Does the other side really want “reasonable, common sense gun control”?
Nah.
Remember Nancy Pelosi saying that if she could have, she would have said “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,” or words to that effect? That intent still exists beneath the relatively transparent surface of the usually more disingenuous gun prohibitionist movement.
We offer as evidence, Professor Alan Dershowitz.
Now, “to give the devil his due,” I’ve had some good things to say about Professor Dershowitz in public, and I’m happy to repeat them here. I’ve heard lawyers criticize him for using his law students to do his research for cases he was getting paid for, and I defended him for that: he was giving those students priceless real-world on-the-job training in high profile cases, and reducing the legal research costs for the defendants in the bargain. His comments why the prosecution of George Zimmerman, and the manner thereof, constituted an outrage were outrage were in my opinion spot on, and I said so…in this space, and elsewhere.
However, there are some points where I profoundly and vehemently disagree with the professor. One of those was his assertion that police are taught to lie on the witness stand – to “testi-lie” – in the police academy. Having more time by far in police training than he has, I call BS on that.
And then, of course, there is Dershowitz’ radical position on “gun control.”
On the opposing side is an old friend of mine, Richard Feldman, Esq. Watch it yourself. Feel free to comment here as to who won the “reality check.”
The Hard Line | Alan Dershowitz and Richard Feldman discuss proposed gun-free zones
Or see it here: https://youtu.be/DqeiLQoazt8
I was going to correct your misattribution of the “turn ’em all in” comment because I was pretty sure it was Barbara Boxer. Turns out it was actually Diane Feinstein. Yeah, they’re hard to keep straight. All three of them are more or less interchangeable.
Mas,
I believe it is Diane Feinstein who said turn em all in.
Feinstein, not Pelosi, but yeah, basically interchangeable.
What I came away with from that video was how that time allowed for each to respond was far leaning to the “left” , as usual in most new forecasts.
I wonder how Mr, Alan Dershowitz would feel after he was mugged or suffered a home invasion ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffI-tWh37UY
What the other side wants, as we all know, is confiscation and banning of all personally owned firearms. Except those owned by the security forces that guard the elites. Winning a reality check against these people is meaningless as they have no intention of giving the least bit of consideration to any point of view save their own. The rest of us are in the amen corner with Mr. Feldman and need no further convincing. The left’s tactic is incrementalism and must be watched for and guarded against constantly.
Note the host of the program nodding sagely as Dershowitz advises that anyone wishing to hunt go to a, as he calls it, “hunting place,” hunt, and then turn his presumably rented firearm back in to the proper authorities.
I point out for the record that Dershowitz was part of the “Dream Team” that sprung one of the most savage, brutal and clearly guilty murderers we have seen. A murder that was committed with a knife, not a gun. What is Dershowitz’s position on deadly assault knives? In his opinion, is the rarefied atmosphere of advanced legal theory and technicalities more important than seeing a clearly guilty murderer atone for his crimes?
While we are tweaking the Constitution to suit Mr. Dershowitz’s view of the modern world, should we also revisit his beloved First Amendment as well?
What about the Fourth and Fifth? The Third Amendment can go for sure, right? How about if we actually started observing the Tenth? Or just scrap the whole thing and let the wise and all knowing, kind and gentle leftists with good intentions take over and create the Utopia they have been seeking for so long.
No one should have to point out to Mr. Dershowitz what happened when six or so million of his fellow Jews submitted meekly to an all powerful central government and boarded the cattle cars headed to the camps.
Behold the power of left-wing bias. It so distorts the world-view of those afflicted that they see no contradiction between being a staunch defender of the Constitution, so long as it aligns with left-wing thought, and being a vicious destroyer of the Constitution where it opposes the left-wing viewpoint.
Like most on the left, Professor Dershowitz must believe that the Heller Decision was “wrongly decided” since his argument, that the “Well Regulated Clause” gives Federal and State governments the authority to totally gut the 2nd Amendment and turn all of America into a “Gun Free Zone”, was rejected by the SCOTUS in Heller. So, if you don’t like the Heller outcome, then just pretend that the Heller Decision never happened and keep repeating the pre-Heller failed arguments until someone takes you seriously. Rather like the tactic, all too common nowadays, of repeating a lie until it becomes accepted as the truth (“A lie can travel around the world while the truth is tying its shoe-laces.” – Mark Twain).
