Guns & Ammo columnist fired
Ok, some thoughts from me on this.
While the argument is that there are limitations on the Constitution, that the gun grabbers use as their “moderate, rational argument”, it is anything but rational, nor is it intellectual. The premise that there are limitations on freedom of speech, because you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater, is flawed from the beginning. The reason it is flawed, is because there are two different things affected by that premise. One is yelling “fire”. I can stand in the middle of the street and yell “fire” without incurring the wrath of law enforcement. Doing so in a crowded building invokes safety as the crime that I would be charged with, not speech. I would be charged with inciting a riot, because I am using words to gain a reaction, just as if I were to tell someone to kill my neighbor. If they did, I wouldn’t be charged with a violation on the limitations of free speech, but rather with conspiracy to commit murder. Same with the other Amendments.
What people are forgetting is that you are infringing on my 2nd Amendment rights, since my exercising of it in no way infringes on the rights of anyone else. To Keep and Bear Arms in no way, shape, or form infringes on the rights of anyone else, period. If I use one of those arms to commit a crime, then it really doesn’t have anything to do with the 2nd Amendment, since I would be infringing on the rights of someone else and that is the crime for which I would be in trouble, not keeping and bearing.
Category: Guns
Very clear thinking. Hopefully it’ll give pause to the casual gun-grabber.
I have a slightly different take, although I agree with everything you have written. Were I the editor in chief at G&A, I would have both published the article, and kept the offending writer on staff.
I would have run a disclaimer at the beginning of the article, clarifying the magazine’s position on the Second Amendment and underlining that Mr. Metcalf’s position is a dissenting view.
One of the problems each of us faces today is that we can tailor our news sources into an impermeable echo chamber, into which no dissenting opinion reaches. This leaves us unaware of the world around us, and less able to successfully debate the people on the other side. This is part of the reason why Romney lost in 2012–he thought he was winning, because his “echo chamber” polls were telling him just that.
Hearing only what we want to hear ensures we become and stay second rate. We must know what the other side is saying, so that we can counter their spin when we hear it. And once in a blue moon, the other side actually gets it right.
I encourage each of you to find a Leftist website to read at least twice a week, or a Leftist Facebook page to “like.” It will provide you with tons of ammo for your next fight with the dimwitted and the True Believers.
Incidentally, I cannot call Leftists “liberals,” because the word implies freedom, which they definitely oppose. Nor can I call a group “progressive” when they cling to a Nineteenth Century collectivist big government ideology that failed decisively in the 1990s. So “Leftist” they are, from where I sit.
Cordially,
Ranger Pat
I read his piece after reading the story of his being fired. His first paragraph shows he does not understand the Constitution or it’s meaning.
He has done a great deal of great things for gun owners in the past and his column started a real debate. He should not have been fired for writing this, that is a ridiculous over reaction.
Everyone should read the entire column at the root of this controversy first then comment.
An old saying:
“Never mess with a person’s car, kids, or pets. If you choose to do so… watch out for the “nuclear response!”
The pro-gun advocates have been promoting an “under siege mentality” for years in their magazines. This position is understandable, with the gun laws passed in the last several decades.
When you “mess” with the Gun-rights advocates tenets, and put it in print in THEIR magazine, watch out for the repercussions! Their “nuclear response” was a firing.
There are permissible and constitutionally agreeable limitations on the exercise of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. There is no question about that. Were they not such limitations, anyone at any time could own any weapon he wishes, carry it wherever he wishes and whenever he wishes. But we all know that we can’t. Why? Because reasonable restrictions are permissible. A flat proihibition on gun possession and ownership, the ultimate goal of the gun grabbers, is not reasonable. The question is why this fellow elected to use the magazine to make his point. The information is readily available elsewhere and there is no paucity of conflicting views regarding the 2nd Amendment. He was not exercising his 1st Amendment free speech right. He worked for a private employer. So, he screwed up and lost his job. That’s life. My take on most of the permissible restrictions is that they ought to be fought tooth and nail at every opportunity and not merely conceded. After all, it was the Supreme Court that recognized the restrictions, and it is a (certainly not the present one) Supreme Court that can undo them.
Spot on! Clear thinking like this needs to be repeatedly stated to the general populace to cut through the dissembling fog the anti-gun Nazis spew out.
Dick’s reply shows he still doesn’t get it
http://www.theoutdoorwire.com/features/228229
At the bottom of his, well, speech he posts these questions
1. If you believe the 2nd Amendment should be subject to no regulation at all, do you therefore believe all laws prohibiting convicted violent repeat criminals from having guns are unconstitutional? Should all such laws be repealed?
