I like Juan Williams but he's as far from reality as ever here...I caught Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday, during which the Heller vs Washington DC ruling, naturally, came up. The commentary that followed was enlightening with Juan Williams lamenting the negative effect in DC that such a decision might have. The following is a paraphrased snippet (the transcript is as of yet unavailable.):
Bill Krystal: What effect did the handgun ban have on DC's murder rate? (Alluding to the fact that DC, despite it's gun ban, maintained a growing murder rate that eclipsed other cities equitable in size.)
Juan Williams: I get what you're saying, but maybe there'd have been more without the hand gun ban.
Brit Hume: Or maybe there'd have been less had the ban never been in place. Hume then quoted the old axiom of "outlaw guns and only the outlaws have guns."
Juan Williams: (accurate quote) "Guns don't make me feel more secure. Guns scare me."
Ah. And there you have it. The only logical resistance to gun ownership. Subjective ignorance and consequential fear. Understandable but not at all acceptable in terms exacting legal restrictions. That you fear firearms suggests that you know little of them and that you live in such a fashion that you have deluded yourself into thinking that you will never have to even consider the prospect of self defense. Good for you. Not all of us are so lucky.
The smug, "safe," and holier than thou gun control guru's rely purely on self centered ideology giving no consideration to reality. It feels "right" and it applies to "my lifestyle," therefore it must be law.
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By placing all power and warrant into a device created from human minds and used by the human free, what people have essentially done is stripped free will from individuals and gave it into the keeping of a piece of metal, or a bat, or a knife, or any other implement created by human imagination.
Guns are now the new devil, something to be superstitious of and something for the community to pass righteous laws to ban and restrict and control for fear that without control, the new devil will corrupt the souls of the innocent and defenseless.
Rather than internalizing responsibility, rather than saying that everyone has evil within themselves and can express it, such peeps focus it outwards and displace/projects it upon whatever canvass they deem fit.
Now it is not the individual that has the responsibility, now it is the responsibility of the gun itself and those that own it legally. The individual cannot kill and commit violence and thus scare people like Juan, so so long as we limit guns and the presence of it, we can limit evil by casting it out from our little village.
That's not going to happen. It wouldn't have happened anyways, because of the superstition.
Miyamoto Mushashi fought with kendo wooden sparring sticks. One time he went and crippled a man in a duel by fashioning a wooden katana out of the oar he used to row himself to the meeting spot. The man he was fighting with used a steel katana.
If having a superior tool to kill people with is the decider of how dangerous you are, then obviously the Palestinians are far less dangerous than the Israelis. You, if you have children, would do good to hide them from the Israelis, for they have bombs, technology, and Western military supplies. The Palestinians, using crude technology and almost medieval age implements, are of no danger to a nation wielding the fantastic repertoire of Western technological and military might. Right?
Wrong.
There are no deadly weapons, only deadly people. Deadly people and the sheeplike target/victims they prey on, that is. And also deadly people that prey on other deadly people. No better friend, no worse enemy.
Juan Williams, like most good and loyal fake liberals, do not understand the reality of violence. Thus, they do not understand the reality of humanity. And without comprehending human nature, they give not a care or the rightful respect due to human free will and human individual liberty. How can people have free will when the "Gun", almighty gun say it with me, is the source of such Fear... and Power.
Fear and Power are the foundations of Democrat success. Naturally they would give quite a lot of respect to firearms. Much like the respect they give to America's enemies, respect supposedly owed to terrorists and mass murderers. The "respect" is translated to mean "misplaced devotion".
I do not deny that a firearm will make killing more efficient. I do not deny that a warrior can kill more with a firearm than he could with his bare hands or with a knife/blunt force instrument.
But let's not misplace our devotion and be awed into worshipping a piece of rock, metal, or wood here. What deserves our devotion and our caution and respect is the human mind.
If the human mind was all important, why would Leftist revolutonaries seek to brainwash the newer generations with Marxist-Leninist propaganda? If the power of killing, if the power of having firearms was all encompassing, why wouldn't all fake liberals want to have this power? They aren't shy about appropriating tax money and pork barrel funds for themselves. If money is power, why would they refuse the power of the firearm? (Aside from wanting the power of firearms by using law to ban people from having them, that is)
Because Democrats have learned that violence isn't the way. They have learned to convince and subvert people using words to change how people think when not even the force and violence of the Soviet Union succeeded. Yet the gun is a double threat to them then. It is a source of power, as they see it, that they themselves do not control and are helpless to permanently stop given the 2nd Amendment. The gun is also a source of power that does not come from Democrat politics (It's not welfare. It's not education. It's not healthcare. It's not a pork barrel project) yet is something the downtrodden almost always must have in order to successfully resist their oppressors. The one thing the White Southerners back before the Civil War worried about, even as Britain and the Amerindians waged war on the Colonies around 1812, was that blacks once armed, will use those arms to rebel. Stripping arms away from the downtrodden or those you seek to exploit is the first step in creating an oppression.
