Bloodless Coup

I think you're right about this being mudslinging, but at the same time I can't exactly see Obama in shorts playing basketball or with a beer in his hand watching a game. He just looks like a nerd, and I know, there have been some great nerds like David Souter, but get real. There are Muslims selling newspapers who wear a suit less often than Obama.

And he did himself no favors with us Southern gun nuts by suggesting that Hillary Clinton would go duck hunting with a six shooter. It's called a shotgun. If you're going to suck up to us, at least be a true nerd and take the time to research it so you can get the terminology right. Although you know it is difficult to see how someone can support the DC law banning keeping a gun in the home and at the same time support the 2nd ammendment, the right to keep and bear arms. But ussens aren't so smart, and easily confused by bright lights and nuance.

A presidential candidate who wears a suit - shocking.

Obama has made the no-tie thing a real fashion possibility in ways it wasn't previously, so that way he's a "regular guy". And whether or not you can see it, he plays basketball on a regular basis.

And no Democrat is going to win Louisiana Mo - much less its "Southern gun nuts". It's not remotely surprising that a guy who represented Chicago is going to have a different record on guns than a "Southern gun nut". But I think it's probably also a stretch to think that he'd think what's appropriate in Chicago or DC should apply nationwide.

"And no Democrat is going to win Louisiana Mo"

13 points, and he couldn't even figure out the definition of is. But I guess the current contenders have to overcome the legacy of the W, so it makes sense that they're down by about ten points or so.

Uh, screenwipe, new scene - 1996 and 2008 are not the same world or election cycle. Silly me for thinking you'd note I was using the present tense.

Yes, if you look at the last 50-odd years 3 Democrats have in the past won Louisian - Clinton, Carter in 76 and JFK in 1960. But I wasn't talking about the past. In the current world the only way a Democrat will win LA will be if s/he posts such a crushing national victory that Louisiana falling into the Dem column won't make a bit of difference to the election's outcome.

"Uh, screenwipe, new scene - 1996 and 2008 are not the same world or election cycle."

You're absolutely right, the Democrats are running against (as you love pointing out) the most unpopular President, so why aren't they doing better? They should be up by double digits, since as you say they've won the state three times in the last dozen elections; and if they're not, just maybe it has something to do with the Democratic candidates and their desire to punish everyone just to make sure people at the top don't make quite as much money.

And where do you get the idea that Barrack thinks gun laws that should apply in DC shouldn't apply in red state country? As I recall, he's running for national office. And when the Dems won in '08 they claimed a national mandate for all their policies, not a regional one. So is your assumption about Barrack's limited ambition toward gun restrictions based on what he said, or on something he didn't say? All I've read from him is that he holds guns responsible for violence rather than holding individuals or communities or government educational systems responsible for violence. It's not that William Ayres is teaching our children, it's that government hasn't banned guns yet.

I'm not even sure why I'm engaging such ridiculous points but:

1) Actually the Democrats are running against John McCain, who's much loved by the people and the press. If they were running against George Bush it would be a different matter. Though of course the fact that their nominee will likely be a black man would likely boost Republican prospects in parts of the country like Louisiana - even if Bush were the Republican nomine.

2) "All I've read from him is that he holds guns responsible for violence rather than holding individuals or communities or government educational systems responsible for violence." And your point on this is ... making shit up. It is not remotely factually accurate. Oh, and the idea that Democrats think they have a "national mandate for all their policies" is just nutty. Would Democrats likely pass federal gun legislation? Sure. But we've seen federal gun laws under Republican leaders too. And given how pro-gun rights a lot of Democrats in Congress are, I don't think those laws are likely to be tightened much, if at all.

You say: "And your point on this is ... making shit up."

Actually it's you who are the [Michael Moore] maker uppers:

"I don't think that we can get that [licensing and registering gun owners] done. The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers. The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers. As president, I intend to make it happen."

"We've got to make sure that unscrupulous gun dealers aren't loading up vans and dumping guns in our communities, because we know they're not made in our communities."

Why is it he keeps calling gun dealers unscrupulous? You do research coding leaders by the words they use, so you know the significance of stereotyping all gun dealers as unscrupulous. He's not calling the community or drug dealers unscrupulous, he's painting them as the victims of a failed system:

"I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer's lobby. But I also believe that when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels someone disrespected him, we have a problem of morality."

