This one is for Dylan Boswell, the shortest term facebook friend I’ve had so far.
I find it interesting that someone promoting the Zero Aggression Principle would have need of a weapon designed to kill people. It takes professional grade tolerance for contradiction to not see the hypocrisy in those two positions held together. How can you not be the aggressor while killing someone? You can wave your hands in any flim-flam manner you wish, but no amount of hand waving will change the fact that you are alive and the other person is dead at your hand. That is aggression, plain and simple. It’s excusable in certain circumstances, but you don’t get to kill people (outside of war) just because you want to.
So yes, owning a gun that carries the appearance of one designed to kill people signals the potential of aggression (openly carrying any weapon signals this to some extent) Ask the Somalis, the Afghanis, the Iraqis if they felt threatened when approached by people carrying those weapons.
…and yes, you are stupid for owning a Pit Bull. That breed of dog was carefully bred for aggression against other dogs, a stronger bite and stronger physic. As a dog owner whose dogs have been attacked by free-wandering Pit Bulls, more than once, I have very little sympathy for the cries of how gentle Pit Bulls are. They were made into weapons, to fight in a sport that mercifully no longer exists. I’m not certain that the breed has a reason to continue to exist.
Editor’s note. Don’t repeat common knowledge unless you have verified it first. Words to live by. Pit bulls do not have stronger bites, nor are they physically stronger. They are more aggressive with other dogs and this is especially true if they have had training to be aggressive with other dogs. Which means being trained to fight, what the pit in pit bull means. A pit fighting dog. Pit fighting still exists all over the globe. The extent that any dog is aggressive is quite probably correlated to the history of that dogs lineage. In other words, if your dog is the direct descendant of dogs that were bred to guard and/or fight, you will have a dog that is aggressive with other dogs and sometimes people.
Having a dog that you want to threaten others with is having a liability on the end of the leash you are holding. You should picture dollars flying out of your pocket. You don’t want a dog that bites. What you do want is a dog that follows instruction. A subtle but important difference.
This is for Steven Vandervelde who, in his infinite wisdom, decided to unfriend me in the middle of a conversation on his wall (conversation appended) I was in the middle of real life, of watching movies with family, when this conversation started.
I should have resisted commenting on his post (that was how I started the comment I had to abandon because of his actions) I have no fondness for trolls, and despise myself when I catch myself trolling. Still, I have to wonder if the conspiracy theorists understand just how nutty their words appear, when seen from outside the realm of the conspiracy initiated. The conspiracy initiated, the people who simply know that the forces of government are arrayed against them. In yet another example of my inability to keep myself from arguing with the terrified weapons holder (a phrase that should give anyone pause) I attempted to explain that it was completely rational to limit weapons to people who are trained and licensed to use and carry firearms. That there is no conspiracy at the UN to steal all our guns.
The UN exists exactly as I described in the appended argument. It was created specifically to echo the will of the victors in World War Two, it does what we (our government) tells it to. Everyone who isn’t part of the conspiracy knows this. No one is proposing that you should not be allowed to defend yourself. Even if they were, such a proposal would contravene centuries of US law and the founding documents of the government of the United States, not to mention the most recent decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570) which has reversed the presumption that you could legally render the population of the United States defenseless.
Can Not Be Done.
Not without changing the precedent, something that is quite rare. Let that sink in for a moment.
Before I leave this subject, I’d like to highlight another point. Recently the world was treated to a breath of fresh air commonly referred to as the Arab Spring. Third World regions such as the Middle East (my apologies to anyone who takes offense to this characterization) are historically the most despotic. They have some of the worst records on human rights, freedoms and most importantly gun ownership. Yet these people, officially unarmed by law, managed to overthrow several governments and change the course of the region, politically. What does that mean when it comes to the necessity of arms and the need to make government responsive to the people? For me, it embroiders an opinion that I’ve long held; that revolution need not be violent in order to be effective.
The US is obsessed with guns. We have been since Lexington and Concord. In the 1700’s, it was necessary to hold arms in order to be able to effect change. This adage was observed and utilized through numerous generations, and taken to heart by several successful dictators of the recent past, which the gunnuts (a term I use with the greatest of sympathy) have enumerated ad nauseum during the current debate about guns.
But that doesn’t mean that guns are ultimately of any use to those who hold them. It bears noting that Adam Lanza’s mother (who purchased the guns he used in his mass shooting) ultimately disapproved of the use he put her guns too after he killed her with them.
