Prohibition

[Callisto32]

There have (predictably) been a lot of calls for prohibition of late. The questions thrown around are things like "should civilians really be allowed to own X" or "why should people be allowed to own X."

Here is a question for all the prohibitionists.


By what moral authority can you say "you, sir/madam must relinquish X property, despite the fact that you have caused no harm through it"?

Last I checked, this kind of behavior is called "theft," and is widely and correctly considered immoral. To consider it moral would be to place the strong above the weak, and support violence; which is exactly what gun prohibitionists claim to want to avoid. This is important since there are so many privately owned firearms in the U.S. that any prohibition on new manufacture and distribution would be essentially worthless without a concurrent confiscation of already owned firearms.


From where does the power to prevent the ownership of an item by another person flow?

[wtmusic]

1. Straw man.

There's plenty of prohibition right now, and the power comes from the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act

[Callisto32]

3. Fail.

That isn't even an argument.

At best it is begging a question.

From where does the GOVERNMENT get this power?

Edit:

Also, I don't think you know what a straw man is. I didn't claim the other side made a different argument than it did, and then attack that false argument. That is a straw man. You set it up a straw man, to then knock it down. I think you were trying to say this is a red herring. To which I say, prove that this is not a real issue.

[wtmusic]

22. Substitution of a distorted position is a straw man

and you're substituting prohibition for the position of every rational gun control advocate I've ever met, which is one of regulation.

It's one of the rules society has set up, and one which they give a theoretically-impartial third party (the government) the power to enforce. If you don't like that arrangement, feel free to revolt.

[Callisto32]

23. You don't know what prohibition means either.

"Civilians cannot/should not own 33 round magazines" is a prohibitionist position, and exactly the position I have seen espoused MANY times on this very forum over the last week. The same goes for "civilians should not be allowed to own X kind of weapon." If you can show me how that is NOT prohibition, you are deluding yourself about the veracity of your argument.



There is no straw man. It is EXACTLY these people, that want to remove civilian access to various kinds of magazines and guns to whom I directed my question.

[benEzra]

6. The NFA originally restricted (but did not ban) guns that were *never* common,

and was not controversial. Alcohol Prohibition, on the other hand, banned something that tens of millions of people valued prior to the ban being enacted, and was controversial. It was also a complete, total, abject failure.

Americans currently own close to a third of a billion firearms, a couple hundred million "high capacity" magazines, and expend roughly ten billion rounds of ammunition a year in recreational and competitive target shooting with the very guns that the MSM and the gun control lobby wish to ban. More Americans lawfully and responsibly own "assault weapons" than hunt, and several times as many people own semiautomatic pistols than hunt.

We will retain the right to choose to own them. The history of gun owner activism 1994-present shows that. And with the overall violent crime rate in steady decline for a decade or two now, and "assault weapons" being among the least misused of all weapons, the gun control lobby is deceiving itself if it thinks that the United States will ban guns that aren't even banned in much of Europe. That is simply not happening. And were a ban to pass via a bait-and-switch---like Prohibition was---I'm pretty sure it would be widely ignored until it was eventually repealed, just like Prohibition was.

[Callisto32]

9. Interesting article about prohibition.

I am sure that many will look at the source and dismiss it, but what the hell:

http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/13/when-booze-was-banned-but-pot

[benEzra]

17. It shouldn't be dismissed. It is exposing Republican moralist authoritarianism.

I have actually met repubs who believe alcohol prohibition should be reinstated. Seriously. They talk as if Prohibition was a huge moral accomplishment, and pretend it was actually successful.

I don't read Reason much, but I do read Radley Balko's blog regularly, and he is quite hard on repubs over their WoD/WoT/Surveillance Nation/torture crap, and with good reason.

[one-eyed fat man]

27. Interesting take on Prohibition, they were NOT alone.

Introduced in the House as H.R. 6810 by Andrew Volstead (R–MN) on June 27, 1919. Passed by Congress, it was vetoed by President Wilson. Congress then overrode his veto. The purpose of the Act was to enforce the PREVIOUSLY adopted Eighteenth Amendment.

