Post-Heller bloodbath in D.C.

[DavidRoss]

The bloodbath did not happen, in spite of dire predictions by adversaries of responsible citizens' right of self defense. Instead, violent crime in D.C. went down. The Court struck down Washington D.C.'s unconstitutional ban on private handgun ownership in June 2008. Crime stats for 2009 show a 25% decrease in the year since--a rate more than twice as great as the nationwide 10% drop in the same period (a drop that coincided with the largest increase in gun sales since 1993-94). See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03039.html.

Interesting that the Washington Post story makes no mention whatsoever of Heller and its consequences in the story. Interesting, but not surprising, given the WP's long crusade against private firearms ownership and the 2nd Amendment. Within 24 hours of the Heller decision, the WP published three editorials attacking the decision, law-abiding gun owners, and the 2nd Amendment:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03655.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03605.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01755.html.

Those to whom facts carry more weight than unsupported emotional appeals will be interested in the consequences of the Right To Carry laws that swept the nation in the aftermath of the Clinton administration's assault on the 2nd Amendment: http://www.nraila.org/Issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=18.

Of further interest is NRA-ILA Director Chris Cox's article on the Violence Policy Center's attacks on civil rights from the March issue of American Rifleman:

Right-to-Carry: Earning America's Trust

When we were young, we all learned to look out for people who can't-or won't-lift themselves up through character, intelligence and hard work, but instead try to get what they want by tearing others down.

In the gun control debate, that age-old lesson is never more relevant than when we look at the half-dozen or so handgun-ban activists who call themselves the Violence Policy Center (VPC). Since it was put together in the late 1980s, VPC has carved a niche for itself in the debate by going further than other gun control groups-especially in trying to tar all American gun owners with the deeds of those who don't conduct themselves in a law-abiding and respectable manner.

Last year, VPC once again took that cheap shot when it tried to portray Right-to-Carry permit holders as murderers, just before Congress took up legislation introduced by Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and David Vitter, R-La., calling for interstate recognition of state Right-to-Carry permits. The Brady Campaign released a similar "study:' (See "Political Report;' Oct. 2009.)

VPC tried to derail the Thune-Vitter amendment by listing a small number of permit holders who had committed crimes. But even the few crimes VPC listed in that report (or in its more recent updates) don't hold up to a second look. Some crimes didn't involve a concealed handgun, or any handgun or other firearm at all. Others took place in locations where a permit wasn't required to possess a handgun, or where even a permit holder couldn't legally possess a firearm. VPC even listed accidents as "crimes.” But even if every incident claimed by VPC had been relevant to Right-to-Carry, the number was so small-in comparison to the more than 5 million people (according to economist John Lott) who have carry permits-that it showed how overwhelmingly law-abiding permit holders are on the whole.

Congress may take up Right-to-Carry reciprocity again, and states are constantly debating NRA-backed improvements to their Right-to-Carry laws. Those are two obvious reasons why VPCs website now features its 2009 anti-carry "study" and a "Concealed Carry Killers" page, featuring a running tally of incidents involving permit holders. But when you look at VPCs history on the Right-to-Carry issue, there's even more to it.

In 1995, VPC released a propaganda paper attacking state Right-to-Carry laws in general, by targeting Florida's law in particular. At the time, anti-gun groups were looking for national issues on which to campaign, because the two biggest gun issues of that period-the Brady Act and the 1994 ban on hundreds of semi-automatic firearms-were temporarily off the front burner. The Brady Campaign (then called Handgun Control, Inc.) came out for the bill known as "Brady lI" that, among other things, called for national gun registration and handgun licensing, and massive new federal taxes and fees on guns, ammunition and gun dealers.

VPC, however, decided to go after Right-to-Carry laws and to single out Florida for special attack. So, why did VPC focus on this issue?