…and that really is the question before us. The people who are opposed to this discussion on the basis of the discussion itself want to frame the question completely differently; but the real question remains, “can we limit access to weapons and yet retain our ability to defend ourselves?” Experience and history seem to indicate that this is a viable possibility, despite the (nearly) insane rants of those who would have you believe that if the government keeps you from purchasing and owning an Abrams tank, they are restricting your right to defend yourself. That conversation continues, in spite of the insanity.
There is something about the arguments of the conspiracy minded, though, that inspired this entire rant. The paranoid, like a broken clock, is right at least once a day (twice a 24 hour cycle) and the paranoid among us are already onto the weapon that will be used against them.
It’s been suggested in a few of the previous conversations I’ve had on this subject, that the government was going to restrict access to weapons based on a judgement of sanity; that they would deem us all insane and thereby take away all our guns. I’ll give them partial credit here. There are people who have guns today who are (to establish a clinical judgment) completely nuts. Those people really shouldn’t have weapons, and I hereby approve of the government taking their weapons away from them, in furtherance of the safety of the rest of us.
You know who you are.
The rest of us, those of us who are quite sane, should probably welcome a discussion of what measures should be taken to limit access to weapons. After all, we’ve seen more mass shootings in the last few years than we’ve seen previously in history; if that knowledge doesn’t give us pause, then I guess it’s time to go buy those Bushmasters with 30 round clips, as well as the fallout shelters, a year’s worth of dry goods, a water purification plant and a good solar power system. Too bad there aren’t enough electric cars available on the market to make a self-sufficient system truly viable (the operation of a refinery being beyond the ability of a small group of determined individuals) much less there being no real investments to hold all those fake dollars we invented over the last few decades…
…But please, don’t let me dissuade you. They are coming for your guns. Go run and hide. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.
Here are the saved comments from the thread, text that I put aside before I was blocked, and I’ve further embroidered responses to them from the bare bones that they were in that thread. If they can block me and pat themselves on the back, I see little reason not to make myself sound smarter and righter than they are on my own blog:
To Obama, Feinstein, Biden, Schumer, Reid, McCarthy, DeGette, and the rest of weird, sick, criminal anti-gun fetishests …
I am saying no. I’m saying no to the weapons merchants, the profiteers and their defenders in government.
L Neil SmithAnthony, were you born a useful idiot, or did you have to take lessons? Go read some history. Victim disarmament is the all-important prelude to genocide — in this case democide. Go look at Agenda 21 and see what this government and the UN have in mind for you. 9/10 of the human population must die, in their view, the view of every top-level gun-grabber in the world, to save their lovely Mother Gaia.
I chose not to drink the conspiracy kool aid that appears to have infected the balance of libertarian thought. This is a fact-based observation, not an ad hominem. That it appears to be an ad hom is not my problem.
L Neil SmithAmerican Independence was the result of a conspiracy. So was the Federal Reserve System and the income tax. Look up “Jekyll Island”. Not to mention the Manhattan Project. Or the dirty tricks that kept Ron Paul off the ballot. Are you ignorant of what Obama’s death squads are starting to do? Better look that up, too. Holding your nose loftily in the air only make it easier for the badguys to cut your throat.
And you never answered my question
I did answer your question. The fact is that the UN does what we want it to do. It was designed to do what we want it to do. If you don’t understand that basic fact, there’s no point in addressing the various other fallacies involved in the conspiracy theories you allude to.
Steven Vandervelde if you actually had a point you certainly failed to make it, minus the ad hominem attack. Are you really that incapable of carrying on an intelligent discussion? Are we to suppose that you don’t support the right to self defense? Why do you call yourself a libertarian?
I don’t call myself a libertarian. Not anymore (not for quite awhile) Self defense? Self defense does not guarantee you a firearm, or else you’d emerge from the womb clutching one.
L Neil SmithI deal with them every day. Usually they’re cowards who simply don’t want to think about the murder and mayhem going on all around them. Or they’re too lazy to take charge of their own lives, which includes pulling their heads out and looking around. Natural-born Tories. Imagine one of them calling himself a libertarian!
Wonder what this guy is going to tell himself when Obama’s death squads become commoin knowledge.
Again I repeat, Not a libertarian. You gotta love the total lack of ad hom’s in their replies. So much more directly argumentative than my comments, not attacking the person at all. I really should try to emulate them I guess. Also, I’ve noticed a distinct lack of death squads since this back and forth occurred. Still waiting for them to appear.
