There were loyalists during the American revolution as well
militia doesn’t mean what you think it means.
This is true for tyrannies as well.
There is a big difference between death camps, concentration camps, and internment camps.
Until the 1940’s, interning foreign nationals during wars was normal and expected, even if a less than brilliant use of public funds. Britain interned Italian citizens. It’s a terrrible scandal that we did this to US citizens of Japanese decent, but these were not camps where people were worked to death.
As well there should have been. I agree with Jefferson that “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” And I can’t think of any revolution sparked by lighter or more transient causes than ours. There were some good people among the revolutionaries. But after Britain attempted to make peace with the natives on the basis of the Proclamation Line of 1763, and then freed its internal slaves in 1772, I can’t imagine opposing my king when faced with a largely slaveholder-led rebellion.
I’m a loyal US citizen. But if things had gone the way they should have, I’d be just as loyal to the British Commonwealth of Nations.
P.S. The strategy of my last post, immediately above, seems to be: First, totally piss off liberals by attacking one of their most cherished beliefs. Then, do the same to conservatives. I’m only self-destructive in virtual life, not real life. I hope.
What happened to the Japanese-Americans in WW2 should have been enough to provoke a “Defense of Liberty”; how Africans were treated is the same. If that wasn’t enough I can’t imagine what the people making the DOL claim would consider sufficient. Also, the Japanese and the Jews were both simply being relocated according to their governments. Now I’m not saying the U.S. and German governments were both evil, I’m only saying that history shows that Americans will tolerate or even applaud the repression of a group as long as it isn’t themselves. I’m also asking what exactly would it take to Americans to rise up if they didn’t historically fight for other Americans when those people were being repressed.
Come at me bro…We’ll test that theory.
To put it simply: guns are great at killing people to keep from being killed.
Could you do a side by side comparison of these OUTRAGEOUS amounts of gun-deaths vs the teensy weensy number of automobile deaths? I’m just curious if you have even an inkling of an idea of the numbers you’re talking about…
And so, after you find out that many, many more people are killed each year by automobiles than by guns, what meaningful automobile bans would you propose? I mean if your objective is to save lives, then let’s start with bans that would save the most lives right?
They are not proposing insurrection, they are proposing having the means for insurrection. The basic question is who are the masters? Are we the masters of our government? Does our government work for us to do the things which are not practical to do on an individual or state level? OR is our government the masters of us? And if our government isn’t the public servant that it is supposed to be, has it not in fact overthrown us and taken over, no matter how nice living in the cage seems?
Seems like I read somewhere:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
How do you propose we alter or abolish it if we are unarmed? If they aren’t playing by the rules to the point that you would abolish the government, do you think sitting down to tea and discussing the matter is a viable option?
I’m glad you weren’t around telling the people who wrote that little ditty that it was illegal. People with guns I might add. I will add as it is pertinent to the conversation at hand. Do you suppose they would have written it if they were unarmed?
Those who don’t learn the lessons of history, etc, etc…
And hence the rest of your argument breaks down from there. When you begin with a false premise, you will seldom arrive at a proper conclusion.
Hi everybody, nice place you have here! First post, so please be gentle on MB etiquette. (Feel free to rip me a new one on my ideas though.) Here goes:
Reaching a point where we the people were forced to defend our liberty from our own government through force of arms would be a catastrophe of epic proportions. It would mean that we utterly failed in our responsibility as self-governing people to create a just and responsive instrument for carrying out our collective will. Arguing over whether or not small-arms equipped patriots could overcome such an assault is useless and misses the point.
Allowing ourselves to go down that road would be an insult to all of the brave souls who struggled and sacrificed so that they could pass this great opportunity/responsibility on to us. I’m speaking not only of the warriors, but all those who through their words and deeds have fought oppression and injustice in our name. Defense of liberty is a poor argument against firearm regulation (or prohibition for that matter) because if we reach that point, the casualties will have long exceeded anything even remotely acceptable. This eventuality simply cannot be allowed to come to pass.
