6 Reasons Your Right-Wing Friend Isn’t Coming To Your Side On Gun Control

3. The Loudest Voices Are Often The Most Ignorant

I find this to be the biggest problem here on NT.  Too many people want to argue about gun control with an absolute kindergarten level of knowledge about guns, gun laws, and law enforcement.  If you're gonna make a statement about gun control, know what the fuck you are talking about.

It doesn't take a genius to notice that of all the developed nations in the world, we are the only one with this problem. It also doesn't take a genius to see that they all have far more strict laws than we do. Canada may be the lone exception, but there are also significant govrenment/societal differences that can account for the discrepancy. 

See number 5.

1. We Rarely Get To Come To The Conversation In Good Faith

2. The ‘Blood On Their Hands’ Attacks Are Offensive

I wonder if the author knows what happens after something offends.  My guess is they don't.  They probably stay in that shocked, world falling apart state until somebody gives them a hug and a pacifier.

3. The Loudest Voices Are Often The Most Ignorant

Kind of telling given most of the loudest voices are coming from the left.  But being the source is a liberal rag, what can we expect.

4. The Most Prominent Policy Ideas Have Nothing To Do With The Tragedy

The policy doesn't do anything to stem the problem.  Just pacifies the liberals and the left.  You know, something stupid like "banning" a flag after a shooting.

5. We Seriously Don’t Care About Gun Laws In Other Countries

I guess you missed the "Other Countries" in that.  We aren't other countries.  We are the US.

6. We Really Do Consider Owning Firearms A Right

The author doesn't think it is?  I recommend somebody sending them a copy of the Bill Of Rights.

Just more half assed, selective outrage.

Jeremy, I'm a little confused with your answers.  You seem to be attacking the author with their own views.  The author is a gun owner who opposes gun control.

C'mon, he's on a roll

Meh, fuck the second amendment, serves no purpose these days but to make mass murder as easy as possible. 230+ years changes a lot. 

230 years ago you would have been a loyalist tory, you are aware that the thing that started the war of independence was "gun control" grab at Lexington and Concord, ( my home stomping grounds btw) british regulars attempting to confiscate powder and shot  the colonists intended for defense of the colony from outside forces other than the british.

  the thing that started the war of independence was "gun control" grab at Lexington and Concord,

the more things change the more they stay the same.

the federalists (left) did not want the bill of rights to begin with.

you are aware that the thing that started the war of independence was "gun control" grab at Lexington and Concord, ( my home stomping grounds btw) british regulars attempting to confiscate powder and shot the colonists intended for defense of the colony from outside forces other than the british.

Which were stockpiled by the militia called up by Massachusetts Provincial Congress, NOT by a private owners. So that hardly bolsters you cause. 

Secondly, 'gun control' was NOT the predicate for the war of independence, hell it wasn't even the predicate for the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The  Massachusetts Government Act was much more relevant. 

hell it wasn't even the predicate for the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Uh, yeah it was in this case.  The British forces were heading to Lexington and Concord for the specific purpose  of destroying or capturing "military" supplies, to include shot, powder and arms.

This Article reviews the British gun control program that precipitated the American Revolution: the 1774 import ban on firearms and gunpowder; the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gunpowder; and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations. It was these events that changed a situation of political tension into a shooting war. Each of these British abuses provides insights into the scope of the modern Second Amendment.

Furious at the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, Parliament in 1774 passed the Coercive Acts. The particular provisions of the Coercive Acts were offensive to Americans, but it was the possibility that the British might deploy the army to enforce them that primed many colonists for armed resistance. The Patriots of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, resolved: "That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles." A South Carolina newspaper essay, reprinted in Virginia, urged that any law that had to be enforced by the military was necessarily illegitimate.

The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, had forbidden town meetings from taking place more than once a year. When he dispatched the Redcoats to break up an illegal town meeting in Salem, 3000 armed Americans appeared in response, and the British retreated. Gage's aide John Andrews explained that everyone in the area aged 16 years or older owned a gun and plenty of gunpowder.

Military rule would be difficult to impose on an armed populace. Gage had only 2,000 troops in Boston. There were thousands of armed men in Boston alone, and more in the surrounding area. One response to the problem was to deprive the Americans of gunpowder.

