George "Macacawitz" Allen on Guns
 

Some of you may know that I work for the National Park Service, so when I see the NPS in the news, I take notice. At the risk of being called a fascist again, I submit that today's NYT editorial board got it right about guns and George "Welcome to the real Virgina" Allen:

November 22, 2006
Editorial
A Parting Shot From George Allen

As a last little gift to America, Senator George Allen, who was narrowly
defeated by James Webb this month, has introduced what may be his final
piece of legislation: a bill that would allow the carrying of concealed
weapons in national parks. The argument behind the bill is that national
park regulations unfairly strip many Americans of a right they may enjoy
outside the parks. The bill has passed to the Senate Committee on Energy
and Natural Resources, where we hope it will die the miserable death it
deserves.

Americans' confusion about the Second Amendment is now nearly total. An
amendment that ensures a collective right to bear arms has been misread in
one legislature after another -often in the face of strong public
disapproval- as a law guaranteeing an individual's right to carry a weapon in public. And, in a perversion of monumental proportions, the battle to extend that right has largely succeeded in co-opting the language of the
Civil Rights movement, so that depriving an American of the right to carry
a gun in public sounds, to some, as offensive as stripping him of the right
to vote. Senator Allen's bill is, of course, being cheered by the gun
lobby, which sees it not as an assault on public safety but as a way of
nationalizing the armed paranoia that the National Rifle Association and
its cohorts stand for.

If Americans want to feel safer in their national parks, the proper
solution is to increase park funding, which has decayed steadily since the
Bush administration took office. To zealots who believe that the Second
Amendment trumps all others, the parks are merely another badland, like
schools and church parking lots, that could be cleaned up if the carrying
of private weapons were allowed. The concealed-weapon advocates are doing an excellent job of sounding terrified by "lonely wilderness trails." But
make no mistake. Senator Allen's bill would make no one safer. It can only
endanger the public.

Well I'm a gun owner. They stay home. Only if I'm going long trip is one in car, truck. Allen must be smoking great shit. They F#$k around the few days they call themselves working and then some a-hole dreams this up.
MAybe link to Griff's rant thread?

The only positive I can see to that bill is you wouldn't be hassled for having it in the car if you stopped in a park on a trip/vacation.

Concealed carry in the park? No.
Visiting the Liberty Bell? No.
Smokey Mts? No
Grand Canyon? No.
Olympic? No.
Everglades? No
Mt McKinley? If you're hiking in Grizzly country...a big one and on your hip, not concealed.
Generally not needed...it'll die in committee. :cool:

EVER
 

And THEN you see that giant Burmese Python coming toward you!

Some woman, trying to take a picture of a momma Black Bear at Great Smokies, got her head dang bit clean off. Doubt a gun woulda helped in that case. Maybe some common sense would have, however.

I carry just about everywhere else. I see no reason a park should be different. I don't see any reason to expect the NYT to get anything "right" about armed citizens, either.

That's beyond comical.

Comedy
 

Why is that "comical"? Do you even have any idea how much law enforcement goes on in our parks? Drunks, poachers, artifact stealers, suicide cases, drug dealers, teenagers tearing up battlefields. Funding for Park Service law enforcement has been cut to the bone to the point where we have interpretive rangers doubling as LEs. You think it's better to fund faith-based organizations?
Haliburton?

WTF do you want? Until you spend 15 years working for the Park Service I really don't think you are in the position to say what is or isn't "comical."

I would very much like to be able to go to see the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, The National Constitution Center, and Valley Forge Park without being forcibly disarmed.

Whether or not I have a gun is none of anyone's freakin business.

And in case you were wondering, I live in Virginia.

Why do I have to disarm just to appease you? Who the hell are you that I have an obligation to make you feel more comfortable? The guy who plans on mugging/abducting/stealing the children of/ me and you has a gun? Why shouldn't I?

We've seen the future of gun control. It is Washington DC.

We've seen the present of concealed carry. It is Virginia.

Bring on the Gun crime stats between DC and VA. Go ahead... make my day.

Virginia is mostly rural, and its largest city is considerably smaller than DC. You may be confusing cause and effect.

It's been said elsewhere by Major Gun Guru Colonel Jeff Cooper that a collective right to bear arms cannot be practiced without practicing an individual right to do the same.

That editorialist is also pig-ignorant of the state of the scholarship on the Constitutional right, which view of the Second is the polar opposite of what he states. He's being about as smart about the Second Amendment as Klansmen are about the Fourteenth. Remarkable how ignorant some people will be; if I owned that paper, I'd fire him for incompetence and patent hostility to human rights. It's a matter of fact that no one who lives by the First should denigrate the Second; it is easy to see how they go hand in hand as overall checks and balances on governmental power.

HM, concealed carry's salubrious effects do not depend one whit on population density. Northern Virginia is in effect one large built-up area, urb upon suburb. Consider Florida, and Miami-Dade with its huge urban population. They have benefited from liberalized concealed carry longer than most, and crime is and remains well down.

Crime-lovers around the District keep things in their current unsatisfactory state of affairs. Were the country to put this matter into my hands, by a few simple changes of law I'd cut DC crime in half in six to eight months, with no bottoming-out in sight. In two years or so, Anacostia, a notably bad neighborhood, would be a pretty nice place.

Isn't there a difference though, between the right to own a gun and the right to move about heavily populated areas with a concealed weapon?

No. The right is defined as the right to keep and bear arms. They are linked. Being able to own a pistol does me no good if I need it in the community and it is locked in a cabinet at home.

About all the difference I can think of is you can benefit more people per stroll. Properly speaking, in the United States there isn't a difference.

The English are not raised to comprehend the idea of a citizen militia and its police powers -- while it's neither organized, nor very demanding of the individual citizen in any one day of his life, American law encourages the citizenry to do something about criminal or life-threatening behavior if at all possible. In a certain rather narrow range of situations, opening fire is about the best and only option.

This is part of our entire conception of a republic. Some will say that it was all very well for the Wild West but now there are police departments. That argument tends to dry up when it is pointed out that saving lives never obsolesces, and is by no means delegated to sworn officers only. In the early West, true enough, DIY justice and defense of self or other was the only available course, which made the West look pretty hairy though the actual casualty rate was pretty low, as most of the bang-bang was confined to those areas where there was a population mostly of transients, almost entirely of young men, and liquor. Strong drink got them shooting -- and mainly missing, when it came to human targets.

They are largely responsible for our needing it, though.

How so?

There was this thing, you may have heard of it, called the American Revolution.

Yep. Was a fucking long time ago. Dont see how that relates to your current need for small arms.

Also, the need for weapons in everyday life had as much to do with being a frontier nation as with the revolution

Incidentally Urbane, Up until very recently the concept of militia was a strong part of the English consciousness. We held to a militia system for over a thousand years. It was the duty for every freeborn man to hold arms throughout the saxon and medieval period.

In British history books it is not called a "revolution" at all, but merely "The Loss of the American Colonies".

Not true Undertoad.

Well it was in the book I had. (1978, 3rd form public school)

I think the key there is '1978'. Believe it or not, progress happens even in blighty.

They are re-writing history?!

History isn't static. Historical scholarship is a constantly changing and revising affair. However, this is about how history is taught to children, rather than scholarship. How history is taught is and has always been subject to the political zeitgeist and prevailing orthodoxy. The book you are referring to is from a time when the concept of 'Empire' was still tenously clinging on, albeit it in terms of something lost. Nowadays, that concept is a historical one and brings little or no influence to bear upon the teaching of our young.

The UN and other socialist...sorry, of course I mean "progressive" elements continue to insist that we prove we "need" things in order to be allowed to keep them.

To my mind, how important it obviously is to these people that I be disarmed is some of the best proof I have that I "need" to continue to be armed.

I had British neighbors once upon a time who referred to the American Revolution as the American Rebellion and sported a bumper sticker that read "Paul Revere was a snitch!"

It's all a matter of perspective.

Brian

nope, we do call it the American Revolution.... and with good cause.... those colonials were definately revolting.....

geee...even the Australian ones? (who happen to be doing very well in the cricket atm) :)

especially the....the...aus....oz.....ab..... them thar lot down under...


(ashes? what ashes? hmmmph... it's only a game....)

How sad. And I thought you had a 'thing' for...ummm...aussies. ;)

ah, well. as I said, it's only a game.


mmmm......how game are you? (in best Leslie Phillips accent)

Well at 4/427, I'm more than game. :)

Which is where WE got it from. What's more, as a society that loudly makes a point of its citizens being freeborn, we're determined to keep them around.

Your society should not drop this, or you'll be 1984 in only a matter of time. You have only to reread the book to say yuck to that. At least, that's all I have to do. You?

Roger that.

Forgive me, but we aren't the ones who started a perpetual war against an invisible enemy :P That said, we are the most surveiled nation in Europe.

I am very familar with Orwell's work.

ISTR that every home in many of the cantons of Switzerland are required to posses and to be profiecent with arms. Yet one so rarely sees hordes of swiss 'sportsmen' swanning around the alps blasting away at the yodellers, nor even swaggering around their downtown malls 'carrying'. Why would that be?

@ ali - was going to say I'm going to train my big guns on you, but tbh at 9/602 and then a paltry response of 53 for 3, I think I'm more inclined to shoot our own team!

It's far worse than that Jay. ;)

Show us ya guns baby!

Wooohoooo! England all out for 157 in the first innings!!!

Looks like we'll be one up in the series to kick things off. :D

*sniff...* it's only a game....

As you can see I am new to this forum, in fact this thread brought me to it.

I think the article posted overlooks the practicality of this law. While the text of the bill being introduced certainly makes it clear the law is about using a gun for protection, the law's real world effect is a practical one.

