Another example of unrestrained viciousness from TomnDeb, the Dancing Attack Dog. No wonder he has such a reputation for savagery!
Ooopsy! I was referencing the previous post, not the moderating post. I tug my forelock in submission.
The Founding Fathers were monsters; genocidal slave owners. I have zero respect for them. “Fools and idiots” would be an upgrade.
And what I’m saying is that widespead gun ownership helps create a Hobbesian society, not that they should be banned because society is Hobbesian. They hand power over to whomever is willing to be violent.
My answer is that I’d be perfectly happy if they took your stupid guns away and melted them into slag. I just don’t they they will. What makes gun owners paranoid is their belief that gun control has something to do with an agenda for imposing a tyranny; and what makes them nuts is thinking their guns would do anything to stop it if it was.
But if guns were “completely illegal” ( not that they are, if the cops have them ) then that wouldn’t happen; the criminals primarily get their guns from law abiding citizens. For that matter, there would also be a drop in gun crime in other countries, since we are such a source of guns for the world black market.
It would take a long time for the present supply to all be confiscated and melted down, of course.And no, I don’t expect any such thing to actually happen; as a culture, Americans are far too stupid and self destructive. We will continue to make our own murder that much easier; we will continue to arm the criminal and the tyrannical and the stupid.
Tom, the OP’s “issue” is imaginary. That was taken care of early on.
Surely it’s not improper to discuss how the issue came to be imagined, or how it comes to have been so widely believed, or by whom. That is inseparable from the emotionality, and separation from the world of fact and reason and law, of the Second Amendment absolute-individual-rights view.
It is quite valuable for a debate to expose the true nature of a commonly-held but false view, is it not? It’s kinda what this forum is for, right?
Actually, gun owners don’t think that gun control as something to do with a step towards tyranny (although all tyrannical governments almost universally ban guns).
What they say is that tyranny becomes easier if guns are banned.
Much in the same way that taking away freedom of the press doesn’t encourage radical, government sponsored viewpoints. It just makes it far easier to encourage radical, government sponsored view points.
Ah, you’re not talking about “Completely illegal,” what you’re talking about is “Magically disappeared.”
What about people who hunt? Should they be gun-free too?
“Sorry, bucko, the fact that you hunt deer to supplement your income is too bad, Der Trihs doesn’t like guns, and you should be forced to purchase that meat from a slaughter house instead!”
Completely ignoring the ecological ramifications, too, no doubt?
In which time we, law abiding citizens, should happily surrender to criminals?
In fact, we’ll exclusively arm the criminal by banning guns.
By allowing them to be legal for otherwise law abiding citizens, we arm the law abiding citizens.
That was exactly the progression of the smoking ban in Maryland. First it was banned on the job, then in all public places except restaurants and bars, then in all restaurants that didn’t serve liquor, finally in all bars last year.
Same with seat belt laws. When they were passed, we were assured that it would only be a secondary offense-the only way you could get a ticket for not wearing one is if you were pulled over for something else. Within two years it was reclassified as a primary offense, and now they have seat belt task forces who go looking for just people without belts in order to write them a ticket (all the while pretending it’s “for our own safety” and not for the money it generates for the state. Sure thing, Chester, if you pull this leg it plays Jingle Bells). Surely you don’t deny the creeping authoritarianism that is inherent in any government agency?
You’re absolutely correct, of course, and I’m going to bookmark this post so that the next time (and you know there’s going to be one) I’ll have it available to throw in their face, like a ref tossing a red flag.
Sounds great, sign me up. I doubt Sarah Brady, Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or our current Pres. would ever go for it, though; on the surface, it sounds like a workable solution.
Says who?
I already replied, showing briefly how that post was just more childish, imaginary bullshit. If you think you’d be making a point by repeating it, well, yes you would, but not the kind of point you really *want *to make. You really do need to make a little effort to understand what is being said to you *before *you denounce it, even if it isn’t quite as much fun that way, ya know?
Weirddave, that argument does have kind of a ring to it: “…But when they came for my guns, I was the only one left who had any! Hahaha!” I like it, in a way. 
And they are wrong. As has been said repeatedly, it’s more likely that the people with guns are going to be helping the tyrants.
“Melting down” isn’t magic.
Don’t hunt then. Or take a job killing animals in the meat industry, if your bloodlust is that strong.
:rolleyes: Guns don’t protect you from criminals.
We “arm the criminals” NOW. Most criminal’s weapons are stolen. Dry up the supply and you disarm them.
I could point to Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia (admittedly, not until circa 1929-Stalinist Regime, which marks the differentiation between Soviet Ideals and Stalinist-totalitarianism in most views).
It would also be a relatively easy case to make that pre-WW2 Japan had Gun Control (which it did) and totalitarian tendencies. Despite the fact that they currently have the former without the latter.
In World War 2, a basic Soviet Intelligence (And Nazi Intelligence, IIRC) tactic was to seize and use against the population (in form of weapons seizure).
The irony in the case of the Nazi’s, was that it was the Weimar Republic that set in place gun laws (arguably to disarm the Nazis), which the Nazi party then liberalized (to their own perverse definition) for Party Members.
This isn’t a statement that all governments who implement gun control laws are totalitarian (Australia and the United Kingdom, for instance), only that totalitarian governments typically do.
In much the same way that all people in [insert prison here] wear orange, but not all who wear orange are in [insert prison here].
And I could point to Iraq, where Saddam had no problem with people owning weapons.
Not so.
No, but “Completely illegal” in the sense that we some how magically ban them all from existing is.
It’s not an issue of bloodlust, some people have a job that they enjoy, or that they’re qualified for, that doesn’t pay them well enough to live luxuriously.
By hunting they are essentially subsidizing their annual food budget, with no real expense. They can get a 200 pound deer, which has, say, 100 pounds of meat (I’m guessing, I’m not a hunter, someone correct me numbers?) and that basically amounts to 200 dollars (minimum, good luck finding 2 dollar a pound meat…) worth of free food for them.
(I notice that you did, in fact, ignore the ecological aspect, nice job!)
I also notice that you imply that all hunters have a blood lust. That’s pleasant and definitely doesn’t show a bias.
Really? I have an aunt who would disagree.
If the majority of them are stolen, does it occur to you that the best way to prevent that would be to encourage people to keep their guns locked up?
And I could point to that pesky little qualifier…
Yes, they will. “Pro government death squad” is not a contradiction in terms.
You mean the decimation of the ecology, and the fact that present human prey animals are smaller, uglier and sicker than they used to be because by hunting the most impressive specimens we’ve bred them in that direction ?
The vast majority of hunting is for sport. If you just want meat, you trap; hunting large animals is a less efficient means of acquiring meat ( outside of whaling ).
No, because they won’t do it. And keeping them in a safe rather destroys your fantasies about fighting off the criminals who are just waiting for you to be disarmed.
Not so.
I’m guessing you don’t understand how firearms work. In a society where people are allowed to own firearms, anyone can own a firearm. Even those who ‘pro government death squads’ would attack.
In Rwanda, it didn’t take civilian firearms in order for genocide to occur. However, if everyone were armed there’s a chance that some of the Tutsis’ would’ve survived if the majority of them were armed, as the Hutu wouldn’t have wanted to risk their own lives to murder innocent people.
It’s the funniest thing, mob mentality tends to break up rather quickly when the mob is being fired at by an individual with a gun wanting to defend himself.
You’ll note (or, more likely, you won’t, since it would interfere with your carefully crafted, cherrypicked argument) that ‘government death squads’ don’t need firearms. They only need mob mentality.
I’d ask you to look into the Deer overpopulation issues in states like Ohio, where if there weren’t hunters they would starve themselves sickly.
Traps are inhumane. A bullet will kill an animal in less than 30 seconds, where traps could take days to do so, if at all.
In fact, it doesn’t.
