If you’re looking for hard data as opposed to ethics, logic, politics, and philosophy, read this instead or as well: http://rense.com/general76/mths.htm
“In laboratory settings, there’s no evident difference between liberals and conservatives in their propensity to believe what they want, evidence be damned. In one experiment, Yale law professor Dan Kahan showed you could get liberals to start doubting global warming (and conservatives to begin accepting it) by making clear that any solution would require geoengineering. In another he showed that both liberals and conservatives were more likely to rate someone an expert on climate change if they agreed with their conclusions. In a third, he showed liberals were about as resistant to evidence showing concealed carry laws are safe as conservatives were to evidence showing climate change is dangerous.” ~Ezra Klein
The left, whom I side with on 95% of issues, needs to quit playing into the right’s hands and leave guns alone regardless of their personal opinion unless they wish to admit they are obsessed with them to a self destructive degree. Why?
Setting aside all the logical and ethical reasons to do so, of which there are many, there is the strategic reason that when ignored leads to party impotence. By simply vowing to stay out of gun policy, either for or against, the left could secure enough one issue voters to secure a permanent majority in every nationally relevant context.
Now really, if the price of declawing gun owners (and be honest, that’s the objective) is the failure of all your other policy objectives, and you knowingly pay it, who is really the more gun obsessed?
Update: A message to progressive individuals and organizations from which I have been forced to unsubscribe.
Why did I unsubscribe from your progressive email list suddenly? Because you forced me to. I am steadily being forced to the right by this one issue which you refuse to process rationally, instead relying on a partisan checklist of prefabricated opinions designed to keep the system deadlocked for all eternity.
Any progressive that jumps on the anti-gun band wagon has proven their disinterest in logic and the constitution and has therefor become a mindless part of the system and problem.
Gun prohibition is as insane as Alcohol prohibition and Drug prohibition. Yes we regulate alcohol, but not remotely to the degree we regulate guns, and there is no good reason for it because a rag and a lighter turn booze into a horrifying weapon.
Incrementalist efforts to achieve gun prohibition under the guise of regulation, because they can’t be bothered to attack the 2nd amendment openly cannot be tolerated. Opposition to the 2nd pursued in this way is as is as underhanded as anything the right wing does to achieve its goals. It’s easily as bad as voter disenfranchisement under the guise of fraud protection for example. It’s simply another attempt to undermine any potential opposition to our continued enslavement to billionaires and their millionaire congressional minions.
The 2nd Amendment
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
~James Madison
The right to bear arms is not for defense or hunting, it’s to equip a revolt if needed, that’s why we’re allowed to field a militia as well. A militia with muskets was the equivalent of a battalion complete with strike craft, rocket artillery, and stinger missiles, in those days.
The whole point was to allow the existence of a force which could rival the army, not be the army.
It’s shockingly absurd to assert that the 2nd was somehow intended to protect the rights of the military, and that somehow the needs of the 2nd are met now by the military. To believe that is to believe that the framers of the Constitution didn’t have command of the English language or logic.
Arms escalation is an issue, and we were overtly warned on national television by the president of the United States of the dangers of the military industrial complex. This is one of them.
“My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights or of waging war against tyrants.”
~Patrick Henry
The founding fathers did however make one critical error. They should have simply made, and explicitly stated that, it is our right to prepare for an armed revolt, as that was clearly the intent. Context makes it obvious if you take the time to look.
The whole point of the document was to establish a government that could be modified as the people saw fit, and tossed out entirely if that failed. But how could the people toss out a corrupt government if it was tactically powerless? It can’t, which is why we have the 2nd amendment. It was to create a government that was the slave of the people.
Both sides of the popular gun “debate” simply refuse to read the relevant documents. Perhaps that’s because both parties are owned by the same handful of people. (http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html)
The purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that the government be barred from annihilating the population’s ability to prepare for and execute an armed rebellion.
The ‘well regulated militia’ line is the framers being specific about how they expected such a rebellion to come about if required. I.E. The government goes bad, the populace wants a new one, and forms an armed militia (or in today’s popular parlance a “terrorist organization”) to depose it. The concept of diffuse, headless, guerrilla warfare simply didn’t occur to them. They expected us to be able to organize. They did not anticipate the power of mass media manipulation and consent manufacturing. In short, wise as they were they couldn’t entirely envision the deep future.
