Thank you for this insightful article, Graham. Obviously you have read our second Amendment in its entirety. It is too long for too many of my fellow Americans to read and understand. Yeah, it's only one sentence, but for heaven's sake it has two phrases! Ok, to be absolutely honest, for the first 25 years of my life I was a Canadian. Very few Canadians owned guns, and those few were mostly shotguns and hunting rifles. I emigrated in 1958 and became a citizen of the United States in 1967.
The problem here with we Americans, is, besides the inability to read compound sentences, we're going about gun control in the wrong way.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in New York in 1871. For it's first 100 years, it was a sporting association, predicated on gun safety and usage in hunting and target shooting.
Meanwhile the invention of the 6 shot revolver together with shoot em up cowboy movies, had increased little boys interest in guns. The movies, and serials like the Lone Ranger, starting in the 1930's and continuing well into the 1960's gave these little boys heroes, like Billy the Kid, [a mentally retarded teenager who, using a rifle, shot his victims in the back in reality] and other mythological gunmen gained far more interest as these little boys reached the age of "immature adulthood" they gave up their cap guns in favor of real 6 shooters.
Suddenly, in the 1970's the weapons manufacturers (who were fresh out of wars for a short time) got together with the NRA who needed more clout and membership. First they grasped the second phrase of Amendment 2 "...the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" Those were words even a moron could understand.
This was about the same time period the horde of lobbyists descended upon the once hallowed hallways of Congress. GREED was the king. A series of laws to protect the gun industry were passed, the political parties' coffers grew fatter and gun ownership was off to the races.
My State, California began responding with gun control laws - especially military weapons like fully automated AR15's and AK 47's. These laws have been over-turned by equally greedy courts (also in on the take).
Now, I am advocating in going after the source. The Weapons Industry. Right now they enjoy extreme protection. A person; whose children were slaughtered by a mass murderer sporting an automated rifle killed a large number of students for the crime of attending school; cannot sue a weapons manufacturer or ammunition supplier. "After all, it's not our fault this maniac believed our advertising and PR campaign"
I want our people to protest in huge numbers at the headquarters offices of the entire munitions industry. To boycott chain stores that sell weapons and ammunition. And to insist on enforcement of laws already existing. I am truly sorry I waited so long to get started that I can't do much in person, too bloody old and partially crippled.
It is shocking. I remember a similar column in the New York Times several years ago called, simply, The Gun Report in which Joe Nocera covered gun violence in the US on a daily basis. He finally stopped writing the column about 10 years ago; it was too horrifying for him and his colleagues to continue. Thanks for continuing to write about this issue.
The laws across the world vary greatly. There is a fundamental principle that, if you can safely remove yourself from the threat, then that's the safest place for all concerned. Nullifying the threat itself is viewed through a number of different lenses, from these extreme examples in Texas and Florida (fear is the key) to other states where there is a more objective analysis of the justification for fear. So, reasonableness tests do exist, but, of course, what persuaded the court in Donoghue v. Stevenson was the notion of yourself being confronted with a dead snail in your beverage. People could relate to that, so Mrs Donoghue won. People who live in a close community where physical contact is frequent even among strangers, such as shaking hands, bowing and kissing the hand, or gently guiding someone through a doorway as a matter of courtesy can be construed by others as a physical intrusion. Most judges would probably recognise these as acts of common decency. However, there is nothin g indecent in simply asking for alms. Yet those who do so are dressed in a rag-tag fashion. So a judge may sympathise with someone who feels threatened when he's only being asked for alms. The assessment lies in how the jury will see it.
Emmett Till's killers didn't get off because the jury didn't believe they'd done it; they got off because the jury members themselves would have likely done the self same thing.
Thank you for this insightful article, Graham. Obviously you have read our second Amendment in its entirety. It is too long for too many of my fellow Americans to read and understand. Yeah, it's only one sentence, but for heaven's sake it has two phrases! Ok, to be absolutely honest, for the first 25 years of my life I was a Canadian. Very few Canadians owned guns, and those few were mostly shotguns and hunting rifles. I emigrated in 1958 and became a citizen of the United States in 1967.
The problem here with we Americans, is, besides the inability to read compound sentences, we're going about gun control in the wrong way.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in New York in 1871. For it's first 100 years, it was a sporting association, predicated on gun safety and usage in hunting and target shooting.
Meanwhile the invention of the 6 shot revolver together with shoot em up cowboy movies, had increased little boys interest in guns. The movies, and serials like the Lone Ranger, starting in the 1930's and continuing well into the 1960's gave these little boys heroes, like Billy the Kid, [a mentally retarded teenager who, using a rifle, shot his victims in the back in reality] and other mythological gunmen gained far more interest as these little boys reached the age of "immature adulthood" they gave up their cap guns in favor of real 6 shooters.
Suddenly, in the 1970's the weapons manufacturers (who were fresh out of wars for a short time) got together with the NRA who needed more clout and membership. First they grasped the second phrase of Amendment 2 "...the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" Those were words even a moron could understand.
This was about the same time period the horde of lobbyists descended upon the once hallowed hallways of Congress. GREED was the king. A series of laws to protect the gun industry were passed, the political parties' coffers grew fatter and gun ownership was off to the races.
My State, California began responding with gun control laws - especially military weapons like fully automated AR15's and AK 47's. These laws have been over-turned by equally greedy courts (also in on the take).
Now, I am advocating in going after the source. The Weapons Industry. Right now they enjoy extreme protection. A person; whose children were slaughtered by a mass murderer sporting an automated rifle killed a large number of students for the crime of attending school; cannot sue a weapons manufacturer or ammunition supplier. "After all, it's not our fault this maniac believed our advertising and PR campaign"
I want our people to protest in huge numbers at the headquarters offices of the entire munitions industry. To boycott chain stores that sell weapons and ammunition. And to insist on enforcement of laws already existing. I am truly sorry I waited so long to get started that I can't do much in person, too bloody old and partially crippled.
The US is totally unhinged in its gun laws, such as they are. Check the Gun Violence Archive:
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
The website is quite shocking. I was taken aback by the suicides by firearm.
Belgium is not immune. We have the 4th-highest rate of gun crime in Europe. Here's an older English-language article about how easily one can obtain firearms in Belgium: https://www.brusselstimes.com/47810/gun-control-in-belgium-how-easy-is-it-to-get-hold-of-a-gun-in-brussels
Thank you for this link. I was unaware of it, Mark.
You will have seen my previous contribution on the subject. For anyone else interested, I wrote on guns here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/blessed-are-americas-gun-laws.
Subscriber Fay Reid has also written extensively on the constitutional aspects of the gun law in the US. You can find some of her contributions to the debate here: https://fayreid.substack.com/p/guns-731 and https://fayreid.substack.com/p/the-constitution-contd
It is shocking. I remember a similar column in the New York Times several years ago called, simply, The Gun Report in which Joe Nocera covered gun violence in the US on a daily basis. He finally stopped writing the column about 10 years ago; it was too horrifying for him and his colleagues to continue. Thanks for continuing to write about this issue.
If this was an Amicus curiae, and I was the justice, I'd take it into account and decide in accord.
The laws across the world vary greatly. There is a fundamental principle that, if you can safely remove yourself from the threat, then that's the safest place for all concerned. Nullifying the threat itself is viewed through a number of different lenses, from these extreme examples in Texas and Florida (fear is the key) to other states where there is a more objective analysis of the justification for fear. So, reasonableness tests do exist, but, of course, what persuaded the court in Donoghue v. Stevenson was the notion of yourself being confronted with a dead snail in your beverage. People could relate to that, so Mrs Donoghue won. People who live in a close community where physical contact is frequent even among strangers, such as shaking hands, bowing and kissing the hand, or gently guiding someone through a doorway as a matter of courtesy can be construed by others as a physical intrusion. Most judges would probably recognise these as acts of common decency. However, there is nothin g indecent in simply asking for alms. Yet those who do so are dressed in a rag-tag fashion. So a judge may sympathise with someone who feels threatened when he's only being asked for alms. The assessment lies in how the jury will see it.
Emmett Till's killers didn't get off because the jury didn't believe they'd done it; they got off because the jury members themselves would have likely done the self same thing.