First, VPC recognized that even though Right-to-Carry laws were being passed state by state, those laws had the greatest national implications of all pro-Second Amendment efforts of the day. Right-to-Carry was a growing national movement, and one that would create its own built-in political constituency. (Permit holders will always fight against legislation to repeal or restrict Right-to-Carry laws.) During the previous two years, a whopping 11 states had adopted NRA-supported Right-to-Carry legislation modeled after Florida's law. Needless to say, the tireless Marion P. Hammer-former NRA president, longtime member of the NRA Board of Directors and longtime president of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida who led the fight for Florida's law-has never been high on VPCs Christmas card list.

Second, permit holders carry the type of gun that VPC has always most wanted to see banned-namely, handguns, particularly those designed for defensive use. VPCs leader is, after all, a former public relations staffer with the so-called National Coalition to Ban Handguns (now called the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence) who has written books and articles advocating a total ban on handguns.

Third, VPCs existence hinges on the financial support of foundations that spend millions of dollars, year in and year out, trying to reshape America into a country our Founding Fathers wouldn't recognize. These foundations (including behemoths like the Joyce Foundation, which has given VPC $6 million since 1998) want their dollars spent on national issues.

Finally, VPC is well-aware that Right to Carry laws, more than any other laws expanding protection of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, let gun owners prove to their fellow citizens in a very recognizable, often publicized way, that anti-gunners' core argument-"gun owners can't be trusted"-is a lie.

In tackling Florida's Right-to-Carry law, VPC had its work cut out for it. Like all state Right-to-Carry laws, Florida's was working as intended. As of 1995, rather than becoming the "GUNshine State" and "Dodge City East” as gun control supporters had predicted, Florida had experienced an astounding 38 percent decrease in murder since the law took effect, while in the rest of the country murder went down only 4 percent.

Florida's law worked so well that in Dec. 1995, John Russi, then director of Florida's Division of Licensing, testified before the Michigan House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, stating, "Florida's concealed weapon law has been very successful. All major law enforcement groups supported the original legislation, and in the eight years the program has been in place none of these groups has requested any changes”

Mr. Russi added, "[S]ome of the opponents of concealed weapon legislation in 1987 now admit the program has not created the problems many predicted.” Of course, he wasn't referring to VPC.

Ironically, in going after Florida's Right-to-Carry law then and now, VPC has only highlighted the law's success. Florida has issued more carry permits than other states-nearly 1.7 million through the end of 2009. After all, it's the fourth most populous state, it has a high rate of gun ownership and it's had a Right-to-Carry law longer than any other large states, having adopted Right-to-Carry several years before Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Michigan followed suit.

Florida also publishes the most comprehensive permit revocation statistics among the carry permit states. Florida's rate of revoking carry permits for firearm crimes has been 10 for every 100,000 permits issued. That microscopically small figure includes not only revocations for violent crimes, but also for some non-violent crimes. And it includes revocations for crimes committed in situations in which a permit wasn't required to possess the firearm, such as in one's home.

By comparison, over the same 22-year period, Florida's rate of firearm-related violent crimes by non-permit-holders -not counting misdemeanors- has been over 3,000 crimes per 100,000 state residents age 21 and older- in other words, those old enough to be issued a carry permit.

This simple comparison doesn't take into account the growing number of carry permit holders in the state over the years, the growth of the state's population, or other factors, such as multiple permits issued to a single individual, and non-permit holders who committed multiple offenses. It does, however, illustrate that permit holders, on the whole, have been vastly more law-abiding than nonpermit-holders, and it shows the fundamental flaw of VPC's 14-year vendetta against Right-to-Carry laws.

In the 14 years since VPC first took aim against Right-to-Carry, we've reached the point where there are 40 Right-to-Carry states, with more than 5 million carry permit holders and many jurisdictions recently reporting large increases in applications for carry permits. Despite anti-gun groups' pleas to the contrary, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that the Second Amendment "guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation” and sales of handguns and other firearms have gone through the roof.

And yet, contrary to every VPC prediction, the nation's murder rate has been cut in half, and Right-to-Carry laws continue to enjoy the support of the public and its elected representatives. As VPC and others who detest the Second Amendment are so painfully aware, the statistics don't lie.

