A Texas law is going to allow students to open-carry guns into the classroom, so the University of Houston administration is doing the responsible thing, and informing instructors how to deal with armed students. Tell me if this sounds like good advice to you.
- Be careful discussing sensitive topics
- Drop certain topics from your curriculum
- Not “go there” if you sense anger
- Limit student access off hours
Good thing there are no sensitive topics in biology. No one gets upset about evolution, or reproductive biology, or biotechnology, or vaccines, or chemotherapy, or birth defects, or bioethics, or heritable traits, or…hey! If the administration ever tells me to drop controversial topics from my curriculum, I’ll be on easy street! I’ll just stroll in to every class, say “Let’s rap”, and we’ll just talk about non-stressful events on everyone’s minds, because all the subjects I teach have the potential to be controversial. This being Minnesota, we’ll just talk about the weather every day.
I feel for you people who teach political science, or sociology, or psychology, or any of those harder topics that everyone gets upset about. I’ve got it easy.
I think professors ought to consider some kind of class action lawsuit (with the reservation that I am not a lawyer). It sounds criminal to turn our profession into a dangerous occupation to the point where administrators advise us to not do our jobs.
From the comment section in that link:
I don’t even.
You guys are fucking nuts!
Open carry won’t have a chilling effect on campus at all, PZ! Clearly, no-platforming is the worst and what you should be concerned about. /s
Because there could be a totally legitimate reason that a student is carrying something primarily designed to kill things* into a classroom.
* I mean, there are some people who seem to use guns as a combination security blanket and ego-stroker, but they tend to be people I don’t trust with firearms.
The Profs should hire armed guards to sit in the classrooms with their fully automatic weapons pointed at the students.
That should make everyone feel safer.
!
I mean, okay, well, the States has such a clean record of responsible, sober gun
fondlersowners, who just like to wander around with loaded guns, and gosh, no problem with school shootings. Nope. Not here. Ever.*
This is fuckin’ insanity.
There’s a simple solution: the teachers should be armed with a gun and steely, Clint Eastwood glare. Any sign of trouble and they just ask the students, “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” That should take care of any possible problems.
Are teachers allowed to pack? Maybe Teachers Unions should issue bulletproof vests and hand guns with clips and secondary high capacity magazines. The whole, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) concept was a valid theory, I guess, during the Cold War.
Question: Are faculty allowed to open carry when meeting with the administrators? Say, for performance review?
“Shit, it’s cold today. Heh, some global warming, huh?”
Too controversial. Stick to fluffier topics.
“Cats? Yeah, I suppose cats are alright, but I prefer dogs.”
AUGH!
“It sure is five minutes past ten in the morning, huh?”
“Uh, actually, my watch makes it four minutes.”
NOOOOOOOOOO!
Igh! I graduated from the U of H and this is just batshit crazy. The loonies in the legislature wanted this and thanks to the gerrymandering of Tom Delay, they were able to get what they wanted. Literally every private university in the state has banned firearms both concealed and open carry. The U of H faculty and student body wanted to ban guns in any classroom or dorm but the law does not allow that. So, they have to do this. UT in Austin fought even harder, and not just with dildos. When my Ex went to Texas Tech, she kept her 9mm in her room. Despite the fact that the student handbook said instant expulsion for doing so, and despite my repeated warnings for her to leave it at the house. But, now you can carry a handgun anywhere you want on campus.
The law they passed that really pissed me off though is the one that says your employer has to allow you to carry your gun, in your car, in the parking lot at work. So much for their strong support of private property rights.
Hey, College students and guns, what’s the worst that can happen. *shudder*
Sorry, I don’t mean to make light of a serious situation (although I realise that I just did exactly that and this sentence is deeply weasely) but… ugh. Do they think more guns is going to lead to fewer shootings? Because I don’t see the logic there.
If students are allowed to carry guns into class, does this mean faculty are allowed to carry guns into their meetings with the dean and administration? If not, why not?
Hypocrisy and cowardice, no doubt. And if a few students use this as a means of intimidating teachers, it’s “not the administration’s problem”.
Glad I don’t live in Texas.
Long ago, I almost took a research job in Texas. Ended up going somewhere else. Hmmm, I hate to say it but maybe the gods do exist and Frigga and Athena were looking out for me!!!
I thought avoiding ‘certain topics’ is M.O. nowadays in University.
Just point something out as I have been following this for a while now. To the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of students, faculty and administrators at U of H and other Texas universities are deeply opposed to this measure. This is not something that is the “fault” of any group aside from the Texas Legislature and a small group of gun nuts who want to be able to carry their firearms wherever they feel like it.
Please don’t blame the faculty, administration or anyone at the U of H. They had little to no choice in this. If you want to blame someone, please direct all vitriol towards the State Legislature.
The mildly deranged penguin recommends using a large pair of scissors, or perhaps an exceptionally large box cutter, snipping Texas out of the ground, and rocketing it into the Sun. The rather large hole in the ground where Texas once was can be used an overflow site for the rising oceans. That will presumably also help to recharge the Ogallala Aquifer, especially if you include Oklahoma for the Sun’s dessert.
Topics I have seen students driven to frothing rage by during lectures, whether one I was teaching, or attending as a student:
1) Simple fractions (speed/distance…) in an Astronomy class, without even the expectation that we use them, resulted in a rage-fuelled five minute rant about being promised this was a class for non science majors, wandering across the professor’s professional qualifications and parentage, and finally ending when another student stood up in front of the idiot in question and asked them to “shut up and go back to grade school, the rest of us are hear to learn things”. Everyone else was just staring at the ranter in stunned silence.
2) Changing the questions around from one semester to another on the midterm. Not even the content of the questions, just the order of them, as the student had memorized “A,C,D,D,B,C,D,A,A,…” despite being warned that there were four different versions of the test in the room. Less than a minute of angry ranting, but the people in front of them were wiping spit off of their shoulders and hair. (End result: dean of student affairs informed me that I was no longer allowed to imply that students in my class are idiots, “even when they clearly are”.)
3) Student took exception to failing a midterm that he didn’t answer any questions correctly on, and found out (through other means, it was never even brought up in class due to complete irrelevance) that the prof who failed them was gay. Interrupted three lectures with angry anti-gay ranting, had to be removed by campus police, and later the city police were called in to deal with repeated death threats and harassment.
4) Giving the instructions for assignments in English, despite it being the official language of the University, and province the University was in.
So let’s see, that adds basic math, updating course materials ever, failing people who don’t get good marks, being a member of any minority that any student may decide they don’t like, and speaking/writing in the official language of the institution.
The list of things these Texas profs are not supposed to do just keeps getting longer.
PZ is right. College students are young and often don’t exhibit good judgement. I know, having once been young and often displaying bad judgement. You learn from your mistakes and from experience. It’s also a stressful time for many, growing up and facing the world alone for the first time while taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt that will hang over your life for decades.
I’ve also seen some serious verbal attacks on teachers and a few physical assaults.
Tossing guns into this mix isn’t going to end well.
If I was a prof in Texas and armed students became a problem, I’d do what I could to find another job even if it was in another place. Who wants to go to work every day and worry about getting killed?
Say goodbye to biology, geology, astronomy, women’s studies. I’d even be hesitant to teach calculus or physics in case someone gets mad that he can’t figure out the math.
