Scary Anti-Gun People in Switzerland
Grading...little time to comment beyond: apparently Big Sister is watching you, Switzerland.
A quote:
"We don't know any woman who wants a weapon in the house," said Lisa Feldmann, the magazine's editor. "Women and the younger generation think this is crazy."
1. Then you don't know my mother, nor Johnny Quest, nor most of the females around where I grew up.
2. My suggestion to Ms. Feldman: so don't own one.
But you can't have mine, and that, you see, is final. You can't take it, you can't have it, that's the end of it, and, thus, this is all just hot air from my perspective.
Er, though last time I checked, this wasn't Switzerland, so perhaps I'm over-reacting...
Somehow these people don't seem to recognize the significance of the following facts, also quoted in the story:
According to Swiss police, there were 204 homicides in Switzerland in 2005, including 48 that involved guns. That is about the same number of gun-related killings as took place last year in England and Wales, which have strict gun control and a population seven times the size of Switzerland's.
I try not to talk to hysterical anti-gun types for the same reason I've started avoiding Bush dead-enders, creationists, Jesus freaks, and rabid physicalists: it's bad for my objectivity--they drive me farther over to the other side. My objectivity--such as it is--is a fragile thing.
Grading...little time to comment beyond: apparently Big Sister is watching you, Switzerland.
A quote:
"We don't know any woman who wants a weapon in the house," said Lisa Feldmann, the magazine's editor. "Women and the younger generation think this is crazy."
1. Then you don't know my mother, nor Johnny Quest, nor most of the females around where I grew up.
2. My suggestion to Ms. Feldman: so don't own one.
But you can't have mine, and that, you see, is final. You can't take it, you can't have it, that's the end of it, and, thus, this is all just hot air from my perspective.
Er, though last time I checked, this wasn't Switzerland, so perhaps I'm over-reacting...
Somehow these people don't seem to recognize the significance of the following facts, also quoted in the story:
According to Swiss police, there were 204 homicides in Switzerland in 2005, including 48 that involved guns. That is about the same number of gun-related killings as took place last year in England and Wales, which have strict gun control and a population seven times the size of Switzerland's.
I try not to talk to hysterical anti-gun types for the same reason I've started avoiding Bush dead-enders, creationists, Jesus freaks, and rabid physicalists: it's bad for my objectivity--they drive me farther over to the other side. My objectivity--such as it is--is a fragile thing.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:25 AM
17 Comments:
I try not to talk to hysterical anti-gun types
I hope you can avoid the hysterical pro-gun types, too.
Many anti-gun people (not to mention reporters) know very little about guns. I don't either, though I do know that the Colt revolver replica I played cowboys and Indians with should not, for realism, have been semi-automatic. This ignorance doesn't help us arrive at good policy.
But the pro-gun people won't hear any arguments against their pastime and security blanket. It's too emotionally important to them.
To have a rational argument about guns, the first thing to try is: Divide the question into arguments over rights and arguments over utility. Usually, anti-gun people pose utilitarian arguments against something the NRA thinks is an absolute right. Lately, there's been some role reversal, but that's the fundamental disagreement, and it's unresolvable.
What rights does the Second Amendment guarantee? I'm not sure, but here's what I think, subject to further research:
- For better or for worse, there is an individual right "keep and bear arms".
- However, the absolute rights asserted by the NRA don't bear scrutiny:
** The Confederate theory that the Second Amendment confers (or recognizes) a legal right of insurrection is baloney. If that were its intent, every two-bit hoodlum would plead his rights to stick it to the man.
** There is certainly meaning in "well-regulated", too, and there is little doubt that the government can regulate any aspect of gun ownership and use consistent with its continuation. This means for certain that waiting periods, identity checks, the closing of gun show loopholes, ammunition tagging, and the fingerprinting of rifling could be passed without amending the Constitution.
- That said, the Framers were intent upon devolving power widely, even if what they meant was power widely shard among elites.
- We all recognize that Second Amendment rights are not unlimited. You get all your First Amendment rights back upon parole from prison but not your Second Amendment rights. (Tangent: Why is it that an inmate retains freedom of religion but not freedom of speech? Note: I don't actually disagree in principle.)
That's rights; what about utility?
Gun control advocates want to treat firearms as a public health problem. More of us would live if none of us had guns. This is undoubtedly true, at least in the short run. It's also counterfactual; we already have 300 million guns or so, they aren't going to disappear overnight, and I've heard no one advocate the police state required to seize all of those guns. So, the real question, as with abstinence-only vs. real sex education, is what do we do in the real world where guns/sex are widely available, hard to resist, and coveted?
