Silversea Water Cooler: Welcome! Part Four

[Tothesunset]

The solution to guns is ... more guns?

Of course. Like the solution to famine is more famine.

[UKCruiseJeff]

Of course. Like the solution to famine is more famine.

 

Could you imagine if Trump had said "I know that many of my supporters will find this unexpected and some even dissapointing, but I cannot stand by and do nothing whilst I see our children repeatedly being slaughtered in our schools. The most sacred obligation we all have as caring and sensible adults and parents to our children is to do everything we can to protect our children whilst they play or study. For that reason I plan to take the first step along a path that is intended to make America safer for all of us. I plan to start the process of removing all automatic and semi automatic weapoins out of circulation. The first step is to halt their sale followed by a consultation on how to remove all existing automatic weapons out of circulation completely. There is no rational reason for any law abiding sensible person to own an automatic weapon. I am asking for the support of the American people to help and support me whilst I take us along that path ......."

 

I think that many Trump doubters would see him in a completely different light and he would become a hero.

[rosepark]

I confess that feel sorry for the armed sheriff who stayed outside the school, it just proves that we can't know how even trained marks(wo)men will react under pressure.

Just ban the automatic weapons, does that really remove the right to bear arms? Why is that so difficult for the NRA to accept?

 

Rp

[jollyjones]

I confess that feel sorry for the armed sheriff who stayed outside the school, it just proves that we can't know how even trained marks(wo)men will react under pressure.

Just ban the automatic weapons, does that really remove the right to bear arms? Why is that so difficult for the NRA to accept?

 

Rp

 

When you see all the police shootings in the States, it emphasizes how incredibly difficult it is to make the correct, or more often the least bad, decision in a critical situation - and that's trained officers.

Arming teachers? Ludicrous.

Selling military style assault weapons to civilians of any age? Dangerous.

To a teenager? There are no words ...

 

Many of us non-US folk struggle to understand why you do this to yourselves.

[UKCruiseJeff]

I confess that feel sorry for the armed sheriff who stayed outside the school, it just proves that we can't know how even trained marks(wo)men will react under pressure.

Just ban the automatic weapons, does that really remove the right to bear arms? Why is that so difficult for the NRA to accept?

 

Rp

 

I agree.

 

As I understand it, and i know that one of our regular posters will be authoritative and can correct me on this topic, one of the main reasons why a single armed office would be clearly instructed in the UK to wait until further armed and vested officers arrived is because their formation training ensures that progress through a buildimg is made in a way that ensures 360 degrees of observation, something impossible and highly dangerous for a single armed officer. to do by themsleves. It would be suicidal.

 

It is a shame that in the rush to find someone to blame this officer is being it seems unfairly receiving criticism.

[mysty]

Greetings Coolers!

 

An interesting Opinion piece on the CBC website today related to the gun issue capturing the world's attention.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/florida-school-shooting-1.4547536

 

 

Some of the interesting bits:

 

"Indeed, the NRA has long sold its message by way of the politicians it supports. Yet this, too, is a façade. In 2016, the association made just $1.1 million in political donations during the 2016 election cycle, according to nonpartisan research group Open Secrets. This makes it a punter compared to the Walt Disney Company (about $10 million), not to mention the "other" NRA, the National Restaurant Association (about $1.2 million.)"

 

"Then there's the matter of Donald Trump. Outwardly, at least, the 45th president is a staunch NRA supporter who has so far jettisoned calls for better gun legislation — a political nod to the rust-belt and rock-ribbed Republican states that elected him. "I will not let you down," Trump said during the 2016 presidential campaign, as he accepted the association's endorsement."

 

"Moreover, Trump's conversion to the NRA came rather late. In his previous life, he actually supported a ban on assault rifles — including the type used by Nikolas Cruz. In 2000, he chided those Republicans who "walk the NRA line and refuse even limited restrictions." Trump doesn't have an ideology so much as a series of competing needs, chief among them the desire to be loved. If the NRA becomes a political liability following the shootings, history suggests Trump won't hesitate to throw it under a bus."

 

Have a great day all!

[UKCruiseJeff]

I have even written his speech for him ...........:D

[mysty]

And a very fine job you have done of that J! :)

[mysty]

Here is an article providing a time line of Major Gun Control Laws in the US. Makes for very interesting reading.

 

http://time.com/5169210/us-gun-control-laws-history-timeline/

 

 

The US President does not hold the authority to change the Constitution. He or she does have veto power.

 

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution

 

 

"The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by theCongress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representativesand the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of theState legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have beenproposed by constitutional convention. The Congress proposes an amendment inthe form of a joint resolution. Since the President does not have aconstitutional role in the amendment process, the joint resolution does not goto the White House for signature or approval. The original document isforwarded directly to NARA's Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for processingand publication. The OFR adds legislative history notes to the joint resolutionand publishes it in slip law format. The OFR also assembles an informationpackage for the States which includes formal "red-line" copies of thejoint resolution, copies of the joint resolution in slip law format, and thestatutory procedure for ratification under 1 U.S.C. 106b."