L Neil SmithAnthony, I’m not sure I’d use the word “we” as promiscuously as you do. I agree that the evil fascist sum presently troubling us is widely distributed. I can’t tell which end is the dog and which end is the tail. The UN and the US government both approve Agenda 21. I’m not a part of the “we”, are you? I’ve written of UN officials and presidential advisers who agree that 9/10 of the population must be gotten rid of. I’m not a part of that “we’, either, are you?
I know that this is painful — it was for me — but get it through your head: you don’t live in Disneyland any more. You never did. The only way we’re gonna have the America we thought we had is to_make_ it, starting now.
Oh, and I don’t drink Kool-Ade. I drink Jameson’s.
I drink Kelt, myself. What alcohol preference has to do with a known cult reference is a matter of conjecture. I don’t think we should casually joke about the insanity of believing everyone is capable of handling firearms responsibly. That they can and do hold these beliefs without question is one of the hallmarks of cult-like thought.
Then you hear the knock on the door. They know. Four blue-helmets stand there, armed to the teeth. One of them hands you a slip of onion-skin reading “CITATION 36-H53.1: LEFT BATHROOM LIGHT ON DURING WORK SHIFT.” And without a word, you go with them. There’s no need to pack and no point in protesting. By nightfall, you’ll be farming wind at a Work Camp 100 miles outside of the city, and nobody will say a word about the new code-stamper at the factory on Monday. Because they don’t want to be next. And in the North American Continental Sphere, anyone can be next.
I hadn’t noticed that the conflict had gone viral. I hadn’t even noticed it had happened. Apparently Alex Jones went on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN and was typically Alex Jones. Weirdly, people were surprised to discover that Alex Jones was a complete nutjob. People were also weirdly surprised that a talking head with a British accent doesn’t like guns, almost as if they didn’t know that the United Kingdom has some pretty strict regulations on guns, which is why the United States adopted the second amendment, rightly or wrongly.
This is further evidence that,
I’ve never been happier to not be a watcher/listener of either of these idiot’s shows (or CNN in general)
That Alex Jones and a good portion of his followers are becoming dangerously deluded. Banning assault rifles isn’t coming for your guns. The assault rifle dressing on the weapon may be cosmetic, but it also might serve a purpose (too bad no one seems to be studying the subject in depth) and I would really like to ask the people who think they should have access to military grade weapons exactly which weekends each month they are spending training with their (state/locally organized) militias? I’d really like to get a serious answer to that question because it’s the part of the amendment which seems to be completely ignored. And:
It’s time to re-institute the fairness doctrine on bandwidths which are licensed from the FCC. If these panderers of vitriol wish to continue their paranoid rants, they should be required to balance their adrenaline feed hysteria with an equal number of hours of quiet mood music. Also:
Most Americans are complete morons when it comes to history.
I was sick of Alex Jones when he was running his public access channel here in Austin, and he should still be confined to that channel because his rants haven’t changed. If he warranted a larger audience, his communications skills and message should have improved. His is the same, old, tired, schtick that I’ve heard a thousand times. Piers handled him perfectly. “Oh, would you like more rope? Here, let me get that for you.”
On the other hand, everyone who is pro-gun simply skips over the parts of the Second Amendment they don’t want to address. If the State of Texas drafted every 18 to 40 year old tomorrow and started a militia as it was intended by the founders, there would be screaming all across the state. But that proper usage of the population for defensive measures is what the 2nd amendment establishes.
The fact that the federal government already limits access to other military grade weapons, and so can limit access to the assault rifles as well if it so desires. You want a semi-automatic weapon anyway? Buy one that isn’t dressed up to look sexy and sell to wanna-be soldiers or become one. A soldier, that is. Satisfying a need for defense (the finding in the Heller case) can be defined as shall-issue permitting for a weapon. This doesn’t mean there can’t be required training to go along with that permitting. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the exact type of weapon you want. Pro-gunners want this to be about banning all guns, because they win if that’s the argument. It’s not the argument being advanced.