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. (emphasis mine)
It does not say the right of “the army”, (which it does mention explicitly elsewhere), it says the people. Gun control advocates when forced to comment at all seem to think the purpose of regulated militia in the context of the second is meant to fulfill a need now filled by the standing army. This is obviously false.
Firstly, as mentioned, the document makes overt reference to the army and the navy elsewhere in the document. The framers didn’t need a metaphor for the army, they knew the word and used it.
Secondly, think how absurd it would be to list a right of the army among a list of rights obviously meant for the people.
“There is no fettering of authority.” ~William Shakespeare
Think about what that implies. As if the ‘true/modern’ wording of the second should be something like this: “A well regulated army being necessary to the security of the state, the right of the soldiers to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Obviously that was not the intent of the amendment. The Constitution is not an elaboration of government rights, it is a limitation of them. It is an elaboration of the people’s rights.
The whole assumption of the document is that left alone, government will seize all rights, which is what tyranny is. It doesn’t need a constitution for protection, the people do. If the point was to safeguard the army the question becomes safeguard it from what?
What government has ever fielded an army without weapons? Is an army even an army if it is disarmed? The whole notion that the military fulfills the intent of the militia wording is mind numbing ignorance and cognitive dissonance, at best. Normally I like to expose insanity of that sort with an exaggeration of some kind but I can’t think of one. The claim that “well regulated militia” == “military” is the very apex of nonsense.
But getting back to reality, it does not say security of the state but security of a free state. That taken with the fact that a militia with muskets was the state of the art in military technology of the day, the equivalent of tank divisions and gunships, it becomes crystal clear that the intent of the second is to safeguard the people, as separate from the government and the military, against a possibly corrupt future government and military, more so than any external foreign threat. Though enabling the people to defend themselves in the event of invasion, should the military be logistically barred, or too incompetent to do so at the time, was also a consideration.
This was all fresh in the minds of the framers given that they had just recently been a citizen militia perpetrating an armed rebellion against a corrupt government’s army. Note also that the wording says keep and bear arms. This means that simply allowing us to have them is insufficient, we must also be allowed to carry them. 90% of gun law (along with 99.999% of proposed additional gun law) is absolutely unconstitutional given these facts.
Now, an argument can be made that muskets aren’t readily concealed so the intent may not cover concealed carry, but it absolutely does cover open personal carry, or concealed carry within a vehicle, considering hiding a musket in a carriage or cart is absolutely possible and yet they didn’t feel the need to stipulate visibility. Think about it, when one bears their teeth, the point is to make them visible.
This is further defended by the word “infringe” as opposed to something like “prohibit.” Clearly the spirit of the statement is meant to prohibit regulation generally as well as an outright ban, being perfectly aware as they were of the incrementalist approach. This is supported by the context of the time, since the rebellion itself was begun not by overt decree but by stealthy stacking of oppressive regulation and taxation. Incrementalism caused the American revolution.
“[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually. . .“
~George Mason
Regulation is often used to produce the effect of a given sort of law without the actual intent being declared. Indeed one could argue that this is regulation’s primary use. Waiting periods and background checks and application fees add up to prohibitions and infringements without coming out and saying what they are. There is clearly an element in American politics that, openly or not seeks to slowly regulate firearms into effective illegality because the legitimate course of action with this intent would be politically impossible, a repeal of the second amendment.
Again, the framers were absolutely speaking about, and aware of, the potential to tax and regulate firearms to the point of an effective ban, which is why they used the word infringe. All gun regulation is unconstitutional.
The argument that regulation is needed to prevent crime is absurd. Crime is crime, regardless of the tools. Regulate the act, not the tool. (Which I why murder by hammer is illegal and yet hammers are legal.)
Attempting to deny criminals the tools to commit crime is a fool’s errand since fire, rocks, and fists can get the job done. Let alone the awesome power of biology, chemistry, and basic physics. The need to make a law that you can’t sell a gun to a crazy person is proof that there is a problem with health care, not gun law. A person crazy enough to be dangerous with a firearm shouldn’t be in a position to get hold of rocks or matches either. The sane solution is not rock and match law, yet that’s what we’ve allowed to occur.
Hitting someone with a rock should be illegal, not carrying a rock. Setting fire to someone’s house should be illegal, not owning matches and gasoline. Shooting people or robbing them with guns should be illegal, not owning them or carrying them.
Debates about crime reduction or hunting are completely beside the point.
