The desire should be not to have to confiscate them even if it means by force, but to make gun owners give them up voluntarily and stop sucking on the teats of the weapons manufacturers and fuelling their incessant aim to put guns in the hands of everyone who can afford one, and fuck the consequences.
I believe you are, in fact, correct in your description of the opinions of gun-confiscation nuts.
How about your opinion of “stop shooting people” nuts?
Well, this is refreshing! Usually, these gun arguments degenerate in a big ass hurry.
Yep. So far this thread’s been as good-natured as an Alabama shotgun wedding. When are the fireworks going to start, one has to wonder?
Obviously, you need something beyond the text to reach either conclusion. But that doesn’t mean that something would necessitate that you reach both conclusions. Why would it?
Nor does the requirement of something beyond the text make the mode of interpretation non-textualist. Suppose I am holding an apple in my right hand and nothing in my left hand, and I write on a slip of paper “You may eat this object I’m holding.” Does a plain reading of the text of my writing say that you may eat an apple?
A gun that fires once and is then useless will certainly sharpen up people’s decisions on when to fire it, so there is that.
Bricker, the US Constitution of 1787 as written simply does not protect abortion rights, they were invented by activist judges.
They were invented by activist judges because women were literally dying to get abortions in this country. And the judges saw that the political class wasn’t going to fix that in a timely fashion, so they wrote what they thought the law should be. And you know what? Constitutionality aside, Roe v. Wade is better law, better law in its effects, than the “only to save the life of the mother” paradigm that preceded it in most states.
What we can take from this is that strict constitutional law is not always better, and unconstitutional law sometimes is better.
So thanks for opening up this apparently relevant comparison, because once we get outside your cultural-relativist legal-positivist authoritarian tradition-mongering, it actually proves a point; to paraphrase Dickens:
The Constitution is a Ass.
The clue is in the first 3 letters.
Yes. Under common law.
Don’t blame me, I’d happily take occupied Quebec (everything west of the 1763 Proclamation Line) back to France and civil law. I’d miss habeas corpus if it weren’t already gone. You common-law savages can have the eastern shores, at least until the hurricanes wash you all away.
OK. Let me see if I understand.
I was outside today and the sky was blue. Anyone want to continue to claim that it is orange and has an Adidas logo?
No?
Good. Easily stated, easily confirmed facts, win an argument in one post. Is that poisoning a well? Then let’s get everything that we possibly can sorted out that way.
You offer no alternative wherein law-abiding citizens can apply for licensed firearms. Nope, your position, not John Stamos’s Left Ear’s position, not mine for the decade or so I was a pretty serious gun control moderate,
*YOUR *OWN GODDAMN POSITION IS THAT [SIZE=“4”]THERE IS NO GODDAMN MIDDLE GROUND.[/SIZE]
“If you outlaw guns…”
Wait, what? Outlaw guns? I have lots of friends who own guns, I don’t care that much. I want to know how to stop the next George Zimmerman or Scott Roeder. I want to know how to stop the next Kukluxer who shoots up a place of worship.
Wait, you mean the only way to stop it is to outlaw guns? OK, then I guess that’s what we have to do. Understand, you’re (geeky reference) Max Lord in the Golden Lasso here, saying, “The only way to stop me is to [del]kill me[/del] confiscate all privately held firearms.”
OK, in that case, let’s do that.
Oh, is there a practical reason that’s a bad idea? Many if not most Americans go their whole lives never firing a gun at another person. Many if not most cops, for god’s sakes! And people who aren’t practiced in firearms use suck at using them for protection. So chuck the right to bear arms. No great loss.
Since you clearly have no real-world leg to stand on, except "the Framers said… boo hoo, whaaah," you admit you have lost any practical argument for any gun rights at all.
I await your voluntary surrender of your firearms.
See, this is a reasonable answer. And I wish this were the answer.
But to hear the hardliners talk, this isn’t even an option. I offended a lot of people earlier this year by saying that I suspected (without evidence) that a large proportion of rural American gun owners are already supplementing their incomes by running guns to organized crime.
Now, I have no evidence of that. But the way they want to keep it legal to do so, that would be a rational explanation of the way they vote.
If that’s not what they’re doing, why do they get so offended at moderate regulations?
That’s the thing, though. Do rural people really believe that “personal protection” line?
I think it’s not only that they don’t care about urban violence. Given the rhetoric on the radio, it’s pretty clear that “rural white Americans” want anyone who lives in a city–especially if you’re too dark–to bleed out and die. There’s a real enmity there.
Fuckwit. It says, “shall be enrolled.” You’re not in a militia (i.e., force of trained watchmen, a police force, in effect) just because you’re a white man. You have to actually show up and train. A bunch of unorganized individuals are not a militia unless and until they join one.
Oh, whoever gave us this cite, thanks!
That is clearly so much worse than the USA. She was discharged from free medical care the same day! Why, in this country, that would happen to a poor, shattered girl with much worse injuries if she were unable to afford care!
What kind of a country is it where such an incident makes the international news? Here that sort of thing would barely rate as a violent crime!
What a disaster for Britain, with their less dangerous criminals. What hell!
And lo! it was suddenly 1959 again.
I loves guns. Gonna get Mrs. J. one of them shootin’ irons for Xmas.
Explain to me then, why, in a place where the only ones carrying guns ARE the criminals - and they aren’t exactly the restrained wallflower types either - there isn’t a constant stream of ordinary defenceless citizens being held up every day?
What is holding these violent criminals back when they know we are all helpless on the streets and in our homes?
Maybe you haven’t been reading the paper.
Why the “militia argument” keeps coming up is beyond me considering that it’s dead and gone, but regardless, what you have said here is wrong. The Militia Act of 1903 defines the “unorganized militia” as every male aged 17 to 45 not already members of the National Guard or Naval Militia, to include veterans to age 65. Therefore, you do not have to show up and train.
The Amendment is incorporated. It’s a done deal. Yet this argument persists. Far be it from me to tell you what you can or cannot think, but your argument is nothing more than tilting at windmills. It will never again be relevant anywhere but on a message board.