It's probably no coincidence that shortly before VPC fired its first squib load at Right-to-Carry laws in 1995, attorney Jeff Snyder wrote that to protect the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, "... it is the support and esteem of our neighbors that we must win, for it is upon them that the continued enjoyment of our rights depends.”

Today, you and I, and the overwhelming majority of other Americans who exercise our right to carry firearms for protection, have earned our fellow citizens' trust and respect- and we've therefore helped secure our rights for future generations. from http://funreviews.net/publish/NRA-Relat ... _Trust.php

[Corlyss_D]

The law DC enacted in response to Heller was equally draconian. Heller was put through so many hoops to get a permit merely to own a gun that at last report he was planning to sue the city again to force it to obey the spirit of the SCOTUS decision. The city appears to have no plans to license law-abidding citizens to carry.

Unfortunately, there's no correlation between the SCOTUS decision and the drop in crime. Crime has been declining for several years. It's declined more sharply since the recession, which has been the topic of other threads: this fact has been taken by some sociologists as final proof that the 1950s-60s theory that poverty bred crime is a fiction.

Gun Owners' Next Victory in D.C.
by Robert A. Levy

Robert A. Levy is chairman of the Cato Institute and was co-counsel to the plaintiffs in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Added to cato.org on September 2, 2009

This article appeared in the Washington Post on September 1, 2009.

The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, declared that Washington's 32-year ban on all functional firearms violated the Second Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, however, applied only to possession of guns in the home. The court did not address, and was not asked to address, firearms carried outside the home. That's the issue posed in a new lawsuit against the District by Tom Palmer (disclosure: my colleague at the Cato Institute) and four other plaintiffs — represented by Alan Gura, the lawyer who successfully argued Heller before the court.

After Heller, the District relaxed its ban on residents seeking "to register a pistol for use in self-defense within that person's home." But D.C. law still states that "[n]o person shall carry within the District of Columbia either openly or concealed on or about their person, a pistol, without a license." Currently, the city affords no process by which to issue such a license. A first violation of the carry ban is punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and imprisonment for up to five years.

Does the Constitution mandate that the nation's capital allow firearms to be carried outside the home? The right to bear arms, the court said in Heller, is an "individual right unconnected to militia service." To "bear" means to "carry." More specifically, when used with "arms," the opinion said, "bear" means "carrying for a particular purpose — confrontation." Nothing in that formulation implies a right that can be exercised only within one's home.

Does the Constitution mandate that the nation's capital allow firearms to be carried outside the home?
Indeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, although she dissented in Heller, cited Black's Law Dictionary to suggest in a prior opinion that the Second Amendment entails a right to "wear, bear, or carry ..... upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, ..... armed and ready ..... in a case of conflict with another person." That language, says Michael O'Shea in the West Virginia Law Review, "reads like a literal description of the practice of lawful concealed carry, as engaged in by millions of Americans in the forty-eight states that authorize the carrying of concealed handguns."

Of course, Second Amendment rights, like First Amendment rights, are not absolute. Scalia was careful to note that "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." Lawyers call such statements dicta — a statement not necessary to the holding and, therefore, not binding in other cases.

Nonetheless, dicta can be important. Gura, for that reason, took pains to fashion his new complaint to fit Scalia's framework. The Palmer lawsuit acknowledges that Washington "retains the ability to regulate the manner of carrying handguns, prohibit the carrying of handguns in specific, narrowly defined sensitive places, prohibit the carrying of arms that are not within the scope of Second Amendment protection, and disqualify specific, particularly dangerous individuals from carrying handguns." Restrictions on carrying are permissible, but an outright ban is not. As Gura put it, the District "may not completely ban the carrying of handguns for self-defense, deny individuals the right to carry handguns in non-sensitive places, [or] deprive individuals of the right to carry handguns in an arbitrary and capricious manner."

