Demon Gun

Another shooting and once again another assault on our eardrums from all the usual suspects. Without any information on the incident, except that a shooting had occurred in an Asian venue, a chorus of Gun Prohibition furies immediately pounced on the opportunity to denounce "another act of gun violence."

The Democrats in particular jumped at the chance to be proactive about an issue that does not involve redistribution of wealth from their donor class or their uppper middle class base.

Not to be outdone, self-avowed "community leaders" joined in bewaling another "hate crime" that afflicted a "community" already under "assault." Hours after this denunciation sheriffs disclosed that the prime suspect was himself Asian.

After the usual denunciations Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan concluded by saying "Let’s wrap our arms around the community and put in the work to prevent these senseless acts of violence."

Yessss!!! Hear, Hear!! Enough is Enough !!!! BAN GUN

OK... but how does one prevent a "senseless" act?

The word "senseless" means "Destitute of, deficient in, or contrary to, sense ... foolish; unwise; unreasonable, absurd, ilogical, irrational, pointless."

The idea of prevention is to take logical and practical steps which are reasonably calculated to prevent a knowable occurrence; for example, using a condom, covering windows with plywood, and so on.

But something that is "senseless" is unknowable until it takes place. Before it takes place it exists in the universe of randommness. How is it possible to prevent a randomn occurrence? It is like trying to predict chaos.

The inane hysteria that emits from Gun Prohibitionists is reflected in the term "gun violence" which has convinced them that the "thing" at issue - violence - is something done by guns; that the gun is in someway the cause of the violence. That's the way adjectival nouns work.

To attribute to an object -- a cut piece of stone or a tree perhaps -- the ability to cause something is the core of all fetish totems and taboos. But that is precisely what Gun Prohbitionists have done, just the way their erstwhile predecessors attributed all evil in society to demon rum.

So now we have Demon Gun.

Guns don't act senselessly; people do. If people are acting senselessly the remediative efforts must be directed at the psychological, social and economic causes. Banning guns is to chase after a chimeral solution.

As to chimeral solutions, Sheriff Luna stated, "California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country... let's look across our nation and see what works and what doesn’t. I can tell you this - the status quo's not working."

And what precisely is the "status quo"? California has among the strictest gun laws in the country. Simply the list (not the text) of statutes prohibiting gun use, possession and regulation is three pages long. The state's "Assault Weapons Identification Guide" goes on for 96 pages. What more is left?

California's gun control regime has obviousely failed. It will continue to fail because it is blaming the stone for the hand that threw it.

CNN reports that "The gun wrestled away from the man in Alhambra was a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic weapon according to a law enforcement official." What can be said is that the gun is not listed in 96 page Identification Guide.

The Cobray M11 is designed to take 30-round magazines which are now illegal in California. (Penal Code 32310(c)) For some reason law enforcement had yet to clarify, as of this writing, whether the gunman had an illegal magazine or whether he used a legal 10 round magazine.

But it really makes no difference. If the gun or the magazine were illegal, it just goes to show how laws do not prevent crime. Laws can punish crimes, but why anyone in his or her right mind would think that laws prevent crime is beyond me.

If the gun or the magazine was not prohibited it just goes to show that California will have to ban all guns outright. "Mass shootings" are defined as those involving three or more persons. Anyone who thinks that a mass shooting cannot be accomplished with shotguns, revolvers or bolt action rifles doesn't know weapons. That it is easier to kill with a semi-automatic does not mean gun violence cannot be accomplished with non automatics.

Banning all guns outright which is what Gun Prohibitionists are really after and what they will have to do if they continue to pursue their Total Safety in Senselessness agenda.

Since when has prohibition worked? In the lead up to the 18th Amendment, ardent, monomaniacal prohibitionists traced all evil to Demon Rum. They assured us that once alcohol was banned "there will be world peace." I'm not kidding, I saw the film footage with my own eyes. The day after the amendment was pased the mafia was born in this country. And, speaking of crime, how's the war on drug working?

We laugh at primitive people who make a taboo of some Byanyang Tree, but gun-controllers are no different. They have a fear infused gun fetish. They are convinced that if they abolish guns they will have cured the psychological and socio-economic causes of senseless acts. Like all primitive fanatics they will trample on everything and anything in pursuit of their ghostly solution, including the Constitution.

Democrats have become the party of subversive insanity.