I don’t believe we are in imminent danger of being confronted by such a scenario, but there are certainly many things we can do now to safeguard our liberty, including limiting the power of the executive, reducing the influence of money in government, maintaining careful oversight of the judiciary, and resisting the tendency to hand powers to the state in hopes of achieving security. In short, what we need right now is more thoughtfulness, cooperation, and democracy, not more guns. Straight man illustrated this earlier in the thread:
By the same token, it seems to me that the focus on “gun control” is incomplete. I like the idea of educating, testing, and licensing gun owners. I don’t oppose a registry as I think fears of this leading to confiscation are overblown, and a registry would make enforcement of liability more feasible. I fundamentally object to mandatory insurance as a way to handle liability, as this uses statistical justification to amortize the risk of non-stochastic events. (It also requires individuals to purchase a product from a private-sector supplier, which I find distasteful.) Individuals need to be held accountable for their own liability when their firearm is misused. Whatever losses to society that are unrecoverable in this way can be handled through licensing fees and ammunition tax. Beyond this, I fear we are facing decreasing returns for increasing loss of liberty.
This is where we’ll need to get creative. We need to find ways to reduce the violence in our society, and to reduce the escalation of violent incidents to the level of assault with a firearm (or hammer, or chainsaw, etc.). This effort will probably take many fronts, from completing the work we’ve done reducing childhood lead exposure to widespread teaching of non-violent conflict resolution to increasing social justice, equity, and security. I believe (no cite, sorry) this approach will yield more dividends than simplistic bans on behavior and materiel, but it won’t be possible if we waste our energy arguing over whether the Syrian rebels would have a greater or lesser chance without small arms, or whether an individual needs 30 rounds per magazine or only 10.
Peace.
-B
Automobile deaths. Interesting. Automobile deaths; I never considered that angle before. Hey, wait a minute. I’m pretty sure some people died in pools last year too. Fuck! I think we’re on to something here.
I’ll be back later. I have some research to do around a theory I have about ladders.
Guns don’t defend liberty. People defend liberty.
If people weren’t defending liberty with guns they’d be defending liberty with knives, home-made explosives, fishing wire, or cabbage patch dolls .
Don’t ever blame the guns. Never, ever blame the poor innocent guns. From what I’ve heard in online debates they’re completely useless as a means of killing lots of people, anyway.
I suggested a little research for you that would expose you to actual data about what you’re spouting off about.
I see that when a fellow suggests facts to you and you don’t like the facts, you subscribe to the make fun of the fellow theory of debate…nice.
I understand that you’re not interested in saving lives. This is a mistake among the anti-disarmament people. We treat your type like you’re interested in rational discussion, when nothing could be further from the truth. Hell, in this thread alone, I’ve seen “well I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I have an opinion anyway” type remarks. So, it isn’t surprising you fail to deal with my question. It leads to a conclusion you will not be lead to.
Half truths do not an argument make.
A legitimate government governs with the consent of the governed. It can be effective because it has the will of the people behind it. The law breakers the government is trying to enforce the laws on, will be a minority compared with the populace at large.
Armed mobs are also a small portion of the populace at large and have nothing to do with DoL argument. DoL is about the majority of the people overthrowing a tyrannical government. Not an armed mob.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Are you sure? Question Mark?
Well, we know those guys were all a bunch of smugglers and ne’er-do-wells.
we don’t want you owning THAT gun, or if you want to own one like THIS, you need to file a bunch of paperwork and pay a fee and submit to fingerprinting and a background check
I don’t see how “shall not be infringed” is confusing or ambiguous…
“we want the populace to be armed so that if we, as a government, ever go nuts, they can shoot us all.” That’s not actually what it means.
That is precisely what it means…That ultimately, they wanted the people to be free and to be free, they MUST have the means to be the masters of the government, and not the other way around.
Just because the oppressed side loses, doesn’t mean they don’t have a better chance with weapons. Do you suggest that people without arms have the same chance to resist violence as those with arms? That is an error. Take a lap, sir.
Having done it before does give one a sense of confidence.
And we’re here telling you that we don’t want to have to do it with glocks. That is not what we used last time. The citizenry had the same basic weapons that the British regulars had. Now, do you get it? More numbers + same weapons = FREEDOM. Fairly simple equation.
So you concede we could export all the illegal aliens if we wanted to. Cool.
But, ALL gun owners could stop them.
Are you advocating free & unlimited civilian access to full-on military hardware? Last I checked, even the heavily pro-gun people posting in this thread and others thought that was a bad idea.