2. Do you also believe all laws establishing concealed-carry licenses are unconstitutional?
3. Do you have a concealed-carry license anyway?
4. Are you thereby violating the Constitution yourself?
I would hope this discussion could continue.
Is he being dense on purpose?
This is his ”A” game?
Ok Dick,
1.Not even a good straw man here.
The laws against violent criminals having firearms are not “gun” laws they are behavior laws. If you act outside of the accepted rules of society then the law says you lose some of your rights.
This is not to be confused with any laws that say non criminals must meet requirements to have their rights.
Criminal behavior = loss of rights
Citizens possessing guns = exercising of rights.
Laws against criminal behavior that causes loss of firearms rights = Societies restrictions on behavior.
Laws on firearms or possession of firearms of Citizens = infringement.
2.Yes.
Yes they are, you should not have to be declared a good and true citizen by any government agency to exercise your rights.
3.Yes
While I believe it is an infringement of my rights, it is the law where I live and
like the huge majority of gun owners I am a law abiding Citizen.
Do not confuse that with supporting or agreeing with that law.
4.You mistake me for the U.S. Government. The constitution limits the power of
Government, I am not the Government. I cannot violate the constitution.
Dick you seem to be missing some basic understanding of the Constitution.
Don’t blame it on the internet.
@2: You’re right, he shouldn’t have been fired, however, there should have been a rebuttal article to go along side the offending article. That way, the arguments for restricting the 2nd Amendment could have been rationally argued against at the same time and readers could have both sides at once, kind of like the old “point/counter-point” on the evening news.
Says Dick, the writer, in the piece linked in comment 7, as quoted in the same comment, “I would hope this discussion could continue.” Well, there you go. That’s the thing. Dick wants the discussion on gun restrictions to continue. Discussions of what? Whether the Supreme Court should have done this or that? Towards what end is this desired discussion aimed? The gun grabbers want your guns. The gun grabbers want ONLY the enforcers of the state to have guns. What discussion is there to be? No, I’m not buying this discussion crap. So, I’m out.
@5: Please define “reasonable”?
I have been subjected to the statement of “reasonable restrictions” many times in the gun debate. What is reasonable to one person may not necessarily be reasonable to another. I get asked; “should I be allowed to have a full-auto machine gun”? I answer; yes. Is my response “reasonable”? Those that say no try very hard to prove it to be unreasonable by basing their argument on the flawed logic that they use for their general argument. Prior to the prohibition era, I could own a machine gun, but the flawed logic that permeates the debate today was used, back then, to ban lawful ownership by the masses. The next question I get asked, by those that try to define “reasonable” is; “should I be able to own a canon”? Again, the answer is; yes. Same with a tank (which I can buy right now, if I had won the lottery, but what they are getting at is the gun on a tank). What is more dangerous; a tank without the gun, or a tank with the gun?
The point is; if we want to have “reasonable restrictions” based on potential, then we had better lock everyone up, because women have the potential to be prostitutes and men have the potential to be “johns”. At the gun grabber hearings, here in Minnesota, this past Winter/Spring, te gun grabbers were trying to infuse intent on the inanimate object in front of them. Just like when cartoons give human attributes to animals, the anti-gun types try to give guns intent and then argue that point. That’s not reasonable, nor is it honest.
There’s a big damn difference between “some limits” and what the most recent gun bills have been trying to do. Gave the far left an inch, the took a mile and now think they can try to take a mile all the time on every issue. Then the idiots are shocked when people say “hold on a minute”.