The effects of Prohibition were largely unanticipated. Production, importation, and distribution of alcoholic beverages — once the province of legitimate business — were taken over by criminal gangs, which fought each other for market control in violent confrontations, including mass murder. (Sound familiar?)

Women were strongly behind the temperance movement, for alcohol was seen as the destroyer of families and marriages. Men would often spend their money on alcohol, leaving women with no money to provide for their children. They did not stop there, however. The temperance societies began to push to change American society and elevate morality through national legislation.

Prohibition was demanded by the "dries" — primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers and Scandinavian Lutherans. They identified saloons as politically corrupt and drinking as a personal sin.

In 1917, the House of Representatives wanted to make Prohibition the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Congress sent the amendment to the states for ratification, where it needed three-fourths approval. The amendment stipulated a time limit of seven years for the states to pass this amendment. In just 13 months enough states said yes to the amendment that would prohibit the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic liquors.

One of the major supporters of National Prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. (1920-1933) was the anti-alcohol Ku Klux Klan.

In the case of the Democratic Party, the key battleground was the 1924 Convention. The Klan endorsed William Gibbs McAdoo, the front-runner for the nomination. It battle came down to the the Klan and the "drys" versus Tammany Hall and the "wets". That the 1924 convention came to known as the "Klanbake" and ended with a massive cross burning should be a clue.

Prohibition had WIDE support in the Democratic Party. Homer Cummings, the head of the DNC in the Wilson Administration, Attorney General under Roosevelt supported the Klan, Prohibition, and gun control.

[benEzra]

40. The thing is, the 18th Amendment only authorized restricting intoxicating *liquours*.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

The general understanding of "liquor" is a distilled beverage:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liquor

a distilled or spirituous beverage, as brandy or whiskey, as distinguished from a fermented beverage, as wine or beer.

But when the Volstead Act was passed, it defined "liquor" as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume, as I recall.

A lot of people who did't speak out strongly against the 18th Amendment (and perhaps even some who supported it) undoubtedly felt that as long as beer and wine was legal, they didn't care much if whiskey and vodka were banned. But then Volstead came along and defined the term "liquor" to mean beer, wines/champagnes, everything.

That isn't much different from what the gun control activists did with the "assault weapon" term: talk up the law as if it would restrict military automatic weapons, and then define the term in the legislation so broadly that it actually covers the majority of civilian firearms.

[cleanhippie]

20. Always such a plaesure to read your enlightened, well-thought and informative posts.

Not.

Why are all your postings drive-by nonsense? Stay and have a conversation for once.

[beevul]

34. The NFA isn't prohibition.. Fail. N/T

[shadowrider]

2. Because it feels sooooooooooooooo good n/t

[Callisto32]

5. Maybe..

I should just be glad that they aren't calling for the banning of hooded sweatshirts and pointy steak knives.

[shadowrider]

13. Patience grasshopper. They must get guns banned first

Then comes the rest.

[Katya Mullethov]

21. You want to really put the hurt to Al Queda ?

Ban chorus pedals !

[svsuman23]

4. +1

[flamin lib]

7. Section 8, necessary and proper clause.

Lots of precedent too, even for guns; short shotguns, full auto, etc.


flame on . . . .

[Callisto32]

8. I'm not here to flame, I'm here to discuss.

Would you say that the Constitution is a ceding of power from the people to the government?

[flamin lib]

12. Yes, to some degree. The articles of confederation, aka the government that

governs least, was a failure. The Constitution was written to strengthen the federal government, not weaken it. Article 8, the necessary and proper clause gives congress the power to pass any law deemed to be for the general welfare. One can argue if any individual law is really helpful to the general welfare but one cannot argue that Congress does not have that power.

[Callisto32]

14. I certainly can.

By that rationale, any law, no matter how abhorrent to the rest of the constitution would be okay, so long as "for the general welfare." But for my purposes here, the rest of the constitution does not matter, really.

