So a lot of blogs are covering this article. One of the few bummers of being a new dad is I still have time to READ quite a few news stories and blogs (tho not as many as before little LaWeer’da came into my life…still keep sending me those stories Les…sorry more of them aren’t becoming articles here!) but I don’t have as much time to actually put pen-to paper on them. Thankfully for this article the post that has been milling in my mind isn’t copying the posts I’ve been reading, so away we go.
My entire adult life has been dedicated to the deliberate management of violence. There are no two ways around that fact. My job, at the end of the day, is about killing. I orchestrate violence.
I am not proud of that fact. Indeed, I am often torn-up by the realization that not only is this my job, but that I am really good at my job. But my profession is about directed violence on behalf of the nation.
I think this sets the tone for the piece amazingly well. I found a quick biography blurb for this author on another site:
Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Bateman is an infantryman, historian and prolific writer. Bateman was a Military Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and has taught Military History at the U.S. Military Academy. He is currently stationed in Washington, D.C.
I can see that above line being perfectly acceptable for a serviceman who signed up at 18 did a tour then left the military with honors. The job of our soldiers, like any other job, is not for everybody. Some people are blinded by Hollywood and patriot culture to think serving is something it isn’t. Further others in this country are die-hard peaceniks and don’t have a taste for any flavor of .mil. All of that is fine, and while you might have an opinion on such ideologies, I’m really becoming a “Big Tent” sort of guy as I’m getting older and meeting more people from various walks of life.
Still THIS author is Career military, military educated, and holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, AND he made that above remark. I can only read it two ways. Either he’s a total idiot who managed to serve for such a long career without ever understanding what the US Army was, and what it means to serve, or he’s a whore, willing to exclusively do a job he detests so he can get money and benefits. If you can read that any other way, please let me know in the comments.
Moving on:
What is happening inside our country is random and disgusting, and living here in England I am at a complete loss as to how to explain this at all. In 2011 the number of gun deaths in the United States was 10.3 per 100,000 citizens. In 2010 that statistic in the UK was 0.25. And do not even try to tell me that the British are not as inclined to violence or that their culture is so different from ours that this difference makes sense. I can say nothing when my British officers ask me about these things, because it is the law.
First up, given the scope of this article, I would recommend the Lieutenant Colonel resign his post and surrender his passport to the US Embassy in London and fucking stay there. If you hate this country so much, and love theirs, I would actually respect that action, rather than writing this horrible, and ignorant crap about this country while wearing the uniform. Also how is it you can write this article in a widely distributed magazine, as well as their website, and NOT talk to the Bobbies in England about it?
Still your first bit of horrible bullshit is in that paragraph. First up the UK doesn’t even remotely record crime the same way we do here in the states, essentially a “Murder” in the United States is a dead body that obviously was killed by another human being through malice. In the UK a “Murder” is a person who was convicted of the crime of Murder in the UK Court system. When you look at the unsolved murder rate in this country, suddenly the disparity of the data becomes MUCH smaller, we can practically HALF the US Murder rate if we want to compare the numbers on a level field. Further the UK Home Office has been cooking the books on what crimes actually get reported to the public.
Still even with this, YES the UK historically has been less violent than the US. Joyce Lee Malcolm wrote a very powerful book called “Guns and Violence” where she looked at violent crime rates in the UK since before the use of gunpowder, and discusses the historical treatment of civilian armament. She found that even when the US and UK had the same gun laws, the violent crime rates were still drastically different. So while you may not WANT to believe it, it appears to be true.
I won’t fisk his next bit on his deeply flawed interpretation of the Militia and the US Constitution, as that is done to great detail here. I do want to dive on this next bit.
I am adding the following “Gun Plank” to the Bateman-Pierce platform. Here are some suggestions:
1. The only guns permitted will be the following:
a. Smoothbore or Rifled muzzle-loading blackpowder muskets. No 7-11 in history has ever been held up with one of these.
b. Double-barrel breech-loading shotguns. Hunting with these is valid.
c. Bolt-action rifles with a magazine capacity no greater than five rounds. Like I said, hunting is valid. But if you cannot bring down a defenseless deer in under five rounds, then you have no fking reason to be holding a killing tool in the first place.
So above this he spends a great deal of time talking about the word of the 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But now suddenly gun ownership of THE PEOPLE is limited to guns he’s decided are sporting for hunting? Again, George Washington did not cross the Delaware River to get to his duck blind, and the Second Amendment is NOT about shooting ducks and deer. Further, he is probably correct that a musket, or the misnamed “Rifle Musket” (either you’re a musket, and smooth-bore, or you’re a rifle…sorry that’s the gun geek talking!) not being used to hold up a convenience store. Also you won’t find many of them being used to foil a robbery, or prevent a crime. Hey, but we’ll see how much he cares about the “little people” below.