@2 When Metcalf wrote this, he already had one foot out the door, to hear what Guns & Ammo was claiming. I like how Metcalf is now crying that we’re infringing his ‘first amendment writes’. No one is. He’s being punished for the stupidity of what he says. This would be like letting notoriously anti-video game jackass Jack Thompson write an article in a video gaming magazine. Of course you’ll lose subscribers, you just paid someone to insult your target audience. As for the answer to Metcalf’s idiotic screed: 1. You neglect to notice the difference between a law abiding citizen and a criminal. Ignoring that the criminal will probably end up with another firearm anyway (because they kill about 8000 of each other a year), you’re also ignoring that their loss of liberty was entirely of their own doing, much like their loss of a vote. That’s also ignoring that, in most states, there is an appeals process by which even a convicted felon can attempt to get their right to keep and bear arms back by showing that they’re no longer a piece of shit likely to use said firearm for crime. This is like saying ‘just because you committed a crime doesn’t mean you should lose your right to liberty’. No, that’s pretty much exactly what it means. You’ve shown that, because of who you are, you will abuse your rights. Thus, you are denied them until such time as you can show you’re not a threat to society as a whole. 2. Yes, they are unconstitutionally federally. But at the state level, they are, more or less, constitutional. 3. Given the choice of either being able to legally protect myself or illegally carry a firearm, I chose the method of least hassle. Do not equate my abiding with local laws with consent for them. 4. A classic failure to understand the constitution. The constitution only applies to government, not myself. If I were the government and I had squashed your article from print, I’d be infringing. If I’m a private organization or individual and I refuse… Read more »
#8 That would have been a great way to “have a discussion,” and would have filled column inches. Great improvement.
#9 I agree, except that the discussion will happen anyway. We should ensure we are a powerful part of it.
Ever notice how “The Big O” says that once his programs are “the law of the land,” we should all salute and stop griping, but when he wants to change the law, it is because of some pressing need, and that “the American people cannot wait”?
That is how the gun control debate will continue. It is wrong, arguably criminal, but as Churchill noted, “Success is never final, defeat is never fatal.”
We must not ever fool ourselves into believing that our gun rights are safe. We are always one election and a mass shooting (likely in a “gun free zone”) from confiscation.
We cannot prevent that if we cede the debate to the other side by forfeit. We need to study what they will say and stand prepared to calmly refute it with common sense and the Constitution. With respect, “I’m out” isn’t a winning strategy.
Best,
Ranger Pat
#12 I agree with all you wrote. I couldn’t care less whether or not Mr. Metcalf keeps his job, and he certainly got a predictable response to his behavior.
I would keep him around, writing his dissents, so that we can watch his arguments evolve and stay prepared to counter them. Again, the echo chamber is a dangerous place.
We must stay able to calmly persuade those who are persuadable.
All of that said, don’t look for me to be tossing coins into Mr. Metcalf’s hat when he is standing at the intersection with his little sign:
Out of work anti-gun columnist
Please help
God bless U (is it a requirement that EVERY bum add that last line to his sign?!?)
Best,
Ranger Pat
Okay, G&A Editor, as a general rule, if you’re gonna smugly talk about how constitutional rights aren’t absolute (duh!), so you trot out the “fire in a crowded out theater” line to make some point, you might want to read the case (U.S. v. Schenck). It’ll make you seem a bit more serious.
(1) Shouting fire in a crowded theater can be constitutionally protected (i.e., if there’s a fire). So, if you’re gonna quote it, the key phrases to include are “falsely shouting” and “causing a panic.”
(2) The quote was rhetorical flourish by Justice Holmes, an analogy that was in no way binding law, since (a) it was (basically) dicta, and (b) had nothing to do with the facts of the case. “Bomb in an airport” is a better choice.
(3) The actual facts and holding of the case are, to modern sensibilities, grotesque:
In 1919, Schenck was was convicted under the Espionage Act for non-violently opposing the draft and war during World War I by handing out pamphlets; the Court upheld his conviction on the grounds that advocating for peaceful petition to repeal the draft constituted a “clear and present danger” to the country (during war). Holmes soon after doubled-down by suggesting that merely saying “I hate war” might likewise be criminal. It was a trio of decisions slightly less odious than “three generations of imbeciles.”
(4) Apart from the fact that Holmes soon realized the error, later dissenting in similar Espionage Act cases, Schenck was eviscerated years later, beginning with Brandenburg v. Ohio, and then every KKK rally/hate-speech/heckler’s veto case since, particularly re the substantial burden the Government has re restricting the speech rights.
(5) Since Brandenburg, cites to Holmes’ quote (during the legislative history or argument) is almost a guarantee that a criminal statute (at least re state stuff) will be struck down.
The idea that there are limitations on the Constitution, or that the Constitution is a “living document” are just ways of saying that politicians can pass any law they like, and that our rights are up for grabs.
The American people have allowed these criminals to undermine the Bill of Rights for decades. Not only has the Second Amendment been ignored, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth are have been under attack since Bush.
The idea that Washington can spy on us, read our e-mail, tap our phones – all without a warrant, sounds more like Nazi Germany than the US. The Nazis never told the Germans that they were enslaving them. They told them that they were “protecting them from terrorism”.
