So fucking what? Is your position that as long as any other method for killing people exists that we shouldn’t lift a finger to reduce gun violence?
No, no, no, no, no, no. 10000X “No!” (As Ted Stevens was - and the current Republican Party is - so fond of saying). You’re twisting things around, again. This has NOTHING to do with “what function government should have.” It has EVERYTHING to do with YOU guys wanting government to do what YOU want it to do and to “lay off” when “the other guys” want it to do something that you DON’T want it to do (such as, oh, I don’t know - providing restrictions on what regular Joes can buy when it comes to firearms and their accessories). To say anything else is nothing short of a LIE whether you or other conservatives/Republicans/gun nuts are willing to admit that or not.
Well, thanks for clearing that up!
I find the ability of some conservatives to provide such quick and ready answers to profoundly complex questions to be really quite inspiring. I note that exactly the same enlightenment can also provide some helpful answers to some of the other vexing questions of our time; for instance:
Q: Should evolution be taught in public schools?
A: Infidels who teach heresy to children will burn in hell.
Q: To what extent are humans contributing to climate change?
A: To no extent. Didn’t you hear what we just said about heresy?
Q: Should gay people have the same rights to marriage or civil unions as heterosexual couples?
A: They should burn in hell.
Q: But what about the problem of equal rights and civil liberties for gays?
A: What problem?
Q: Should we be doing stem cell research?
A: …
I think at this point, one can see how the Conservative Dogma Template (CDT) can be used to answer all of life’s questions with no thought required at all. Hopefully this is helpful in addressing the perplexity of the OP. 
Are you not conflating conservatives with the religious?
Did I say that? Lift as many fingers as you like. Just don’t violate Constitutional rights as you lift them.
Again, that’s the question of the legitimate function of the government. And yes, opinions differ. Of course, mine is the right one.
Are you in a militia? Then you don’t have a right to guns.
Ahh, you sound just like one of my wife’s FAVORITES, SCJ Antonin Scalia (since you probably didn’t catch that, I was being facetious). But of course - thank you for living down to my expectations as a pompous blowhard who is of the belief that only HE knows how the world works. Are you personal buddies with “Dubya,” by chance, 'cause you sound about as intelligent and coherent as HE ever did.
They share this with libertarians, who, at least, have a system that they can point to when it comes to making any decision immediately and simply. The trouble with conservative simplism is that it doesn’t follow any specific rules. It seems largely to be authoritarian, based on the talking points of whomever is the Alpha Conservative of the day.
Well, be careful! The same logic could come back to bite. “Do you own a press? Then you don’t have a right to freedom to publish your views!”
(It’s tricky to be a First Amendment absolutist…and yet want to interpret the Second Amendment only weakly.)
But that’s NOT what I so often hear coming out of the Republican “camp.” Once again, like a TRUE conservative, you’re trying to twist things around. What I hear coming out of the Republican “camp” is things like: “It is not the government’s job to suppress personal freedoms!” Well, guess what - whether you like it or not, having an abortion is a “personal freedom” just like owning a gun is. So unless you and other conservatives want to avoid coming off like MAJOR hypocrites about what you think the government should and shouldn’t be doing you shouldn’t be against abortion any more than you are against gun control since restricting EITHER is “suppressing personal freedom” and is the SAME government function either way. And one more thing (as one of my earlier posts alluded to): just as conservatives/gun nuts like to say things like: “If you put more restrictions on gun ownership then only criminals will have guns!” then I’ll counter with: “If you don’t provide access to clinical abortion - no matter how repugnant you might find it to be - then there’s a good chance that you’ll have the death of MANY women trying to abort their own children on your head.” So tell me - “How does that make you feel?”
But abortion is NOT seen as a personal freedom, it is seen as murder by social conservatives. That is exactly the problem with this debate. This is seen as freedom vs. murder - not exactly a debate that lends itself to easy resolution.
Right. But just as people like me cannot really control how many people “out there” choose to own and “enjoy” firearms, “social conservatives” have little, if any, control over how many women get pregnant and, IF they’re pregnant, how many of them choose to abort their unborns, safely or otherwise. And IF any of those women choose to try to abort their own unborn and end up DEAD because they didn’t have access to clinical abortion, then, to me, that makes “social conservatives” no less culpable for the deaths of those “already born” women than they say “liberals” are to blame for the deaths of those unborns. As I’m mentioning for the THIRD time I’m not really a big “fan” of abortion, myself. But when “social conservatives” refuse to acknowledge that abortions take place and are then unwilling to provide safe places for them to be done then, to me, whatever cause they think they’re championing in being “pro-life” is COMPLETELY negated because they seem to be showing, at that point, that they care more about a fetus than they do about a grown woman.
I’m pro-choice, but your argument is silly. This is like arguing that because straight-up murders happen regularly, it should be everyone’s natural priority to see to it that the murderer has safe and reliable weapons to use and is trained in their usage, rather than focussing on catching and prosecuting him.
No, what these anti-abortion wingnuts are doing is forcing women into underground unsafe medical procedures, or alternately in some cases forcing them to carry to term against the interests of their own physical or emotional health or the future well-being of the child. All because of idiot dogmatic beliefs, mostly arising from something they thought they read in the Bible, or something they heard on talk radio. If the mother dies, well, it was God’s will, but the child is alive, praise the Lord. Meanwhile after the child is born these same dogmatic wingnuts will be the first to vote against children’s health insurance, Medicaid, education, and welfare.
I don’t agree. If it were the case that murders were legal and happened regularly, they should have a safe reliable place to do it.
The legality is the important part. And comparing abortions with murder is histrionic nonsense. It even drove Terr to invoke Hitler because he was so unable to defend it.
Are you SURE you’re “pro-choice” 'cause you sure come off with the comprehension and argumentation “skills” of someone who isn’t and who loves his guns!! The ONLY WAY your (EXTREMELY) weak refutation would make ANY sense is if it were true that people who murder are generally killed in the act of murdering. Or even if there were a chance of it. I don’t have any statistics in front of me but my general impression is that those who murder don’t generally turn right around and kill themselves after the fact (there ARE exceptions, I know. But there are exceptions to just about everything, aren’t there?). Your point is NOT taken.
Wow, didn’t expect so many replies…okay!
Anyway, I wanted to point out how I find it’s interesting that eating eggs is not considered eating meat, but aborting a baby is murder. By that logic, eating eggs should count as eating animals (therefore eating meat), if we are going to say that the embryo is a human-being and that aborting it is murder.
I agree that it’s nonsense, but it’s still the foundation of the pro-life movement.
Arguing that ectoplasm and goo, slurping about in a woman’s abdomen isn’t a human and isn’t alive is a reasonable position to hold. Arguing that murder is acceptable in case A because it’s legalized murder but unacceptable in case B, because it’s illegal murder, is a facetious argument from the viewpoint of the person who has no reason to differentiate between case A and case B. Adding bold text doesn’t change that.
I agree that the legality of abortions is critical to the success of this argument. Abortions are legal, and thus, not murder.
But if I come along and argue that abortion should be illegal, you can hardly counter that argument by relying on abortion being legal.
Abortion is legal now because the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution forbids restricting it. Suppose a future Supreme Court found that, contrary to the holding in Roe v. Wade, unborn children had a Fourteenth Amendment right to life?
This is getting beyond the scope of the OP, but here’s how I would answer your hypothetical – it doesn’t matter if the unborn have a right to life or not. Women get to control what goes in or stays inside their bodies, period. Nothing gets to go in, or remain inside, without her permission. This trumps anyone else’s rights.