[clue-talk] Heller

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:28:16 -0400
Angelo Bertolli wrote:

> In this case, they found these guys with a bunch of weapons and armor
> in their trunk some days before the incident took place, but because of
> the politicized nature of the whole "right to bear arms" issue and how 
> aggressive the NRA is in trying to give people the ability to use any 
> kind of armament they want, they couldn't stop these guys.  They 
> actually caught them and had to let them go with a slap on the wrist.  
> Not even any jail time.
> 
> Whereas if you have some weed in your trunk instead, they say "intent
> to distribute" and you're in the slammer.
> 
> I'm not advocating a ban on guns, and this has nothing to do with the 
> specific case in DC.  I'm just saying that there is a balance.  We
> don't need wild west style laws.  For example, does having
> armor-piercing bullets really make the "average citizen" safer?
> Because if you think that citizens should be having shootouts with that
> level of criminal, then we already have a societal problem that goes
> way beyond the issue of gun control.

There's a major philosophical problem with your argument. We have the
legal doctrine here of "innocent until proven guilty". The state has no
power (or shouldn't, but it's been creeping up on us for years) to take
action against someone without probable cause. That's why we have the
search warrant processes we do. Possession of firearms is not, by itself,
cause for suspicion. I don't know the details of the "illegally modified
assualt rifles", because in California, that can be something which
would considered quite inocuous in other jurisdictions. That is, it's
just fear factor over cosmetics. What you're also not mentioning is that
these guys were arrested. If the state failed to keep them in
confinement, you can't blame guns, or this so-called politicized nature
of RKBA. In California, it ain't like that, it's much more the other
direction, where guns are demonized in the media regularly, and more
highly regulated than most other states. I'll also note that "two
semi-automatic rifles, two handguns, over 1,600 rounds of 7.62 mm rifle
ammunition, over 1,200 rounds of 9 mm and .45 caliber handgun ammunition"
could easily be a good haul from the gun show. Don't scoff at that.
People who are avid target shooter go through a lot of ammo in the course
of a year. It ain't at all unusual to by 1000 rounds at a time or more.
You get a better price when you buy in bulk. And if I carpool with 2 other
friends on a range trip, we'll easily exceed that number of guns in the
car, and could have a quantity of ammo approaching 1000 rounds. In truth,
people who aren't exposed to the community of gun ownership and shooting
sports have a very skewed notion of what constitutes "a lot" when it
comes to numbers of guns owned, and ammo kept on hand.

The "wild west" argument has been debunked time and again. It comes from
the movies and TV, which like to portray the "wild west" with lots of
shootouts because that's exciting.

Moving on to your next straw man, well, first, there are documented cases
of criminals wearing body armor. Armor-piercing bullets have nothing to
do with this, because most body armor is designed to stop only pistol
caliber cartridges. There are multiple levels of body armor. There are
also insert plates, either ceramic or metal, which can stop projectiles
fired from more powerful cartridges. The thing is, the more effective the
body armor, the heavier it is. So those who wear it -- mostly cops, tend
towards the lower level stuff, because otherwise it's too restrictive.
However, the "entry level" vests (note these are "bullet resistant", not
"bullet-proof") will not stop most rifle cartidge bullets. (The .22 LR,
is, after all, a rifle cartridge). I'm talking about typical hunting
cartridges such as the .270, .30-06, 7mm Rem. Magnum, etc. Again, none of
these are "armor piercing" bullets. Though it's possible to get steel
core bullets and load them, most people don't do that. True military type
armor piercing bullets are not common.

The unfortunate truth is that the citizen could very well find himself
needing to deal with that type of criminal. As the saying goes, "when
seconds count, help is only minutes away", which refers to the response
time for a 911 call. You can't count on agents of the state to protect
you, or to respond in time when armed thugs are already in your house.
That's the reality of it. Yes, we do have this problem in our society.
Saying "people don't need armor-piercing bullets" doesn't make it go
away. (And as I already mentioned, AP ammo isn't an issue anyways.) It's
being armed that makes the difference, and there many many news items to
back this up. See, for example:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html

jed