A Very Good Start at Putting Gun Grabbers on their Heels

Selwyn Duke has been carrying on a debate with gun grabber Brett Joshpe at the American Thinker.  Duke's latest can be found at The Great Gun Debate: New Laws? The opening salvo can be found at Sensible Arms Policy by Brett Joshpe, followed up by The Great Gun Debate: Selwyn Duke vs. Brett Joshpe .  Joshpe's first piece essentially asserted, without much proof, that the arguments of gun rights advocates are either dismissed or somehow were less persuasive than the arguments of gun grabbers. Selwyn Duke takes these on in his rebuttal, calling the 22,000 gun laws currently on the books, all of which were supposed to stop criminals from committing crimes "insane."  Joshpe then came back with The Great Gun Debate. Mr. Joshpe:

I have heard on many occasions the argument that "when every second counts, the police are just minutes away." I find the idea that every second counts persuasive. We are reminded that an AR-15 can shoot up to 60 rounds per minute (or one per second). That means six to eight seconds can mean six to eight shots, which can mean six to eight lives. That can make a real difference, especially if your kid is hit by the last bullet fired.

The argument that Joshpe is making is, in essence, the emotional "but if it saves just one life, it is worth it" argument. Joshpe concedes that Duke's response to his original article is basically correct, but Mr. Joshpe still feels as if SOMETHING, anything, must be done. Even if what is done is ineffective, as Duke showed, even if the slippery slope argument in this case has merit, we simply can't let this opportunity to pass without making yet more laws, because...because?   Because people who feel their emotions more than they think with their heads are running in circles screaming and shouting that something must be done.

Interestingly, putting teachers who have concealed carry licenses already, and who volunteer to undergo special training and carry their weapons while at school would do much to protect our children.  If schools were no longer "gun free" and the shooters who commit these crimes knew it, it would stop at least some of them.  If a shooter doesn't know who might be carrying, of where he or she is, that adds an extra problem to overcome.  For, while people who commit school shootings are not thinking properly, the knowledge that nobody at the schools is armed to stop them, by government decree, empowers them to choose schools as opposed to...say...a gun store, as a site to commit their crimes.  Indeed, John Lott has noted that all mass shootings in modern times, except for Gabby Giffords, have occurred in "gun free zones."  Maybe it's time we tried something different, rather than doing the same old thing and expecting different results.

Now, Duke goes even further in demolishing Joshpe's arguments" (emphasis mine):

In other words, guns aren't a panacea - they couldn't be since the problem is people - but they can be a mitigating factor. And they are - every single day. In fact, Florida State University criminologist Dr. Gary Kleck found that guns are used by Americans to ward off criminals 2.2 to 2.5 million times per year. Of course, these defensive uses of firearms wouldn't be necessary if there weren't so much criminality in the first place. And this brings us to the most important point: when criminality increases to fearsome levels is when good people need guns most.

Yet this is precisely when the fear-governed gun grabbers want to take them away.
 

Does this make sense? You might as well say that the United States should have responded to Pearl Harbor by unilaterally disarming.

As for the argument that Joshpe doesn't know if the magazine capacity should be limited to 10, or15 rounds, but it shouldn't be 30, William A. Levinson has argued that:

When it comes to rifles, police departments believe the answer to be no less than 30 rounds of .223, as shown by their deployment of AR-15s. The only difference between a police officer and a private citizen is that the former has the authority and duty to intervene in situations that the ordinary citizen should, or even must, avoid. If either needs a firearm for any non-sporting purpose, though, he...needs it for exactly the same reason. The definition of a weapon that is "reasonable" for legitimate self-defense is therefore, "Any weapon that is routinely available to law enforcement agencies."

While this assertion will no doubt offend many who have come to look upon the police as soldiers fighting a never ending battle against heavily armed criminals, the truth is much more prosaic. The police are merely civilians who have been given some special training in police procedures, the laws, collecting evidence and a little training in the use of their sidearm and patrol rifle. They have been given special authority because of the job, but beyond that, they have no special moral authority to either command our respect or demand our unquestioned compliance. Rather, every officer commands our respect and compliance by how they act in any given situation, just as any other citizen.

The final point that Duke makes is that we in the gun rights movement have been "compromising" since at least 1934, painting ourselves into an ever smaller and smaller corner.  But as Duke points out, what has been happening is not compromise, because the other side never seems to give something up, and except for the 1994 AWB, nothing has ever been repealed, only added to:

It's like this: imagine some barbarians breach your borders and demand territory in Traditionland. You don't like this, but to avoid conflict give them a quarter of the land they want. But then they return a year later making the same demands - and again you cede a percentage of what's asked. Now, how long before this process ensures you have no homeland left?

snip...

I have just explained why conservatives have long been losing the cultural and political war. The liberals will never be satisfied because, being relativists, they have no definite vision of what they want civilization to be. All they can do is oppose what is. And what always is, is the status quo, which conservatives always defend - and always quite poorly. So unless we can stop being conservative and start being bold, and yell "Stop!" and mean it, the only thing in question about our complete and abject defeat will be the rate.

We need to begin formulating ways to push back the existing gun laws on the books at both the State and Federal level. Clearly, we will probably have more success at first on the State level. But there are things in the 68 GCA that can be attacked. Hitting hard on the fact that much so called gun control is racist in origin, and often acts to keep poor people from having the means to defend themselves, we can attack certain provisions of the act. The point is that we need to be on the offence all the time, proposing things that remove restrictions on gun ownership, and getting us back to the Constitution. It would be nice if the NRA led this effort, rather than looking to simply defend the status quo.   Just as the Left has been slowly moving the goal posts for 80 years, we need to start moving them back, with every victory for our side being just a good start.