Motus Mentis

23 Comments

1. the one eyed man says

   Discouraging news from Iowa: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/08/iowa-grants-gun-permits-to-the-blind/2780303/

   Posted September 15, 2013 at 4:18 pm | Permalink
2. Malcolm says

   I rather doubt that gun crime committed by rampaging blind people is a significant public-safety issue.

   If a blind person wants to own a firearm, or keep one that he acquired before he lost his sight, that’s fine with me. It’s certainly worth it in terms of not eroding basic rights.

   Posted September 15, 2013 at 5:00 pm | Permalink
3. the one eyed man says

   Oy.

   Posted September 15, 2013 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
4. Malcolm says

   If he murders somebody with it — and I defy you to demonstrate to me that gun crime by blind people is a serious issue, if it has ever even happened at all — he’ll go to prison. You people are obsessed with preemptively controlling everything and everyone.

   Bearing arms is not a privilege to be granted, reluctantly, as an indulgence by the state and revoked at a whim. It is a fundamental right of a free people, guaranteed (not created by) the Constitution. I’m prickly about those. You should be too.

   Posted September 15, 2013 at 9:17 pm | Permalink
5. the one eyed man says

   Guns for blind people. Great idea! While we’re at it: heroin addicts, four year olds, the terrorist watch list, the bipolar, those who have attempted suicide, people with Alzheimer’s, spousal abusers, kids with Aspergers, and anybody with really bad anger management issues. Let them all have semi-automatic weapons with 100 round magazines! What could possibly go wrong?

   People who clearly and obviously are incapable of safely operating firearms do not have a “fundamental right” to own them, and defining what groups will cause mayhem is hardly exercising a “whim.”

   The Constitution also provides for the public safety – however, to a gun nut, safety is always trumped by the right to own lethal weaponry, regardless of who owns it or what it is. Funny how the First and Fourth Amendments, among others, have plenty of common sense exceptions which have never been controversial, but somehow the Second Amendment is absolute and inviolable. Go figure.

   Semi-automatics for blind people. Sorry, I’m not taking the bait here. The thought is too absurd to even contemplate, much less debate.

   Posted September 15, 2013 at 10:53 pm | Permalink
6. Malcolm says

   If you can demonstrate to me that blind people who happen to own guns have ever, in any significant numbers, caused “mayhem”, then you might have a leg to stand on here, and I might even agree with you. Failing that, I see no justification for the State preemptively to restrict the Constitutional rights of free and law-abiding citizens. It’s appalling that people like you would do so with such blithe indifference, when you’ve presented no evidence whatsoever that there’s even a problem here. It’s a presumption of guilt. It’s prior restraint. And it’s deeply un-American.

   I’ll also say that for you to lump blind people in with felons and pre-rational children is pretty shameful, both morally and intellectually. I shouldn’t have to point this out to you, but all the other categories you mention are types of people whose judgment we have good reason to doubt. Blind people, we may assume, are normal, responsible citizens in every regard other than their eyesight.

   I do realize these subtleties would not occur naturally to anti-gun nuts, besotted as they are with obsessive hoplophobia. So much easier just to take control.

   Posted September 16, 2013 at 1:06 am | Permalink
7. Malcolm says

   What’s striking here is that there’s no sense of the caution with which one ought to contemplate the erosion of essential liberties. With you, and people like you, the rule is: “when in doubt, pass another law.” Regulate, centralize, control, restrict. (Lather, rinse, repeat.)

   In 1788, Patrick Henry said:

   “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

   Given that it is only the Second Amendment that preserves this “downright force” for the people, it is arguably, along with the First Amendment’s guarantees of the freedom of speech and assembly, the most important part of the Bill of Rights. These are the rights that protect all the others.

   “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

   — William Pitt, 1783.

   Posted September 16, 2013 at 9:49 am | Permalink
8. TheBigHenry says

   “It’s appalling that people like you would do so with such blithe indifference, …”

   Your one-eyed friend is the poster-boy for “blithe indifference” (and “blind indifference”). He also oozes “smug indifference”. He is a “nice-car-driving” giant pustule of indifference.

   Posted September 16, 2013 at 10:46 am | Permalink
9. JK says

   One-Eye, the thinking concerning blind persons being able to possess firearms refers to handguns.

   Not these:

   http://finance.yahoo.com/news/new-rifle-mimics-machine-gun-s-rapid-fire—-and-it-s-legal-145153186.html

   Posted September 16, 2013 at 1:28 pm | Permalink
10. the one eyed man says

    There are two reasons why blind gun owners haven’t caused mayhem. The first is that not many blind people would buy a gun, because they can’t shoot them. Duh. The other is that no responsible store would sell them. If you go to the gun department at your local Wal-Mart being led by a seeing eye dog, I really don’t think they will sell you a semi-automatic rifle – just as if you went frothing at the mouth and swearing how much you want to kill your wife, they won’t sell you one either.

    People who are either physically or mentally incapacitated should not own lethal weapons, and the state has both the right and the responsibility to ensure this. The right of the public to be protected from those who are incapable of handling lethality far exceeds any putative inconvenience a blind person may have in being deprived of owning a Glock. These are such astoundingly self-evident truths that I can’t fathom why I even need to assert them.

