Comments on Professor Meets Gun

• firearms
• Posted by Orwell on June 6, 2008 at 11:10am EDT

• I will not bury UD or other readers under an avalanche of pros and cons about guns or America's many different gun cultures. I merely hope UD finds her visit interesting and informative, and writes about the experience for us.

• Posted by francofou on June 6, 2008 at 11:25am EDT

• Keep your head down and don't sit with your back to the door. And remember: Guns Don't Kill, so take along something else when you go hunting.

• Posted by BSK on June 6, 2008 at 2:20pm EDT

• The degree to which my colleagues care what foreigners, often illiberal, more often ignorant of our way of life and political and cultural traditions, and all too often treating the products of their own hyperactive imaginations as sufficient alternatives to fact, think about US public policy is bizarre and worrisome.

  Since De Tocqueville's time, they've sneered at us. Let them: it makes for good jokes about an inferiority complex. I'm not willing to abridge my neighbor's liberty, put him (or her, for those who misread "him"...) in danger, or interfere with his livelihood just to satisfy a European ideologue. My ego is not that flimsy.

• Posted by Bill M. on June 6, 2008 at 2:20pm EDT

• I heartily applaud your efforts to learn more, but I would suggest not limiting yourself to the NRA.

  Learning about guns by going to NRA headqurters is like learning about cars by going to GM's headquarters -- you'll learn some useful stuff, but won't get the full experience of driving a car.

  I strongly suggest going to a range and actually doing some shooting under the supervision of a proper instructor. The NRA can probably suggest one.

• Guns, gun control and the NRA
• Posted by Doug Huggins on June 6, 2008 at 3:15pm EDT

• Perhaps to an outsider, the NRA looks like the Vatican of Gun ownership...not so. It's simply a useful political organization much of whose membership could care less who the "pope" is, as long as someone is able to get the word out when things look bad, and possibly help defend the deserving when they fall afoul of some petty bureaucrat or a prosecutor trying to make a name for himself. So guns, gun ownership, lawful concealed carry and organized political action to support the right to keep and carry guns is beyond your ken because of your upbringing and the university cultural milieu, is that your point?

  I'm a retired naval officer trained in chemical engineering and financial management, who never owned a gun until 1999, when I decided it might be prudent, in the event the doomsayers weren't exaggerating about the Y2K bugs in everyone's computers, including the power grid, the air defense grid, the air traffic control grid, the fuel distribution grid, etc. Happily, they were more than exagerating...they were smoking something other than Camels.

  Unreasoning fear of weapons, inability to understand why someone would want to own a gun, how someone reasonably enlightened could stand to be around a loaded gun, these are the things beyond my ken...To me a gun is at minimum simply a tool that does things a hammer or knife or power drill won't do...and some are more interesting than others because of their history, or their design, or how they function.

  I'll be back and write more, if my point of view might be helpful.

• Posted by Bill on June 6, 2008 at 3:20pm EDT

• I'm shocked! A university professor who thinks the Second Amendment should be repealed? Who would have thought it possible. O.K., sarcasm off.

  Next you're going to tell me the ultimate irony - he's a history professor.

  But seriously. I never cease to be amazed at the casual way in which certain hoplophobic people are willing to simply discard and yield to the government a fundamental right, considered by the founders of our country to be inherent in natural law. How bizarre would it sound for a liberal university professor to propone "repealing" the First Amendment? Or the Fourth? Or any of the basic, fundamental, natural rights purportedly protected by the Bill of Rights?

  He's concerned because people in other countries are interested in our Second Amendment? Maybe it's because they WISH their government would ALLOW them to own their own private arms. Read Federalist Paper #46, by some "wierd" old guy named James Madison. Here, I'll provide a key passage:

  "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

  What is unique among nations about our constitutional right to keep bear arms is not that we have the individual right, but that our government recognizes it and is sworn to protect it.

  Here's another crazy nutjob, I think his name was, uh - oh yeah, John Adams:

  "To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government."

  Some whacko named George Mason opined that to disarm the people "was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

  Finally, a mental incompetent who could barely tie his own shoelaces infamously wrote:

  "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

  Oh yeah, that was crazy old Ben Franklin.

  Mr. UD proposes a nightmare scenario for anyone who truly enjoys individual liberties and the concomitant responsibilities: arms only in the hands of government and a disarmed populace. How sad and tragic that an American - and I presume he is an American - would actually seriously propose such an outcome.

