If we in the US want to restrict the availability of guns but don’t want to mess with the Constitution - why can’t we just restrict the availability of ammo?
That’s not “messing with the constitution”? We are not dealing with a computer program here, and while such sophistry does occassionally make it into law, the judges are supposed to consider the meaning of the words, not just the characters.
If you are carrying a gun when no ammo is available, you are no more armed than anybody else carrying a length of pipe.
Who’s “we”?
The reason “we” in the NRA dislike that approach is that it tries to circumvent a legal process with legerdemain.
Why don’t we cut down on drunk drivers and road ragers by restricting the availability of gasoline?
Why don’t we cut down on spousal abuse by restricting marriage license?
Why don’t we eliminate child abuse by drafting legislation restricting who may or may not have children?
The answer is that those measures, while possibly having an impact on the numbers, doesn’t resolve the underlying issues of violence and impulse control.
I’m not a statistician, so I’m not going to try and interpret the Bureau of Justice’s Crime Statistics to put spin control on my arguments about Gun Control and “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
But some simple results posted by the BOJ show crime has been steadily declining in the U.S. for several years; Texas’ (and other states that have passsed similar Concealed Carry Laws) crime rates have been dropping about 3% quicker than the national average. And no state passing such laws have experienced “bloody gun battles in the streets” that the Gun Control Lobby had predicted; no “Dodge City” shootouts; no rampant vigilantsm.
Maybe my bias towards the right to keep and bear arms prejudices me to see a correlation in the crime rates between a legally, responsibly armed populace and an unarmed one, such as New York.
The vast majority of lawfull gun owners are safe, responsible individuals; that there are accidents involving firearms is regrettable, but the “safety devices” that HCI wants legislated are no substitute for safety awareness and training.
If we (the U.S.) want to try and “foolproof” every device that could possibly injure or kill us, as opposed to raising our consciousness through education and training, then we will wind up with a country full of drooling idiots who are incapable of the simplest tasks without a jillion safety devices.
But back on subject, if you truly feel that guns need to be removed from our society, be honest enough to present an intellectually honest argument; don’t hide behind punitive taxes, cumbersome bureaucracies, hazy definitions of firearm types and classifications or over-engineered “idiot-proofed” firearms that will cost thousands of dollars apiece.
<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
"Don’t tread on me!
Lets not play semantics here. Guns do kill and injure people. By accident or design, someone shoots someone far too often for it to be dismissed as “regrettable”.
Most gun owners are responsible, but, far too many guns wind up in the hands of those who are not. And too many responsible gun owners resist any effort to curtail this problem.
Comparing guns to wife beaters, child abusers, drunk drivers, etc. is "apples & oranges.
You can’t take a wife beater to school and blow away a dozen or so kids.
I don’t think guns should be removed from society. I do think there are far too many guns and that a person should have to earn the right to own one. ONE.
You want facts? Here are two;
Very few lives are saved by gun ownership.
Many lives are taken by gun accidents.
Guns are designed to kill.
And please, don’t try to bullshit me about target shooting and hunting and all that crap.
Grrr.
Peace,
mangeorge
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything” Mark Twain 1894
[[If we in the US want to restrict the availability of guns but don’t want to mess with the Constitution - why can’t we just restrict the availability of ammo?]]
Logic, history, and jurisprudence dictate that “arms” cannot be legitimately separated from the ammo with which to “arm” them.
Thanks for your replies - and you’re right, banning ammo amounts to the same thing as banning guns. It’s just that when things like the Colorado school shootings happen, you think - what can we do?
I mean, I really hated high school, but at least I never had to face first period wondering which of my psycho classmates might decide to shoot me.
I was just hoping for some quick fix to a complex problem.
George, your very argument is riddled with glaring contradictions: in one breath, you claim that “guns do kill and injure people”; in the very next, you claim that “…someone shoots someone [else] far too often…”.
So which is it? Do guns kill people, or do people kill people? Even if it is by accident, the inattention and irresponsible behavior of the individual is the reason the gun accidentally discharged, hurting or killing the unintended victim.
You then go on to say that “Most gun owners are responsible, but, far too many guns wind up in the hands of those who are not.”
So you feel that it is correct to punish law abiding citizens for the misdeeds of criminals and the criminally negligent? That our Constitution can be cavalierly abridged or discarded to conveniently treat the symptoms of violence, as opposed to addressing the issue directly, and trying to reduce the tension and hostility in our society?
