With a wide variety of threats to America’s future — economic, political, foreign, environment, health — but violent crime down, any voter who uses stance on guns as the primary criterion for choosing which candidate to vote for has crossed a threshold, has left the world of rational thought for the Twilight Zone.
The Doper unable to fulfill his life’s dream of visiting Europe because his special love partner wouldn’t be welcome has also crossed the threshold.
A thug like Zimmerman who packs heat and then goes to pick a fight with a black teenager, perhaps hoping to get a kill, is not a positive influence.
You’re missing the point. Little Nemo seems to think that it doesn’t matter if governments are acting to secure people’s rights, because the rights are given by God. It does matter, because when governments act wrongly, as the FF believed England was doing, it is the right of the people to alter their government. If the government won’t act rightly, then even means up to and including rebellion are justified.
The part of the Constitution about suppressing insurrection can’t mean that insurrection is never justified - the FF had just finished conducting a successful insurrection. According to the laws of England, that insurrection wasn’t legal. But the FF thought it was morally justified.
If the US government under the Constitution ever stopped securing the rights of the people, and ignored the petitions of the people for redress of their grievances, the people of the US would be just as morally justified in rebelling as the people of the colonies did in rebelling against England. And it wouldn’t matter what the Constitution said, just as it didn’t matter what the laws of England said. Rights come first, from God - governments and Constitutions come later, and are a means to an end.
That’s not to say that all insurrections are morally justified. Insurrections “for light or trivial reasons”, or wrong reasons, are not. But saying the Constitution rules out insurrection doesn’t work, because the Constitution is a means to an end, which is securing God-given rights.
“Special love partner”? Someone who loves their partner enough and refuses to travel to countries that forbid such a love has " left the world of rational thought for the Twilight Zone"?
Please tell me that I have misunderstood what you seem to be saying here.
If you don’t have a serious answer, then we can proceed agreeing that there’s no way for anyone to tell your noble intentions.
Then why carry ever?
You continue evading. I’m far *less *likely to get killed by someone with no weapon or a less lethal one.
Disagree all you like. How about refuting it?
“Magicking”? :rolleyes: Any takeback would be in support of our basic human right to life, and would violate *no *other basic human right claimed by *anyone *outside the US gun lobby.
I love the story about how a democratically elected government can somehow become tyrannical. Tell it to us some more. :rolleyes:
What you purport would be a People’s Militia would in fact BE the insurrection that the *real *militia of We The People, nowadays the Guard and by extension the military and police (there was no clear distinction in 1789), would have a right and a duty to suppress. And rightly so; you’d just be a criminal gang. The actions you tell yourself would be Resisting Tyranny (“Wolverines!”) would in fact be killing cops. That’s how it works.
Exactly, so why are you presuming evil intent from everyone?
Why carry any tool? Tools are sometimes useful, that’s why they exist.
I’m not evading, your line of questioning here is absurd. You are just as much a threat to another person’s life as I am, all things being equal.
The tens (possibly hundreds) of millions of guns in existence that have never been fired at any living thing? The millions of gun owners who have never used a gun to commit violence?
To me, a society in which the weak and easily victimized have no recourse against the strong does not sound like a society in which the right to life is respected.
Not everyone. People who choose to avail themselves of the means to kill me, yes. Please drop the binary stuff, okay?
On what occasions is your “tool” expected to be so useful that you need to carry it? Useful for what purpose?
That’s another method of evasion.
But they’re not equal, are they? *You *have decided to equip yourself with the means to end my life. That makes you a threat, no matter how much you may wish to reassure me, and yourself for that matter, that you don’t intend to actually use it.
Yet.
You do wish the unarmed to have no recourse against you. That does indicate a lack of respect for the right to life - on your part.
I’m curious on what your opinion is about the point I made in Post #248 about why the murder rate varies from a high in Louisiana of 10.8 to a low in New Hampshire of 1.1. It seems like the highest murder rate are in the Deep South.
Top Five
Louisiana 10.8
Mississippi 7.4
Alabama 7.1
Michigan 7.0
South Carolina 6.9
Bottom Five
Minnesota 1.8
Utah 1.8
Iowa 1.5
Vermont 1.3
New Hampshire 1.1
An 8 year old with access to a shaving razor has the means to kill you. Stop acting like humans are harmless fluff bunnies until they possess a firearm, then they somehow turn into bloodthirsty killers.
In hindsight, I have never needed to carry it. I haven’t carried in several years, actually, but that’s not relevant. It could potentially be useful in de-escalating a violent situation, or in preserving life, either my own or someone else’s.
I was born with the means to end your life. Namely, a functioning brain.
A gun does not need to be fired at someone, or even fired at all to be useful in preserving life.
Stop being afraid. The world is actually a very nice place.
This again assumes my evil intent. Someone having recourse against me implies that I have done wrong.
See HurricaneDitka’s post. See also some previous posts about how Bush was going to cancel the elections, and/or Trump is going to impose fascism, etc., etc.
