A group of gun nuts has just had a demonstration on the University of Texas at Austin campus, promoting gun rights and calling attention to Texas’s new law allowing concealed handguns not just on college campuses, but inside college buildings. Unfortunately, the UT Austin campus is where Charles Whitman killed sixteen people with a rifle, firing from atop the campus tower.
The gun nuts were outnumbered by protestors and the media, but the law still stands, and it frightens me (as it frightens many of my colleagues at UT), to think of the consequences of students walking around with handguns like it’s the Wild West. The reports below come from today’s New York Times and the PuffHo:
Pro-gun advocates doused fake victims with fake blood outside the University of Texas on Saturday in what they called a theatrical event to show the need for firearms on campus.
One of the mock mass shooting organizers, the group Come and Take It Texas, said allowing gun-free zones on campuses eliminated a human right to personal protection.
“Our goal is to instill the importance of everyone to be able to defend themselves in any way they choose,” the group said in a statement posted on its website.
“Come and Take It Texas” has a Facebook page here, where I found the following video. It would be amusing if it didn’t show how far these gunophiles will go—even brandishing assault rifles—and if Texas hadn’t passed that odious law, which happens to take effect next summer, on the 50th anniversary of Whitman’s massacre.
The Times gives some more background:
The dueling positions echoed divisions that have flared on college campuses since the Legislature passed a bill to make Texas the ninth state to permit campus carry. The Texas law will go into effect on Aug. 1, coincidentally the 50th anniversary of what is regarded as the nation’s first on-campus mass shooting — a 1966 rampage by the sniper Charles Whitman from the University of Texas Tower that killed 16 people.
Texans who meet the state’s requirements to carry concealed handguns have long been permitted to carry firearms on campus grounds; the new law allows gun permit holders who are at least 21 to carry the weapons inside college buildings.
The law requires all tax-supported public universities to comply with the requirements, although amendments that were opposed by gun-rights advocates allow campus administrators to establish gun-free zones.
Private universities are not required to follow the requirements. Two such schools, Texas Christian in Fort Worth and Rice in Houston, have opted out of the law, and Southern Methodist University in Dallas is expected to decide in the coming week. The board of Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth plans a vote in January, and Baylor University in Waco is reviewing the law.
Some lovely photos of the gun nuts:
Although New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik and I have differed on some issues, most notably whether there are “ways of knowing” that come not from science but from the humanities, we’re both in synch on the need for stringent gun control. Among the good articles he’s written on the issue lately are these, all worth reading:
“The simple truth about gun control”
The first one is the latest, and is eminently sensible. An excerpt:
There are complex, hand-wringing-worthy problems in our social life: deficits and debts and climate change. Gun violence, and the work of eliminating gun massacres in schools and movie houses and the like, is not one of them. Gun control works on gun violence as surely as antibiotics do on bacterial infections. In Scotland, after Dunblane, in Australia, after Tasmania, in Canada, after the Montreal massacre—in each case the necessary laws were passed to make gun-owning hard, and in each case… well, you will note the absence of massacre-condolence speeches made by the Prime Ministers of Canada and Australia, in comparison with our own President.
The laws differ from place to place. In some jurisdictions, like Scotland, it is essentially impossible to own a gun; in others, like Canada, it is merely very, very difficult. The precise legislation that makes gun-owning hard in a certain sense doesn’t really matter—and that should give hope to all of those who feel that, with several hundred million guns in private hands, there’s no point in trying to make America a gun-sane country.
If Scotland, Canada, and Australia can do it, why can’t we?
The video was produced and staged by idiots. Why is this not an obvious fact to everyone?
I guess it takes a certain amount of brain power to realize that you’re an idiot. The people staging this stunt? Well, as Bill Engvall was fond of saying, “here’s your sign.”
I’m afraid–and unfortunately reasonably confident–that soon enough the massacre won’t only be staged.
Explain to me again–free speech is not an absolute right (the famous shouting fire in a crowded theater example); marriage is not an absolute right (polygamy laws); freedom of religion is not an absolute right (I don’t think a human sacrifice cult would be condoned on the basis of the constitution); ad infinitum. So why is it that gun-nuttery has suddenly become an absolute right?
I quote, yet again, libertarian and gun nut extraordinaire L. Neil Smith: “If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.
I choose to defend myself with hand grenades but weak kneed legislators have made my choice illegal. Freedom is gone in this country, we are all slaves of the state now! 😉
I don’t understand why politicians disarm blind people (a minority!); hand grenades are the only viable defense option they have!
Blind people can hunt with firearms in Michigan.
You may jest, gluonspring, but I remember years ago online running into an otherwise mild, intelligent and reasonable guy who claimed that the 2nd Amendment gave all Americans rights to own any and all weapon kinds. I asked about nuclear bombs, and he said something like “if you can afford it”!
As crazy as that sounds, I read one serious analyst who states that is indeed a reasonable interpretation. The point is, the amendment is poorly written and should be changed.
What a fascist restriction of freedom! I can only have nukes if I can afford them? Can I only have freedom of speech and protection against unlawful searches if I can afford them? Wait a minute…if I’m entitled to free nukes, that’s socialism! ***Head explodes from political paradox***
It is not hard to legally own a gun in Canada. You just have to be a law abiding citizen. We’re not that much different from the US in terms of what we can own as well. Scary guns like AR’s and handguns (which I own) are easily on the menu.