And the “Too many responsible gun owners resist any effort to curtail this problem.”? Neither I, or the NRA, have ever opposed any measure that punishes a criminal or criminally negligent individual who abuses firearms. The laws and concurrent punishments already on the books, if uniformly applied and upheld by the various Depts. of Correction, are adequate to dissuade those who would abuse firearms, or permanently remove those individuals from our society.
And comparing gun violence to domestic or vehicular violence may be apples and oranges, but you’ll find both in the same basket of fruit.
In other words, they all have one root thing in common: violence. Our society’s increasing propensity to resolve every little issue violently is the underlying problem, not the instrumentality of that violence.
“I do think there are far too many guns and that a person should have to earn the right to own one. ONE.”
Excuse me, but what country do you live in? You, me, and any other natural born citizen were born with the right to keep and bear arms. ARMS. No limit. To limit such would be an unconstitutional abridgement to the Second Amendment. Now, if you want to institute some sort of certification course and/or mandatory safety instruction prior to permitting people to legally purchase firearms, bang on! It’s exactly what I and the NRA stands for and encourage: safe, responsible ownership and handling of firearms.
But mandatory safety devices and trigger locks are no substitute for an aware and concientious mind, trained in the safe, responsible usage of firearms.
“You want facts? Here are two;
Very few lives are saved by gun ownership.
Many lives are taken by gun accidents.”
To quote the inestimable Mr. Disraeli:
"Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics."
"Guns are designed to kill.
And please, don’t try to bullshit me about target shooting and hunting and all that crap.
Please present forthwith your appointment to the post of Executive Director of Recreational Activities for The United States of America.
By what right do you denigrate the time honored and legitimate recreational activities of target shooting and hunting? You feel them barbaric? Anachronistic?
Can I call for the banning of all NASCAR events due to the fact that they promote the Culture of the Automobile, which also kills people and damages the environment? I may want to, but I have no right to project my personal feelings onto other people’s fun, and will not do so.
Get a real argument George, not some rehashed and politically whitewashed statistics compiled by the appointees of Gun-Control politicians and HCI’s lobby.
Did you know that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms compiled a study in '95-96 that showed gun-related crimes and violence was down significantly in the U.S.? That Attorney General Reno sent the report back with instructions to re-write the study?
I trust no one in the federal government who are dependant on the goodwill of their political masters for their position or career advancement; they will do as they are told, regardless of truth or facts, which may be embarrassing to their benefactors.
Stop listening to sound-bites on CNN and NBC/MSNBC, and their paid-for talking heads, and look around yourself with a skeptical eye and some common sense. You’ll be wide awake and looking for The Truth.
<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
“Trust a politician? I’d rather roll around on rattlesnakes and walk barefoot over scorpions!”
Okay, how’s this?
So, the rate of handgun deaths per capita in the UK, which bans them, equals approximately 1 in 1.9 million.
And handgun deaths in the US, which does not ban them, come out at about 1 in 25,000 – a rate 76 times higher.
It’s kind of hard to argue with the numbers, although I’m sure some people will make the effort.
“I’m not an actor, but I play one on TV.”
Sure, those are some pretty wicked numbers, and I don’t deny that it is physically easier to kill someone with a firearm than a knife or a club or such.
But I maintain that the instrumentality is not what should be at stake; but rather our propensity, as a society, to lash out violently at every perceived wrong done to us. We all too often see violence as the only recourse to our situations, rather than debate or compromise.
Anger/stress management and good impulse control will go much further towards reducing violence in our society than re-writing or abridging our Constitution.
I dislike comparisons with different societies, as they have different histories and events which shaped the character of that society. As I see it, (having visited several European countries) most European societies are much better behaved than we are; this is not due to any legislation or gun-control laws, but rather an inherent societal stability deriving from shared historical and cultural experiences.
One country you failed to mention: Australia.
After that bloody massacre by a crazed individual several years ago, Australia banned private possession of ALL firearms. Period.
Since the passage of that law, Australia’s crime rate has skyrocketed, trebling in less than two years.
Coincidence? One thing all human beings with criminal intent share is the desire for easy, unresisting prey. Disarming a populace makes them just that.
Ask the Jews who survived Hitler’s Solution.
Ask any Russian who knows something about the Bolsheviks.
Ask any Albanian.
Ask any South African of color.
<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
“National Socialists and Communists LOVE Gun Control.”