Having lived near Gettysburg National Park and currently living near Valley Forge National Park the current prohibition of carrying a gun through them creates several problems. The first is that many people who have a permit and legally carry a gun concealed may not be aware of this prohibition. It is your duty to know the law, but this is not common knowledge even among informed gun owners. The second problem is that these parks are large and have prominent throughways that are used by many during their daily commute & regular drives. These two circumstances have to potential to land one of the good guys in very big trouble.

I don't think the intent of the bill is to make the parks safer, but to add uniformity to concealed carry laws.

Welcome to the Cellar, martinbrody.:D
Good point. A lot of parks have major through travel.

I think that travel through the park without intention of stopping would be covered as 'peaceable journey,' in the same way that you can drive through a post office parking lot or within 1000 feet of a school while armed, just so long as you don't go inside the buildings.

The fact that the armed Swiss are NOT gunning those yodellers down is a testament to their commitment to peace at any price.

Here's to the Swiss!

What's wrong with yodelling?

btw, it's not a practice soley kept for the swiss. Plenty of country singers do it too. ;)

Yeah....but do they do it wearing funny pants?

Now that's comical...

Okay. Serious question:

I understand the logic of armed citizenry. I even agree, to a certain extent with the wisdom of that concept. After all, a citizenry who aren't armed are potentially at the mercy of powerful armed governments. What I don't understand is the desire to walk around armed. Is life so dangerous that people feel the need to carry weaponry wherever they go? Who/what does the gun protect them from? How likely is it that someone will need to use their gun?

They opt for silly shirts.

If there were known to be a vampire in your city, would you carry garlic with you? I mean, it's just one vampire, what are the chances that you'll run into him? On the other hand, what's the harm in carrying a little garlic with you? It can't hurt, and it just might save your life.

To a responsible gun owner, there is no reason not to carry in most situations. And if it saves you or a random stranger's life from a crime just once in your entire life, wouldn't it be worth it?

I like that analogy Clodfobble!

I would carry garlic if I knew there was a vampire in my city, of course I would. But I wouldn't carry 1 crossbow, tip dipped in holy water, vampires, for the despatch of - check.

In my case I think it's solely the environment I grew up in. If you grow up with an unarmed populace, carrying guns is more likely to seem unnecessary, and people defending carrying concealed guns for a trip to the park will sound militant. I'm happy to admit YMMV however.

That's an interesting analogy Clod.

You're kidding yourself. Your "populace" is no more "unarmed" than it is "drug-free".

Much less likely than if it was known that all the law-abiding are unarmed.

How likely is it that your home will burn? Yet you still have fire drills, fire extinguishers and smoke alarms, don't you? And having them, the likelyhood that a small conflagration will grow to consume an entire building is vastly reduced.

If someone dropped a lit cigarrette in a rubbish bin, would you simply call the fire brigade and wait? After all, *they* are the trained professionals...

On the surface, that's a great analogy. But for it to be fully accurate, those things you listed would also have to sometimes cause fires as well as protect against them.

:thumb:

Ironically, having it usually means not needing it.

And nothing de-intellectualizes an argument like being one-on-one with someone who wants you to die and has the means to make it happen. I see all the chin stroking logic going on in this thread and wonder how far it would get you when you absolutely, positively need to kill someone in order to stay alive.

The shortest unit of time in the universe is the time it takes for someone staring down the barrell of a gun to realize that the feebly constructed intellectual argument they have been clinging to like a warm blanket is about to cost them their life.

Bad guys have guns. Blame whoever you want but they do. Do whatever you want and they still will. So you can be the principled recipient of a bullet in the head or you can level the playing field. I have no objection to whichever choice you make and ask why anyone thinks they have the right to make that choice for me.

How likely is it that I will need it? To address the question is to quantify my need for one. To quantify is to justify. To whom must I justify? And exactly how is it that I am accountable to them? I don't recall relinquishing that control.

All analogies have non-congruent features, or they wouldn't be analogies. But I will point out that there are many more things in the world that spontaneously cause fires (hypergolics, highly-reactive metals, strong oxidizers) than there are weapons that spontaneously cause violence. Weapons don't cause violence...and that's the flaw in *your* implcit analogy.

If you're intent on demonizing tools that can be used for defense as well as to commit crime, rather than holding responsible the people who actually commit the crime (because it causes less cognitive dissonance to your no-fault sense of relativistic humanism, perhaps?) then I'm afraid that there's not much that can repair your logic.

"If" indeed. You're saying my logic is flawed, that I think nobody is responsible for their actions, and that it all confuses me. Fuck you. You're reading an awful lot into my post.

Yes. I've stated in the past that weapons are tools. We've covered this before. Your analogy above says that weapons are tools only for preventing crime. I'm pointing out that weapons are also tools for committing crime. Pretty simple really.

Maybe I should have typed "be used to cause" instead of "cause," but I forgot that I was dealing with the queen of semantics. Sloppy of me.

I could quite easily use a smoke alarm to start a fire if that was my intent. It's the people and their intent that matter, not the tools.

Words matter too. "Semantics" is the science of meanings, not a reason to dismiss an argument.

Notice how quickly the choir chimed in with the "guns are evil" chant right behind you.

Never mind, I know better than getting into these discussions!