Monday, May 13, 2013

Why repeating lies and other nonsense won't work

The problem is that when your spout stuff which isn't based in fact, someone can verify the information pretty easily on the internet as this article points out:

There are roughly 30,000 deaths a year in the U.S. due to gunshots. As this week's news makes clear, incidents of children killing themselves or other children are appallingly common. They are also the types of stories -- compact, outrageous, horrifying -- that are readily transmitted through Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media. As such stories spread, they make it increasingly obvious to increasing numbers of people that American gun laws are uniquely insane.

The NRA has been remarkably successful in suppressing government research on gun violence and hindering dissemination of data on guns. Legislators in Washington and state capitals have been ghoulishly accommodating. The Internet, it seems, won't be so easily bought.

So when you try to lie about the meaning of the Second Amendment, say by using the quote:
The great object is, that every man be armed.
Realise not only can people get the quote in its entirety since Patrick Henry’s “That every man be armed” speech found at The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (3 Elliot’s Debates 384-7), Virginia, Saturday, June 14, 1788. Page 386-7 (see also 5 June)
. . .
As my worthy friend said, there is a positive partition of power between the two governments. To Congress is given the power of “arming, organizing, and disciplining the militia, and governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States.” To the state legislatures is given the power of “appointing the officers, and training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” I observed before, that, if the power be concurrent as to arming them, it is concurrent in other respects…May we not discipline and arm them, as well as Congress, if the power be concurrent? so that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, &c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed. The great object is, that every man be armed. But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms &c.? Every one who is able may have a gun. But we have learned, by experience, that necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavoured to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case. When this power is given up to Congress without limitation or bounds, how will your militia be armed? You trust to chance; for sure I am that nation which shall trust its liberties in other hands cannot long exist. If gentlemen are serious when they suppose a concurrent power, where can be the impolicy to amend it? Or, in other words, to say that Congress shall not arm or discipline them, till the states shall have refused or neglected to do it? This is my object. I only wish to bring it to what they themselves say is implied. Implication is to be the foundation of our civil liberties, and when you speak of arming the militia by a concurrence of power, you use implication. But implication will not save you, when a strong army of veterans comes upon you. You would be laughed at by the whole world for trusting your safety implicitly to implication.
We can add in this gloss from an expert on Patrick Henry:
In this connection, however, I need to say something about a recent popular misconception concerning Patrick Henry’s legacy and the genesis of the Second Amendment, which states, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Despite efforts of a number of misguided scholars to construe this language as justifying individual, unregulated gun ownership, I am firmly convinced that the Second Amendment is concerned with the state’s power to control its own militia as a civilian alternative to a professional standing army. In raising the issue in the Virginia Convention Patrick Henry several times pointed to Art. I, Section 8, Clause 16, as an example of the potentially threatening effect of dual state and congressional jurisdiction over the militia and the possibly dangerous union of the purse and sword vested in Congress. Yet wielding the scholar’s power of the ellipse several partisans of gun ownership have edited Henry’s remarks about how best to regulate the militia into an inflammatory half-truth “The great object is that every man be armed….Every one who is able may have a gun.” The NRA has blown this up into a poster-sized blurb embossed with Patrick Henry’s image.
This is not, I repeat NOT, part of Patrick Henry’s legacy. Clearly speaking of the problem of militia organization, what he actually said is, “The great object is that every man [of the militia] be armed.–But can the people to afford to pay for double sets of arms &c.? Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience, that necessary as it is to have arms, and though our assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case. When this power is given up to Congress without limitation or bounds, how will your militia be armed? You trust to chance….”
Not to belabor the argument, but cinch it, I would also remind you that the liberty or death speech itself was in support of a resolution to put the colony in a mode of defense, and the plan proposed by Henry’s committee as a result of its passage included a militia law that described in great detail not only the number of men, but the amount of ammunition to be raised by a collective levy, and a very clear procedure for maintaining county and provincial control over the militia system. If Henry’s remarks were intended to cast doubt upon the adequacy of a hypothetical Congressional militia law, they only affirmed his commitment to the traditional method of state control over a militia that, far from being a privatized collection of gun-toting individuals, was a community temporarily called to arms and always subservient to public authority and law.
from  Henry Mayer, A Patrick Henry Essay (No. 5-98), THE POLITICAL LEGACY OF PATRICK HENRY.

And funny how it seems to back up the things I have been saying.

As I like to say, your arguments don't stand scrutiny--and the internet is extremely unfriendly to them.

6 comments:

  1. Laci, I'm not aware of ever saying that ever single source from the time the Constitution was written agreed with me. But Patrick Henry was an opponent of the Constitution precisely because he believed that it gave too much power to the Federal government. We can quibble about one or another quotation from the man, but if you're implying that he'd support the kind of gun control proposed on this blog, you are hugely distorting Henry's political philosophy.

    But also, your quotation from a Bloomberg article about the Internet--really? The whole of the Internet has declared war on the NRA? Laci, you need to get out of your echo chamber more often.

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    1. Greg, stop insisting Laci pay attention to context. It makes him sad...

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    2. He barks, but the world moves on.

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  2. Ain't Patrick Henry the dude who said, "Give me Liberty or give death"?
    What is the palladium of liberty?

    orlin sellers

    "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" Shakespeare

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  3. Apparently Laci failed to notice some of Patrick Henry's key statements in addition to the quote, "The great object is, that every man be armed."

    Here are some more in the paragraph that Laci provided:

    "Every one who is able may have a gun."

    "... that necessary as it is to have arms ..."

    "... though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavoured to have the militia completely armed..."

    This and many other statements from the Framers make it clear. The Framers wanted every citizen to have the right to keep and bear arms of their choosing for defense of themselves and their state. And to make it crystal clear, they did NOT empower government to define nor enforce "reasonable restrictions". Our Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons and property prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures. Thus reasonable searches and seizures are allowable under the Fourth Amendment. There is no such language in the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment clearly states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period. End of debate.

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  4. The more I see you post, Laci, the more I see you haven't learned.

    Your issue is dead, and your side lost. Move on

    ReplyDelete