Here are some suggestions from a person who doesn’t hate guns yet who thinks too many idiots and/or criminals have too easy access to them:
It should be necessary for people to take classes on how to use guns properly and responibly before issuing to them a license or permitting them to purchase guns. And the licensing would be required for shotguns and rifles as well as handguns. It just makes sense to me that if you are going to let people buy a deadly weapon, you should at least make sure they know how to handle it, how to clean it and take care of it, and how to use or store it safely and responsibly. I think, too, that perhaps with the supervision on an instructor, a person’s potentially destructive tendencies might be spotted sooner, like if they ignore repeated warnings not to point the weapon at class mates, show a disdain or disrespect for instruction or the instructor, make “jokes” about who they’d like to use the gun on, and so on might set off warning bells in the head of an experienced instructor.
Furthermore, I wouldn’t permit anyone under the age of 15 or 16 to own or handle a gun at all, except maybe an air rifle, although I’ve even seen those used on my grandma’s cat and on my house by miscreant neighbor boys. If children under the age of 15 aren’t expected to have the judgement, hand-eye coordination, etc., to operate a motor vehicle, it seems nuts to me to let them have guns. Sorry, you won’t be able to kill bunnies and ducks until you’re older and hopefully wiser.
Finally, make back ground checks mandatory for every kind of gun and have them go back practically to the moment a person was born. Every blip on their record should be taken into consideration, from to midemeanors to traffic violations.
I have a friend who used to do background checks on gun permit applicants and she said it’s appalling how low the requirements are. She said they were only allowed to check back about 10 years, and even then they were only allowed to refuse an application if the applicant been committed by a court order from a judge. She said one person she approved promptly took his newly licensed gun to the bank and shot a teller in the face.
A lot of people who kill have previous criminal records, even if some of it seems “small” like shoplifting. Requiring education, age limits, and thorough screening might have taken some of the guns out of a lot of murderers’ hands. These boys from Littleton were known to have been gun nuts and had even filmed themselves with their collection. If my suggestions were implemented, I don’t think they would have passed the background check or finished the education process to get a license to get the guns. Then if they were known to have guns anyway, the weapons could have been confiscated, the premises searched, the bombs found, the psychiatric care given and so on a long time ago.
Ideally, anyway.
So, go ahead, blast away and tell me that I would be restricting our rights too much. But so many people are killed or wounded in accidents as well as murders, it seems like we do need to better educate more people before giving them guns. And a lot of people just flat out don’t deserve them.
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
The assumption that the NRA has been able to inculcate is that the Constitution guarantees gun freedom to every citizen. It doesn’t.
What the Second Aritcle of the Bill of Rights says is that “A well-regulated Militia, being neceassary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
That clause, “A well-regulated Militia” is set off, and for a good reason. At the time of writing, the militia consisted of every male citizen over the age of 18. The only well-regulated militia NOW in existence is the National Guard, and every Supreme Court to rule on this has so said.
The Second Amendment does not guarantee your right to own a howitzer. The NRA is wrong. The Founders wanted to assure the right of a properly founded body to guard against invasion, not your right to instigate mayhem. If you think they did, you are an idiot.
Assault weapons are not protected, and no Supreme Court decision agrees with that. Congress is totally under the thumb of the gun lobby and we, as a people, have bought that idiotic argument.
The Supreme Court believes that what the federal government cannot do is infringe the right to own arms that are “ordinary military equipment” that could “contribute to the common defense”. (U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)). How’s that for screwy? The Federal government can ban sawed-off shotguns, but can’t stop us from owning M-16s. (and it is us, in the context of the second amendment, the Supreme Court considers the populace of the U.S. to be the militia.)
But, the Supreme Court is fond of pointing out that the States have greater power to ban guns. If you want rid of guns in your neck of the words, go talk to your state government. That’s the organization with the power to do something about it.
Of course, if federalism really is dead, this entire post is useless.
No, Ex Tank, guns don’t actually kill people.
It’s those damn bullets.
I thought I made it clear that I am not proponent of banning guns.
I think that any prohibition is morally severe, and deserves extreme consideration before enactment. If “The Government” were to try to ban guns I’d be out there with your crowd, in FRONT of you, yelling my stupid head off.
Wanna talk apples & oranges?
Do you support tough drug laws? Many of your supporters do! The NRA does, doesn’t it? Why? Is it because drugs kill people? I’ve never heard of a marijuana joint jumping off a shelf and killing anyone. Or a bag of smack, for that matter.
