Southern belle, structural engineer, and confessed liberal millennial, mother, and wife Anastasia Bernoulli blogged in favor of gun control. She attempted to use commonsense reasoning to engender disdain for public possession of assault rifles like the AR15, M16, or M4 carbine.
She began by explaining that as a former US Army soldier, she received training on and loved the accuracy and ease of use of the M4 carbine. Then she explained why she believes the American public has no need or use for such a weapon other than for killing lots of people fast, the very use to which several deranged militants have put the assault carbine.
She seems to think all such weapons should be locked inside an armory the way the military kept them when soldiers did anything but combat or weapons training. It goes without my saying, I suppose, that she also believes people with such weapons at hand should have no ammunition for them except during live fire at the shooting range or in sergeant-supervised combat. She flat-out believes that civilians with assault weapons could never successfully engage government troops with much more advanced and meaner weapons. She never experienced guerrilla war, I suppose.
That aside, Anastasia could quit her engineering job any day and switch to journalism. I like her writing style that much. And her liberal mind-set (inability to reason rationally regarding civilians possessing weapons of war) perfectly suit her move to such a career. Read her blog articles for yourself. I write my response to them below.
Anastasia:
As much as I love the flow and style of your writing, I kept noticing logical fallacies in your arguments, particularly when you cite an analogy or example to support your point. I'll cut to the chase here. Your idea has holes, but you could patch them up. Okay, now I'll drone on...
Example of bad logic. You wrote that 18% of NYPD bullets miss the target and hit elsewhere, implying the bullets will hit innocent people, and if cops can't shoot straight, then civilians certainly cannot shoot straight and will end up killing each other by accident.
"Dude. NO." Every unarmed able person runs and hides when the shooting starts, leaving the shooter alone. Cops miss from adrenaline nerves, or from ducking and dodging while running for cover. But when the cops start shooting back, the bad guy's aim goes bad, and he starts missing. If nobody shoots back, the bad guy just keeps killing. THERE you have the problem with your logic.
As for the effectiveness of a pistol, a person who knows the point-and-shoot technique fires accurately by pointing, without aiming. A 9mm can easily kill and maim at 50 yards, and most school shootings occur at much shorter distances indoors or in classrooms. That moots your rifle logic.
Schools should arm patrol guards with bullpup 5.56mm carbines like the Tavor with frangible rounds. They should arm teachers with compact 9mm pistols with frangible rounds- females can wear a bra or thigh holster to conceal it. And it will take only a couple of dead teen thugs to teach students not to try disarming the teacher, a lesson worth the grieving of parents who feel secretly glad to have lost their bad egg.
Genghis Kahn was said to have remarked that government doesn't miss dead children because parents can make more of them in short order, but it sorely misses dead taxpayers and soldiers. I tend to agree. If allowed to thrive, bad eggs victimize many during their formative and adult years – society should nip them in the bud, along with the parents who produce and train them to iniquity. Besides, if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs, right? How's that for logic contretemps?
This brings me to the most glaring flaw in your "Dude. No." gun control thesis. It ignores the salient reality that 25% of the nation's population has an IQ barely higher than a bucket of rocks. That disease has no cure. Doesn't everybody know that children inherit their stupidity or intelligence from their parents?
Use your engineering mind to evaluate the Gaussian distribution of IQ scores of racial groups. I found that roughly 22 million Negroes, 25 million non-white Hispanics, and 33 million Caucasians have IQ below 85, the minimum IQ one needs to graduate from a high school that administrators have not intentionally dumbed down to allow the stupid to pass.
That gives the USA 80 million people who have gravitated to crime and welfare abuse because they cannot compete for the better jobs or mates. They procreate without restraint, unlike their much smarter counterparts who, ironically, don't seem to have the intelligence needed to procreate at a rate sufficient to sustain their gene groups.
Stupid people cause most street crime. Stupid children become miscreants in school because throwing them in with smarter students makes them feel frustrated and angry. Smarter students hate being around them, but have no choice.
Medicos administer Ritalin and other mind altering drugs to stablize children, but it can make them violent. Wherefore, school integration of the smart, the stupid, and excessive numbers from wildly alien cultures, has contributed to the craziness that leads to school shootings.
Pogo said it best: "We has found the enemy, and he is us." America should not remain a breeding ground for intellectual maggots, and should not force children of extreme cultural and intellectual differences to interact with one another in an academic environment.
The abject absence of procreation controls, and incompetent immigration controls, have dramatically increased the percentage of irresponsible people in the population. Our schools hurry that process along by integrating the smart in with the stupid.
