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Gentlemen, and the Ladies in our midst:

I found this scholarly analysis of the incremental progression of gun restrictions, and I would like to share it with the forum.

This is an article published in the Hamline Law Review of the Hamline University School of Law. As are many scholarly publications, it is somewhat tedious, but fascinating nonetheless. It illustrates vividly how our rights are defeated incrementally. They are chipped away in small pieces until nothing is left.

I urge each of you to read this.

ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA

Your attention to this issue is timely considering the gun control debate we are likely to face in the coming months and years.

Curl

I have not read the link above yet, but another excellent scholarly work of how England lost its firearm rights was published in a book by Joyce Lee Malcolm titled "Guns and Violence, the English Experience".

Every gun owner (and everyone else for that matter) should read "The Seven Myths of Gun Control" by Richard Poe.

Rights defeated incrementally? They're going now lickety-split. How could anyone be surprised by a majority making the rules in ostensibly a democratic society? Gun control didn't drop out of the sky. Politicians represent people, not telephone poles. What's reading a scholarly treatise while citizens blithely submit to infringements on liberty over the whole gamut of their daily lives? That's mowing our lawns while our roofs are on fire. We've succumbed to a culture of fear. Spin. Don't look to England as a model of deference. The manufacturing of fear has been brought to exquisite perfection in the United States of America.

It always nice to have a Kings perspective.
Best,
Ron

King,
I've always admired your insight. While I think your entire post is right on, the particular point that struck a cord was the last sentence. Bush used it to get a big piece of our rights pilferred in one move.

I also note that it's not just our politicians that are using fear. Lastnite, a friend brought up the TV commercial about the woman walking to her car at night in a lonely parking lot and her remote control indicated an intruder in her car. Talk about playing on fears! Theres a better chance of being struck by a meteor than someone getting into your car and laying in wait...saw where that happened (meteor) several times on Discovery Channel Also, OnStar has played the fear card to greater or lessor degree over the last few years.

Hi King,

I also enjoy your perspective. In this post I would contest that "Politicians represent people" (their constituancy). Ideally this would be true, but I think many represent special interests and many more like to advance their personal agenda or beliefs.

I would like a politician to represent their people while respecting the constitution and framework on which this country has been founded. Many of our ancesters have sacraficed in defending this country and its freedoms and liberty, I hate to see it compromised by politicians (yes even the ones I elect seem to be fairly ineffective, yes they sometimes do some good).

Jeff G.

Chuck, Americans wouldn't be aware of this but Canadians consider Anzacs their only peers as assault troops. We've always been placed dead-centre in hopeless (Dieppe) and glorious (D-Day) actions. The Germans were in a category of their own, principally because of field leadership of a professional army.

Exactly 90 years ago, Canada requested that the British and French move out of the way to allow it to take Vimy Ridge, a salient that had cost the the French and British 200,000 killed in the previous two years, We took it in three days at a cost of 3,600 dead, 11,000 wounded---and this little former colony gained a place at the armistice table.

Yet I think it was within 12 days of the Australian school massacre that legislators drafted the repressive gun laws. In Canada it took a bit longer for the long-gun registry after the McGill University massacre of 17 women engineering students. The world faced Cold War mutual nuclear destruction with far greater equanimity.

As for risk, if there were 9/11 every three months for five years the risk of being killed in one of them is 0.02 per cent. The American astronomer Allan Harris has calculated that at present rates the probability of anyone being killed anywhere by a terrorist over the same period as 1 in 80,000, about the same as being hit by a comet or asteroid.

About Anzacs our peers, I make no claim for the truth of it. It's only a perception, maybe a factoid from so many years in their company on battlefields. I don't think it has escaped anyone's attention that Canada drew the hottest sector in Afghanistan. Only the Anglo-Saxons are carrying the fight there and if the international community doesn't ante up we should get out of there.

Thanks for posting the link to this very informative essay; it makes for some interesting reading.