It is high time in America for antis to stand up and be proud of being anti whatever they’re against.
Be anti-gun, anti-Trump, anti-abortion, antivaccine, anti-whatever you deplore or revile.
Yes, we know you shy away from the “anti” label for fear that people don’t like negativity. But your euphemisms generally range from moronic to actively deceptive.
So march proudly in your anti-dom.*
*The Antifa get my grudging respect for at least being proud antis, despite their other loathsome characteristics.
I thought I’d throw this into the mix.Washington state voters approved 1639 in the last election. The initiative will
Maybe I should say “would” because the NRA–surprise, surprise–filed suit almost immediately, and one city, Republic, Washington, is apparently going to try the ol’ nullification bit that worked so well in 1833 and declare itself a"sanctuary city" for gun owners who don’t like to play by the rules.
Well, it can be pretty easy. First of all, criminals are stupid and they can just admit it, or they can be taped saying so.
Next you have to convince a jury, and if I was on a jury and they brought in a guy who purchased 20 AR15s from Dave’s Gun store on Nov 18th and sold them to various bad guys and criminals over the next few days, hell yes, that solid evidence of intent.
They have convicted quite a few straw man sellers. So, it certainly can be done.
So, the guy shows you a fake id. Are you then Ok with that sale, assuming you dont know it’s fake?
We can prosecute for straw man sales.
No, if you buy guns with the intent to resell to another person, you are *not buying that gun legally. *
And these straw sellers that the ATF just chooses not to prosecute, are they the smart ones that realize that they shouldn’t admit it?
You have to convince them beyond a reasonable doubt. How do you prove that they were not just bought because you like AR-15’s, and then a few days alter, people started making offers for them that were enough above the markup that you really couldn’t refuse?
And yet, people still sell their guns to criminals and get away with it.
At the very least, it creates some level of accountability. If it is from out of state, you know that you shouldn’t sell it. When the police come to talk to you because the gun that you purchased was used in a crime, you can tell give them more information.
If you give a fake ID at the gun store, and they don’t know it’s a fake, are you okay with that sale?
As I’ve said before, I would consider a valid CCW or other sort of carry permit to be considered an adequate background check.
Are you saying that CCW’s are so easy to fake that they are worthless?
Only if the straw purchaser basically begs to be prosecuted.
Oh, well, then if you aren’t buying the gun legally, then they shouldn’t sell it to you, right?
It’s not a matter of number of guns or type of guns. It’s a matter of how you view guns.
For people in other developed countries, guns are either: a tool of your trade (soldier, farmer, LEO), a hunting tool, or a sports item. Not a symbol of the greatness of their country. Not their most important freedom. Not a self-defense tool.
For a lot of Americans, they are those last three things. And that’s what’s a huge difference. We look at guns and we see metal and wood; you guys look at guns and see second amendment rights. Many Americans identify the second amendment and the US so strongly that they even honestly believe people in other countries can’t own guns, or that it’s not possible to travel to any other country with a gun - neither of which makes any sense!
You’re right in some of those senses re: attitudes, but the right to use firearms to defend oneself is recognized in (at least) Northern Ireland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and I believe Estonia. The Czechs have an ongoing debate on whether to adapt their version of the Second Amendment. It’s not gone far yet, but interestingly there is no clear partisan slant on it there. Mexico also has the right to bear arms in their constitution, but it has not been de facto supported by the government.
And in a lot of other countries people have the right to bear arms but never put it in a Constitution or equivalent document(s) because we see it as absurd as putting our right to breathe air in there. What next, “people shall have the right to have sex”? We regulate both the right to bear arms and the right to have sex, but we don’t feel the need to list either one as being something which exists. As for the right to breathe air, it’s not even regulated.
And, we don’t see the exercise of any of those rights as being something particularly patriotic, nor peculiar to us. Americans often do see guns that way (not other weaponry, just the ones which have a tube and go BOOM).
That’s the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate. Either rights are self-evident, or we must enumerate them to resist perceived challenges to them. And whether one feels they are important actual rights or not is a different argument than recognizing that the BoR is intended to not grant rights but provide recognition of natural rights.
“Personal protection” is recognised as a valid reason for asking for a firearms certificate, which it is not in the rest of the UK. That’s not to say it’s an absolute right,nor that you would get a firearms certificate for that purpose just for the asking. The latest statistics I’ve seen is that there are about 3000 people in NI who have a certificate allowing a weapon for personal protection.
And the usual rules on the law of self-defence (proportionality to the specific threat at the time of use) would still apply.
