Second Amendment

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

militia

I don’t agree with everything in Michael’s  take-down of a comment by Eric R. to my post, “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post,” but as an example of the genre ( mastered on Ethics Alarms by the 2011 Commenter of the Year tgt and others), it’s a gem. The main point, that the Second Amendment has significant symbolic value as a right that reminds the government that the citizens of a democracy will not bare their throats to central power, is a crucial one, which I touched on in an earlier Ethics Alarms post. An armed insurrection against the government would be a catastrophe, of course. Still, while those Americans who believe that arming citizens against possible government tyranny trust too little, the citizens who argue that the government should be able to disarm the populace in the name of safety trust far too much.

I did remove one small non-substantive part of the post, because I really dislike mockery as a device on Ethics Alarms (the unedited comment is still under the original post.) I particularly think Michael’s identification of the reasons underlying the recent spate of mad dog killings is seriously off the mark. My own list, in order of influence would be…

  1. The difficulty of getting seriously disturbed individuals institutionalized, and the lack of places to keep and treat them.
  2. The availability of assault-type weapons to such disturbed individuals.
  3. The failure to enforce existing gun regulations
  4. The increasing difficulty and complexity of life generally, making it harder for those who are poor, poorly trained, not especially bright, or emotionally fragile to compete and succeed.
  5. The pervasive media, which creates false norms of success and happiness that are unachievable for most Americans.
  6. The culture of guns and violence, which is intensified by the entertainment media, but which is also a core American characteristic that isn’t going away.
  7. The publicity given to mass murderers by the news media.

But I digress.

Here is Michael’s tough Comment of the Day, to the post “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post”. The bold sections below are quotes from Eric’s comment: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

“When will America choose to protect children instead of guns?”

—- The headline writer for the Washington Post, introducing columnist Petula Dvorak’s column this morning on the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shooting, which took the lives of 26, including 20 children.

Newtown shooting

Presumably the Post’s headline writer was inspired to come up with that headline by the similar statement from Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, who was quoted in Dvorak’s essay. Edelman said,

“This latest terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is no fluke. It is a result of the senseless, immoral neglect of all of us as a nation to fail to protect children instead of guns and to speak out against the pervasive culture of violence. It is up to us to stop these preventable tragedies.”

This is not quite as irresponsible and dangerous as the Post’s headline, but it is close. The suggestion that greater safety and security compels and justifies abandoning the core rights that make the United States unique and free is the ticket to tyranny, benevolent or otherwise. Continue reading →

The Inconvenient Truth About The Second Amendment and Freedom: The Deaths Are Worth It

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

carl-with-a-gun-The shocking murder-suicide of of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Jovan Belcher has once again unleashed the predictable rants against America’s “culture of guns” and renewed calls for tougher firearms laws. Yes, reasonable restrictions on firearms sales make sense, and the ready availability of guns to the unhinged, criminal and crazy in so many communities is indefensible. Nevertheless, the cries for the banning of hand-guns that follow these periodic and inevitable tragedies are essentially attacks on core national values, and they need to be recognized as such, because the day America decides that its citizens should not have access to guns will also be the day that its core liberties will be in serious peril.

Here is Kansas City sportswriter Jason Whitlock, in the wake of Belcher’s demise:

“Our current gun culture ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it… If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

I don’t disagree with a single word of this. Yet everything Whitlock writes about guns can be also said about individual freedom itself. Continue reading →

American Lessons from the English Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I am going to refrain from joining the ranks of amateur psychologists trying to identify the “root cause” of the English riots. People of any age or economic status who riot are, it is fair to say, assholes, like lesser social miscreants such as vandals, computer virus inventors, Leroy Fick and Pastor Terry Jones. If I were convinced that these riots were in response to necessary government cutbacks in social programs, I would have something arguably useful to say, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

There is no question, however, that in allowing the riots to go on so long and harm so many citizens, businesses and homes, the British government has failed one of its most basic duties. Great Britain has been the anti-gun zealot’s Nirvana for a long time: not only can’t citizens own guns for their personal protection, neither can the police. That can work, if the culture is reliably non-violent, and if social and community institutions do a good job making sure that the culture of non-violence is strong, self-reenforced, and deep.

Well, it isn’t, is it?

Continue reading →

Marketing the Glock and Corporate Social Responsibility

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Dr. Chris MacDonald has a thoughtful post on this topic on the always excellent Business Ethics Blog. “The social benefits of selling handguns may be fundamentally contentious; in other words, reasonable people can agree to disagree,” he writes. “But I doubt that the same can really be said for marketing moves designed, for example, to foster the sale of high-capacity magazines (ones that hold 33 bullets instead of the usual 17).”

You can read the whole article here.

Solution to the Starbucks Gun Controversy: Try Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Starbucks is under fire from anti-gun advocates for its policy of allowing patrons in states that permit open carrying of firearms to sip their espresso with guns on their hips. This has, of course, provoked the usual high dudgeon from Second Amendment supporters, NRA members, conservative media, and—who knows?—maybe a few postal workers getting ready to blow. Continue reading →