Yes ARs and hand guns cannot be carried on your person around town and you need a permit to transport the, in a locked box when you are taking them out to use them.
We also have many more restricted or banned arms than in the US.
Your comment regarding carrying a restricted firearm is actually not correct from a legal standpoint but more or less true from a practical perspective. Authorizations to carry do exist but they’re issued only in rare circumstances.
In terms of what we can own vs the USA? It’s complicated but really not that restrictive. Sure I’d like to see Canadian gun laws relaxed in some areas but it’s not like we’re the UK or anything.
I forgot to mention that, just to be clear: this sort of demonstration is nuttery and in bad taste. I just want to correct stuff like “…in others, like Canada, it is merely very, very difficult.” That is categorically false.
Yes, concealed carry is almost impossible to get unless your job requires it and most of our security are unarmed. Police, Brinks guards and a few I probably don’t know about are the types of armed occupations you see in Canada in regular day life.
If you’re wanting to own restricted weapons, you also have an additional test to pass as well.
Compare to France and Italy where many monuments and banks, etc. are sentineled by military types with machine guns. American tourist neck swivels, clutches wallet, tries to breath slowly.
Prohibiting concealed carry is hardly enough to stop mass shootings when guns can still be owned by individuals. There must be something else about Canada that makes them less prone to mass shootings we have here in the US.
I don’t think mass shootings was on anyone’s mind when concealed carry was made difficult to get in Canada. I think we felt that our society wasn’t so dangerous that every citizen needed to be armed just to go to Tim Horton’s.
Oh and I should add that Canada is no stranger to mass killings but we have them at a lower rate than the US. I mentioned L’école Polytechnique above, which happened in 1989 (when I was in my first year of university) and is still marked on university campuses with an assembly and the lowering of flags to half mast.
There was also, in the 90s, a person who had taken a hostage at gun point in Toronto. A police snipper took him out.
So, I think you will always have insanity and killing because bad guys find ways of doing bad things, but limiting access to firearms most likely limits a lot of bad things.
It’s sort of the same question: would we have world peace if we had no religion. No, but I bet the world would have less conflicts.
If you haven’t seen Roger Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, you should watch it; he makes the case that it’s not just gun ownership but cultural differences that account for the discrepancy between US & Canadian instances of gun violence.
LOL, Michael Moore.
(Was looking at a Roger Ebert review and combined the names…)
Fahrenheit 9/11 does sound like a good Bond film though.
🙂
And as noted below, of course I meant Bowling for Columbine anyway. But I’d recommend F 9/11 as well, if you haven’t seen it.
Studies seem to show otherwise.
From p. 84 of the study linked above: “The results imply that, all things equal, restrictive gun control regulation have a negative effect (reduction) on the rate of casualties due to firearms while the gun culture variable does not have any predictive value on the death by gun rates.”
On p. 90, it points out that there is some link between culture and death rate in the southern United States, but no link at all to mass shootings: “As to the culture of violence and death by guns relationship claim, this is mainly invalidated at the international level but partially validated in the Southern region of United States by the murders by firearms rates. Also there is no connection between gun culture – or the absence of thereof – and the occurrence of mass shooting.”
woops, somehow copied an embedded link there…
Interesting article, thanks!
Moore was talking about something other than the “gun culture” that the article tested, though. He seemed to suggest something along the lines of tribalism in the US, encouraged by selective reporting in the MSM. (Too bad he didn’t add religions to the ranks of said encouragers.)
(Tribalism, with a strong overnote of racism.)
I’m going to have to look this film up… a Ray Bradbury epic fanfic film starring Roger Moore as James Bond in: Fahrenheit for Columbine. Got it… googling now…
hmmm… not working. I keep getting titles starring either Ron Jeremy or Pia Zadora.
So impressive how you’ve learned to entertain yourself. 🙂
That’s because you forgot the subtitle. The full story is Fahrenheit for Columbine: Down with the Liberal Metric System.
IMDb synopsis of Columbine:
I think the movie you refer to is Bowling for Columbine. The part when he went up to Canada and no one had locked doors and such was enlightening- a good cultural contrast for sure.
….and as a Canadian, I can assure you, a complete exaggeration. It made me question all of his other statements.
Duh! Thank you for correcting me, of course I meant BfC!
Yeah, that unlocked door business wasn’t the strongest part of the movie. And for that matter, there are still plenty of areas in the US in which not everyone locks their doors–mostly small & rural, of course…
Diana, you probably weren’t the only one. 😉
by seeing these events as theatre
they demonstrate there is no such thing as a responsible owner
guns are weapons they are not tools
ammosexuals are the problem and their eagerness to get into shootout is the problem they don’t see
I firmly believe every “good guy with a gun” has hero fantasies about saving the day when he gets his “tool” out. Which always makes me wonder about their adequacy in other areas.
I’ve never heard the term “ammosexual” before. I like it. I’m sure someone will post the Chris Rock clip about charging $400 each for bullets. He has a point!
actually Rock said $5,000 per bullet. 🙂 Ammosexual isn’t my word, but it’s very much out there and is exactly what your suspicion is. People who think guns are a solution are just waiting for the opportune problem. I think it’s part of the glee factor in hoping for a zombie apocalypse waiting to shoot yer neighbors
I guess folks are lucky that a “good guy with gun” didn’t see this theatre and mistake it for the real thing, eh?