It's not the drug dealer that's failed morality, it's morality that's failed to the drug dealer. Classic, and typical of modern liberalism.

You say:
"Though of course the fact that their nominee will likely be a black man would likely boost Republican prospects in parts of the country like Louisiana - even if Bush were the Republican nomine."

Who's going back to before 1996 now? You do realize that in our fair city we just elected a black mayor in an election in which more whites turned out that blacks, right? And are you trying to say that Obama's getting most of the black vote for reasons besides racist identification but that racism will be the only conceivable reason someone white would vote against Obama? People are smart when they're with you, but they're racist when they're not?

Oy. He isn't saying gun dealers are unscrupulous - he's referring to unscrupulous gun dealers. Did you pass English? [Yes you did, but c'mon). He's specifically separating unscrupulous gun dealers from gun dealers as a whole.

And I find your reading of that drug dealer line similarly weird. Looks to me like he's saying indiscrimate shooting on the basis of being disresepected is the problem - so ... how is that not the fault of the shooter (whose morality is that which is leadering to the shooter)?

And to your last point - oh puh-leeze. I said no such thing. I am merely noting that in some areas of the country McCain will do better than he otherwise would b/c of racism. Given patterns of racism in the country it'll be no great shock if parts of Louisiana and parts of WV (which will thereby affect the vote totals of both states) are two such areas.

And to close - in the above you have failed to show I was "making shit up". And I still find it utterly ludicrous to assert that Obama thinks guns are responsible for violence in the country.

You write: "And I still find it utterly ludicrous to assert that Obama thinks guns are responsible for violence in the country."

It's the Chicago attitude:
CHICAGO - An outburst of gunfire rattled the city during the weekend, with at least nine people killed in 36 separate acts of violence. The shootings were reported from Friday until Monday morning, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said Monday. They included gang shootings, drive-by attacks, and even one case in which someone used an AK-47 to shoot up a plumbing supply store.
Police Superintendent Jody Weis blamed an excess of guns and gangs.
"There are just too many weapons here," Weis said Sunday. "Too many guns, too many gangs."

Now, if Obama's consistent, he'll call for an immediate timetable for withdrawl or open negotiations with Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.

Perhaps you, unlike everyone else on the right who's ever condescended to try, can explain to me -- in lieu of fashioning yet another incoherent strawman argument that, as silly as it is, you still can't even knock down -- why the right thinks registering guns is bad, or why having an instantaneous background check for convictions of crimes of violence is inconsistent with the law-abiding gun ownership they so readily tout. And before you go off crying "privacy" (a word one won't hear you or anyone else on the right spouting when the privacy right at issue is people's right to do as they choose with their bodies), or anticipating the coming revolution (mind you, the very name conservative defies the notion of a revolution), recall and account for this much: I don't hear anyone on the right decrying automobile registration; physician licensure; surveilling and maintaining files on law-abiding citizens who are interested in the wrong topics or political groups.

Cry privacy when you can model it to fit how the right really behaves, and to fit your own disparate set of beliefs. Or else come up with another basis to explain to me why that one deadly instrument should be sold out of the trunks of cars (gun shows, if you prefer, but with no monitoring it's the same difference) to any child-felon with ready cash .

Guns don't kill people, people kill people, sure. But people kill people more frequently and more cavalierly when guns are in ready supply. And anyway, the same people ___ people is true of cars. Terrorist cells. Teh gays. Roe v. Wade. None of which stops the right from supporting the regulation or eradication of each.

Seriously, Morris. Give me one good reason for the disconnect or else shut the f*%k up about guns already, because you make even less sense on this topic than you usually do. The right's so-called "stance" on this is as bizarre as Heston's conduct was toward the end of his life. His excuse was Alzheimer's. What's yours?

The right thinks registering guns is bad because, historically, situations where governments have a detailed list of guns in civilian hands haven't worked out so well for the civilians. Ask the Australians and Brits about that one, for starters.

Or watch Red Dawn! (if I remember it correctly ...)

I never saw Red Dawn. But the concern is real, and deep, and supported by recent precedents in modern, ostensibly democratic nations.

Oh I didn't mean to make light of it. I just love a chance to play the Red Dawn card.

And yeah, personally, I find registries kind of creepy and unsettling, though I also understand why the state and parts of society like them.

and what does history say about registries regarding cars? granted, we have only 100 years to play with, but i fail to see why we can't anticipate the same problem with that deadly instrument, which is every bit as crucial to the coming revolution (wolverines!) as the hand gun will be.

educate me, a lowly lawyer. how did gun registries hamstring the flourishing societies in england and australia? if this sounds ignorant, perhaps it is -- educate me.

