Tag Archives: assault

JUSTICE FLAYED

Hatred, anyone can see, is imPrudent.  In some circumstances one can understand anger, as when a person of color appears to have been mistreated or, God forbid, killed by police for no good reason.  Obviously his or her family has good reason to be angry in such a case.  His or her friends have a “right” to be angry, too, one could allow.  “Justice” is the correct call… in every instance, but lately by some process that translates into destruction of American culture and political existence.  How? Prudence wonders.

It takes a long-term plan, a lot of work… like a political campaign, and money – it takes money.  People are not born haters, we must be carefully taught.  Part of our social troubles… or dissolution, is our tendency to paint with broad, angry brush strokes.  It used to be if an Irishman were inebriated it was because “…those Irish are all drinkers.”

If an Italian pulled a fast one on you, then  “… those Italians are all like the Mafia.”

Frenchmen are all great lovers and they all have mistresses.  Scotsmen are cheap.  Germans are all rigid and militaristic.  Used-car salesmen are all liars.  There are dozens of similar generalizations.  These are prejudices.  They seem not so bad when applied to ethnic or economic distinctions… not nearly as bad as for racial distinctions.

Yet there are people who judge whole “racial” groups based on prejudice from anecdotes and half-truths and expressed hatreds, as well as from official, legal special treatments, real and perceived, based on popularized, but largely meaningless racial victim-hood.  In this sense, government is the worst offender for dividing populations by so-called, “race.”

“Blacks are too stupid to do…” whatever was in question.  “You can’t depend on Chinamen.”  “White people are racist white-supremacists.”  Almost everyone is guilty of some form of “group-think.”  That is, that individuals may be understood by virtue of their “group identity.”  This is diametrically opposed to the ideals of the Constitution.  In the ostensible American system, everyone is equal under the law.  Therefore, laws should be written for individual application, not racially or ethnically or for any other “group” connection.  Color-blindness is a virtue for a free people.

Governments, for the most crass, self-serving (politician) reasons, have proven themselves incapable of resisting group-identity codification.  They attempt, and intend, to garner votes by doing favors legally, legislatively for various groups, undermining the greatest strength of our Constitutional republic.  What a crappy way to damage one’s own nation.

These largely inaccurate distinctions are an easy building-block for generating hatred for groups, and, by natural distillation, for individuals within that group.  Automatically, that hatred is reflected back on the originating group and its individuals.  Great, great restraint and moral strength is needed to resist an easy slide into hatred and prejudice.  Religious teaching helps here, particularly Judeo-Christian teachings and the Bible.  It is instructive that those who would tear down the Constitution and the family-centered culture it protects, are doing their damnedest to dissolve Christianity, too.  Rainbow flags weren’t enough.

Where does the money come from to pay rioters, BLM agitators and Antifa thugs… busing or flying them around the country, covering living expenses and raising funds to bail them out if arrested while looting, committing arson, assaults and an occasional murder?  Is it surprising that, literally, Democrats provide it?  Millions of dollars flow from Democrats and Democrat-supporting corporations like Apple, Amazon, Nike, Microsoft and others who donate multiple millions to various Black Lives Matter-connected foundations and others.  Other Democrats donate and encourage others to donate money to bail criminals out of jail.  Why would people on the Left do such a thing to their own country?

It is what leftists do.  We are no longer contemplating the arguments of left-of-center liberals as to how we can organize America better for everyone.  We are watching socialists and avowed “Marxists” of all colors who are organizing total disruption – first of cities, by rioting and grabbing “reparations” for the “community” by looting and burning, then states by confusing and changing a perfectly good voting system, and ultimately the United States, again by confusing and changing voting procedures to reduce election certainty, and by destroying faith in our system of government by distorting economics and the justice system… possibly by stealing elections.

Back to “justice.”  In MOST instances, the offending police officer or officers are dealt with properly and prosecuted as he or they should be.  Some are in jail.  But not all are appropriately sanctioned, and anger toward a closed, obscured process is well justified.  What should relatives and friends do to seek real justice?  Here’s the list that lately is providing popular choices:

Protest loudly and publicly in large groups, vilifying all police.