Proponents of a total ban have seized on another of Scalia's pronouncements in Heller. He pointed out that 19th-century courts considered prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons "lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues." That statement, too, is dicta. Perhaps more significant, open-carry rather than concealed-carry was the preferred mode of arms-bearing in the 19th century. To be sure, some states prohibited concealed-carry, but only because they allowed open-carry — an alternative that the District probably would reject. An early Georgia case, for example, upheld a concealed-carry ban but struck down an open-carry ban. Ditto for other cases cited in Heller. Essentially, the Second Amendment demands that peaceable citizens be allowed to carry defensive weapons in some manner. The right to bear arms can be limited, but it cannot be destroyed.

Prediction: The courts will (and should) invalidate Washington's unconditional ban on carrying, as well as similar bans in Wisconsin and Illinois, the only two states to have such bans. Regulations consistent with the Heller opinion will be permitted. But the Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, expressly enumerated in the Constitution. That means government has the burden of demonstrating that its proposed regulations are necessary.

[jbuck919]

I'm sure it is good news that the homicide rate is down in DC. Crime rates have gone down in many cities over the last generation, for various reasons, some of which are not fully understood. However, the Post article is actually gun-owner friendly in that it makes no attempt to blame the continuing situation, which is atrocious compared to other cities of a similar size in the civilized world, on the fact that people, um, have lots of guns. The NRA can't ask for a nicer concession than that from the press.


washingtonpost.co

Homicide totals in 2009 plummet in District, Prince George's

By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 1, 2010; A01

The District and Prince George's County, long considered the region's most violent jurisdictions, logged their lowest homicide totals in years in 2009, with D.C. hitting a 45-year -low.

The number of slayings last year in the District, once known as the murder capital of the United States, was 140, a 25 percent drop from 2008. Prince George's recorded 100 killings, the county's lowest in nine years. Montgomery and Fairfax counties also had significant decreases in homicides in 2009.

But the drop in the District was unprecedented and significant for its size and its scope: Every police district in the city experienced at least a double-digit drop in homicides.

"It's huge," said D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier. "We're making an impact."

The homicide numbers were compiled as of late Thursday night and could go up New Year's Eve, but any such increases are not likely to change the overall trend.

Crime across the country is falling, with FBI statistics from the first half of 2009 showing that homicides dipped 10 percent nationally, compared with the same period in 2008. Although final year-end totals have not been tallied, New York expects to post its fewest homicides since 1963. Philadelphia had a 9 percent decrease, and Chicago had an 11 percent drop.

Despite the widespread decreases, there is no consensus among police officials about why crime went down in 2009, but theories include more focused enforcement, better use of technology and stepped-up intelligence gathering.

It is notable that crime is dropping across the entire region because when violence is tamped down in one area, it often gets pushed to a neighboring jurisdiction.

That did not happen in 2009. Prince George's had its lowest homicide numbers since 2000. Montgomery recorded 13 killings, a drop from 21 in 2008. And Fairfax had 11, compared with 19 in 2008.

Prince George's Police Chief Roberto L. Hylton said the county made a concerted effort to reduce violence. "It's not about luck," he said. "It's really a methodical approach to crime. We're actually applying strategies. We're developing new relationships and partnerships with community groups, and I think that has a lot to do in the way of affecting crime."

In the District, city officials said they have come a long way from the bloodshed of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when street wars over crack cocaine helped fuel more than 400 slayings annually. The violence has been shrinking steadily since and took its most dramatic dive in 2009.

The 2nd Police District, which includes Dupont Circle, Georgetown and Cleveland Park, did not have any slayings in the past year.

Lanier attributed the drop in the District to two overall strategies: targeting violent repeat offenders and strengthening ties in the community so detectives could get information quickly to make arrests.

Police maintain databases of gang members and their affiliations, so if violence flares up in a neighborhood, officers are deployed to a rival neighborhood to head off retaliation.

Every morning, Lanier and members of her top staff receive e-mails detailing which gangs are feuding, which students are fighting in schools and which locations have had reports of gunfire. Every other week, they get a "go-go report" of where bands are playing because authorities say the concerts often bring together feuding gangs.

Homicide detectives closed about 75 percent of their cases last year, far surpassing previous years and the national average.

"We are sending a message to the bad guys," Lanier said. "Homicides occur, and two days later we arrest the guy. Sooner or later, the bad guys are going to get the message."

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), head of the public safety and judiciary committee, said that Lanier should get some credit for the decreasing crime but that the homicide rate is still elevated. Last year, the District had 23 killings per 100,000 people. In safer big cities, such as New York, the rate is at an all-time low: six per 100,000.

"Another way of looking at the good news is the rate is too high compared to other cities," Mendelson said. "If we were to have the same rate as New York City, we would have less than 40 a year."

But Lanier and others pointed to a significant drop in 2009 in homicides in the 7th Police District, the southernmost area east of the Anacostia River, which historically has had stubborn crime issues. Although the area, which includes the neighborhoods of Barry Farm, Congress Park and Congress Heights, had the highest number of killings last year, with 40, that was a 15 percent drop from 2008.

The year was not without trouble for police. There were some high-profile shootings, such as the November killing of 9-year-old Oscar Fuentes, who was shot through the front door of his apartment in Columbia Heights. And security officer Stephen T. Johns was killed in June, allegedly by a white supremacist during lunch hour at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Other setbacks for D.C. police included a Dec. 1 fatal robbery that resulted in one of the department's own, Officer Reginald Jones, being charged in the homicide. And a court ruled illegal Lanier's strategy of using military-style checkpoints to screen motorists in the Trinidad neighborhood during a spate of violence in 2008.

In Virginia, Prince William County police found developmentally disabled Alexis "Lexie" Agyepong-Glover, 13, dead in a creek near Woodbridge in January. Police discovered that her mother, Alfreedia Gregg-Glover, had left the girl in the creek for days before she died.

In Maryland in April, Frederick police said Christopher A. Wood, 34, killed his family: Francie Billotti-Wood, 33, a Sunday school teacher, and their three children, ages 5, 4 and 2, before killing himself.

"Things are not always going to go perfectly," Lanier said. "There are human beings involved, and human beings are fallible, myself included."

Staff writers Maria Glod, Dan Morse and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.


© 2010 The Washington Post Company

[Corlyss_D]

However, the Post article is actually gun-owner friendly in that it makes no attempt to blame the continuing situation, which is atrocious compared to other cities of a similar size in the civilized world, on the fact that people, um, have lots of guns.

You mean foreign cities of course, where guns are freely available to criminals but not the law-abiding citizens, the police lie about the crime statistics, violence by other means like knives and clubs goes unreported, tight restrictions on immigration and cultural hegemony operate to greatly limit violent crime, and the police rarely catch anyone so there are few prosecutions, right? You're talking about those cities, right?

[jbuck919]

However, the Post article is actually gun-owner friendly in that it makes no attempt to blame the continuing situation, which is atrocious compared to other cities of a similar size in the civilized world, on the fact that people, um, have lots of guns.

You mean foreign cities of course, where guns are freely available to criminals but not the law-abiding citizens, the police lie about the crime statistics, violence by other means like knives and clubs goes unreported, tight restrictions on immigration and cultural hegemony operate to greatly limit violent crime, and the police rarely catch anyone so there are few prosecutions, right? You're talking about those cities, right?

As always when this subject comes up, reason is unavailing against emotion grasping at straws. And not even grasping, but flailing. And not even at straws, as they at least have substance.

[Corlyss_D]

As always when this subject comes up, reason is unavailing against emotion grasping at straws. Not straws, even, as they at least have substance.

I agree. You continued reliance on the myth that gun control = elimination of gun & increased safety s is emotional and not rational, because there's certainly no empirical evidence supporting the myth. It's an Article of Faith, not a proven fact. I don't understand why you continue to believe it.

[jbuck919]

As always when this subject comes up, reason is unavailing against emotion grasping at straws. Not straws, even, as they at least have substance.

I agree. You continued reliance on the myth that gun control = elimination of gun & increased safety s is emotional and not rational, because there's certainly no empirical evidence supporting the myth. It's an Article of Faith, not a proven fact. I don't understand why you continue to believe it.