Sidenote:
It occurred to me the other day why it is that gun control was chosen (by the 1%, those who own and orchestrate partisanship as a tool of statecraft) as the one and only issue the “progressive” side is to decide on dogmatically or ideologically as opposed to rationally.
The real reason democrats are to mouth foam in the face of facts when it comes to gun control and no other issue, is because while the 2nd serves the 99% as a last resort, opposition to it serves the 1% as a last resort as well.
Many people talk about what would happen if the tables tipped in their favor to the point of crushing tyranny resulting in armed revolt. (http://underlore.com/if-not-now-when/) But it occurred to me that no one really thinks about the other side of that coin. Further, no one thinks about the 1% thinking about that, and so on. Well, rest assured they have, and this seemingly irrational position on gun control taken by the “progressive” party strongly implies it.
You see I always assumed this mixing and matching of smart positions was entirely about making sure no party is ever allowed to really win, a tool to keep us bickering over trivialities while they train our children to endure and internalize the ethics of slavery, and it is that, but there is another bonus.
Opposition to gun ownership is their last resort just as ownership of guns is ours. Think about a total progressive victory. Banks regulated, healthcare offered, the playing field leveled, etc. For them, that is the equivalent of tyranny, that is the worst case endgame scenario. But, having tricked the progressives into adopting gun control as an immutable tenet, the resulting society would be a disarmed one, ripe for recapture or counter revolution.
A true critical thinker doesn’t just examine his enemies, but himself as well. If you oppose gun ownership and the 1%, ask yourself why the facts don’t matter to you, and be sure you know who gave you your opinion and why.
Ok, so lets say I agree, but we couldn’t ever beat the army right?
(From here: https://plus.google.com/+BrandonSergent/posts/UgnM1cvMZ8b)
“The notion of taking on a military that is unchallenged in the world is utterly absurd.”
Someone has been watching too much TV.
The statement made however radically misunderstands both the nature of American warfare and the kind of war the 2nd amendment anticipates.
A war of the military vs its citizenry would not be the same class of conflict as a war against foreign powers. Most clearly because that citizenry provides the material support that military needs to run.
Beans, bullets, and bandages. Who do you think supplies those for our military?
It would instantly be a guerrilla war also, and half of the military may well switch sides, many waiting to do so at critical moments.
Basically, defeating the US military for the US citizens would be an inside job and we could simply outlast them.
A general strike is implied in such a scenario and given the amount of funding, which translates obviously to the amount of domestic labor the American military relies on, that alone would be devastating.
Make no mistake the 2nd is doing its job.
I’ll be generous and say every last person in uniform is unified, that’s 2,927,754 military personnel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel
According to http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828
The American civilian populace is armed to the tune of 9 out of 10.
And that’s completely ignoring what we make and hold for government use, and what’s sitting on pawn shop and gun shop shelves all over the country. Every walmart in the south is an armory.
Population: 311,591,917 (2011) United States Census Bureau
That’s 280,432,725 people with a gun each 2,927,754.
That’s just about 99 to 1.
Frankly, we could take them even it they fuel air bombed the major cities, in advance. And they know it.
Update: 2016-06-13 0430 PM Orlando
Here we go again.
After months of the DNC/MSM (and MIC) positioning for a corporate coup via election fraud, we get one disturbingly well timed terrorist attack that checks all the hot button social boxes, LGBT, Muslim, guns, terrorism… and we predictably start begging to be disarmed like the trusting emotional irrational sheep we apparently are on the whole.
AGAIN. Do you people not recall how the war on terror started? Where the patriot act came from? Why it’s a bad thing in the first place?
Democracy is a sham, not just because stolen elections, but because you people are so easily manipulated into begging for totalitarianism.
Look at what you’re screaming.
“Please declaw us! Please child proof our lives! Please make us totally powerless to rebel! Please take away our rights in the name of security! Please distract us! Please rule us with fear! Please put us totally at the mercy of people who we know for a fact are corrupt sadistic murders with no mental limits on how far they’ll go for power and wealth!”
Do you people really want your front door to be like a TSA checkpoint? Do you really want to turn the whole country into an airport? Because that’s what it takes to make everyone “safe” this way. That’s where a gun-war executed like the drug war will take us.
Do you honestly think making a gun or a bomb is more complicated than making meth? By definition no since you can accidentally make a bomb while making meth. A gun is an order of magnitude simpler, even before 3d printers and CNC machines.
Begging for a new drug war over guns is suicidally stupid.
Freedom comes with risk.