I get it, no one wants to be defenseless. If these gunnuts (and I mean that in the kindest way) want to have 50, 100 guns, machine guns, rocket launchers, tanks, whatever, it’s completely within reason for the government to turn around (local, state and/or federal) and say “OK, if you want those weapons, insist on having those weapons, you will be trained and certified to carry those weapons, and you will do it in the following prescribed manner.” There is nothing in the Constitution that limits the cities and states from reconstituting militias of their own and requiring all citizens to participate and be trained. No matter what the Second Amendment meant historically when it referenced the militia. We aren’t living in history, we live in the here and now.
This image is for Steve Kubby, who chose to unfriend me over the double damned nerve of mine to laugh at his ridiculous images comparing discussion of weapons deaths in the US to Hitler celebrating the banning of guns in Nazi Germany. I invoked Godwin’s Law at the comparison. For that, and for the gall that I had in rejecting truther anomaly-hunting with a link to eye-witness accounts of the Pentagon impact, I was blocked. Then he commented on the status that the image was a prelude to.
Mr. Steele has issued a public statement whining about me unfriending him, even though he was told exactly why he was unfriended, before that action was taken. Moreover, he refused to view any of the video report which was the basis of our discussion. If his post is any indication, it would appear that Mr. Steele has a difficult time separating fact from fiction. Here is what he was told about my removing him from my list of FB friends:
“Apparently Mr. Steele has never heard of Operation Mockingbird or the revelations of the investigation by Senator Frank Church that proved the CIA can easily have stories published like the ones he offers as some kind of proof in support of the Government’s version. I went to his FB page and sure enough he is a gun grabber. How these folks ever end up on my FB friend list is a mystery to me, since I usually only accept friends I know or people who are friends of my friends. I doubt Mr. Steele is either and I am unfriending him.”
I’ve heard of most of what passes for an explanation in conspiracy fantasy circles. What I have always found startling is that people who are convinced that the government is incapable of doing basic services without constant help, can also manage to craft and keep secret the most complex conspiracy cover ups ever seen in history. It would take someone who is stoned most of his life to buy into the kind of illogic represented in these theories. Mr. Kubby is forgiven for this, because he has a medical need. I’m not sure all his friends qualify.
If all it takes to qualify as a gun grabber in Mr. Kubby’s book is being willing to admit that guns are far too available in the US, and that we as citizens of a free society should be able to discuss these subjects like adults and make decisions that improve our communities, then I will proudly wear that label.
Finally, since this is my fucking wall (and my comments remain public, unlike Mr. Kubby’s) I’d like to reiterate the salient point here. I friended Mr. Kubby ages ago because he was asking for support in his legal fight. His conversation then was about drug legalization, and I continue to embrace ending the Insane War on Drugs. I did not realize that there was a litmus test across all subjects that required that I agree with all his stands in order to be his friend. My friends know that I’m open to discussion of all topics and don’t pull punches just because someone disagrees with some facet of my political belief. A political movement, like libertarianism, either welcomes all comers and expands to encompass the views that align with it; or it withers and dies because those who self-identify as libertarian cannot bear to allow new people to taint the purity of the ideology. In the spirit of this truism, I have endeavored, always, to come to grips with what the average American seems to be concerned with, attempting to find ways to adapt the ideas of freedom and individualism to the changing world we live in.
Currently, there is a debate raging (and it is a real debate amongst real Americans, not some mock discussion foisted on us by the media in an attempt to disarm us all for take-over by the New World Order) concerning weapons in our midst that are a danger to us all, and what we should do about this. This is a real problem that will require real solutions. The ideologues and profiteers would prefer to leave things as they are; the ideologues because they see the course before us as the wrong direction and wish to move back in time, and the profiteers because there’s always money to be made from people who are afraid. I have consistently called foul on those who think that we can somehow move back in time; that there was some previous time that was better than today.
…and I really don’t give a damn about where the profiteers think they will find profit. I’m interested (as I’ve also said before) in how systems fail, and why, so that these errors can be corrected for the benefit of future generations. That outlook is what living in the here and now requires, not opining about what is ideal, and hoarding the diminishing political scraps that are all that remains of the movement created by our predecessors in libertarian circles.
That is the salient point. Growing with time, instead of shrinking with age. Something the LP should give some serious thought to. Mr. Kubby can go gnaw his bones of bitterness hiding his posts from public eye. Makes no difference to me if I meet his purity test or not. He’s the one who has to come to my wall and cast aspersions, not vice versa.
That was one of the links I posted that was related to the conspiracy fantasies that I found on Mr. Kubby’s wall. Conspiracy fantasies that (mercifully) I can now no longer access.
Back in 2017 I stumbled across the entry that the content of this article was pulled from on Facebook, and I linked a few more articles for Steve Kubby’s perusal, since I knew he would get a notification of the activity. Poking the sleeping dog is a thing that I find amusing, on occasion.
…but he never rose to the bait and then I forgot all about this little disagreement, until a few months ago when Mr. Kubby finally went through his messenger message requests and noticed that I had written him a message seven years previously.
The lapse was understandable. I only noticed that there was a thing called message requests a few years ago myself. I’m not sure when Facebook inserted themselves between me and people who wanted to contact me. I’m not even sure I care that they do that, I just wish they had bothered to tell me they were doing it before just going ahead and doing it. There are a bunch of people out there that I don’t want to talk to. Most of them that I know on Facebook are already on my ever-expanding block list.
Mr. Kubby isn’t on my block list because I remained hopeful that in a moment of sober contemplation he might understand just how crazy it is to believe that more guns will solve the problem of there being too many guns in American society. I still don’t know if that moment has occurred, because he only gave me the ubiquitous Facebook thumb’s up that could mean equal parts of I agree and fuck you. Which is the conversational equivalent of the Southernism “Well bless your little heart.”
My mystification for how to explain that thumb’s up took the shape of this article.
Which also got the cryptic thumb’s up in response. And so it goes. At least I finally put the two ends of the argument together into one seamless event. It is closure, after a fashion. Closure, like finally seeing the beginning of that movie that you’ve seen the middle of a dozen times on HBO. At least I know how it all began now. I can finally quit trying to figure out how the whole thing started and get on with poking the next sleeping dog.
I would like to have a conversation on the subject of gun control that doesn’t end with the armaphile clutching his AR-15 and screaming “You just want to take my guns!” Just once, I’d like to have that conversation.
(I think the sweaty guy holding onto his fetish object shouldn’t have it. The rest of you will have to wait on judgement. -ed.)
…but then I think the point of obfuscating intentions is to avoid meaningful solutions; in other words, gun owners do not want to have to be held to new and different standards.
The slightest hint that perhaps having twice as many guns per capita as any other nation on the planet is too many guns, leads to a charge of ban all guns. I had one guy suggest that I wanted government to dictate the un-invention of the gun in response to the suggestion that perhaps training should come with a gun purchase. I own guns. I have been a gun rights advocate on many prior occasions. This doesn’t mean I have to love guns more than I love my children, which is the attitude I get from a lot of gunnuts/armaphiles.
Very few people who haven’t been in the military themselves seem to know one end of their weapon from the other. But all of them are proud to be gun owners, more of a danger to themselves than to anyone around them. I’m sure a certain ‘gun enthusiast’ who had her own guns used against her was one of them right up to the moment that the guns she bought were used to kill her. That is what happened yesterday:
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
That is what happened to Nancy Lanza. She kept guns in an unsafe condition in her home alongside a mentally unstable child; a child that she educated in the use of these same guns. She got herself killed because of her stupidity. Not only did she get herself killed, she got all those other children killed along with her own son. She should never have been allowed to have weapons in her home. She should never have allowed her child near those weapons, much less trained him in their use.
But the response to this common sense observation is “You just want to take our guns! You want us all to die!” The response of those who hold anarchist/libertarian ideologies is completely off the charts when it comes to this subject. If, in fact, the requirement to satisfy you is that you have unfettered access to all types of weapons; then the only response I have is that the Second Amendment qualifies defense with well-regulated militia. So, if you want all those weapons, congratulations, you are in the army now. All of us are. Enjoy your weapons access, if you can prove your proficiency with them.
Federal gun control is not prohibited by the constitution. Not giving the citizenry the ability to defend themselves on an equal footing with criminal gangs is. That was the finding of Heller, for those who have a problem reading legalese. You have the right to defend yourself with a firearm in cities that had banned their possession outright. The rest of the field remains open, including whether or not we can require you to have training before purchasing a firearm and what kind of training that will be.
The militia is the how that training in safe weapons usage and storage is supposed to occur. The militia is all branches of the military as well as the catch-all of the unorganized militia (that keeps us all on the list of future drafts, in case you are wondering) which doesn’t exist in reality, only as a legal fiction. It’s not that the government owns the guns (although someone does have to buy them) it’s that the government controls the militia. Without the training, like teens in the car for the first time, we are a danger to everyone around us but an even bigger danger to ourselves. The militia should have (and would have, if it was recognized as a local arbiter for weapons control) the ability to deny access to weapons that a person has not shown a proficiency with, or has no training for.