• Gun culture
• Posted by RKM on June 6, 2008 at 3:20pm EDT

• After a visit to the NRA, get a copy of Unintended Consequences by John Ross for you and hubby. Read it, then come back and tell us what you learned.

• Don't worry about it
• Posted by Don Gwinn , Lowly Special-Ed Middle School Teacher on June 6, 2008 at 3:25pm EDT

• The rest of the country thinks it's weird that people are so thoroughly frightened of inanimate objects. What matters is that UD is willing to find out for herself and examine the things she takes for granted. Her husband may learn more from her example than he thinks.

  Look at it this way--every student who grows up somewhere in the vast majority of U.S. territory and then goes to college does a much harsher version of what UD proposes to do. They go to their campus and find that suddenly everyone around them has "weird" ideas about guns, about economics, about politics--and a lot of the people with the "weird" opinions are professors who have direct authority over the student.

  At least UD gets to go talk to people who, while they may not be able to reach agreement with her, can't flunk her. :)

• I will follow your journey
• Posted by Trevor , Pedantic Ambassdor of Weaponry at Bellevue Univesity on June 6, 2008 at 5:25pm EDT

• And I expect it to be an interesting trip, no matter what conclusions you may draw from the experience.

• The Second Amendment
• Posted by Andrew Frechtling on June 6, 2008 at 5:25pm EDT

• Dear UD -

  You might point out to Mr UD that the Second Amendment is part of that whole that is sometimes identifed as "American Exceptionalism".

  Yes, most foreigners find the Second Amendment strange. Most foreigners probably find the First Amendment strange too, coming from countries that have long histories of suppressing speech, prohibiting dissent, and establishing state religions, like the Church of England?

  Can you say "Church of England"?

  I knew you could.

• Posted by Armed & Christian on June 6, 2008 at 5:25pm EDT

• Congratulations and well done! I am proud of you for having the character and fortitude to check this out for yourself.

  A gun is a tool, nothing more. It is a useful tool that prevents the young lady from becoming another rape/murder statistic. It helps the grandmother fend off the pack of thugs who would victimize her, and it allows a man to protect his home and family from invaders.

• Firearms
• Posted by Ashley Higgins on June 6, 2008 at 5:50pm EDT

• There's probably little useful information that a small-town Southern lawyer can provide to an Eastern professor about firearms. But I hope you enjoy your expedition to the NRA.

  There are three useful rules you might want to take with you. Treat every gun as if it were loaded, even if you know it is not. This is sort of metaphysical. The next two are practical: Don't point a firearm at anyone. Don't touch the trigger unless you want the firearm to discharge.

  If you do fire a firearm, expect the laws of physics to cause it to make a loud noise and to jump around. In a sense, it is kind of like a young male child.

• Keep exploring the world of the 2nd Amendment.
• Posted by Tarn Helm on June 7, 2008 at 6:10am EDT

• I too started off completely ignorant of guns and the 2nd Amendment.

  I had no idea what it meant or what it was intended to accomplish by those who designed the political blueprint upon which this country is organized.

  I was the family bookworm (studied philosophy, Greek & Latin); my brother was the adventurous one who went on to be a decorated deputy sheriff on his department's SWAT team and a highly accomplished gun handler even though firearms were not part of our upbringing.

  In about 1993, he took me to a gun range and the experience did nothing for me (I surmised that he had lost his mind at the Sheriff's Academy).

  Ten years and many books later, I began to understand what the 2nd Amendment was about.

  Read Stephen Halbrook, Rudolph Joseph Rummel, Joyce Malcolm, Don Kates, Gary Kleck, David T. Hardy, Robert J. Cottroll, David Kopel, and the many, many other distinguished scholars who write on the historical, legal, political, philosophical, and sociological dimensions of the 2nd Amendment.

  Studying the 2nd Amendment changed my life for the better.

  Studying the 2nd Amendment put everything I had ever read into perspective; it has given a center to my thought, so to speak, a gravitational field, a core, and meaning.

  Prioritizing political decisions became much easier once I started from the premise that we have not only an unlienable right to live but also to defend the life of ourselves and loved ones.

  More than that, we have a duty to be as self-reliant as possible with regard to self-defense in order to ward off predators, foreign and domestic.

  Those are the two main political rights and the one main political duty of a person committed to pursuing a just and free life in our polity.

  Everything else is secondary and derivative from and subordinate to those considerations.

  Anything that interferes with those two rights and that duty must be regarded as suspect.