Throw stones and bricks at police who are trying to maintain order during the protest.

Burn a police car

Burn a store or restaurant near the site of the use of excess force by the offending officer(s).

Bring in Antifa and BLM to rile up ever larger crowds.

Shoot explosive fireworks at police.

Pull down or deface a statue that honors someone few if any in the crowd know much about.

Assault, or worse, whoever is wearing an article of clothing that offends somebody in the crowd.

Force police from one of their buildings and burn it down.

None of this, obviously, generates “justice” for the victim of a perceived crime, but spreads INjustice across the lives of as many people as possible.  How does this bring even a sense of justice to the family of the original victim?  Maybe our erstwhile leaders could institute something like the following:

First, legislation that requires police agencies to provide a comprehensive, public report no later than 5 days from the date of the questionable incident.  This report could not include any statements of judgment that could distort other legal actions or suits.  The same legislation should include a strict limit of, say 20 or 30 people who are permitted to stage a protest during those 5 days; more than the right number would be apprehended and fined.

Political leaders would call for a 5-day cooling-off period and offer such help as would be accepted to the family of the “victim.”  No public funds could be diverted to any advocacy groups not related directly to the family. This process, however, must be free of admissions of any guilt or responsibility by the municipality or agency before the public report is made.  During the 5-day waiting period groups could apply for permits for demonstrations to follow the waiting period, that may or may not be granted in some form.  Beyond that, demonstrators will be strictly contained and arrested for actions outside of the parameters of issued permits.  Public safety and the civil rights and private property of others are paramount.

Being “really angry” is no excuse for rioting or stealing things or setting fires anywhere.  Municipal leaders: WAKE UP!

Shooting Back

gun-316890__180
The second amendment is also an area of increasing logical failure. And factual failure. The killing of innocents is a crime no matter how much news is generated. When a group of innocents are killed, and the news multiplies, along with public upset, and the killer has used a gun to do the killing, there is no longer room for common sense. All gun owners are blamed… and responsible.

Guns are objects, mechanisms, machines. None does anything until intimately directed by a human. Ahh, but they facilitate the doing, don’t they? Any sane proto-murderer would blithely discard whatever hatred, passion, ill-will or socio-pathology that may have bubbled up prior, when faced with the lack of a firearm. Right?

Well, no, silly, but at least he or she won’t be able to kill as quickly as he or she might with one of those… those… scary-looking GUNS. For Heaven’s sake, use your head!

Maybe that’s right; how silly of me.

On the other hand, Timothy McVeigh managed to quite efficiently eradicate 168 of our fellow citizens and injure nearly 800 more without a single bullet or gun to fire it.

Oh! Be serious! An act like that takes a lot of planning and preparation. Most gun-involved deaths are spur-of-the-moment acts of passion or stupidity. There’s no point to be made bringing up Oklahoma City.

You know, you’re probably right… if your point is how the government can make it harder to be an efficient killer. In fact, that is where the argument is, isn’t it? If we can somehow make murder by amateurs harder to do, we’ll save a few lives. And, as any person who shrinks from the silhouette of a scary assault rifle will quickly tell you, “If it saves only one life of an innocent child, it’s worth it!”

Maybe that is sufficient reason to lop off a chunk of the Constitution, but I’m not so sure. To start with, look at the nature of past and proposed gun bans and their possible positive impacts.
The 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” had a nebulous impact on U. S. so-called “mass murders.” A stricter ban in Australia appears to have had a more significant effect on multiple-murder events, there, but a single statistic does not a story tell. There are so many social-demographic differences between Australia and the United States that a far broader analysis is needed before we should try to set public policy (and Constitutional subversion) based on an apparent impact on a very different population.
Most of the parameters of the “ban” were derived from the appearance of the weapons, and not their functions. The one key exception was the size of the magazines, which could have a limited role in inhibiting a mass-murder. How would that work?