As I have noted before, left-wing bias springs from a world-view that sees all human life as “born innocent”. See this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
Since all humans are innately good from this point of view, evil behavior can only arise from environmental and social influences. Therefore, the left-wing political approach is an activist one which seeks to identify the social sources of evil and enact government programs to destroy or (at least) mitigate them. All left-wing movements follow this pattern. For example, the left identified poverty and capitalism as negative social forces. Their Proposed “solutions” were communism and/or socialism. They identified alcohol consumption as a negative social force. Their proposed solution was the Prohibition of Alcohol which tore America apart during the early 20th Century.
They look at crime and mass shootings and they do not see the work of evil people. To the left-wing mindset, the term “evil people” is an oxymoron. They see the offenders as basically “good people” who were twisted and made to commit these terrible acts due to social forces such as poverty, racism, drug abuse and (in this particular case) the availability of firearms to the public.
To the left-wing mindset, firearms are a negative social force that is DIRECTLY causing violence. They hate firearms with the same fervor that the Temperance Movement hated alcohol. They hate gun owners like the Temperance Movement hated and belittled alcohol drinkers. In their self-righteous mindset, the rights of gun-owners mean nothing. They would gladly trample on the Constitution and round-up and imprison every gun owner since those means are “justified” by the “noble goal” of eliminating the social evil of firearms ownership and destroying the “gun culture” which Professor Dershowitz railed against.
That is why we can never relax our guard against these extremist. Their fanaticism is such that they would send us all to concentration camps if that was what it took to eliminate guns from America.
Alan Dershowitz said….”there are ways to change the culture…” He is absolutely correct. Anyone who remembers rotary dial phones will understand how true that statement is. Nothing is impossible. Won’t go into the details, but you all know what I mean.
As I watched the Video, it appeared to me that the “Commentator’s” head bobbed up, and down, with each, and every, word of anti-Firearms BS, that Al Dershorwitz spouted, just like one of those “Bobble Head Dolls”.
Additionally, I had never even heard of the Pro-Firearms individual, nor the Organization he represented either?
My take on the interview was that it was extremely slanted, and engineered to make Dershowitz look reasonable, and believable, while the background videos were designed to make gun owners, and gun shows, seem to be a bunch of wild fanatics, and law violators, conspiring to evade current firearms Laws?
I’ll go there and correct the Master. With all due respect Mas, it was Diane Feinstein who said she’d like to command that we turn em all in.
Actually Mas, it was Dianne Fienstien who said “turn ’em all in…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_LaBJvI0BI
But yeah, same old group of tyrants.
Not Nancy pelosi, it was Diane Feinstein
From a fellow sigforum member, just a quick correction; it was Dianne Feinstein who made the “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,” comment.
I see Alan is still trying to hoodoo the masses with the tired old militia argument!
If I’m not mistaken, even though D.C. vs. Heller was a 5-4 vote, on the issue of the 2nd being a militia vs. individual right did not SCOTUS vote 9-0 in favor of it being an individual right?
Heck…let’s not even get into the militia vs. individual argument – let’s just break it down to basic language.
From Professor Nelson Lund of George Mason University-perhaps our foremost Constitutional scholar on the Second Amendment.
Below is taken from the link-in the “The Original Meaning of the Second Amendment” section of his article.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/wm1851.cfm
The text of the Second Amendment does not imply that the right to arms is confined in any way to militia-related purposes. The most significant grammatical feature of the Second Amendment is that its preamble (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”) is an absolute phrase. Such constructions are grammatically independent of the rest of the sentence and do not qualify any word in the operative clause to which they are appended. The usual function of absolute constructions is to convey some information about the circumstances surrounding the statement in the main clause.
Another very significant grammatical feature of the Second Amendment is that the operative clause (“…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) is a command. Because nothing in that command is grammatically qualified by the prefatory assertion, the operative clause has the same meaning that it would have had if the preamble had been omitted or even if the preamble were demonstrably false.
Consider a simple example. Suppose that a college dean announces: “The teacher being ill, class is cancelled.” Nothing about the dean’s prefatory statement, including its truth or falsity, can qualify or modify the operative command. If the teacher called in sick to watch a ball game, the cancellation of the class remains unaffected. If someone misunderstood a phone message and inadvertently misled the dean into thinking the teacher would be absent, the dean’s order is not thereby modified.
Feldman of course won the debate. If NICS is going to work, then the data needs to be up to date.
