who can become immune to a bullet?
On Oct 5, 2015, at 2:12 PM, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Miriam:
I am trying to say that if we kill a sufficiently large number of people
those remaining will become immune to the effect of killing.
R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.
On 10/5/2015 10:23 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I don't understand the analogy. Are you saying that if people keep shooting
other people, eventually, the other people will stop dying?
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll Sr
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:32 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control
Amendment
Miriam:
Medically speaking the continued use of powerful antibiotics will slowly
produce organisms which are resistant to the antibiotic being used.
R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.
On 10/4/2015 8:22 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Gopnik writes: "Gun control ends gun violence as surely as
antibiotics end
bacterial infections, as surely as vaccines end childhood
measles-not
perfectly and in every case, but overwhelmingly and everywhere that
it's
been taken seriously and tried at length. "
Participants consoling each other during a candlelight vigil for the
nine
people who were killed in a shooting at Umpqua Community College, in
Roseburg, Oregon, on Thursday. The gunman also was killed. (photo:
Rich
Pedroncelli/AP)
The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control Amendment
By Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
04 October 15
The tragedy happens-yesterday at a school in Oregon, and then as it
will
again-exactly as predicted, and uniquely here. It hardly seems worth
the
energy to once again make the same essential point that the
President-his
growing exasperation and disbelief moving, if not effective, as he
serves as
national mourner-has now made again: we know how to fix this. Gun
control
ends gun violence as surely an antibiotics end bacterial infections,
as
surely as vaccines end childhood measles-not perfectly and in every
case,
but overwhelmingly and everywhere that it's been taken seriously and
tried
at length. These lives can be saved. Kids continue to die en masse
because
one political party won't allow that to change, and the party won't
allow it
to change because of the irrational and often paranoid fixations
that make
the massacre of students and children an acceptable cost of
fetishizing
guns.
In the course of today's conversation, two issues may come up,
treated in
what is now called a trolling tone-pretending to show concern but
actually
standing in the way of real argument. One is the issue of mental
health and
this particular killer's apparent religious bigotry. Everyone crazy
enough
to pick up a gun and kill many people is crazy enough to have an
ideology to
attach to the act. The point-the only point-is that, everywhere
else, that
person rants in isolation or on his keyboard; only in America do we
cheerfully supply him with military-style weapons to express his
rage. As
the otherwise reliably Republican (but still Canadian-raised) David
Frum
wisely writes: "Every mass shooter has his own hateful motive. They
all use
the same tool."
More standard, and seemingly more significant, is the claim-often
made by
those who say they recognize the tragedy of mass shootings and
pretend, at
least, that they would like to see gun sanity reign in America-that
the
Second Amendment acts as a barrier to anything like the gun laws,
passed
after mass shootings, that have saved so many lives in Canada and
Australia.
Like it or not, according to this argument, the Constitution limits
our
ability to control the number and kinds of guns in private hands.
Even the
great Jim Jeffries, in his memorable standup on American madness,
says, "Why
can't you change the Second Amendment? It's an amendment!"-as though
further
amending it were necessary to escape it.
In point of historical and constitutional fact, nothing could be
further
from the truth: the only amendment necessary for gun legislation, on
the
local or national level, is the Second Amendment itself, properly
understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original
sense.
This sense can be summed up in a sentence: if the Founders hadn't
wanted
guns to be regulated, and thoroughly, they would not have put the
phrase
"well regulated" in the amendment. (A quick thought experiment: What
if
those words were not in the preamble to the amendment and a
gun-sanity group
wanted to insert them? Would the National Rifle Association be for
or
against this change? It's obvious, isn't it?)
The confusion is contemporary. (And, let us hope, temporary.) It
rises from
the younger-than-springtime decision D.C. v. Heller, from 2008, when
Justice
Antonin Scalia, writing for a 5-4 majority, insisted that, whether
he wanted
it to or not, the Second Amendment protected an individual right to
own a
weapon. (A certain disingenuous show of disinterestedness is typical
of his
opinions.)
This was an astounding constitutional reading, or misreading, as
original as
Citizens United, and as idiosyncratic as the reasoning in Bush v.
Gore,
which found a conclusive principle designed to be instantly
discarded-or,
for that matter, as the readiness among the court's right wing to
overturn a
health-care law passed by a supermajority of the legislature over a
typo.