One thing from the CNN story about Switzerland that surprised me was the high rate of all shooting deaths. Then I tried to reconcile the numbers with each other, and they don't make sense. The quoted death rate of 6.2 per 100,000 should work out to 4600 or so annual Swiss gun deaths, yet the homicide and suicide numbers are quoted as only 50 and 270 (in particular years), respectively. That leaves the rest, more than 4200, as accidents.
So, again, we don't really have enough information to judge the Swiss example, but CNN's report raises more questions than it answers. For my part, I'll hold on a little longer to my perception that the Swiss don't have a problem that requires stricter gun control, while we do.
Gun control probably has different motivations and needs in Europe than in the U.S. I recall hearing (but can't footnote) that Nordic gun death rates are similar to ours, yet ours skew much more heavily to murder, while theirs skew to suicide. Obviously, different policies would be needed in this case.
One thing that make the Swiss case a little wierd is that most of the guns there are actively handed out by the government. That is, when young Swiss men finish their compulsory military service, they are issued their rifle (or sidearm) to keep. Two points that on the Swiss lady's (badly phrased) view.
One: If the government is handing out the guns, then it has more - though not absolute - right to set conditions on their use. They already mandate that these guns be used as part of the national defense, so why con't they set demands on where and how the weapons be stored?
Two: Given the long and ugly history of men's violence against women, it can hardly be suprising that women would find guns threatening, especially since they are not being usued them and trained in thier use. Of course, what this suggests is that women should be inducted and taught the use of weapons along with the men, but here is something that the wackier elements of both the left and the right will oppose, since both seem to agree that the ability to have babies make you find violence - even just violence - icky.
Definitely right on that last point, A.
LL:
All good, but re: "a well regulated militia being necessary...":
Much controversy there. Anti-gun folks like to pretend that this means that only militias are granted the right to bear arms, but that's fairly clearly false. The amendment doesn't say that. Rather, it states a rationale and then identifies/grants a right. Even if the rationale somehow turned out to be wrong or dumb, the right is still granted--it isn't conditional on the soundness of the rationale.
As for hysterical pro-gun types: I rarely encounter them anymore, and for some reason they don't have the same effect on me. That is, they don't make me think "hey, maybe I SHOULD get rid of my shotgun!"
But that's just me.
WS, your interpretation of the beginning of the Second Amendment won't wash. 'Well-regulated' is an important qualifier. In fact, the whole introductory phrase would be superfluous as you interpret II, in contrast with the economical phrasing of the rest of the Bill of Rights. A phrase that is only a rationale might have belonged in the Federalist Papers but not in the Bill itself.
Sorry, LL, you're just wrong on this.
"well-regulated" is irrelevant given the point I make above.
The amendment does NOT say:
"Well-regulated militias have the right to bear arms, and no one else does."
Nor does it say:
"Well regulated militias have the right to bear arms."
Nor does it say:
"IF a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state, THEN the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
What it says is the following:
(a) Well-regulated militias are necessary to the security of a free state
and
(b) The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Now, (a) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant: the right is granted in (b). (a) is the reason, (b) states the right. Even if the reason is wrong, the right is granted.
It is NOT a conditional right.
WS, let's start again at the beginning, where I said, For better or for worse, there is an individual right "keep and bear arms".
What I then followed with was a comparison of the language in the Second with the language in the First. If your interpretation were the slam dunk you think it is, the Second Amendment would say:
A) "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
This is not its full text, though gun advocates (e.g. the NRA) want Americans to believe that it might as well be.
You also provide alternate texts the Framers could have framed:
B) "Well regulated militias have the right to bear arms."
and
C) "IF a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state, THEN the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
These are both straw men. I'm not arguing for either of them.
You argue that the introductory phrase is superfluous. I argue based on the Framers' previous and obvious care with succinct language that it is not.
Maybe it was a diplomatic compromise to allow multiple interpretations, but frankly that seems like a later technique of diplomacy that the Framers didn't much engage in. I mean, they came right out and stated the craven 3/5s of a person compromise (though they were a bit shy about the word 'slave').
So, neither of us has fully explained the introductory phrases, but I still think an explanation is required.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Conflict_and_compromise
Given the way they end up changing the amendment (you can see multiple wordings of the same amendment in that link), it does seem that WS is right.
However, I would imagine that had the constitution been written with today's weaponry, the second amendment might have turned out a bit differently.
