Kanluwen wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
My impression is that a significant number of Americans would object to a scheduled police inspection of their weapon security cabinet.

In the UK and Japan, this is a feature of the licensing system, designed to prevent people from leaving guns and ammo lying around the house.

Scheduled is different than random gun inspections . I would agree to such schedule inspections for licensing reasons... Though I wouldn't be a gun owner lol, like I said earlier in the thread don't need a license to own my gun, just gotta not be crazy. It does help that I have FBI and BCI criminal background checks done, thanks to my student teaching.

Random drug testing is allowable for employment in many areas.

Why would this be any different? The caveat is that it has be truly random or applied in such a way that it is not prejudicial.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it's using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.
...

The majority falls prey to the delusion — popular in some circles — that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth — born of experience — is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks' homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process. See Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, 80 Geo. L.J. 309, 338 (1991). In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised their right to bear arms to defend against racial mob violence. Id. at 341-42. As Chief Justice Taney well appreciated, the institution of slavery required a class of people who lacked the means to resist. See Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 417, 15 L.Ed. 691 (1857) (finding black citizenship unthinkable because it would give blacks the right to "keep and carry arms wherever they went"). A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history — Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few — were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 578-579. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision , one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
[Random drug testing is allowable for employment in many areas.

Why would this be any different? The caveat is that it has be truly random or applied in such a way that it is not prejudicial.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Random drug testing is allowable for employment in many areas.

Why would this be any different? The caveat is that it has be truly random or applied in such a way that it is not prejudicial.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Random drug testing is allowable for employment in many areas.

Why would this be any different? The caveat is that it has be truly random or applied in such a way that it is not prejudicial.

YET THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENTER PEOPLE"S HOUSE"S AND FORCE RANDOM DRUG TESTS ON PEOPLE.
That utter nonsense. Corporations are not state actors. Corporations can also call you on the telephone. Does that mean the police have the right to enter your house and strip search everyone in the house? You're not making sense at this point.

Frazzled wrote:If I sound angry its because you've made statements about being in law enforcement or wanting to be. This lack of knowledge of basic constitutional law concepts is scary.

Whembly wrote:There's no comparison there dude...

 Kanluwen wrote:

Your point is nonsensical. The Chewbacca Defense lives strong in this one.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Your point is nonsensical. The Chewbacca Defense lives strong in this one.

No, he's right, the government can't just force drug testing on you without reason. Employers do random drug tests, but even that is starting to be challenged in some places. (5th amendment)

 Kanluwen wrote:

Whembly wrote:There's no comparison there dude...

Actually there is.

The fact that you refuse to see it does not negate it.

 Kanluwen wrote:

If it were being challenged, it would be under the 4th amendment not the 5th.

"Random drug tests" do not fall under self-incrimination, they fall under protection from unreasonable search and seizures.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Yeah, I'm not seeing it either...

And Random Drug Tests aren't all that random. Some industries can and do have truly "random" drug tests, and most places tell you have the right to test you. I mean my place at least has to have reasonable suspicion that you're on some form of substance...

 Alfndrate wrote:
Yeah, I'm not seeing it either...

And Random Drug Tests aren't all that random. Some industries can and do have truly "random" drug tests, and most places tell you have the right to test you. I mean my place at least has to have reasonable suspicion that you're on some form of substance...

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
Hmm, would I rather have officers conducting easily defeated "plain sight" searches, or would I prefer them out on the street? As someone with criminal intents, I would certainly prefer the former, as a law-abiding citizen I'll take the latter.

 d-usa wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

If you advertise that the staff will shoot you, then anybody with bad intentions will just go in shooting first.

The bad intentions we are discussing, specifically, are someone going into a school with the intent of shooting it up, though.

So simply shoot the teacher first, then proceed with the murder of children, switching to shooting anybody over 4 feet tall as needed.

It's not as effective of a solution as people make it out to be.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

If it were being challenged, it would be under the 4th amendment not the 5th.

"Random drug tests" do not fall under self-incrimination, they fall under protection from unreasonable search and seizures.

Most court cases thus far have addressed it as a fourth amendment issue (Marchwinski v. Howard), however a paper by CRS recently raised the question of if the samples thus taken constitute a part of 'self' and if the 5th might also be applicable. It hasn't gone before a judge yet, so it's all pie in the sky theory atm, so you're correct, the cases brought thus far have focused on 4th amendment rights.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

If you advertise that the staff will shoot you, then anybody with bad intentions will just go in shooting first.

The bad intentions we are discussing, specifically, are someone going into a school with the intent of shooting it up, though.

So simply shoot the teacher first, then proceed with the murder of children, switching to shooting anybody over 4 feet tall as needed.

It's not as effective of a solution as people make it out to be.

Not when you phrase it like that, no, it wouldn't seem so.

But instead of over-simplifying and dismissing the idea, I think you can see the logic behind making a school a harder target than it is currently.

There is one question that the pious critics of America's so-called gun culture cannot answer. If mass school shootings like that in Connecticut really are a product of the apparently mad Second Amendment, of the fact that guns are widely available in the US, then why did such shootings only take off in the late 1970s and early 1980s? Guns have been available in the US for more than two centuries, but multiple-victim shootings in schools, of the sort that rocked Connecticut and Columbine before it, are a very modern phenomenon. It cannot be simply the availability of guns that leads people to massacre children or their fellow students, or else there would have been horrors like this throughout American history.