I am glad that you admit that the government's power flows from the people. Here is why almost everything they do is then illegitimate. You cannot give away what you do not have. I can't give you the power to steal from people, because I do not have that power myself. To suggest that the government has powers beyond those of the people that establish and ordain those governments is to suggest that a legal fiction (government) has powers greater than the rights of those that establish it. That argument seems absurd on its face, no?

[flamin lib]

16. No, and I've hung around here long enough to know better than to engage

in one of these futile exchanges. I made a mistake and shall now correct it by ignoring the rest of this thread.

[Callisto32]

25. Is it a futile conversation?

Or, maybe your position that one can give away what he never had is what is futile?

I'm really not here to flame. I just think that the concept that government can prohibit non-harmful activity is based on entirely flawed thinking on the nature of governmental power.

Edit: I also find it interesting that you don't show me WHY your argument is not absurd on its face, if it is indeed not.

[Starboard Tack]

32. "government can prohibit non-harmful activity"

Are you suggesting that government can, or maybe even should ban HARMFUL activity? Like hunting, if you're the deer or Dick Cheney's lawyer? And how about potentially harmful activities, like drunken driving, reckless driving or carrying a loaded weapon in a public place?

[Callisto32]

39. You equate things that are not equal.

I'll start with drunken v. reckless driving. Focus on an arbitrary blood alcohol (drunkenness) is ridiculous. What we should focus on is impairment given the circumstances. It is entirely possible for a sober man to drive recklessly, just as it is possible for a drunk man to drive well. Should a drunk man driving well, or modifying his driving (say, going slower and running his blinkers) be punished merely for having a certain BAC and operating a vehicle? I think not. Real recklessness, causing an immediate risk of harm to others by swinging a across lines and erratic speed changes (analogous to handling a weapon poorly in a populated area) should be the focus on enforcement. Banning and punishing those activities with mere potential for harm leads us down a slippery slope of punishing "harmful" acts that never happened. I am not willing to punish a person for something they MIGHT do.

As for carrying a loaded weapon in public, a properly holstered handgun is about the safest weapon a person can have, and not harmful in the least.

As an omnivorous animal I reject the idea that hunting (for food or to control the populations of pest animals) is a real problem. The unfortunate reality is that if you wish to eat, something has to die. This is true weather eating animals or plants and I find the two to be morally equal. I am not talking about "sport" hunting here, that is an activity that I find barbaric and physically sickening. To kill for pleasure is a nasty enterprise that often leads people to abandon their places as stewards of the land they use; and I cannot support it.

In general, no I don't think that entire categories of activity should be banned based simply on the fact that they can be seen as harmful or potentially harmful. There needs to be some distinction. Firing a weapon into, say, a board is harmful to property if that board is owned, and if you destroy someone else's property, you should be required to replace that property or provide equivalent value. However, we can't disallow shooting boards, since that may be the actor's board to destroy. This is not to say that some actions cannot be entirely prohibited by society, such as murder and theft. These actions are as a matter of definition harmful, and may be properly prohibited. Firing a gun is potentially harmful (not harmful in se), as is swinging a hammer. These actions can't be banned simply because the act MAY cause harm.

[benEzra]

18. Not ANY law. The Bill of Rights sets some laws out of bounds

whether people feel they would promote the "general welfare" or not.

Yes, the Bill of Rights is sometimes ignored (e.g., Bush et al pretending that torture is OK if it's for a good cause, or the bipartisan position that warrantless searches are OK as long as they support the moral panic du jour), but the Bill of Rights is a big list of restrictive clauses and exceptions to the general power.

[X_Digger]

19. the 'general welfare' relates to taxation and spending, not law enforcement

At least that's the current precedent in the courts.

[beevul]

30. A half truth.

"The Constitution was written to strengthen the federal government, not weaken it."

The other half of the truth is that the bill of rights was written to LIMIT the federal government:

THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution

http://billofrights.org/


It says so, in the bill of rights itself.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

10. Short shotguns and full auto are not banned.

they are regulated, not banned.
The courts uphold those regulations because those items are not in common use.