If this were the 1780’s, and you used a Kentucky long rifle daily to provide food for your family, your proficiency wouldn’t be a question (although your training as a member of a miltia group would be) the same is not true for today’s more specialized weapons systems. Without training, at any time in history, you would simply not be allowed access to those weapons. It’s a simple fact.
The argument that the unorganized militia has the right to buy and own tanks and bombers as individuals is simply without merit, on the face of it. The same can be said of a good number of military grade weapons (the Bushmaster used at Sandy Hook, as a case in point) how those weapons are either collected up, or their owners certified in their use, or some other route altogether, is what the current discussion is about. It really isn’t about guards in the classroom or violent video games or allowing teachers and administrators willing to take on that risk the ability to defend themselves and their schools.
I think we’re about to get a lesson in what the federal government can really do in today’s world. I’m not sure I’m going to welcome it, either. The Second Amendment in no way should be read as a license to overthrow the government if we deem it to be tyrannical. This idea was put to the test just a few years after the end of the revolution. We call it the Whiskey Rebellion and it ended with the rebels surrendering to the federal army that showed up to explain to them exactly who had the power in the region.
This is still true today. The United States military has a presence in every state in the Union. There are troops wearing U.S. military uniforms, driving U.S. military vehicles and carrying U.S. military weapons in nearly every strategical position across the country. The country is theirs for the taking, if they want it.
We are all the government as well. I’m sure that’s a shock to a good number of Americans; especially the ones who think the government is our enemy. I find it rather fitting, since I observe quite frequently that we are our own worst enemy, and that we get the government we deserve.
…but then I really do appreciate deep irony. Government of, by and for the people. We are our government and we do hate ourselves. We lock ourselves up and we pay billions of dollars to ourselves so that we can kill ourselves in the streets of our own cities. We don’t need our military to kill us too, but we might get that as well if we don’t do something about all the other mindless killing that we do.
We are the government, because we simply are. The average citizen runs around in a daze daily (several of them are my friends, apparently) making up excuses as to why things are as fucked up as they are; when, if the population simply exercised the control, the will, that is theirs for the taking, the world could be transformed overnight. I have literally been waiting for 25 years for the American population to wake up to the fact of their own power. Apparently I will be waiting a good bit longer.
After learning as many of the facts of the case as I could back in November, I came to the conclusion that a no-bill from the grand jury concerning Joe Horn was the only result that would make sense under current law. Justice being what it is these days, it took 6 months to get here.
As with most things, the proof is in what his neighbors are saying, and they are pretty supportive. Of course, that might have more to do with the more recent killings in the area, rather than a specific desire to vindicate Joe Horn.
The broader picture was always my perspective. In order to protect against home invasion, it’s important that a property owner be confident that they will not be prosecuted if they use lethal force against intruders. Even to the point of shooting home invaders who simply walk across your property after breaking into somebody else’s house.
Yes. I would not bother calling 911 next time. Not if you are determined to use lethal force. Clearly that evidence can be used against you. In hindsight, it’s regrettable that the undercover police officer did not inform the 911 operator that he had arrived on the scene until after Horn had already exited the house to confront the burglars. Had Horn been assured that there were police on the scene, I’m quite certain he would have stayed in the house, and the two men would be serving time in prison instead of being dead today. But that’s not how it worked out, and reality is a bitch when it comes to 20/20 hindsight.
I called in to the Jeff Ward show myself (Dirty Harry was a cop, Jeff. Just FYI) when the subject of the no-bill came up Monday. Here’s the clip:
I’ll freely admit to being wrong (or at least unable to verify the facts) concerning the neighbors and permission to protect their property. If I was away on vacation, I’d appreciate someone like Joe keeping an eye on the place.
A 911 operator is not an officer of the law. You are not required to follow their instructions (remember the strip search calls?) Nor do we want to be.
Mr. Horn was not informed of the officer’s presence in the area until after he had already fired the shots and was requesting assistance. The police are not required to protect you or your property; “protect and serve” is written on the vehicles, but they have no duty to protect you personally. Look it up. This is why the DC gun ban was overturned last week; the individual is ultimately responsible for protecting his or herself.