Given the power of indoctrination and brainwashing and propaganda and subversion, the "gun" is a tool that essentially is irrelevant against what Democrats would deem the major expressions of power. (US military putting tanks in cities to end riots, for example) Thus Democrats feel uncomfortable with people having guns and they themselves don't see much of a need for them. This is not theory, I have seen plenty of Democrats explain their views on guns face to face with me, and some even more of that number explain things on the internet, although they never quite explain things in a clear fashion if they believe they are talking to a pro-rights proponent.
But that isn't true for oppressed people, it isn't true that for those with less power than the Democrat middle class, that guns are superfluous and a great deal of community danger. If blacks are right that there is an "institutional racism", then why wouldn't there also be an institutional bias towards stripping guns from blacks and giving them to whites so whites can terrorize blacks? If, everything Jeremiah Wright has said about the US government is true, that it created AIDS to wipe out black people, why wouldn't white Democrat proponents of gun control be creating a law that will naturally bias whites against blacks? And yet, the downtrodden and poor vote Democrat. They vote Democrat because socialist or fake liberal policies created the break down in family and thus created the onslaught of gun crime across the nation in the 80s. The Democrats promise that if we ban hand guns, you'll be safer from accidental discharge and criminals won't have as easy access to guns as they otherwise would. Less school shootings in zones that ban guns.
On the other hand, blacks are very high at risk from suffering violence at the hands of other people, especially if they live in low cost housing environment owned by gangs. If black people are provided guns, which the Democrats are against given the example of Katrina, then black people will be able to find solutions to their oppression that wouldn't require a master slave relationship with the Democrat party, which is, last time I checked, headed by mostly white people. And one of them happens to be Robert Kleagle Byrd, for some odd coincidental reason.
There is an obvious conflict here, of course. We know that guns provide power to a person, but that power is not an inherent trait of the device itself, that power is an expression of a man or woman's desire and demand to be free. To be treated as a human being, owed the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness the same as any other human being, regardless of differences in sex or race or ethnicity.
When you strip the ability of a person to have a gun, not strip away an ability that people never had, you are stripping their individual liberty away.
Especially if what the black libertarian people are saying is true.
Yet, Democrats do not see the need for guns, for their power does not derive from guns. Juan Williams is not kept safe nor is his family kept safe by Juan's ability to own personal firearms for self-defense. The military exists to use guns to protect Juan. Cops exist to use guns to protect Juan, well except when cops are brutal pigs that violate people's civil liberties that is. In the end, people with guns exist to protect Juan, they exist to kill with those firearms to defend Juan. They don't exist to use those firearms to defend themselves. Big critical difference when it comes to how Juan is protected. He isn't protected by his own actions as a citizen of a Republic, he isn't responsible for killing or risking death to defend his liberties, the state of the Republic, or the rights of others.
No, Juan Williams is kept safe by his neighbors, he is kept safe by Americans that do own guns, he is kept safe by the police, he is kept safe by the good neighborhood he lives in, or he is kept safe by men and women who have used firearms to kill other people for Juan's safety.
He is not kept safe by any personal ability on his part to be able to use violence to tear a man limb from limb with nothing but his bare hands. Now, physically you might not be able to tear off a man's arm, but you bet you can tear the joints in his shoulder, elbow, and wrist so that his arm might as well be ripped off.
So, in the end, if Juan isn't safe because of his actions, why should you be safe because of yours? You don't need a power or a right to defend yourself. You have others to sacrifice for yourself. You don't need to wield a firearm to kill others to defend yourself, you have lawyers, judges, a legal system, cops, and the Marines to do that. America is invulnerable, having a gun won't make you any appreciably safer. That's what the nation is all about, getting others to do your dirty work. I mean, how would a nation that demanded that its citizens defend their own rights ever be able to stand in the face of vigilantism and the deaths that will result from citizens killing people on a whim?
Losing the moral high ground and your son isn't worth it simply to get the right to kill people on a whim.
But here's the dirty secret most people don't know. I don't need a gun to kill people. I don't need a firearm to permanently blind people by scooping out their eyes with my thumb and finger. I don't, in fact, need a gun to to crush a person's throat or cave in his skull. All I need is the intent and the knowledge/trained skillset.