I am sick and tired of people like Dershowitz saying that you must prove a self-defense need to own a firearm. We all know that where this is done today (like NY) that only the politician’s cronies and celebrities get approved for a firearm license for carry. No one else can even make it to first base. What makes any celebrity’s life more valuable than any one elses (much less a crony’s life)?
As always this is not about gun control, but simply about control. Proving a self-defense need is only used for blanket denial to the public while being sure that large campaign contributors and other cronies get whatever they want. Anybody that supports proving a self-defense need is either stupid or disingenuous. I believe Dershowitz knows this doesn’t work but is OK with it since he will be one of the VIPs that will always be approved for a license. I view Dershowitz’s support for this idea as just another form of corruption to maintain an oligarch is this “democracy”.
If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t the “turn them all in” foolishness Feinstein?
MA’s, the quote you referred to, “Mr. & Mrs. America, turned all in!” Is from the lovely and ignorant Diane Fienstien. Let’s call a spade a spade — Dershowitz is an educated man, there fore on the 2nd Amendment he’s a baldfaced liar. He’s talking of the “Militia” as though it were the National Guard, when the “well-regulated” language of the 2nd is referring to a well trained group of individuals who supplied their own arms, powder and ball.
My question to Mr. Dershowitz is, “What part of ‘Shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand?”
Not at all fond of Dershowitz’s “culture”. He must think he”d have the need to carry a gun in a lawless society.
Loaded quite a bit toward Dershowitz and his faulty logic instead of a shared time debate.
“Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,”
– Dianne Feinstein
Aauugghh! I did indeed say Pelosi instead of Feinstein, when I have long known better.
If I get court-martialed, I’ll ask for Larry, who posted above, to be my advocate. He has articulated my best defense.
I believe D. Feinstein was referring to black rifles, AKs… and all standard capacity magazines, 11 rounds or more, with her “turn them all in” statement. However, I am not naive enough to believe that that was her end game, had it become law, and subsequently would never again call for more “sensible” gun laws and confiscations.
Eventually firearms like an 11 shot Glock 30 would have become too dangerous to the public, perhaps magazine loaded pistols are too easily and quickly reloaded for public safety. Six shot revolvers may be acceptable, but wait, what if someone decided to carry two of them, 12 shots at the ready, can’t allow that possibility.
Lastly, I never understood where the ten round magazine capacity limit came from. Why ten, why not seven or nine or eleven or thirteen? Was it just an arbitrary selection, was it carefully selected in the hope of ending the manufacture of wide-body pistols or was it something else entirely?
Oy vey!
In the past, I have asked as per why anti-gun propaganda routinely appears in this space and was provided a fine answer by Mas…
None the less, vile mess such as that spewed forth by the likes of Prof. Dershowitz in the above clip never gets any easier to watch!
So why are the ratings so good for media outlets that perpetrate such drivel? If ratings were not strong whenever such trash is publicly aired, then surely they’d stop the madness.
Speaking of madness – It’s all a part of Humanity and being a person. This explains why each and every one of us can make plain-as-day clear sense on one issue to people of like mind concerning said issue yet subsequently appear to be crazier than a bag of snakes to same other when opinion on another topic is subsequently expressed!
Police are people, too. So as such, some will lie and others won’t. Be it on the stand or out on the street, doing their jobs. Just like anyone in any other profession may do. I feel such behavior is likely to be more personal than institutional as perjury is not exactly known to be a boon to one’s court case.
One thing that is not a feeling, it’s a fact –
Many jurisdictions that severely restrict and hamper civilian gun ownership make it entirely legal for police to lie to private citizens yet that same private citizen lying to an LEO constitutes an offense!
How do ya like that, Prof Dershowitz? (RHETORICAL – I have had much more than enough of that guys thoughts for one lifetime, thanks much!)
Needless to say, my vote in the debate goes to Esq not Prof.
Maybe there could be a need to say is that one thing the mass killers in “gun free zones” and the ultra left media mouthpieces have in common (other than that each is liable to be entirely insane) is that their end games are to get famous (leading to an increase in bank account balance for media). Judging by the amount of readers of this very blog whom felt the need to parrot the gross quote of anti, I’d say it’s working for them and I have answered my own question above concerning ratings.
I will be sure to forget all such names post haste.
William: Bill Ruger led the way for a 10-round mag limit when he proposed a 15-round limit. The Clinton Administration took the sale-and-acquisition mag cap limit temporarily down to ten because it could. Ten fingers principle.
The “Hardline” video is supposed to be about “proposed gun-free zones” (shudder!). Was one word spoken about “more guns, less crime,” though? I work in a currently “gun-free-zone.” Depriving anyone of effective security is a crime. Effective security often involves going armed. Go sheepdogs!
Feldman won that in a walk… Dershowitz reminded me of the old saw, “If wishes were horses…” And his facial expressions said he DID NOT like Feldman’s ‘corrections’ to his mis-statements!
Dershowitz needs to do some research (a 6th grader could look this up) on what “well regulated” means (hint Alan: it’s not “a lot of restrictive laws”).
I have had a love / hate relationship with Alan Dershowitz for years.
One of my favorite rants from him in his 1988 book, “Contrary to Popular Opinion” on the (then new) Glock pistol:
“Why would anyone want to pack a plastic pistol? Metal pistols do the job. … The only plausible justification for owning a plastic pistol is to be able to circumvent the increasing number of metal detectors … This is why major law enforcement associations are in favor of legislation the manufacture and importation of lethal plastic pistols.”
I guess that’s why cops never carry them.
ML170
i believe that the Left Wing nuts are going after the guns because they are scared to death to try to tackle the real problems: Criminals, Gangs and the Mentally ill. The Mentally Ill pose a problem because of doctor-patient confidentiality.
I find it interesting that in the comments above and time this post has been up no one has pointed out that Mr Richard Feldman is in fact one of the destructive forces to the 2A. Just Google him to see how he has done his best to knock the NRA and its leadership along with other orgs. Like an ex wife he worked for the NRA and now wants his pound of flesh. Feldman represents the worse of the gun community. One whose personal agenda of revenge takes precedence over any concept of natural or constitution rights. There is a special place in hell for scum like him.
First the left does not want to tackle real problems because it admits failure and , those problems enable them to grasp more power. The left has always been scarred of the masses, and must totally control them. That is hard to do when they have guns. .Gun control, will be the cherry of the Obama legacy, if they can pull if off. Expect a full press, as long has he is in office.
MICHAEL JT – touche’! Very well stated. The only thing I would add to your post is that those very same “6 million Jews” (how ’bout the “other” 6-7 million NON-Jews that were exterminated as well?) were DISARMED first! It has been repeatedly stated that there would have been no way the Nazis could’ve done what they done if the Jewish people and others – had kept what they had.
A couple observations after watching the video. Spencer B – the reason the ratings are so good is because the liberal left thrives on sowing seeds of fear – and they do an excellent job with every mass killing. It’s very easily done when you control the lamestream media as they do. I swear these talking heads and Dershowitz in this example, take classes on making faces ala a disgruntled child when something is said they don’t like. Then, it is pathetic how Dershowitz, a legitimate big-timer, would make a statement as he did here, about the meaning of “well-regulated militia.” Has he never heard of the Supreme Court? It is a classic example of an attorney twisting words to his benefit. We simply must hammering the truth home.
There is no room for the mentally I’ll in both the VA or state levels and our government knows this. The mental health system is broken has been for decades. When I was a police office I often delt with the same mentally ill individuals for many years they never kept them confined. So the next best thing is to attack lawful gun owners who own guns for various reasons including hunting, sport, collecting and self defense who bother no one.
I thank God for the NRA and joined them as a teenager and I am a proud life member.
Listening to Allen, he believes in having very few people with firearms and calls the 200+ year history of having the Second Amendment a total failure. I note that we’ve never had a government gone amok like they’ve had in Europe.
But put that aside. At least for the next several decades I feel that there will be a sufficient number of firearms owners who simply will not comply with attempts to disarm them to prohibit even the attempt to do so. I also feel that an attempt by the federal government to force the issue within the next several decades would be the tipping point plunging us into a second Civil War, something no sane person wants.
In any case it is evident that the Second Amendment is not safe and that all of us need to be eternally vigilant. We must also bring as many responsible people as possible into the gun owning community by sharing our passion for the issue and the hobby. It’s only through superior numbers that we will continue to succeed.
Alan Dershowitz needs to refresh his memory on what this little experiment we call America means. To say the Second Amendment is a failure – is a failure on HIS part to understand what it meant then – and still means today. Someone needs to sit him down and define “tyranny” for Mr. Dershowitz. This is just another sad example of what it takes to be a college professor in 2015.