Are all the other issues you rant about so trivial that you can forget them because of a single emotional shock?
Banning real effective guns would put us totally at the mercy of cops that kill blacks at will, a military that bombs hospitals by “accident,” a government that imprisons us in world-record numbers, and a string of presidents and elected officials that assassinate us by drone and trample all our constitutional rights. (Not just the one you are begging to have trampled.)
Are you insane?
Did you people just suddenly forget about the drug war? Did you not notice that murder is already illegal? Do you scream for the banning of cars or booze to cure drunk driving?
Do you really say we should ban anything that makes killing possible? Do you have any idea how surrounded by weapons you are?
Have you ever heard of an ied? What do you think will come after guns even if you could magic them away? The most lethal school killing was not a shooting, it was a bombing and it happened in 1927.
Mass murder isn’t new. And it isn’t caused by anything recent.
When did you stop caring about the constitution? When did you start cherry picking which of our rights really matter like the republicans?
Any liberal that’s against guns needs to shut up about:
- Cops: Because they are now your only line of defense.
- Prison: Because a new ban war means more prisons.
- Militarized police: Because taking the guns away means civil war.
- Police brutality: They’ll need lethal force to declaw America, and a lot of it.
- Constitutional rights: Because you’ve made it clear you don’t care about the constitution.
- The drug war: Because you want a new one that’s even worse.
Wake up. Gun law only protects the rich from us. They own the cops and the military. They don’t need guns, they have soldiers. This isn’t about crime and hunting. This is about future and present tyranny.
Think like a grown up from the real world for once.
The Filibuster 2016-06-16
And so in the wake of the tragedy that was preventable, in a thousand ways other than stripping us of a constitutional right and tyranny backstop, we now have the so called “progressives” in congress banding together to do just that. Seemingly fighting the good fight that they are unwilling to fight on any other front that matters.
Leftists are so stupid for cheering for this. Do they not ask themselves why this issue? Why now? They are neoliberals! HRC is under investigation and her actual hacked emails are being leaked!
You idiots. What they are doing serves their 1% masters. The rich don’t need the 2nd amendment! The rich are always served by tyranny.
Indeed the rich are the source of tyranny! Remember income inequality? Campaign finance reform? Climate change fueled by fossil? Who is at the root of those issues you’ve forgotten in your mad egotistical dash to virtue signal by way of stripping the rights from others?
So this is all it takes. Allow or create a problem, and then pitch once again trading freedom for the illusion of security. Gun prohibitionists are now falling into the same emotional trap as those itching to get “tough on crime.” And just like that debate, the real issue isn’t solved by more oppression, and more laws.
You can’t fix crime with prisons, prohibition, and police. Have you fools forgotten the drug war? Is stricter drug law the solution? Do you really want your entire life to be like a TSA checkpoint?
It seems you do. And via the arbitrary and corrupt terrorist watch list no less. Idiots. Cowards. Infants. Hypocrites.
Related links:
Is it a “Lie” That More People Carrying Guns Can Lead to Less Crime?
In summation, even to Lott’s critics, the best conclusion is not that he’s a clownish fraud and liar, but that the matter of gun carrying and crime is incredibly complicated and the best evidence regarding the effect of more people carrying guns on crime is still ambiguous, not that Lott’s conclusion is the opposite of the truth.
The overarching fact remains: many more guns in the country and more states with the legal right to carry them with fewer regulation coinciding with an enormous decrease in gun crime.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/second-amendment-came-from-articles-of-confederati/
http://www.gunpolicy.org/
http://anoncentral.tumblr.com/post/41055625177/america-is-now-flirting-with-the-dark-side-of-history
http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html
I am not a constitutional attorney. However I will address a couple of easy to dispel arguments you have made. Firstly:):The 2nd amendment was not included to allow citizens to stop a tyrannical government. State militias were only needed at that time because the federal government did not have a standing army. When George Washington called up 13,000 militia members across the country to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, he set the precedent for the federal government to enforce it’s laws. Some involved in the rebellion were actually tried and convicted of TREASON AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. So the 2nd amendment was NOT to protect the people against the government (they had just formed!) but to protect the newly formed government against rebellions by the people. Even if I believed your convoluted interpretation of the 2nd amendment, the 2nd amendment like the 1st amendment is NOT ABSOLUTE. By your argument, I, or my crazy neighbor, could own machine guns, drones even nuclear weapons.