But then again, it might not. The founding fathers were very concerned about the use of a federal military to force the common people to do what the government tells them to do, and that's the main reason they provided the right to keep and bear arms - that organized militia of which they speak was argued to be the best form of defense against occupation - be it from abroad or one's own federal government.
Given this reasoning, I think it's safe to say that the founding fathers wanted the citizens to be armed so that they could take it upon themselves to defend themselves against any rising oppressive force - be it foreign or local.
This absolutely has its drawbacks in that any crackpot can get a gun, but I guess the question is whether or not that trumps the need to have weapons in order to fend off the chance that the government goes haywire and tries to control us all, or we're invaded by foreign forces.
I might add that we often overlook the concept that the invasion of America would be a huge, huge problem to the invading force for precisely the reason that there's a large body of armed citizens.
But again, is this worth the increased risk of a lunatic getting a gun? That, I don't know.
I'm not following you, LL.
If it's not a conditional--and you admit that it isn't--then the statement of the rationale ends up being irrelevant to the recognition/granting of the right.
Thus formulating the conditional in order to make it clear that that's not what it says doesn't seem to me like any kind of straw man.
I'd think that a better argument would go something like this:
Laws are goverend by ends, and the introductory clause identifies the end of this law (i.e. the maintenence of a well-regulated militia and the consequent protection of the freedom of the state) is bogus. Hence, though individuals DO have the right to keep and bear arms, they SHOULDN'T have it.
and:
Since we ALREADY infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms (they can't have howitzers), we're just quibbling over details.
I don't buy that first part, but that seems to me to be a more reasonable way for people to go.
Maybe we're not disagreeing...I'm doing the swamped-with-grading thing, so probably not attending to this like I should. Let me know if I'm in error.
Winston,
I'm afraid I'm not following the point of you quoting this statistic:
"According to Swiss police, there were 204 homicides in Switzerland in 2005, including 48 that involved guns. That is about the same number of gun-related killings as took place last year in England and Wales, which have strict gun control and a population seven times the size of Switzerland's."
Doesn't that indicate that Switzerland effectively has seven times the rate of gun-related homicides that gun-controlling England and Wales do? How exactly is that an argument against gun control?
I say this as someone who recognizes that the Second Amendment obviously specifies that one has a right to bear arms.
That being said, it doesn't also say that that right can't be limited in some way such as who can own guns and what guns they can own. Can anyone name a right that has NO restrictions or limitations on it whatsoever?. Every right, even that of free speech can be limited in some manner (e.g. libel, slander, incitement to riot etc.) or class of person (e.g. government officials may not communicate official state secrets).
This is why I have no problem with things like background checks, preventing felons from owning guns, and outlawing automatic weapons. In this last respect, I agree with Wesley Clark who said "If you want to use automatic weapons, join the United States Army. We have them".
Uh, Der...
Yeah, I read that as:
Switzerland has the same RATE of deaths as England + Wales, not the same NUMBER of deaths.
So this is actually evidence in favor of the claim that liberal gun laws are correlated with higher rates of death.
COMPLETE space out on my part.
And possibly also evidence that one sees what one expects to see...
Let this be a lesson to me.
Footnote:
Like you, I don't have a problem with regulating the types of weapons people can have. I really don't see any problem at all with having a pretty stringent licensing process when it comes to e.g. handguns, esp. high-capacity semi-automatic handguns.
It's just not clear to me what real need is met by civilian handguns.
For home defense, you usually want a shotgun (though, admittedly, in cramped quarters I'd take a handgun).
For--God forbid--you'll want a rifle.
Handguns...well, I enjoy shooting them, but frankly think the world would be better off without them.
Now, I'm not giving mine up--primarily b/c the bad guys aren't giving *theirs* up... But if I could flip a switch and get rid of all the non-cop-related handguns...well, I just might do it.
Even though I really, really like shooting them.
Actually, Winston, I'd be interested in what gun experts would say on the handgun vs. shotgun or rifle for home defense. The shotgun seems to offer a shorter range blast area (a positive in terms of requiring less accuracy from the shooter), but wider dispersion (more potential for *collateral* damage), while the handgun seems more wieldy in what potentially might be a tight situtation, though more difficult to fire with high accuracy on average.
I keep returning to how my friend who was a military pilot told me that they were required to carry a sidearm (always a pistol) at all times while on flying duty.
I have a couple of practical questions that maybe someone could point to references about:
- I assume that most handguns are pretty accurate, unlike the Saturday night specials of the 1970s, but I believe that few shooters are. How likely to be able to hit a dodging, moving target is the average handgun shooter?
- Dick Cheney only slightly injured his friend even though he hit a vulnerable area at pretty close range. OK, that was bird shot, but did Cheney miss with the "umbra" of shot and only hit his friend with the "penumbra", or is a light load just effective on birds? (That would make sense.) What about other gauges and powder loads? Does anyone have a reference? (No, I don't believe Hollywood any more now than in 1950s Westerns where gunfighters died without a mark on them.)
Back to the discussion:
There are significant differences in the expression of the First Amendment and of the Second Amendment. The religious freedom clause of the First:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
The Second (entire) is:
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.
There is an obvious difference. The religious freedom clause doesn't start, "The absolute claims of religion being too dangerous to the comity of divers society" or "The relations of men to the Creation being too personal to be decided by government" or any other "rationale". Therefore, the introductory clause in the Second Amendment is not present solely as a rationale with no probative value.
The men who wrote the Bill of Rights knew they were promulgating fundamental law that would have to be interpreted for as long as it was in force. Hence the examples given by 4:08 PM Anonymous of lawful limits on free speech. They could have tried to pin everything down in a schlerotic document perfect for the late 18th century but unable to grow for decades, much less centuries; instead, they trusted us (thinking that they didn't really have a choice) to interpret and amend as we see fit.
I claim that the Framers gave the Second its own little preamble to tell us why they ensconced keeping and bearing arms into the Bill of Rights. Nothing in the link that The Mystic provided contradicts this view.
At that link, you can see the evolution of the phrasing of the Second. The removal of composed of the body of the people is interesting. A gun advocate friend once asserted that militia meant every able-bodied adult male, and this seems to bear that out. Why did the Senate remove it? My theory: It was definitional and thus redundant.
So, what is the practical meaning of "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"? It's not nothing. It says that the purpose of Second Amendment rights is not self-protection, it's not hunting, it's acting as a counterweight to despotism. Thus, I would say, keeping and bearing arms as part of the militia is completely unassailable (one reason the survivalist nuts out west called themselves militias). The personal right to keep a .25 under the driver's seat is less clear.
Of course, if you've ever been to a quaint New England Town Meeting, which acts as the legislature for the town, you know that many articles that pass build a majority out of several different and sometimes contradictory rationales. I don't see any reason that this is a new feature of human nature, so I conclude that the Framers probably had more than one view of the Second Amendment themselves.
Two points:
(1) Forbidding ownership of howitzers does not restrict the right to bear arms. Nobody, but nobody "bears" howitzers. Restriction of bazookas, on the other hand , is another matter. I have always assumed that only genuine crackpots think the second amendment applies to anything except very light weapons.
(2) speaking of crazy pro-gun nuts... How's this for some self-parody:
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/nra/nras-secret-graphic-novel-revealed-223889.php
One of my sentences above was supposed to be:
"In the case where you have to--God forbid--fight against an oppressive government, you'll want a rifle."
LL asks how likely an average shooter is to hit a mobile, dodging, man-sized target:
The answer: a helluva lot LESS likely if he's got a gun. Which is the point: both the good guys and the bad guys face the same problems--IF they're both armed. Sure, it'd be hard for, say, me (a notably-better-than-average-but-by-no-means-excellent shot with a handgun) to hit a bad guy. But it's hard for him to hit me, too...IF I'm armed. Otherwise, if I'm trapped in a room...well, fish in a barrel.
As for LL's other points:
The difference in the two amendments IS striking. But, again, the "militia" language does not put a condition on the right, so I'm still not seeing the point...but I'm no legal scholar, so I just may be unfamiliar with the relevant type of argument.
Anonymous: "howitzer" was a joke.
WS- I realized that howitzer was a joke; but the reason it was a joke is worth pointing out, since some people do make that argument seriously.
It does seem a reasonable interpretation that "bear arms" is not a synonym for "drive a tank" or whatever. "Bear" means "carry for effect", or so I always assumed. If you want to play with a squad weapon, you have to join a "well-regulated militia."
-mac
The difference in the two amendments IS striking.
But, WS, you're just going to ignore it.
My view, based on the relevant history and the full text, is that the right is conferred to individuals but that regulation of the terms of that right is still within the power of the government, so long as the people can still form a militia that could resist a despot, an insurrection, or a foreign invasion (remember that the Bill of Rights was written in a time when there was no standing army).
So, intellectually, I have a problem: Are individually owned rifles enough to make an effective militia?
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