San Francisco Approves Gun, Military Recruiting Ban

[vern_humphrey]

Arba Sicula:

I am speaking of concealed handguns, not arming a militia. There’s simply been no final interpretation by the SCt, so you can see it your way, and I mine. And we are joined by partisans on either side. I read somewhere that the NRA doesn’t actually want the matter to go to the Supreme Court because they’re genuinely fearful of losing, so they’d rather have it remain in legal limbo than be decided.

1. It’s in the Bill of Rights.
2. It says “The rights of the people.” Everywhere else in the Constition where it says “the people,” it means “the people.”
3. People did carry concealed firearms in those days.

Arba Sicula:

Yes, that might likely be so if I accepted your position as to the correct interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

What’s incorrect about reading the wording and the Debates? the idea of a “collective right” pretaining to the miliria only is a 20th Century invention – just like the right to an abortion.

 

[Arba_Sicula]

1. It’s in the Bill of Rights.

1. It says “The rights of the people.” Everywhere else in the Constition where it says “the people,” it means “the people.”
2. People did carry concealed firearms in those days.

If it were so cut-and-dried as you believe, there’d be no controversy over it. But, there is, and better minds than mine on both sides have used a lot of ink in support of their positions. So, right now, you (and lots of others) have your position and I (and lots of others) have ours. Mexican standoff for now, it seems.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Arba Sicula:

If it were so cut-and-dried as you believe, there’d be no controversy over it. But, there is, and better minds than mine on both sides have used a lot of ink in support of their positions.

People have used a lot of ink to support the idea that visitors from outer space regularly come to earth, too.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif
Arba Sicula:

So, right now, you (and lots of others) have your position and I (and lots of others) have ours. Mexican standoff for now, it seems.

As I suggested, do the Catholic thing and look at the whole picture:

1. Allowing concealed carry causes no harm – even the most rabid anti-gunners are reduced to arguing, “Well, it doesn’t help.”
2. Failing to go by the obvious plain wording of the Constitution leads us into quagmires like “abortion rights.”
3. Tactics used to circumvent one amendment can be used to circumvent others.

The safest thing for us all is to follow the Constitution using the plain wording and original intent. If we want to change the Constitution, then use the amendment process, not re-interpretation!

 

[Arba_Sicula]

vern humphrey:

People have used a lot of ink to support the idea that visitors from outer space regularly come to earth, too.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

True enough, but I’ll reserve judgment as to whether liberals and conservatives are as crazy as those people.

1. Allowing concealed carry causes no harm

Dubious conclusion IMO.

1. Failing to go by the obvious plain wording of the Constitution leads us into quagmires like “abortion rights.”

I’d separate abortion questions from those about guns.

1. Tactics used to circumvent one amendment can be used to circumvent others.

You presume circumvention.

The safest thing for us all is to follow the Constitution using the plain wording and original intent.

“Safest” for you in your position. I’m not an originalist.

 

[manualman]

koda, if you are still out there I have a response.

The “oil company conspiracy” is, quite frankly, another classic excuse for not taking responsibility for ones actions.

How did the EV1 electric car sell among Californians? Lousy. Because the best that industry could do at the time placed limits on consumers they were not willing to accept.

There are no magic bullets. People who expect to be able to run their AC all day, leave their computer on, heat the pool, etc. are total hypocrites when they protest new power plant construction. Wind power kills bird populations, hydro-electric kills fish habitat, coal makes acid rain, nukes make radioactive waste. There ARE no lily white alternative energy sources. Big oil got big because oil is amazingly cheap to turn into energy. It’s still cheaper than Evian for crying out loud!

Sorry, but my points stand. Banning the military from recruiting is just another example of wanting all the goods from life, but not accepting any of the responsibility for it.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Arba Sicula:

I’d separate abortion questions from those about guns.

Of course you would – to allow both to be examined together would show how badly astray we go when we allow this kind of interpretation.
Arba Sicula:

You presume circumvention.

Only because I speak English.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

“Safest” for you in your position. I’m not an originalist.

It doesn’t matter what you are – reality is external, not internal.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Arba Sicula:

Read the Amendment. It refers to the people’s (militia’s) right to bear arms, not to the individual’s. There are numerous law briefs available that support this position - as well as, I know, support for unabridged gun possession.

I ask again, how is it that the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights refer to individual rights but this one for some reason doesn’t? Don’t you find that odd?
Arba Sicula:

I’ll support every law that restricts the “right” to carry a hidden handgun in public, at least in my city.