Just the thought that occurred to me.
Pity** no evil malicious person phoned the FBI and told them a terrorist attack was planned for that exact time and place…
(**Substitute ‘fortunate’ if you’re less cynical than me)
cr
I am getting into the habit of reading the entire comments threads, and refreshing. Most of the time, someone says exactly what I was going to say.
It even had infiniteimprobability’s follow-up, which I was going to say as well. (the cynical version)
zeitgeist !
Good grief, with evidence that students have the maturity of 2 year olds given their narcissism rages over inconsequential controversies like Halloween costumes, what will be the consequences of arming them? Will they really be able to keep it together when they hear something they don’t like or someone challenges their ideas?
I wouldn’t want to be on such a campus.
I wouldn’t either, and the chances of it ever happening are two: slim, and fat.
At least for the time being, it is easy for me to simply avoid people with guns, and places where they are allowed. Hopefully sanity will prevail, and it will remain that way. But there are some doubts…
Exactly! The performance above demonstrates that lack of reasoning skills too.
“More safe spaces!”
“No gun-free zones!”
/@
a week after the 14 women engineering students were murdered at the Montreal College, the Univerity of Victoria held a memorial service
2 male students, making the child hand gun pointing index fingers and making bang sounds, stood overlooking the memorial and pretending to pick off various participants.
they were shocked people didn’t get they were just joking,
you shouldn’t have to explain to alleged adults what is wrong with that, and why it’s really sociopathic. a word universities need to better understand in their admission practises.
Yep, what is it with late adolescent/young adult human male primates? Are they to be excused because current research hold that in not a few humans full brain development does not occur until approximately age 25?
You know, Filippo you might be onto something.
We should make society easier for them.
I think that girls getting to drive at 16 but boys at 20
girls drinking after high school but none for boys until 25.
make the choices simpler and they can maybe get waivers if their parents co-sign extra insurance or something.
crime statistics reveal very painful truths,
I am thinking chastity belts for boys too.
maybe the only way to make them understand rights is to separate what is an entitlement vs a right.
earn your privilege, eh
I’d be even more worried about the mixture of campus alcohol culture and guns.
Or a mixture of pot and beer, which might lead to a sense of paranoia coupled with over exuberance.
Good point. I think if a lot of students were carrying heat, I would have to change my mind and be on the side of the “safe space” advocates.
Where I live allowing gun-free zones is chosen as the way to establish the human right to personal protection, lowering the risk of the enacted gun massacre.
Why would US be different?
Because the US has a very large contingent of (at the very least) neurotic crazies who see their identity in terms of their ability to project violence on to others, and the desire to do so, based largely on the xenophobia and religious exclusiveness with which they were inculcated (I almost wrote “infected”!) as children.
I wonder if neurotic craziness is roughly equivalent to Amuricun Exceptionalism.
The latter is often the foreign policy consequences.
I used to teach classes there. I can’t imagine any of the students I taught would feel safer if there were guns in the class. The whole activity is condemning on so many levels. I would feel like a prisoner to the craziest man in the room.
I have never been able to understand the US mentality re guns. Gun rights supporters refuse to even acknowledge that dozens of other countries have found a solution to frequent gun massacres.
More legal guns means more guns in the hands of people who will use them for nefarious purposes. What is so hard to understand about that?
Much, much worse though is the fact that the NRA has such a stranglehold on legislators that it’s illegal to even COLLECT STATISTICS regarding all but the most basic categories regarding gun violence. That is a disgrace.
I think the appeal of the “gun nuts” message about a good guy with a gun is that there is an element of plausibility there. Let’s consider a classroom where a ‘terrorist’ walks in with a weapon and announces that he will kill everyone in the room. Another student is just returning from the toilet also has a weapon. She is right behind the ‘terrorist’ and before the ‘terrorist’ gets off a shot, she shoots him in the back and saves the class from a massacre.
It could happen.
Sure. I don’t think it’s an absurd fantasy either. I’m sure that, eventually, it will happen. I do not even find it completely implausible that the average net body count from *mass* shootings might go down at some level of armed citizens. What doesn’t seem plausible to me is that, at that level of armed citizens, overall net gun deaths would go down. Having a gun on your person always puts you a breath away from a deadly situation. I can think of a couple of times that very calm non-egressive me probably would have shot someone if I’d had a gun on my person. Passion is human. Multiply that times millions and it just doesn’t seem remotely plausible to me that millions of people walking around with guns would lower overall violence even if it did occasionally make a mass shooting slightly lower in body count.
It already had happened, in a way. There was a shooting in progress that was stopped by an Uber driver not so long ago..
Yes, of course. I should have said “It happens all the time”, because of course it does. There is a multiple-homicide shooting every day, and millions of people with guns, so it’s bound to happen with some frequency. I saw a youtube video of an old man taking out some guy robbing the place at gunpoint, and I’ve seen lots of 7-11 camera footage of clerks shooting bad guys. It’s absurd to say it doesn’t happen.
