I'm still not sure I understand your NH/DC comment  - could you elaborate a bit for me, please?

I've been thinking extensively about this for quite some time -  long before the VT shootings.  I still haven't made up my mind, but I still believe that it's far too easy to get one's hands on a gun.  I have to register my car every year, but my neighbor doesn't have to register his gun every year.  I'm not sure that makes sense to me.

I'm coming to agree that it's not the guns, it's the culture (and the culture of guns).  I have to admit to feeling a bit hypocritical here; I LOVE action adventure movies (the last flick I saw in the theaters was Shooter).  The difference here is that I KNOW the difference between fantasy and reality.  I'm teaching my children that a good shoot-'em-up film might be fun, but that violence is NOT the way to solve problems.

The problem may well be that not enough parents are teaching those lessons...

NH = very little gun control & very little gun violence

DC = Stringent gun control & among the highest murder rates  in the country

Off topic just a bit, but I do so tire of Hollywood glorifying gun use and violence on the one hand and denouncing those who would own guns in the real world on the other.    

I'm going to start this comment by saying that, at this point, I'm kind of playing Devil's advocate here.  I've come off of my hysterical limb and am thinking more clearly and, while I'm still not entirely convinced that we've got even a fantasy of control on this topic, I'm willing to concede that there's merit of both sides.

Now, having said that, I don't for a second buy the whole "I could kill you with a knife.  Are you going to keep me out of your kitchen" argument - and you're not the first one to point this out to me, either.  I think the woman reading in the middle of the lake joke is funny, too, and I understand the concept that otherwise harmless things can be used for evil, but without exception, EVERY other thing that gets mentioned as a potential weapon has other intended - and benign - purposes.  The ONLY purpose of a gun, as far as I can see, is to hurl a projectile at deadly speed toward something else.  Granted, that something else may be an inanimate target, and it may be a bad guy, but guns have no other function than to do what they do.

WHY is there less gun violence in states where there's stricter gun control?  Can the same be said for other COUNTRIES which have tight gun laws?  I don't know...

Your point about not giving a crap about a misdemeanor gun law is well taken, and really, that's the one that I keep falling back to (with a slight bit of despair) when I think about all of this.  An addict will find his crack, and we've outlawed that, so it's not a great leap to think that gun laws won't keep a crazy with murder on his mind to get his hand around the grip of a gun.

I just wish it weren't so EASY, though.  I sometimes wonder - would most people actually do the things they do if they didn't have the tools?  I'm assuming a general laziness on most people's part, and wonder how many of the horrific things we see done with guns aren't spur-of-the-moment crimes of opportunity.  If a gun weren't just lying around, would the guy who's pissed off at his girfriend have shot her dead in the heat of his rage?  Would the VT or Amish schoolchildren shooters have gone to the trouble of getting black market guns, or would they have just figured out a way to commit spectacular suicide?  These are just things I ponder as I worry about my children's safety in their elementary school (to which a .38 was brought - and fired in a classroom - by a fifth grader some years ago) or my own safety on the streets or in our local Wal-Mart (because I KNOW it's just a matter of time before some disgruntaled someone goes off in THAT place!).....

You are all so fabulous to talk to me about this stuff, and I appreciate not only your views, but your willingness to share them with me.  This is how I learn, and I'm grateful to you for helping me do that.

Very well put. One can argue the utilitarian arguments against gun control all day, and they'll be met by utilitarian arguments in favor of gun control. Almost all mistaken arguments, but you'll hear them and in most people's eyes neither has more legitimacy than the other.

However, when you strip away the statistics and theories, and get down to the moral basis of the question. Not the emotional one, but the cold, hard, moral basis of it- the simple fact is that the act of owning a gun harms no one. In the same way free speech, freedom of religion, or freedom of association harm no one. All three of those can be directly tied to acts that do harm people, acts that might have been prevented had the relevant freedom been denied to everybody. However, we recognize the fact that is immoral to do so because these freedoms are basic, human rights which can not justly be denied to any person.

What makes these rights, though? Why are these freedoms enshrined as rights while other freedoms are not? The underlying, common denominator to these rights, and all others, is that the act of exercising the liberty in question, on an individual basis, does not inherently cause harm to another person. And the exact same thing can be said for firearms ownership. That is what makes it, or any other freedom, a basic right that can not be justly violated.

You said that you have come to dislike the idea of "Constitutional rights" because it fosters the idea that the Constitution is the source of these rights. I would take it one step further and claim that any enumeration of rights should be avoided on the basis that it fosters the idea that these rights come from some pre-existing list, and that any right not found on that list isn't a right at all, as opposed to the idea that there is a basic formula, the Harm Principle as some have called it, that can be applied to any human action to determine whether or not it constitutes a right.

Now the obvious caveat is how you define "harm", but that's grounds for libraries full of opinions and debate in and of itself.

-Andy

Andy, you make some very good points here.  I resist listing "rules" in the syllabi for my classes for that very reason; if it's not expressly prohibited, then the assumption is that it's allowed.  It's quite the sticky wicket.

Really, what it all comes down to is the idea of personal responsibility and education, and what we, as a society, find permissable.  While we all shake our heads and bemoan the state of things, I'm not sure that enough of us are doing enough to stand up and say that it's not right.  My children are being raised to understand that violence serves no one; that if you can recognize yourself in others, than you can harm no one; and that anything that is intended to degrade another only degrades oneself in the use of it.  I'm not sure there's enough of that sort of lesson going around lately, though, and the fact that I'm starting to become accustomed to the horror stories on the news makes me tremble for the future.

"if it's not expressly prohibited, then the assumption is that it's allowed"

Well, when dealing with the government that's exactly the way it needs to work, actually. Unless there's a specific, Constitutional grant of power to the federal government (and in most states it, in theory, works the same way with the state government), that power is expressly denied to the government.

The simple fact is that any government will expand over time, both in pure size and the scope of its authority. That's why Jefferson wrote of the need for a revolution every twenty years or so. Barring armed revolt, the best way to keep a government in check is to put up as many obstacles and hoops they have to jump through to expand their power as you can. The 1st Amendment could be done away with if enough politicians, or even moreso, enough of the people got behind doing so. However, because the only way to do so would be to go through the arduos process of amending the Constitution, it's very unlikely. That's rule two of government- while power-grabbing, it's also generally lazy.

In a very good book I recently read, Robert Heinelin has his character, in the wake of a revolution (on the moon, but that's not really relevant) propose that the new legislature be bicameral. The lower house could pass any law by a 2/3 supermajority. The upper house could repeal any law by a 1/10 vote. In my opinion, a very good idea.

That's the problem with the UK right now. They have a doctrine of "parliamentary sovereignty", whereby literally anything can be done by a simply majority vote in Parliament. Anything. There's no right they can't trample, no constitutional principle they can't violate. They could even, contrary to popular belief over here across the pond, do away with the monarchy if they so chose. Now, it would appear at first glance that the UK is doing fine, but when you look at the trend of government growth there, since Parliament truly began to exercise this principle of sovereignty in the mid 19th century, you can see how quickly and rapidly their government has grown to envelop almost every aspect of life. And it's a trend that's continuing now, with several laws in the past few years violating freedom of speech in the name of religious and cultural "tolerance". Of course, the right to bear arms died in the UK a long, long time ago.