  AnyONE who interferes with those two rights and that duty IS suspect and will never be trusted by me.

  Any politician who attempts to weaken my right and legal ability to defend myself must never and will never be trusted by me.

  Since beginning my study of the 2nd Amendment, I have learned a sort of "Socratic" lesson about what is important to know about politics.

  Even if I don't know whom to vote for, I definitely know whom NOT to vote for: anyone who attempts to weaken my right and legal ability to defend myself.

  I count that as precious knowledge.

  Good luck with your quest.

  Keep an open mind.

• kudos
• Posted by Jennifer on June 10, 2008 at 5:25pm EDT

• I'm very impressed at you venturing out to educate yourself. Bravo! I wish I was in your area. I would invite you to join me and few other ladies on a trip to the gun range. I'd even invite you to shoot the lovely revolver pictured on my blog. If you wanted. I wouldn't ever want to force it on you. I've now read your professor meets gun series backwards from number 3 and am anxious for the next installment.

• The Bill of Rights
• Posted by Hoth on June 11, 2008 at 5:10am EDT

• UD would do well to remind Mr. UD that none of the 10 Amendments contained in the Bill of Rights can be repealed. The Bill of Rights doesn't grant the citizens of the United States any rights, but instead is a recognition of inalienable rights inherent in all people. Without the 2nd Amendment the others mean nothing.

• Oh So Typical
• Posted by Grant Jones on June 12, 2008 at 9:30pm EDT

• "But of course the NRA is a world away from UD [University Diaries] herself. UD — a typical professor at least in this regard — embodies the blue state background that makes guns alien, frightening, disgusting things, and the NRA an outrage."

  Selective hiring practices will do that.

• Posted by UD on June 13, 2008 at 10:30am EDT

• You prefer unselective hiring practices, Grant?

• The Self-Selected
• Posted by Grant Jones on June 14, 2008 at 1:20pm EDT

• I would prefer intellectual diversity, which requires the hiring of those who don't toe the Party Line. How about you? And we all know what the Party Line is and how it is enforced.

• Posted by UD on June 14, 2008 at 1:55pm EDT

• You meant intellectual diversity? Read my other blog. I'm a fierce advocate of intellectual diversity, and I spend a lot of time complaining about its absence in most English departments.

  A careful examination of other departments - economics, entire business schools, many political science departments, etc. - will produce a more nuanced picture.

  Yes -- most professors vote democratic. But you don't want to go concluding too much about intellectual diversity from that. Ask Jim Webb.

• Intellectual Diversity
• Posted by Grant Jones on June 15, 2008 at 11:50am EDT

• I do not base my position that there is a lack of intellectual diversity in the academia on voting records. Although, the massive academic support for Obama is instructive on the mindset there.

• Instructors
• Posted by Seamus on July 2, 2008 at 4:30pm EDT

• "I strongly suggest going to a range and actually doing some shooting under the supervision of a proper instructor. The NRA can probably suggest one."

  They sure can, because the NRA offers courses that train people to be certified firearms instructors. They have many, many highly qualified instructors affiliated with them.

• It's a similar issue
• Posted by fsilber on July 3, 2008 at 8:50am EDT

• The proposition that government employees should have a monopoly on the legal possession of firearms is analogous to the idea, also quite popular among professors (especially in the 1970s and 80s when I was in college), that all property (the means of production) should be in the hands of the state. Just as one can point to bad things that happen when private citizens own guns, our economic system in general also allows bad things to happen to people.

  However, it turned out that making a few government bureaucrats responsible for making all economic decisions, large and small, was far less effective than a system in which all people were empowered to apply their observation, intelligence and judgment in their personal sphere of influence.

  And likewise, it turns out that crime _cannot_ be suppressed by a few government employees -- the most able person to stop a rape or robbery is the suitably armed private citizen targeted for that crime at that very moment.

• The emurated rights
• Posted by scott on July 4, 2008 at 5:30pm EDT

• I commend UD for her willingness to "open her eyes" to a different point of view...

  Have a great time UD, and remember...all those historic NRA museum guns didn't just jump up and shoot themselves...there was a hand connected to them and a brain telling that hand to squeeze the trigger...

• Guns
• Posted by George , Teach on August 5, 2008 at 1:20pm EDT

• UD,

  Don't be a wimp--pick up a gun and shoot it. Try a .22 first, then a .38, then a rifle, then a shotgun. You'll like it.