As for the justification for my personal ideology, I tend to see social and economic liberties in different terms. The way I look at it, everyone benefits from some restrictions on personal income–everyone uses roads (or public transit), everyone uses utilities, everyone uses (or at least benefits indirectly from) public education, and the same would apply for programs like universal healthcare. However, restricting a right is a different matter. The government doesn't belong in your website logs, on your phone conversation, in your bedroom, in a stoner's stash box, in a woman's OBGYN visit, or in my gun safe. The only ones who benefit from a restriction of rights (beyond basic restrictions like background checks on guns or shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater) are those in power, not those being governed. Therefore, while I accept taxes and social programs as the cost of living in a society that provides the basic necessities to everyone, I do not accept restriction of my freedom to do what I want so long as it doesn't harm anyone else–I'm a fan of Mill that way, really. My philosophy can best be summed up as "take my money and then leave me the fuck alone."

As for the "well-regulated militia," the militia was intended to be the whole people–the idea was that everyone (well, at the time, every free male) would have a gun and know how to use it in case of tyranny. Anti-gun activists have the opposite reaction to the overall amendment than the one you discuss; they tend to ignore the phrase "right of the people" in favor of an idea that while the other 8 of the first 9 amendments are individual rights, the Second Amendment is somehow a collective right, and the framers felt the need to write an amendment that basically said "The Army can have guns." In reality, "well-regulated" in the parlance of the times meant "well-trained;" free men were supposed to have their own weapon and practice with it regularly. The militia served the purpose of assuaging fears about a standing army's potential for a coup–so long as the people were armed, they provided a safeguard against domestic tyrants, as well as a secondary force against foreign invasion. Even today, current US Code defines two sections of the "militia"–the "organized militia" (National Guard, Coast Guard, Merchant Marines, Army Reserve, etc.) and the "unorganized militia" (every male between 18 and 45, plus any woman who has served in any branch of the military). Under the law, you and I are both members of a militia, as envisioned by the writers of the Constitution. Therefore, I choose to exercise my right to keep and bear arms, and to help make the militia a little more well-regulated by practicing with them.

I gave you a high five for calling me on the logical fallacy, but let's explore that idea. Glenn Reynolds is wrong about essentially everything. Excepting, in your opinion, his extremist position on the 2nd Amendment. While you're not automatically wrong because you agree with Glenn Reynolds, I'd think that it would give you reason to pause and consider the odds that everything that comes from Glenn Reynolds' mouth can be wrong (and usually indicative of no forethought whatsoever) and yet he has this one issue dead right.

Sure, he might be right. Looking at his opinion on just about any other issue, though, I'd say the odds are against it. If I found myself agreeing with the likes of Putz and G. Gordon Liddy and assorted other talk radio asshats, I'd take a big step back and re-evaluate my position in light of those individuals' track records on any other issue.

Second, there is an inherent contradiction in claiming to be really liberal but having a stridently conservative position on the 2nd Amendment – as several commenters appear to be doing. That puts you in the uncomfortable position of justifying why you're in favor of government restricting individual freedoms in the interest of the common good on a wide range of issues, but not on packing heat. Why do you believe that the government can take people's money but not their guns? How did guns earn special treatment in this set of ideological beliefs?

It seems like the kind of ideological dishonesty that the right does so well, and I'd prefer it if our side of the political spectrum avoided it. I bet you take the 1st Amendment pretty literally – for example, believing that freedom of religion prohibits government promotion of christian dogma. In that case, as is the $64,000 question of the entire 2nd Amendment movement, I wonder why the "well-regulated militia" part is so readily and easily ignored whenever people decide that, well, we can twist a few rules for the sake of our own preferences.

As for your closing point, I'd refer you to one of your own posts:
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2007/09/19/ed-vs-logical-fallacies-part-4-guilt-by-association/

"If Osama bin Laden likes something and you also like it, you are his comrade and supporter. Just like how Hitler liked gardening and I like gardening, which confirms that I am a rabid Nazi. The ACLU thinks terrorists should be tried with due process, so the ACLU are terrorists. Your professor does not think Reagan was the greatest president of all time, so he is an ivory-tower liberal trying to brainwash you. What excellent, logical reasoning."

Well said, Ed of 2007.

It's been a long day and I'm too tired to post anything remotely coherent, but I will close with this: you are in 100% agreement with Glenn Reynolds on this point. If being ideologically indistinguishable from Glenn Reynolds doesn't give you pause and make you reconsider your position, I don't know what will.

My point with regard to you expressing your opinion is simply that you accuse gun-rights advocates of arguing from a purely emotional point of view (i.e. "having a gun makes me feel safer"), and then you proceed to do it yourself (i.e. "having laws against guns on campus makes me feel safer"). It's not necessarily wrong to express your opinion in such a manner; my point is only that if you're going to do it, it's a bit hypocritical to call out people like ladiesbane for the same thing.