I don’t begrudge the 7-11 guys their behind-the-counter guns, that’s a higher risk job (but neither should they begrudge society it’s desire to ensure they are competent and responsible enough to have it). Nor do I doubt that the body count for large mass shootings might be lowered with lots of armed citizens. I only doubt that everyone packing heat will lower overall gun deaths. The Uber guy who shoots himself, his estranged wife, or someone who cuts him off in traffic is not going to be news, so the huge mass of violence of that sort is somewhat invisible compared to mass shootings or people who disrupt mass shootings, even though such deaths are the bulk of shooting deaths.
Of course, even more important than the plausibility is the feeling of powerlessness mass shootings invoke. When people image such a scenario they naturally imagine how awful it would be to just “wait for your turn to get shot”. And, of course, that would be awful. The main thing I think people are seeking with the idea of a “good guy with a gun” is to banish that imagined feeling of helplessness. They aren’t really even tangentially interested in levels of gun violence, they are mostly just interested in feeling in control.
Of course, that is an illusion, and that’s what is wrong with their view. Pursuing the illusion of control, they are happy to put many more people in harms way.
OK. I think you’ve clearly nailed what the feelings are. I would hope that we are not just a nation of feelings. Let’s hope the adult attitude of the society can come in with some influence. Otherwise we are at the mercy of our infantile petulance.
LOL! Yeah… let’s hope for that… and a new pony!
Let’s all clap our hands together and wish.
You are right. It could happen. Just go to Breitbart’s site and you’ll find plenty of stories about good guys with guns stopping bad guys. Everytime I get in a conversation with a gun nut, these stories are brought up along with hypothetical scenarios about when I could make use of a gun.
What these people don’t seem to grasp is that anecdotes are not data and hypothetical scenarios are not indicative of real risk on reality. In this country, we are currently (and have been for a long time) running the experiment to show that more guns make for less death. Reality check. It’s not working. On the other hand, we have dozens of countries where more restrictions have helped immensely. It’s not all that different from discussing religion. Give me evidence about the actual truth of the claim, not scenarios that aren’t completely ruled out as logical possibilities. More guns are not reducing your the risk for the average person anywhere. In fairness, I always make sure to point out that anecdotes about kids killing themselves don’t speak to overall risk either. The aggregate data is a completely different story.
It would do some folks good to go on line and read the story about that shooting back in 1966 there at the University. I sure remember it, at the time the worst shooting around. Today, just another walk in the park.
First thing to note about it — it is very unlikely that even with everyone carrying guns back on that day, it would have made no difference. Even the cops could not hit the shooter up in the tower where he was located.
When the police finally made it up the tower to where Whitman was located, the cop with a .38 revolver emptied his gun from 50 feet away and missed. The next cop with a 12 gauge shot gun shot twice from the same distance and killed the shooter. Personally, I would not have wanted to have 00 buckshot in the 12 gauge shells but that is what the cops use. Number 4 or BB loads would have been better and safer.
But that entire incident should tell us that having everyone with guns would be of no use.
There were armed citizens involved in that incident. So we know for a fact that it didn’t matter too much. People shooting back at him, either cops or citizens, did force him to take cover somewhat, and maybe that did lower the body count by making it harder for him to aim well, but it didn’t stop him.
Also, an armed civilian accompanied the police to the top of the tower and accidentally discharged his rifle. With fools luck it actually distracted the gunman so the police could take their shots, but it could have just as easily alerted the gunman and gotten them all killed. Armed citizens are little more than wildcards in such situations.
And such a false idea that the civilian with a gun, especially and hand gun, will be able to hit anything when the shooting starts. Totally different than standing at a shooting range at a specific distance and hitting a dead target.
Even most cops, when fired upon, cannot hit any thing with their hand gun. Targets rarely stand still.
And storm troopers, forget about it! Those guys hit nothing! 😉
I agree. It takes special training to be cool under fire. I expect that I’d stand there agog until gunned down. I know this because my first reaction is to stand agog whenever anything happens. I am the ultimate observer.
Yep, training is doing something over and over and over and over and . . . until one is used to it and the emotions can be sufficiently clamped down.
I remember that it was a one-off, startling event back then, that they made a made-for-TV movie about it. (starring Kurt Russell, in a breakout role from his earlier Disney teen-flick persona).
The shooter, as I remember, was an upstanding Eagle Scout – rock-solid all-around super-intelligent good kid who noted the changes happening in himself for years leading up to the event. Neuroscience wasn’t (and probably isn’t yet) up to snuff to know for certain that the pecan-sized tumor in his head was the real villain in this story. But there you go.
In this instance, Charles WAS the good guy with the gun.
I remember in the dramatization, there was an aftermath scene where the investigators track Whitman’s ammo and gun purchases to a gun store owner — and bemoan the fact that one guy could sell another guy enough ammo to start world war III, and it was all legal.
Probably Hollywood talking here (perhaps the scene never mapped onto reality), but it was an early instance of mainstream American TV trying to get the point across that the laws and mores in our country are WAY too permissive. It all looks so quaint now, in retrospect. Now we have hoaxers coming out of the woodwork to decry mainstream coverage of mass shooting events as lies + no made-for-TV dramas to distract the public (most of whom are playing 1st-person shooters on their game stations).
I may be wrong about this, but my impression of the NRA back in those days was completely different as well. I recall them being largely about gun safety and providing classes on it. It’s always possible I was just drinking the Kool-Aid, though.