[Callisto32]

11. Well, you are half right about the full auto.

There IS a ban on the sale/transfer of new manufacture full auto weapons to non le/military. It would be accurate to say that there is not a TOTAL ban on them. And short rifles/shotguns are mostly just a revenue source. They don't care if you own one, so long as you pay a 200 dollar tax.

[rrneck]

15. It flows from the voting booth.

If enough people in this country decide we should wear propeller beanies and elect legislators that will pass that desire into law enforceable by police officers and judges, (presumably also wearing propeller beanies), it will happen.

Fortunately, we have the right to ask others using the rights protected by the first amendment how they plan to make us whole when their determination of what we may or may not need is wrong.

[Callisto32]

24. The voting booth?

Then I ask where did the VOTERS get the power/right to steal?

The real point is that, at its core, the "power" of the government to prohibit activity that causes no harm is entirely illegitimate. Since nobody has the RIGHT to steal in the first place, there is no way that right can be ceded to a corporate entity because it was never yours to give in the first place.

[Katya Mullethov]

26. " Are your serious ? ....Are you serious ? "

Seriously .

[Callisto32]

28. Uh, yeah.

:toast:

[Katya Mullethov]

29. Actually .......you have to say that three times

And click your heels in order to pass constitutional muster .

[rrneck]

33. Stealing is against the law.

The voters elected representatives who wrote laws against theft that are enforced by the courts. That's why it's called a representative government. That's how it works.

Laws are a codification of popular consent. Popular consent is achieved through an elected government. It's messy, inefficient, bombastic, irrational, and not infrequently just plain wrong. Just like the people who designed it.

Who are you to determine your activity causes no harm? Whether you like it or not, your rights are defined by those around you. You don't live in a world populated by lone heroes buccaneering their way across the wide Accountant Sea with the right to keep what they kill.

[Callisto32]

38. You aren't answering my question.

Is it right for you to steal? No. Is it right for a large group of people (the electorate) to steal? No. So HOW do they get together, and elect people to steal for them? The electorate has no rightful power to steal, so by what necessarily convoluted intellectual mechanism do you suggest that they can grant a power that is not had by them to begin with?

I reject the idea that rights are defined by those around me. By that rationale slavery was a-okay. Those AROUND the slaves were defining their rights, or lack thereof. This is truly an example of two wolves and a sheep voting on supper, and not a situation that I am willing to accept as right or good.

As for determining whether or not my activity causes harm, this is one place where I believe the common law has done a fairly good job. Given the wishy-washy nature of much of life, I think that the ideas of redressable, fairly traceable (proximate cause), injury in fact actually do a pretty good job.

[rrneck]

41. Well,

like I said:
"It's messy, inefficient, bombastic, irrational, and not infrequently just plain wrong. Just like the people who designed it." We fixed the slavery thing with statute law. Of course slavery as an institution has been around since the dawn of civilization, so common law would have us owning slaves today.

Just so you know, the people around you determine the meanings of words too. Lawfully elected and maintained governments expressing the will of the people do not steal. We contribute to the group a portion of our labor for the common good, an arrangement that is as old as the species itself. It seems to me that's about as common law as you can get.

[Callisto32]

42. But you left out an important part of the description.

We are forced under threat of violence to contribute to the group a portion of our labor for the common good. That doesn't mean that many people would not were the violence removed, but you cannot deny the presence of coercion inherent in the current system.

Also, I think I am using the term "common law" as a bit more of a term of art than you are. When I say common law I mean the specific body of judge-made law that arose in England and the United States, not some more hazy concept of law that is "law" because it is deep custom.

[rrneck]

43. Heh,

Exactly what are you being coerced to do beneath the threat of violence that is so onerous?

[Callisto32]

44. Other than giving up more than 30% of that for which I worked?

The labyrinthine and expensive permitting/inspection/licensing procedures.