If you look at this long and comprehensive list of shootings in American schools, one thing becomes clear very quickly: between the 1760s and the late 1970s, with a few exceptions, most shootings in schools were just a continuation of criminal activity in general. They involved the killing of one or two or maybe three persons, as gang clashes spilled into the classroom, or spurned teenage lovers exacted revenge on the object of their affection, or students lashed out at teachers they hated. It isn't until the 1960s, and then much more notably in the 1980s and 90s, that the phenomenon of *mass* school shootings emerges, where the aim is to kill as many young people as possible for no obvious, discernible or even old-fashioned criminal reason. There must be some modern culture shaping these outrages, something far newer than the Second Amendment or America's longstanding "gun culture".

The critics of America's gun culture casually point the finger of blame at the more backward elements in American society, particularly at rifle-toting rednecks. As one East Coast commentator puts it, the gun has become "America's Moloch", its pagan god that devours innocent children, and it is all the fault of those communities that are given to "religious fundamentalism" and which are known to "deny global warming or evolution". These gun worshippers apparently revere "the great god gun", and their capacity for logic and reason has been destroyed as a result. We know who he means: Southerners, the ill-educated, the sort who support the NRA, who speak in a drawl and probably chew tobacco, whose insane gun love is now apparently poisoning all of America.

But look at the photo of Adam Lanza. Or better still watch the videos and manifestos made by the Columbine killers or the Virginia Tech shooter and other recent school shooters. Do you really see Southern-style gun culture in these videos and words and images, or do you see a different, more modern culture at work? I see youngsters raised to consider themselves little gods, who see their self-esteem as king and who believe their angst must always be taken seriously. I see youth brought up in a world where we are increasingly encouraged to cultivate a persona, preferably a dangerous, edgy one, through media like YouTube and Twitter. I see young people so imbued with the narcissistic creed of the politics of identity, where how you feel and what you want must take precedence over any social or communal considerations, that they have been absolutely wrenched from both their own communities and from even basic moral codes.

I see the culture of narcissism, taken to its extreme, not the culture of gun worship. Which rather suggests that the supposedly liberal politicians currently wringing their hands over the availability of guns in the US might want to shine the spotlight on themselves instead, and on the dislocated, atomised, self-regarding modern world they have had a hand in creating.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Listening to the local afternoon drive talk radio show, and a caller is talking about if you look at the majority of these shootings that have been happening in places where there is little resistance because they're places where things like CCW isn't allowed. Schools, Malls, etc.. Though movie theaters don't have that rule (so Aurora would be the exception).

 AustonT wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
Listening to the local afternoon drive talk radio show, and a caller is talking about if you look at the majority of these shootings that have been happening in places where there is little resistance because they're places where things like CCW isn't allowed. Schools, Malls, etc.. Though movie theaters don't have that rule (so Aurora would be the exception).

he Cinemark theater chain has a "gun-free zone" policy.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Listening to the local afternoon drive talk radio show, and a caller is talking about if you look at the majority of these shootings that have been happening in places where there is little resistance because they're places where things like CCW isn't allowed. Schools, Malls, etc.. Though movie theaters don't have that rule (so Aurora would be the exception).

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
Listening to the local afternoon drive talk radio show, and a caller is talking about if you look at the majority of these shootings that have been happening in places where there is little resistance because they're places where things like CCW isn't allowed. Schools, Malls, etc.. Though movie theaters don't have that rule (so Aurora would be the exception).

And yet in many of these cases, ordinary citizens with CCW probably would not change anything except the body count--which could go both ways.

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet in many of these cases, ordinary citizens with CCW probably would not change anything except the body count--which could go both ways.

 Seaward wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet in many of these cases, ordinary citizens with CCW probably would not change anything except the body count--which could go both ways.

History proves you wrong on that one.

In all cases I'm aware of where a mass shooter was confronted by a CCW carrier, and there are more than a couple, the spree ended, then and there.

If your argument to that is, "Well, fewer people die, so what," I'm not sure what to tell you beyond that I think you're just trolling.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
Listening to the local afternoon drive talk radio show, and a caller is talking about if you look at the majority of these shootings that have been happening in places where there is little resistance because they're places where things like CCW isn't allowed. Schools, Malls, etc.. Though movie theaters don't have that rule (so Aurora would be the exception).

And yet in many of these cases, ordinary citizens with CCW probably would not change anything except the body count--which could go both ways.

I'm not arguing that I was simply making a statement based on something I heard, but look at it this way. If you, god forbid, decided to shoot up a school, movie theater, or mall or some other place. Would you want the least number of threats possible?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
Hmm, would I rather have officers conducting easily defeated "plain sight" searches, or would I prefer them out on the street? As someone with criminal intents, I would certainly prefer the former, as a law-abiding citizen I'll take the latter.

Officers "being out on the street" does not stop crimes from happening.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Not really. The psychology of these individuals supports my statement.

The fact that I have said it four or five times in this thread and yet you do not seem to grasp it boggles my freaking mind.

These people DO NOT CARE if someone is armed.
Their goal is to cause as much mayhem as possible before they go out.
I believe it was you who had mentioned an incident where a CCW carrier had taken cover behind a pillar, which (supposedly) led to the shooter retreating to a back hallway and blowing their own brains out. There is no real correlation between those instances.

 Maelstrom808 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
Hmm, would I rather have officers conducting easily defeated "plain sight" searches, or would I prefer them out on the street? As someone with criminal intents, I would certainly prefer the former, as a law-abiding citizen I'll take the latter.

Officers "being out on the street" does not stop crimes from happening.

That's not entirely true, as it has been shown that while just driving through a neighborhood doesn't really do much, having directed foot patrols in high crime areas with a focus on community interaction can have a significant impact on reducing and preventing crime.

In any case, it'd almost certainly still be more effective at reducing crime than these searches you are proposing.

Actual criminals are probably not going to be reporting the fact they have a gun to begin with, and lazy/irresponsible citizens are simply going to keep the closet or dresser the gun(s) are contained in closed, thus having the weapons out of sight.