Congressmen in Brazil, one of the most violent countries in the world, are proposing to dramatically loosen restrictions on personal gun ownership, bringing the country much closer to the American right to bear arms.The politicians say the measures are necessary to allow embattled citizens the right to defend themselves from criminals armed with illegal weapons. But opponents say the move will only increase the country’s toll of nearly 60,000 murders in 2014.The draft law, which is set to be voted on by the lower house of congress this month, introduces a right for citizens to own firearms for self-defense or the protection of property. Currently, citizens must apply for a gun permit and justify why they need a gun, meaning that applications can be easily denied.
I doubt it will pass in its current form or anytime soon. But the fact that it is being seriously discussed is an amazing change for Brazil and South America in general. Basically somebody took a sledge hammer to the tectonic plates of status quo and gave it a good whack.
It also represents the desperation that grips people in Brazil. Criminals outnumber police and they are not afraid of them. The military was sent to the favelas (ghettos) and got their asses kicked. The good people are hostage of a well armed minority because Gun Control has been the doctrine since the early 20th Century.
However, the Brazilian Congress needs to also copy the U.S. self-defense laws that give the citizens the benefit of the doubt and the assumption of innocence, something that is lacking in South America. Without those, people will not feel confident enough to defend themselves. Those two together? Drop in crime will follow (and lots of criminals assuming room temperature)
“These are not abstractions. And this is where the arguments about the freedom of speech become most tone deaf. The freedom to offend the powerful is not equivalent to the freedom to bully the relatively disempowered. The enlightenment principles that undergird free speech also prescribed that the natural limits of one’s liberty lie at the precise point at which it begins to impose upon the liberty of another.”
I have one response: BULLSHIT!
I would now like to cite precedent:
National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977)
The American Nazi Party wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois. Why? Because Skokie had the highest percentage of holocaust survivors of any city in the country (1 in 6 residents). They were denied the right to march.
The NAZI Party sued and guess who came to their defense. The ACLU. Who was their lawyer? Burton Joseph, a JEWISH lawyer who’s parent ran a business as caretakers of Jewish cemeteries. The Supreme Court found for the NAZI Pary in a 5-4 decision. Who was one of the Justices who argued for the majority decision? The first African-American Justice to the US Supreme Court, Justice Thurgood Marshall.
THAT IS THE BEST OF AMERICA RIGHT THERE. A Jewish lawyer defending the freedom of speech for NAZIs, upheld by a black Justice. Two minorities who showed their mettle by proclaiming the right to freedom of speech and peaceably assemble was more important than feelings.
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
What does the NYT have as a retort? Safe Spaces, were only certain opinions, races, or sexual orientations are allowed. The NYT is doing a damn fine job upholding the great Democrat tradition of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Update:
The protest group Concerned Student 1950 – named for the year that Mizzou admitted its first black student – has just instituted segregation on campus. George Wallace would be proud.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national campus free-speech organization, posted the video to their Web site. Since then, a young woman who argues with Christakis in the footage has been called the “shrieking woman”by the National Review and subjected to online harassment and death threats.Surely these threats constitute an infringement upon her free speech—a position that has scarcely been noted amid the outraged First Amendment fundamentalism. This rhetorical victory recalls the successful defense in the George Zimmerman trial, which relied upon the tacit presumption that the right to self-defense was afforded to only one party that night—coincidentally, the non-black one. The broader issue is that the student’s reaction elicited consternation in certain quarters where the precipitating incident did not. The fault line here is between those who find intolerance objectionable and those who oppose intolerance of the intolerant.
Maybe they called her “The Shrieking Woman” because it fits?
The speech-restrictive tactics “Let’s Have a Conversation About Guns…SHIT UP YOU IDIOT!” are now being expanded to the First Amendment on Campus. Also the use of lies, dismiss when caught because there is a higher truth and purpose to achieve and then shift the blame to the other side because they got caught deceiving. This has caught Campus officials with their pantaloons and inner garments down.
This one is particularly twisted: I had caught some idiot posting pictures of racist events from years past and even in other countries as if they were happening at that moment in the University of Missouri. The original posting idiot was a troll belonging to a White Supremacist website who was displaying a photo of Abner Louima in 1997 at a hospital bed in NY as if it was some student shot overnight by the Klan.
Get it? It does not matter that it is all a lie! Because feelings and there are bad people including those who dare question the veracity of the lie! You Racist! This poor excuse for thinking human actually sides with a Nazi Wannabe and his poison than do the adult thing and face the music.
And then we have Jelani Cobb, the author of the original piece who wastes no time tying in this stomping of the First Amendment with the Trayvon Martin case. Why? Well, the damned Media tried but did a piss poor job of silencing opposing views and the truth in the case. That cannot happen again so we need to have a way to make sure only one side of the issue (the politically correct one) is heard and maybe it will spread into the courts. That way we can have people convicted not on the evidence but on the false coverage that they can develop.
I am actually having a bit of fun watching Academia being attacked by its creation. There is an old Spanish saying that goes:
Cria cuervos y te sacaran los ojos. (Raise crows and they’ll pluck your eyes out)
I figure there is a future in the sale of white canes at assorted locales of “High Education” across the nation.
Instead, Canizares-Esguerra and Timmons explicitly frame the conflict as a racial one, with supporters of gun rights cast as white racial oppressors who are the heirs of slavery, Jim Crow, and other acts of “settler colonialism.”“We are witnessing the great ideological return of settler colonialism,” they say. “America has all along been about the sheer display of white male power (with guns): over Indians, over slaves, over females, over Mexicans, over Asians, over African Americans, and over Arabs. [The] return of the vigilante movement is a giant, collective white push back against the Civil Rights Movement and against the unintended consequences of globalization,migration, and demography.”