Er, because I'm not hypnotized by American exceptionalism? You always sound like the people in East Germany who swallowed the propaganda line that they were actually better off because capitalism and democracy came with evils greater than they had to deal with under communism. (And in the analogy, the NRA plays the role of the communist government).

[Corlyss_D]

As always when this subject comes up, reason is unavailing against emotion grasping at straws. Not straws, even, as they at least have substance.

I agree. You continued reliance on the myth that gun control = elimination of gun & increased safety s is emotional and not rational, because there's certainly no empirical evidence supporting the myth. It's an Article of Faith, not a proven fact. I don't understand why you continue to believe it.

Er, because I'm not hypnotized by American exceptionalism?

That's the root of your opposition to an unambiguous constitutional right? Interesting. How did you get there?

[jbuck919]

As always when this subject comes up, reason is unavailing against emotion grasping at straws. Not straws, even, as they at least have substance.

I agree. You continued reliance on the myth that gun control = elimination of gun & increased safety s is emotional and not rational, because there's certainly no empirical evidence supporting the myth. It's an Article of Faith, not a proven fact. I don't understand why you continue to believe it.

Er, because I'm not hypnotized by American exceptionalism?

That's the root of your opposition to an unambiguous constitutional right? Interesting. How did you get there?

Who said anything about the Constitution? And I didn't "get" anywhere. The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go. You're the one with the weird opinion who is lucky enough to live in a country where it hasn't been laughed off the political scene.

[Corlyss_D]

As always when this subject comes up, reason is unavailing against emotion grasping at straws. Not straws, even, as they at least have substance.

I agree. You continued reliance on the myth that gun control = elimination of gun & increased safety s is emotional and not rational, because there's certainly no empirical evidence supporting the myth. It's an Article of Faith, not a proven fact. I don't understand why you continue to believe it.

Er, because I'm not hypnotized by American exceptionalism?

That's the root of your opposition to an unambiguous constitutional right? Interesting. How did you get there?

Who said anything about the Constitution? And I didn't "get" anywhere. The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go. You're the one with the weird opinion who is lucky enough to live in a country where it hasn't been laughed off the political scene.

Okay. Let's rewind . . . What has American Exceptionalism got to do with gun control?

[Barry]

Who said anything about the Constitution? And I didn't "get" anywhere. The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go. You're the one with the weird opinion who is lucky enough to live in a country where it hasn't been laughed off the political scene.

Okay. Let's rewind . . . What has American Exceptionalism got to do with gun control?

My guess, from putting together his use of the term earlier with the last sentence above, is that John is saying that if he were an American Exceptionalist, he'd be proud of the fact that our gun laws (not to mention our approach to the death penalty) are considered nonsensical in the rest of the western world. But as it stands, he's both bewildered and embarrassed.

[Corlyss_D]

Who said anything about the Constitution? And I didn't "get" anywhere. The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go. You're the one with the weird opinion who is lucky enough to live in a country where it hasn't been laughed off the political scene.

Okay. Let's rewind . . . What has American Exceptionalism got to do with gun control?

My guess, from putting together his use of the term earlier with the last sentence above, is that John is saying that if he were an American Exceptionalist, he'd be proud of the fact that our gun laws (not to mention our approach to the death penalty) are considered nonsensical in the rest of the western world.

If that's the case, I'd say he doesn't understand the doctrine of American Exceptionalism, which has nothing to do with guns.

But as it stands, he's both bewildered and embarrassed.

I just want to understand what we're talking about.

[jbuck919]

Who said anything about the Constitution? And I didn't "get" anywhere. The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go. You're the one with the weird opinion who is lucky enough to live in a country where it hasn't been laughed off the political scene.

Okay. Let's rewind . . . What has American Exceptionalism got to do with gun control?

My guess, from putting together his use of the term earlier with the last sentence above, is that John is saying that if he were an American Exceptionalist, he'd be proud of the fact that our gun laws (not to mention our approach to the death penalty) are considered nonsensical in the rest of the western world. But as it stands, he's both bewildered and embarrassed.