To the Left, criminals have guns cause they are bad people, anti-social, or just plain evil. To the Left, conservatives wanting to have the same guns means that conservatives have lowered themselves to the same level. If a Democrat is pro-gun, that perhaps can be tolerated if he can use that to beat a Republican.
To me, criminals have guns cause criminals know how to use violence and they do it. Because they are mostly untrained, lazy as hell, and prefers to prey upon weaklings, they want to have a knife, a bat, gross number advantage, or a firearm in order to make the effort of crime just a little bit easier and more entertaining. If I ever want a gun, it won't be because I'd like to convince the jury that the man who assaulted me needed killing. If I got a gun and trained in its use, it would be because a gun makes killing simpler once you have the intent and it gives you a range advantage. A firearm does not require that you get within melee range of the enemy. Ever hear of the Navy or Army phrase "if the enemy is in range, so are you"? Well that's predicated upon the assumption that both of you have similar weapons in how far they can reach.
Most people don't carry knives or bats or what not. Thus their optimum range from which they may inflict brutal and fatal damage is about half a feet. If you have a bat or knife, then the range is like 1 feet. If you have a sword, the range is Far enough so you can lunge from where you are at, stick your sword into a man's belly, have it erupt 1-2 feet in his back, and still remain enough away that he doesn't fall and drag your sword down with him. But a firearm? What's the optimum range on a firearm? The answer is, whatever range you can get it to work at, based purely on skill.
Used correctly, a single headshot will inflict fatal damage. Used incorrectly, you'll spend a lot of shots and get spray and pray.
But still, it is far better than hand to hand against firearms. Hand to hand against firearms requires that you either ambush the guy as he is coming inside a room, (Columbine and Virginia tech) or it requires that you somehow sneak up behind as he is capping people.
If you are in a long hallway, without cover, and the gunman sees you, well usually you're not going to be able to close the distance in time.
What a firearm does for a person versed in violence, is that it allows you one more tool in your arsenal. Now you don't have to sneak up behind somebody, you just need to aim and pull the trigger and hit what you are aiming at. And if the enemy gets into melee range and starts wrestling with you over the gun, just let gravity takes it course and fall backwards if the enemy is in front. Your body weight will naturally extend your arms and now the gun is going to be pointed straight at the enemy's chest, while the enemy's arms are essentially trying to hold you up against gravity's pull. But if the guy won't let you fall or you are on the ground wrestling, then let have the gun. Gun's only useful at range, it's just a piece of metal up close and personal like. Let him have the gun. It's a good thing he has two hands on the gun, since that means there's nothing covering his face from my hands.
We'll see how well he aims without eyes to do it with. Or rather, I will see. I wonder if a person's fingers are long enough, whether they can punch through the eye socket and reach the brain for an instant fatality. Probably only rarely, and only if the skull has no where to go to retreat from the pain.
In conclusion, people that don't know the science of violence will never see the positive use of a gun for they will never comprehend what a gun has to do with violence. They'll look at a gun in superstitious dread or awe, and that's how serfs are supposed to look upon the weapons of their betters.
Juan Williams might be crazy, but i'd listen to him read the phone book. i really love is voice.
Also speaking from a liberal perspective, I think that my fellow travelers often utilize gun control as a panacea for things that might lower violence in the inner city--such as increased community investment, gang suppression, and other more infrastructual tools.
Ymarsakar, wow, quite the comment. It'll take some time to read and respond to. Initially I'd say that guns aren't so much a superstition as a convenient excuse. The deeper entanglements of a multi-ethnic, economically divided society are simply too much for politicians, whatever their stripe. Those on the left simply heap the troubles wrought by these social difficulties on a single political Idol; the gun.
Sean, I too like Juan Williams as a journalist, even if his political leanings occasionally rankle me a bit.
Adam, excellent to hear from you again!
I agree though I'm a bit more brusque and would refer to such as not a panacea, rather convenient social snake oil.
Good post, Soob. Second Amendment opponents are, in general, very well meaning like Mr. Williams, but do not feel any personal threat in their cloistered lives and do not trust individuals. That sums up the left to a tee I think. At any rate, good post. Linked. http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2008/06/interesting-posts-from-around-web-1_30.html
While I sympathize with Senor Williams, I can see a problem with Uncomfortable = Danger: the guy with a concealed handgun is more of a danger (because you can't see him coming) than the guy with a gun out in the open. The danger that makes you uncomfortable, or the bigger danger you don't know about--which would he prefer?
Good question. I suspect the entire concept of gun ownership makes Herr Williams uncomfortable. The comedy is that gun control has not and will not have an effect on the guy with a concealed handgun.
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