So you hold anti-Catholic beliefs that an individual should not be allowed to have the means to defend himself and others for Part 3, Section II, Chapter 2, Article V, Paragraphs 2264-2265 of the “Official Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church” states that we have a GRAVE responsible to protect ourselves and others from harm.

Jesus, Himself, instructed His followers to protect themselves when He encouraged them to sell their outer garments in order to buy a sword (Luke 22:36-38; cf. 2 Corinthians 11:26-27 – a plain reading of the passage indicates that Jesus approved of self-defense). Here the “sword” (Greek: maxairan) is a dagger or short sword that belonged to the Jewish traveler’s equipment as protection against robbers and wild animals. Pretty much the equilavent of what a handgun is today.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Arba Sicula:

You consider carrying a gun one of the basic human rights. I don’t see carrying a concealed weapon as a right at all, I see it as a privilege. Just like driving a car, for example.

Do you consider being free from murder and serious bodily harm to be a privilege or a right? If you say that it is a right, then why limit the way in which a person can defend themselves?

 

[Philip_P]

vern humphrey:

As I suggested, do the Catholic thing and look at the whole picture:

1. Allowing concealed carry causes no harm – even the most rabid anti-gunners are reduced to arguing, “Well, it doesn’t help.”

It doesn’t help crime rates. I’m not convinced there’s no harmful affect in other areas. Two likely areas would be 1)gun-related violence and 2)increased cultural acceptance of violence as solution to problems.

For the first, one interesting question would be whether the percentage of crimes guns are involved in has been going up, especially in conceal-carry states. We know the crime rate overall has been going down nationally. Of crimes that are committed, though, has there been a change in the percentage in which firearms are involved? Anyone have this data?

On the second, cultural arguments are difficults to prove, but I would put forward that, in a society where the answer to a problem is “shoot it”, it’s not surprising that an accepted answer to the “problem” of an unwanted pregnancy is also “kill it.” In this view, abortion and gun violence are merely two sides of the same problem in American culture. If this is true, arguments over whether which is “worse” are pointless, as this fails to address the actual problem (American embrace of violence as a solution). You can’t get the right answer if you’re not asking the right questions.

 

[Philip_P]

vern humphrey:

1. Allowing concealed carry causes no harm – even the most rabid anti-gunners are reduced to arguing, “Well, it doesn’t help.”

Also, note that the drop in crime has been less pronounced in conceal-carry states. You could argue that liberal conceal-carry laws actually do hurt progress on reducing crime. In states with strict gun laws, the drop in crime has generally been doublethat of states with looser regulations.

 

[Jennifer123]

Hi-
Sorry to butt in here - the thread title attracted me first being that I live just outside SF proper.

I don’t have much of an opinion other than that I agree with gun ownership - if Katrina showed me personally anything, it’s that society is one hurricane, one earthquake, one natural disaster away from going completely beserk. I do believe that even though I think our personal possessions aren’t worth fighting over, as a woman I have to especially think of my safety in a way a man doesn’t. Anyway, I don’t even have to worry about an earthquake when I have drug addicts outside my patio screaming they are going to kill someone.

Anyway, I like this particular reference from this source:
fff.org/freedom/1095e.asp

"…consider that Madison’s original draft reversed the order of the elements: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country.” That sentence implies that the way to achieve the well-armed and well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state is to recognize the right of people to own guns. In other words, without individual freedom to own and carry firearms, there can be no militia. (“Well regulated,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers , meant well drilled and disciplined.)

How do we know that the “well regulated militia” is defined in terms of an armed populace and not vice versa? The syntax of the sentence tells us. Madison and his colleagues in the House of Representatives chose to put the militia reference into a dependent phrase. They picked the weakest possible construction by using the participle “being” instead of writing, say, “Since a well regulated militia is necessary. . . .” Their syntax keeps the militia idea from stealing the thunder of what is to come later in the sentence. Moreover, the weak form indicates that the need for a militia was offered not as a reason (or condition) for prohibiting infringement of the stated right but rather as the reason for enumerating the right in the Bill of Rights. (It could have been left implicit in the Ninth Amendment, which affirms unenumerated rights.)

The House reversed the elements of Madison’s amendment. That changed the emphasis, but not the meaning. In fact, the reversal made it a better sentence for the Bill of Rights. As adopted, the amendment begins by quickly putting on the record the most important reason for its inclusion in the Bill of Rights but without dwelling on the matter; that’s what the weak participle, “being,” accomplishes. The sentence then moves on to the main event: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” The Framers correctly intuited that in a Bill of Rights, the last thing the reader should have ringing in his mind’s ear is the absolute prohibition on infringement of the natural right to own guns."

