Delaware Gun Bill Gets Heated Response ...

[spin]

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell is firing back about a proposed bill to let all residents of the state's public housing developments to carry guns.

A major second amendment battle is brewing over the issue.

Markell says he is trying to keep in place what he believes are common sense gun control laws.

The dispute targets a simple, but confounding question: Are handguns part of the problem of violence or are they part of the solution?

Handgun posession is against the law for residents of Delaware's public housing properties. And the handful of WHA residents we talked to in Wilmington, believe that's probably for the best.

But House Bill 357 would ban public bodies like the WHA from exercising the authority to regulate firearms.

In short, it would allow residents to carry guns.

"This is not an NRA initiative. This is something the people have asked for," said John Sigler, a former Dover police captain and current board member of the National Rifle Association.

"The Delaware constitution makes it clear that a person has a right to keep and bear arms for the protection of themselves, their families and their homes," Sigler said.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/030510-delaware-gun-bill-gets-heated-response

Delaware government: Gun lobbyist's bill drawing fire

***snip***

At Tuesday's rally in Wilmington, the Rev. Derrick Johnson, pastor at Joshua Harvest Church, said the NRA-backed bill, H.B. 357, is dangerous and will lead to even more gun violence in Wilmington, and elsewhere. Johnson says the NRA is attempting to create the image that they are standing up for people in public housing.

"What's particularly disturbing is the NRA is trying to put a black face on their gun-rights objectives, when the very people who will be impacted by this will actually be made more vulnerable to shootings and killings and I'll end up preaching at even more funerals."

Johnson said the group that rallied in front of Unique Day Care Center at Concord Avenue and Washington Street opposes the bill in any form.

"I don't think it was meant for public housing only," he said. "I think the sponsors and the NRA got caught with their pants down."

Even if the final version of the bill only applies to public housing authorities, it would still be dangerous, Johnson said.

***snip***

Matthew Allen, 53, a member of the Wilmington Peacekeepers group, said he prefers trying to comfort and convert young criminals to change their ways.

"We use love, hugs and lollipops to try to change them," he said.


http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100311/NEWS02/3110352/Gun-lobbyist-s-bill-draws-fire

From an article by the Delaware States Sportsmen's Association
House Bill 357 introduced to overturn Public Housing gun bans

The bipartisan legislation would limit the authority of public bodies to regulate firearms, absent specific authorization from the General Assembly.

By Lee Williams

A bill that would stop the state’s public housing authorities from banning guns was introduced today, co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of more than two-dozen state lawmakers.

Millsboro Democrat Rep. John C. Atkins and Georgetown Republican Sen. Joseph Booth are the prime sponsors of HB 357

Both have said their legislation comes in response to an ongoing investigative series by the Caesar Rodney Institute, which revealed that every housing authority in Delaware banned their residents from owning firearms for self-defense.

After CRI’s series was published, the Newark Housing Authority withdrew its firearms ban. However, the Delaware State Housing Authority, along with the Wilmington and Dover housing authorities, still prohibit their residents from owning firearms.

***snip***

Laurel Democrat Sen. Robert L. Venables, Sr., said none of the housing authorities ever held public hearings before they enacted the gun bans.

“The bureaucrats made those decisions,” Venables said. “I’m not sure they should do that.”

“I am allowed to have a gun in my home to defend myself and my family,” he said. “It seems unfair that good, decent people in a poor economic situation can’t defend their property. I think our constitution should not only apply to people who own their own homes, but to people who live in public housing as well.”
http://blog.delsports.net/?p=220

[sui generis]

1. "the bureaucrats"

nice. How about "the manufacturers".

Follow the money, as usual.

[DonP]

2. Which manufacturers?

Are you suggesting that firearm manufacturers are behind this?

I'm sure, since you say "follow the money", that you can show us where the funding is all coming from.

Since the entire US Firearms industry consists of a handful of relatively small, privately held companies, and a few bigger ones like Smith & Wesson, Beretta USA and Colt. Collectively they account for less money than American's spend on Potato Chips in a a given year, it's probably not the Gun manufacturers.

I mean ... it couldn't possibly be the actual citizens in public housing that might want the right to defend themselves and family, could it? Or are they too simple minded to make their own choices? Now that has a truly ugly sound to it, doesn't it?

[sui generis]

3. I'll bite.

Just as soon as you get down off yer high horse missy so we can see eye to eye.

I think guns ADD to crime. I also believe in the second amendment. I also think that it's wrong to deny someone the right to purchase and own a gun in a housing development when the local law permits gun ownership. Note that I said local law, and that's where you might pause with your foot in the stirrup and wind your dander up again. Not that I care. Gun manufacturers DO have a vested interest in manufacturing more guns, Economics 101, not NRA Pamphlet 101. Comparing guns to potato chips is right out of your NRA remedial reader.