[jpalbny]

Right. Then an amendment must be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures before it becomes law. It is a slow and arduous process. As it should be. But, the second amendment does not need to be modified in order to pass reasonable restrictions on guns.

 

But by way of clarification, fully automatic weapons have been banned here for 30+ years. The guns used today are styled to look like military-grade weapons but they're not fully automatic. This statement is NOT to be interpreted as saying anything other than the fact that they aren't fully automatic...

 

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[UKCruiseJeff]

M,

 

It is doubtless my lack of knowledge I'm displaying here, but my understanding is that the various amendments aren't as set in concrete as the pro-gun NRA keep repeating when talking about the blanket "right to bear arms" and it needn't take amendments to ban for example automatic weapons.

 

If you put aside the second amendment for a moment and look at the First instead - and in particular "free speech" then it is fairly clear that subsequent laws set common sense exceptions to what had previously been clear and unambiguous rights without exception. People are still responsible for the consequences of exercising free speech and for example laws with respect to pawnography (purposefully misspelt), "fighting words" ie inciting riots or lawlessness, inciting suicide, knowingly making false statements including false advertising, obscenity, breaching copyrights, defamation and slander etc.

 

I see no impediment for the withdrawal of the sale and ownership of fully automatic or semi-automatic weaponry or it being as a contradiction of the second amendment rights to bear arms.

 

I read a piece by Nelson Lund and Adam Winkler which I think gives a good perspective with respect to the Second Amendment in American society today and why the issue isn't as clear cut a right as the pro-gun lobby claim.

 

 

 

The Second Amendment

 

By Nelson Lund and Adam Winkler

 

Modern debates about the Second Amendment have focused on whether it protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms, or a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard. This question, however, was not even raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted.

 

Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.

 

The onset of war does not always allow time to raise and train an army, and the Revolutionary War showed that militia forces could not be relied on for national defense. The Constitutional Convention therefore decided that the federal government should have almost unfettered authority to establish peacetime standing armies and to regulate the militia.

 

This massive shift of power from the states to the federal government generated one of the chief objections to the proposed Constitution. Anti-Federalists argued that the proposed Constitution would take from the states their principal means of defense against federal usurpation. The Federalists responded that fears of federal oppression were overblown, in part because the American people were armed and would be almost impossible to subdue through military force.

 

Implicit in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists were two shared assumptions. First, that the proposed new Constitution gave the federal government almost total legal authority over the army and militia. Second, that the federal government should not have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry. They disagreed only about whether an armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression.

 

The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists’ desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution. Yet the Amendment was easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.

 

Much has changed since 1791. The traditional militia fell into desuetude, and state-based militia organizations were eventually incorporated into the federal military structure. The nation’s military establishment has become enormously more powerful than eighteenth century armies. We still hear political rhetoric about federal tyranny, but most Americans do not fear the nation’s armed forces and virtually no one thinks that an armed populace could defeat those forces in battle. Furthermore, eighteenth century civilians routinely kept at home the very same weapons they would need if called to serve in the militia, while modern soldiers are equipped with weapons that differ significantly from those generally thought appropriate for civilian uses. Civilians no longer expect to use their household weapons for militia duty, although they still keep and bear arms to defend against common criminals (as well as for hunting and other forms of recreation).

 

The law has also changed. While states in the Founding era regulated guns—blacks were often prohibited from possessing firearms and militia weapons were frequently registered on government rolls—gun laws today are more extensive and controversial. Another important legal development was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Second Amendment originally applied only to the federal government, leaving the states to regulate weapons as they saw fit. Although there is substantial evidence that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms from infringement by the states, the Supreme Court rejected this interpretation in United States v. Cruikshank (1876).

 

Until recently, the judiciary treated the Second Amendment almost as a dead letter. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that forbade nearly all civilians from possessing handguns in the nation’s capital. A 5–4 majority ruled that the language and history of the Second Amendment showed that it protects a private right of individuals to have arms for their own defense, not a right of the states to maintain a militia.

The dissenters disagreed. They concluded that the Second Amendment protects a nominally individual right, though one that protects only “the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia.” They also argued that even if the Second Amendment did protect an individual right to have arms for self-defense, it should be interpreted to allow the government to ban handguns in high-crime urban areas.

 

Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Court struck down a similar handgun ban at the state level, again by a 5–4 vote. Four Justices relied on judicial precedents under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Justice Thomas rejected those precedents in favor of reliance on the Privileges or Immunities Clause, but all five members of the majority concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state infringement of the same individual right that is protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment.

