A world W/ out guns

[Treo]

I found this on THR it's a very realistic and thought provoking essay.
imagine the world without guns" was a bumper sticker that began making the rounds after the murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon on December 18, 1980. Last year, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, followed up on that sentiment by announcing she would become a spokeswoman for Handgun Control, Inc. (which later changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and which was previously named the National Council to Control Handguns).

So let's try hard to imagine what a world without guns would look like. It isn't hard to do. But be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture.

The way to get to a gun-free world, the gun-prohibition groups tell us, is to pass laws banning them. We can begin by imagining the enactment of laws which ban all non-government possession of firearms.

It's not likely that local bans will do the job. Take, for example, New York's 1911 Sullivan Law, which imposed an exceedingly restrictive handgun-licensing scheme on New York City. In recent decades, administrative abuses have turned the licensing statute into what amounts to prohibition, except for tenacious people who navigate a deliberately obstructive licensing system.

http://nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel120501.shtml

[jgraz]

1. Only in the gun group do we get unapologetic links to The National Review

What, was Newsmax too left-wing for ya?

[onehandle]

2. Next it will be Stormfront.

Just wait.

[Treo]

3. IOW I don't like the source therefore the information is invalid, got it .

Truth is truth where ever you find it.

[jgraz]

5. You can't make your point without directing people to far-right websites?

Maybe that should tell you something.

[Treo]

7. J you're just looking for trouble I won't be responding to you

If you feel that my thread violates any DU rules report it good day

[spin]

18. You have to admit that there is not a lot of pro-gun far left sites...

The link was an opinion piece. Often the opinions of the Brady Campaign and the VPC are linked to by anti-gunners.

The pro-gun advocates don't whine about this.

[AtheistCrusader]

25. The question is more, why would you think NRO has any credibility with your audience here?

Because they clearly don't. I imagine you'd get the same reception if you went to FR and posted something relying on original research by the Brady campaign.

Lead balloon, etc.

[paulsby]

33. i read the national review as well as the nation

just because a source is right wing does not mean it's not credible.

both are credible sources with different VIEWPOINTS.

that's a good thing.

[phasma ex machina]

31. Sturmfront seems more likely. nt

[Treo]

4. Is this piece posted on newsmax?

As I said I got this from Thehighroad.us it may have originally come from national review but I got it from THR

[jgraz]

6. You tell me. You're the one posting reactionary articles on DU.

[westerm]

9. hm

I notice you're not making any effort to refute the points made in the linked article. Pretty typical anti gun stuff, really. Your entire opinion on the issue is based on a knee-jerk antigun reaction, leading to your position being little more than "guns bad!". I always laugh when I see some anti gunner come into a thread like this and get all angry and then whenever someone challenges them on the issue, something as simple as "why?", most times, they get flustered and are unable to respond coherently and are forced to resort to "duhhh everyone knows why" over and over, rephrased endlessly.

[jgraz]

10. My reaction is that of any normal DUer when someone lovingly posts a link to a far-right site

I have no plans to read the article, because I have no desire to give hits to the National Review. If Treo wants to make his own argument based on his right-wing research, I'll be glad to respond. But, at present, the only thing to discuss is why someone on Democratic Underground feels the need to use National Review to make their point.

[westerm]

11. translation

"i am too dumb to actually argue against the point made in the linked article, so instead i'll whine about reactionary websites"

[jgraz]

12. Translation of your translation

"I just popped in from Free Republic, I don't know the rules and I can't be bothered to educate myself."

[rd_kent]

14. What rules is he breaking?

Only thing I see getting broken are your balls.

[friendly_iconoclast]

19. Do you have something to say about the *content* of the OP?

Or is your commentary concerned only with the source of the OP?

[Hugabear]

36. You sound just like Glen Beck when he whines. Is that you?

If so, welcome to DU, and enjoy your stay

[X_Digger]

16. "no plans to read the article" = willfully ignorant..

aka, "I know what I know, and no amount of facts can change that!"

