How Communist of her!
Posted on 12/19/2012 4:23:40 AM PST by Kaslin
PARIS -- Anyone who can't withstand a rational debate on the subject of gun control -- particularly in light of last week's Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut -- should be automatically prohibited from ever owning a firearm. In fact, this should be the number-one requirement of gun ownership: Can someone applying for ownership of a deadly weapon withstand an hour-long debate against someone in favor of gun control without resorting to physical or verbal assault?
Is it too much to ask that every person wanting to possess a firearm be subject to a battery of tests -- everything from intelligence and emotional quotient exams to a psychological evaluation and background check? When America's Founding Fathers drew up the Second Amendment, they didn't do so with the mentally stunted, emotionally disturbed and deeply insecure in mind. Back in their time, life was relatively challenging unto itself, and they must have figured that anyone who could survive day-to-day existence could surely handle a firearm if need be.
A question that has repeatedly come up since the Sandy Hook shootings is why America has so much more gun violence than other Western nations. The best explanation is that the Constitution defines and underpins culture. In fact, nearly every element in any Western democracy can be traced back to its constitutional roots.
The Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms, but in other countries -- Canada, for example -- the right to own a gun is not a given. The onus is on an individual to prove he's mature, competent and sane enough to own one. As a result, no one in Canada grows up thinking of guns as a natural appendage. Gun ownership is seen as a privilege one must earn. Is there really anything so backward about that? Or is it preferable to arm everyone and pray for the best?
Canadian law requires a license and a safety course in order to own, borrow or store any sort of firearm. Police conduct a criminal background check and a safety screening to ascertain whether an applicant has "threatened or attempted suicide, suffered from or been diagnosed or treated by a medical practitioner for: depression; alcohol, drug or substance abuse; behavioral problems; or emotional problems," or "been reported to the police or social services for violence, threatened or attempted violence, or other conflict in your home or elsewhere," or recently suffered a relationship breakdown, job loss or bankruptcy. If an ex-wife tells the cops that perhaps you are not sane, then too bad for you.
Such a regulatory process also means fewer guns floating around. But what if a criminal did happen to be packing heat? Would you wish that you had a weapon so you could have a movie-style shootout? No, you would swallow your pride and let him take what he wanted, then call the insurance company.
Believe me, I understand the acute frustration one feels when being robbed or otherwise victimized. I was mugged on the subway in Paris last year. We both could have had guns, but thankfully neither of us did in a country with tight gun control. (The perpetrator would have had the advantage of foresight anyway, while I would have fumbled around trying to find mine.)
So how can America go about fixing its gun laws? Well, it's complicated, because all the crazies are mixed in with the sane gun owners. Since there was no sanity litmus test at the outset, how about implementing mandatory license renewal complete with psychological evaluations and background checks? Anyone failing to comply with a basic psychological competency test should have his weapons revoked.
It would likely take at least a generation to better balance individual gun rights with everyone else's right to their own day-to-day freedom and safety, but the shift in cultural mind-set needs to start somewhere
Yesterday I heard Rich Wyatt of “American Guns” say that there is NO follow up if a felon or any other non qualified person tries to buy a firearm and is refused due to the background check!!!!!!!!!!!!
My answer to that was/is; SAY WHAT??????????????
Jared Loughner, if he was released today could walk into a gun store and try to buy a gun and when he is refused due to the background check, he DOES NOT get a visit by the authorities.???????
It’s amazing how incredibly stupid this column is.
I think it speaks volumes that in every one of these shootings, you see paramilitaries walking around the scene with AR’s. They’re not firing them, because the deed is already done. Since AR-15’s are good at stopping murders, and the paramilitary’s AR’s always show up too late, maybe more people should own them. I wonder why none of these murderers invade the places these dusty AR’s are stored.
Anyway, the problem isn’t too many guns, it’s not even too few guns. The problem is a culture that’s rotten. From the top of the head, even to the foot, there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. Decreasing or increasing guns won’t bind the sores up or mollify them.
Went to Canada last month for the first time. Lovely people but very much a foreign country. Even their currency looks like Slobbovian pezoozas.
