A Second Amendment hero

[fpb]

Christopher Dorner was clearly a firm believer in the Second Amendment. Meeting what he regarded as intolerable wrong in the state sector, he got out his gun and started shooting. If this is not what johncwright means when he says that an armed citizenship is a bulwark of freedom, I would like him to explain, because I see no other scenario.

Comments

[ext_933203]

How about the defense of the 2nd Amendment as needed for self-protection? I don't really buy the "I need my gun to defend against the forthcoming tyranny" argument (I see where it comes from, but I don't think it really works in an era where the government has jet bombers, drones, cruise missiles, tanks etc), but having a weapon for personal protection seems a bit more persuasive - then again you would have to convince me that more guns are used in incidents that save lives rather than in deadly accidents or crimes

[fpb]

Your father got a glimpse of what an abundance of guns in the polity REALLY does. It does not give strength to citizens; it gives strength to armed gangs. And if you think that has never happened in the USA, think not only of the KKK, but of such things as the nineteenth-century city riots and of the rise of organised crime. If that, in turn, seems to you irrelevant, you have to realize what we in Italy have long since known, that organised crime is ultimately a political phenomenon, placing itself instinctively in a political position between the people and the state, exploiting a mediator position. That is what gives the Mafia and its imitator their power.

[jordan179]

Wait, why don't you just outlaw guns in private hands? Then the Mafia would be disarmed!

Well, if they obeyed the law, that is. Which of course they don't, or they wouldn't be the Mafia.

Which is what you don't get: criminals will always be armed. Gun control only disarms honest citizens, rendering them more vulnerable to criminal gangs.

[fpb]

This comment is unworthy of you. It is NRA boilerplate of the cheapest variety. But as it happens you are wrong, too. While the NRA vulgate that Fascism "disarmed the people" is exactly wrong, it is true that a Fascist official, the legendary Police Chief Cesare Mori, did in fact order all permissions to hold arms through the entire Province (County) of Trapani withdrawn, in 1925, as the first blow in his plan to destroy the Mafia. It worked, too; not by itself, of course, but as a part of a string of emergency measures worked out in advance and carried out single-mindedly, Efficient, experienced, clear-headed, and ruthless (he was quite literally a bastard, brought up in an orphanage), Mori had worked out in detail a plan to break up the Mafia, disarm its members by main force, and destroy the authority of its leaders. Within a year, the back of the beast had been broken, and Mori was recalled. (He had never been a Fascist, and in fact had gained the hatred of several Fascist chieftains by his inflexible attitude, rare among

[jordan179]

Well, for one thing, he deliberately killed two innocents.

[fpb]

So, if he hadn't killed those two particular people, you would have no argument against what he has otherwise said and done?

[jordan179]

Didn't say that. A lot would depend on the extent to which Dorner genuinely believed that the LAPD was actually behaving in a terroristic and tyrannical manner which rendered legal action impossible to correct the wrongs, and on the extent to which it was true. I wouldn't do what Dorner did, based on my assumptions about the LAPD, but then maybe Dorner knew something I don't.

[fpb]

So you have no problem with the principle of one man declaring himself law, judge, jury and executioner?

[ravenclaw_eric]

Have you read his manifesto? It's online.