We reckon that rights only need to be enumerated if they’ve ever been under heavy-enough attack (succesfully or not) or if the different legal traditions which formed Spain viewed them differently. For example: the right to vote used to be handled differently in different areas, including women’s right to vote, which was succesfully supressed in the 19th century, recognized again in 1931 and supressed again by Franco. So, the right to vote and that it’s not affected by gender is something that’s listed.
Another difference which often makes speaking about legal matters with Americans difficult, we never consider any list as self-limiting unless it explicitly says so: there is a part of the current Consti which once got challenged as being self-limiting and it specifically got touched-up to indicate that it’s not. This is part of our normal legal process: if any law (yes, including the Consti) is at some point found to be ambiguous in any way, it gets re-edited for clarification. Whenever you’re looking at a Spanish law, you need to make sure you have the latest version.
We also tend to write our laws to be more sweeping than yours. This has led to things such as being given a “bad grade” on account of “not having a law requiring internet service providers, forum moderators, etc. to report possibly-illegal behavior”: we already had a law requiring anybody who sees possibly-illegal behavior to report it! The whole country is mandatory reporters :smack: (so, call us Big Brother if you want :p) The same law details possible penalties or that you don’t have to report if doing so would put you at risk. But, because there wasn’t a law called “ISP as Mandatory Reporters” or suchlike, these people compiling a list about how countries view internet crime didn’t find the applicable legislation. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, same as “the right to bear arms” exists in dozens of countries which don’t bother put it in their Constitutions.
There’s no ‘sorta’ about it. Legal gun ownership provides a never ending supply of guns to criminals. Whether it’s through strawman transactions, legal sales to people who aren’t yet known criminals, private sales, or theft. The 2nd Amendment ensures a vast supply of weapons readily available to the enterprising criminal.
The only way to prevent criminals from getting guns is to enact laws that the NRA (and their toadies) would vomit all over.
Expansion of carry rights gathered momentum in a big way back in the 1990s with ‘shall issue’ for concealed-carry permits. This was followed up in the 2000s and since by an increasing number of jurisdictions allowing open carry, jurisdictions reducing or abandoning training requirements to have a carry permit, jurisdictions abandoning the requirement of needing a permit at all to carry.
Then there was the expiration of the assault weapons ban (2004), and of course the spreading of the stand-your-ground laws.
And as you mention, Heller.
So what I see is the assault weapons ban of 1994 being the high-water mark of gun control, and practically everything since then moving in the direction of expanded gun rights.
So yeah, if things keep going in the direction they’re going, I figure in another two or three decades, anyone will be able to carry any weapon anywhere that can physically be carried.
Do you really believe that the only people in America who support legal gun ownership are “the NRA and its toadies?” You’re operating under a false premise.
No, I don’t really believe that. What I believe is exactly what I wrote:
The only way to prevent criminals from getting guns is to enact laws that the NRA (and their toadies) would vomit all over.
What supporters of gun ownership who are NOT the NRA or NRA toadies, believe or don’t is a matter I have not ventured an opinion on.
Theoretically, a decent law abiding human being could support the concept of legal gun ownership and also support laws that actually prevent guns from getting into the hands of criminals. One could also think that a person could be conceptually in favor of legal gun ownership, but after considering the massive social cost of actual widespread gun ownership, come to the conclusion that legal gun ownership comes with too high a cost to support.
BTW, feel free to comment on my claim that legal gun ownership provides an endless supply of guns to criminals.
Strawman sales are not thru legal gun ownership. The many who buys the guns, intending to resell them is a criminal. The only way to prevent criminals from getting guns is to enact laws that **violate the Constitution. **
The assault weapon ban did nothing and as has been shown, even if every legally defined assault weapon was banned, violent crime would not decrease significantly.
The “high water mark” was DC, Chicago and SF banning handguns, for all normal intents and purposes. Which caused Heller.
By what process was this criminal afforded the opportunity to buy stock for his illegal gun sale business? The answer, shocking exactly nobody, is the legal gun ownership market. If you didn’t have the right to buy a dozen guns for “personal protection” these assholes wouldn’t be able to buy a dozen guns to sell to gang members.
The fact that you and I have the right to buy guns means there will always be people with guns who are willing to sell them to criminals.
We already violate the Constitution! The NFA was passed over 80 years ago, abridging our right to buy fully automatic weapons. Nobody is jumping up and down about that -crystal clear- violation of our right to keep and bear arms.
The question isn’t whether or not it is acceptable to ban guns in “violation of the Constitution”, it is, and we have a very long history of doing so, the question is where to draw the line.
The Supreme Court disagrees, and I think they know more about the Constitution than some ransom poster on a MB. Unless you are, in secret, a noted Constitutional scholar? :rolleyes: