choose to make straw man arguments and whine about “Gene did it too” (which was, in itself, another straw man argument – Hofsteadter would be proud…). Can you explain in what way intelligently designed regulation is inferior to no regulation at all or do you just want to call me more names that you don’t understand?

  12. Gene:

    “That you chafe at the idea of regulation shows that you do not understand the role of the rule of law within the social contract.”

    First of all I dont chafe at the idea of regulation, as I stated above objective law is a necessity for living in a society.

    What you want is carte blanch to control the behavior of business operating in an ethical and legal manner. You do this for the sole purpose of control so that you can determine social outcomes.

    It is pretty simple and you and yours are pretty transparent.

  14. Otteray Scribe:

    ooooooh, rally scary stuff. No it is called hard ball politics and it is about time our side started playing by the rules you guys promulgated.

    You should have seen the outright lies and the amount of money spent to ruin the reputation of a decent republican in my district. It was vicious and it was hard ball. He cannot ever run again.

    I dont feel at all sorry for the Dems in North Carolina. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

  16. Only slightly OT. I have just been listening to Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh
    Air. She interviewed writer Jane Mayer. The subject was Art Pope and his political takeover of the state of North Carolina for the ultra right wing.

    This is some scary stuff. It explains people like Bron and his ilk and where they get their talking points. And why they are totally unswayed by logic and reason.

    http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141078608/the-multimillionaire-helping-republicans-win-n-c

  17. Bron,

    “Then it is simply the rule of law that you object to. Laws (restrictions and corrections on bad behavior and mistakes a.k.a. criminal law and torts) are part of the price of the social contract (which you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t understand).”

    The only scarecrows being built are by you. I was not arguing by analogy using serial killers to make my point at that stage, merely pointing out that your objection seems to be the rule of law as you fail to understand how it interacts within the social contact. Regulation of business is how society defines what is and is not proper business activity. That you chafe at the idea of regulation shows that you do not understand the role of the rule of law within the social contract. Regulation – proper, focused, objective and equitably applied – is required to prevent abuses by businesses who could under a laissez-faire model claim “we didn’t break the law, we’re not regulated”. And if a societal benefit means stopping a businesses otherwise profitable activity under penalty of law? Too damn bad. Law (rules) are what make the social contract enforceable and they have to apply to everyone. Even (and recent history would suggest “especially”) businessmen.

  18. As usual, Bron, when faced with an allegation you can’t refute, you change the subject. If, in fact, Gene had constructed a straw man of your position – as you say he did – then you would be able to explain how Gene had misrepresented your position (as Gene and I have both done to you on multiple occasions). Your unwillingness or inability to do this speaks volumes.

  19. Noah,

    I apologize (to you and everyone else who those remarks were not directed at) for my ad hominem remarks. For some reason I felt personally attacked on this thread and while I believe in the teachings of Jesus, if not his divinity, “turn the other cheek” is a hard one to live…

  20. Slarti:

    “Then it is simply the rule of law that you object to. Laws (restrictions and corrections on bad behavior and mistakes a.k.a. criminal law and torts) are part of the price of the social contract (which you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t understand).”

    I do not object to objective laws which prohibit people from harming their neighbor. He is saying I do, I am talking about decisions of normal law abiding citizens in the pursuit of their daily lives, not serial killers.

    I believe Gene has engaged in scarecrow construction.

Comments are closed.