Posted on 09/04/2009 4:46:54 PM PDT by Still Thinking
I don't like the term "gun crime"--crime is crime, and while crimes, of course, vary in heinousness, that variance is not a function of the criminal's equipment. The term is useful here, though, because today's discussion is about "crimes" that are only "criminal" due to the fact that guns are involved.
An example is perhaps called for. Take, for instance, laws--such as California's--prohibiting faux "assault weapons." A violator of such a law need not do any harm--need not, indeed, intend any harm, but intent to do harm is irrelevant to the forcible citizen disarmament lobby--all that matters is that the violator is a "gun criminal."
In Jeff Snyder's brilliant A Nation of Cowards: the Ethics of Gun Control (required reading, if it were up to me--I know it isn't--for anyone who wishes to argue either side of the "gun control" debate), he explains the concept of "fighting crime by creating crime."
Stated simply, the laws CREATE crimes in order to STOP crimes. English common law distinguished between crimes that were "malum in se", or morally wrong in themselves, like rape, murder or robbery, and crimes that were "malum prohibitum", wrong because prohibited by a legislative pronouncement.
So, to how many layers of laws against behavior that is not, in and of itself, harmful are we to be subjected? Lots, if the Brady Campaign's Dennis Henigan has his way.
Gun shows are a primary venue for these no-check sales. A licensed dealer who was selling at a Texas gun show recently complained, "I have had people that failed background checks, and yet they are carrying guns out of here that they bought from someone else."According to the "enforce current law" argument, we should allow criminals to exploit this loophole in the background check system, but devote more enforcement resources to tracking down the criminal after he has the gun. Doesn't it make more sense to prevent the no check sales in the first place?
This Spring, in a little over a month's time, over 50 people were killed in mass shootings in the United States. In virtually all of these incidents, the shooter either attacked police officers who already were "enforcing current laws," or the shooter committed suicide after the rampage, strongly suggesting that "more enforcement" would not have deterred him.
By that approach, every gun law is "a good first step" (indeed, those are words you will here at the passage of every gun law). Every such law, even if infallibly enforced, accomplishes nothing on its own--it is simply a tool to make compliance with other laws more easily enforceable.
Henigan succinctly explains what the "gun control" lobby's approach is to more "gun crime"--more gun laws! With the new gun laws, we have yet more "gun criminals," and thus more "gun crime," so the "good first step" (the most recent "first step") must be followed up by a second step (but they won't call it that). And so on ad infinitum.
The Brady Campaign does things like if someone is arrested for having marijuana and they also own a gun calling that a gun crime...even if said gun was not on the person at the time of arrest.
Like a tree, if you hack enough chips out of the trunk, the tree eventually falls.
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Like when MADD got Klinton to lower the national DWI level to 0.08 (I assume shenanigans took place with the MADD of Sinkmaster’s choice). Then the year after the threshold is lowered, guess what? Lots more violations, which MADD touts as “Increased Incidence of Drunk Driving” with no mention of the changed in definition!
Brady Campaign’s new slogan “Almost as honest as MADD”
Laws didn’t stop criminals yesterday an laws won’t stop criminals tomorrow.
Punishment is only solution.
If justice won’t be served in the courts then it will be dealt on the street.
My opinion....stay safe
A it's a 'DIY' world now out there. Stay well ................ FRegards
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