Now we have a president who thinks he has the authority to assassinate American citizens without a trial. Don’t think I am defending some terrorist, I am telling you that if that terrorist can be murdered without a trial, so can YOU.
Maybe someone who opposed Obamacare, or fights for his Second Amendment rights, or opposes the UN or the next unnecessary, undeclared war might be considered a “terrorist”.
The real threat is coming from Washington.
Look at who owns G&A, and other gun/hunting magazines and to whose political campaigns the owners contribute to.
Dude broke the 11th Commandmant: Thou Shalt Not Give Left/Libtards an Inch… ’cause sure a shit their “common sense gun restrictions” crap will disarm us like England.
There is no “compromise” with a group whose position is “give us part of what we want now, and we’ll get the rest of what we want later”. That’s what the grabbers want and the only position that preserves RKBA is uncompromising resistance to them. Metcalf’s piece in Guns & Ammo gives the hoplophobes propaganda that can be used against those of us who value RKBA. He had to go or Guns & Ammo would continuously lose subscribers among the one demographic that they could not afford to lose, that’s the simple equation at work here.
@2 The word liberal in the USA means almost the complete opposite of what it means in the Commonwealth. In the Commonwealth a liberal is someone who adheres to the political philosophy of liberalism which is a centrist philosophy so has adherents in all parties. (They tend to piss off their more right wing and left wing comrades in their respective parties.) From the perspective of a Briton the GOP is the more liberal of the two parties.
It pisses me off too when Democrats are called liberals.
Kenneth-true, “leftists” (i.e. inspired by Marx) would be more accurate than “liberal” (i.e. inspired by J.S. Mill or Adam Smith) in describing parties of the left today.
This article should make you wince. Although these students were living in a school-owned apartment, and the university has a ‘no guns’ policy, they feel they are being forced to choose between being expelled and defending themselves from a felony break-in.
Note that the real cops (not campus police) did not arrest them, nor is there any indication that any weapon was fired.
http://now.msn.com/erik-fagan-and-dan-mcintosh-gonzaga-university-students-face-expulsion-for-stopping-break-in-with-gun/
@2 Ranger Pat. Well said but may I suggest that rather than visiting just one lefty blog on a daily basis one can avail himself of the leading lefty opinion makers output by daily visiting the Daily Caller, Breitbart, etc. and especially News Busters. They all post the latest leftist non-thinking.
I will agree that if you want to view the views of the common lefties expressed in their comments, you must go to the websites they frequent. However, most of those views are so uninformed as to render them useless.
Old Trooper, congratulations on a well thought out essay. I confess that your line of reasoning had not previously occurred to me. It will remain with me forever as an effective way to refute that comparison of First and Second Amendment limitations. Of course it employs logical thinking and we all know how little effect that has on the Left.
@23 I failed to point out that those sites I cite are all conservative news and opinion websites.
I guess the 19 year old african american woman who got her head blown off in the detroit suburb when she knocked on whitey’s door asking for help didn’t have her rights infringed by the second amendment either!
Oohhh gawd!!!! VWPussy is back again!!!
If you’re going to spew uninformed opinion as a news quote, please cite references – news source, date, city, names of persons involved, etc. In other words, the Five Ws+H; Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.
Otherwise, it’s just your propagandist uninformed opinion blowing shit out your asshole (in this case, the one under your nose).
“something, something, half-understood current event, something, something, hot-button non-sequitur, something, something, something.”
B Woodman-apparently there’s quite a bit more to the story (quelle surprise) than out idiot friend here has related.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/07/woman-shot-to-death-while-seeking-help/3465719/
I know, I know-who ever heard of a dishonest lefty troll? Shocking, right?
Still, given that he doubtlessly got the story from God knows what lefty propaganda organ that could whittle it down to single syllable words for his digestion, I’m just amazed that he doesn’t think Bush the younger personally hunted the young woman down and shot her for sport.
I read through the story link. And feel sorry for the dead young woman and her family.
But somehow it now feels sullied and slightly dirty having passed through VWPussy’s mental processes.
And to use that story to somehow paint with the broadest of brushes that ALL gun owners are irresponsible and must be therefore disarmed just smacks of the deepest of hypocrisy.
The Leftist Libtards want tolerance, forgiveness, and forbearance for THEIR special groups. Where is OUR tolerance, forgiveness and forbearance??
As has been pointed out many times before by those better then I, gun control isn’t about the guns, it’s all about the (waaaaaaiiiiit for it. . . . ) CONTROL.
