I’m giggling uncontrollably.

The Maximum Leader’s last post is a hoot.

On the off chance that he is NOT exaggerating for comedic affect, here is a fisk of his fisk!

(Naked Villainy is your one stop shop for flame wars!)

This all started with Velociworld’s rant against the slippery slope of incremental activism. More precisely, it was Velociman’s rant about how the left refuses to acknowledge that they are engaged in incremental activism. In my reflection on that post, I challenged Velociman’s central assumption. Unlike pro-life activism, logic does not carry gun control, smoking restrictions, fast food labeling (control?), or drunk driving laws to an irreducible conclusion.

In brief:

If abortion is murder. Therefore, ALL abortion is wrong. If one accepts the first statement, then one must accept the second.

The same slippery slope of logic does not apply to gun control, etc.

I particularly focused on the gun control because I knew it would push the buttons of my dear Maximum Leader and the Foreign Minister. Think it worked?

The Maximum Leader would like us to only consider a few extremists who advocate the total disarmament of the North American continent. But these extremists are not a real danger to our gun “rights.” As they move through the spectrum of increasingly restrictive gun laws, more and more of their support will evaporate. I expect that only a tiny percentage of the American public wants to ban hunting rifles.

My response to Velociman’s article was not an attempt to grant cover to the leading gun control advocates highlighted by the Maximum Misleader. My response was to Velociman’s broad paintbrush (to quote myself:)

“Methinks the good Velociman paints with too broad of a brush, particularly when he implies that all advocates of gun control want to eliminate all guns and leave right-thinking people at the mercy of the evil mutant criminal hordes.”

Velociman himself was not talking about just the leaders of the gun control movement:

“A left-winger will deny this shit forever. “NO! All we want is to get assault weapons off the street. All we want is to get Saturday Nite Specials out the hands of criminals. All we want is safety locks on handguns so children don’t blow their widdle brains out.” Bullshit. They want every gun in America melted down, and recast as sculptures to draft dodgers in Canada, or statues of Che Guevara.”

(As an aside: kudos to Velociman for the statues of Che Guevera line. Very funny!)

I’m not sure how the Minimum Reader missed this very clear language. Perhaps his poor textual analysis skills, as demonstrated by his parsing of the Second Amendment have rendered him incapable of seeing shades of gray. (Rose colored glasses! Hell no! The Maximum Leader uses the patened Ted Turner DECOLORIZATION technology)

I did, however, enjoy the Maximum Leader’s riff on my squishy lines. I was becoming concerned with the frequency with which he passed up the straight lines I have been lofting over the plate.

With regard to the textual analysis of the Second Amendment:

Cool sentence diagram. Love it. I have seen others that reverse the meaning the other direction.

Hmmmm. If we can’t turn to the English teachers for a definitive interpretation of the Constitution, who could we turn to?

It’s too bad there aren’t any people out there who interpret the Constitution professionally and are empowered by our system of government to do so…

Wait! Let’s ask the courts.

Hmmmm. It seems that the courts have always (with the exception of one recent circuit court ruling that was non-binding and rendered moot by further court action - see the archives for our earlier exploration of this topic), always ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to individuals.

But I’m not here to get into another pissing match in which we both dig up legal opinion and sort through court cases. The point I was making (and the Maximum Misreader knows this) is that the gun nuts conistently ignore the first part of the Amendment. The Amendment has to be read as a whole. The “well-regulated” part isn’t a product of Ms. Brady’s opium dream.

I’m for well-regulating firearms. The Constitution explicitly says this is permissable.

Before we move away from the Constitution, I can’t help but bash the Minimum Breeder’s careless error:

“Besides, has the Smallholder ever really stopped to consider that all the other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are individual? Humm… How odd that only one would be some sore of restrictive collective right”

Actually, my dear Maximum Feeder, both the Second and Tenth Amendments protect the rights of the states. And I thought you righties dug the Tenth Amendment. Remember when Reagan made it cool again?

But moving away from Constitutional one-ups-manship, let us turn to policy.

Just because owning guns isn’t a right doesn’t mean that it should be illegal. You don’t have a right to snowmobile in Yellowstone - but that doesn’t mean snowmobiling ought to be illegal.

(As a brief aside, I don’t believe abortion is a right - penumbras be damned - the creation of this right rests on very shaky legal ground. Of course, my opinion on this, like the Maximum Teether’s opinion on the Second Amendment, holds less weight than the opinion of the judiciary. But stay with me. If abortion is not a right, and if one believes that life does not begin at conception, one could still argue that abortion should be legal, in much the same way that the Hollywood homies of the Minister of Propaganda argue that the non-right of lightin’ up doobies for “medicinal purposes” ought to be legal.)

The Maximum Mouth-breather writes:

“Liberalization of concealed carry laws and other pro-gun initiatives have been shown by some researchers to be connected with the overall drop in violent crime in the US. Of course, as your Maximum Leader and the Smallholder are well aware, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. For every expert your Maximum Leader could cite, the Smallholder could cite a contrarian. Then the argument would not be focused on what a nimrod the Smallholder is, but on the credentials of expert witnesses.”

Actually, my dear Maximum Mulah-heeder, I wouldn’t cite contrary sources. I would first look at the evidence, because as a “squishy” centrist, I like finding out information that might persuade me to change my mind. Only empty-headed extremists cover their ears and sing “la-la-la” so they aren’t “confused by the facts,”* about say, I dunno, the nature of gayness or global warming.

*Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. - Earl Landgrebe

(As an aside, kudos to Mike for bringing back the hyperlinked insult from the previous Rob/Mark nimrod posts. Ha!)

My position on gun control, as the Minimum Peeper well knows, has changed over time. I have become convinced that blanket bans are not the silver bullet (heh - kill myself) that will make society safe. To quote Eric Idle, what I’m on about is the misrepresentation of history practiced by nutcases on the right (and I mean that in the kindest way, Mike) who like to pretend they are arguing for the preservation of sacred principles.

So a nuanced view would be to try to craft laws that allow for guns to be used as tools and home defense while minimizing crime and accidental injury. Crime can’t be limited by gun control - it is much more a reflection of poverty and socialization (but I am open if anyone has evidence that gun restrictions reduce crime). So can we accomplish the goal of allowing guns to be used as tools and home defense and at the same time reduce accidental injury?

How about using shotguns for home defense instead of handguns? When I shoot the boogeyman coming through my front door, my shotgun’s discharge is unlikely to travel three hundred feet and burrow itself into the skull of a sleeping third grader.

The Maximum Leader disagrees, and for once, it is in an area amenable to reasoned discussion:

“And anyway, particularly when talking about home defense, a pistol is more handy to use in the house. It is less likely to get caught up in furniture or bump against walls. Women are generally more comfortable with pistols than with long guns, etc. etc.”

Now that we have moved past the phony rights argument, we can discuss practical things. Shouldn’t anyone using ANY firearm have enough orientation with the weapon to be comfortable and able to walk with the weapon in question? If my wife was uncomfortable using firearms, I’d be much happier if she was packing a shotgun when confronted with the barbarian at the end of the hall. She is much more likely to hit him with the shotgun. Spray pattern and all that. But I’m open to continuing the discussion. See how this works? We create policy by weighing pros and cons and measuring safety against liberty.

Before leaving the subject of guns to address the Laffer curve, let me poke at one more bit of Mikey’s argument:

He quotes me:

I don’t want to ban all guns. But I’m comfortable banning rocket-propelled grenades. I’m comfortable banning the Foreign Minister’s beloved MP-40. (but it is coooool to shoot!)

and responded:

“Indeed it is cool to shoot… But the Smallholder is making something of a strawman argument here. MP-40s (as well as other full automatic weapons) are HIGHLY regulated by the Federal Government. You can’t just walk into a gun store and buy one. (You could around 1904, but your Maximum Leader doesn’t think that the Minister of Agriculture is confused as to the year.) You need a Class III license to own one.”

Game.

Set.

Match.

The Maximum Leader essentially concedes my entire point: Gun Control is NOT a slipery slope AND not a constitutionally protected individual right.

We banned machine guns a century ago. And yet we still have other weapons. So the majority of people/legislators who supported/created the ban on machine guns did NOT hang together to ban all weapons.

The ban on private ownership of weapons has not been overturned on constitutional grounds for a century. Ergo, the ban must be constitutional.

And the whole Class III license thing… I mentioned it in the post and you quoted me mentioning it in your feeble fisk. So why would you use it in an attempt to illustrate my ignorance of gun laws? It is not like you to be so sloppy, Mike. For shame.

As to the Laffer curve:

The Maximum Speeder (have you ever driven with this man? Good lord!) writes:

“You know, the Smallholder is always hung up on the “right side” of the Laffer Curve. He just assumes we are on the “left side” of the curve. He’s never ever clued anyone in on why this might be the case. He just assumes that marginal tax rates should be increased. He never backs up his assertion. He just assumes that since most people to whom he is speaking have never heard of the Laffer Curve when he mentions it, and they just stand there gaping at him; he has scared them intellectually and is correct.”

First of all, it is not to scare people off and claim victory. If people are talking about tax policy, well, by god, either they know about the Laffer curve and Adam Smith or they are assclowns. I don’t enjoy talking policy with assclowns (with the occasional exception made for old college chums like Mike).

There is a simple way to test what side of the Laffer curve we are on.

If we are on the right side, reducing taxes should increase government revenue.

If we are on the left side, increasing taxes should decrease government revenue.

The beauty of the Laffer curve is that it is so simple.

When Clinton pushed through his “unprecedented, humongous, (insert your overblown Republican rhetoric here), did government revenues go up or down?

When Bush passed his tax cuts, did revenue go up or down?

I’ll concede that a revenue drop after the Bush tax cuts would not be a decisive indicator of our position on the curve - other factors (like the emerging recession) would push down revenue and the salutary effects of the tax cut would take a while to materialize, according to both Laffer and Keynes.

But a tax increase ought to have an immediate negative impact on the economy; businessmen would immediately begin altering business decisions in response to a burdensome tax increase.

I really don’t have the data about what happened to government revenue after Clinton’s tax increase. I can’t figure out how to winnow down the google response to “United State” “tax revenue” “by year.”

Perhaps the Maximum Leader would like to use his greater computer schools to find the data.

If revenue dropped after Clinton’s tax increase, I’ll admit that we are on the right side of the Laffer curve.

If the revenue increased post-Clinton, I’ll assert more strongly that we are on the left side of the curve.

But I won’t look for the Maximum Denier to admit anything on his side. He’ll be too busy clapping his hands over his ears and singing “la la la.”

Who wants to bet that the Maximum Leader NEVER posts revenue data?