This. I also.
In one case, it wasn’t clear what the student was upset about. AFAWCT, it was that the professor was a…woman and this guy thought she should be at home baking cookies for the kids.
A Texas law is going to allow students to open-carry guns into the classroom…
Shouldn’t they at least limit that to guns with a Bible verse or “America” (or “Texas!”) etched into the metal?
This is dystopian future level insanity. Holy shit. You democrat voters better fucking vote if there’s going to be any hope whatsoever of reversing this kind of mindbogglingly surreal shit.
I don’t see what possibly could go wrong
Are you allowed to carry a gun into the Capitol building? I would guess not. They’re evil, not stupid.
I was going to suggest Texas legislators — I had thought only police officers and similar are allowed to carry guns in the capitol building — but this seems not to be the case. I’m not 100% certain, but it appears guns can be carried openly in the capitol building.
Who will be the next Charles Whitman at the UoT?
@blf
Holy crap, you’re right!
I stand corrected. They really are that stupid.
Um. What? This is not a joke?
How stupid has someone to be to allow open carry for students? I don’t even… This is weapons grade idiocy.
Charly @ 29:
Literally.
@1:
Yeah, students have NEVER shot teachers, except Sandy Hook, VA Tech, Columbine,… oh, wait.
ugh
to me the whole point of education is to be presented facts that make one uncomfortable to learn why one was uncomfortable by the facts. It seems that list of “suggestions” reads like a way to abandon the role of teaching completely. To turn unis into mindless daycare for young adults. Whether armed or not. if a teacher is advised to , basically telling teachers STFU.
Actually, is it open-carry or (worse!) concealed-carry? The reports I am reading, e.g., Texas academics told to avoid ‘sensitive topics’ if gun law goes into effect, are saying the law in question, which goes into effect in August, allows concealed-carry on campus:
The article also mentions that some educators and students have either stated they will leave, have turned down offers, or have already left, over this absurd law.
I think we’ve finally reached peak gun-nut. It’s as if the legislature put their heads together to come up with the stupidest policy possible, the one that can’t be defended no matter how pro-2nd Amendment you are, and then voted on it.
Even these idiots can’t possibly believe that this will lead to a net reduction in people getting shot. This may well just be a deliberate spit in the face to higher education. The final fuck-you to those pointed-headed professors.
Moreover, isn’t it basically admitting that allowing guns is dangerous? I mean, the not-so-hidden implication is that you shouldn’t “go there” because otherwise you might get shot.
Gun-fondlers love the quote “an armed society is a polite society,” but they never really think through the implications.
“Politeness” that is the result of genuine goodwill and respect for your fellow humans is perhaps a desirable goal (though not if it’s at the expense of advancing ideas through intellectual exchange). But “politeness” that is enforced through the implied threat of violence is not even arguably a good thing.
Orwell’s Oceania was a pretty polite place. I bet most totalitarian states are.
erichoug@11:
Hmm. What happens when a Muslim employee casually mentions the arsenal he keeps in his trunk?
Area Man@33, as per the quoted article in (me)@32, private colleges are allowed to opt-out, it’s the public colleges which must allow concealed-carry: Which suggests, adding slightly to what you wrote, “This may well just be a deliberate spit in the face to publicly-funded higher education. […]”
I think the main gun nut argument for carry laws in general, if I recall, is that “well, killers ALREADY could carry guns onto campus (or anywhere they want guns) and shoot people, and laws don’t stop that, so stopping us good-guy gun owners from bringing guns is unfair ONLY to good guy gun owners who want to defend themselves”.
Course, the obvious counter is that we KNOW to run away from anyone who looks like they have a gun if guns are banned, and we can thus react to protect ourselves.
If guns are legal, we’ll have no way to check who’s bringing guns with intention to murder people and little spats between students will be far more easily escalated into shootouts. And they’ll also fail to stop most killer premeditated shootings anyway, besides making them easier.
It’s pissing me off that the freedom conservative assholes want is almost always freedom to worsen the lives of other people. Private ownership of utilities and no regulation, so poor people can die of lead poisoning! Private rights to gun ownership, so people can get shot more easily or live in more constant fear! Reduced taxes and government, so other people can starve or die without healthcare!
LykeX @#25
You are 100% correct, it is illegal to carry guns in the Texas State Capital building. The legislators are worried that it might lead to some unfortunate incidents. But, for the rest of us…
Whoop, I have to correct myself. It apparently is Legal to carry in the State Capital Building
So our legislators are assholes but not hypocrites. Well…at least on this issue.
I “eagerly” a wait further developments in the ongoing story of guns in society (US).
uncle frogy
At what point will they have guns that fire not from a trigger but from a stroking of the barrel?
It is interesting how all the hypothetical “defenders” who need guns to take-down the miscreant killer; are all assumed to be perfect shots, that they never miss their target and never accidentally hit a bystander.
If I was a prof at UT, I’d make a point of wearing body armor while I taught.
Can professors at least decide that no student can bring a weapon into their office? Somehow I’m guessing the answer is no.
I’m thinking of counselors and ombudsmen in particular – their entire jobs consist of seeing students when the students are angry and/or upset…
@34: “Moreover, isn’t it basically admitting that allowing guns is dangerous?”
In fairness, the slide show above is an unofficial reaction by the faculty Senate, not something the legislature came up with. The legislature has presumably swallowed the myth of the heroically armed citizen going out in public and stopping the bad guys before they can kill, and would never admit that the roughly zero probability of this happening in a classroom is more than offset by the extra corpses caused by having more armed citizens out in public who may act stupidly or angrily.
But yeah, the faculty regard this policy as dangerous, and for good reason.
Hmm…looking for loopholes. Could you remove a student carrying a gun because the gun is disruptive? So you’re not removing them because they are armed, but because they are a disruption? Sorta like free speech not stopping you from being prosecuted for inciting a riot.
The compromise our wise legislature made was to allow campus buildings to ban guns as long as they put multi-thousand dollar metal detectors at every entrance.
Or could you require them to unload the weapon? You know, something to make it less Wild West?
No doubt the gun crowd will reply that professors can carry guns for self defense too. But just like students professors can become violent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Fabrikant
@screechymonkey
You mean, the implication that they find the causal slights of everyday life so unbearable, they need to fantasize about murdering everyone who’s “impolite” to them in order to get through the day?
Sadly I fear that one of the stats that will increase as a result will be the number of student suicides…
So which is a bigger threat to education and free public discourse: students carrying guns on campus or students asking to be warned of content related to their personal traumas?
Also, is this a stealth campaign to bankrupt public universities?
Re: auntbenjy (#51):
I fear they won’t. There will be some excuse not to track such embarrasing stats, or they will simply be merged into something else to hide them. Anything involving guns is not worth monitoring, it seems.
A few years back, Missouri voters rejected concealed-carry. The state legislature passed it anyway.
The Second Amendment of the U. S. Constitution has nothing to do with individuals owning guns, or carrying guns in public, concealed or open. It has to do with national defense and avoiding professional armies.
Correct, no Federal funds can be used to collect data on the number/severity/cause of gun wounds under any conditions. Almost like they knew gun deaths/wounds would go up. Which the CDC or ATF should be collecting….
