Skip to main content

Guest post by a Democrat gun-owner

A respected military veteran (and long-time friend of mine) Colonel Hank Foresman talks about what has to happen next in gun rights debates:


I am not a libertarian; nor am I conservative or liberal; in fact I guess I am a moderate whose views are shaped by the ideologies of libertarianism, conservatism, and liberalism.
Today I find myself torn between the three competing ideologies that influence me on the question of gun ownership and regulation.  As a libertarian the notion that the government should infringe upon the rights of individuals enshrined in the constitution is abhorrent; as a Burkean conservative I understand that at times the rights of individuals must be tempered in order to provide for the commonweal of the larger community; and as a liberal I believe that the government has a role in regulating the lives of the people for the betterment of society. 
I find myself torn over the question of gun ownership.  I do not know what the right answer is?  But what I do know it is a discussion that I and other responsible gun owners along with every citizen in the nation must have.  We must be willing to listen to those with other views, but they also must listen to our views.  This is a discussion that must be based on fact not emotion, it must rational and without rancor, for each sides view must ultimately shape the answer. 
If this is not handled properly, if like the healthcare debate, the elites ram down a solution on the masses of law abiding gun owners I fear mass civil disobedience and possible revolution; if nothing else there will be wedge firmly driven between the educated east and west coast elites and the great mass who view themselves as the common man.  As a gun owning Democrat I generally reject the view of those who believe the Democratic Party wishes to confiscate guns, but given the rhetoric of the last week I am not so sure.
While the left can be accused of a tin ear when it comes to theSecond Amendment and what the common man wants; it can be said that the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of American etc that they live in a fantasy world.  Proposals such as arming teachers and putting police in every school are bound to be dead upon arrival in the minds of parents those attending public school.  There are many Americas who believe the NRA and Gun Owners of America are nothing more than shills for the gun industry and should be considered terrorists organizations.  On the first count they are guilty as charged; on the second count it is a fanciful charge.
Read the rest here. 

Comments

Guns said…
well i would like to say that every Gun owner should know his responsibility, and also know the rules and regulations regarding guns.
January 4, 2013 at 1:42 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...
44 comments
Read more

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...
22 comments
Read more

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...
26 comments
Read more