Whether I believe they SHOULD be allowed to have guns or not (I do), I don't think the poor noble poor housing project people defending their magnificent heirlooms and accoutrements require guns, and if they're spending money on guns and ammo and spending time getting all cockeyed crazy paranoid gunownerish, they could be spending money and time hauling their asses out of the ghetto rather than planning to stay in it.

But that's just what I think, since we're here having a discussion and not a shootout.

[GreenStormCloud]

4. If guns add to crime, then why is crime falling as gun ownership is increasing?

Not all guns are expensive. You can get a Hi-Point in .45 for under $200, brand new. A used one would be less.

People in projects get burglarized too, even though their possesions are aren't "magnificent heirlooms". Do you think only the super-wealthy have stuff to defend. The project person most valued and important possesion will usually be their car. They NEED that car to try to get work and to climb out of the projects. That car must be defended.

The women in project need to be able to protect themselves from rape just as much as any other woman.

[shadowrider]

6. You can get a Windicator .357 for $250 or so, brand new

[spin]

17. This report shows that the Windicator .357 ...

is cheap but functional. It's not a Smith and Wesson by any means but still it should be a good self defense weapon.

http://www.handloads.com/articles/default.asp?id=22

[shadowrider]

21. I saw that report

and considered a Windicator. In the end, I got a Millenium PT140 (.40 cal) for less than $325 with an extra magazine.

The nice thing about the Windicator, it'll fire .38 specials greatly reducing the kick.

[shadowrider]

5. I think guns ADD to crime (Your words)

Yup, you're right IF they're ILLEGALLY obtained by people too young to have them (which is against the law) AND who couldn't pass an NICS check.

I would give your argument some credence if you can show me links to articles that show LEGAL owners simply going off like it's the wild west (which doesn't happen by the way).

I should also add simply because people in housing projects don't have expensive heirlooms and accoutrements, they have something FAR MORE VALUABLE. Their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and young children. It IS their HOME and they have every right in the world to defend it regardless who stands to make a buck.

[sui generis]

8. If you have more guns for sale you're going to have more guns

for sale illegally. It's simply a matter of volume in circulation. The extreme other side of that argument is that in some bizarre fantasy-nightmare of the gun-elite that the gun-grabbers go snatch up all yo guns only the criminals would be left with guns. . . . even so, unless those guns are passed down as criminal heirlooms in crime families, you would eventually see a reduction in gun-related crime, or an extreme reduction in ammo quality and variety.

But I re-state, that scenario of gun-do-gooders grabbing all the guns is sillier than the tooth fairy, and quite comical that grown men and women get so mouth frothing skeert of it coming to pass.

The fact of the matter is, conservatives tend to have guns because conservatives tend to live in fear. Of everthing. Of the gun grabbers, mostly. Of gang bangers. Of wife and daughter raping gun toting gang bangers. Of seven eleven robbers. Of church shooters. Of rabid chihuahuas. I don't know - I'll take my chances, I have a rabid chihuahua and a pit bull, and contrary to most gun-fearing citizens, I actually have been shot, and even if every citizen on the street had been toting a gun and ready, there wasn't a damn thing anyone else nor I could have done about it.

Mostly, people in the ghetto, with and without permits, use their guns for fireworks on holidays and special occasions, and occasionally just a good drunken tear. I really doubt that even two percent of the bullets fired in any given week are for gun crime or for gun crime prevention. Ask me how I might know this fact: zipcode vs. gunfire reports on the police blotter, plus Dallas crazy zoning and housing layouts.

Yes, technically firing your gun in your back yard is a crime, but having a gun next door won't keep anyone from doing that, anywhere, much less in subsidized housing.

[sharesunited]

9. Agree about the effect of abundance. Ban retail sales and turn them into collectibles.

[spin]

18. Sure, in 50 to 100 years they will be collectibles ...

and with proper maintenance, they still will be as good as new.

You would increase the price of firearms and might price the lower and lower middle classes out of gun ownership. But then, the whole object of gun control is to keep "those people" from owning firearms.

The criminal element will always have access to firearms. The black market for weapons manufactured in other countries like China and Pakistan will take care of any demand.

[slackmaster]

24. Thus guaranteeing that the poorest people are least able to afford them

For the protection that they are most likely to need.

[DonP]

13. We call that "bizarre fantasy-nightmare of the gun-elite" Chicago

"in some bizarre fantasy-nightmare of the gun-elite that the gun-grabbers go snatch up all yo guns only the criminals would be left with guns"

You should come here and try a week or two in a gun control fans ultimate solution and see how peaceful things are on the streets of Englewood or Chatham.