Anyone who wants to both grasp that decision's radicalism and get a
calm,
instructive view of what the Second Amendment does say, and was
intended to
say, and was always before been understood to say, should read
Justice John
Paul Stevens's brilliant, persuasive dissent in that case. Every
person who
despairs of the sanity of the country should read it, at least once,
not
just for its calm and irrefutable case-making but as a reminder of
what
sanity sounds like.
Stevens, a Republican judge appointed by a Republican President,
brilliantly
analyzes the history of the amendment, making it plain that for
Scalia, et
al., to arrive at their view, they have to reference not the
deliberations
that produced the amendment but, rather, bring in British common law
and
lean on interpretations that arose long after the amendment was
passed. Both
"keep arms" and "bear arms," he demonstrates, were, in the writers'
day,
military terms used in military contexts. (Gary Wills has usefully
illuminated this truth in the New York Review of Books.) The intent
of the
Second Amendment, Stevens explains, was obviously to secure "to the
people a
right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a
well-regulated militia." The one seemingly sound argument in the
Scalia
decision-that "the people" in the Second Amendment ought to be the
same
"people" referenced in the other amendments, that is, everybody-is
exactly
the interpretation that the preamble was meant to guard against.
Stevens's dissent should be read in full, but his conclusion in
particular
is clear and ringing:
The right the Court announces [in Heller] was not "enshrined" in the
Second
Amendment by the Framers; it is the product of today's law-changing
decision. . . . Until today, it has been understood that
legislatures may
regulate the civilian use and misuse of firearms so long as they do
not
interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia. The
Court's
announcement of a new constitutional right to own and use firearms
for
private purposes upsets that settled understanding . . .
Justice Stevens and his colleagues were not saying, a mere seven
years ago,
that the gun-control legislation in dispute in Heller alone was
constitutional within the confines of the Second Amendment. They
were
asserting that essentially every kind of legislation concerning guns
in the
hands of individuals was compatible with the Second
Amendment-indeed, that
regulating guns in individual hands was one of the purposes for
which the
amendment was offered.
So there is no need to amend the Constitution, or to alter the
historical
understanding of what the Second Amendment meant. No new reasoning
or
tortured rereading is needed to reconcile the Constitution with
common
sense. All that is necessary for sanity to rule again, on the
question of
guns, is to restore the amendment to its commonly understood meaning
as it
was articulated by this wise Republican judge a scant few years ago.
And all
you need for that is one saner and, in the true sense, conservative
Supreme
Court vote. One Presidential election could make that happen.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference
not valid.
Participants consoling each other during a candlelight vigil for the
nine
people who were killed in a shooting at Umpqua Community College, in
Roseburg, Oregon, on Thursday. The gunman also was killed. (photo:
Rich
Pedroncelli/AP)
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-second-amendment-is-a-gun-contro
l-amendmenthttp://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-second-amendment-is-a
-gun-control-amendment
The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control Amendment
By Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
04 October 15
he tragedy happens-yesterday at a school in Oregon, and then as it
will
again-exactly as predicted, and uniquely here. It hardly seems worth
the
energy to once again make the same essential point that the
President-his
growing exasperation and disbelief moving, if not effective, as he
serves as
national mourner-has now made again: we know how to fix this. Gun
control
ends gun violence as surely an antibiotics end bacterial infections,
as
surely as vaccines end childhood measles-not perfectly and in every
case,
but overwhelmingly and everywhere that it's been taken seriously and
tried
at length. These lives can be saved. Kids continue to die en masse
because
one political party won't allow that to change, and the party won't
allow it
to change because of the irrational and often paranoid fixations
that make
the massacre of students and children an acceptable cost of
fetishizing
guns.
In the course of today's conversation, two issues may come up,
treated in
what is now called a trolling tone-pretending to show concern but
actually
standing in the way of real argument. One is the issue of mental
health and
this particular killer's apparent religious bigotry. Everyone crazy
enough
to pick up a gun and kill many people is crazy enough to have an
ideology to
attach to the act. The point-the only point-is that, everywhere
else, that
person rants in isolation or on his keyboard; only in America do we
cheerfully supply him with military-style weapons to express his
rage. As
the otherwise reliably Republican (but still Canadian-raised) David
Frum
wisely writes: "Every mass shooter has his own hateful motive. They
all use
the same tool."