Finally, addressing the audio clip, Ed baited me several times trying to get me to go “Dirty Harry” and say killing someone over a property dispute is OK. His final scenario (the one before they cut me off. No hard feelings, it’s entertainment) was “what if you were a security guard patrolling the property of a convenience store, and happened across two men stealing beer and Cheetos from the store after it was closed.” I think it’s safe to say that shooting someone in that scenario isn’t problematic. It’s dark and you don’t know if the men are armed. You are armed, and they are criminals who have just destroyed property and are making off with their ill-gotten gains. I daresay that exact scenario has happened within the last 24 hours somewhere in the country. At most the last month.
One of the neighbors in Pasadena said it best. Hang up the phone. There wouldn’t have been a problem in that case.
Postscript
There is no archive for most radio programming that I’ve ever discovered, and this is why the links to the full radio program that my phone call appeared in have gone missing from this article. That audio no longer exists, apparently. This is a serious oversight that needs to be remedied. We are losing precious detailed information about the state of human thought in this age at a staggering rate. Our descendents will look back on this time and curse us for our blindness to the need to preserve records.
I remain convinced that Joe Horn acted in self-defense.
On June 26, 2008, the Court rediscovered the Second Amendment. More than five years after six Washington, D.C. residents challenged the city’s 32-year-old ban on all functional firearms in the home, the Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the law is unconstitutional.
I’d like to offer a thanks to Rob Balen (who was subbing for Jeff today) for alerting me to the fact that the Supreme Court finally got a decision right. Having said that, I must observe that Rob Balen the food critic is a gun-phobe. I never heard so much whining over someone being allowed to have guns since the last time I heard someone begging not to be shot in a movie.
Someone should explain the danger to this Yankee carpet-bagger, when he goes South and tries to tell Southerners that they can’t be trusted with weapons. It’s going to rile some people up.
I was living in Austin when this tragedy occurred. I remember at the time wishing that a customer had taken the guy out. No one could wish harder than Suzanna Hupp.
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Militias are the people. Each individual person is a member of the militia. Guns equip the militia. Should we amend the constitution? Remove the second amendment and task government with our protection, empower the military as the only form of defense for the country?
If not, then each of us is responsible for our own defense, and the defense of our neighborhood/city/state. That is the way the founders intended for this to work. It’s about time the courts have acknowledged these facts.
Postscript
Heller itself may have been the correct decision as relates to gun ownership, but there is so much else that is being left unsaid in this post that I can’t imagine where to begin, even if I wanted to fix all the misconceptions apparent in this piece. Since I made a deal with myself ages ago not to erase old posts and simply make corrections through editor’s note, postscript or afterword, I’m left scratching my head just how to exactly paint the picture of my cognitive dissonance on this subject. I think I’ll start with a link to my 2013 article:
…in which I reverse pretty much everything I say above aside from appreciating that the Heller decision changes everything.
The tragically escalating numbers of mass shootings in the US over the last decade has left us all pretty much scratching our heads. A good number of what I considered allies as of the writing of this 2008 piece have become conspiracy fantasists in the true meaning of the phrase and have decided that any mass shooting that can’t be explained with the label terrorism is automatically a false-flag event. They are essentially turning themselves into the kinds of nut jobs that really shouldn’t be trusted with high-powered weaponry in the first place.
This development has left me without a place to call home on this subject. I do find some comfort in the writings of Jim Wright over at Stonekettle Station. Sadly he doesn’t see any end to this craziness either. For myself, I think I have written my last article on the subject of guns:
I don’t have anything left to say on the subject. I just want the senseless killing to stop. When the US itself gets tired of the bloodshed and settles in for a good old-fashioned discussion of what an American fix for this problem might look like, then we will see an end to it. Here’s hoping that self-reflection occurs sooner rather than later.
I’ve been waiting to blog on this subject until Joe Horn gets no billed by a Harris county grand jury (and if there is any justice left in the system, that’s what will happen) but it seems that this isn’t going to happen for a while.
I’m not going to go so far as to say that someone who shoots intruders in the back because they are stealing his neighbors property is a hero; but I will say that if you don’t want to be shot and have the system look the other way, then you probably shouldn’t engage in burglary.
I only wish that other incidents like this one ended as well for the shooters. Specifically Cory Maye, who remains imprisoned for shooting a police officer during a no-knock raid on the wrong house, and recently John White, who shot a man in his front yard.