Modern "smokeless" gunpowder is stable under most conditions. The "black powder" of the 18th Century was far more volatile. Accordingly, large quantities of black powder were often stored in a town's "powder house," typically a reinforced brick building. The powder house would hold merchants' reserves, large quantities stored by individuals, as well as powder for use by the local militia. Although colonial laws generally required militiamen (and sometimes all householders, too) to have their own firearm and a minimum quantity of powder, not everyone could afford it. Consequently, the government sometimes supplied "public arms" and powder to individual militiamen. Policies varied on whether militiamen who had been given public arms would keep them at home. Public arms would often be stored in a special armory, which might also be the powder house.

Before dawn on September 1, 1774, 260 of Gage's Redcoats sailed up the Mystic River and seized hundreds of barrels of powder from the Charlestown powder house.

The "Powder Alarm," as it became known, was a serious provocation. By the end of the day, 20,000 militiamen had mobilized and started marching towards Boston. In Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, rumors quickly spread that the Powder Alarm had actually involved fighting in the streets of Boston. More accurate reports reached the militia companies before that militia reached Boston, and so the war did not begin in September. The message, though, was unmistakable: If the British used violence to seize arms or powder, the Americans would treat that violent seizure as an act of war, and would fight. And that is exactly what happened several months later, on April 19, 1775.

Five days after the Powder Alarm, on September 6, the militia of the towns of Worcester County assembled on the Worcester Common. Backed by the formidable array, the Worcester Convention took over the reins of government, and ordered the resignations of all militia officers, who had received their commissions from the Royal Governor. The officers promptly resigned and then received new commissions from the Worcester Convention.

That same day, the people of Suffolk County (which includes Boston) assembled and adopted the Suffolk Resolves. The 19-point Resolves complained about the Powder Alarm, and then took control of the local militia away from the Royal Governor (by replacing the Governor's appointed officers with officers elected by the militia) and resolved to engage in group practice with arms at least weekly.

The First Continental Congress, which had just assembled in Philadelphia, unanimously endorsed the Suffolk Resolves and urged all the other colonies to send supplies to help the Bostonians.

Governor Gage directed the Redcoats to begin general, warrantless searches for arms and ammunition. According to the Boston Gazette , of all General Gage's offenses, "what most irritated the People" was "seizing their Arms and Ammunition."

When the Massachusetts Assembly convened, General Gage declared it illegal, so the representatives reassembled as the "Provincial Congress." On October 26, 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress adopted a resolution condemning military rule, and criticizing Gage for "unlawfully seizing and retaining large quantities of ammunition in the arsenal at Boston." The Provincial Congress urged all militia companies to organize and elect their own officers. At least a quarter of the militia (the famous Minute Men) were directed to "equip and hold themselves in readiness to march at the shortest notice." The Provincial Congress further declared that everyone who did not already have a gun should get one, and start practicing with it diligently.

In flagrant defiance of royal authority, the Provincial Congress appointed a Committee of Safety and vested it with the power to call forth the militia. The militia of Massachusetts was now the instrument of what was becoming an independent government of Massachusetts.

Lord Dartmouth, the Royal Secretary of State for America, sent Gage a letter on October 17, 1774, urging him to disarm New England. Gage replied that he would like to do so, but it was impossible without the use of force. After Gage's letter was made public by a reading in the British House of Commons, it was publicized in America as proof of Britain's malign intentions.

Two days after Lord Dartmouth dispatched his disarmament recommendation, King George III and his ministers blocked importation of arms and ammunition to America. Read literally, the order merely required a permit to export arms or ammunition from Great Britain to America. In practice, no permits were granted.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was masterminding the surreptitious import of arms and ammunition from the Netherlands, France, and Spain.

The patriotic Boston Committee of Correspondence learned of the arms embargo and promptly dispatched Paul Revere to New Hampshire, with the warning that two British ships were headed to Fort William and Mary, near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to seize firearms, cannons, and gunpowder. On December 14, 1774, 400 New Hampshire patriots preemptively captured all the material at the fort. A New Hampshire newspaper argued that the capture was prudent and proper, reminding readers that the ancient Carthaginians had consented to "deliver up all their Arms to the Romans" and were decimated by the Romans soon after.