Moon writes: But people kill people more frequently and more cavalierly when guns are in ready supply.

I thought you would have heard of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy?
"Whether gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates. Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime."

Or maybe you're a typical Streisand liberal who thinks saying shut the f- up means not having to say you're sorry when you're WRONG? Sick burn!

And your other argument is with the NRA. I believe in background checks, and if you're running these checks on particular guns, you have de facto gun registration. Yes, as Jacflash points out, it has a troubling history, but post classical liberals have the best of intentions. And without instant background checks it would be a lot easier for illegal gun markets to thrive, and these don't exactly help the defensive gun owners' cause. I firmly believe that if the government started showing up at people's doors and started taking their guns, a lot of people would just happened to have recently misplaced them.

God, I miss Milius.

Well, gee, it could also be that not all correlational relationships are either causational or linear.

Moon, the short answer is that, within the last ten years, the UK and Australia have (with a few exceptions in the UK, fewer in AUS) banned the private ownership of firearms and rounded 'em all up.

If you think that's a net societal gain, you're entitled to that opinion, but that's why gun owners resist registration.

Wait, the Harvard Journal of Whosit? I have no idea what you're talking about.

If my problem were only with the NRA, it would be no problem at all. My problem is with supposedly thinking people on the right who, by and large, swallow the NRA's garbage whole. Or are Republican politicians deliberately making sure that the, ahem, marginal view of the NRA is central to their platforms based on an erroneous view of their base, in spite of alienating whom they somehow manage to hold election after election.

Clearly, in any event, I have no truck with you on this issue, and that's just fine with me. :-)

I am, however, still curious what ills befell our friends across the pond as a consequence of gun registration. Seems a fair question.

What Binky said.

If you think that's a net societal gain, you're entitled to that opinion, but that's why gun owners resist registration.

See, I view that as a perfectly good reason to object to, you know, people trying to round up and take legally owned guns. It's not, however, a perfectly good reason to reject a completely different, less draconian policy position, one that even the most ardent gun-owners would probably like a lot more if one of their children were killed by a gun that would have been traceable but for their chosen politicians' determination to preclude any measure that would have made that possible.

But then the same is true of any number of pro-lifers upon learning their 14-year old daughter is pregnant following a date rape.

Which is why I wish I saw more evidence of the Golden Rule in people's ideological positions.

Anyway, like Morris said, it's a far cry from registration to confiscation. But I'd go further: I'd require that every gun be fired, and its ballistics profile be entered into a searchable database before it leaves the factory floor. That, plus registration, would give the police somewhere to start in investigating every gun crime committed in the country. And while it would create the risk of false accusation, that could be substantially alleviated by creating a regime for reporting guns missing and stolen.

And before you object, it's how we do it with cars. If your car is implicated in a hit and run killing, you can bet the police will knock on your door first. Somehow, we manage to get by without too many people going to jail falsely accused on that basis, and I suspect that's how it would work out with guns, too.

And it still wouldn't prevent people from going out and shooting animals and targets and beer bottles and such.

"Ardent gun-owners" -- at least the thinking ones -- would be a hell of a lot more amenable to "reasonable" measures if everybody sat down and agreed that the Second Amendment guarantees a right to own such personal arms as would be suitable for militia service. The refusal of the Bradys et al to do that in the face of some pretty heavy-duty legal scholarship has made their motives very suspect, in the eyes of the gun-rights crowd, and convinced many that confiscation is (or at least was) the ultimate aim of the Brady Bunch and their allies in government.

Oh, and Moon, don't bother picking a fight with me over this. I swore off online gun-rights debates a decade ago for mental health reasons. I have been trying to explain the (reasonable, IMO) roots of these lines of thought in response to Armand's comment, not argue Morris's case (such as it is) for him.

Jacflash writes: "Ardent gun-owners" -- at least the thinking ones -- would be a hell of a lot more amenable to "reasonable" measures if everybody sat down and agreed that the Second Amendment guarantees a right to own such personal arms as would be suitable for militia service.

Well said, and no arguments here. Hopefully the Court will do that in June.

Moon writes: "Wait, the Harvard Journal of Whosit?"