@Nerd of Redhead #55
I had no idea. But then I live in a country that actually records such numbers…
Are there bars on campus? There are in most universities around the world, but I don’t know about Houston. I hope not, because after August they probably won’t be very safe for anyone on a Saturday night.
Geez. I’d hate to be giving exams at that place.
“I just need ten more minutes! You’ll take my unfinished paper out of my cold dead hands!”
sigaba@50,
Oh, I don’t know — I think they’re quite aware of that implication.* I think what they ignore is the implication that they’ll have to watch what they say because everyone else has a gun, too.
*Though there are some who aggressively deny it. They like to turn it around on their opponents and say that “well, maybe you can’t be trusted not to go around shooting everyone who pisses you off, but we are above such things.” Just like they brush aside instances of children shooting themselves or each other with a parent’s carelessly-stored gun: oh, that only happens with irresponsible gun owners. And suicides? Well, either they would have found some other way to kill themselves, or else they’re just obviously weak-minded and don’t matter. Anti-gun control people tend to think of themselves as flawless: not subject to anger or carelessness or moments of weakness, and think that –in this one area only, mind you — public policy needs to be built around the assumption that people are flawless.
Do they think more guns is going to lead to fewer shootings? No, they think it will lead to more gun sales.
I’d be interested to see how much the NRA contributed to campaign funds.
My wife taught second-graders here in Texas until she retired two years ago (seven- and eight-year-old children, for you folks with different numbering systems.) A majority of the teachers on her hall had pistols in their desks or purses every day. I do not know how many of them had concealed-carry permits.
I don’t know of any fatalities there. Yet.
Second Texas anecdote: the safety officer at my workplace was showing his new pistol to my lab partner in the parking lot, inside the facility. He is a responsible gun owner (obviously!!) and a big Second Amendment fan. His gun discharged, missing my chemist’s knee by about a foot. The bullet went through the back door of Safety Man’s company vehicle.
Management was amused – laughed out loud – but did get pretty stern about making him pay for the repairs.
And I still live in the fucking place. Maybe I’m the crazy one.
The thing the originalists miss is that in earlier drafts, the clause said “the right to bare legs, shall not be infringed” but a Puritan scribe changed it up.
I still remember the good ol’ boy sitting in front of me during my college exit exam. It was one of those general tests to get a grip on how much we’d learned overall. There was a reading-comprehension bit with a couple paragraphs we had to get information from, which happened to be on the life of Socrates. At the end of the test the cowboy was swearing about the Socrates part – he knew nothing about Socrates, he kept repeating.
He totally failed to get that it was about reading and regurgitating, and he hadn’t already known the trivial stuff that was in the paragraphs. But he was irate, and making sure everyone knew it. (To be fair, he did know how to pronounce “Socrates”.)
Such a total lack of comprehension, and so much indignation. And just the guy to have a gun out in his truck. I am now glad that he didn’t have a gun on him.
Some other student once had a shirt saying that prayer was the ultimate weapon. I wonder if she would carry a gun.
Coragyps@62: “the safety officer at my workplace”.
I take it that, at your workplace, a “safety officer” is to “safety” what Ray Bradbury’s “firemen” were to “fire”?
To be fair to whoever wrote that slide, it’s quite possible that they realise just how awful those suggestions are but are trying to reduce the danger to staff and students and also make it abundantly clear the effect the legislative changes are having.
“Hi, I’m Joe, from the Safety Department.”
“Hi, Joe. What’s your job title there?”
“Bad example.”
@#13, left0ver1under
To be fair to them, they probably do think that teachers should have guns all the time. The only place pro-gun lawmakers traditionally believe should be free of guns is the legislature. Can’t have dissatisfied voters trying to shoot them — but everyone else is (in a literal sense) fair game. This isn’t something I’m making up, it’s a point which has already been elaborated by some of them, although I can’t dig up a source at the moment.
It’s not unlike the way the Supreme Court won’t let abortion clinics have a “protest-free” zone around the building, but won’t let protesters get close to the justices themselves. Their job, after all, is important.
This reminds me of the fact that military bases don;t allow people, even trained soldiers, to carry guns wherever they wish. Those that are on guard duty sure, but everyone else in unarmed when not in firearms exercises. The guiding principle of course is plain sense – bring guns to situations where you can reasonably expect it to be useful – e.g. shooting practice – but otherwise leave it in storage.
Or in other words, every toolbag that goes about their day to day business while armed is, and indeed the very concept of puclic carry, is failing this basic rule.
Ah, I see from later comments (should have read the whole thread, darnit!) that Texas does indeed permit guns in the legislature. I stand corrected — although there are other states where the hypocrisy is exactly as I described. It came up in a discussion elsewhere, and there were at least 3 states where the lawmakers had pushed through bills to let guns into places where most people would probably not want them, but wouldn’t let them into the legislature. But, I must admit, not Texas.
@35 screechymonkey
This attitude makes “sense” when you consider how religion interacts with gun-fondling. Christians often deem the former impossible and the latter necessary for morality to even exist which is why many will not only assert that atheists cannot be moral but insist that they themselves would become depraved if God weren’t constantly holding the biggest, baddest weapon to their heads.
Tabby Lavalamp
You know, if that mechanism also needed the average amount of stimulation the real thing needs, that might actually be a good thing. (You can bring your gun to class but NOT your vibrator. Safety issues)
This is the progressive view of that Amendment, of course, but it is not the opinion of the US Supreme Court.
What’s mindbogglingly surreal is that you think that adult citizens of the United States should be prohibited from exercising a constitutional right simply because they are sitting in a classroom. There are certainly very good arguments to allow guns on campus (just as there are very good arguments against).
One obvious argument – and a silver lining for this measure – is that women will now be able to protect themselves should they feel threatened on campus. That’s undeniably a good thing, and it is probably going to prevent more than a few sexual assaults in the future.
And those would be…what?
Ah. And how would that work? Should women go around with their guns drawn at all times or only if they feel threatened? I’d feel threatened all the time if I thought the man or woman next to me might be contemplating shooting me, so I guess I’d run around with my gun in my hand* constantly. Which would probably scare the woman sitting next to me who would likely think that I’m a threat…
Or are you imaging that the canonical rapist in a dark alley will give a woman he’s stalking time and warning to draw her gun? Not likely. And…oh, look, according to the FBI, rates of rape are highest in the open carry states in the south and lowest in the Northeast. What a shocker!
*Oh, cut that out, dirty minded Pharyngulites. It doesn’t even have that implication for a woman and I’m shocked–shocked!–that you’d think such a thing.
What is and what should be are very different.
What’s mindbogglingly surreal is that you think that adult citizens of the United States should be prohibited from exercising a constitutional right simply because they are sitting in a daycare.
What’s mindbogglingly surreal is that you think that adult citizens of the United States should be prohibited from exercising a constitutional right simply because they are sitting in an airplane.
What’s mindbogglingly surreal is that you think that adult citizens of the United States should be prohibited from exercising a constitutional right simply because they are sitting at a high school football game.
What’s mindbogglingly surreal is that you think that adult citizens of the United States should be prohibited from exercising a constitutional right simply because they are sitting at a music concert.
What’s mindbogglingly surreal is that you think that adult citizens of the United States should be prohibited from exercising a constitutional right simply because they are sitting in a bar room.
OMG THE SURREALITY!
Fucking eh.