My impression, too. Growing up in Alaska, we knew a thing or two about firearms and firearm safety. Oldest bro is an NRA member from back in the day — I asked him about 25 years ago about their kooky stances, which were really starting to come out then (Reagan years… you might remember George HW Bush giving up his membership ~10 years later, if it ever became news in Canada). My bro countered that a group such as the NRA would be most effectively driven by the opinions of its members. Change comes from within, y’know.
I don’t think the strategy has worked. Too many cretins within. Why am I not surprised? 😉
Glad you concur. 🙂 (A brief glance at the Wikipedia NRA entry confirms our memories.)
I barely remember GHWB’s giving up his membership, and only because you mentioned it. Thanks for the link–I admire his letter.
Growing up in AK back then must have been quite the experience! Were you up there pre-statehood?
We got there in the fall of 1968. Jay Hammond was still a Senator, then governor (until we left in ’82). He was a Republican, except not the batshit crazy kind. For example, he never seemed to want to legislate morality. He didn’t sweat stuff like legal weed, for example.
What is really sick though, is Ted Stevens would become Senator a couple months after we got there (by Dec ’68). He seemed rather harmless when he first got in. Little did we know he would become one of the most toxic and THE longest-serving Repug in US history. A corrupt “bridge to nowhere” piece of garbage. Don Young (also listed in that article) was similarly non-toxic back in the beginning (’74), but grew into the virulent bag of vomit he is today, still occupying his seat. The whole state got taken over by Okies and Texans around ’77-’78, which is why reactionary corrupt garbage in their House and Senate became the norm.
Republicans–one more entity that used to be quite different, back in the day. 😉
I don’t remember Hammond at all–enjoyed the link, sounds like he was a classic westerner, back when there was still a little frontier. Stevens I’d like to forget. So the Okies/Texans came up to work the oil fields/pipelines?
Yep. The pipeline entered the pipeline – the same year there was a buzz that this guy George (HW) Bush was somebody to keep an eye on. It was ’74, and I was in the 6th grade.
Quite the memory for a whippersnapper.
This also seems to confirm how completely insane the Republicans have become. I think most of the push far right has happened since Obama took office. Imagine the reaction if any of the candidates in the Republican clown car today renounced the NRA. They’d be branded socialists and anti-American.
The NRA certainly has had a more reasonable history as this Atlantic article demonstrates:
Good example.
One entity that tends to get left out of all these conversations, but influences not only the Republicans and the NRA but most of the Democrats and gawd knows what-all are the corporations (well, them and the 1%. Lots of overlap there). IIANM, gun manufacturers play a huge role in the NRA, getting them to lobby Congress so the manufacturers themselves can remain in the shadows–where they’re pulling the strings.
The part that says “Thanks to the Crisis Actors who made this possible” has a photo of a woman talking into a phone. She was the sister of a teacher at Sandy Hook. People who believe that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax insist that she was a “crisis actor” who was part of the fraud. Her inclusion in this video indicates that the group agrees with that notion.
“People who believe that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax . . . .”
First I’ve heard of that. Guess I’ve had my head in the sand. For real?
Yup, a hoax so Obama can come get your guns.
Why would Obama stage a hoax with actors? I mean, Obama is evil and powerful so he’d just order a real massacre wouldn’t he? Duh!
That’s exactly what he’d want you to think! That’s why it had to be him!
I wonder if the pass rate will increase. I’m not at all sure that I’d fail a student with a firearm in his/her hand!
“…in others, like Canada, it is merely very, very difficult.”
I think it’s relative. I don’t think it’s very, very difficult to get a gun in Canada, you just need to show your responsible enough to pass a firearm safety course or challenge the test.
This was deliberate to create a climate of safety with firearm owners in Canada, rather than the much looser attitudes seen in the USA.
A thorough background check is done. If the police find out you have a problem with impulse control and you tend to fly off the handle, they won’t pass you.
Firearms at home must be secured, ammo separately in a firearm safe when they are not being supervised. This works, Canada does not have a problem with toddlers regularly shooting themselves and others.
BTW, so called assault rifles are legal in Canada, but restricted. Canada’s firearm laws are somewhat comparable to Switzerland’s firearm laws.
I think Canada’s firearm requirements are reasonable, especially compared to the USA where almost anyone with a pulse can get a firearm and the laws and background checks have loopholes in them a truck can drive through.
Yes. All I want out of gun owners is to feel like they are on Team Society instead of Team Anarchy. They can have their guns, even scary ones, heck I don’t mind them having machine guns and grenades… just work with the rest of us to make sure that only responsible people acting responsibly have them. That, apparently, is vastly too much to ask in the U.S.
All true and I agree with everything except for one point: “…so called assault rifles are legal in Canada, but restricted.”
There are a lot of firearms that can be categorized as an “assault rifle” that are not on the restricted list in Canada. Examples: Robinson Arms XCR, Bushmaster ACR and Israel Weapons Industry Tavor. All of them can be had in the ever popular 5.56 Nato cartridge. The average person would be unable to pick these out of a lineup with a bunch of restricted firearms. That’s no fault of the uneducated because, for the most part, they are not much different from a restricted firearm like an AR. These guns don’t need to be registered and you can take them anywhere you can take a non-restricted firearm in Canada.
What is the legal/constitutional rational for owning mass murder weapons in Canada? It seems to me we are waiting for a mass murder incident in Canada to bring the current situation into question.
We do have a 5-round magazine restriction for center-fired rifles that makes it at least a little more difficult to commit mass murder. We also have a 10-round mag limit for handguns.