So...this Canuckistani thinks it’s time to reeducate the masses, just like Janet Reno crowing that “America’s long love affair with the gun is over!”
That was after Waco, IIRC. Once again, the New Fascism is on the march, feeding as usual on the blood of slain innocents.
And how exactly does this apply to the likes of Adam Lanza?
Answer: It doesn`t. He stole the weapons from his dead mother.
I believe that I would fail the “Gun Inquisition” within about....let’s see.......in about 3 minutes before I beat the crap out of the Marxist Socialist interviewer.
Then I would ask “I failed the test didn’t I?”
It would not have mattered at all for the test is designed to make a person with “backbone” rail against the extremely liberal and stupid questions they would ask you.
To a leftist, "verbal assault" means stating a point of view contrary to their own.
I would suspect that the "someone in favor of gun control" would be much more likely to resort to physical assault within an hour, and I'm certain that before the hour is out they will have resorted to proclaiming the prospective gun owner as "racist". (That's just how leftists roll).
I don’t think it is racist to tell the truth. So here goes.
Alabama is 26% black, 2% hispanic, and 72% white.
We also have poor record as far as crime, health, obesity, education, income and other assorted statistics goes which sometimes causes our northern liberal friends to point fingers at us and laugh, calling us rednecks, hillbillies, dumb hicks, red staters etc, etc.
However, if you remove the 26% black from the statistics, we’d have crime rate of North Dakota, education level somewhere in the middle, we’d be much more healthy, less obese, and our medium income would be close if not at the national average.
This is true for the other Southern states with large black poulations.
Now, you can argue that this is a legacy left over from slavery, but it is still true. The idea that Americans are a violent people, and Southerners especially so, is simply untrue. It breaks down very much on a racial basis as to who’s culture is causing these statistics to be higher than Norway or Belgium or other countires that consider themselves to be more civilized.
As a US citizen working in Canada for the past 3-years and having worked with Canadians for the past 25-years, I can tell you everyone I talk with hates their restrictive gun laws and are jealous of my ability to own firearms.
Whenever one of my Canadian friends stops by my place in the Northwest, the first thing they want to do is go to the range.
So just because their restrictive gun laws are enforced doesn't mean they are appreciated or respected.
“Paris —”
France?
I stopped reading right there.
I COMPLETELY AGREE. Post of the day!
The French have strict gun control? What about the horrific shooting of little girls at a school in Paris by Islamists??? Boy, do they have short memories.
Can someone applying for ownership of a deadly weapon withstand an hour-long debate against someone in favor of gun control without resorting to physical or verbal assault?
Can someone in favor of gun control withstand an hour-long debate against someone that is pro-second amendment without resorting to physical or verbal assault?
How Communist of her!
Any time a firearms-related thread is created on FreeRepublic, please be sure to add the "banglist" keyword to it so that interested FReepers don't miss it. Just a suggestion.
Let Freedom Ring,
Any time a firearms-related thread is created on FreeRepublic, please be sure to add the "banglist" keyword to it so that interested FReepers don't miss it. Just a suggestion.
Let Freedom Ring,
Is there anything that is more a waste of time than "journalists" writing about guns? They're completely ignorant and don't care to know the truth.
“The Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms, but in other countries — Canada, for example — the right to own a gun is not a given. The onus is on an individual to prove he’s mature, competent and sane enough to own one. As a result, no one in Canada grows up thinking of guns as a natural appendage. Gun ownership is seen as a privilege one must earn. Is there really anything so backward about that? Or is it preferable to arm everyone and pray for the best? “
A lecture in basic human rights from a cheese-eating surrender monkey whose “revolution” wiped God and religion from public life and recognized tha all rights come from the state, lecturing a people who believe their rights as human beings are sacred as derived from God Himself and not from any acts by a guillotine crazed government of luddite iconoclasts.
Ahhh. I feel MUCH better!
Good question, Rachel, why don't you answer it?
Who does the killing in America? Are killers randomly spread through the society or are their concentrations in certain population groups. Basically, if you compare the White population in America with the White populations in other weathly countries, the murder rates are comparable.
Don't let PC blinders prevent you from answering your own question. You didn't answer it in your article. Do you have the courage to face the truth, Rachel?
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