No, don’t prohibit guns, or drugs, or other dangerous things. Just try as best we can to restrict the damage to those who choose them.
By the way, I left off the [else] intentionally, because all to often the victim is the person holding the gun.
Peace,
mangeorge
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything” Mark Twain 1894
Well… I’m not sure if this argument is spent and I’m just blowing hot air (always a possibility s)… but I thought I might add my own two cents.
The fact is, I am not too sure if any of you are at all right. :0)
(I’ll let that hang there and give you a chance to skip over this letter which may save me some unneeded embarrassment)
Here’s how I see the gun issue. And I will use general statements because I’m not so good at these arguments and becasue this is the first time I’ve ever posted here and I kinda like to make some kind of good impression. (hee hee) 1. talking does no good. Gun control is not about to happen anytime soon. I hate to say it. Actually, it disgusts me. I am not against having guns by those who are responsible. I am not against having guns within our society. I do see that there could easily be issues to deal with if private ownership were banned and I would not recommend it. We’d be dealing with a sort of Sleeping Beauty syndrome… no matter how many guns you throw on the fire, there’s bound to be a few hidden in the back room. HOWEVER, I do have a big problem with the means of our society in the controlling of the guns we offer to our citizens. There are good reasons for having guns. There is the right to bear arms and I see this as highly logical. I would hate for us to sit about like sheep waiting to get herded into some kind of meat market for the slaughter. And I suppose you could use that as a reason for keeping the AK47’s out on the street. (and those black talon bullets and whatever other guns taht when you shoot them your shoulder is seperated from the shoulder blade)… Yet, there is a real issue here that has to find some kind of middle ground. I am not in any danger of having the military run into my house and seperate me from my family and then drag me off to kick me and shoot me in the stomach and whatever other horrific picture you can think of for that reason. But I DO have a chance of coming home and finding a nicely dressed policeman on my steps, whose wonderful job it is, to tell me that my son, has been shot in the leg/arm/chest/head (God forbid) because one of the kids I let him stay with overnight, knows where his dad/mom/whoever, keeps the key to the gun case and wanted to show him the “cool” things his dad/mom/whoever, does with this thing. I am at a greater risk, of turning on the television and finding that my son’s school was broken into by a wonderfully destroyed young child who thought that through some sort of suicidal ideation or unrealistic and damaged thinking process, that it is quite alright to go into a public place and shoot something other than tin cans.
Now, not having the knowledge to think of a single good way to control the guns that we are seeing so commonly (there were about five or so at a local highschool last year… population of the highschool I’m sure is around hmm… 1200? and to tell you the truth, I can’t recall seeing one as a child (and I’m not that darn old L) in my highschool only eight years ago… in a highschool of a much larger population) but I would wonder if any of you have any good ideas on how to find a middle ground. The means we’ve taken so far, to get gun control is not effective. L I just found out how many days it would take to get a gun only a bit ago… I’m not required to do all that much that a reasonably intelligent person could not do (even if they were intent on using it on someone else). So… not willing to run around and scream to throw all of the firearms into a pile and burn them to the ground, I would like to hear any ideas from those of you with the knowledge on how to better protect our kids.
Oh… dang… I was numbering these weren’t I? Wahl… guess the other would be this.
Most of the guns out there that are doing the killing… are NOT registered. They are street/black market material.
I can be eight and if I have the correct contacts, I can get myself a nice one to do some real damage to those tin cans in the back of the woods. Guess, there wouldn’t be all that much left of the can when I was done. THIS is the problem. Guns are not regulated when it comes to those who have a history of criminal behavior. Proposals?
~Sara
(sorry if that got long winded or if you just passed over it then no worries for me anyhow. L)
{{George, your very argument is riddled with glaring contradictions: in one breath, you claim that “guns do kill and injure people”; in the very next, you claim that “…someone shoots someone [else] far too often…”.
So which is it? Do guns kill people, or do people kill people?}
Ex-Tank
People use guns to kill people (finding it to be much easier than without uing them).
It is foolish to deny that there is a cost to easy availability of guns – there is a cost to every civil liberty, at least in the short run.
{{You then go on to say that “Most gun owners are responsible, but, far too many guns wind up in the hands of those who are not.”
So you feel that it is correct to punish law abiding citizens for the misdeeds of criminals and the criminally negligent?}}
I’m generally sympathetic, but we outlaw drunk driving and speeding and a host of other things, too, on the theory that the activities create an unreasonable risk.