Some of your arguments are even sillier. Really? “Rocks don’t kill people, people kill people” is your argument. Rocks are not man made. And hammers, knives, ropes, whatever are not made to kill. We don’t have drive by rock or knife throwings. Owning a hammer, doesn’t make me 42 times more likely to die by hammer. We don’t have 20 dead 1st graders and 6 dead teachers because of rope.
I asked what you were afraid of. You answered that you weren’t afraid;you needed an arsenal for “deterrence”, symbolism, economic reasons or “miscellaneous”. Why would you need a deterrent against something you are not afraid of. And if you think your big guns are going to deter the federal government, you are a fool. What do your big guns symbolize? All most people see is fear. Economic reasons? Buy some gold or whatever gun nuts are into these days. Miscellaneous? What???
“I am not a constitutional attorney.”
This is clear. What is also clear is that you’ve not bothered to read ANYTHING that the founders said about why the people shall retain the right to keep and bear arms. Rather than trying to fix your misconceptions, I’ll explain it as simply as possible. I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Whether they be domestic usurpers of the Constitution’s authority, common rabble trying to overthrow our Constitutional form of government, or foreign invaders, they are my enemy, and I will be perfectly happy to use my privately owned firearm to persuade them to stop. Fatally if necessary.
Firstly (I see what you did there 🙂 ) thanks for commenting. Congratulations on being the first less-rights advocate to have the spine to debate me on my own ground. I look forward to another chance to prove that I don’t cheat.
Secondly, I’m making it clear now that I haven’t the slightest belief that I’ll convince you, or that anything on the Internet is even capable of convincing you. As I quipped on twitter recently, people don’t have positions anymore, they have religions. And I am not fool enough to think I can talk you out of yours.
Onward!
“Some involved in the rebellion were actually tried and convicted of TREASON…”
Treason proceedings don’t prove or disprove anything with regard to the 2nd amendment. The articles of confederation were replaced by the Constitution because a stronger federal government was needed. As part of the transition the 2nd was included to appease elements that were resisting the change because they feared they were taking a step away from the freedom they had so recently fought for.
The 2nd’s usefulness as a bulwark against tyranny only works if the situation is so dire and universally agreed on that virtually everyone responds. Here is a basic work flow for the thinking behind the 2nd: Government grows improper. People oppose it peacefully. Government ignores process and stifles freedoms. People protest and peacefully resist. Government grows overtly tyrannical and responds with violence and overreaction. Some people criminally rebel. Government goes insane, attempts to disarm the public, makes examples, forcibly disband militias under the rubric of national security.
This disarming action is a prelude to the declaration of martial law, mass imprisonment, military action against civilians, etc. Whatever they think it takes to get whatever they want from us. Look at other governments in history for examples of just how far that can be carried against a powerless population. It’s not even a matter of submission. We’re talking about systemic insanity here, like for example McCarthyism. Seeing enemies and crime where there are none.
By its very nature the first thing any tyrannical government wants is a non-lethal people. If you have a tiger in your house and you plan to mistreat it, the first thing a wise person would consider is declawing it or otherwise rendering it harmless, before it realizes you are a threat.
The genius of the 2nd is that it is both a defense against, and a early warning system of, the government losing its mind. If our government does go truly insane, because of the 2nd the result will be a civil war as opposed to (Stalin style) purges or even a second holocaust. The difference between a civil war and a mass slaughter is the ability of the attacked to defend, to resist. (I anticipate an argument that we are incapable, see below and links above.)
“So the 2nd amendment was NOT to protect the people against the government (they had just formed!) but to protect the newly formed government against rebellions by the people.”
Again, the constitution was created to replace the articles of confederation. The debate of this transition and the resulting required compromises are what gave rise to the amendments.
All of those amendments were introduced to protect the interests of the people who were happy with the articles and did not like the directing of moving towards a stronger more centralized federal government. These were people who had more or less just gotten out from under an autocrat, a monarch. Look at them. Each amendment is obviously a protection of the people, not the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The argument that the 2nd is an elucidation of the government’s right to arm itself is nonsensical.
“Even if I believed your convoluted interpretation of the 2nd amendment, the 2nd amendment like the 1st amendment is NOT ABSOLUTE. By your argument, I, or my crazy neighbor, could own machine guns, drones even nuclear weapons.”
Actually if you believed my interpretation, it would make sense that yes I am of the opinion that the point of the 2nd is to grant the citizenry access to weapons, information, and training sufficient to defend themselves against a misdirected military. This is really a whole separate debate. (To what degree, as opposed to if at all.) And I’d rather not get bogged down by this tangent. But it will suffice to say that the only weapons that should be kept out of civilian hands in principal -at the federal level- (more locally is a different matter) should be nuclear, biological, and some chemical weapons. I say “some” because mace and pepper spray are chemical weapons. That definition could be warped, but again that’s part of this secondary debate that really should be had among the second’s defenders exclusively. If you don’t agree on the purpose of the 2nd, arguing about the degree to which it is honored is disingenuous and should exclude you.
“Rocks are not man made.”
This is actually a third debate. (Can gun law be enforced?) Yes, rocks are not man made, but they are potentially lethal. This means that lethality alone is an insufficient argument against gun rights. The point is that you cannot render people totally harmless by any reasonable means, even if you were incorrect enough to think that was a good idea. It’s futile from the outset, which means the character and effect of gun law is automatically not going to be what was intended. Prohibition and the drug war are excellent examples of what happens when laws are enacted which cannot be enforced. You don’t get the results you expect, and I’m telling you the results of gun control law will not be a less lethal populace, but a more vulnerable demographic within the populace plus a more lethal, better funded, demographic. It’s cliche but it’s also true, by banning guns you simply ensure that only criminals remain armed.
Think about it. You consider me a gun nut right? Well, do you think as a gun nut I’ll hand over my guns if ordered by the government? No, I won’t. But you presumably already don’t have any, so nothing changed there. I’ll still have my guns and the only thing between you and criminals is the police. Now, if the police were sufficient to protect you, how do you explain all the murders, rapes, robberies, arsons, etc which the police can not prevent? All your law did was add me to the list of criminals. It turned a passive law abiding ally into an armed and now cornered adversary. For my own protection I would have to join with others of my type to survive. In other words I would have to organize. Did you catch what happened there? Your law did nothing but create additional resources for organized crime. We saw it with prohibition, we see it with the drug war, and we would see it more if gun control expands.
Indeed the degree to which gun control laws already exist have already created underground markets. Black market weapons are a booming global business. Ironically, most obviously among the other class of criminals we created with asinine laws as part of the drug war.
Actions in favor of gun control are actions in favor of empowering the mob. Because the mob or, whatever you want to call organized crime of any stripe, is already well adapted to living criminally . If I and other gun owners are turned into criminals who do you think we’ll end up working for? Think it through.
“And hammers, knives, ropes, whatever are not made to kill.”
Irrelevant. The arguments above apply. This is actually a fourth debate. What price are we prepared to pay for gun laws?
In addition, making a technology illegal in an attempt to curtail a single specific use is a radical over reaction, especially when that one use is already specifically and vigorously prohibited. It would be like making paint illegal to prevent graffiti. As I linked above, all security decisions must among other things consider the trade-off and cost. Clearly you are willing to tolerate some degree of potential misuse from your technology. You are willing to risk graffiti so long as we can all have paint. And I agree. I just extend that logic to firearms and other weaponry because I see the value of weapons beyond their superficial ability to kill.
I’ve saved my own life with the threat of violence with a weapon. I know indisputably from personal experience that a weapon in the right hand at the right time prevents violence and protects the innocent and the weak. Your vision of what a weapon intrinsically is and does betrays a lack of imagination and experience. And that’s fine, if you think weapons are useless, by all means, advocate against their use. But you have no right to attempt to take my right to peacefully disagree, or defend myself.
You have no right to declaw me. And nor does anyone else ultimately.
“Owning a hammer, doesn’t make me 42 times more likely to die by hammer.”
That is a still fifth debate. Is having a weapon worth the risk to the owner? Well in my hands my weapon is about as dangerous as the stove. I respect it, I understand it, and I am responsible with it. Sure it’s dangerous, but so is the breaker box. That’s not a sufficient argument to have it outlawed. In any case such a choice is mine to make. I’m allowed to climb a mountain also, or attempt to live on fast food. Being wreckless to one’s self isn’t and shouldn’t be a crime. If you think I’m taking a stupid risk, by all means say so, but you don’t have the right, nor should you, to dictate my life choices when the cost in this context is my own well being. This facet is exactly like the drug debate in my opinion. I should be completely permitted to endanger my own health. (To say it’s not about just me, is to move past this particular debate and move to one of the debates above, or somewhere else.)
“You answered that you weren’t afraid.”