That adds up to a mass of 15.
… assuming every round fired hits its target with absolute accuracy.
Does anyone know the ratio of shots fored per death in recent massacres?
cr
If the mag in question is made for that specific firearm, then yes, 5 is the limit for semi-automatic rifles. It is however perfectly legal to pop a 10 round pistol mag into a semi-automatic rifle (when mechanically possible and safe).
I should also add that pistol mag capacity is based on what cartridge that magazine was designed for. For instance, in Canada, a Glock 22 mag can legally hold 10 rounds of 40 caliber Smith and Wesson (i.e. the round that the magazine was designed for). That same magazine though can hold 13 rounds of 9mm Luger. If you own a 9mm Glock you can legally use that Glock 22 mag in your gun loaded with 13 rounds of 9mm Luger and it will function just fine.
Canada magazine laws are complicated and what I’ve described only really scratches the surface. One thing to note and this is right out of the firearms act: “However, magazines designed to contain centrefire cartridges and designed or manufactured for use in a rifle other than a semiautomatic or automatic rifle, do not have a regulated capacity.” That means for instance a bolt action rifle or pump action shotgun where the magazine is designed specifically for that gun – no limit other than practicality.
I too think our laws are reasonable. I do have friends though that think otherwise, especially if there is gang violence as was the case in Toronto and when there are incidents like L’ecole Polytechnique. I don’t believe stricter controls would prevent these crimes, however. Most of the time, Canadians who feel the laws are too lax often are not acquainted with them and presume we have the same rules as in the US (since we see a lot of American news).
This is where I am kicked out of liberal club regularly.
Because we’re ‘Murica dammit!
Excellent segment on this issue from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. “Jordan Klepper: Good Guy With a Gun” Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCI4bUk4vuM
I fear the blind hand of those who make the $$$$’s are the real drivers behind the ‘gun lobby’. Let’s get real.
As a ‘anti-big government’ person I depart from many of the right when they start fantasying about over throwing the ‘totalitarian’, ‘oppressive’ etc government. Its a fantasy, and a self deception of classic proportions.
The reality of a popular uprising, driven by like minded freedom loving individuals all somehow coordinating the revolution is absurd. We see with the fantasy two important elements of fantasy, firstly it appeals to the lost self, and secondly does the bidding of the external profiteer!
Imagine if the arms manufacturers and the NRA were banned from exercising their ‘freehumanism speech ‘. The debate would sgift immediately.
Why don’t we follow this idiotic idea through and stage an actual re-enactment of the sniper incident? Put a guy in the tower. Load the campus up with gun nuts who fire back. Let’s chart where all these bullets that inevitably miss the sniper come down. Then let’s see how well college students can pick out the good guys who are trying to stop the shooting by shooting more and the bad guys who may be in the tower or may be on the ground. Is it a lone nut in the tower or did a good guy get up there to try to get a good view at the crazy bad guys on the ground who started this? I’d love to see that result (of course with all participants in the experiment not being told beforehand who the bad guys are).
Yes, that’s a good point. How would you know who was the good guy and who the bad guy when they are all shooting?
White hat?
There’s a lot to consider when discharging a weapon. When aimed upward at a tower, a bullet missing it’s target could travel according to Newtonian physics in a parabolic arc into the suburbs, where a citizen watering her garden is day-dreaming about the effectiveness of a slightly softer spray on the petals of her roses – the impact of a droplet of water on a petal.
I had a similar thought. An armed swat team arrive at a campus where an unknown number of gunmen are on a shooting spree. An equally unknown number of concealed permit holders are brandishing their weapons in response to the attackers. How the heck do the police decide who to shoot at? Do they play safe and shoot anyone with a gun or do they politely ask them to identify themselves as (a) a crazed gunman or (b) a law-abiding self-defending NRA member?
You’re missing the whole point of a good guy with a gun… the swat team is too slow. By the time the swat team gets there the good guy with a gun will have taken down all the bad guys. His or her weapon will already be put away. There won’t be any active shooters when swat gets there, just a good guy sitting on the dead bodies of bad guys and having a smoke or something.
Really, do liberals ever think these things through?
What has he done with the dead bodies of the collaterally damaged bystanders?
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Ah, that’s why you always bring throw-down guns so you can frame them as additional shooters!
Professor Coyne, you think that you know everything about gun nuts. Well, its not true… Just look here( finest example of pure libertarian wingnuttery) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldbpfJU_kyRIueXmXvBHdw
All the words on the world are not enough:-)
I’m really angry that this gurl is beautiful. This youtube channel kills everything childish in me:-)
Bizarro. I don’t have the patience to listen to her whole spiel, but it sounds like she’s going in the direction of libertarianism. Ian Rand would be proud.
Ian? Spellcheck? 😀
Ian, Ayn’s Scottish cousin.
The why was missing?
😀
The melee in Waco, Texas in May, 2015, is a clear case of good guys with guns (the Cossacks) stopping bad guys with guns (the Bandidos), the designation being made by seven Cossacks killed and only 2 Bandidos.
Clearly, the Bandidos were the bad guys.
The wrench in the works is that 4 of the dead were shot by Waco Police and I’m not sure where that puts the police in the mix.
Anyway, the brouhaha started when some guy got his foot run over. EVERYBODY knows that stepping on a guy’s boot or messing with his hat is a shootin’ offense in Texas.
Once the first shot was fired then everybody who was carrying was downright obligated by the Code of Texas to pull out their weapon and figure out who to shoot.
I
So that’s nine less Texan gun nuts running around? Not all bad, then. 😉
cr
Yes, but the only solution to a suicidal former Marine marksman in a campus tower with an unlimited field of view, a scoped .30 caliber M-1 carbine, and over 700 rounds of ammunition (not to mention a sawed-off semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun, a Remington 700 6mm bolt-action hunting rifle, a .35 caliber pump rifle, a 9mm Luger pistol, a .25-caliber pistol, and a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver) is a gawky college kid on the ground with a six-shooter.
“gawky college kid”
Now wait. This is pure persiflage. He had a gun, that makes him magical and unflatable even if a bit rangy and uncoordinated. Think Hollywood and you will understand.
Obviously. Which is why the gawky college kid should be packing a HK416 A5 and a scope attachment. Duh! Think, people, think!
Nah, to take out a guy in a tower you would obviously need to be toting an RPG around on your shoulder. Or, at the very least, an M72 LAW.
Come on, guys, don’t you remember that Hollywood documentary ‘The Enforcer’ where good guy Dirty Harry took out the bad guy gunman in the tower on Alcatraz with just such a shoulder-launched rocket? That’s the way it’s supposed to be done! Whooosh! Bang! Ker-pow!
Nah, just a Harrier jet, like Ahnuld used in ‘True Lies’.
RPG launchers are for pussies or Rae Dawn Chong (when she pointed the thing the right way round).
cr
… speaking of which, I thought the scene in ‘Commando’ where Ahnuld breaks into an arms shop and piles up ‘one of everything’ on a supermarket trolley was a brilliant spoof of the gun mentality. Or maybe not a spoof. Poe’s Law applies, I think.
cr
I didn’t understand why the arms shop was stocking automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, hand grenades and the afore-mentioned four-shot rocket launcher (an M202A1 FLASH) that Rae Dawn Chong used to such comedic effect (*) – that seemed a bit excessive, even by American standards. Or perhaps the only defence against one of those bad guys who tries to mug you with a knife really is a 66mm high-explosive unguided rocket.
(*) though why did the recoil of the first shot knock her over backwards – surely the whole point of a rocket launcher is that there is no recoil? Hollywood physics, again!
I am surprised (and a little impressed) that the 4-shot rocket launcher is a real thing. I thought it was just a Hollywood invention.
cr
So these people want us to all live in a state of perpetual combat-readiness? Given the recent plea for civility, would it be against da roolz to call these people a bunch of fuckwits?
crazy!
Imagine sitting in class with 50 or 100 other people and about half are armed and loaded – Hopefully just the gun. Don’t want to think about grading on the curve any longer because some of these cowboys might just want to improve their odds.
How many of these kids are going to shoot themselves or other innocent people? Nothing could go wrong here.
I think you are way over-reacting. In this scenario, the professor will, from now on, be wearing a protective vest and be packin’ him or herself. Nothing could go worng. Trust me.
It occurs to me that duels will be brought back shortly.
Hmmm…interesting. Dueling with automatic weapons? Take 10 paces, turn and…unload your 30 round clip at your opponent. May the best spray win.
Look for UT to announced it’s offering a new major in the code duello.
Wouldn’t want random violence on campus, when matters can be resolved on the college green at 20 paces. The local haberdasheries will no doubt do a booming business in fine gloves, suitable for slapping.
Yet another reason to legalize pot.
I wonder if they would they arrest someone (jaybird? – and where does that saying come from? A jay is no more or less “nekkid” than any other bird or creature on the planet) dry-humping a blow-up hand gun balloon inside the student center. Certainly no one would be killed by it, and possibly someone would be aroused by it, eh?
Car backfiring, firecrackers, stomping on an empty Coke can, slapping an inflated paper bag, slamming a door.
Texas, the lone neuron state! Or so I thought, but this indicates collectively they could have more than one and they are not in good health.
Fear of a massacre at any given time can’t be a way for a good life and I don’t believe that a vengeful, honour based mentality with macho overtones has the direction of well being either. The saddest part is they will never know what it is like to be without it. They are immersed in a self entitlement sezure that guns mean freedom.
This is in lock step with fear, as in, more fear, need more guns. Or more to the point, my rights to pack a six shooter is non negotiable.
I use the word fear in it’s broadest terms e.g. fear of.. losing the wife, the house, the kids, threat from outsiders and of outsiders, loss of status, north and south identity the whole freekin gambit. These people just don’t know how to differentiate what is really bothering them but guns give them blanket power to rule over it. Add that to the mix of overarching gun culture that is prevalent (laid down historically and embedded) and you have frightened professors and a disaster waiting in the wings.
It may not happen but the recipe sure looks volatile.
Dailyshow recently had a very interesting piece on concealed gun carry and good guys with guns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCI4bUk4vuM
That’s an excellent segment.
Gopnik seems oddly ill-informed about Scotland, where I live. Gun legislation is reserved to the UK parliament, and applies to the UK as a whole, with slight relaxations for Northern Ireland. For Great Britain, which includes Scotland, it is incorrect to say “essentially impossible to own a gun”: that is true of handguns, but non-automatic rifles are permitted for hunting and target shooting, albeit with tough conditions on ownership and secure storage. Shotguns are permitted with slightly less rigorous controls.
There’s to be licensing of air-guns in Scotland. On the Scottish Government website:-
“Licensing will enable the police to ensure that only those who can use air weapons safely, and with good reason, will be able to access them in the future. “
One thing that really got me thinking about this issue of gun and homicide is that it looks like psychologist Steven Pinker is not convinced about the relationship between gun availability and homicide.
The issue is that major epidemiological centers, such as Harvard Injury Control Research Center led by Dr.David Hemenway and Center for Gun Policy and Research (part of Johns Hopkins School of Publich Health) led by Dr. Daniel Webster, conducted studies and they’re agree on the relationship between gun availability and homicide, and suicide.
However, I don’t think Pinker really exposed what are his issues on the matter, it’s just a few tweets and brief answer on a interview. I know Jerry Coyne have contacted Pinker directly on previous occasion and posted on this site his responses, so maybe Pinker could clarify what he thinks.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned earlier–another shining example of the “good guy with a gun” recently was the woman in Michigan who fired at shoplifters:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/14/mich-woman-who-shot-at-fleeing-shoplifters-is-charged-with-reckless-use-of-a-handgun/
OTOH, there’s this: “After a week in which two horrific shootings left a total of 16 victims dead in Colorado Springs and San Bernardino, Calif., it might be surprising to learn that deadly gun violence has become much less common in the United States.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/08/the-mysterious-case-of-americas-plummeting-gun-violence/
” Gun control works on gun violence as surely as antibiotics do on bacterial infections. In Scotland, after Dunblane, in Australia, after Tasmania, in Canada, after the Montreal massacre—in each case the necessary laws were passed to make gun-owning hard, and in each case… well, you will note the absence of massacre-condolence speeches made by the Prime Ministers of Canada and Australia, in comparison with our… “
This is not a rational argument. It’s magical thinking.
The U.S. is not Scotland or Canada or Australia, it is country with a Constitution that says that people have a right to own, carry, and use guns.
The Heller decision specifically ruled on the prefatory and the operative phrase of the 2nd. Give up any arguments based on the meaning or impact of the word “militia”.
Any gun control laws passed can not unreasonably restrict that right to protect oneself. You can not ban guns in legislative districts anymore. A provision to require all guns be kept unloaded and with a trigger-lock was found unconstitutional, because it effectively meant that a person could not effectively protect themselves.
You can not make “gun owning hard” anymore. Law abiding citizens can apply for, and they must receive permits for ownership, or concealed carry.
What you can do, however is have reasonable restrictions on where guns are allowed. Specifically, Heller said that:
[wiki: The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.]
So, U of T Austin could challenge the Constitutionality of the Texas law which insists on allowing guns on campus, and it seems to this non lawyer that they would likely prevail.
So “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” is only about where guns can be carried?
And what is magical about the thinking? You pointed out a single Supreme Court ruling that speaks to a split decision interpretation that actually ran counter to the sentiment on previous Supreme Court cases. You didn’t refute the rationality of the argument that making gun ownership harder reduces death rates.
As for everyone being allowed to carry concealed weapons or restrictions that make “gun owning hard,” you are simply wrong. The Heller case does not guarantee concealed carry rights nor does it speak to how severe purchase restrictions can be. It only says a full ban is not allowed.
Without studying the issue at all, because I don’t actually care beyond wanting to snicker at paranoid gun nuts, is there anything special about the right to own a gun compared to, say, the right to an abortion? If not, then clearly guns could be restricted until there is only one gun dealer in a state and that one under constant siege. And an endless series of hoops could be erected until only those with lots of time and money on their hands could get a gun.
In any case, the idea that anything is settled constitutional law for all time is just not how things work outside of Schoolhouse Rock videos. It only takes one favorable supreme court to undo Heller and return to the pre-Heller status quo, or beyond. You may think the reading of the text is unambiguous and doesn’t allow for any other interpretation but that doest matter. What will matter is what nine judges think. You’re just kidding yourself if you think some future panel of judges might not read that sentence differently and overturn this version of the right (FWIW, I suspect the Heller reading is closer to the intent, but I still wouldn’t wager much that that reading will survive for fifty years).
You, sir seriously do not wish for a “tooled-up” me to get within arm’s reach of you.
My available tools include misdirection; confusion; teeth, a certain philosophical rock in a sock, and the sure and certain knowledge that the Universe’s repeated attempts at killing me have failed .
Your bangstick scares me not. I’ll use the dirty, devious and indirect to get within a sock – length, then it’s history.
Was anything said by the stagers about the need to know how and when to use a weapon? I didn’t read it carefully, but I suspect not. Persons who know how to use firearms almost never advocate for universal carry without instruction. You can’t just get in a car and start driving, so why should guns be any different?
Shucks, I could go to the local hardware store and get my edge – weapon of choice. 18 inches of steel, with a weight that would only stall on major long bones (humerus, femur ) and indefinitely reusable without reloading It’s an agricultural tool (great for managing hedges, or paths through woodland). Is there a second amendment for such tools?
Just call it a ‘trimming knife’. Don’t call it a ‘machete’ 😉
cr
Machetes are too long for my taste. Weaponry, like hand lenses and pens, is a very personal choice.