Your naivete is disgustingly precious. Potential rapes will turn to definite murders. I’m surprised you seem to think that only the innocent will own the weapons, when I’m sure you’re one of the people chomping at the bit to use the cliched “only outlaws will have guns!” phrase.
Is that the late Scalia’s originalism where the constitution must be read like those who wrote it thought about it? Any evidence those dudes thought “really, kids should be able to bring weapons of a technological level we cannot even imagine into every single space!”?
Lolsob
Yeah, I can totally imagine what would happen to women if they started shooting the dudes walking too closely behind them at night, the dudes who catcall them, the dudes who ask for their number even though they already said “no”.
It wil, of course, totally protect them when they’re pass out drunk or already in bed with their boyfriend who suddenly decides he wants to do anal no matter what she says.
Penny L, being wrong on everything.
throwaway
Just imagine how differently the terrorist attack at Bataclan would have played out if everybody had had a gun!
Sadly, that’s exactly the kind of nonsense Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes has been spreading since the Bataclan attacks. One would hope he’d know better.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/16/eagles-of-death-metal-frontman
Penny L continues their streak of being laughably wrong on every single issue they post about.
Giliell, #76
Beat me to it. :)
the same court that decided corporations are really people.
oh hell, I’ll just all the way back to the Dred Scott decision and drop the mic.
Oh, look, it’s Penny being a horrible human being again. It must be a day of the week.
If kicking your children in the face was a constitutional right you’d be defending it…
I don’t understand the US. Here in Sweden it’s illegal to carry a knife in public places and schools, let alone a gun.
That’ll make for a great, productive studying climate.
I think everyone should be prohibited from exercising said constitutional right. I think that said constitutional right is a stupid thing to have in existence now and would give anything to see it amended out of existence.
No one needs to own a gun.
It’s the sign of somebody who doesn’t have an actual moral compass and therefore needs a Supreme Court in lieu of a god to tell them what to think
pentatomid
How anybody thinks that it would have helped if more people had had guns, in a dark location and complete chaos is beyond me. Did anybody ever tell them that Die Hard is fiction?
? Oh, really? Little secret here: guns don’t stop bullets.
I hate to say this, but…arguably it is, under the heading of “freedom to raise your children the way you want to” and Penny probably does defend it.
No, but they can – and have – stopped rapists.
I’ve been abused and berated on this site for several of my opinions, but never more viciously than when I said women should report sexual assaults to the police. So now, when I suggest that perhaps being armed might protect a woman from a sexual predator, people once again resort to name calling instead of addressing my ideas. If I didn’t know better I would think that the people commenting here really don’t care about women’s safety on campus.
Because as we all know, rapists can’t own guns.
How armed I am doesn’t matter; if someone got the drop on me, pulled a gun, and told me to do anything, I’d do it. I’m not Clint fucking Eastwood and this isn’t a shootout at high noon.
The gun I have on my body becomes useless the second someone else pulls a gun first, and I’m not going to walk around gun in hand 24/7 because I’m not an idiotic gun fondler who thinks they’re Clint Eastwood.
No, the day students are allowed to bring guns on my campus is the day I drop out of college and go somewhere safer.
Except that, as noted above, they don’t. Okay, there may be anecdotal cases: I won’t say that it’s impossible that some woman somewhere stopped a rapist with a gun. It’s just that it doesn’t happen often and a woman is far more likely to be raped in an open carry state (suggesting that she is more likely to be threatened with a gun than to protect herself with one) and she is far more likely to be shot than to be able to protect herself with a gun.
What scenario do you imagine in which a woman could stop a rapist with a gun?
And your ideas have been addressed in multiple comments, including by PZ. You simply have chosen to ignore that fact.
@90 Penny
No, people have not “abused” and “berated” you for saying that women should report. You have been deservedly critisized for claiming that not doing so makes them responsible for the potential future actions of their rapists, you slimy, dishonest fucking arsehole.
No, they do not. The only thing a gun will do, when it comes to a rape, is end up with a dead person, especially when handily provided by the victim, and especially when the rapist happens to ponder that perhaps they don’t want someone telling on them the next day.
Penny L, you don’t understand the concept of evidence. PZ supplied third party evidence showing having a gun doesn’t protect you as you claim it would. You presented no third party evidence in return. Your reply is therefore dismissed without evidence.
You need to learn the difference between right wing evidenceless propaganda, and impartial sources of evidence. Claims about the protective power of guns are born out when the evidence is in.
Just like a fundy Christian, Penny’s chief method of making decisions on real life moral issues that have to do with living, breathing human beings is to consult a centuries old text. If it’s in there, it’s good. If it contradicts something in there, it’s bad.
Fuck the Second Amendment.
How about we enact policies that will actually keep kids safe, rather than trying to turn this into some gun-fondler’s wet dream where the only thing keeping your gun in the holster is my gun in my holster?
Regardless, this topic did actually come up in my university as a response to the Isla Vista shootings. Students overwhelmingly oppose guns on campus, and several professors said that they would retire if such a policy was passed, citing the exact same issue in PZ’s post.
Angry burnout kids failing some hard class and showing up to office hours packing heat isn’t exactly a far-fetched notion.
@96
Real talk. Parts of the constitution are cool, but I see absolutely no reason for this unflinching loyalty to everything in it. It’s a somewhat shitty document written by somewhat shitty people, and there’s no reason to suppose that something is good just because the constitution allows it.
So yeah, fuck the second ammendment and fuck your constitutional right to own dangerous weapons.
Vivec:
It’s also a document which was tailored for the time it was written. There wasn’t much “let’s take the long view” going on there.
You know what? I’m prepared to concede that allowing guns on campus will likely deter some assaults (sexual or otherwise). However, this has to be balanced against the fact that allowing guns on campus is also likely to facilitate some assaults (both sexual and otherwise). So we need to balance the two… Given what we know about both the demographics of gun ownership and the psychology of gun use, it seems inevitable that allowing guns on campus will facilitate far more sexual assaults than it will prevent, and that conclusion seems fairly obvious. This conclusion is also supported by empirical data, in that sexual assaults are more common in jurisdictions which permit the carrying of guns.
Now, who is it that doesn’t really care about women’s safety on campus again?
No, see, just put it through an
98 (lol scalia) man taffy pull every couple of years and you can extricate any conclusion you want from it.Sure, just as the occasional granny stops a robber with her gun. Yet those are the exceptions, like when you choke to death on a slice of toast, not the rule.
First of all, yeah, rapists can have guns as well. Their first order would be “take off that holster and throw it to me!”
Secondly, guns are totally useless against being drugged.
Thirdly, they are absolutely no use in situations where you trust the rapist, which is the overwhelming majority. No reason to sit with a drawn gun next to your husband while watching TV.
Unless somebody walks towards you announcing that they intent to rape you so you can draw, guns are pretty useless.
Penny:
Okay, I’ll bite on this one.
When Wife and I lived New Hampshire, a woman that Wife knew was at a bar late. She was tipsy enough that she decided not to drive. She called a cab. Small town, so the cab was going to be a while. A man from the bar offered her a ride. Winter in New Hampshire? Okay, why not. He took her to an industrial parking lot and raped her. She reported it to the police but it was never investigated because she was drunk, dressed ‘for fun’, and willingly got into his car. When should she have pulled a gun and shot him? When he offered the ride? When he took the first wrong turn? And how would the police have reacted to that crazy drunk floozy shooting some poor guy who offered her a ride home on a 35F night?