I said my primary motivation wasn’t fear. Of course I’m afraid. I’m very afraid that people like you out number people like me and that eventually I’ll be forced to live and presumably die as a criminal. I’m already an activist and abolitionist. The last thing I want is another reason to worry about the government suddenly declaring me an undesirable. I already know that I’m in danger of having my life taken by a justice system saturated with errors, (Google “The innocence project”) or that a multinational corporation could declare war on me at any moment and there is nothing that would happen to them. (Google “too big to jail”)
But my response to that fear isn’t as simplistic as thinking I can shoot my way out of these potential situations. That why I write, not shoot. If I thought shooting would make the world a better place, I’d be doing that. Your kind routinely imply that my kind are violent and stupid hillbilly thugs when the very fact that we engage with you and function in society proves we aren’t. Why would I take the time to talk to you at all if I thought I could solve the problem of people like you with a bullet? Especially if I was so in love with the idea of killing with my “big guns” that you so childishly mock.
I already know that you’re even more vulnerable and unprotected than I am. I don’t fear you, I fear the death of democracy being voted in. Many despots have been rightfully elected in history, and many societies have voted in their own extinction. Indeed, I fear that democracy itself may prove unsustainable. This debate and it’s cultural outcome is critical in that context.
In short, I have many fears, and I’m reacting to them as responsibly and peacefully as I know how.
This last section applies primarily to me personally. None of this should be construed as an argument for forcing gun ownership on others. Unlike you I’m willing to let other people live in opposition to my beliefs. I’m not the bigot (for lack of a better word for someone who would force their will on others) you seem to be.
“you needed an arsenal for “deterrence”
Not me personally, but as the power of the military grows due to gross over-funding the number of weapons in private hands required to give the strategists pause necessarily increases. As I said above this is an argument for parring down the military, not giving up and disarming the public.
I think barring various exceptions, from a strictly policy standpoint it would be wise for every house to have one military grade rifle, one pistol, and something like 500 rounds for every household. I think that would be enough to keep them from attempting psychotically tyrannical solutions here that other governments have attempted. (Mass internment, etc.) But since that kind of diffusion of arms isn’t feasible since many are unable or unwilling, then to get the same social protection some people are going to have to stock pile so that in case the worst does happen at least our side has an armory or two. I personally would rather have those armories in rational civilian hands (as opposed to xenophobes, racists, radical fundamentalists, cultists, etc) but your side of the table makes that harder and harder. Only those groups are willing to put up with the risk and hassle your side creates as it throws up road blocks to armament, which only fuels their paranoid delusions with bits of actually evidence.
Who do you think is driving up the gun sales whenever you gun control types get traction? Arms dealers and people more crazy than I am with more money than I have.
You gun control types remind me of republicans, putting two wars on the credit card and legalizing publicly funded wallstreet gambling and then whining about the deficit. You’re creating the very problem for which you offer marginalizing me and my kind as a solution. Convenient.
“Symbolism.” | “What do your big guns symbolize? All most people see is fear.”
This is a personal thing but yes, they are a powerful symbol. I can’t run. Physically I’m incapable due to a leg deformity. Socially I am the same. They know where I live, they know my name and face. I am too poor to travel. I have no choice but to fight. Flight is not an option. I live in a state of being cornered. I would have been killed and eaten long ago had humanity not mastered all its predators through weaponry. The rock, the knife, the club, the spear, the sword, the bow, the rifle, the handgun. These things made this planet ours. My handgun is a symbol of my pride in my species and it’s accomplishment. It also symbolizes self discipline and ascendance over my animal nature. I can kill my enemies. But I don’t because I am a rational being now. I’m not just another animal, or at least I have the potential to rise above my animal nature. My weapon also symbolizes the trust my society places in me which I struggle very hard to be worthy of. I have a CCDW license. My state trusts me with the lives of everyone around me. I can physically hold proof of that trust in my hand. Can you understand why I will not give that up just because you or some 1% pawns start to worry about all the little people like me who want to defend those who can’t defend themselves?
“Economic reasons.”
My weapons rise in value as your efforts to ban them even seem to gain traction. A firearm is both currency and tool.
“Miscellaneous.”
I can hunt with it if need be. I can signal for help with it. I can trade it. But most importantly in this context I can do with it things that I can’t do with my naked hands. It is an expansion of personal options, every bit as much as any other technology. I have it for the thousand reasons I can think of and the millions that I can’t. I’d rather have it not need it than need it and not have it.