That makes my day, thanks Moon.
It's the unfortunate nature of just about every lobbying group that they take the most extreme position possible, just look at Greenpeace or the ACLU or PETA. I support their ideals, but they sure make a habit of taking on extreme cases that go way beyond anything I'd support. The NRA never gets that far, so in a way its failure has allowed me to support it with a clear conscience.

Binky writes: "Well, gee, it could also be that not all correlational relationships are either causational or linear."

That's what she said, if it is causational or linear, more guns means less murder. In the article, she makes the valid point that if the relationship isn't causational or linear, the burden of proof is really on those opposing legal gun ownership to make their case, if we're going to be scientific about it. I confess that a willingness to be unscientific about it brings up the question of what really motivates gun control. It's kind of like the Dems making the case for raising the capital gains tax rate. When it goes against the common good, who benefits?

No debate -- merely the observation that at least as much equally rigorous, defensible scholarship suggests that the 2d Amendment created a collective right rather than an individual one. And more Courts of Appeals have so concluded to date.

Personally, I think the debate is silly, and has little to do with regulation, anymore than time / place / manner restrictions are incompatible with a broad first amendment right, and a dozen other constitutional examples of rights with regulation that very few find terribly objectionable.

You're still not explaining to my why what's true for cars shouldn't be true for guns, which is all I'm asking someone to do.

Show me the recent historical precedents for confiscation following auto registration and we'll talk.

Oh, and you're completely wrong on the "at least as much". Even Tribe conceded the individual-rights point, ages ago. With luck the big court will settle it for a while, soon.

"You're still not explaining to my why what's true for cars shouldn't be true for guns, which is all I'm asking someone to do."

If you're talking about the recording of ballistic information, having to train and be licensed (at a nominal fee, not a several hundred dollar fee) to carry one, punishing people for using them recklessly, I don't see a lot to object to. Of course, cars don't have a ban list, so I would assume that may work the other way. And are we going to start requiring a Toyota must have a certain number of US made parts, to fit in with current firearms restrictions?

In some states, Arizona comes to mind, registering a car costs hundreds of dollars a year. As for bans, you've heard the phrase "street legal," no? We ban cars too. As for U.S. parts, I'm not debating trade policy, so that's sort of irrelevant.

But once again, it sounds like we're on the same page (ballistics just being tantamount to a VIN number, really, since the VIN on a car is pretty impossible to get rid of from all of it's locations, which makes it more analogous to ballistics info than the removable serial numbers on guns). Which is cool.

Moon writes: "In some states, Arizona comes to mind, registering a car costs hundreds of dollars a year."

But of course there's no explicit Constitutional right to drive a car. We'd hate to end up with a de facto civil rights violation against people too poor to come up with a spare hundred dollars a year, right?

"We ban cars too."
Sure, when they're built for reckless use. I struggle to understand why the "assault weapons ban" forbade certain types of rifles because they had a pistol grip, for instance. That is a completely aesthetic reason for banning a gun, like banning cars if they have fuzzy dice. The bullet does the same amount of damage whether or not it has a pistol grip.

nor do the well-to-do have a constitutional right to be punished more leniently for powdered cocaine than for crack cocaine, but the fact remains. the one rationale ever offered in support of that ridiculous and patently racist (in effect) disparity is that a more pervasive culture of violence grew up around crack, hence it was more of a societal cancer. whether for aesthetic or practical reasons, the asserted basis for the pistol-grip thing likely is that those guns are more desirable to people using them in criminal enterprises. note, please, i'm not saying this is true, so a statistical refutation citing a single footnoted sentence from Gun Nuts R Us will have no effect on my speculation here, so please don't waste your energy. the cocaine thing is flawed, too, if for no other reason than the existence of powdered cocaine is a but-for cause of the existence of crack, which means it lies at the heart of whatever evils lurk in the crack trade and is equally worthy of draconian punishments in the name of deterrence. flawed doesn't mean untrue, though.

as for the constitutional right thing, ah, well, you're right that if there is an individual constitutional right to bear arms, then that is a distinction from cars. but cars are essential to our freedom of movement, which is a constitutional right, and precisely for that reason no state can impose unusual regulations -- say, requiring all vehicles to have four-point seat belts -- without running afoul of the commerce clause. and as a practical matter, no revolution is going anywhere without vehicles, yet no right wingers bristle at the imposition of onerous registration requirements as to cars. and that's been my point all along -- where's the outrage?