*snort*

[paulsby]

34. lol

"lovingly posts a link"

i also love this self imposed ignorance.

here's a hint for you. EDUCATED people of all political stripes read commentary from both sides of the pole, so to speak.

national review is well respected and an excellent source for rightwing commentary. i read it.

i also read the nation.

i am sure there are many on the right who also read sources from both sides.

it's willfully ignorant to just ignore stuff like NR.

[DrCory]

29. Reactionary, eh?

Your use of that word is quite telling.

[DissedByBush]

30. I think we got some about Siebel Edmonds too

They get some things right I guess.

[rl6214]

35. Can't respond to the issue

So you have to attack the messenger?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

8. Arrows don't kill people, Indians do. On edit to add, Indian somehow

someway means "In God". In Dios I believe was the original.

[Euromutt]

15. The "In Dios" thing is a myth

Supposedly, Columbus saw something of the divine in the native Americans and therefore called them "In Dios." The story is a fabrication. The truth is that Columbus went to his death continuing to believe he'd found the (east) Indies, and called the native Americans "Indians" in the way that we'd call someone from Bangalore "Indian."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

20. You don't see something divine in the native Americans?

Pity that.

http://www.barefootsworld.net/sweatlodge.html
The Sweat Lodge Ceremony, now central to most Native American cultures and spiritual life, is an adaptation of the sweat bath common to many ethnic cultures found in North and South America, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, and Africa. It was prompted by the influence of European culture with its corrupting effect on native culture. With the introduction of alcohol and the inhumane treatment of native people, the need to re-purify themselves and find their way back to traditional ways of living became evident, as they were becoming increasingly poisoned by European culture. The Sweat Lodge Ceremony was the answer.

With the help of Medicine Men and Women, they could repair the damage done to their spirits, their minds and their bodies. The Sweat Lodge is a place of spiritual refuge and mental and physical healing, a place to get answers and guidance by asking spiritual entities, totem helpers, the Creator and Mother Earth for the needed wisdom and power.

A traditional Sweat Lodge is a wickiup made up of slender withes of aspen or willow, or other supple saplings, lashed together with raw hide, or grass or root cordage, although in some areas the lodge was constructed of whatever materials were at hand, from a mud roofed pit house to a cedar bark and plank lodge. The ends of the withes are set into the ground in a circle, approximately 10 feet in diameter, although there is no set size for a Sweat Lodge. That is determined by the location, materials available and the builder. The withes are bent over and lashed to form a low domed framework approximately 4 - 5 feet high at the center. The pit in the center is about 2 feet in diameter and a foot deep. The floor of the lodge may be clean swept dirt, or natural grassy turf, or may be covered with a mat of sweetgrass, soft cedar boughs, or sage leaves for comfort and cleanliness, kept away from the central pit.

The lodge in former times was covered with the hides of buffalo, bear or moose. In this day, the animal skins have been replaced with blankets, plastic sheeting, old carpet, heavy gauge canvas sheets and tarps to retain the heat and the steam.

[Treo]

21. They are human beings no more, or less, Divine than any other.

Are Norwegians divine because they sit in saunas?

[Artie Bucco]

22. They are divine because they eat lutefisk.

[Treo]

23. Eating Lutefisk should earn anyone a "by"

I have a can of gefelt(?) fisk in my pantry that is going to stay there until gabriel blows his horn.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

27. They are closer to the divine than heathens who don't recognize

or value the great pumpkin.

[Treo]

28. They're human beings

They have no greater or less value than any other human beings. I used to work on a ranch on the Rosebud reservation Indians are people just like any other people, they're weird.

[Euromutt]

26. I didn't say that, but as it happens, no

I said the claim that Columbus called the native Americans "In Dios" because he was something divine in them was false; I didn't say anything about my own views on the matter. But as it happens, I'm an atheist; I don't feel the urge to ascribe anything to some supernatural entity. As far as I'm concerned, native Americans are just as human as anybody else (as Treo puts it), with some cultural characteristics that are laudable, and some significantly less so (and note that it's a mistake to generalize about native Americans; they had quite a wide diversity of cultures).

[GreenStormCloud]

13. That is easy to imagine. The Dark Ages.

Go back to around the 12th century should do it. Anybody care to live that kind of life?

[Euromutt]

17. Guns were a nail in the coffin of feudalism

As David Landes puts it in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, describing the Tokugawa shogunate's decision to abolish firearms:

Worse yet, the gun was an equalizer. with it, the merest commoner could slay the finest samurai swordsman. One couldn't have that. So, no guns.

When the ruling class of a society depends on the power of professional warriors, equipped with arms and armor unaffordable to commoners (but all paid for from taxes), to remain in power, the last thing it wants to see is a piece of technology that can turn those armored thugs into dead meat with only a modicum of training in its use. Mark Twain had a point to make with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and there's a reason the main character is a gunmaker. Europe was fortunate in never being unified (like Japan), because no medieval ruler could afford to suppress firearm technology, lest the next dominion over gain a battlefield edge by adopting guns.

[Buzz cook]

37. I'd say the printing press and the enlightenment had more to do with it.

Swiss independence predates the common use of firearms. Wm. Tell used a crossbow not a matchlock.

The first major kingdom to fall was France. Not many guns in the hands of the people there.

Speaking of France; without French guns and soldiers the people of the US might be part of greater Canada.

The idea that each man is his own mediator with the divine given to us by the reformation was much more important than guns.

The idea that the voice of the people was the voice of god was much more powerful than canons.

The ability to cheaply copy and distribute those ideas and others was more powerful than the atom bomb.

[PavePusher]

38. Your first point...

Crossbows were the 'guns' of their time. They allowed a commoner to attain the functional equivelancy of the longbow-man without the literal years of practice and physical conditioning that longbows required, thus making effective archers dependent on a sophisticated support system relieving, at least in part, the requirement for them to farm their own food. Crossbows could be learned in a short period of time, did not require the physical endurance or the social support structure. They were slower, but you could put together more numbers to compensate for that.

[Buzz cook]

39. Crossbows have been around since Etruscan times

If they are (as you say) the great equalizer of the pre-gun powder era, why didn't they do more equalizing?
Pikes equalized the foot soldier peasantry with the horse born nobility. Many times the knights in shining armor were beaten by a couple of serfs armed with long pointed sticks.
With simple technology and massive numbers the people have always had the advantage over the oppressors. That is until the invention of modern firearms.

[Euromutt]

41. Too expensive, and insufficiently weather-proof

Arbalests could penetrate mail armor, and even plate at close range, and they required comparatively little training to use effectively, but compared to a hand cannon (or "gonne" if you prefer), they were fiendishly expensive, and the bowstrings were vulnerable to moisture, making them not much more reliable than hand cannon. Arbalests were not "simple technology," certainly not for the period.

And yes, pike formations have on multiple occasions trounced mounted knights, until the knights got smart and let their archers work the pike formations over first; see the battles of Falkirk (1298), Dupplin Moor (1332) and Halidon Hill (1333). Pikemen need be backed up with ranged weaponry.

[Buzz cook]

42. And knights beat the pike when they dismounted as well

The Spaniards beat the famous Swiss pike formations in a similar manner.

The argument here is that firearms gave the oppressed an ability to over throw their masters that hadn't existed before.
I disagree with the premise.

[Euromutt]

40. Yeah, notice how I said "A nail," not "THE nail"?

But the Enlightenment? That was the 18th century. Feudalism in western Europe pretty much died out during the 16th, and in England and France, a century earlier.

The basis of the feudal system was the exchange of land for military service: the crown gave land to the nobility, and the nobility provided the crown with professional armored thugs. During the late Middle Ages, there was increasing friction between kings and nobility due to the latter demanding influence in government. Thus, the kings sought other allies to aid them in suppressing the power of the nobility, and found them in the cities. But the nobility were still the ones with the professional armored thugs at their disposal, so the kings needed military power, which is why mercenaries became so popular in the late Middle Ages.

[JonQ]

24. It would make oppression alot easier

just get the strongest guys on your side and they can beat down everyone else.

The gun is a great equalizer, removing age, physical size, gender, etc as substantial factors in self-defense.

I suppose if you desire was to see the weak preyed on by the strong then a completely gunless world would be ideal.

[proteus_lives]

32. Create a world without criminals, extremists and crazies.

Then we can discuss the whole no-gun thing.