    Posted September 16, 2013 at 8:41 pm | Permalink
11. Malcolm says

    There are two reasons why blind gun owners haven’t caused mayhem. The first is that not many blind people would buy a gun, because they can’t shoot them.

    Precisely. Blind people already don’t cause trouble with guns. End of story.

    What’s “astoundingly self-evident” to those of us who aren’t statist control freaks is that there’s no need to pass laws to solve problems that don’t exist.

    Can’t you people leave anything alone?

    Posted September 16, 2013 at 9:19 pm | Permalink
12. the one eyed man says

    In the article linked above, Delaware County Sheriff John LeClere is quoted to say “If you see nothing but a blurry mass in front of you, then I would say you probably shouldn’t be shooting something.”

    Now there’s a right-thinking American. Simple, common sense.

    Posted September 16, 2013 at 9:46 pm | Permalink
13. Malcolm says

    Well, I agree. That’s good common sense. And you could leave it right there, if you weren’t pathologically incapable of leaving any aspect of American life unlegislated.

    Posted September 16, 2013 at 10:35 pm | Permalink
14. JK says

    People who are either physically or mentally incapacitated should not own lethal weapons, and the state has both the right and the responsibility to ensure this.

    Well One-Eye, you might want to refresh your memory and take a good gander (full version) Americans With Disabilities Act.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 4:36 am | Permalink
15. Dom says

    Slightly off-topic, but look at the second amendment as re-written in a high school text book:

    http://imgur.com/svgZ0E9

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 8:32 am | Permalink
16. Dom says

    Are blind people more dangerous than Mexican drug terrorists? Because we supplied guns to the latter.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 8:42 am | Permalink
17. the one eyed man says

    Pathological?

    The NRA has fought vigorous campaigns to allow cop-killing bullets, to enable people on the terrorist watch list to own weapons, and has characterized federal agents as “jack booted thugs.”

    Legalizing the sale of bullets which are purchased to pierce policemen’s vests, giving the gun “rights” of terrorists greater value than public safety, and equating federal agents with Nazi storm troopers is pathological.

    Me? I’m just a right thinking American, who happens to agree with 90% of my fellow citizens that reasonable gun control legislation is both necessary and overdue.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 10:24 am | Permalink
18. JK says

    Well One-Eye, what does your 90% of fellows consider reasonable for my 90% of fellows?

    Norway’s laws perhaps? Pretty strict I’m given to understand.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 10:58 am | Permalink
19. Malcolm says

    I’m just a right thinking American, who happens to agree with 90% of my fellow citizens that reasonable gun control legislation is both necessary and overdue.

    Right. I’ll pass this along to a couple of former state senators I know in Colorado.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 11:58 am | Permalink
20. the one eyed man says

    The gun lobby will always win a lop-sided number of electoral victories, because the 10% of the population which supports it is shrill, noisy, and fanatical. They will show up in lockstep to vote, especially in low-turnout oddball elections like recalls, when there is much less interest among the non-fanatical majority. Like anti-abortion zealots, they are single-issue voters whose passionate intensity leads them to show up en masse when their perceived interests are threatened.

    However, as the biologist Peter Medawar noted, “the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.”

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 12:10 pm | Permalink
21. Malcolm says

    The gun lobby will always win a lop-sided number of electoral victories…

    Insh’ Allah. I hope that nasty, “noisy” riff-raff will continue to fend off incremental threats to their “perceived interests” (known in some circles as “essential liberties”) with eternal vigilance. I hear that’s what it costs. (Oh, and by the way, speaking of zeal, the gun lobby was outspent by about three to one in those recall elections.)

    Anyway, from what you’ve said, it seems to me that your 90% — 90%! — is punching awfully far below its weight. Maybe people just don’t care as much about this as you seem to think they ought to. Or maybe you’ve overcounted just a tad.

    At the very least, I can certainly see why people wouldn’t be “fanatical” about the urgency of finding a legislative solution to all the mayhem those blind gun owners aren’t causing.

    As for Professor Medawar’s adage, truer words ne’er were spoke.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 12:36 pm | Permalink
22. Malcolm says

    Dom, thanks for the textbook link. Downright insidious, but I suppose nobody should be surprised. The full text of the amendment itself wouldn’t have taken up any more space.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm | Permalink
23. JK says

    Anyway, from what you’ve said, it seems to me that your 90% – 90%! – is punching awfully far below its weight.

    Right Malcolm … that’s precisely it.

    I went to the trouble of checking my phone records, no record to be found that anybody polled me my mail is logged, so the poll couldn’t have been conducted through USPS, UPS or DHL. I wasn’t consulted via email (course I coulda been very drunk when the poll was conducted but surely somebody amongst my 90% woulda remembered whether they’d been polled on the same questions One-Eye’s 90% apparently was.

    None, zip, nada any of my friends or associates were polled were either.

    Exactly who One-Eye, since nobody either I or anybody I communicate with, makes up part of that 90% you’re agreeing with?

    90% of “the fellows” you agree with doesn’t come close to Arkansas’ 90% of Democrats. Matter of fact, should I have a hankerin’ to go on a fully automated rabbit hunt – I’d need ask one of my Democrat friends if I could borrow their firearm.

    All I own are semis.

    Posted September 17, 2013 at 2:58 pm | Permalink