So only Republicans support gun rights? Interesting.
If they’re not the answer to 300 years of slavery, lynching, and disenfranchisement, then what? Maybe if the black helicopter guys try and restrict the size of the magazine you can legally carry that would be the final straw. You can never have enough ammunition on a crowded day at Toys R Us.
Patting myself on the back; I like that! Maybe I’ll sell it as a bumper sticker at gun shows.
This is just illogical. Even if what you say is true, then it isn’t gun rights that are eroding other civil rights, it is the people doing the encouraging to focus on gun rights. And that has an element of truth to it - I find it wrongheaded when people focus on the second amendment to the exclusion of the other parts of the bill of rights.
But I also find it equally wrong headed when people focus on the other parts of the Bill of Rights to the exclusion of the 2nd.
Count me as another liberal, pro-individual gun rights, pro-rest of Bill of Rights person.
I’ve never mentioned black helicopters, so you can take that strawman and cram it up your ass, if there’s room left after 500 monkeys on mopeds and the Peking Royal Circus.
The lack of a slave uprising here in the US has exactly what to do with the topic? The slaves, having no guns, weren’t in much of a position to use them to secure or protect their freedom.
Their is no need to start bloodshed as long as there is legal redress. The soapbox, the ballot box, then the cartridge box.
Your comment was very mildly funny; too bad you had to piss all over that small success by preening. In the future, if you should ever manage to say something funny again, let others compliment you on the bon mot. When you compliment yourself like that it makes you look insecure.
I’ve seen plenty of societies do just fine without a specific right to guns. I haven’t seen the same from societies without a right to a free press.
I don’t think it should be infringed on, since it is a right. But I wouldn’t particularly care if there were a movement to amend the Constitution to get rid of it. I wouldn’t vote for such an amendment, but I wouldn’t care.
And that’s where the importance of the 2nd breaks down for me. There are plenty of countries that seem just as free and just as fair as the US that don’t have an equivalent to the 2nd Amendment. If guns were as important as some like to claim (not necessarily anyone in this thread), that wouldn’t even be possible.
I rather thought that the jews in general did [for the most part] have the population against them. Granted, there were the occasional person who did aid and abet the jews, but in general the great mass did absolutely NOTHING while the jews were legislated against. It may start with having to wear a yellow star, then it progresses to not being able to practice most professions, to having to live behind those walls over there to being moved entirely into a camp, to killed.
And I have no problem with my fellow liberals who oppose the second amendment and seek to have the constitution amended. Well, no problem is the wrong way of putting it. I think they are wrong headed about it, but I can respect their positions.
Where I lose respect is when people try to jibber about how the 2nd doesn’t protect individual gun ownership, or are willing to support legislation restricting that right in an unconstitutional manner. That’s dishonest.
I also don’t think the analogy to other countries is quite as simple as that. While I am actually pretty much on board with your overall point (I don’t view the right to gun ownership as being an essential prerequisite for stable democracy) different countries have different histories and different social make ups. It is perfectly conceivable that different factors protected Britain, for example, from a descent into tyranny (not including the Thatcher years), and that those factors are not present in the US.
Of course they had guns. If they didn’t, then you would be arguing that gun prohibitions work. In fact, since gun prohibitions make things worse, then they had MORE guns.
But you have ignored my question. It’s pre 1955. You have no or limited access to the ballot box, the media is owned by whites so your access to the soabbox is limited. You have MORE guns than the people legally allowed to own them. Now let’s say you afre 60 years old and you don’t have access to a crystal ball. It looks to you like you might die before you ever have the right to sit in the front of a bus or aren’t restricted on what water fountain you can use. You don’t know that some black person inspired by Ghandi is going to organize the black population and a bunch of peaceful Jewish, commie, fags Yankees are going to start a succesful civil rights movement.
Who do you shoot first? The bus driver, teacher, white clegyman preaching hate, sheriff? Or do you just start shooting random white people?
What the fuck ARE you jabbering about here? You are going to have to provide a cite that there was widespread gun-ownership among slaves in the antebellum south; or join gonzomax on the list of retards who make shit up and cannot be taken seriously as a result.
I’m laughing as the hypotheticals reach epic proportions. First the government is herding us into cattlecars, now it’s 1955…
…it’s almost 2009 and we CAN own guns, and that isn’t going to change.
I entirely agree. As you say, the mass sentiments towards Jews in Germany at that time can charitably be called indifference to their plight, and in many cases active interest in contributing to it. What they didn’t have to contend with is that same general populace, still set against them but in addition considerably armed. It’s not the “against” part i’m saying didn’t occur.
It seems to me from the points given in this thread that guns aren’t necessarily protection from the government; guns (provided that those who want them can get them) protect majority rule. So guns protect an armed populace from a tyrannical elite but do not protect persecuted minorities. In my opinion, this explains a lot about the conservative/ liberal positions on gun possession.
You mean the non stormtroopers that participated in Krystallnacht? Not too many women and youths were stormtroopers [at least the Hitler Youth weren’t until they hit adulthood.]
