So the Glibertarian Perfesser wants to ban private businesses from regulating themselves? Nice.
And if there were a market for 'Tooled-Up Malls', one would assume there'd be ones across the US.
But here's the deal: Perfesser Dickless has fantasies about being John McClane and gunning down some misfit shooter. Trouble is, he'd be more likely to shit himself while admiring a digital camera.
Um, that seems one step removed from blaming the victims for not packing. Does he really want to go there?
I'm assuming the Perfesser actually believes something he professes to believe.
Aside from encouraging frivolous lawsuits against a business establishment that bears no responsibility for the events, what more can he do?
And one would have to assume that he would agree that if it is time to start suing those establishments because they prevent people from protecting themselves that it would also be time to start suing all the gun manufacturers and gun dealers for making that protection necessary in the first place.
If it saves just one life, it's worth it.
That's Exhibit A the next time anyone claims Reynolds is a libertarian.
We have so much to learn from Iraq. The teacher becomes the student.
He doesn't apparently think the mall/store should be prevented from banning guns on their property.
He just thinks the mall/store should be sued for allowing the incident to take place, after having prevented their heroic customers from carrying shotguns under their coats to stop it.
He apparently wants a society where you go to the local mall, and every other person is carrying a shotgun and/or rifle. I'll refer people back to Roy's post on Posse-Comitatus-itis. A post that still gives me giggles.
Um, that seems one step removed from blaming the victims for not packing. Does he really want to go there?
The gun-loving assholes have been there, done that, got the Virginia Tech t-shirt.
The problem is the language; we use "belief" to describe things that people could not actually believe were those things reduced to simple math, things they do not bother to defend, and which they don't even do us the courtesy of acknowledging the perversity of their delight in. There must be a better term for this somewhere. It's as if, faced with describing a woman with a phantom twin growing out of her left shoulder, we were left with "accessorize".
I would also like to point out (as a supporter of the Second amendment*) that just as "the problem isn't a lack of gun laws, the problem is insufficent enforcement of the laws we do have", so too with gun bans, and while I'd never second-guess an actual professor of the law, I'd think insufficient enforcement of the policy might be what's actionable here.
*as written
Um, that seems one step removed from blaming the victims for not packing. Does he really want to go there?
It really isn't even one step removed. They do blame the cowardly mall shoppers for not packing a weapon while doing their Christmas shopping. Clearly, some heroic shopper should have gunned down the shooter before he killed nine people.
While I would be very happy if someone had done that, it isn't very realistic to expect people to want to carry weapons while they do their Christmas shopping. That's the logic of his argument, though.
The sad fact is things like this are going to happen and there really isn't anything that can be done about it. It's getting to be as American as apple pie.
Your About.com link states that Nebraska has no concealed-carry handgun permits, which I'd venture to say is what the Perfessor's referencing, not some fantasy about people toting shotguns through a mall. I still think he's full of shit, but it does our side no good to gerrymander the facts for the sake of a larf, if only because the other side has no sense of humor.
When they eliminate the gun free zones and people start busting caps in the mall over who gets the last Wiii or food court table, then the Perf will move right along to blaming liberal family values for the crimes. You can't win.
That has to be sarcasm, doesn't it? I mean, "if it saves just one life"? That's the nanny state rally-cry! Lawsuits that will make trial lawyers rich? That's like a John Edwards campaign contribution! The cognitive dissonance in that post made my head hurt.
BTW, could someone give me a definition of glibertarianism? I know who glibertarians are, just not what they espouse.
Fats Durston summed it up best, although heavily armed Iraqis do seem to be dying despite their weaponry. I get confused as to whether I should go around armed in places where there have been shootings or where there haven't been any.
Also, why didn't the perfesser suggest that the shoppers were cowards for not rushing the shooter? How many could he have plugged, 3 or 4? That's 5 lives saved right there.
We don't need no stinkin' legislation, we need braver citizens! When you hear shooting, don't run away, charge!
What is to stop the malls from reconstituting themselves as free far zones in which every man, woman, and child are issued guns for "target shooting" as they walk through the door. My mall offers free popcorn at christmas and I'm sure it makes me more likely to shop there. I can only imagine the shopping excitement in a mall that voluntarily arms all its customers in advance in order to protect them from the *other* gun toting lunatics. It might even *save* money in the long run because you woulnd't need to employ any mall security or use the local police force. Its the ownership society writ large!
aimai
I'm sorry, that should be "free *fire* zones" not "free far" which must have been my attempt to spell it phonetically.
aimai
I was being tongue-in-cheek when I suggested the Perfesser was one step away from blaming the victims. How he got through law school, let alone merits tenure and an endowed chair, boggles the mind.
He talks about the mass shootings in "gun free" zones, but how many mass shootings have occurred in "gun permitted" zones?
My foolproof plan is for a machine gun nest at Footlocker, a mortar team operating out of The Body Shop, and snipers located at Claire's and Auntie Anne's. Maybe claymores should be set up at Macy's, but that might be a little much.
Your About.com link states that Nebraska has no concealed-carry handgun permits, which I'd venture to say is what the Perfessor's referencing, not some fantasy about people toting shotguns through a mall.
Why is that a fantasy? The Black Panthers used to carry long guns all over the place, until that liberal bastard Ronald Reagan stopped them.
Nebraskans should prove to its legislators, and to the world, that an armed society is a polite society, and avail their right to openly carry shotguns to the mall, the PTA meeting, the courthouse, and the day-care center. Then we can talk about concealed carry.