The younger sister of a friend of mine, at the age of 12 or 13, was strong-armed off of a county fair midway and was raped by a twenty-something year old man. She reported the crime. It was investigated. He was arrested. It went to trial. Despite the evidence from the emergency room, the skin under her fingernails, and all the witnesses, he was found not guilty because she was wearing suggestive clothing — mid summer in Maryland and she was wearing shorts and a bikini top. So when should she have pulled out a gun and shot the man? When he first pulled her arm up behind her back? When he led her off the midway? And how would the police have reacted to a child shooting a respected member of the community (owner of a local agricultural supply store)?
I was raped for two years by a scout leader. I was eight, nine, ten years old. How would having a gun have helped me? And how would the police have reacted when a (mild) troublemaker (gee, the troublemaking started when I was almost nine — coincidence?) shot a government biologist who held a leadership position in the local LDS, had a wife and two (or three? not sure on that) kids?
You keep writing that all a woman (person) needs to do is arm themselves and they will not be raped. How would any of the three real situations have ended up if one of us survivors had been armed and had shot the rapist? Jail? Juvenile detention?
Ogvorbis:
Well, you know all the circumstances with me, there isn’t one where a gun would have helped (except to possibly see me locked up for murder), and in one circumstance, it would have most certainly seen me dead. I’ll never forget the hearing where I got to listen to the man who raped me explain that if he got out, he’d have to overcome his distaste for guns, as they were more certain when it came to making sure victims were dead. Aaaaand, this is not a good time for me to be talking about all this. I’d prefer it if Penny the Parrot perched somewhere else.
Moreover, how long before some creep starts arguing that the fact that you didn’t shoot him proves it was consensual? We already see this tendency today: If you don’t resist violently enough to get bruises, you’re assumed to have consented. This would be an entirely logical extension of that idea.
Hell, even not owning a gun could be taken as a sign that you’re unconcerned with protecting your virtue. It’ll be right next to “if you drink alcohol, you’re asking for it”.
We are forgetting that Penny lives in a fantasy world where people who report being raped are listened to, treated with dignity and their cases are adequately and swiftly processed, 100% of the time. In this wonderland full of strawberry flavoured unicorns that shit Ferrero Rocher, i imagine that all rape is preventable by pulling out a gun and shooting the unarmed fucker right in the heart.
If only those damn progressives would stop getting in our way of creating a true conservative Shangri-La, where every man is free to own as many wives as he has guns
Vivec @ 85
I just wanted to say I unequivocally support this idea.
Penny @ 90
I agree, you clearly don’t know any better. “More guns” doesn’t contribute to ANYONE’S safety, FFS.
Caine @104
I’m sorry you have to deal with Penny’s bullshit. Take care of yourself.
Jimb:
I’m sorry anyone has to deal with Penny’s bullshit. My thanks, though, I’m taking care. Been in a PTSD meltdown a few days now, afk stuff, not this, but people like Penny do not help.
LykeX:
Jesus fuck. Yeah, you’re right, I could see that happening all too easily. That shit would fit right in the current rape culture. And for the record, I’m with Vivec @ 85 all the way.
I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking so.
While I might amend my “no one needs a gun” statement to allow extremely specific situations, mostly dealing with some jobs, I think that they should be exceptionally regulated in those occasions, and not allowed otherwise. 99% of people do not need a gun and should not have one.
Help help help, PennyL has gone down the u bend of stupidity. Won’t someone think of the anaerobes?
To my mind, gun ownership/carry should be strictly limited. Specific occupations (police, military, security guard, etc) and locations (hunting ground, shooting range, etc). Outside such specific circumstances, I don’t think there’s any reason to be armed in a civilized society.
@114
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was getting at. However, even then, I’d strictly limit the types of guns and rules for usage. You don’t need heavy machine guns or anti-material rifles to shoot ducks.
LykeX @ 114:
Not all police forces are armed, and I’m not so sure they need guns, at least once you get the guns away from everyone else. Given how kill happy U.S. cops are, I’d be flat out relieved if their guns were taken away. Perhaps, in an ideal world, or even an ideal U.S., I’d be okay with cops having guns if they were properly trained to use them as a last option only.
This country is fucked.
Someone give me a reason that does not use the 2nd Amendment why the 2nd Amendment should exist.
Fucking do it. I dare you.
ftfy
When the potential rapist yells at you from a distance first, announces their intentions.. then asks if you have a gun while patiently waiting for you to dig it out of your holster or bag.
Vivec
Honestly, I’m done with that kind of concessions. They’re usually nothing productive in the discussion. Because the way communication works, we all know that when talking about “nobody” it is pretty clear that very specific situations are NOT included, but that we’re talking about your average Joe who does NOT live in a cabin in bear territory.
This kind of discussion only serves two purposes:
A) Derail. It takes the discussion from why your average JOe shouldn’t have a gun to the very few people who reasonable should be allowed to bear a weapon.
B) Opening the window. Just like with abortion discussion*, the aim is to find the one exception where somebody should be allowed to have a gun therefore everybody should have a gun everywhere.
*Only that of course no reasonable exception exists in case of abortion
Caine
*supportive hugs*
This is why the proper protective measure is a small, portable nuclear bomb. Whenever you sense someone you don’t trust, BOOM! Should you fail to sense the person in time, it will hopefully still be possible to go BOOM! And as a precaution, just to be on the safe side, every now and then, randomly BOOM!
Also solves the problems of cooties, liberals, stray cats, most other crimes as well, urban blight, depression on a rainy day, insufficient cheese, and unemployment (someone’s got to build all those mininukes).
That conclusion doesn’t seem fairly obvious at all, but it is the start of a good way to test whether or not this policy at the University of Houston will have net positive or net negative effects. Does it bother anyone else, btw, that it took 100 comments on this topic before someone got the idea to study this policy using actual data?
No, he didn’t. The evidence he cited was about homicides, I was and am speaking about sexual assault.
And here we go again with the distortions and the straw men…
I did now write that all a woman (person) needs to do is arm themselves and they will not be raped. Never said that. Never would say that because it’s stupid. What is it around here that prevents people from actually addressing the point I am trying to make? I’ve never quite seen anything like it.
I’ve also never advocated for giving guns to minors, Brother Ogvorbis, which two of the three cases you discuss in your comment involve. However the woman your wife knew may well have been saved if she had been armed. Your questions about when she should have shot him are idiotic, btw, the point at which she could have pulled out the gun was the point at which she felt that her life was in danger. And just showing someone a gun can stop an assault, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be fired.
Think about it just for a minute – why was that man able to sexually assault the woman your wife knew? Because he could physically overpower her. Having a gun, or a tazer, or pepper spray, etc., could very well even that score. I’ve personally experienced it. It works.
And I’m with you Caine, this isn’t a good subject for me to talk about either, but for other reasons.
Which is usually the moment it’s too late.
BTW, try asking Marissa Alexander about protecting yourself with a gun…
What’s to prevent a partner/minor taking your gun off you while you sleep or wash? The presence of a gun in a household is far more dangerous than no gun at all.
I cited evidence about sexual assault way back at comment #74. You chose to ignore it because, shockingly, it does not support your specious claims.