"Mostly, people in the ghetto, with and without permits, use their guns for fireworks on holidays and special occasions, and occasionally just a good drunken tear."

You really have a low opinion of minorities and people with less than you seem to have.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. Clearly this man should have been busy bootstrapping himself into a better life

rather than protecting himself from catching a vicious beating on the street.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003297197_shooting10m.html

That 52 year old man? Homeless. Legally in posession of a .357, and a concealed pistol license. Homeless. Down and out BEYOND public housing.

"defending their magnificent heirlooms and accoutrements"

Indeed.

[sui generis]

28. yeah why didn't a single one of you answer the real assertion

most gunfire in poor zip codes is not crime related.

Guess the NRA doesn't have a pamphlet or talking point for that one. Yet.

[AtheistCrusader]

29. Source?

I've lived in a poor zip code. Weekly if not nightly gunfire. Never heard a shot without accompanyment of sirens, or the police helicopter orbiting around.

So I'd like to know where you get the idea 'most' gunfire in poor zip codes is not crime related. 'Most' cities have ordinances against discharging a firearm within city limits, so chances are good, SOME law is being broken.

[sui generis]

30. durrr

what I said.

Yes gunfire discharge within city limits is a crime in and of itself. Thus the Oh Duh. But is it gun-related crime such as robbery, rape or gangbangin'? Not most of it, in poor neighborhoods, at holidays.

This crowd has got to be the most humor incapacitated bunch of hillbillies on DU. Yes, weekly if not nightly gunfire, now check your zip code statistics. Source = your local police blotter.

[AtheistCrusader]

31. Yeah, holiday's weren't an issue.

People don't discharge firearms around here for the holidays.

[sui generis]

32. they do here

plus Quinceañeras, chupacabra sightings, Cinco, payday, and sales at the dollar store.

[X_Digger]

33. Bullshit

I lived in Oak Cliff, Plano, and Highland Park before moving to Coppell.

Please, show me reports of widespread usage of guns as fireworks on any holiday, latin american or otherwise.

[TheWraith]

16. Do you have any idea how racist and elitist that statement is?

"Mostly, people in the ghetto, with and without permits, use their guns for fireworks on holidays and special occasions, and occasionally just a good drunken tear."

There is so much wrong with the premise of that statement that I don't know where to begin.

Do you think that people who live in the ghetto are stupider than people who live elsewhere? That they're more likely to be drunken psychopaths? That they have less regard for the lives of the people around them?

The ghettos have disproportionate violence because extreme poverty creates a fertile climate for gang recruitment. That's where the gangs grow, so it's where the black market for drugs congregates and where the gang wars happen. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the quality of the people, other than the fact that they're poor and can't get out. Living there doesn't automatically mean that you're too crazy or stupid to be allowed to own a gun, or that you don't deserve the same rights as somebody living out in the suburbs to be able to defend yourself against robbery, rape, and murder.

[sui generis]

26. oh good fucking grief

do you take everything at face value? It was a little tongue in cheek, however, saving the world from wife and daughter raping gangbangers does beg laughter as well.

[AtheistCrusader]

34. Well, you're the one offering both scenarios, so you must laugh quite a bit.

[GreenStormCloud]

19. You dodge the facts.

Gun ownership is growing dramatically.

Crime is falling.

Those are facts that contradict your assertation, therefore your claim fails.

BTW - There has been gun confiscation in New Orleans after Katrina. Also in California and in New York of legally registared guns that were then made illegal and the list used to get the guns.

Your experience is singular. You are trying to claim that all cases of self-defense are hopeless because you think yours was. My wife, in Dallas, saved her life by being armed. We don't live in fear, but we don't live in denial either.

[sui generis]

27. you dodge facts yourself

I'm not generalizing. Just saying for me guns are a non-starter. I still support the second amendment, and I still fucking hate the NRA.

You can have it both ways.

[Euromutt]

20. You're reasoning like a drug warrior

If you have more guns for sale you're going to have more guns for sale illegally. It's simply a matter of volume in circulation.

That assumes that the determining factor in the volume of illegal firearms is supply, rather than demand. Criminal demand for firearms is comparatively small; the number of violent crimes committed with firearms annually has been below 500,000 since 1998 (see http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/firearmnonfataltab.cfm and http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_08.html), and the very fact that the number of firearm offenses has declined even as the supply has increased indicates that there is a ceiling above which increased supply of firearms does not affect the number used for criminal purposes.