“And if you think your big guns are going to deter the federal government, you are a fool. “
I’m curious what you think war is like. I suspect you think it’s like a Michael Bay movie or Call of Duty. You seem to have this image of war like it’s all a video game, when really it’s more like a zombie movie in that it’s very personal, and very low tech. There’s a reason the people that give our military the most trouble are fundamentalists who literally want to live in the dark ages, in already war saturated countries.
As I said I already linked to this, but just for others since I know you won’t read it with anything approaching an open mind…
https://plus.google.com/115056313943520401920/posts/UgnM1cvMZ8b
Those who think like you overlook so many basic facts about war it’s hard to know where to begin. Ironically your ignorance of war is a consequence of our mastery of it locally. You are so insulated from war your image of it has grown completely inaccurate. This reminds me of a quote from a movie. “Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you.” I am both pleased and worried by this. I’m not one of these tough love assholes that wants everyone tortured so we can be a nation of tough guys, but at the same time I don’t think those who are completely ignorant of a thing should be using it as an argument to make policy relevant to it.
I’m glad when any human has no idea what war is. I’m worried when that ignorance threatens to create some.
You challenged me in no uncertain terms on a G+ thread that you decided was on the second amendment although the latter hadn’t been cited until you came in. After I reacted in the thread on your response to my comment, I see at the end of your reaction to somebody else’s later comment that you declare to have muted the thread and direct here to respond. I think it is appropriate for me to tell you I hate this form of behavior, and also that you’ve no reason to believe that the contexts are equivalent.
@borisborcic:disqus
Let’s be clear.
1. You’re not selfless and you’re not my friend. My friends make themselves obvious by their actions and I have a whopping 3 of them on G+. You interest me, and I occasionally interest you. Nothing more.
99% of people on G+ are there to hear themselves speak and look for cool new pictures.
2. “The” thread and “A” thread mentioned are My thread. You’re avoiding that for a reason. I can do what I want in both places. But here I own the content, there, it’s just so much G+ babble.
3. Funny how you came here to scold me, but not to have the debate.
So I challenge you again in “no uncertain terms” read the above post and tell me where I am wrong. Grab something you think I can’t prove, prove something wrong I’ve said.
Or is meta-commentary scolding all you bring to the table?
I came here to scold you because I spontaneously read comments coming on my threads top-down and so spent some effort replying to the one where you challenged me, before discovering that you had dismissed the thread wholesale, and leaving a link to this page for eventual reactions.
Who likes talking to walls? Next time you do that, please think of removing prior comments of your own that are likely to not even have been read by the destination yet.
I considered copying my comment but, as I said, the contexts are not equivalent, and this has less to do with the identity of the owner than with whether or not the 2nd amendment is the head topic of the post.
@borisborcic:disqus
So you made a special trip and wrote two pointless comments to whine about the consequences of your own oversight? Read to the end of the document next time before you start talking. That’s a newbie mistake.
You’re angry at me for exposing your own impatience and misplaced assumptions.
Also, learn to recycle your own content. I’m ever so sorry that you can’t just copy pasta, but hey news flash sometimes expressing yourself takes effort and sometimes that effort doesn’t pay off.
Your scolding is completely pointless except as a masturbatory exercise. I hope you feel better now.
But hey, at least you’ve once again shown that people in favor of gun control are logically bankrupt, and in most cases eager to evade showing this fact.
Bottom line, I see less and less point to G+ as time goes on. None of you fucking people listen to anything, let alone logic or facts.
I have 1300 silent followers and even the vast majority my very best friends refuse to comment here, unless their fragile little egos are wounded (like in this case.)
You’re mad because my response ultimately reminds you that G+ is an illusion of audience, participation, and friendship. you want me to help you perpetuate that illusion and burn hours typing somewhere to profit your ego and Google’s bottom line.
If I’m going to waste time talking to myself, I might as well do it here.
If your next comment do not mention gun control, it will be read and deleted.
Please remove the whole thread. I am not writing to the choir, my point is precisely that I write comments to an address not posterity.
@borisborcic:disqus
No. You have options for trying to alter history. Use them if your absence of integrity demands it. And thanks to you I’ll never see that thread again.
I do write for posterity.
You’re lucky I even responded.
But again, it’s awesome to see that yet another gun control advocate has no integrity, intellectual courage, or spine.
So far all you can do as far as I can tell is whine about manners.
Future censorship requests will be deleted and ignored along with other posts not relevant to the gun law etc.