And her assailant is going to sit there politely while she finds the gun, pulls it out, fumbles with the safety, and fires? Um…no. Far more likely he’s going to grab it from her as soon as he see’s that she’s going for it (or fumbling around in her purse or pocket or whatever.)
I’m from Texas. There are guns everywhere in Texas and have been for some time. Know what we were trained to do if facing someone with a gun who you have reason to believe is going to fire it at you and no reasonable option for running away? Rush them. Grab the gun and make it yours instead of theirs. Relatively few people who are not hardened soldiers can maintain their cool and fire in the face of someone running at them and screaming. Plus if you stretch your arms out you might be able to protect vital organs with them. It might not work and might get you killed, but standing there while someone pulls a gun on you and fires WILL get you killed so might as well roll the dice.
Oh, and if I managed to get a gun from someone that way, I would shoot them in the head and feel justified. No matter how much a “good guy/gal with a gun” they were. Well, I would if I could figure out how. I might just whack them over the head with the nice heavy piece of metal I had in my hand at that point. I was raised by anti-gun nuts in Texas.
In short, waving a gun around is as likely to get you killed as to help you.
Lofty
Yep. A safe gun is absolutely no use when it comes to self-defence and any gun that is not safe is simply a danger to you and those around.
@Lofty and Giliell: Multiple studies demonstrate that people who have guns about the house are at higher risk of dying from a gun shot wound than those who do not. They are at higher risk of all three: homicide, suicide, and accident. Having a gun in the house is no protection against anything except maybe rattlesnakes if you live in far west Texas and it’s a serious risk for death in any number of violent ways.
Penny L
You are an idiont. Really. For someone who says about commenters on this blog that their “stupid burns so bright sometimes” you fail at the basic reasoning.
Read carefully: Anecdote is not data. Your personal experience is not necessarily typical.
You are also inable to read and/or comprehend what others wrote. This (emphassis mine):
Dunc #100
involves the conclusion, which you omitted. No “testing” at univerity campusses is necessary, because the probability that it would lead to unnecessary deaths is high, but the probabilty that it would provide some new knowledge is negligible. If you think otherwise , then present the reasoning you have for thinking that presence of guns among students would play out differently than presence of guns among general populace?
And, prey tell
if guns cannot help people not to get killed by other people with guns, how can they help people not to be sexually assaulted? If guns do not prevent other violent crimes, why should the magically work against sexual assault? Present some data, or shut up.
Here, read this, there is plenty of references to third-party evidence in there.
No, no, no, the only data that counts is cases of attempted rape by a stranger, in isolated locations, where the victim had more than enough time and opportunity to pull out the gun and shoot, but not fatally. Everything else just doesn’t apply to the scenario in Penny’s head that would totally be made better with guns.
Penny’s strawman rapists that run away at the sight of a gun waved amateurishly in their faces clearly haven’t been able to out think such a masterly mind such as Penny’s. The rapists haven’t been able to acquire a gun of their own, either, because all such rapists are obviously too stupid/foreign to work out how to get one.
Meanwhile, in the real world….
You don’t understand, Lofty, like Giliell said earlier, what matters is to imagine a specific situation in which having a gun would possibly have the desired result, as long as that scenario is at least feasable, then allowing guns is a net benefit by fiat and all other scenarios don’t matter, no matter how unlikely the winning scenario is.
Penny L, hypocrite
Your evidenceless screed is dismissed without evidence. You have no evidence, and won’t until you show with non-propaganda sources that you are correct.
Fuck off until you learn how to evaluate and present evidence.
A question for the Americans in the room. Where are the insurance companies in all of this?
I would assume that any injury or death would result in a law suit from either the injured party or the health care provider against the gun fondler. What do the personal liability insurers have to say on the topic? Or can i assume that each time someone is shot, the shooter declares bankruptcy after the trial and life moves on.
And an comment. What if the health insurance companies required gun owners to carry liability insurance to cover health care of the victims. I the case of death the insured’s life insurance company could sue the shooter. If I was a health care insurer I would wish to recover costs related to the injury of the insured by the injuring party when possible. Similar to auto insurance (except for no-fault jurisdictions).
Or am I just blowing smoke?
devlynh@135: there’s lots of laws to prevent your type of dangerous thinking which could serve to limit guns, which are the measure of all that is good in the world.
Real talk penny, just fuck off. No one buys that Scalia was some legal supergenius (and plenty of us are glad he’s dead), no one buys that women are responsible for rapes if they don’t report, and no one agrees with your bullshit gun-fondling.
No one needs to own a gun and your “second ammendment rights” are an idiotic remnant of a bygone age.
The answer to preventing crime and rape isn’t saying “its inevitable, so you better arm yourself if you want to stay safe”, and it certainly isn’t to try and turn campuses into some kind of wild west wet dream.
Since most rapes are committed by someone you know and at your own home or the home of a friend or loved one, essentially I need to have a gun cocked and ready to fire any time I am in one of these places with another person there. One cannot make out with someone without a gun in a side holster (which stays on even when naked)* with one’s hand on it, ready to draw if any part of them looks like it’s getting too close to an orifice without consent.
Likewise, if a friend’s husband offers to help me get some fruit salad out of the garage for our picnic, or I stay late at work with an office-mate, I will likewise need to be prepared.
Since I live with my husband, I will have to build some sort of contraption involving a motion detector near my mouth and genitals for while I’m unconscious. It will trigger a spring-loaded robot arm that will aim and then fire a gun at my husband if he attempts to rape me while I am asleep. Like driverless cars, it may take some testing to work the bugs out.
*Joe Cocker’s song will be changed to “You can leave your gun on.”
Penny L #123
So which one did you experience?
gun? tazer? pepper spray?
Because the techniques for dealing with those are very different.
When I was gun crazy, I remember liking Penn & Teller’s Bullshit episode where they say we should just give every woman a gun and it would stop sexual assaults.
But a big problem was immediately apparent: the people who might need the potential self-defense power don’t actually WANT to carry guns around, because it doesn’t make even them feel safe.
Even if it somehow magically gave women superiority of threat in every situation and we magically took guns away from any men who might use them to facilitate rape/assault, we’d have to be FORCING guns on some women to really get them to be perpetually armed, and that’s NOT freedom.
Just the fact that guns are less popular now makes their magical deterrence impossible; only the hardcore survivalists are stockpiling guns, so guns have now become even more dangerous and even less relevant to militia needs or even self-defense needs. Despite the average guns per person, the actual ownership percentage of any guns is going down.
We can’t make people own guns, which means guns will deter less, which means we need them FAR less because only the paranoid or violent will own them, who are the people we least need to own guns.
That’s even before getting to the reality of how many defense stops guns actually contribute to (not many), the many homicides mere gun-ownership accidents would add (too many), the fact we’d be adding yet another added burden on women to be even more rape-proof because seeking redress after the crime is so fucking difficult, the fact most people can get to within “stop you from using your gun” range without throwing up your danger-reflexes (forget the 20 foot rule, most people’s social bubbles are like 5 feet max without feeling imposed on), the dangers of crossfire, the dangers of multiple civilians drawing weapons in self defense when police don’t have an ID on the shooter, and the fact that civilized countries exist without civilian-owned guns OR totalitarian overlords despite our patriotic claims, and so forth.
