Feinsteins Gun Control Bill

[hydrashok]

And so it begins....


WASHINGTON -- In the wake of Friday's mass killing at an elementary school in Connecticut, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that she plans to introduce an assault weapons ban bill on the first day of the new Congress.

"I'm going to introduce in the Senate, and the same bill will be introduced in the House -- a bill to ban assault weapons," Feinstein said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The shocking murder of 26 children and adults in Newtown, Conn., on Friday has sparked a national discussion on gun control, with mostly Democratic legislators saying laws need to be tightened.

President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law in 1994, but the measure expired a decade later. Democrats have tried several times since then to renew the ban, without success.

Feinstein called for the ban to be renewed after the mass shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater that killed 12 people and injured 58 others.

"Who needs these military-style assault weapons? Who needs an ammunition feeding device capable of holding 100 rounds?" Feinstein wrote on her campaign website. "These weapons are not for hunting deer -- they’re for hunting people."

On Sunday Feinstein laid out details of the bill.

"It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession, not retroactively, but prospectively," and ban the sale of clips of more than ten bullets, Feinstein said. "The purpose of this bill is to get... weapons of war off the streets."

Feinstein would not comment on whether President Obama had failed to lead on gun control. "He is going to have a bill to lead on," she said.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...p_ref=politics

[Destrier]

One might think, that in order to write a bill of such importance, one might need to educate themselves on the topic. However, she still is unable to call it a magazine.

[hydrashok]

While I'm all for preventing more shootings, I don't know why it has to come at the detriment of law-abiding citizens. The following is a post from another board where I am a member, I find it quite accurate.

"But, there is a bigger gorilla in the room that no one is talking about. Why do they want to "ban" guns. To save the "children"? To prevent murder? To lower the crime rate? No...

The political class of the other side sees the same facts and statistics to which we all have access. While your average cognitively impaired leftist hippy might actually believe banning guns will reduce crime, the average intelligent authoritarian statist does not. They KNOW banning guns will have no significant impact on violence. That's NOT why they want guns banned, and we all know it. They'll never publicly state why they really want guns banned.

They believe in the "virtue" of authoritarian statism, morality to them is set by "authority" and authority is not perfected without power. Total power is perfect "authority", perfect morality. As uncomfortable as it might make some people feel the 2nd amendment is there so citizens can defend themselves from the state. Our founding fathers were wise men. This makes authoritarian statist very, very uncomfortable. It doesn't fit the long-term plan. An armed citizenry is a potential challenge to authority, and that simply won't do.

It's the gun in the room.

Which is why I don't give a rat's ass whether YOU are personally "conservative" or "liberal" anymore. The only thing I care about is your position on statism. Your stance on authoritarian government. If you believe "legal" = "moral", that laws make any action "right". Then I believe you are sadly mistaken, and a statist. Frankly, you're part of the problem. Singing patriotic songs, flying the flag, knowing all the worlds to the Star Spangled Banner, loving apple pie, and Ronald Reagan does not automatically redeem you."

[Streck-Fu]

Very good article from the Canada Free Press....But then, we already knew this: LINK

If you’re the biblically minded sort, then the trouble began when a jealous Cain clubbed Abel to death, but if you’re evolutionarily minded, then it’s a ‘chicken and egg’ question. Violence had no beginning, except perhaps in the Big Bang, it was always here, coded into the DNA.

If people are just grown-up animals, more articulate versions of the creatures who eat each other’s young, and sometimes their own young, there is as much use in wondering about the nature of evil as there is in trying to understand why a killer whale kills.


But debating how many devils can dance on the head of a pinhead is largely useless. We are not a particularly violent society. We are a society sheltered from violence. No one in Rwanda spends a great deal of time wondering what kind of man would murder children. They probably live next door to him. For that matter, if your neighborhood is diverse enough, you might be unfortunate enough to live next door to any number of war criminals, all the way from Eastern Europe to Asia to Africa.

The issue isn’t really guns. Guns are how we misspell evil. Guns are how we avoid talking about the ugly realities of human nature while building sandcastles on the shores of utopia.