So let's see... a mall is private property, right? Don't they have the right to say what is allowed on their premises? Wouldn't Teh Perfesser have a problem with smoking bans if he really were a libertarian?
One of these days, someone will be packing when this happens (Luby's in Killeen, TX, VA Tech, etc.) and I hope it doesn't end up with the self-appointed deputy making things worse.
There's a big difference between putting holes in a paper target at the range and trying to shoot someone in a public place who may be trying to kill you or an innocent bystander, to say nothing of the noise and confusion.
Is there a name for this Red Dawn/Dirty Harry fetish? Besides inadequacy?
"The sad fact is things like this are going to happen and there really isn't anything that can be done about it. It's getting to be as American as apple pie."
Yes. What disturbs me most about the latest mass shooting is how unconcerned I found myself. They have become semi-annual events, randomly distributed (like tornadoes) and to be expected. In a society flooded with guns and which glorifies them, we are stuck.
It's like those events which we here in Bubbastan have come to call redneck divorces: he shows up in his pick-up, shoots her and often everyone else in sight (even the kids), then turns the gun on himself.
Surely all these armed Christmas shoppers would be at least as likely to hit each other, or to hit the scented candle display or sausage place or the kitchen doodads?
Not to mention the ensuing human collateral damage. I can't see how arming a toddler, for instance, could prevent the kid from getting hit by accidental fire from Citizen Christian Warrior.
Or said toddler's helium balloon pops, and these good citizens all start blazing away.
In the Ole Perfesser's America, all right-thinking people shoot straight, like in the movies, and they only hit the guilty.
Why does anybody think this idiot can think?
I'd like to see (although not really) a situation in which a VA Tech/Neb. mall shooter starts firing, in a place where everyone is packing.
Imagine, for two seconds, the escalation of fear--esp. in a mall, where the acoustics are so weird, and you couldn't tell where the shots were coming from.
Everyone, within 15 seconds, would be shooting everyone else, in a steadily-mounting cycle of panic, terror, and pre-emptive shooting.
If you're as old as I am, you saw Our Friend the Atom in school, a science film in which they demonstrated a "chain reaction" with a table covered with mouse traps. Each trap held two ping pong balls. The host tossed one ball onto the table. It hit a trap, which released two, which hit two more traps, which, etc. The table went from a state of silence and stillness to a froth of snapping and flying balls in literally seconds.
Now imagine they're guns.
Of course if the professor's "libertarian" fanstasies came true, there would have been thirty deaths and fifty wounded in the damn mall.
I mean can you imagine a bunch of the type of people who would carry concealed weapons Christmas shopping getting excited and pulling out their pieces (no pun intended).
It would be a goddamn free fire zone, like a Blackwater convey after a tricycle rolled into one of the humvees at a stopsign.
I see Roy's more erudite commentors beat me to the punch. Great minds, etc.
kia got his/her in just before mine. And yes, good pernt, the popping balloon. You go with your gun BECAUSE you half-expect to encounter danger. You're more primed for it than you'd otherwise be. (In fact, you hope for it.)
Idiots.
My foolproof plan is for a machine gun nest at Footlocker, a mortar team operating out of The Body Shop, and snipers located at Claire's and Auntie Anne's. Maybe claymores should be set up at Macy's, but that might be a little much.
Foolproof, my ass. Where's your pillbox, your self-propelled artillery, your tactical nukes, your Strategic Defense Initiative, huh? You're gonna get reamed with your so-called defense.
If they outlaw flamethrowers in malls, only the outlaws will have flamethrowers. We have to fight them in the malls, so we don't have to fight them here. You go to the war on Christmas with the ornaments and armaments you have. Und so weiter...
Wait, I think I actually saw this on a buffy the vampire episode. When a blue colored demon comes to the mall to feast on helpless shoppers Buffy takes him out with a rocket launcher. As I recall there were no real problems with this solution. I guess I was wrong to continue advocating against guns. Because what *if* a blue colored demon came to your mall? Huh? Think.About.That. (reference to the conservapedia)
aimai
If we're going full metal galleria, can I chuck a couple phosphorus grenades into the GNC? Their supplement prices are outrageous.
...Um, that seems one step removed from blaming the victims for not packing. Does he really want to go there?...
Um, I think he went there. Apparently liked it. Stayed. Seems to me that's Roy's point. Given him, um, beliefs, he should really be blaming them, it was their, um, choice.
I love Perfesserly locutions: the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed
Does this make the mall objectively pro-mass murderer?
Paul said, "One of these days, someone will be packing when this happens... and I hope it doesn't end up with the self-appointed deputy making things worse."
It has happened, and no, it didn't start a free-for-all. Instead, many lives were likely saved.
I'm betting that Matthew Murray, the deranged shooter, thought he was going to a gun-free zone -- gun-free except for his own, of course. That's the issue: these guys always strike in what they expect to be self-defenseless zones. They're willing to break all kinds of laws, including laws against murder, to take advantage of that.
Here's a few more incidents where armed citizens stopped armed bad guys.
By the way, Nebraska does indeed have a concealed-carry permit law. It seems reasonable to me to expect places forbidding licensees to carry be required to accept liability for failing to protect citizens they have rendered defenseless. You may be interested to know that the mall has taken down this notice without comment.
You may also be interested to know that many carry licensees are indeed vowing not to shop in posted venues.
Sorry, haloscan trimmed the link to the of this article on my website.
Due to the limitation on the number of links allowed, I also trimmed off this comment: "All you folks crowing about "inadequacy" and "compensation"? Please see my post here about confusing guns and genitals."
if i move to nebraska, can i buy a tank without a permit?
Commenting by HaloScan