 

Notwithstanding the lengthy opinions in Heller and McDonald, they technically ruled only that government may not ban the possession of handguns by civilians in their homes. Heller tentatively suggested a list of “presumptively lawful” regulations, including bans on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in “sensitive places” such as schools and government buildings, laws restricting the commercial sale of arms, bans on the concealed carry of firearms, and bans on weapons “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Many issues remain open, and the lower courts have disagreed with one another about some of them, including important questions involving restrictions on carrying weapons in public.

 

 

 

[UKCruiseJeff]

JP, our posts crossed, but I think we're saying the same .... but you have the added authority of being an educated American and knowing what you are talking about whereas my opinion was more speculative. :)

[mysty]

JP....thank you! I do realize that it is not necessary to change the Constitution in order to change gun laws. And of course, the added complication is that States do have their own gun laws. And in cases where the State law is more lax, in most cases it is left to the discretion of local law enforcement as to whether they will enforce federal law.

 

https://www.gunstocarry.com/gun-laws-state/

 

 

Thanks J! I do understand the point about the 2nd Amendment not needing to be changed. However, the interpretation of what the Forefathers had in mind when it was written is subject to swings. It seems to me that a clear interpretation would be less subjective. Hence the suggestion that the Amendment in question be examined. It is also not clear to me how easy it would be to change gun laws in general. There are many different state laws to deal with and many different state governments to convince of the need for change.

[rosepark]

Not only an interesting and informative article by Lund and Winkler but I have learned new word, "desuetude"

How educational this thread is.

Rp

[mysty]

Florida Governor Rick Scott is proposing changes.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rick-scott-gun-changes-florida-1.4548557

 

 

"Florida's governor is proposing a plan to prevent gun violence that includes banning the sale of firearms to anyone younger than 21 in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida high school last week.

 

Scott's plan also calls for:

• A trained law enforcement officer in every school in Florida by the time the 2018 school year begins.
  
• One officer for every 1,000 students on campus.
  
• The sale of bump stocks be banned.
  
• Mandatory "active shooter training" at all schools. Students, teachers and staff must complete all training and "code red" drills by the end of the first week of each semester.
  
• Prohibiting a "violent or mentally ill person" from purchasing a firearm through a sworn request by a family or community member, called a "violent threat restraining order."
  
• $50 million in additional funding for mental-health initiatives."
  

"The 2018 United States Senate election in Florida will be held on November 6, 2018, alongside a gubernatorial election, U.S. House elections, and other state and local elections." from wikipedia.com This may prompt some candidates to take a harder line on gun laws.

Edited February 23, 2018 by mysty

[Lois R]

Hi everyone, hope all of you have a great weekend:).......no big plans for me......... I may go to the movies and see a matinee.

 

As for the gun issue........now he spoke at the CPAC convention and it was like a damn campaign speech again......did he really forget he just spoke with the families of the fallen kids?:mad:...........UNbelievable.........but nothing he does surprises me.........

 

Is it 2020 yet?

[UKCruiseJeff]

Good Morrning Coolers from early morning UK ... ie 02:20 ....

 

I really believe that Netflix is the natural home for obsessive foodies. There is so much. Just watching David Chang in Ugly Delicious episode 5 on BBQ. It is sublime. From making crispy Peking Duck in China to Yakitori to an extraordinary level in Japan. It makes me want to smoke and cook.

 

I think I'll give bed a miss today and watch the next episode on Fried Rice ....

 

It is lovely to escape from one world to a better one. :)

[spinnaker2]

Agreed.

Escape is good.

[mysty]

Thanks J! Much more soul uplifting that discussions about guns! :) We enjoyed delicious Peking Duck in Hong Kong in 2009. One of our most favourite meals. Enjoy your gourmet viewing!

[UKCruiseJeff]

I have bookmarked some Peking Duck for next January in Singapore. And I impatiently dipped into the episode on fried chicken which is leaving me hungry and fowl. :)

[mysty]

:) Gastronomic enthusiasm is contagious!

[jpalbny]

We went out for dinner with some dear friends who we don't see often enough. Great fun.

 

Home now sipping some old vine Garnacha and spending time with the ancient cat. Think it's a matter of days now. 21 years isn't a bad run but still sad to think that she won't be with us much longer.

 

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[jillyf]

JP it’s very sad when part of the family gets to the end of their days. Our cat is only 13 but is a diabetic and has insulin twice a day.

We have just moved and wondered how he would cope, but he seems very happy to be inside. We’ve taken him for walks with a harness and lead and he unexpectedly likes that.

 

My husband says Charles Melton makes a great Grenache ( he thinks the same grapes as Garnacha). Your tour might take you there. We like his Nine Popes.

[UKCruiseJeff]

 

 

 

 

 

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[Camillus112]

Good morning, Coolers!

Jeff, the burger looks good, but where's the ketchup.......?