Thank you, Barry. Except maybe "embarrassed" is not the right word. I have a couple of Venezuelan-American friends (high school Facebook reunions) who are very politically astute, and in considering Chavez an anomaly and a throwback even by Latin American standards, they can be dismayed but not embarrassed by him. Nor are they apologetic for their country of origin, or any the less in love with it. But they're not proud that the rest of the world considers Chavez a dangerous megalomaniac.

If you get what I mean.

[Corlyss_D]

Nor are they apologetic for their country of origin, or any the less in love with it.

Yeah, but do they still live there? If they consider Chavez an anomaly, how do they account for the history of military dictators and leftist or populist dictators?

You sound like Obama. Mere love of country is not the intellectual basis for American Exceptionalism.

[jbuck919]

Nor are they apologetic for their country of origin, or any the less in love with it.

Yeah, but do they still live there? If they consider Chavez an anomaly, how do they account for the history of military dictators and leftist or populist dictators?

You sound like Obama. Mere love of country is not the intellectual basis for American Exceptionalism.

Nor are the country's stature and accomplishments the limits of what it has been used to justify.

[Barry]

Who said anything about the Constitution? And I didn't "get" anywhere. The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go. You're the one with the weird opinion who is lucky enough to live in a country where it hasn't been laughed off the political scene.

Okay. Let's rewind . . . What has American Exceptionalism got to do with gun control?

My guess, from putting together his use of the term earlier with the last sentence above, is that John is saying that if he were an American Exceptionalist, he'd be proud of the fact that our gun laws (not to mention our approach to the death penalty) are considered nonsensical in the rest of the western world. But as it stands, he's both bewildered and embarrassed.

Thank you, Barry. Except maybe "embarrassed" is not the right word. I have a couple of Venezuelan-American friends (high school Facebook reunions) who are very politically astute, and in considering Chavez an anomaly and a throwback even by Latin American standards, they can be dismayed but not embarrassed by him. Nor are they apologetic for their country of origin, or any the less in love with it. But they're not proud that the rest of the world considers Chavez a dangerous megalomaniac.

If you get what I mean.

I do get what you mean. But I'm not an ideologue on this issue. So if the statistics support Corlyss' case as she says they do, well, then I'm not going with what seems like common sense on an emotional level over statistical evidence (although frankly, the argument that criminals will avoid homes or people who they think may have guns makes just as much sense to me as the notion that more guns equals more violent crime .... and I'm convinced that the bad guys will always be able to get their hands on guns even when they aren't available to the general public). On top of that, I can't get around the conviction that the second ammendment clearly gives Americans the right to keep a gun in their home. I know some people try to give funny readings of the language to say otherwise, but to me, the amendment is pretty clear. Of course, it's funny how most of the people who were most vocal about the Bush administration "trashing the Bill of Rights" would love to pretend that the second ammendment, which the last time I checked, is still part of the Bill of Rights, doesn't exist.

Also, the fact that a lot of people in Europe may think our gun laws are nuts doesn't have any relevance to me. They've been wrong on too many important issues in the past (and current) for me to take their judgment as gospel.

[DavidRoss]

Your continued reliance on the myth that gun control = elimination of gun & increased safety is emotional and not rational, because there's certainly no empirical evidence supporting the myth. It's an Article of Faith, not a proven fact. I don't understand why you continue to believe it.

The need for sensible gun control is obvious to a lot of people from the get-go.

Just as it's "obvious to a lot of people" that gays are pedophiles, "obvious to a lot of people" that Mexicans are lazy, "obvious to a lot of people" that Jews are greedy, "obvious to a lot of people" that women are incapable of rational thought, and so on.

Even though such bigoted beliefs may seem obvious to a lot of people, they are all false, as can be easily ascertained by anyone who is not so determined to remain an ignorant bigot that he dare not examine the facts fully and fairly. jbuck's unwillingness to investigate any facts threatening to his prejudices is a matter of long record on this site. Why should he, when he already "knows" that what matters isn't the truth, but what's obvious to a lot of people--as least as long as they share his prejudices?