Re: the U–once again, I don't believe that concealed carry laws have any relevance whatsoever to the likelihood of some psycho blasting away. For example, the shooting that happened at the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City a few years back (about four blocks from my parents' house) was perpetrated by an 18-year-old. He had a shotgun that was legally purchased, but his handgun was purchased illegally from a convicted felon he worked with, and he sure as hell didn't have a concealed carry permit. In any case, Trolley Square prohibits guns on their property. Yet somehow, his lack of permit and the mall's anti-gun policy didn't stop him from shooting people there. Now, would it have turned out differently if more people in the mall had been armed, due to either higher permit numbers or a different mall policy? It's impossible to say. But I can say that if I'm in that sort of situation, I'd like to have an option that doesn't involve hiding behind a counter and praying to a God I'm not sure I believe in that the psycho won't find me.

My argument is not "punting" so much as a willingness to try something new. Trolley Square, Virginia Tech, that mall in Omaha, etc, etc. have pretty much shown that "gun free zones" don't work. So why not give students who are allowed by law to carry guns ten feet off campus the opportunity to defend themselves on campus? Hell, citizens with guns helped keep Charles Whitman from killing more people than he did, and that was back in 1966.

As to your last point, I acknowledged that straw purchases and theft of legal guns was likely responsible for the majority of illegal guns in the US; my point is only that limiting legal purchases won't have much of an effect on the illegal ones.

Nick, I honestly don't think that bringing up England or any other country in Europe serves your argument well. They don't have a fraction of the gun crime that we have. If you're going to pursue that line of argument I hope you are prepared to explain away the correlation: in England they have SOME guns and SOME gun crime. Here we have a fuck-ton of guns and a fuck-ton of gun crime. It would seem to me that those two things are related.

Second, I wasn't denying the fact that I was expressing my opinion with the classroom statement. Not sure what it accomplishes to call me on it. I was offering two alternatives because I think a reasonable person would see one of them as inherently superior.

Third, regarding U of U, if it causes no harm why not allow it? Because one time it will cause harm and one time is too many. When the decision is between people's rights and people's lives, I pick the latter every single time. I don't care if 99.999999% of people can handle concealed carry without incident – the one time someone snaps and starts blasting away is not worth the tradeoff.

On the fallacy of gun-free zones, I wonder if you've ever been in an airplane or a Federal courthouse.

I go back to the original point, and I read yours carefully because I know you've been around here for years, which I appreciate. My point is not about your right to own a gun. My point is simply that putting more guns in a classroom does not make it safer. When you're at home, hell, I don't care if you go in your yard and fire a .50 cal on full auto at a junked school bus. I don't care if you want to hunt every animal that walks on land. I don't care if you want to go to the shooting range and practice sniping a human-sized target 12 hours per day. Adding more weapons to an environment in which we have a long, sad history of violent shooting incidents does not make sense. When someone with a concealed carry finally snaps and adds to the list, how many people do you think he'll shoot before one of the vigilantes in the class returns fire?

Your argument seems like it has just punted on safety – like, "Fuck it, we can't get rid of the guns so we might as well arm everyone to the teeth so Good and Evil balance out." Permissive firearms laws got us into this situation, and they're unlikely to get us out of it.

RE: where criminals get their guns, I'm afraid I'll have to see some evidence before I believe that the majority of guns used in crimes here don't originate in the US as legal purchases.

As for your point regarding the U of U, I've already acknowledged that there's no evidence (that I've seen, at least) beyond anecdotal–which, of course, is mildly useful at best and exists on both sides of the argument–that indicates that concealed carry or higher rates of gun ownership are preventative of crime. But if it doesn't cause problems, why not allow it? If heavier controls on guns don't do anything to prevent crime, why exactly should we enact them? At best such laws are useless.

You accuse pro-gun types of arguing based on their emotions and feelings, yet in the next breath you write "As someone who spends a lot of time in classrooms, I’m more convinced of my safety and the safety of the classroom by an idea like 'No one in here is armed' than by 'Phew! If a gun-toting assailant comes in here, like 10 of my students can start blasting away at him!'" You acknowledge that the predicted negative effects of legalized concealed carry have not manifested themselves (while the fallacy of "gun-free zones"–that is, they're only "gun-free" if you're talking about legal guns not carried by the criminally insane–is shown pretty much every time some psycho shoots up a classroom), yet for no reason other than your personal feelings you prefer the idea of students being disarmed. Sounds to me like you're only against emotional argumentation if the person in question has feelings different than your own.

Also, to add to Shamash's point: I'm extremely liberal. I believe in moderate to high tax rates to pay for social services including universal healthcare and education, but I also believe that the government should stay out of my doctor's office, out of my bedroom, and out of my gun safe. I didn't follow some link from a dumbass conservative forum; I'm a long-time reader of this blog (since finding the gin reviews a couple years back). Personal attacks and assumptions don't sound any better coming from you than they do from those you mock.

• I'm not a conservative, freeper, wingnut, dittohead or NRA member
• I prefer to listen to NPR rather than talk radio
• I prefer to watch Rachel rather than Billo
• I voted for Obama rather than McCain
• I probably found this topic through a link eventually going back to either Crooks & Liars or Kos
• Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum

I have no idea what I said to be worthy of the insults (other than disagreeing with you), and I won't be back to find out. I prefer to limit my intellectual debates to those capable of debating and at least making an effort to use their intellect. If you spend a lot of time in classrooms, I sincerely hope it is not as a teacher. Your clear willingness to impose authoritarian rules on others and to ridicule dissent rather than foster reasonable debate would make for a very uncomfortable learning environment.

And feel free to set up a poll. It is your blog, after all.