[CLUE-Talk] Bowling for Columbine

[bof]

Timothy C. Klein wrote:

>This is total, utter nonsense.  
>

Your point of view. I personally think that your position is based on an 
incredible naivity and an inability to think in other than simple 
slogans ("Guns kill people"). Shall we stick to issues, or just go 
straight into ad hominem attacks?

>If you can look me in the eye and
>say that guns serve no other purpose than to fire bullets, I would be
>saddened. 
>
Any day of the week, and three times on Sunday.  I hope that you can 
live with that. ;-)

> That is just such red-herring debate tactic.  A
>gun is designed to fire bullets.  Why?  To hit a target.  Why hit a
>target?  
>

You are confusing design with intent. A gun is designed to shoot a 
bullet; where the bullet goes depends upon the intent of the shooter, as 
a means of projecting power beyond the reach of their reach.

>You are either practicing for the act of, or actually partaking in,
>causing a significant bit of physical violence on the target.
>
>

So? Why is this a bad thing? There are times when physical violence is 
necessary: the tyrannies of the 20th century would never have been 
defeated without it.

>Guns were not developed, and are not used, as some academic exercise in
>moving matter at a high rate of speed.  They are designed to kill
>animals, or kill people. 
>

No! Guns were designed to shoot bullets. There are many specialized 
types of guns that are completely useless for shooting at people or 
animals: their calibers are too small, they are too heavy, they are 
unwieldy, for a start. They are designed strictly for shooting targets 
as sports in which the skills practiced are not at all useful for 
shooting at people or animals.

> <snip>  If you take the position that guns are just built to
>'fire bullets', then I disagree with you fundamentally, and I think the
>position seems dishonest.
>

But I would say that your position is incredibly naive in that you are 
confusing the purpose of an inanimate object and the intent of the 
animate object who uses it, and that you are intellectually dishonest in 
that you are attempting to confuse the debate by doing this.

>Neither you, nor I, are mind-readers: what the frmers 'meant' is a
>sticky issue at best.  
>

No, not at all. This issue was discussed enough in debate and in writing 
that there is little doubt as to what the framers meant in mnay cases, 
and firearms in particular.

>Thus, with the word arms, there is room for
>interpretation.  
>

There is no doubt whatsoever that, whatever else "arms" might have 
encompassed, such as swords, bayonets, pikes, etc, it definitely 
included firearms of the kind carried by the individual soldier.  

>I think the Constitution is only an embodiement of something a hell of a
>lot more important:  human rights, as it pertains to a governments
>treatment of its people.  
>

The framers of the Constitution were heavily influenced by John Locke 
and the idea of a social contract between the governed and the 
government, in which the governed gave up certain rights to band 
together for the common good. Such a contract could be dissolved if the 
government failed to live up to its end of the contract; this, in fact, 
was the grounds for the Declaration of Independence and the spilt from 
England. The original Constitution dealt with the way the government 
would be formed and its powers. There is no mention of "human rights" in 
it at all. The individual "rights" mentioned in the Constitution were 
added as an afterthought in the Bill of Rights when the framers became 
concerned that they had not addressed them and wanted them in writing to 
protect people from the tyranny of the government and to make clear 
certain terms of the contract in which it could be dissolved. Much of 
the Bill of Rights reflected their experience under the English and the 
years leading up to the Revolution. Thus such provisions as the right of 
free speech, brought about by such incidents as the trial of John Peter 
Zinger; the right to freedom OF (not FROM) religion, the basis for 
settlement of many of the colonies; the right to own firearms --- it was 
the march on the armories at Lexington and Concord to seize the guns 
there that was the direct cause of the war; the right not to have troops 
billeted in civilian homes during time of peace; the right to be free of 
unreasonable searches, brought about by the British actions in the early 
1770's; the right of speedy, open trial by jury, again from the 
experiences of the early 1770's under the English court system; and 
finally, the catchall Tenth Amendment, which denied the government 
anything not specifically granted it to as a result of the King's 
ministers making up laws as they went along.

>I have never said, nor do I believe, that "we must have laws to make the
>people good."  My belief is that, as needed, we create laws to help the
>society prosper.  Whatever an individual does within that society is up
>to him/her, within those boundaries that don't harm the society as a
>whole.  
>

Including my owning a fully automatic weapon or even a small nuclear 
device? In of itself, and as long as I don't use it, then society will 
prosper (whatever that means), and no harm will come to it. OTOH, when 
you start advocating licensing of guns on the grounds that they are 
harmful, then not only are you demonizing an inanimate object and 
patronizing people as being too weak to withstand its evil, you are 
passing laws to make people good by controlling the behavior of owning a 
gun.

BOF