dagblog - Comments for "Police abuse: 911 don't come correct"

You don't need memory for

artappraiser — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 23:49:01 +0000

In reply to Thank you. Was it you that

You don't need memory for that, it is only a few comments up on this subthread, last night, 2/23/2014 - 10:28 pm.

Thank you. Was it you that

Resistance — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 22:47:26 +0000

In reply to Here's the whole section I'm

Thank you.

Was it you that asked me about mental health and said the author brought it up? Unfortunately I don't have a good memory.

I liked the way he worded 37.

I believe it is a courtesy to

Resistance — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 22:33:00 +0000

In reply to Thank you. It's nice that you

I believe it is a courtesy to readers of scholarly works, to have foot notes for ease of reference. I read many things but unfortunately I don't have a perfect recall or photographic memory.

Here's the whole section I'm

Peter Schwartz — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 22:13:16 +0000

In reply to Well actually, it is too much

Here's the whole section I'm calling the conclusion, footnotes and all:

Today is not 1893, and when proponents of restrictive gun control insist that their motivations are color-blind, there is a possibility that they are telling the truth. Nonetheless, there are some rather interesting questions that should be asked today. The most obvious question is, "Why should a police chief or sheriff have any discretion in issuing a concealed handgun permit?" Here in California, even the state legislature's research arm--hardly a nest of pro-gunners--has admitted that the vast majority of permits to carry concealed handguns in California are issued to white males. [36] Even if overt racism is not an issue, an official may simply have more empathy with an applicant of a similar cultural background, and consequently be more able to relate to the applicant's concerns. As my wife pointedly reminded a police official when we applied for concealed weapon permits, "If more police chiefs were women, a lot more women would get permits, and be able to defend themselves from rapists."

Gun control advocates today are not so foolish as to openly promote racist laws, and so the question might be asked what relevance the racist past of gun control laws has. One concern is that the motivations for disarming blacks in the past are really not so different from the motivations for disarming law-abiding citizens today. In the last century, the official rhetoric in support of such laws was that "they" were too violent, too untrustworthy, to be allowed weapons. Today, the same elitist rhetoric regards law-abiding Americans in the same way, as child-like creatures in need of guidance from the government. In the last century, while never openly admitted, one of the goals of disarming blacks was to make them more willing to accept various forms of economic oppression, including the sharecropping system, in which free blacks were reduced to an economic state not dramatically superior to the conditions of slavery.

In the seventeenth century, the aristocratic power structure of colonial Virginia found itself confronting a similar challenge from lower class whites. These poor whites resented how the men who controlled the government used that power to concentrate wealth into a small number of hands. These wealthy feeders at the government trough would have disarmed poor whites if they could, but the threat of both Indian and pirate attack made this impractical; for all white men "were armed and had to be armed..." Instead, blacks, who had occupied a poorly defined status between indentured servant and slave, were reduced to hereditary chattel slavery, so that poor whites could be economically advantaged, without the upper class having to give up its privileges. [37]

Today, the forces that push for gun control seem to be heavily (though not exclusively) allied with political factions that are committed to dramatic increases in taxation on the middle class. While it would be hyperbole to compare higher taxes on the middle class to the suffering and deprivation of sharecropping or slavery, the analogy of disarming those whom you wish to economically disadvantage, has a certain worrisome validity to it.

Another point to consider is that in the American legal system, certain classifications of governmental discrimination are considered constitutionally suspect, and these "suspect classifications" (usually considered to be race and religion) come to a court hearing under a strong presumption of invalidity. The reason for these "suspect classifications" is because of the long history of governmental discrimination based on these classifications, and because these classifications often impinge on fundamental rights. [38]

In much the same way, gun control has historically been a tool of racism, and associated with racist attitudes about black violence. Similarly, many gun control laws impinge on that most fundamental of rights: self-defense. Racism is so intimately tied to the history of gun control in America that we should regard gun control aimed at law-abiding people as a "suspect idea," and require that the courts use the same demanding standards when reviewing the constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.

Well actually, it is too much

Peter Schwartz — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 22:11:36 +0000

In reply to Again, I guess it's just too

Well actually, it is too much to ask to be frank.

However, in at least two cases, the footnotes were part of the quotes I pulled, and those links work. One can click on numbers 37 and 38 and be taken to the cites.

Here's the one for 38...

"38. Thomas G. Walker, "Suspect Classifications", _Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States_, (New York, Oxford University Press: 1992), 848.

Do you think a bibliographic footnote provides illumination, okay.

In any event, as I said, no one is "hiding the footnotes." If anyone wants to read your entire article, which I did, they can. They can look at all the footnotes, and they can decide whether they agree with me or not.

However, for the most part, I was disagreeing with his conclusions, not with his history, and his conclusions were not footnoted. They wouldn't be.

In fact, if you look, he has numerous footnotes in the historical background section, but only three in the section where he draws his conclusions. And it's here where I was making my counter argument.

Thank you. It's nice that you

Peter Schwartz — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 21:58:33 +0000

In reply to You sound bound and

Thank you. It's nice that you noticed.

You sound bound and

artappraiser — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 21:57:45 +0000

In reply to Again, I guess it's just too

You sound bound and determined to alienate the one commenter left at Dagblog who was still trying to treat your ill-thought out arguments respectfully. He gave that article a considerable amount of time and thoughtful analysis, far more than you did. I can't believe how patient he has been with you and how much time he spends on what you just flippantly throw out there.

Here's how I see your complaint: Resistance links to an article as if it means something inmportant to him and proves something, but can't really remember what it says that well, not enough to defend it in entirety. When Peter reads it carefully and analyzes it, Resistance basically says he doesn't know the article that well and requests pointers.

Again, I guess it's just too

Resistance — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 21:40:31 +0000

In reply to These are reasonable

Again, I guess it's just too much to ask, that you be courteous and put the page # or closest Ftn # , if you're going to argue or mock the author of the article. The author of the article may have cited other sources that would easily rebuff your mocking. Hmmmm maybe that is why you don't include them?

and Resistance knows this I'm

artappraiser — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:30:10 +0000

In reply to There is a difference between

and Resistance knows this

I'm not so sure of that. He always just grabs any argument he can (often without checking the nuance of things he links to.) Logic is not what it's about, the primacy of guns as a civil right over everything else is the program; just throw it all out there, and see what sticks, often historical quotes out of context, and even nonsense.

Overall, there is a fervent unwavering belief that in protecting gun ownership, everything else just (as in "justice") will follow, and one cherry picks as best one can according to the best of one's ability along those fundamentalist belief lines. The world according to guns. As I said elsewhere recently, the NRA does it far better.

Or between self defense

Peter Schwartz — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:08:53 +0000

In reply to There is a difference between

Or between self defense working to make fundamental change.