Thanks for letting me express my two cents!

 

[Sir_Knight]

Philip P:

Also, note that the drop in crime has been less pronounced in conceal-carry states. You could argue that liberal conceal-carry laws actually do hurt progress on reducing crime. In states with strict gun laws, the drop in crime has generally been doublethat of states with looser regulations.

What you’re over-looking is that the states that already had a conceal and carry didn’t drop as much in the crime rate because those areas already had a significant drop in crime when the laws were liberalized.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Philip P:

On the second, cultural arguments are difficults to prove, but I would put forward that, in a society where the answer to a problem is “shoot it”,.

An armed society is a polite society.

 

[Philip_P]

Sir Knight:

An armed society is a polite society.

Like Baghdad?

Beyond the flipness of the comment, the point I’m driving at is that cultural factors and crime rate, etc are due to complex factors. The pro/anti gun debate pretends that it can all be boiled down to something as simple as restrictions on gun ownership.

The pro-gun argument is that more guns means less crime. Yet a casual glance at societies worldwide where guns are common reveals this easy generalization does not hold. If the comparison of the US to Baghdad or Somalia seems absurd, what this points to is that presence of guns, all by itself, tells us nothing. The claim that more guns means less crime can’t be supported.

This does not answer the question of what public policy ought to be, though. And once we realize that, we can have an intelligent conversation on gun laws, without resorting to worn-out slogans and talking points.

 

[gilliam]

Many troops talk about the Sunni triangle as the wild west. People there have guns to protect themselves from bad guys with guns because there is not a strong police force yet to protect them.

In the North, where it is peaceful, there are not so many guns.

Not sure how that adds to your discussion.

 

[Philip_P]

gilliam:

Many troops talk about the Sunni triangle as the wild west. People there have guns to protect themselves from bad guys with guns because there is not a strong police force yet to protect them.

In the North, where it is peaceful, there are not so many guns.

Not sure how that adds to your discussion.

Interesting. As far as how that relates to the discussion, my point is that gun ownership really doesn’t. Talking about guns as a way to lower crime doesn’t seem to pan out, but I’m doubtful that removing them helps much either. I think, on the gun debate, the question has to be, what end are we trying to achieve, and how can we best get there? If the end is to reduce crime, a focus on an effective police and improved economic opportunity seems to work very well (see, for instance, NYC).

 

[Arba_Sicula]

Sir Knight:

ISo you hold anti-Catholic beliefs that an individual should not be allowed to have the means to defend himself and others for Part 3, Section II, Chapter 2, Article V, Paragraphs 2264-2265 of the “Official Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church” states that we have a GRAVE responsible to protect ourselves and others from harm.

You’d better talk to a priest as you have a deficient understanding of the Catechism. You will find no advice from the Church anywhere that tells you to go around with a concealed weapon. That you could even think that the Church wants its billion adherents to carry guns is over the top.

BTW, if the Church wanted all men to have a pistol concealed on their persons, it would give the same advice to all Catholics world-wide. The United States is pretty much the only country in the world with such a fetish for handguns, and where the question is even debated.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Philip P:

think, on the gun debate, the question has to be, what end are we trying to achieve

The end that you are trying to aschieve is to ensure that people have a means to protect themselves when faces with younger, stronger, bigger attackers and/or multiple attackers.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the role of Police is to protect society as a whole and they have no legal requirement to provide personal protection. That said, each person is ultimately responsible for their own personal protection. Carrying a concealed firearm is the best way to accomplish this.

 

[Arba_Sicula]

Sir Knight:

Do you consider being free from murder and serious bodily harm to be a privilege or a right? If you say that it is a right, then why limit the way in which a person can defend themselves?

Being free from assault is a right. Carrying a concealed handgun is a privilege.

As far as limiting “the way in which a person can defend himself,” would you find it “limiting” if the authorities, even in a gun-loving state, banned carrying a machinegun in heavily populated areas - or on buses and subways?

 

[Sir_Knight]

Arba Sicula:

You’d better talk to a priest as you have a deficient understanding of the Catechism.

It is not my understanding of the Catechism that is deficient but your for it CLEARLY states that not only do we have a RIGHT but a GRAVE DUTY to protect ourselves and other innocent individuals from harm.

Go to the passage that I referenced and read it for yourself. Not only do we have a duty but a GRAVE duty!