@140 kagekiri:
My bad, second paragraph should end “because it doesn’t even make them feel safe.”
I’m just baffled by how one can claim guns will have any major effect on rape when the vast majority of scenarios would make owning a gun useless.
For example:
Rapist has a gun and pulls it first.
Rapist incapacitates you with drugged food or drink.
Rapist physically restrains you by surprise.
Rapist is a trusted friend or family member that waits for an opening,
Rapist was a consensual sexual partner that decides to force themselves on you partway through.
The only time a gun would come in handy is some nonsense situation where the rapist is unarmed, declares their intent to rape you, and then politely waits for you to draw.
kagegiri
I mean, welcome to modern society. It’s simply not possible to tell that something is off until it’s too late*. I told the story before. I once had a close call with somebody who probably wanted to rape me. I walked to the car park where I’d parked my car (off the road, dark…). A guy followed me there. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if he hadn’t cat-called me while passing me in the other direction. He constantly narrowed the distance, getting closer and closer. In the end I made a dash for my car and he made a dash for me. This was the moment when I could tell something was really off and would have been justified in using violence. Because threatening people who can simply claim they’re walking towards their own car is generally frowned upon.
*But heavens forbid you suggest guys change the side of the road when passing a woman on a lonely road at night. Misandry!!!!!
Adding to Vivec@142’s list of examples where a gun is unlikely to be any help to the victim:
● Rapist has accomplices.
● Victim actually manages to draw the gun but misses, rapist takes gun.
● Victim shoots her- or him-self whilst attempting to find / draw gun.
● Someone else who is also carrying spot’s victim’s gun and shoots at victim (presumably misunderstanding the situation).
● Cop, sent to the scene to investigate what happened, spots victim’s gun. This would be especially bad news if the victim is guilty of being black.
I’ll pile on (again). I was raped for six years on a regular basis when I was a child. How does a gun help there? A whole lot of children get raped, every single day.
Penny is just using the rape issue to try to justify guns.
Of course, even if we assumed the best case scenario, I’m sure there would be to be no repercussions for women shooting the rapists. Naturally in these circumstances people believe rape victims and do not at all speculate that they were plotting to ruin a man’s life, so we can be sure that they’ll receive only the fairest of evaluations by juries of their peers. Hell, rape trials usually go so well when they have DNA, witnesses, or the act on video that a murder trial is bound to go even better when the only evidence that rape by the hands of a respected member of the community was imminent is the shooter’s own testimony.
And if it’s one thing that certainly wouldn’t surface from this, it’s the idea that it’s open season on men with paranoid, man-hating women seducing and then killing them.
To the moderators
I posted something in response to this:
My response got flagged for moderation because it contained about a dozen links to back up my claims. I was seeing it in moderation until this morning. It seems to have disappeared. I would like to know what happened. I would also prefer to post a rebuttal to the quoted bit above, but I would also prefer to do so with sufficient citations that it cannot be easily brushed off. I thought that this is what I should do when arguing contentious topics in this place: Research my position, make the arguments with citations, and include the citations. I had about 10 citations.
EL #148, do two posts with only 5 citations per post.
EnlightenmentLiberal #148
There are no moderators except PZ.
You can report a problem to him by clcking the link in the sidebar.
There is also a tech issues link at the very top.
There is a maximum number of links allowed per comment, I think it’s 5.
Today, the word “militia” generally refers to small armed groups, whether government-controlled or not. At the time of the writing of the second amendment, the word “militia” always referred to the whole population as an armed fighting force. (Technically, only able-bodied adult white males were members of the militia at that time.) Even today, this fact survives in federal law:
10 U.S. Code, S 311 – Militia: composition and classes
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/html/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partI-chap13-sec311.htm
Today, the word “regulated” has a strong connotation of government control and limitation for safety. At the time of the writing of the second amendment, the term “well regulated” had a very broad and general meaning. “Well regulated” simply meant properly working, properly maintained, properly adjusted, in good working order, etc. For example, if someone has good taste in music, it can be said that their taste in music is well regulated. This usage is documented from dictionaries from the time. This meaning is also apparent from Hamilton in The Federalist #29.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers/No._29
Emphasis added:
The bill of rights, the federal constitutional amendments 1 to 8, were passed to appease the anti-federalists and their fear of federal government tyranny. All of the protections were simply codifications of universal consensus of pre-existing rights, like the personal right to guns. In particular, this is apparent from the relevant history of England, where personal gun rights was well established. In particular, see the history and conflict leading up to the passing of the English Bill Of Rights of 1689.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
Madison in The Federalist #46 casually notes that Americans have personal gun rights, and that personal gun rights form a bulwark against tyranny (and that bulwark is made more effective with the combination of other facts, such as local government direction). I use this evidence to establish the historical consensus that Americans enjoy gun rights, which was later codified in the second amendment.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers/No._46
Hamilton in The Federalist #29 argues that there should be a law that imposes a personal requirement on every white male adult to obtain a proper firearm, ammunition, and other military equipment. Again, I use this evidence to establish the historical consensus that Americans enjoy gun rights, and that one purpose of personal gun rights was to allow persons to fulfill their militia obligations.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers/No._29
Some people refuse to accept the clear reading of Hamilton. So, let me mention that Hamilton’s idea (or an idea identical to it) was put into law shortly thereafter: In 1792, the federal congress passed the second federal Militia Act of 1792. This law puts a duty on every white male adult to obtain a proper firearm, ammunition, and other military equipment.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Large/Volume_1/2nd_Congress/1st_Session/Chapter_33
This was a personal duty imposed on every member of the militia, aka on every able-bodied adult white male of a certain age. Here are two pieces of evidence for how we know that this was a personal duty.
1- Commonwealth v Stephen Annis. Massachusetts. Year 1812.
The decision of the court case is available in the following book:
Title: Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court Of the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts.
Volume XI.
Book Compiler: By Dudley Atkins Tyng, Esq.
URL:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_7RJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=Commonwealth+%22Stephen+Annis%22+Massachusetts+1812&source=bl&ots=p-z426pKJB&sig=Qlm7vcr6GeN1n4SDDOim0rb-HMM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK-_G__-vKAhVO3GMKHdGwD0oQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=Commonwealth%20%22Stephen%20Annis%22%20Massachusetts%201812&f=false
In this court case, it was clearly stated that there was personal penalty of 1 dollar 50 cents for any person who failed to obtain a proper firearm in the time alloted by the second federal Militia Act of 1792.
2- American State Papers. Military Affairs. Volume 1. 1789 – 1819. Year 1812. Number 198. Article Title: “No. 62” “The Militia”.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=016/llsp016.db&Page=198
This is a document prepared for the federal congress. It clearly states that a majority of the firearms of the militia are privately owned by the individual militia members:
With all of this in mind, let us revisit the wording of the second amendment, and translate it into today’s English.
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.
In today’s English:
A population that is properly armed and trained in war is necessary to defend and maintain a free government and society, and for that reason, the right of every person to possess and carry firearms shall not be infringed.
Tangent: Some people argue that the proper understanding of the second amendment is to include a built-in sunset provision. In particular, they understand the second amendment to mean “As long as a well regulated militia is necessary, the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. This reading is fundamentally dishonest. Generally, the legislature are the primary determiners of fact, and presumably the legislature is the body that would decide when the sunset provision applies, which means that this amendment under this reading would carry no teeth: the legislature would be entirely free to decide to repeal it at its own discretion. This reading is thus self-defeating. No one can be honest and hold to this reading.