While I am not proud of Joe Horn, I am proud of the fact that I live in a state where property owners can defend their property with lethal force if necessary. Thank you Texas for that little bit of justice.
One more statement on the subject, just to be clear. For all the hand-wringers out there who decry the injustice of Joe Horns actions; every time you open your mouths, what the rest of us hear is:
“what if I’m so desperate I have to turn to a life of crime, and someone shoots me in the back?”
There can’t be any doubt that the dead men were robbing the neighbors house; there also isn’t any basis for the claims that you must follow the directions of a 911 operator. Joe Horn was responsible for protecting the neighbor’s property, because he had explicitly agreed to do so. That he chose to use lethal force is completely within reason, and within his rights, given the situation. So, if you still just can’t bear to think about criminals being dealt with harshly, then all I can do is repeat the important point written above. Don’t want to get shot? Don’t engage in burglary. It’s a simple solution.
Found this article on the subject in the Dallas Morning News:
…But then another friend of mine told me that every occupation has an occupational hazard. A fireman can die in a fire. A coal miner can die in a mining accident. And a burglar can die in someone’s garage in the dark of night.
Dallas News – For gun owners, added protection – January 20, 2008
The NRA has called me several times over the last few weeks. It hasn’t really added to the problem of 10 or more calls from telemarketers that I get every day, maybe I just expect better from the defenders of the second amendment than to be harassed at home by their monetary fishing expeditions.
A few years back I responded to a survey that the NRA sent me and ever since then they’ve decided that I’m a great untapped fiscal resource. While I think it’s sweet that they thought of me, I have a little problem with them, and here it is. The NRA wants to protect hunting. Not the right to keep and bear arms, hunting. For the NRA the argument is only about the rights of gun owners to go out and shoot at animals as a sport, not about maintaining an adequate defense of the nation from enemies foreign and domestic. And that is a problem for me.
I’d give to the NRA if they only had the balls that they act like they have. If you want to know what I mean, drop by the GOA (Gun Owners of America) site and take a look at what they have to say on the issue of guns and gun possession, and then go and read the documents that formed the republic that was the US. Once you’ve done this you’ll probably begin to understand that hunting was never an issue for the framers. Oh, hunting was part of the deal, while you were out drilling with the militia you had to eat something, but they didn’t want the average person to have guns so that they could hunt deer on the weekends. The reason is, that an armed and trained population is a force to be reckoned with all on it’s own. The ability to stand up and say no when push comes to shove is something that keeps the power hungry at bay. Or it should.
This is the real problem with focusing on the right to bear arms as the key issue right here and now. The average man not just having, but being trained in the use of weapons is key to the deterrent effect. Outside of a few active militias, that training is sadly lacking. Without the training, guns in the hands of average citizens is a minor deterrent at best, which probably does more to explain the current state of the union than anything else. Without education, without an understanding of how and why things work the way they do, all our potential is wasted. A loaded gun just waiting to be misused. And misused it most likely will be.
Postscript
This was the first post I wrote on the subject of guns for the blog. While I’ve owned guns for as long as I can remember, I never felt much of a need to write about them. Living in the small towns that have been home for most of my life, I never met anyone who didn’t own a gun. In Texas there are few people, even in the cities, who don’t own firearms.
It was Austin where I met my first gunphobe (as opposed to a gunnut or ammosexual) someone with a pathological fear of firearms. Over the years I’ve met many of them, so I don’t doubt they exist.
But like christians insisting that they are persecuted when they can’t promote their religion everywhere they want to, gunnuts are convinced that they have to be allowed to display their favored fetish everywhere or they are being disarmed. This is the problem that has developed with the NRA in the years after writing this post. This always was a problem with the GOA (which has rightly run afoul of watchdog organizations that track hate groups) it just wasn’t recognized until after the court decision that allowed citizens to defend themselves with firearms wasn’t enough. After a dozen states and more had passed Stand Your Ground laws that have been shown to be horribly flawed pieces of racist legislation.
Disarming the population isn’t a solution to the violence problem, although it will reduce the number of gun deaths. People will still beat each other to death with bats, stab each other to death with knives. Looked at from a different point of view, giving everyone a gun will actually lead to more gun deaths. This is a statistically unavoidable outcome. It will happen as a simple side effect of there being more weapons in more hands.
If we pursued liability for gun miscreants as Jim outlines, mass shootings would rapidly become a rare occurrence again. It is too bad that not even the NRA can recognize their own rules anymore.