Hell, there are places in the U.S. where you need to pay some bureau to have a YARD SALE. Or, guess what, you get fined. Threat of violence (theft, through the fine) because you didn't beg daddy government's permission to SELL YOUR OWN STUFF.

How can that be described as anything BUT onerous?

EDIT: Does it matter if theft is "onerous" or not, has a person that took a dollar from you not stolen since the quantity was small? You still have not answered my question as to how the electorate can grant the government a power that the electorate did not have in the first place.

[rrneck]

45. Did you actually earn half of what you got?

Do you think all this infrastructure sprang up out of the ground on its own? Do you think the paradigm in which you live was your creation? Where did you get the ideas that you are putting forward right now? Everything you have and everything you are exist because you are standing on the shoulders of giants. Not a few of whom are walking around you every day. They graciously allow you to think you are the center of the world because your rights stop at their noses. But you're outnumbered to the tune of about three hundred million to one. Lucky you.

Everything you do impacts those around you. That gives them the right to moderate your behavior. Your very existence is a debit against the common good, and it's your responsibility to make it a credit. The "violence" that concerns you so much doesn't come from the government. It's in the ground and the air and the water. That violence is life in an unforgiving world and humans have to cooperate to survive in it. We're herd animals and have been for about two million years.

By what moral authority do you decline to contribute your fair share to the common good?

From where does the judge that rules from the "judge-made law" derive her moral authority?

[Callisto32]

46. You once again misunderstand my position.

I do not think I am the center of the universe. In fact, I realize that I am very, very small. I don't thin that I have the right to tell others how to live their lives, and merely expect the same concession from your "giants" who graciously "allow" me have rights. (To suggest that people only have the rights that others ALLOW them to have is to deny the very existence of rights, by the way. At that point everything becomes a privilege. I don't have rights because the giants limit their rights, I have rights because I have rights, same as the giants and everyone else.

I realize that everything I do impacts those around me. However, since it is impossible to NOT impact the world, we have to draw the line somewhere. That is why I say moderate the behavior of people by not allowing behavior that causes actual harm. I will discuss your final question here. You note that when I talked about the common law I said that determining where real injury occurs is a place that I think the courts have done a good job, considering the shades of gray necessarily considered in such determinations. I do not believe that all of the common law is promulgated upon proper moral authority. The judge derives the moral authority to condemn from the same place as everyone else, the right to defend the rights of self and others. Any pronouncement beyond that is an abuse of that right.

As for my right to decline to contribute. I would say that derives from my ownership of my body. If I own my body, do I not also own my labor and by that ownership have the right to use that labor as consideration in contracting? In return for that labor do I not get payment? Since that payment was gained by my labor, do I not own it the same as anything else for which I traded it? Is not taking something that belongs to someone else theft? It is impossible to extract wealth from someone on a non-voluntary basis without stealing. It is stealing if I do it, and it is stealing if any other natural person does it, but if some legal fiction does it it is now a civic duty? The cognitive dissonance you would have to put up with to believe that is staggering. The proper solution is not to steal my property, but provide the proper incentives to people, both positive and negative. Shun the man that won't help out. Refuse to do business with him. He will either begin to conform, grudgingly perhaps but voluntarily, or he will remove himself from your society where he will no longer be a problem. Why do we have to resort immediately to violence to get people to do what we think they should do?

[rrneck]

50. You're a giant too. That's the miracle of democracy.

And a perk of citizenship of an empire.

Not only do you have the right to tell others how to live their lives, you have the responsibility. It's your civic duty. Of course I'm not advocating anybody be a scold or a tyrant, that's why we have a government and the laws that it generates. It is a tool that, among other things, helps us to agree on how we should live. Using taxes to promote the common good is no more theft than using a gun for self defense is murder. If the people that are being taxed agreed to be taxed, it simply isn't theft. If you don't like it, call your congressman or renounce your citizenship.

