Gun Confiscation Reference December 2015

[Reverse chronological order]

December 10, 2015
Excerpted  New Republic: It’s Time to Ban Guns. Yes, All of Them.
https://newrepublic.com/article/125498/its-time-ban-guns-yes-them

December 4, 2015
Imaged/Excerpted The New York Times: End the Gun Epidemic in America [First Front Page Editorial In 95 Years]
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html

December 4, 2015
Excerpted  Salon: The Second Amendment must go: We ban lawn darts. It’s time to ban guns
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/04/the_second_amendment_must_go_we_ban_lawn_darts_its_time_to_ban_guns/

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It’s Time to Ban Guns. Yes, All of Them.

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy

December 10, 2015

Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those. Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.  

I used to refer to my position on this issue as being in favor of gun control. Which is true, except that “gun control” at its most radical still tends to refer to bans on certain weapons and closing loopholes. The recent New York Times front-page editorial, as much as it infuriated some, was still too tentative. “Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership,” the paper argued, making the case for “reasonable regulation,” nothing more. Even the rare ban-guns arguments involve prefacing and hedging and disclaimers. “We shouldn’t ‘take them away’ from people who currently own them, necessarily,” writes Hollis Phelps in Salon. Oh, but we should. 

…

Ban Guns, meanwhile, is not discriminatory in this way. It’s not about dividing society into “good” and “bad” gun owners. It’s about placing gun ownership itself in the “bad” category. It’s worth adding that the anti-gun position is ultimately about police not carrying guns, either. That could never happen, right? Well, certainly not if we keep on insisting on its impossibility.

Maltz Bovy is a writer living in Toronto. She is writing a book with St. Martin’s Press about the idea of privilege (2017).

https://newrepublic.com/article/125498/its-time-ban-guns-yes-them

End the Gun Epidemic in America

​It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 4, 2015 

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

...

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

...

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

This editorial published on A1 in the Dec. 5 edition of The New York Times. It is the first time an editorial has appeared on the front page since 1920.

A version of this editorial appears in print on December 5, 2015, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Gun Epidemic. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html

Friday, Dec 4, 2015 11:00 AM UTC

The Second Amendment must go: We ban lawn darts. It’s time to ban guns

We are one nation, forever f*cked by the NRA and an outdated and dangerous read of the Constitution. Let's fix it

Hollis Phelps

[...]

Yet when it comes to guns, we collectively do nothing, except spout off some strained political rhetoric every now and then, that is, after the most recent mass shooting. [Add in prayer here.] Or we dig in and cite our constitutional right to bear arms, which apparently trumps death, even the death of children. There’s a lot of room for debate regarding the meaning of the second amendment. I doubt very much that our “founding fathers” envisioned that right in its current form, but even if they did, it really shouldn’t matter. The framers of the constitution weren’t gods, meaning that their words aren’t—and shouldn’t be—sacrosanct.

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/04/the_second_amendment_must_go_we_ban_lawn_darts_its_time_to_ban_guns/