2. We will pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers. That is because I am willing to wait until you die, hopefully of natural causes. Guns, except for the three approved categories, cannot be inherited. When you die your weapons must be turned into the local police department, which will then destroy them. (Weapons of historical significance will be de-milled, but may be preserved.)
Yeah, they aren’t coming for our guns. First up, yes they are, and second, at best what you’re saying is you aren’t coming for MY guns, but you’re coming for my daughter’s guns? Oh that doesn’t make me one bit happy! Also I love how de-milling a historical weapon is “Preserving” it.
3. Police departments are no longer allowed to sell or auction weapons used in crimes after the cases have been closed. (That will piss off some cops, since they really need this money. But you know what they need more? Less violence and death. By continuing the process of weapon recirculation, they are only making their jobs — or the jobs of some other cops — harder.)
Police auction guns are always sold through an FFL with a background check. You are admitting by destroying valuable equipment is taking money out of the pockets of law enforcement (who actually round up violent crimials), but you’re making a dubious claim that selling a gun confiscated from a drug dealer to a vetted upstanding citizen will make us safer. I’d ask you to show your work on that, but let’s face it, you will be perfectly unable, since the data says just the opposite. My accusation of you being a whore might still be true, but this level of ignorance is starting to point that you certainly are an idiot.
4. We will submit a new tax on ammunition. In the first two years it will be 400 percent of the current retail cost of that type of ammunition. (Exemptions for the ammo used by the approved weapons.) Thereafter it will increase by 20 percent per year.
Again, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”, and yet you are now talking about taxing ammunition. Further what ammo would be exempted? Since all shotguns he discusses are breech-loaders, all shotgun shells are out, the only cartridge guns this jerk is speaking of are “Bolt-action rifles with a magazine capacity no greater than five rounds.” with the exception of some truly massive big-game cartridges, just about every hunting caliber out there has a gun with a capacity over 5 out there for it, or an auto-loader. At this point I can only assume he’s completely stopped looking beyond the end of his own nose.
5. We will initiate a nationwide “buy-back” program, effective immediately, with the payouts coming from the DoD budget. This buy-back program will start purchasing weapons at 200 percent of their face value the first year, 150 percent the second year, 100 percent the third year. Thereafter there will be a 10 year pause, at which point the guns can be sold to the government at 10 percent of their value for the next 50 years.
And what exactly will be the “Face value” of one of the many (the bulk of arms in civilian hands, I might add) firearms you have deemed illegal to own or sell? Further what will now be the “face value” for the various kosher guns? So not only do you have no knowledge of firearms, crimes, and laws, but you’re also ignorant in basic economics. Boy I hope people take your advice, it seems REALLY sound and intelligent at this point?
6. The major gun manufactures of the United States, less those who create weapons for the federal government and the armed forces, will be bought out by the United States of America, for our own damned good.
Ahhh the Government buying out private business, likely at the same “Fair Face Value” as the guns will be bought out. I think a Godwin is warranted, given that this is one of the core tenants of National Socialism.
This man claims to be a military historian, yet is openly buffing the Military Industrial Complex, while disarming the people. Remember that part where he doesn’t like the fact that his job as a military leader demands he do violence for our government? Where the fuck does he think this is going? Gee, maybe if you were a military historian you could look to see where defensive arms were seized from the people, and the military started taking control of private business. Its happened a bunch of times, and there are mass graves of innocent lives in all of those places.
I frankly would not waste my piss on Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Bateman if he was on fire, and I am ASHAMED he is allowed to wear the Uniform of the United States Army.
**UPDATE** I just found this article by the above Tory Dog. Overall I find the tone of this vastly more cavalier and poorly written than the previous post, so its not worthy of a fisk. Still he does say this among his anti-rights “Utopian” diatribe.
We believe that advocates of massive home armaments/weapons stores should be sent to a country where this is a reality and see how well that is working out for the inhabitants of that nation. Specifically, we propose mass deportation of those who espouse this theory to the place where they can see it in action. To wit, Baghdad, Iraq, where every household is entitled to own and maintain an AK-47. Said relocation is to be paid for by the USG.
Go ahead and read the whole thing and read the distaste and disrespect he has for armed civilians.
When talking about this article over the breakfast table with the wife, she noted in his gun type restrictions, and ammo taxes: “Why bother saying you can keep those guns? Just come out and say ‘I want to ban them all!”
I would turn around and extend that to the above quote. Why not just execute them and incinerate their bodies in industrial furnaces?
I have no doubt now that this man is a straight-up Nazi in the truest sense of the word.