Actually, I don't think anybody needs high capacity magazines. They're as useless as tits on a boar hog. It is difficult to argue that the time it takes to change mags is inconsequential in a mass shooting but somehow onerous if you have all afternoon to fart around at the range. Furthermore, I think you should train with the equipment you're going to use in a fight. I wouldn't have that goofy looking shit sticking out of the bottom of my gun if you gave it to me. I wouldn't mind a bit if they never made another one. Do I think they should be banned? No. Because banning them would be wasteful.

That magazine sticking out the bottom of that gun is emblematic of the waste of resources that has been the norm for our culture and the downfall of many others before it. That little dab of metal and plastic and the resources it took to manufacture it would feed a family in the third world for a month. Somebody went hungry so you could rip another dozen rounds or so through the gun without having to trouble yourself with switching mags. But it's not worth wasting the political capital required to get anything done in Washington just for that. Furthermore, those fuckers make about ten thousand dollars an hour up there so I'll be damned if I'm going to pay them to argue about something so trivial.

You may own your body but you don't own the resources it consumes. Everything you have was taken from somebody else and they have a say about that. You and I injure somebody just getting out of bed in the morning. We just haven't heard that much about it yet but we will. One way or another those from whom we steal resources will achieve parity. Income disparity in this country is as bad as it was in the Gilded age, not to mention how bad it is globally. What do you think 9/11 was all about? It's not about dueling ideologies or market forces or even profit. It's about distribution of resources, and we in this country are using way more than our fair share. And the rest of the world knows it. We are a declining empire that can't afford to continue to garrison the planet for the sake of novelty pistol magazines.

If you accept the role of a judge in society, you have to accept the fact that some consensus must be reached by those being judged in his selection and acceptance of his judgment. It doesn't matter how that consensus is reached as long as there is one. Complaining about how people have agreed to contribute to the common good makes about as much sense as trying to parse exactly how many bullets it takes to achieve a mass shooting. The only two sure things in life are death and taxes. Either play ball or take your glove to some other country and call it home.

[PavePusher]

48. Who determines "fair share"? n/t

[rrneck]

51. If we're lucky everybody gets a say.

But we're so rich these days it's hard to figure out. There's a big difference between actually feeling hunger and merely being interested in some new bauble. Our species was designed to struggle against scarcity. Give us abundance and most of the time it seems we wind up fighting over it. We just don't know how to create artificial scarcity. At least that's the way it seems to me.

[one-eyed fat man]

47. Unfortunately

large groups of people do get together and steal property. They used to just be able to band together and steal for "public use." The the Supreme Court said they could steal it to give to a corporation for the "public good." Like the good citizens of New London did to Kelo.

[DissedByBush]

31. Our system is supposed to protect us from the voting booth

Preventing the tyranny of the simple majority by enshrining certain rights as near untouchable.

[rrneck]

35. And limiting those rights where appropriate

by laws codifying popular consent. We relinquish certain rights and portions of others and give them to disinterested third parties for adjudication.

[beevul]

36. Not exactly how it works.

"Preventing the tyranny of the simple majority by enshrining certain rights as near untouchable." (which another poster said - and accurately)

The system was designed, so that certain rights were outside the influence of a simple majority, and require a supermajority to truly change.

The first ten amendments of the bill of rights are examples of such protected rights.

Limiting those rights, by simple popular majority consent, does not, can not, mean simply ignoring those protected rights completely. Or put differently, pretending that the restrictions do not exist, on how and why and when the government may flex its muscles.

With few exceptions, government is required by law to follow the rules which govern it.

And when there is an exception, it MUST be narrowly tailored to fit a compelling governmental interest, and be the least restrictive means with which to achieve that interest.

Prior restraint does not fit that description.

[rrneck]

37. I'll buy that. nt

[Katya Mullethov]

49. Prohibition is one of the most powerful economic engines yet devised

You can stop it before it starts .
But dont get in the way once the boiler is up to temp .


And more to your question

'''''
From where does the power to prevent the ownership of an item by another person flow?
''''
Interstate Commerce , mere regulation , and activists in our judiciary . Amongst other small things ....like apathy and corruption .