[[The laws and concurrent punishments already on the books, if uniformly applied and upheld by the various Depts. of Correction, are adequate to dissuade those who would abuse firearms, or permanently remove those individuals from our society.]]
After the flood …
[[“I do think there are far too many guns and that a person should have to earn the right to own one. ONE.”
Excuse me, but what country do you live in? You, me, and any other natural born citizen were born with the right to keep and bear arms. ARMS. No limit.]]
NO LIMIT? Maybe.
[[Now, if you want to institute some sort of certification course and/or mandatory safety instruction prior to permitting people to legally purchase firearms, bang on! It’s exactly what I and the NRA stands for and encourage: safe, responsible ownership and handling of firearms.]]
Sounds like youre slicing it pretty thin, actually, since that sounds like a significant impediment to getting a gun that is not readily resolved by the text of the 2d Amendment. Why can the government infringe the time of your weapon purchases but not the amount?
[[Did you know that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms compiled a study in '95-96 that showed gun-related crimes and violence was down significantly in the U.S.?]]
All violent crimes are down, due almost surely to demographic changes (ie., the fewer numbers of young males).
{{The assumption that the NRA has been able to inculcate is that the Constitution guarantees gun freedom to every citizen.}} jdv
Well, not EVERY citizen, but it is eminently reasonable to read the 2d Amendment as granting an individual right to keep and bear arms, even of you think the amendment is purely a states’ rights thing.
{{ It doesn’t.}}
That is a proposition upon which reasonable people may disagree. It seems pretty clear to me that it does, generally.
{{What the Second Aritcle of the Bill of Rights says is that “A well-regulated Militia, being neceassary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
That clause, “A well-regulated Militia” is set off, and for a good reason.}}
Please, you wouldn’t be parsing the grammar like this if it was a right you liked.
{{ At the time of writing, the militia consisted of every male citizen over the age of 18. }}
Yup – and everyone was expected to have his own guns at home, which suggests that the right was to extend to having a gun or more at home. The British common law at the time allowed gun possesion for reasons unrelated to any militia, and the Bill of Rights is understood to have been intended to incorporate many of the English common law protections.
{{The only well-regulated militia NOW in existence is the National Guard, and every Supreme Court to rule on this has so said.}}
Said what? If you are suggesting that the Court has ruled that there is no individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the 2d Amendment, you are flat wrong.
{{The Founders wanted to assure the right of a properly founded body to guard against invasion, not your right to instigate mayhem. If you think they did, you are an idiot.}}
I’m a lot more comfortable interpreting and construing the actual words of the constitution, rather than the elusive intent of those who wrote it (or are the important ones the ones who voted for it? In the congress or in the state legislatures?). The 2d Amendment pretty clearly endows rights in the people to keep and bear arms.
{{Assault weapons are not protected, and no Supreme Court decision agrees with that.}}
That would be largely because no Supreme Court decision has ever addressed that.
{{ Congress is totally under the thumb of the gun lobby and we, as a people, have bought that idiotic argument.}}
It’s down to me (oh, yes it is) …
Hmmm. As with virtually all debates on the SMDB, this is well-considered, informed, and (mostly) civil; even though it’s obvious there are some extremely contradictory positions here, people are being responsible enough to quote, attribute, refute, and re-propose.
And as with many of these discussions, it’s fairly clear that nothing is likely to be resolved.
The issue is complex enough that each side can marshal impressive statistics and citations to support their assertions. We could split hairs and calculate pin-dancing angels all day, and nobody will be budged from his or her respective positions.
Can we at least agree to agree on a few simple propositions? To wit:
The Second Amendment is subject to interpretation. Aside from the infamous “militia” clause, it also refers to “arms.” It doesn’t say handguns, or flintlocks, or whatever – just arms. By basic definition, that could include a slingshot, or it could include a thermonuclear device. Over the last two centuries, we have come to an uneasy collective consensus about what “arms” really means, but it’s obvious that we aren’t operating from the simple word itself; it’s been interpreted and narrowed according to societal need. In our present culture, we have decided on a compromise that the mainstream can live with, even though on one side people are unhappy with not being allowed to have fully automatic weapons, and on the opposite side, other people are unhappy that handguns are available at all. The majority falls somewhere in between, and that’s how we have chosen to live, for better or for worse.
Because of this historical preponderance of interpretation, any substantive change to the current situation will require amendment to the Constitution. This is not to claim advocacy of same – it’s merely stating that “sophistries” designed to get around the Constitutional language are just that.
