Southern Beale's Tennessee Gun Report

Southern Beale

1- A Montgomery County man says he was drinking and smoking dope while playing with his gun, you know, like how you do sometimes? And oops, guess what:

According to a police report, Tripp said “he was playing with the weapon and pulled the hammer back on the pistol. Reuben then laid the pistol on the couch and sat on the floor, bumping the pistol.”

Tripp said the pistol discharged. When deputies arrived at the home, they found his wife, Dinah Tripp, holding a wash cloth to Reuben Tripp’s back. The first thing Reuben Tripp told officers is that his wife did not shoot him and that it was an accident.

Dinah Tripp, 49, told deputies she was in another room cleaning when the incident happened.

Congratulations, Reuben Tripp! You are our Second Amendment Hero of the Week!

You really think an armed rebellion would succeed?

The violence in the Ukraine is once again fueling the claims that sometimes it's necessary to fight the government (despite the Constitution's plainly saying that it wrong).  But, are armed revolts a good thing?

Max Fisher writes in the Washington Post:

When civil resistance movements popular uprisings adopt small arms use, they become much more likely to fail and the government becomes more likely to survive intact. That was a conclusion I reached, anyway, as part of my graduate research on government crackdowns against popular democratic movements. I surveyed 20 attempted uprisings over the past century and found overwhelming evidence that when protesters take up arms in large numbers they make their movement far likelier to fail. Within those cases, the chance that a popular uprising would "outlast" the government and ultimately secure its goals was cut almost in half if the protesters took up arms.

There a few reasons for this. One of them is that shooting back makes the conflict less about politics and more about simple force, a contest of strength that disorganized civilians are often bound to lose. Probably the biggest is the military: when protesters start shooting back at security services, it makes the military much more likely to intervene against them. And if the military intervenes against protesters, that usually ends things pretty quickly.

Seriously, you are delusional if you think you are going to take on a trained and well-equipped military with an assault rifle.  And the military doesn't need to bring in the drones or MLRS on you as an article in Forbes pointed out:

Benson and Weber (the team sounds like a cigarette brand) explored how the military might domestically apply its concept of full spectrum operations, which cover everything from all-out war to counterinsurgency and nation-building. In fact, the Army’s operating concept for 2016 to 2028  considers highly likely a future where the U.S. is threatened by “radical U.S. citizens operating domestically and abroad”. The Pentagon was probably thinking of Al Qaeda sympathizers in the U.S., but radicals come in all flavors.

There are a few things a successful rebellion needs and one of them is popular support, despite the delusions of the Three Percenters:

To a lesser extent, when protesters take up arms it appears to ultimately reduce popular support for their movement. The hardcore coterie of activists might see the need for armed resistance, but most civilians tend to value their physical security highly, and are more likely to support the government if they believe the opposition is sowing violence. To shoot back is to risk alienating your own "quiet" supporters.

The real point to take away from the WaPo article is that you need both popular support and the backing of the military if you expect to have a serious rebellion.  And despite the so-called oath keepers, the real military oath of allegiance is:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

Which means a few important things here, with the most important one being that they had better resign from service if they have problems with President Obama.  That is especially true if they want to fall back on the Constitution since Article II, Section ii says:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;

I've also mentioned that Article III, Section iii of the Constitution defines the crime of treason (the only constitutional crime) as:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

That means you had better get it straight as to WHERE your loyalties lie if you are in anyway going to claim to be a "constitutionalist" and "oath-keeper".   The real lesson is:

But the military is the big factor here. The protesters need the military to some extent, even if it's only for troops to stay in their barracks. If protesters take up arms, they're much less likely to have military support or even acquiescence. Worse, the military becomes more likely to intervene against them – and the rest of the population becomes more likely to support that.

 See also:
Gun-Rights Activists Ask: What If Ukrainians Had More Guns?
This debunking of the Gun Control =Genocide

Robert Farago Thinks He Knows the Law and History Better then Former Justice John Paul Stevens

Former member of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens

TTAG

“The liveliest (and oldest) former member of the U.S. Supreme Court is at it again. John Paul Stevens, 93, served on the highest court in the land for an impressive 35 years, from 1975 until his retirement in June 2010,” Paul Barrett writes at Bloomberg Businessweek. “Known for his bow ties, brilliant legal mind, and striking transformation from Midwest Republican conservative to hero of the political left, Stevens remains an intellectual force to reckon with.” God, I hope not. Stevens utterly rejects the Heller ruling establishing an individual right to keep and bear arms. In fact, this is how he’d amend the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.” His justification for the change is predictably short-sighted . . .

“Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands.”

Emotional claims? Someone hasn’t been reading his history books . . . “James Madison made clear that, although the proposed Constitution offered sufficient guarantees against despotism by its checks and balances, the real deterrent to governmental abuse was the armed population,” David E. Vandercoy writes in The History of the Second Amendment. 

The awesome success of The Truth About Guns has really gone to the head of its founder Robert Farago.  He seems to think he knows the law better than a former Justice of the Supreme Court. And his reasoning is so weak it's embarrassing.

Madison's explanation that an armed populace is necessary to prevent government from becoming tyrannical worked pretty well when the weapons owned by the citizenry were EXACTLY the same as those owned by the government. Nowadays, as anyone with half a brain knows, it's a different story.  But that doesn't prevent the thoughtless gun nuts from spouting this nonsense over and over again.

After calling Justice Stevens' justification "short-sighted," Farago goes on to repeat this tired old nonsense as his own justification. Then, of course, the sycophantic commenters fall into line, nearly two hundred of them.

This is a good example of why the gun-rights movement is doomed to failure. There's usually no substance in what they say.  It's smoke and mirrors, often making little or no sense, but repeated by legions of unthinking followers until it takes on a life of its own.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

A little laugh for you.

Children Should Be Taught Not to Fear Guns from an Early Age

Interview with John Lott

"A man we can always turn to to get the facts." Hahahahahahaha

Having had a good laugh at that intro, I will say this.  He's absolutely right about the unfortunate tendency of some gun-control folks to exaggerate. It was just stupid to inflate the supposed number of school shootings like that. If they'd limited their statistics to just the true school shootings the point would have been sufficiently made and the opposition would not have been able to tear it apart.  As it is, the entire thing is discredited which is a damn shame since school shootings have continued since Newtown.

It's interesting what he said about New Jersey concealed carry permits. This is where the gun-rights folks like to exaggerate. I've been told more than once that in NJ there's a de facto ban on carry outside the home.

Lott claimed that school shootings have actually declined in recent decades.  I wonder if in order to make that appear true, he's not guilty of exactly the opposite of what he accused Bloomberg and The Moms of doing?

Federal Judge Rules Against the NRA in San Francisco's Magazine Capacity Limit

TribTown dot com

A judge on Wednesday upheld San Francisco's ban on gun magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets, the latest in long series of court rulings grappling with gun rights since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that gun ownership inside the home for self-defense purposes was a fundamental Constitutional right.

The National Rifle Association sought to strike down the ban, arguing that high-capacity magazines were covered by the Supreme Court's ruling.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup disagreed, ruling that the city's law doesn't hinder self-defense and promotes public safety.

San Francisco supervisors enacted the law in November in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newton, Connecticut, in December 2012 that claimed 27 lives. The Sandy Hook gunman was armed with an assault weapon and several magazines each equipped to hold more than 10 bullets each.

Several other cities and states enacted similar bans on magazines equipped to carry more than 10 bullets. Alsup, in refusing the National Rifle Association's demand to stop the San Francisco ban from going into effect on April 7, noted that four other courts across the country upheld similar bans in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Connecticut and New York.