Vietnamasssniffer. @25 So we are supposed to trash the second amendment because of negligent or criminal actions of individuals? That’s like saying We should be allowed to drive because of all the cases of vehicular manslaughter. Better yet it’s like telling me to not use my dick because your dad bred a fucking idiot.
@25: I guess that we need to restrict alcohol and driving, further, because there were at least 10 drunk driving deaths last night? What’s that? Most people don’t drive drunk? True, but we need to severely restrict the things that can cause someone to drive drunk, because a drunk driving fatality could happen. How about cell phones? More people were killed, yesterday, because someone was texting while driving than people were killed by guns; so I say that we need to severely restrict cell phones, because someone could get killed while texting and driving/ Better yet; let’s just ban cars, since the above examples have one common thread in them i.e. driving.
See how that works? You set the bar at a ridiculous level, then you argue to that level, so that it appears logical, but is actually an artificially set standard designed so that you to lose the argument. That’s what leftists, like yourself, are masters at.
OT. I would have responded to you sooner but I was away and unable to respond sooner than this. The reasonableness standard is a legal invention or construct that asks whether a reasonable, average person (as opposed to a lunatic or a highly trained expert) similarly situated to the subject of the matter at issue would, say, act as the subject did. Although it is said to be an objective test, the answer is purely subjective. That is, it cannot be arrived at through science or quantified. What’s more, the answer to the question is not fixed but is wholly dependent on existing social mores and culture. The test is used commonly in tort law. When a court applies the reasonableness test to anything, the court is effectively saying that for this particular place and time, we find x, y, or z to be reasonable. Similarly, abortion, once completely taboo and illegal, came to be reasonable and legal before a certain stage of pregnancy but not after. You and I may reject a court’s determination wof what is and is not reasonable but the final word, in nearly all cases of constitutional import and effect, belongs to that little group of lawyers in DC. s that
I don’t know what happened but that comment wasn’t complete. Preceding the abortion example was the mention of ‘separate but equal.’
@32: The point I was making was the way the anti-gun crowd uses ridiculous examples and then argues against those examples in order make it seem that they are the more reasonable and logical. They, also, infuse inanimate objects (guns) with intent and then want to legislate based on the intent that they, themselves, imported on said inanimate object (gun).
VWP–now if you’d just try to break in someone’s house at 4 am, we’d all be happy.
You are all missing the point. There is endless, venal, gaper-block excitement in ‘someone was shot by a homeowner during a breakin’ than there is in ‘no houses were broken into overnight in the 500 blook of North Lilac Lane’.
By that same comparison, if 500 wannabe burglars and thieves try to break into a homeowner’s home when the homeowner is present, and gets shot in the process, then there are 500 opportunities to get a vicarious adrenaline shot, however small, from that bit of news.
On the other hand if the story is ‘309,999,500 homes were NOT broken into and NO ONE was shot or whacked with a frying pan, there is no adrenaline shot, no vicarious bit of excitment, and it’s boring. That’s the actual argument he wants to use and didn’t, and it is fallacious.
Guns don’t cause crime any more then atomic bombs cause hiroshimas. What about reagan’s welfare cadillac queen example. Huh!
hiroshimas?
There’s more than one?
I think hundreds of years of Japanese civilization “caused Hiroshima”, but you probably meant “the atomic bomb (singular) caused the Hiroshima bombing” which isn’t really true either, but you lack the necessary basic literacy to express even that.
Have to wonder how many actually went back and actually READ Metcalfe’s original column. His premise was that having a training class for CCW (or CHL or whatever your state calls it) for a day or two isn’t a bad thing. His reasoning was that a) there are a lot of people who NEED some damn firearms training (God knows I see them at the range!) and b) No Constitutional right is unlimited. Maybe his example of ‘yelling “fire” in a theater’ is a bit shopworn, but slanderr and libel are certainly not ‘free’ speech. There are some restrictons on almost any right you can name. I’m gonna take an unpopular stance here (nothing new) – I didn’t find his original column outrageous, I think he was fired without cause, and the knee-jerk screamers who automatically start foaming at the mouth at any mention of anything that is not ‘open full auto carry” or whatever probably do more harm than good to the gun-rights cause.
Spare me the invective, I’m a Life Member of the NRA – but I too think requiring a class and qualification for CHLs is not unreasonable, and certainly helps my peace of mind to think that hopefully when Bubba pulls down on some miscreant, he isn’t going to shoot me by mistake.