Diamondback6
Member
So, I'm trying to shock some sense into a formerly close friend who flipped to the other side after the Newtown cluster of spree-killings (it's time to STOP calling them school shootings like they're something special, which plays into the other side's hands, and just lump them in with all the other spree killings), and I need some advice on a draft email. Rules are, keep it intellectual and articulate... I need well-reasoned approaches that I can club a former law-student over the head with and have a good chance of them getting her to see that if she helps DiFi & Co. throw US under the bus today, SHE will be joining us under the tires tomorrow and all we'll have to say is "Told You So".
Here's what I have so far... latest revisions in bold red, and still working.
Thoughts? Additional data? Elaboration? This isn't the "Dear Jane, goodbye, have a nice life" letter yet, but if she can't be brought back to her senses (as recently as October, she was telling me that she agreed with me about the importance of the citizen rifle in home and homeland defense, which to me means best-case she's been swept up in the SFO-area hysteria) that may well be the next note she reads from me.
For the record, I am cross-posting this on a couple other forums as well. Thanks, guys!
Here's what I have so far... latest revisions in bold red, and still working.
You probably think anything outside the Ivy League doesn't count, but do give Olson & Kopel, "All the Way Down The Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England and Some Lessons for Civil Liberties in America," 22 Hamline Law Review 399-465 (1999) a read. For that matter, a whole page of law-review articles for my side can be found at Second Amendment Law Library: Law Journals, [strike: "though I don't know why I'm wasting my breath as your mind is made up"]--just remember, the people you're siding with today, after you've thrown us under the bus, they will put you under the wheels with us next... when she was Attorney General, Janet Reno once declared "registration is just a first step, confiscation is the ultimate goal" and NOBODY on your side has repudiated that nor has she retracted it (and that's precisely how [strike: "your idiots in"] Sacramento set the stage for the Roberti-Roos ban that keeps getting expanded every time they find something new to be scared of.). And [strike: "your galpal"] Feinstein has said as much herself, here: Dianne Feinstein caught in a lie - YouTube So I trust you can see why pro-banners' LONG history of broken promises and not letting the ink dry on one set of demands before starting another leads us to see anything as "negotiating in Bad Faith," ESPECIALLY in parallel with the history of Dems saying "give us what WE want now (tax hikes, amnesty for illegal aliens) and we'll give you something (spending cuts, entitlement reform, better border security) later" and then welshing on the deal as soon as they've gotten what they've wanted, or interpreting a "cut" as meaning "we're just not going to increase spending AS MUCH as we planned"... which is like if you normally gain five pounds a month, going on a diet and calling a gain of three "losing weight."
An enlightening little piece out of New York: Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Markets - Reason.com How well did Prohibition of alcohol--which, I would remind you, required a Constitutional amendment to do, so by that precedent the 2A with its "Shall Not Be Infringed" is still Law of the Land until itself repealed or amended--work out in its goals? It didn't, and it only caused more harm by giving more power to organized crime. As a thought experiment--I'm not even agreeing to the Constitutionality of this, but just as a discussion, never mind that there would be only negligible compliance and the cost in time and manpower to do it would be far beyond practical, let's assume that you could wave a magic wand and get rid of every semiauto rifle in the country, which includes the M1 Garand Uncle Frank carried in WWII and the M1 Carbine he liberated Mauthausen concentration-camp with... Okay, now that gives a significant firepower advantage to the drug cartels immediately, and then their allies, and finally they will see another moneymaker in contraband and the country will be awash in iron from them and they probably WON'T stop at mere semis but go all the way to full-autos. It would have the unintended consequence of basically bringing Mexico's problems here... oh, by the way, since courts have ruled that police have no duty to protect the individual or any group, currently proposed legislation, if in effect, then would have basically left the Koreans trapped in the LA riots to whatever mercy the rioting mob besieging them may have been inclined to show... those AR-15s on those rooftops SAVED LIVES by being a force-multiplier, and such policy would have (and Roberti-Roos HAS) left them defenseless against any future such threat. What HAS happened before CAN and probably WILL happen again... it's just a matter of the trigger conditions being present.
By the way, the shooter at Sandy Hook was an undiagnosed schiozophrenic who had his family hiding him rather than getting him the care he NEEDED, because they're a Money/Socialite Family (dad is a VP at GE) and didn't want to be ostracized from their precious snob-circuit... and one of the people on Biden's task-force is a cop whose own son is a thwarted wannabe Spree Killer. [Citations included in email, which is on my other laptop.]
On top of which, the genie is out of the bottle: it's actually very simple to make an AR receiver, so there will be many who would just give up one and have ten more made before the confiscating agency's vehicle was even back on the street, and quite a few of those would be likely, once they had made the decision to cross the Rubicon, to go all the way to full-auto. Pair that with the fact that the AR is easily oe of the most common rifles in America and is thus protected under the Heller decision's "Common Use" test...
For the utility of semiauto rifles, Mas Ayoob has an article worth reading at Massad Ayoob » Blog Archive » WHY GOOD PEOPLE NEED SEMIAUTOMATIC FIREARMS AND
I am sorry, but I must withdraw that range invitation--if you honestly believe the average citizen should not have things and are truly honest with yourself, then you will recognize that by that logic you have no business reaping any of the benefits that they offer.
Thoughts? Additional data? Elaboration? This isn't the "Dear Jane, goodbye, have a nice life" letter yet, but if she can't be brought back to her senses (as recently as October, she was telling me that she agreed with me about the importance of the citizen rifle in home and homeland defense, which to me means best-case she's been swept up in the SFO-area hysteria) that may well be the next note she reads from me.
For the record, I am cross-posting this on a couple other forums as well. Thanks, guys!
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