The USA has a larger problem with violence than most other industrialized nations. Again, no causation is implied, as to whether the availability of guns is the root, or it’s our TV shows, or comes from economic inequality, or if we’re just plain grumpier.
Gun ownership may be a right, but it also comes with responsibility. This, too, is subject to interpretation. The NRA espouses safety and handling training, and safe storage; gun-control advocates want mandatory trigger locks. (See the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal.) The fundamental position is the same, though: Guns are lethal devices, and misuse can have tragic results.
So. Can we treat these as baseline assumptions, and proceed from there?
“I’m not an actor, but I play one on TV.”
While I believe the citizens of the U.S. are given the right to bear arms by the Constitution, the ramifications of this right are subject to court interpretation, as many have pointed out. Personally, I don’t see any reason for owning a gun. When the Bill of Rights was written, the U.S. was a fledgling country–actually, it wasn’t even a country yet–that was nowhere near powerful. The people were still divided not only whether to join the Union or stay separate states, but there were also many Loyalists still around. Many moved back to England, but others stayed. The people of the new country had fears of Britain trying to regain control and also of other states joining forces and trying to overturn the Union. For this reason, in my opinion, and it the opinion of many Supreme Courts over the years, the people were given the right to bear arms against invaders–NOT to use them to stick up the local general store.
Although I think it’s a stupid idea, I can understand why people would want to keep a handgun in the house to protect against burgleries: they’re scared and want to protect themselves. But this is just a case of machismo idiocy. Do you really think that someone robbing your house in the middle of the night would wake you up, wait for you to brandish your piece, and then duel you?? And even if you somehow got to it in time, you may kill the burgler, but in the scuffle, s/he’ll probably take you out AND your spouse and kids. What amazing benefits of owning a gun! If you didn’t have the gun, the burgler would just take your stuff and leave. No harm done. Even though criminals are often slightly depraved, most will not murder unless provoked or resisted. Would you rather lose your TV and jewelry or keep your possessions but lose your wife Mary and your son, Billy?
So what is your next argument? You use guns for recreation? Okay, it’s fine by me to go to a shooting range and have a gay old time. But you can rent a gun to use at the range. You don’t have to carry it with you. And hunting is ABSOLUTELY IMMORAL and IDIOTIC. If you’re able to go into the woods and kill a deer, why can’t I go into a town and kill a pedestrian? It’s murder, anyway you slice it. If you actually eat the animal you shoot, I can understand that. You gotta eat to live. But if you do it for the fun of it, that’s ludicrous!! Same thing with fishermen who do it for the “sport.” I’d like to stick a giant hook down every sport-fisherman’s throat, prevent him from breathing for a few minutes, then decide he’s too puny and throw him back on the sidewalk. You wouldn’t like that, would you?
And don’t give me that crap about car racing and football being dangerous. Yes, people die playing sports. But it’s CONSENSUAL. The people participating CHOOSE to participate, completely aware of the risks. If you can cite a case where a moose or flounder gave you permission to chase it and kill it, then we’ll talk.
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“While I believe the citizens of the U.S. are given the right to bear arms by the Constitution, the ramifications of this right are subject to court interpretation. . .” - Pete
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- Yes, they are. The ramifications of tht right are subject to court interpretation. The right itself, isn’t.
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“If you didn’t have the gun, the burgler would just take your stuff and leave. No harm done. Even though criminals are often slightly depraved, most will not murder unless provoked or resisted.” -Pete
Oh, no, criminals never kill people for petty reasons. That only happens in movies. And if a criminal wants to rape your wife or daughter, what’s the big deal? That’s what abortions are for, right?
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“And hunting is ABSOLUTELY IMMORAL and IDIOTIC. If you’re able to go into the woods and kill a deer, why can’t I go into a town and kill a pedestrian? It’s murder, anyway you slice it.” -Pete
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- It is hardly sensible to morally equate a deer with a human.
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- Another thing that’s idiotic is assuming plants like to be eaten.
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- Poor drivers were discussed in another thread, I believe.
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- And I understand the slicing is done after the animal is already dead. - MC
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So, if I eat the pedestrian would it be OK? I mean, if I were really hungry?
So it’s OK for companies to own guns? Don’t people own companies?
I’ll kill you if you kill me?
Sorry, Pete, just pointing out a few reasons that a rant seldom stands as an argument.
Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. Lick it once and you will suck forever.