Finally, one must know more of the historical context to understand the second amendment. At the time, there was nothing like our modern police forces. The modern police would not be invented for another 50 years. A large majority of criminal investigation, capture of criminals, and prosecution of criminals was a private affair. (The prosecutor was a private person, but the case still happened in the neutral venue of a government court.) In particular, every person had the legal duty to catch criminals in certain situations, and not attempting this legal duty left one legally liable for legal penalties to the victim of the crime. People needed ready personal access to firearms to live in that kind of society. For further information, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_%28common_law%29
>ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL?
>Roger Roots*
http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
Note: Some of Roger Roots’s citations are lacking. I have personally researched many of the core claims, and they hold up to scrutiny. Some of them did require getting access to papers behind peer-reviewed academic press paywalls.
What can we do to lessen gun violence?
Well, one option is to repealt the second amendment. That seems difficult.
Another option is to erode the rule of law by perverting the meaning and effect of constitutional protections, and especially the constitutional protections of the bill of rights. I have a special kind of disdain for people who advocate this approach.
Here are some facts about gun violence and gun deaths. The so-called category of semi-auto “assault weapons” is a fiction. Your standard semi-auto hunting rifle is just as dangerous as so-called assault weapons. (I have a longer rant if some fool contests this point.) A vast majority of gun violence is handguns. Even a large portion of mass shootings are with gandguns only.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Magazine limits are largely ineffective. Magazine limits don’t matter except for mass shootings, and several mass shootings happened with just handguns and 10 round magazines. In most mass shootings, the shooter has all of the time in the world to reload, and reloading only takes 1 or 2 seconds. Any effective gun ban approach has to include all semiauto firearms, including all handguns (including revolvers). This is unconstitutional (see United States Supreme Court Decision, DC vs Heller). Thus gun bans by make and model or by accessory (i.e. large capacity magazines) is a doomed effort under the current constitution.
However, there are approaches to lessening handgun violence and limiting access to handguns that does not involve blanket bans by make and model.
As I evidenced at length above, the original intent and understanding, and the plain text meaning, of the second amendment allows the federal congress and the states to provide for the training of the militia. Under this authority, the federal congress could discipline and train the militia, requiring lengthy military training, and civilian gun training, including safety training, training in the law and ethics of self defense, and more. Further, it seems quite clear IMAO that the federal congress could use its authority to make this millitia training optional, but also tie the enjoyment of personal gun rights to this training. In other words, the federal congress could require a gun owner’s license in order to enjoy personal gun rights.
It should go without saying, but under this interpretation, any requirements to obtain a gun owner’s license must be narrowly tailored – in a constitutional sense – to serve compelling government interests and it must not otherwise set up unnecessary hurdles to enjoyment of personal gun rights. I might also argue that the class should be free in order to avoid constitutional issues ala the poll tax, which serves as a delicious irony that gun nuts must partake in government socialism!! (sarcasm) in order to get their gun owner’s license.
It’s like a driver’s lisence. Driving a car on public roads is a right, but it’s also a licensed right. For a citation of that claim, see:
United States Supreme Court Decision, Bell v. Burson, year 1971.
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/402/535/case.html
We could require licenses for gun ownership just like we require licenses for driving a car, and it would be entirely constitutional. Further, we can, and we should, make the training to obtain a gun owner’s license much harder than the training to receive a driver’s license. IMAO, laws requiring training to obtain a gun owner’s license are on much firmer constitutional ground than laws that require training to obtain a driver’s license because at least the constitution explicitly mentions the authority of the federal congress to train and arm the militia.
This then dovetails nicely into universal background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases.
These are real things that we could be doing right now that could easily pass constitutional muster, and most gun nuts should have no legitimate complaints.
chigau #139
Not cool. It’s not hard to read between the lines that Penny is talking successfully fending off a sexual assault because they were armed, in a situation where they feel they wouldn’t have been able to were they not armed. Just because Penny is completely wrong about increased gun ownership across the populace reducing incidence of sexual assaults doesn’t mean it’s ok to be snarky at them about the trauma they actually experienced.
marcmagus #154
I have an intense interest in women’s self-defense.
There was no snark in my comment to PennyL.
marcmagus @ 154:
Excuse me, but just where are you seeing snark in Chigau’s post? Chigau was right, that the techniques involved would be very different for each of those particular weapons. Penny L has hardly earned any sort of credibility here, which you might not know, if you haven’t been subjected to the piles of shit they have contributed to a number of threads.
If someone is going to insist that guns are absolutely great for rape deterrence, then decides to switch it up a bit by adding a tazer and pepper spray, it’s perfectly legitimate to ask for details. Like Chigau, I have an intense interest in women’s self defense also, and I have experienced being violently raped, and I’m skeptical, to say the least, about Penny L’s claims as the wonders of weapons. In case you didn’t notice, Chigau was far from the only one pointing out problems with Penny L’s claims.
marcmagus#154
Are there any real statistics on when this actually happens, versus the bad results of pulling their gun and getting hurt, have it taken away, or killed by it? Versus not having the gun? Until evidence is available, Penny L’s dream world can be, and is, dismissed as bullshit.
chigau #155
Sorry for reading into your post something you didn’t intend to be there.
Caine #156
Chigau appeared to me to be questioning the veracity of Penny’s anecdote of personally deterring an actual rape threat using an unspecified weapon. I was misreading Chigau, but that’s where I saw snark.
As for why I commented at all, and why I singled out Chigau, what I thought I saw deserves it. Others were clearly sticking to the awful claim that guns are good for rape deterrence.
Nerd of Readhead #157
Are you misunderstanding me, do you think I’m reading something into Penny’s words that isn’t there, or are you actually being the asshole who says someone’s lying about their experience with assault because statistics/evidence?
@158
No one’s doubting Penny’s experiences, they’re pointing out that Penny’s anecdata is useless for making broad statements about how gun control makes women easier to assault and that arming the population would magically fix assault.
Marissa Alexander was first sentenced to 20 years in jail for firing warning shots at her assailant (in this case her husband). Not even a kill, or even a hit, just shots fired near the assailant. Please tell me again how guns help defend women against assailants, rapists or otherwise.
Caine @145:
Well, Penny already wrote (@ 123):
Does this mean that rapists should go after children since they will not have The Magic Gun?
Also Penny @123:
and then, in the same comment,
So arming oneself stops rape. But it doesn’t.
I have a dream that someday someone will show up with rape prevention tips, with ways for a victim to stop a rape, with suggestions for what women (or children, or men, or whoever) should do to stop, or reduce the chance of, rape and will be able to actually articulate how the limitations and requirements placed on women (usually women) will actually reduce rape. And, at the same time, I dream that the one making the common sense suggestions (such as don’t drink, don’t dress ‘that way’, always have a chaperon, travel in groups, don’t go into an alley, don’t be out after dark, don’t be alone with a rapist, carry a gun, carry mace, wear armoured underwear, shoot your assailant, warn them off with gunshots, mace the man walking through the parking garage, etc) will be able to articulate an actual vehicle in which these limitations will actually prevent rape.