Guest Editorial
BY ALAN KORWIN | JUNE 11, 2014
Clever new approach – Disarm women
The lamestream media told you that following a horrible gun tragedy we've got to do something about the guns the entire public owns. It became clear eventually that three people were shot on the far left side of the country, by one crazed madman, who first stabbed three people to death, then killed one with his car, before committing suicide.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that once again, we only glance over gun policy while dancing in the blood of victims, because anti-rights bigots – and there are many in high places – know that then emotions might trump reason and they will get what they want. That is, more power in their hands (they don't have to disarm) and less power in ours (we would in all sorts of creative ways).
If we looked at other times, we might deal with facts and reason and get somewhere – stopping crime and balancing power.
So here's a completely fresh idea – a thought experiment like what scientists use – for ending crazed-maniac shootings in public.
Let's disarm all women – that's half the population – and see what happens!
That way, at least they can't shoot anyone. It's at least worth a try. We have to do something.
Our thought experiment demonstrates that this obviously won't work at all. But it does establish one critically important element we often overlook.
The problem clearly is not the fact that so many people have guns (about 300 million by some estimates, many of them women). Disarming at least half the public – a massive, expensive (and unconstitutional) endeavor, will have zero effect, right?
You'd have to disarm the right half of the public! I'll get to the fact that the anti-rights people are crying out for background checks (not disarmament, so far), in a minute.
To fix the problem, then, it's obvious, you just have to disarm all the men! Hmmm. Now that's not going to play well at all either – but for entirely different reasons.
So this brings us to the nub of the problem, and the end of the thought experiment.
This is not about background checks or registries or safety devices or gun types, is it?
You could do all that stuff to the female half of the country, and nothing would change. So maybe we could even leave them out of the scheme! It would cut the infringement by half. But if you try to single out the males, well, you can start to see why there is so much resistance, not from civil-rights groups, though they're in it up to their percussion caps, but from the body politic itself.
Laying entanglements over the entire United States of America, to stop a handful of psycho-maniacs who have only recently started acting out, is grotesque. That level of massive government infringement, to accomplish that admittedly important goal, is as astonishing and bizarre as most of what the NSA, or the VA, or IRS, or the BATFE (which would run this campaign) is up to these days. Do you really seek more of what they do? Is that how you solution this problem? Should we try it out on the women first and see, and then go to the good ole' boys?
That little thought experiment (a favorite tool of physicists) clarifies something. America has always been bristling with guns. Always. You used to be able to buy guns through the mail from ads in comics. It's true. I saw them when I was a kid. Guns were sold mail order by Sears and cash-and-carry at hardware stores. Guns are much, much harder to get these days, except in ghettos (www.gunlaws.com/GunshotDemographics.htm). So it can't be the availability at all, that's decreased. Changing that – the Left's battle cry – only inflames owners and freedom advocates. It's something else. It's ...
"Why are people exploding in public and going on killing sprees with knives, guns, cars, even poison?" That's the question we have to answer.
We have heard the answers but we, especially the political Left, don't like hearing them, and reject them or disclaim them:
The increasing coarseness of society in general. The constant drumbeat of acceptable mass murder in mass-market entertainment. The constant murders on TV at night. The promotion of copy-cat murder. Advertisement of psychotic murder in the so-called "news" media. The glorification of the perpetrators. The so-called "games" sold to kids to train them in how it's done, for home and portable use. The removal of religious morality in public that provided a yardstick, and would scold people for such immoral thoughts and behavior. The lack of father figures in homes. The broken homes from government dependence programs. The failure to discipline children. Punishment by the state for disciplining children, at home and in schools. Indiscriminate drugging using powerful psychotropic agents. This is a partial list.
Did I mention any you haven't already heard a bazillion times? Did you reject them all mentally, or did you embrace the list? Did you mentally fall back on the media's anti-rights mantra, we need to do something already – like background checks ...
Another loophole in the background checks mantra
We've been all over the loopholes already – it's really a gun-registration bill (http://www.gunlaws.com/Page9Folder100up/PageNine-122.htm). No one's required to conduct the checks, it bans private sales, criminalizes simple errors, it's a federal jobs program, only aimed at the innocent, omits criminals, and those points don't matters here.
But regarding crazed maniacs – did you fail to think it through, just like them? Since that great background plan omits the 300 million guns people already have, how will this do something? Correct, it won't.
Do you remember when the media handler's holy grail was a magical five-day waiting period, which they've since abandoned? It was just as worthless/meaningless for solving the problem. Let people get guns in five days, then hope they don't go postal for the rest of their lives?! Made no sense whatsoever. Cooling-off period for a psycho-maniac with guns? Only a mental case would bet on that. It's a thought experiment (again) demonstrating that the people suggesting these things cannot think clearly about the subject.
And do you even remember our real problem and real question here just five minutes later? Q: Why are people exploding in public and going on killing sprees? That's the question we have to answer.
Now, since we know people are exploding and are getting tons of publicity for doing so and since we know that nothing we do in the next 12 hours or 12 days or 12 anything reasonable is going to stop them or protect us in the mall, would you, yes you, want a gun – if the guy next to you started shooting the people next to you? From my email list, I can hear a lot of “sh!t yes.”
What if it was a Muslim jihadi who despises you and America, like the ones Mr. Obama just released, and he decided to bring the Nairobi mall strategy to a mall near you?
No? No gun for you? That's fine. I'm completely against forcing you.
What about me? That's for me to decide. If you want to decide for me, and insist that I can't be armed to protect myself – that's an act of violence against me. You would be forcing me to be a potential victim, using law to enforce your will on me. You would deny me my firearm by force; it would not be a voluntary thing.
I categorically reject any legal or moral grounds you may think you have to harm me that way. Even attempting to deny my civil rights in that manner violates federal law, dusty old laws that need refreshing, with your blood (it carries the death penalty if death results, 18 USC §241, 18 USC §242, et seq.). Visit http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 and http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242
Any effort to diminish or restrict my rights, as part of a $50 million effort by a rich guy (Michael Bloomberg) to harm a civil-rights group in Fairfax, Va. (the NRA, the leading gun-safety-training group in the world), is highly suspect if you ask me. Why does he mainly come out of the woodwork in the midst of tragedy? Is he willing to face me in public debate, without tragedy to fuel irrational emotional responses and deal with the issues? I'm ready.