The obsession with guns, rather than machetes, stone clubs, crossbows or that impressive weapon of mass death, the longbow (just ask anyone on the French side of the Battle of Agincourt) is really the obsession with human agency. It’s not about the fear of what one motivated maniac can do in a crowded place, but about the precariousness of social control that the killing sprees imply.

Mass death isn’t the issue. After September 11, the same righteous folks calling for the immediate necessity of gun control were not talking about banning planes or Saudis, they were quoting statistics about how many more people die of car accidents each year than are killed by terrorists. As Stalin said, one death is a tragedy; three thousand deaths can always be minimized by comparing them to some even larger statistic.
The gun issue is the narrative. It’s not about death or children; it’s about control

The gun issue is the narrative. It’s not about death or children; it’s about control. It’s about confusing object and subject. It’s about guns that shoot people and people that are irrevocably tugged into pulling the trigger because society failed them, corporations programmed them and not enough kindly souls told them that they loved them.

Mostly it’s about people who are sheltered from the realities of human nature trying to build a shelter big enough for everyone. A Gun Free Zone where everyone is a target and tries to live under the illusion that they aren’t. A society where everyone is drawing unicorns on colored notepaper while waiting under their desks for the bomb to fall.

After every shooting there are more zero tolerance policies in schools that crack down on everything from eight-year olds making POW POW gestures with their fingers to honor students bringing Tylenol and pocket knives to school. And then another shooting happens and then another one and they wouldn’t happen if we just had more zero tolerance policies for everyone and everything.

But evil just can’t be controlled. Not with the sort of zero tolerance policies that confuse object with subject, which ban pocket knives and finger shootings to prevent real shootings. That brand of control isn’t authority, it’s authority in panic mode believing that if it imposes total zero tolerance control then there will be no more school shootings. And every time the dumb paradigm is blown to bits with another shotgun, then the rush is on to reinforce it with more total zero control tolerance.

Zero tolerance for the Second Amendment makes sense. If you ban all guns, except for those in the hands of the 708,000 police officers, the 1.5 million members of the armed forces, the countless numbers of security guards, including those who protect banks and armored cars, the bodyguards of celebrities who call for gun control, not to mention park rangers, ambulance drivers in the ghetto and any of the other people who need a gun to do their job, then you’re sure to stop all shootings.

So long as none of those millions of people, or their tens of millions of kids, spouses, parents, grandchildren, girlfriends, boyfriends, roommates and anyone else who has access to them and their living spaces, carries out one of those shootings.

But this isn’t really about stopping shootings; it’s about controlling when they happen. It’s about making sure that everyone who has a gun is in some kind of chain of command. It’s about the belief that the problem isn’t evil, but agency, that if we make sure that everyone who has guns is following orders, then control will be asserted and the problem will stop. Or if it doesn’t stop, then at least there will be someone higher up in the chain of command to blame. Either way authority is sanctified, control or the illusion of it, maintained.
We’ll never know the full number of people who were killed by Fast and Furious

We’ll never know the full number of people who were killed by Fast and Furious. We’ll never know how many were killed by Obama’s regime change operation in Libya, with repercussions in Mali and Syria. But everyone involved in that was following orders. There was no individual agency, just agencies. No lone gunman who just decided to go up to a school and shoot kids. There were orders to run guns to Mexico and the cartel gunmen who killed people with those guns had orders to shoot. There was nothing random or unpredictable about it. Or as the Joker put it, “Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying.”

Gun control is the assertion that the problem is not the guns; it’s the lack of a controlling authority for all those guns. It’s the individual. A few million people with little sleep, taut nerves and PTSD are not a problem so long as there is someone to give them orders. A hundred million people with guns and no orders is a major problem. Historically though it’s millions of people with guns who follow orders who have been more of a problem than millions of people with guns who do not.

[Streck-Fu]

cont......