You know what that means – fecund children fuck, and procreate with, only those they meet in school or socially, and the smart seldom fraternize with the stupid outside of school. Thus, willy-nilly integration dumbs down the gene pool. But for schools, the stupid and the smart would never meet till after they have selected mates from their own gene groups.
Until America cures the foregoing problems, Americans should pack heat and keep an assault weapon handy at home in case things go really bad. That brings me to your apparent theory that only the government should control access to assault weapons.
Before I start, I ask that you keep the rabidly insane, mind-blowingly expensive military conflicts of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria in the background of your thoughts. The crazy-ass government put our citizens into centuries if not millennia of debt to send hundreds of thousands of our precious men and women into those actions to slaughter or become casualties. THAT INSANELY dangerous government wants to control OUR access to dangerous weapons.
Giving Government the benefit of the doubt (?!)... No matter what you wish, Government forces cannot go everywhere at once, and governments can and do go rogue, such as at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and recently in the Oregon Bundy land dispute.
No one can blame communities of people for arming themselves against such rogues. We can feel fortunate because we have not seen Nazi SS troopers invading our homes, bashing, raping, and looting. But European immigrants have witnessed it and their descendants comprise some of the staunchest advocates of gun freedoms. The news media has shown mobs of Negroes and Democrats intimidating, looting, and destroying. We trust that our government will stay essentially good and prevent or quash such public menaces, but nothing, absolutely NOTHING, guarantees it, and indeed, history exposes Government's character as an evil empire.
Our Constitution acknowledges state militias for repelling invasion (such as through our Mexican border throughout the past 50 years). For a scholarly comprehension of this issue, read Dr. Edwin Vieira's eight-part discussion The Militia of the Several States Guarantee the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Congress should organize, arm, and discipline the militia, and the state governments should provide its officers and training. The President commands only that part of the militia reserved to federal service. The National Guard constitutes the formal militias of the states under federal law, but the US military conscripted the National Guard for foreign conflicts like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing much trouble in the homes of the Guard members.
Theoretically a secondary state militia consists of all other able bodied people aged 17 to 64. I have not in my lifetime learned of any organization of a militia of such people by state or federal government. And frankly, having a state militia under total control of the President can easily run at cross purposes to the welfare of the people of the state, particularly when some branch of government becomes tyrannical. We have no choice but to presume that the states intend never to rely upon local militias, not even if reptilian people come running out of their holes in the earth to terrorize us.
But unless you have stinking thinking, you know that only the militias of the several states can enforce the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. A populous, strong, responsible, and adequately armed militia keeps otherwise evil Government restrained on a short leash.
Until we see actual local militia organized under state leadership, and not under complete dominion of the federal government, we must surmise none does or will exist until a crisis has come and gone. In other words, the purported militia, the National Guard of each state, is nothing more than a federal government tool, so the people of a state cannot depend upon it to protect them from government tyranny.
It has become monumentally evident that governments OPPOSE any free militia because only a free militia can threaten government abuse of power. So, NOW constitutes the only viable time for a population to arm itself against invasion, insurrection, riot, mayhem, or the terrorism of Islamic Jihadists or government thugs disguised as law enforcers. Wherefore, our weaponry should suffice for that purpose. Otherwise why bother?
THAT shoots the biggest hole in your gun control theory. Yes your arguments soften our hearts, but your logic has an inescapable sourness to it, the faint but unmistakable stench of tyranny in the making through rank, namby-pamby negligence and lapse of the eternal vigilance necessary to responsible liberty.
By the way, let me address your argument that "we had weapons in the armory but we didn't carry them around" on your military base. I'll give you the main reason. In combat, you have a definite chain of command, operative, and in force. A sergeant has grilled, disciplined, and stood on the necks of his minions throughout boot camp and other training. And his commanding officer stands on him and all the troops through the chain of command, ensuring that they will follow orders or face severe discipline.
The command chain keeps subordinates under constant scrutiny and on a short leash, lengthening it only for soldiers of proven trustworthiness, and only for a given mission. But when soldiers go about their personal business unarmed, nobody stands by to scrutinize and control their behavior or pull them up short on that longer leash. This variety of leash length, so to speak, gives reasonable liberty and control to the organization and its members.
But take a look at the members, as young as 17 who might not have the intelligence to graduate from high school, depending on the branch of service and the crises of recruitment. Many, if not most, have lived under negligent to abusive parental supervision. The smarter ones would have gone to college if they could afford it. The military tries, but cannot, undo a lifetime of malingering, conniving, malfeasance, thuggery, wimpiness, pampering, or abuse at the hands of irresponsible parents.