Just to be clear - if Trump imposes a fascist government and begins rounding up illegal immigrants, homosexuals, liberals, and Maxie Waters for the camps, and people rebelled against it, you would say that We the People have the right and duty to suppress that rebellion?
And no waffling - if the OP can assume enough of a majority to revoke the Second Amendment, it is at least as likely that a majority to revoke the other amendments. So - 66% of We the People want to see every liberal in the country put into a sack with a dog, a snake, a monkey, and Kamala Harris, and thrown into the Tiber. No rebellion, because the Constitution says we can’t. Right?
Here is a cite about gun laws- biased sure, but in this case it works:
Here are the states ranked by homicide rate:
CA has the toughest laws, but falls in the middle.
Montana has the weakest gun laws- but falls about in the middle.
New Hampshire has the very lowest murder rate, but has few gun laws.
Michigan doesn’t have that high of a murder rate, however, in the latest stats.
Louisiana also has weak gun laws, but has the most murders.
Maryland has very strong gun laws- but has the fourth highest murder rate.
Vermont has weak gun laws but low murder rates, as does North Dakota.
It is true that the South, with it history of ingrained racism and lowest education rates and highest poverty rates rejoices in having both high murder rates and slack gun control.
It seems, rather than gun laws having a effect on murder rates, what has the biggest effect is racism, education and poverty.
Sometimes. Reuters has long had a reputation as being one of the more unreliable newswires.
I’ll note that Reuters piece, and the linked article, show a decline in Germany (The number of licenses for civilians permitted to carry loaded weapons fell to 12,221 from 12,760.) as well as a decrease in the UK.
It also claims percentage increases with no actual figures for Austria and Switzerland.
The only country with actual figures showing an increase is the Czech republic: “In the Czech Republic, gun permit holders increased 5,944 to 297,966 in the first five months of 2016 following several years of declines.”
The starting point, and the ending point, is that you do not have the votes to change the 2nd Amendment. It’s the Democrats, anti-self defense advocates, and anti-firearm zealots who are pushing the “just because I say so” positions. You want to change the status quo, and your arguments are unconvincing.
Just between you and me, the repeatedly proud ignorance of anti-inanimate object supporters have no chance of changing the mindset of those who understand firearms, and their uses. The bottom line is that your side’s ignorant arguments are just as unconvincing today as they have been since 1968. Better luck next millennium.
Can they kill you from across the room by accident with a shaving razor (which you, as a responsible parent, should also be keeping out of his reach)?
It is not that they are changed, it is that the ability for them to cause harm, whether through accident or intent, is greatly magnified.
Do you carry a first aid kit?
And a functioning brain invented more and more efficient ways of ending lives, and created tools specifically for that purpose. Today, the output of that brainpower that makes it much easier to end lives is called a “gun”.
And you don’t even need a gun to be useful in preserving life.
Actually it is a nice place, and yet, thousands of people a year don’t get to stay in it due to just one ugly aspect of it.
You don’t need intent to do wrong. If you accidently discharge your firearm and kill me, it was not evil, but are you saying that you have no responsibility?
You can decide for yourself whether or not you have that moral obligation, but you would not have a legal right to do so. There are some who feel that committing genocide against minorities or political opponents would be something that is worth breaking the law and killing over.
Then there are the gun owners, who feel the same way about guns as those who would rebel against a government committing genocide feel about people. They too can make the choice as to whether they are morally obligated to rise up against the legal system of the country, and be willing to kill, in order to retain their possessions.
Either one would be illegal, and an uphill fight against a much better armed, trained and equipped “enemy.” The difference is only that one is defense of people, and the other is the defense of personal property. It would be up to the individual to decide whether their ideals inspired them to rise up, break the law, and fight against their fellow countrymen.
I do like that you put genocide as equivalent to losing a possession. It says quite a bit of how much you value your guns, or how little you value people.
But yeah, I would do my best to fight such things at the ballot box, assuming free and fair elections. I am not sure what you mean by trump “imposing” a fascist regime, it would be more that congress has granted fascist powers to the executive branch. Trump wants to be a fascist, but is held in check by our system of government, more so since he no longer has both branches of the legislature beholden to him.
Well, yeah, the constitution does say that we cannot. Can you show me where it says we may rebel if we don’t like the outcomes of democracy?
Though it says quite a bit that you consider it equally likely that we would modify either the 2nd or the 13th amendments slightly, or that we would modify the constituion to not only enable, but to demand genocide of your political opponent.
There are people on the gun control side that would like to see more restrictions on guns to improve public safety. Until your post, I did not realize how many on the republican side wanted to see liberals dead because they simply hate their fellow American citizens so very much, nor that you consider the two to be entirely equivalent.
Thank you for enlightening me.
It is arguments like this that get people to come over to the “ban guns” side every time they are heard by moderates on the issue.
You did realize that that “special love partner” was a handgun, right? (Though I’ll concede that the hyperbole in " left the world of rational thought for the Twilight Zone" was rather too extravagant. )
But the Constitution says that insurrections should be squelched. If you believe that rights come from the Constitution, or the government, or from majority rule, then there is no right to rebel.
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