This matches my experience both with people I’ve known personally and with online commentators and politicians.
It pisses me off much. All that time spent droning about liberty and fighting tyranny, and waving round copies of the constitution claiming it was the most important document since the bible, and gods gift to the world. It turns out every single goddamned word of it was utter bullshit, they didn’t give a single solitary flying fuck about the constitution, or liberty, fighting tyranny. Fuck Rand Paul and every single member of the conservative libertarian movement.
Case in point. Whatever you think of the CDC’s handling of the Covid crisis. If you, an elected member of congress sworn to protect the constitution, survey America 6 months into Trump’s second term of office and decide the most pressing thing to be addressed is the lack of prosecutions against a health official for actions taken five years ago, then fuck you. You don’t get be a ‘libertarian’
Being concerned with liberty, the constitution, and fighting tyranny, are not compatible with that position. You are a bootlicking tyrant’s lackey.
Hell even speaking would have been an improvement. If Rand Paul had been using every senate session to explicitly call out Trump’s explicitly tyrannical anti-constitution agenda then he might have a leg to stand on
“The top 10 causes of death” is a meaningless statistic, because it depends on what you lump together as the same cause. Is “natural causes” a cause of death, or is “squamous cell carcinoma” a cause of death?
Also because it lumps all populations together. If the effort put into gun control is based on such silly statistics, then I’m pushing hard for it. It’s one of the leading causes of death for young children and teenagers. I’m sure that @bump will be on board now.
That also ignores that John isn’t the cause of Jane’s squamous cell carcinoma, but he’s certainly the one that put a bullet in her brain.
I don’t doubt that most Americans would be in favor of laws that could somehow be applied as perfect assessments of character and an almost “Minority Report” level of precognizant accuracy. And if the polls presented the question that way, who wouldn’t say yes? The problem is that people have the broad notion that psychological evaluation is as infallible as the laws of mechanics, in much the same way as juries think that magically swift and accurate forensic analysis is routine. And it just ain’t so. IOW, the public is being promised that these measures will filter out the bad people, spare the good people, and be effective and virtually painless. And I wonder if the people making those promises know it’s b.s. and don’t care.
The very mild Biden gun control measure passed by a bipartisan bill in Congress has apparently done quite a bit to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. One major part cracked down on “Strawman dealers”. So, it can happen, but not to solve any issue entirely, just whittle it down somewhat. And the bill was painless to honest gun owners.
But again, it didnt stop criminals from getting ahold of guns- it just made it harder and more expensive.
FWIW, strongly enforcing the strawman laws has the broad support of most gun owners; no controversy there. But padding poll numbers by wording a poll to imply that a measure will be spectacularly successful if implemented produces distorted results. It’s like asking “do you support ending hunger in our state?”; who’s going to say no?
Just as a reminder, this thread is about Rand Paul specifically. We have a number of threads about what Democrats should be focused on, and many upon Gun Control. I am asking that unless directly related to Rand Paul or his support/lack of by Republicans and other political factions, that we avoid such sidetracks.
This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.
AFAIK also 0, the same with Trump, Obama, Bush 1 and 2, Reagan, Carter and Nixon. Probably more, but I don’t recall further back. Banning guns is the job of the legislature along with the President, and the only President I recall signing any kind of gun ban was Clinton. Unfortunately that one was allowed to expire un-renewed.