That explains why a sergeant and a chain of command stand on the recruits 24/7 during basic training, and closely monitor them thereafter, hoping they will stand firm or advance bravely in the face of enemy fire, and officers stand ready to shoot any combat cowards. Government simply cannot trust its soldiers to behave according to orders, even after the rigors of basic training. Wherefore, it keeps combat weapons under lock and key except during weapons training or combat deployment.
The public has no chain of command upon which it can rely for highly trained, excellent leadership. Until a more selfless and enlightened ethos becomes the world pattern for living, the people must fend for themselves without good leaders or military-quality police to protect them and to prevent unauthorized access to their living quarters, business offices, training grounds, and streets. Furthermore, the citizenry have no reasonable assurance of freedom from abuse by the police and courts.
That might seem unfortunate to some, but liberty has its blessings to justify its curses. Many, I among them, believe that the legalized plunder that characterizes modern western governments has enslaved populaces through low productivity of the stupid and high debt and taxation on the productive. Corrupt government funds the miscreants and feckless of society, including corporate and foreign welfare recipients. That enslavement has taken on the hue of an evil force inimical to the welfare of intelligent and productive people. Only ONE force keeps that evil in check: the locked and loaded pistols, shotguns, rifles, and assault weapons of the more responsible elements in the populace, particularly when organized in militias with a will to use those weapons to suppress tyranny.
In summary, your Pollyanna misgivings about effectiveness of public possession of sniper, assault, and fully automatic machine guns against tyranny must bow to the history written in the blood of populations whom tyrants or poverty disarmed. So a few crazy bastards get their hands on assault rifles and take out a bevy of students or abortion clinic patients or night club revelers. In view of the history of tyranny, that loss constitutes a minuscule price to pay for the freedom to possess dangerous firearms and munitions. In time, government will find effective ways to keep crazy bastards from getting their hands on such weapons, without disarming responsible citizens.
So, Dude. Yes. Americans have good and sufficient historical reasons for acquiring assault weapons, training with them in local militias and at shooting ranges and sporting events, and keeping them stashed at home with a trove of ammo, easily owner-accessible, well-maintained, and ready for emergency use.
We never know when peace, good will, order, and public safety will go totally and quickly to shit. But we have examples: the slaughter at the October 2017 Las Vegas strip Harvest Music Festival slaught4er; the June 2016 Orlando Pulse night club slaughter; and the August 2014 rampaging Negro riots in Ferguson, MO. No National Guard militia attended those events. So, what advantage do they give us?
Let your engineering mind consider this: any reasonably well-trained combat marksman with a 9 mm Sig Sauer P320 pistol could have instantly terminated the recent slaughters at the schools, churches, movie theaters, and night club; and any combat marksman with an assault rifle could have terminated the slaughter at Las Vegas. I see no reason why school teachers could not receive training in combat marksmanship or become card-carrying, steely-eyed militia members with a "Fuck You - I Like Guns" attitude.
If recent episodes of mayhem worry you, start blogging about the need for state and county governments to form, train, and arm LOCAL militias for LOCAL use only, maintain local, fast-access militia armories, coordinate local militias with local police and sheriff deputies, and provide assault-weapon-armed, volunteer former US Marine/SpecOps citizens to patrol public assemblages that law enforcers simply cannot or will not accommodate.
I end my comments by pointing out the elephant in the room. Constitutional rights don't belong to everyone in the USA. The 2nd Amendment applies only to people with a nexus to government such as those who might serve in a militia or back them up at home. Americans well-understand, and do not complain, that illegal aliens, felons, minor children, mental incompetents, and protection injunctees do not have the legal right to own or possess firearms under federal and state laws.
So, I construe your arguments as an exhortation to tighten the restrictions on the irresponsible, such as by stripping 2nd Amendment rights from users and addicts of mind-altering substances, habitues of vices that incline them to further criminal behavior, epileptics and others with bad motor control or seizures, mental defectives, people with IQ below 90, people who demonstrate profound irresponsibility like career welfare recipients, people with long arrest records, people with a history of bullying, threatening, intimidating, or unjustified violent behavior, people who taunt, tease, and tend to drive others crazy, and people with no firearms safety or marksmanship training. Maybe you can add other irresponsibles to the list.
To any who say, "Fuck You - I Like Guns" you might warn "Then behave responsibly, learn good manners, and DON'T make a nuisance of yourself, or else we'll get the court to take your guns away from you and sell them at auction."
Every southern belle knows that even angels lose their liberty when they cannot or will not behave responsibly.
See? You have a happy medium. You have no problem with bridled personal LIBERTY exercised RESPONSIBLY.
Anastasia, please forgive any confusion I caused by injecting to-be verbs or passive voice into my comments above. I don't write for a living.