Moral agency is individual. You can’t outsource it to a government and you wouldn’t want to. The bundle of impulses, the codes of character, the concepts of right and wrong, take place at the level of the individual. Organizations do not sanctify this process. They do not lift it above its fallacies, nor do they even do a very good job of keeping sociopaths and murderers from rising high enough to give orders. Organizations are the biggest guns of all, and some men and women who make Lanza look like a man of modestly murderous ambitions have had their fingers on their triggers and still do.
Gun control will not really control guns, but it will give the illusion of controlling people

Gun control will not really control guns, but it will give the illusion of controlling people, and even when it fails, those in authority will be able to say that they did everything that they could short of giving people the ability to defend themselves.

We live under the rule of organizers, community and otherwise, whose great faith is that the power to control men and their environment will allow them to shape their perfect state into being, and the violent acts of lone madmen are a reminder that such control is fleeting, that utopia has its tigers, and that attempting to control a problem often makes it worse by removing the natural human crowdsourced responses that would otherwise come into play.

The clamor for gun control is the cry of sheltered utopians believing that evil is a substance as finite as guns, and that getting rid of one will also get rid of the other. But evil isn’t finite and guns are as finite as drugs or moonshine whiskey, which is to say that they are as finite as the human interest in having them is. And unlike whiskey or heroin, the only way to stop a man with a gun is with a gun.

People do kill people and the only way to stop people from killing people is by killing them first. To a utopian, this is a moral paradox that invalidates everything, but to everyone else, it’s just life in a world where evil is a reality, not just a word.

Anyone who really hankers after a world without guns would do well to try the 14th Century, the 1400 years ago or the 3400 years ago variety, which was not a nicer place for lack of guns, and the same firepower that makes it possible for one homicidal maniac to kill a dozen unarmed people, also makes it that much harder to recreate a world where one man in armor can terrify hundreds of peasants in boiled leather armed with sharp sticks.

The longbow was the first weapon to truly begin to level the playing field, putting serious firepower in the hands of a single man. In the Battle of Crecy, a few thousand English and Welsh peasants with longbows slew thousands of French knights and defeated an army of 30,000. Or as the French side described it, “It is a shame that so many French noblemen fell to men of no value.” Crecy, incidentally, also saw one of the first uses of cannon.

Putting miniature cannons in the hands of every peasant made the American Revolution possible. The ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution would have meant very little without an army of ordinary men armed with weapons that made them a match for the superior organization and numbers of a world power.

At the Battle of Bunker Hill, 2,400 American rebels faced down superior numbers and lost the hill, but inflicted over a 1,000 casualties, including 100 British commissioned officers killed or wounded, leading to General Clinton’s observation, “A few more such victories would have shortly put an end to British dominion in America.”

This was done with muskets, the weapon that gun control advocates assure us was responsible for the Second Amendment because the Founders couldn’t imagine all the “truly dangerous” weapons that we have today.

And yet would Thomas Jefferson, the abiding figurehead of the Democratic Party, who famously wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”, really have shuddered at the idea of peasants with assault rifles, or would he have grinned at the playing field being leveled some more?

The question is the old elemental one about government control and individual agency. And tragedies like the one that just happened take us back to the equally old question of whether individual liberty is a better defense against human evil than the entrenched organizations of government.

Do we want a society run by the flower of chivalry, who commit atrocities according to a plan for a better society, or by peasants with machine guns? The flower of chivalry can promise us a utopian world without evil, but the peasant with a machine gun promises us that we can protect ourselves from evil when it comes calling.

It isn’t really guns that the gun controllers are afraid of, it’s a country where individual agency is still superior to organized control, where things are unpredictable because the trains don’t run on time and orders don’t mean anything. But chivalry is dead. The longbow and the cannon killed it and no charge of the light brigade can bring it back. And we’re better for it.

Evil may find heavy firepower appealing, but the firepower works both ways. A world where the peasants have assault rifles is a world where peasant no longer means a man without any rights. And while it may also mean the occasional brutal shooting spree, those sprees tend to happen in the outposts of utopia, the gun-free zones with zero tolerance for firearms. An occasional peasant may go on a killing spree, but a society where the peasants are all armed is also far more able to stop such a thing without waiting for the men-at-arms to be dispatched from the castle.