Keeping guns in safes is common sense, some guns can be worth upwards of 1,000 dollars.
Keeping all the guns in your home in a safe, secured, is smart. Barring one, if you’re going to be home. A pistol on the nightstand, you know. 
And this is precisely the claim that, in all the debates on the subject that I’ve seen so far, you have failed to substantiate. If this is in fact what Miller held, it should be quite easy for you to provide a quotation of the ruling that demonstrates this. Please, be my guest.
I sure can:
By my reckoning I’m 3 for 3, considering that 1) you have indeed made the claim I attributed to you (in this very post, even), 2) Der Trihs has put forth that very caricature in such bold terms that exaggerating them is impossible, and 3) there’s a rather nice example of such an imputation from you yourself in this very thread.
I have; and again, I’m asking you to substantiate your claim. You’ve yet to provide any legal or even linguistic arguments for your interpretation of Miller and the Second Amendment, but which you have repeatedly stated as though it were unassailable fact. I think it’s time you either “put up or shut up,” as ExTank put it.
The ruling is Miller itself. You are quite capable of finding and reading it for yourself, and I repeat my strong suggestion that you do so. 0 for 4.
Not even close. 0 for 5.
Of *course *you are, dear. There, there. Of *course *you are.
:rolleyes:
When come back, lose strawmen.
Fine, if it’ll stop this bitching, I’ll substantiate it.
There, happy now?
In Miller, we determined that the Second Amendment did not guarantee a citizen’s right to possess a sawed off shotgun because that weapon had not been shown to be “ordinary military equipment” […]
The implication being that Ordinary Military Equipment is protected. (One of many on that page.)
Heller, of course, added to this to include firearms for self defense. Which, for some insane reason, hasn’t been understood to be part of it, even though Miller only applied to specific types of firearms, and wasn’t an exclusive ruling.
Der Trihs, thank you for responding to my posts and clearly stating your position. The above quote is pretty unambiguous and at least lets us know where you stand. We needn’t then bother debating the petty details when there’s a Grand Canyon-sized gulf between our ideologies.
As nearly as I can categorize your position from the content and tone of your posts, you appear to be what might be termed a “militant pacifist”, if that’s not a contradiction of terms. That is, you reject as false and hypocritical any claim that the use of violence, however restricted, can be morally justifiable. To your credit, you include the police and the government in your definition of guns being “completely illegal”.
The problem is that adopting any moral position in rigid absolutist terms alienates not only those who fundamentally disagree with you, but those who would agree with you in principle but consider the proposed cure worse than the disease. Since the topic at issue consists of proposing that something harmful (guns) be banned from society without compromise, I see an analogy between gun prohibition and alcohol prohibtion.
Imagine debating the merits of alcohol prohibition with an old-time Carry Nation type temperance crusader. To any criticism that total Prohibition was either undesirable or impractical, her response would typically be a vitriolic attack on any claim that alcohol use could ever be responsible or justifiable. She would denounce alcohol as “Demon Rum” and it’s users as morally degenerate inebriates. To any claim that local dry laws had accomplished nothing but bootlegging, speakeasies, rotgut hootch and a culture of scofflaws, she would merely insist that this showed that enforcement must be nationwide and stricter than ever. In short, she would come across as moralistic, militant if not outright fanatical, and humorlessly shrill.
I submit that just as there were people who could honestly and intelligently disagree with Carrie Nation, there are people who disagree that gun prohibition would be a good idea. The opposite of “pacifist” is not “fascist” or “conquistadore”; it is people who reject the absolutist position that violence, and it’s instruments such as guns, is always wrong and never right. The people who believe in ownership of guns do so not because they love violence, but because they love peace. In an almost Zen-like paradox, it’s because they could use guns that they almost never need to. Most legal, responsible gun owners dedicate themselves to being masters of not using guns. There are many things that display a counter-intuitive behavior where what would seem to be the straightforward route in fact does not work. I and others believe that “no guns= no gun violence” is one of these.