More standard, and seemingly more significant, is the claim-often
made by
those who say they recognize the tragedy of mass shootings and
pretend, at
least, that they would like to see gun sanity reign in America-that
the
Second Amendment acts as a barrier to anything like the gun laws,
passed
after mass shootings, that have saved so many lives in Canada and
Australia.
Like it or not, according to this argument, the Constitution limits
our
ability to control the number and kinds of guns in private hands.
Even the
great Jim Jeffries, in his memorable standup on American madness,
says, "Why
can't you change the Second Amendment? It's an amendment!"-as though
further
amending it were necessary to escape it.
In point of historical and constitutional fact, nothing could be
further
from the truth: the only amendment necessary for gun legislation, on
the
local or national level, is the Second Amendment itself, properly
understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original
sense.
This sense can be summed up in a sentence: if the Founders hadn't
wanted
guns to be regulated, and thoroughly, they would not have put the
phrase
"well regulated" in the amendment. (A quick thought experiment: What
if
those words were not in the preamble to the amendment and a
gun-sanity group
wanted to insert them? Would the National Rifle Association be for
or
against this change? It's obvious, isn't it?)
The confusion is contemporary. (And, let us hope, temporary.) It
rises from
the younger-than-springtime decision D.C. v. Heller, from 2008, when
Justice
Antonin Scalia, writing for a 5-4 majority, insisted that, whether
he wanted
it to or not, the Second Amendment protected an individual right to
own a
weapon. (A certain disingenuous show of disinterestedness is typical
of his
opinions.)
This was an astounding constitutional reading, or misreading, as
original as
Citizens United, and as idiosyncratic as the reasoning in Bush v.
Gore,
which found a conclusive principle designed to be instantly
discarded-or,
for that matter, as the readiness among the court's right wing to
overturn a
health-care law passed by a supermajority of the legislature over a
typo.
Anyone who wants to both grasp that decision's radicalism and get a
calm,
instructive view of what the Second Amendment does say, and was
intended to
say, and was always before been understood to say, should read
Justice John
Paul Stevens's brilliant, persuasive dissent in that case. Every
person who
despairs of the sanity of the country should read it, at least once,
not
just for its calm and irrefutable case-making but as a reminder of
what
sanity sounds like.
Stevens, a Republican judge appointed by a Republican President,
brilliantly
analyzes the history of the amendment, making it plain that for
Scalia, et
al., to arrive at their view, they have to reference not the
deliberations
that produced the amendment but, rather, bring in British common law
and
lean on interpretations that arose long after the amendment was
passed. Both
"keep arms" and "bear arms," he demonstrates, were, in the writers'
day,
military terms used in military contexts. (Gary Wills has usefully
illuminated this truth in the New York Review of Books.) The intent
of the
Second Amendment, Stevens explains, was obviously to secure "to the
people a
right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a
well-regulated militia." The one seemingly sound argument in the
Scalia
decision-that "the people" in the Second Amendment ought to be the
same
"people" referenced in the other amendments, that is, everybody-is
exactly
the interpretation that the preamble was meant to guard against.
Stevens's dissent should be read in full, but his conclusion in
particular
is clear and ringing:
The right the Court announces [in Heller] was not "enshrined" in the
Second
Amendment by the Framers; it is the product of today's law-changing
decision. . . . Until today, it has been understood that
legislatures may
regulate the civilian use and misuse of firearms so long as they do
not
interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia. The
Court's
announcement of a new constitutional right to own and use firearms
for
private purposes upsets that settled understanding . . .
Justice Stevens and his colleagues were not saying, a mere seven
years ago,
that the gun-control legislation in dispute in Heller alone was
constitutional within the confines of the Second Amendment. They
were
asserting that essentially every kind of legislation concerning guns
in the
hands of individuals was compatible with the Second
Amendment-indeed, that
regulating guns in individual hands was one of the purposes for
which the
amendment was offered.
So there is no need to amend the Constitution, or to alter the
historical
understanding of what the Second Amendment meant. No new reasoning
or
tortured rereading is needed to reconcile the Constitution with
common
sense. All that is necessary for sanity to rule again, on the
question of
guns, is to restore the amendment to its commonly understood meaning
as it
was articulated by this wise Republican judge a scant few years ago.
And all
you need for that is one saner and, in the true sense, conservative
Supreme
Court vote. One Presidential election could make that happen.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
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