Suppose the situation were like that at Newtown, Connecticut. A sick, twisted, bent-on-mass-murder dope breaks in to a purposely gun-free school. Instead of a 20 or more cartridge clip, he is limited by the availability of no more than 9-shot clips. So, he brings 2 extras, with one in the rifle. As soon as the first few shots are fired, everyone is scrambling to save him or her self or to protect the kiddos. No one is charging at the murderer. When the clip empties there would be a brief quiet period – but very brief: maybe 5 seconds while the clip is popped and a new one inserted and the slide pulled to “cock” the rifle again. The next 9 shots will fully terrorize a grade-school staff that is not only ignorant of firearms, but who fear them, firing or not.

Murderous dope will get his 27 shots off with no problem. If that Newtown numbskull had more clips he could have walked to another classroom and murdered some more people. He shot himself when police arrived, evidently acting out a suicide ritual he had long contemplated.

So the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” would have made no difference unless the rifle, itself, had not been available at all. In all likelihood, the difference would have been that the murderer would have made more shots with pistols. One can imagine that in lieu of a large-magazine rifle, our knucklehead would have brought maybe 3 or 4 handguns and equally terrorized the school’s population with 20 to 30 bullets fired slightly slower than with a scary-looking Bushmaster. No one there was prepared or equipped to challenge him, either physically or psychologically. Dope’s mom could have prevented the tragedy by keeping her legal firearms away from her known-to-be-disturbed son.

Essentially, all the non-NRA proposals that have spawned from the Newtown tragedy will have one basic effect: children in school buildings will be left defenseless, but, since murderers will eventually be a bit less efficient, a few fewer kids will be murdered than otherwise. Hopefully, mom and dad, your defenseless kiddo will be one of the lucky ones.

Those who are aiming at complete confiscation of all but BB guns, could, if their hare-brained concept ever comes to pass, conceivably save most of the TWO hundred lives lost to non-drug, non-gang, non-criminal gun events each year. They might prevent a few suicides, too, and consider the loss of freedom well worth the cost.

What they won’t prevent are the tens of thousands of criminal gun events, because criminals don’t register their weapons and can hide them fairly easily when the Gestapo comes looking for them. I hope that no one reading this is looking forward to living in a country that can even attempt to confiscate private property (or forcibly buy-back) from tens of millions of owners. It’s the same country that doesn’t enforce the gun laws it has now.

All plans for restricting guns and their law-abiding owners can be seriously considered only by putting on blinders to some serious, serious reality. There are many myths that liberals and those further left, continuously proclaim as truth, and which all the people that matter believe. Here are a few:
• The presence of guns will spur an increase in gun accidents, stupid gun crimes, and random, foolish shootings. The opposite is what reality is, in fact.
• Attackers will take a defender’s gun and use it against him or her. This happens extremely rarely, and can be made even rarer with proper education. Rare means a literal handful of times each year. It is more common that unarmed defenders wrest weapons away from attackers.
• Gun deaths increase, overall, because of the availability of so-called (ie. “scary-looking”) assault rifles. In truth only about 6% of shootings involve such weapons, and not even 6% of deaths. Most deadly shootings are done with handguns, often with small calibers.

Finally, the far more important statistic, the far more life-preserving and crime-preventing statistic is this one: EVERY YEAR IN THE UNITED STATES, PRIVATE FIREARMS ARE USED IN SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 830,000 AND 2 MILLION DEFENSIVE EVENTS. Most of these involve no discharge of the weapon, but not only lead to hundreds of thousands of apprehensions, but prevent many tens of thousands of other violent crimes because perpetrators encountered an armed defender, leading to arrests. The logical argument is that we could not enjoy a civil society without private gun ownership.

The only truly effective change that should come from Newtown, Aurora and other such murders of defenseless innocents, would be to teach gun safety and handling to every child, starting around age 8 or 9, including proper self-defense. Teach it right in public school. It is certainly more productive and worthy than lesson plans based on homosexuality and gender-identity problems. Worse, they teach kids how to have sex “safely” in far too early years. There are thousands more lives ruined with pre-marital sex by kids, than by guns. Taking away the unalienable right of self-defense, and damaging the Constitution in the process is a “solution” that deserves the very highest skepticism and suspicion.

Stupid is as stupid does.