The two authors also make the unusual argument that Texas’s concealed carry law is unconstitutional because it results in the suppression of free speech.
“When a student brings a gun into our individual first -amendment [sic] right to control the bond of trust and community that is constitutionally under our care,” they say. “Yes, this is a classroom he has privileged his individual right over our right to establish and control the bond of trust and community in the classroom necessary to teach. The mere presence of guns can intimidate and thwart free speech.”
So I guess I missed the part in the new law where it says only White People can carry on Campus. If any one of my readers care to point out where can I find it, I would appreciate it so much.
And as for the intimidation and thwart factors: I seem to recall that there is a great push for restricting speech on campus, but it is actually coming from the Liberal Left and at full speed. The recent recorded events at the University of Missouri where not only journalists were blocked from doing their jobs, but journalism professors were the ones directing the suppression of speech are just a recent example of it.
The guy in the glasses at the beginning (Professor Richard Callahan) is married to the redhead at the end of the video (Melissa Click, assistant professor of mass media.) Both do their earnest to crush First Amendment Rights.
Ain’t academic freedom wonderful?
Save your money, send your kids to technical school. They will end up with a career that would actually make more money than a major in Spiritual basket-weaving in the Neolithic Era.
I think in the last 48 hours I have come around on the issue of campus carry. It might in fact be a bad idea.
On principle, I believe that every law abiding citizen in entitled to the right to defend themselves. It is a natural right, a primordial right. The gazelle has horns to defend itself from the lion, the porcupine has quills to defend itself from the coyote, I have a gun to defend myself from who or what wants to do me harm.
In practicality, college students in the last couple of days have proven to me that they shouldn’t have so much as crayons and safety scissors. Owning and carrying a gun is a big responsibility. These kids have demonstrated a level of emotional and intellectual vacuousness that is causing time and space to warp around them.
Students at Yale, the No. 3 college in the country, are protesting and pitching a hissy fit because the wife of a dean of one of the colleges at Yale had the audacity to suggest in an email that maybe the school shouldn’t be policing what students wear for Halloween and that students had the right to express themselves. This is how one student described the response to an email defending the right to freedom of expression:
“I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.”
Let that sink in… students, at the No. 3 college in America… kids who are supposed to grow up to be Congressmen, Senators, and captains of industry are losing sleep and having breakdown because of an email that said “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” If this is the standard for behavior at the No. 3 college in America (I’m gonna keep driving that point home), what should my expectations be for the kids that come in below that.
The answer is … worse. So there are were three – at least two of which were unconfirmed – reports of racist activity on the campus of the Univerity of Missouri. The student body had been protesting for days and forced the resignation of the college president. From this there have been rumors spreading of every bit of hostile activity on campus, the Klan showing up, etc. None of which have been proven true.
One professor decided not to cancel class and continue with a scheduled exam. He emailed his students with the message: “If you give into bullies, they win. The only way bullies are defeated is by standing up to them.” He is right of course. For the transgression of believing that his students were made of sterner stuff, he was savaged online and resigned while his character was impugned by the media.
Emboldened by the kerfuffle at Mizzou, students at Ithaca College are protesting for the resignation of their president for… reasons that I can hardly understand since it didn’t seem like anything actually happened there. And the students of the University of Michigan are protesting in solidarity with the students from Mizzou and are causing havoc just because they can.
Speaking of solidarity for a moment, why does it not surprise me that the same people protesting for safe spaces on college campuses are also in solidarity with the Palestinians and anti-Israel anti-Semites (note the “Boycott Israel” bag)?
Here’s the thing. I live in Alabama. In 1963, black students faced attack dogs, fire hoses, and police with night sticks for the right to go to class. They went face to face with ACTUAL Klansmen, screaming n****r in their faces, for the right to go into a lecture hall, listen to a professor, and take a test. Today, the hoax of an unconfirmed rumor about the KKK on campus makes these students demand a professor be fired for not canceling class. This is so far past irony it is headlong into insanity.
These kids broke me. I want to trust them as adults. They are old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to go to war. But after all this, I can’t trust them with anything more intellectually challenging than a sticker book.
(I’d of normally said coloring book, but I’m afraid it would be a micro-aggression against the color blind and people who can’t color inside the lines and they will go on Twitter and threaten to burn down my house.)
And speaking of sterner stuff, civil rights, bravery, and gun rights. Here is a picture of Charleston Heston, the former president of the NRA, of “from my cold dead hands” fame, marching on Washington D.C. for Civil Rights in 1963. Fo those who love to call the NRA racist, there is our former president putting his career and personal safety on the line to take a stand for civil rights.
Charlton Heston and Harry Belafonte appear with Marlon Brando, who embraces James Baldwin, author and civil rights leader, in front of the Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington demonstration ceremonies on August 28, 1963.
Holidays are more fun when there is shooting involved. Halloween is no exception. The Halloween Horror shotgun match is an annual event in Arizona where competitors compete in costume in stages inspired by popular horror movies, games, or books. This year’s match was entirely based upon the Monster Hunter novel series by Larry Correia (if you haven’t read them you should).
Jackie Speier has spent the past 35 years as a state and federal lawmaker, devoting much of her energy to the issue of gun violence. For the 65-year-old congresswoman, the problem is not an abstract one. As a 28-year-old legal adviser to California Representative Leo Ryan, Speier was shot five times while accompanying a delegation of lawmakers and journalists on a fact-finding mission to the People’s Temple Agricultural Project, a Guyanese commune better known as Jonestown, led by enigmatic Indiana Communist and community organizer Jim Jones.