© WCG

EIGHT POINTS REGARDING GUN PROHIBITION LEGISLATION

1.    The Bill of Rights established Principles not Policies.

The Bill of Rights establishes existential principles that govern the whole framework of our social, political and economic life. It is to politics what axioms are to geometry. The Bill of Rights sets limits on what policies the government can enact. That's what “no law” and “shall not infringe” mean. As to the principles established, it is a "No Trespassing" sign.

2. The Bill of Rights does not need to be subject to any “Balancing Test.”

In law, “balancing tests” are used to factor in competing interests in forming legislation or arriving at judicial decisions. But the Bill of Rights is not a collection of legislative policies. The balancing struck by the Framers was the Bill of Rights itself. The convention debates and the Federalist Papers show, the Framers were very atuned to the benefits and risks of each and every provision of the Bill of Rights.

3. The Second Amendment is not about Guns.

The Bill of Rights was not concerned with objects but with human behavior in the social and political context. The Second Amendment is part of a triad of rights designed to insure raw popular participation in public affairs.  The Framers understood the risks of liberties and the dangers of tyranny and it was with those risks that they were concerned. They reserved three fundamental non-legislative, non-judicial, non-military popular rights:

(a) the popular right to assemble, to speak and to incite.
(as Justice Douglas wrote “all speech is incitement”)
(b) the right of a non-professional, popular and independent jury (as Justice Scalia wrote: “the jury serves as a circuit breaker.”)
(c) the popular right of individuals to keep and bear arms. (as Madison wrote, the right of people to be armed is the ultimate bulwark against tyranny.)

4. The Second Amendment's Purposes included Self-Defense.

At the time of ratification English and American law recognized the natural “right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.” (“1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England § 144 (1765) Of the Absolute Right of Individuals”). The existence of modern police forces does not abrogate that right because as a matter of law the police have no duty to respond and cannot be sued if they fail to. If the State cannot guarantee a person's safety it has no interest or business in taking away his or her means of self defense.

5. The Right to Keep & Bear Arms is not Dependent on Militia Service.

The argument that the right to keep and bear arms is "connected only to service in the militia" is patently absurd.  Do those who advance this rationale mean to say that Framers felt it important to protect the right of recruits to be issued arms upon enlistment in a militia?  Those who advance this argument have got it upside down, in England and in Colonial America, the army or the militia and policing all presupposed the existence of an armed citizenry. And it is precisely an armed citizenry that the Second Amendment insures.

6. It is not Relevant that the Framers did not “envision” Assault Rifles.

It makes no more sense to say that the Second Amendment should be revised because assault weapons were not envisioned that it would be to say that the First Amendment can be “modified” because the the Framers did not envision that propaganda power of modern mass media. What the Framers understood was that weapons of any sort can be used to inflict great injury against unarmed people, especially if taken by surprise. The Staute of Northampton, which was known to all colonists, prohibited riding with force and arms into a crowd in order to terrorize the people. At the time the statute was enacted a military style sword was a hardened steel razor blade that was capable of slicing through a neck or arm like a knife through butter. (That's why they wore steel armor.) In a crowded place it could kill several people in a matter of seconds. Did the Framers envision such a sword attached to a spinning rotary device? Who knows; but they understood the risks of armed anti-social behavior, including the killing of three or more people, which is the current definition of a so-called “mass” killing.

7. The Proposed Bills will not Address and Underlying Social Problems

“Gun violence”is an ambiguous noun-adjective that creates a rhetorical shibboleth which suggest that “guns” do harm to people. Actually guns do not do anything. They are inanimate objects. It is humans who do violence with, among other things, guns. Attributing causality to an inanimate object is to indulge in a primitive, fetishistic taboo. Cold, unemotional statistics show that most gun-related deaths are committed in crimes by minorities in their mid teens and twenties and in suicides by white men over age 65 which account for 55% to 70% of all gun related deaths. Suicides are not committed with assault rifles or high capacity magazines (unless it takes eleven rounds to blow one's brain out). The country has an elder suicide problem, and legislative efforts are better addressed at solving that problem.

8. The Legislation is a Dishonest Subterfuge that Discredits the Law

If Gun Prohibitionists want to repeal the Second Amendment, the Constitution provides them with the means to do so. The Framers made amendments difficult precisely because at issue are principles and not mere policies. Failing the ability to amend, and having their arguments rejected by the supreme judicial authority under the Constitution, the bills' proponents seek repeal by subterfuge, enacting regulatory measures that are so onerous and burdensome as to make compliance practically impossible. A parent who sets tasks or goals that are designed to insure a child's failure is guilty of abuse. So too when the power to regulate is used to destroy. Such clever subterfuges bring the law into contempt and will deepen political cynicism.


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