In Parliament, a moderate minority favored conciliation with America. Among the moderates was the Duke of Manchester, who warned that America now had three million people, and most of them were trained to use arms. He was certain they could produce a stronger army than Great Britain.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress offered to purchase as many arms and bayonets as could be delivered to the next session of the Congress. Massachusetts also urged American gunsmiths "diligently to apply themselves" to making guns for everyone who did not already have a gun. A few weeks earlier, the Congress had resolved: "That it be strongly recommended, to all the inhabitants of this colony, to be diligently attentive to learning the use of arms . . . ."

Derived from political and legal philosophers such as John Locke, Hugo Grotius, and Edward Coke, the ideology underlying all forms of American resistance was explicitly premised on the right of self-defense of all inalienable rights; from the self-defense foundation was constructed a political theory in which the people were the masters and government the servant, so that the people have the right to remove a disobedient servant.

The British government was not, in a purely formal sense, attempting to abolish the Americans' common law right of self-defense. Yet in practice, that was precisely what the British were attempting. First, by disarming the Americans, the British were attempting to make the practical exercise of the right of personal self-defense much more difficult. Second, and more fundamentally, the Americans made no distinction between self-defense against a lone criminal or against a criminal government. To the Americans, and to their British Whig ancestors, the right of self-defense necessarily implied the right of armed self-defense against tyranny.

The troubles in New England inflamed the other colonies. Patrick Henry's great speech to the Virginia legislature on March 23, 1775, argued that the British plainly meant to subjugate America by force. Because every attempt by the Americans at peaceful reconciliation had been rebuffed, the only remaining alternatives for the Americans were to accept slavery or to take up arms. If the Americans did not act soon, the British would soon disarm them, and all hope would be lost. "The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us," he promised.

The Convention formed a committee--including Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson--"to prepare a plan for the embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient" to defend the commonwealth. The Convention urged "that every Man be provided with a good Rifle" and "that every Horseman be provided . . . with Pistols and Holsters, a Carbine, or other Firelock." When the Virginia militiamen assembled a few weeks later, many wore canvas hunting shirts adorned with the motto "Liberty or Death."

In South Carolina, patriots established a government, headed by the "General Committee." The Committee described the British arms embargo as a plot to disarm the Americans in order to enslave them. Thus, the Committee recommended that "all persons" should "immediately" provide themselves with a large quantity of ammunition.

Without formal legal authorization, Americans began to form independent militia, outside the traditional chain of command of the royal governors. In Virginia, George Washington and George Mason organized the Fairfax Independent Militia Company. The Fairfax militiamen pledged that "we will, each of us, constantly keep by us" a firelock, six pounds of gunpowder, and twenty pounds of lead. Other independent militia embodied in Virginia along the same model. Independent militia also formed in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, and South Carolina, choosing their own officers.

John Adams praised the newly constituted Massachusetts militia, "commanded through the province, not by men who procured their commissions from a governor as a reward for making themselves pimps to his tools."

The American War of Independence began on April 19, 1775, when 700 Redcoats under the command of Major John Pitcairn left Boston to seize American arms at Lexington and Concord.

You can read more here:

davekopel

Meh, fuck the second amendment, serves no purpose these days but to make mass murder as easy as possible. 230+ years changes a lot.

TRANSLATION:  we want to take all your guns away from you, but we can't out and out say it at this time.  We're still under the false belief those freedom loving Americans aren't aware of it.

Side Note:  We are authoritarians and we want a people by the government, not the other way around.  We don't like Liberty.

Uh, yeah it was in this case. The British forces were heading to Lexington and Concord for the specific purpose of destroying or capturing "military" supplies, to include shot, powder and arms.

What was the PREDICATE for the military supplies being gathered in Concord? Even your overtly bias copied and pasted 'article' gives you a hint.

It may also interest you that NONE of the Coercive Acts 'banned imports or firearms and gunpowder". Oh and did you skip over the whole thingy about the Provincial government buying guns, calling up the militia, ordering officers to be elected and for weapons training to take place? How about the part about discipline? 

As one of the NRA's favorite mouthpieces, even your author let's some facts slip out...

Spin it however you want Dulay.  I've learned you have no desire t learn or admit when you're wrong.  I'm done with you.

I like how conservatives in Texas are dealing with this issue.....they're threatening to suspend any students who protest how class gets disrupted any time there's a mass shooting in their school.

houstonchronicle