Don – Pa,
Sadly, you could sit Professor Dershowitz down and talk until you were blue in the face. It would make absolutely no difference. Left-wing bias has blinded his mind to any kind of logical debate or any consideration that his views might be wrong.
His world-view is such that only left-wing thinking registers now. His mind is completely closed to any other mode of thought.
In his mind, firearms are a negative social force. They cause nothing but evil. All the violence that plagues American is their fault. Therefore, as he sees it, the 2nd Amendment is a failure. He was not just spouting BS when he said that. It sounds like BS to us (because our minds are not blinded by left-wing bias) but he truly believes every word, that he was saying, to be God’s Truth.
Those on the left can only attribute evil to environmental and social forces. Their only solution is government action. History has shown that their proposed “cures” are far worse that any underlying disease. For example, in their quest to end poverty and capitalism, by forced communism, they ignited wars that slaughtered hundreds of millions of human beings. Nevertheless, many on the left still feel that communism or socialism has great merit. It is, in their minds, our foolish resistance to their glorious left-wing utopian dreams that caused the problem.
Many on the left would install gun control, by force, if they had the means. The result would be yet more conflict but they cannot see that this is true. They only see their utopian dream of a peaceful world in which no firearms exist.
TN_MAN – excellent analysis of the status quo. Because your analysis IS so spot on, it only amplifies the need for us to step up our efforts to educate and inform. People that constantly get the ear of the media – like Dershowitz – as far gone as he is – need to hear the truth until they, at the very least, understand what we are saying. The only way this will ever be “settled” is when everyone listens.
Lots of great comments. I’ll just add that every time antis like Dershowitz say things along the lines of, “if I had to rewrite the Bill of Rights I’d remove the Second Amendment” my blood boils. America’s past, where we come from and who we are, is being scrubbed and in effect rewritten enough already.
Rich says, “I note that we’ve never had a government gone amok like they’ve had in Europe.”
I disagree. What would you call the brutal repression of anti-war voices in WWI by Wilson, the abuse of Federal power by Lincoln (though the intent of whether or not keeping the Union unified by force of arms is something I think can be argued), and all 8 years of Obama’s gross abuse of his power every time he speaks or signs another illegal executive order (not to mention that it can be strongly argued that he only “won” re-election through bald-faced voter fraud in several swing states)? Or FDR’s imprisonment and impoverishment of thousands upon thousands of law-abiding US citizens of Japanese decent?
True we haven’t entirely repeated the repeatedly bloody history of Europe, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t had multiple instances of our government run amok, especially with the current president and spineless congress and constitutionally apathetic Supreme Court.
Mas,
I think it’s quite understandable that you mixed up Feinstein and Pelosi. It’s darn near impossible to separate what each has said (except for Pelosi’s imfamous “you have to pass it to see what’s in it” statement with regards to the Unaffordable Care Act, aka Maobamacare). So while it’s a mea culpa, it’s one we all can say, “Yeah, we’ve ALL made this mistake before and will again.”
The below email was sent to DDTCResponseTeam@state.gov, as well as Montana Legislators Sen. Steve Daines, and Rep. Ryan Zinke, hoping for the eventual Repeal of the new, Unconstitutional State Dept. ITAR Regulations.
We are contacting you, our Government’s Public Servants, to go on Official Record, as strongly opposing the rewrite of the State Department’s arms control regulations (ITAR), which could potentially grant the State Department a wide-ranging illegal power to monitor and control Constitutionally Protected gun-related speech on the Internet.
The new language — which includes “making technical data available via a publicly available network (e.g., the Internet)” — could put anyone who inadvertently violates such a provision in danger of facing decades in prison and massive fines, in a “Guilty, Unless they can Prove Themselves Innocent” situation.
So, posting information on virtually any firearm or ammunition could be defined by the Obama administration as requiring, not only government permission, but potentially a government license.
This subverts all American Citizen’s God Given, and heretofore Constitutionally Protected Personal Rights, punishing so-called violators with potentially significant criminal penalties.
We also totally oppose the addition of the word “software” into these regulations, as it appears to be a not-so-veiled effort to ban 3-D printers as well.
Therefore, we Strongly Demand that you repeal these new regulations in their entirety. Whether you like it or not, our Constitution’s First and Second Amendments are still the law of the land, and must be obeyed!
James – it all depends on your definition of “gone amok,” now, doesn’t it? For example, you cannot equate voter fraud with the “cleansing” of entire societies. Perspective, Sir.
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