Riots are riots, adrenaline kicks in and shit happens. If you just spent 3 or 4 years unemployed ‘because of the jews’ and you got the chance to get some of your own revenge, think Watts …
Democracy’s based on the belief that most of the people have a clue most of the time. If that’s not true, democracy is fucked, guns or no guns. If there’s some kind of superweapon that lets 1000 freedom fighters defeat 1,000,000 pawns of the dictator, 1000 Nazi Klansmen could use those same proton disruptor rifles to defeat 1,000,000 soldiers of the lawful democratic government.
Republicans are for the rich elite and Democrats are for the poor multitude. 
I’m not sure what point you’re making. Assuming nearly everyone has guns of a rough parity, than it’s difficult or impossible for anyone without popular support to impose their will on the rest.
No, I meant to the extent that the liberal side of the political spectrum has focused on championing protection of various minorities against the “tyranny of the majority”. A few organizations have gone so far as to lobby against guns to protect minorities from armed mobs.
I disagree. 10 (or 20, or 30, or so on) people without guns versus storming the house of one person without a gun will result in the one dead (or unconscious, or captured). 10 or more armed folk storming the house of one armed person will result in the one being dead and some of the majority being dead. Guns let a minority kill members of a majority before being killed themselves.
Now, if you have a situation in which a majority of a society wants a minority dead, and is willing to fight as hard to kill the minority as the minority is to survive, than the minority is fucked. I personally consider it a moral goodness if said minority can cripple the society in the process of being killed by it. Ergo, I am desirous of popular private gun ownership (especially of longarms) in the hopes that either purges can be avoided as impractical, or actually made impractical enough to wreck a state attempting to carry them out.
My, for a self-proclaimed adult, we get awfully testy, don’t we? Let’s see… after granting that you spot a valid inconsistency in my hastily written post, I break out the oldest DAT joke in the post PC world, figuring you’ll respond in kind. Was your last Graf that long ago? But if it’s going to make you bridle like Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers comedy, then I apologize for hurting your sensitive feelings. You may release the pearls now, and allow them to fall into their natural position on your bosom. Savor it – it’s the last apology you get…
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Um, no. You do not get a cite in support of a claim or implication I did not make, fucking, valid or otherwise. I have no reason to think you racist, homophobic, or bigoted about religions. Gullible, stupid and potentially quite easily misled for evil, perhaps – my cite there is your posting history. Associate? That’s rather vague… Do you associate with racists, homophobes, etc. etc.? Probably, but that’s difficult to avoid for anyone with an extended family… no onus there. Do you traffick with them, make common cause? Well, dude, you’re a right-wing gun nut – of course you do. Coalition building in a “big tent” makes for, well, predictable bedfellows. How do you think the average Klansman votes on gun control? The average volunteer at the Southern Poverty Law Center? The typical Focus on the Family donor? The typical intern at the Human Rights Coalition? Look at all the unnatural and gymnastic fornications and idolatries committed by the occasionally admirable John McCain with causes and groups he once spurned. To be fair, I don’t like all of the folks I vote with either. “Where’s Ex-Tank? Over in the No Gun Control line, with all the racists and homophobes.” The omission of the word “other” is the meed of respect you deserve – no more, no less
Nope, you don’t have to prove anything, but if (IF!) you’re smart, you’ll try. Oh, not to me in particular. You can have petting parties with your Red Ryder all night every night for the next fifty years, and it’s no skin offa me, or my attitude toward you. But one of the hopeful (IMO) signs on the horizon is the inevitable demographic shift. People who feel a visceral pull toward your issues and values are dying peacefully in bed every passing day. People who are fundamentally skeptical of your issues and values are graduating and registering to vote in increasing numbers. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to come out of the comfort zone and explain yourself. Explain to some kid just out of the closet, some African-American guy who just moved to your li’l slice of heaven, the village atheist, the nice lesbian couple down the hall how your private possession of a firearm is a bulwark and a stay against the potential tyrannies of the steadily liberalizing government. They’ll have learned in school about prominent cases where their liberties were protected and advanced by governmental actions against the will of the people of the time. How, in fact, will you define tyranny to them? Will it gibe with their concept of tyranny? Many of the students at the high school in Little Rock that were forced to integrate felt that they were being oppressed by governmental forces beyond their control. Many of them, I feel secure in saying, were probably 2nd Amendment supporters. Now, I’m comfortable in hazarding a guess that your concept of governmental oppression is not that of the pro-segregation students in Little Rock, left to your own devices and plenty of time to ponder. Then again, I’m not one you have to prove anything to. And frankly, dude, you’re no Cicero.
Lastly, I’d like to share that I’m truly impressed and duly intimidated by the number of times you can type out “fuck” on the keyboard – often augmenting it with the use of colorful adjectives. But I’m curious… is it a scout, mortar, or mechanic crouching by your keyboard sounding it out for you? This inquiring mind wants to know. You can avoid the DAT stereotype if you really try. It won’t be easy – you have “Tank” right there in the monicker. But the DA might be something you can work on.
DAT?
1955 is not antebellum. Are you going to answer the questions?