An armed society spends more time stopping evil than contemplating it. It is the disarmed society that is always contemplating it as a thing beyond its control. Helpless people must find something to think about while waiting for their lords to do something about the killing. Instead of doing something about it themselves, they blame the agency of the killer in being free to kill, rather than their own lack of agency for being unable to stop him.

[Streck-Fu]

I do not like the President's statement: LINK

Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is the price of our freedom?"

He vowed to "use whatever power this office holds to engage our citizens ... to save another child or another parent or another town" the anguish of Newtown.

[Roguish Lawyer]

I thought the guy left his Bushmaster in the trunk of his car and used two pistols . . .

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Roguish Lawyer

I thought the guy left his Bushmaster in the trunk of his car and used two pistols . . .

Let's not confuse the leftist hyperbole with facts.

TR

[afchic]

As I am sure most of you have, my husband and I have been talking about this a lot this weekend. We have included our kids living at home in the discussion. They are aged 28, 24, and 15.

The problem never has been and never will be guns. Unfortunately it is crazy people having access to guns. And the reason that is possible is that it has been decided institutionalizing sick and crazy people is inhumane, and too expensive. So many of the institurions that used to do this have been closed. There is no place to put them, and sadly no one willing to say someone needs to be placed in such an institution.

We are never foing to be able to plan for every eventuality when trying to protect our kids. But as parents we can begin to be honest enough with ourselves to understand when our kids needs help. Apparently there is enough evidence that has been gathered at the mother's house that expalins why this young man did what he did. How did the mother not see there was a problem, or why did she chose to ignore it? I am sure more will come out in the next few days.

Pay attention to your kids. Stick your nose in their business. Know what is going on with them. And above all love them.

[Paslode]

Originally Posted by Roguish Lawyer

I thought the guy left his Bushmaster in the trunk of his car and used two pistols . . .

Most of the stories I have read corroborate the 2 pistols and the Rifle in the car story line. But I also read somewhere he may have had as many as 4 pistols and there were .223 casing found on the school premises.

And Reuters is now reporting that he had hundreds of rounds in Hi-Caps, he carried the rifle into the school and left his shotgun in his car.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8BD0U120121217

The news on this appears to be heading to the journalistic dump.

[GratefulCitizen]

Originally Posted by afchic

The problem never has been and never will be guns. Unfortunately it is crazy people having access to guns.

I disagree.
Given certain circumstances, a lunatic in an SUV could wreak significant havoc.

The problem is cultural rot and lack of moral restraint.
Lunatics are a symptom.

[PSM]

If Frisco (they hate us calling it that) was as gun free as DiFi would like, nobody would know her name.

Pat

[hydrashok]

The fact that children were killed changes the entire scenario. While I don't disagree that this was a truly horrible incident, it also allows the dims to paint anyone who doesn't agree with their agenda as someone who does not care about the welfare of children. The effort needs to be focused on the reform of mental treatment not guns.

[trvlr]

Virginia Tech: Pistols
Most of the Elementary School Shooting: Pistols

Sen Feinstein's Response: 'We're moving forward with the assault weapons ban...'

It's laughable. Unfortunately, passed bill or no we will see more of these incidents. I'm just glad they're not trying to blame it all on "violent videogames" this time.

[Badger52]

FBI monograph, a backdrop to a current BAU quick-ref guide being circulated that cites 10-13 year old information. (Reno was the AG at the time, sorry for that image.)

The monograph seems to take a wider examination and discusses contributors, e.g., the kid rules the roost at home, denial by those close to the shooter, other community factors, etc.

In the following regard, from its opening, it would appear not much has changed in what people write:

News coverage magnifies a number of widespread but wrong or unverified impressions of school shooters. Among them are:
• School violence is an epidemic.
• All school shooters are alike.
• The school shooter is always a loner.
• School shootings are exclusively revenge motivated.
• Easy access to weapons is THE most significant risk factor.

A wide-range of issues may foster the initial situation. As seen in Clackamas, OR (and VA Tech) the first appearance of resolute armed push-back seems to hasten the shooter to their end-game and, in my estimation, saves lives.