The extreme other side of that argument is that in some bizarre fantasy-nightmare of the gun-elite that the gun-grabbers go snatch up all yo guns only the criminals would be left with guns. . . . even so, unless those guns are passed down as criminal heirlooms in crime families, you would eventually see a reduction in gun-related crime, or an extreme reduction in ammo quality and variety.

In a closed system, maybe. But the system isn't closed; firearms can be smuggled in from outside, and if there is a criminal demand for them, they will be. Firearm crime in the UK and the Netherlands has increased over the past twenty years, in spite of the gun laws being tightened several times, with many of the firearms being smuggled in from south-eastern Europe (notably Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria). Given that tons of drugs are smuggled into the United States every year, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the same infrastructure couldn't traffick in firearms.

[slackmaster]

23. The guns-behave-like-gas-molecules fallacy

Distributing themselves randomly so as to evenly occupy every bit of available space.

[sui generis]

25. no, modern economics sir.

Not modern physics.

[TPaine7]

11. Let's see

I think guns ADD to crime.

What is that opinion based on? Why is it that the predictions of "blood in the streets" fail so spectacularly? (See for example: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x278888)

I also believe in the second amendment. I also think that it's wrong to deny someone the right to purchase and own a gun in a housing development when the local law permits gun ownership.

You believe in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, subject to the whims of local government? Do you know the history of the Fourteenth Amendment, or do you simply ignore it? If you know the history (the framers of the 14th intentionally wrote it to protect the right of poor blacks--just like the ones who live in public housing--to keep and bear their personal, individual arms), why do you still insist on seeing the Second Amendment as an essentially dead letter throughout the vast majority of America?

Gun manufacturers DO have a vested interest in manufacturing more guns, Economics 101, not NRA Pamphlet 101. Comparing guns to potato chips is right out of your NRA remedial reader.

As newspaper publishers, bloggers, authors, pastors, webmasters, ... etc., have a vested interest in plying their trades under the protection of the First Amendment. Does this reflect poorly on the First Amendment, and the level of protection people who live in public housing should have to write or post to DU?

Even if gun manufacturers are behind the effort to change this, they apparently have a (dubious) ally in you:

Whether I believe they SHOULD be allowed to have guns or not (I do), I don't think the poor noble poor housing project people defending their magnificent heirlooms and accoutrements require guns, and if they're spending money on guns and ammo and spending time getting all cockeyed crazy paranoid gunownerish, they could be spending money and time hauling their asses out of the ghetto rather than planning to stay in it.

There it is, in all its glory:

Those folks in the ghetto don't actually need their rights. They have nothing needing or deserving of protection, no "magnificent heirlooms and accoutrements {sic}" like their betters in the suburbs. I think they should be allowed their rights, but really, what would they do with them? I will speak for them and explain what they should actually concern themselves with. If they were smart, they would forget trifles like protecting their hard earned property (and the trifles not even worth mentioning, like their lives and their children and their physical integrity against would-be rapists) and work to move out of public housing--to places where self defense is actually justified.

Americans decided on attitudes like yours some time ago. Apparently, there are still stragglers.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court will deal this remnant of Jim Crow a deathblow. The Second Amendment is the supreme law of the land; it should not apply "when the local law permits gun ownership" but when one is in the United States of America.

[oneshooter]

12. Gun Free Zone ?

If the government is going to operate a "gun free zone" then it damn well better be GUN FREE. They should be held liable for each and every injury occurred there that is due to firearms. Lawsuits should be filed for loss of property, loss of income, and negligence. The government must be forced to protect these poor people as they can not legally protect themselves.
What ever it takes, no matter the cost. Armed Guards, metal detectors, searches, restricted entry.

These people must be kept safe.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin on Texas

















Do I need the sarcasm thingie? :sarcasm:

[Callisto32]

15. Just keep the that bigotry.

It's very progressive.

[SteveM]

22. So, who are the manufacturers, again?

I am struck by some high-horseyness here:

"I don't think the poor noble poor housing project people defending their magnificent heirlooms and accoutrements require guns, and if they're spending money on guns and ammo and spending time getting all cockeyed crazy paranoid gunownerish, they could be spending money and time hauling their asses out of the ghetto rather than planning to stay in it."

Sounds like you have a rather neat, simple, and reactionary social analysis of people in public housing, but it leaves out the possibility that these folks may wish to "defend" their lives, like the rest of Americans in most places can.

And what is this "I think guns ADD to crime?" We have heard from time-to-time propagandists who say "more guns = more crime," but that is demonstrably false. Is this a patched-up variation on a discredited theme?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

7. House bill "357"... NICE!

Some things are just meant to be!

[Jackson1999]

10. Poor people and minorities can't be trusted with guns.

It is a right reserved for wealthy white people and politicians. Don't you people know anything???

:sarcasm: