Why, you sneaky, underhanded… hmmmm. You think it might work?
“Vote progressive! Tax the rich, free universal health care, expanded education, investment in infrastructure, and a free gun for everybody!”
Hey, eliminate poverty and you can avail yourself of all the free speech you can handle…
Enough with the absurd rhetoric already! For Pete’s sake, can’t people debate in good faith?
You’ll take my snark from me when you can pry it from my cold, dead keyboard!
Yes. The point of the Bill of Rights is to limit the power of government and erect a firewall protecting basic individual rights from the mobocracy.
I’m all for eliminating poverty. Remember: I’m a Liberal – with a gun. I mean, if you’re Pro-Choice, then be Pro-Choice!
What I was getting at is that you said in your post that obviously guns are not the problem because of the Switzerland example. Society’s to blame. But rather than suggesting we fix our culture (e.g., eliminating poverty), you suggest getting rid of guns. Sounded like Double-think to me.
A well aportioned amount of self-deprecatory humor, being necessary to the sanity of a Message Board, the right of the members to link to and post snark shall not be infringed.
I was merely saying earlier that you can’t point to the Swiss as an example of how benign guns are because they don’t have the other societal ingredients that go into violent crime. We have an underclass, we have gangs, adding guns to that mix is like throwing kerosene on a fire.
And if the message board is already certifiably insane, thus rendering moot the prefatory clause…?
Sorry, but that directly contradicts what he said. If you want to call him a liar, then that’s something else. But in supporting the court’s decision, he is saying that exactly that sort of broad ban is not constitutional. Even God Himself (or nature itself) does not give rights to entities that do not bear rights, nor any right to coerce or deceive. There is, therefore, no natural right for you to own a weapon that is intrinsically dangerous to me — a nuclear bomb in my proximity, for example, which is as much a threat to my well being as if you put a gun to my chest and said, “Your money or your life.”
This is commonly asserted, but to the best of my knowledge it is unsupported by the evidence. From 1987 until now the number of states that have “shall issue” laws with regard to concealed carry of firearms has increased from 8 to 37, and only 2 states have laws that forbid concealed carry under any circumstances whatsoever (Wisconsin and Illinois). Surely it would be easy to demonstrate that gun-related crime has increased as a result of such laws, if it in fact has (it hasn’t, but you’re welcome to make the case that it has).
Nevertheless, we’re not even talking about concealed carry laws. We’re talking about mere possession. It would be dubious indeed to assert that ownership of a weapon and the permissibility of its use within one’s own home will actually increase gun-related crime.
The arguments that this law will turn everywhere into the “Old West”, such as the one you’re making, simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Well, yeah, but guns are everywhere, pretty darn hard to increase the availability of something damn near anyone can get. So you wouldn’t expect an increase in crime related to availability, if you follow.
Do we have any police on the Boards? I’d be interested in their input as regards to domestic violence calls.
We’re making rules for the SDMB. FreeRepublic and DemocraticUnderground will have to come up with their own. 
They why do so many persons in favor of “common-sense” gun laws, make that argument?
And the “fact” on which your argument is based, is not supported by anything. You are “begging the question.” NICS, in fact, rejected 1.6% of the 8.3 million applications submitted in 2005. That’s 132,000 gun transfers denied in a single year. Between 1994 (when NICS was implemented as the so-called “Brady Act”) & 2005, about 1.4 million applications were rejected.
In 2005, in states which require a permit to purchase a gun, about 15,000 (or 2.4%) of the 624,000 submitted applications were rejected. From 1999 thru 2005 there were 107,000 (2.1%) rejections among the ~5 million submission.
Seems like an awful lot of people were denied posession of something “damn near anyone” can get.
Very unfortunately, our “modern mentality” is to work hard to fix the Symptoms with very little regard for the underlying causes; whether in Medicine, Politics, or Society. Ok well, maybe not limited to modern, but more of a human condition to do anything necessary to avoid looking a problem straight in the face while trying to control people’s behavior at any cost. Despite millenia of experience in failing to control people’s behavior.
For my part, I have a hard time with the comparisons with nations that are virtual mono-cultures. We are a cornucopia of cultures, subcultures, experiences and beliefs. We’re also a fucking lot larger than a lot of these small nations that we get compared to. 300 Million Americans from scores of cultures spread over 3.7 million square miles is quite a different animal than Switzerland, a nation of 7.5 million people in 15,900 square miles.
Our history is violent, our culture is violent, our media and our stories are violent. Guns are a very large part of our mythos, unlike most other nations we get compared to. It’s no huge surprise that we have more gun violence.
Tragic as you apparently intend those numbers to sound, 97.9% sure fits my own personal definition of “damn near anyone.” There are diploma mills with higher rejection rates.
The thing is, guns are already added to that mix. They’ve been in the mix for decades. They’re there because the gangs don’t give a fuck whether the law says they can carry or not. Like I always say, felons don’t bother applying for a carry permit. This court’s ruling will help the victims of those gangs, the people who need to protect themselves but don’t want the inconvenience of, you know, becoming a felon for doing so.
About Obama and his statement about guns, I think his actions speak louder than words. He’s in favor of near total gun control (no semi autos and no concealed carry) in his own state - why should I assume he won’t support the same thing on a federal level? Anti-gun politicians from New York and California who want the whole country to be like their little nanny-state utopias will see that they have an ally in the White House, they’ll hand President Obama a stack of anti-gun bills, and he’ll sign them so fast he’ll go through a case of pens.
And if you accuse another poster of lying in Great Debates, it may get you sanctioned by the staff.
Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
This is an interesting footnote:
Is this a signal that the 2nd will be incorporated because Cruikshank was wrong, or is it a signal that it will not be incorporated because there is a consistent line of cases reaffirming that it only applies to the Feds?
Why are you acting as if he conceded something and we’re demanding more? He hasn’t said anything meaningful. His statement is classic gun control advocate BS.
I bolded the parts I find to be the most troubling. First, constance reference to children is an attempt to appeal to emotion. No one wants anyone innocent to die of gun violence, so why bring up children specifically except that you want to bypass the rational part of people’s brains and go directly to the part that says “OMG CHILDREN!”? Later invoking terrorists, usually the tactic of the right, is similarly an attempt to bypass rational thought.
“Common-sense” gun control proposals almost never are. Sometimes they sound that way to the ignorant - the armor piercing ammunition proposal in its original form would’ve banned all rifle ammunition period.
But to the ignorant, that’s common sense. You might say “Would you be in favor of banning all ammunition capable of penetrating the common types of bulletproof vests worn by police?” to which the ignorant reply may be “yes, that’s just common sense”. What most people don’t know is that most of those vests are only designed to stop handgun rounds, and rifle rounds being several times more powerful easily penetrate them. And yet ignorance of that makes the proposal seem like common sense. I’m sure the news headlines were something along the line of “Extremist NRA opposes ban of cop killer bullets!”
Even with the revised proposal of that law, it would’ve banned, at the very least, .223 ammunition which may be the most common type of rifle ammunition in the country. Someone made an oversized target pistol that shoots .223 rounds a single shot at a time, therefore .223 is considered a pistol round, and as it can penetrate common police vests, .223 is now banned. Any other rifle ammunition could similarly be banned by making a specialty target gun that would get classified as a pistol (they were huge, bulky, and impractical and not really useful pistols, but legally classified that way). The AG would also have arbitrary control over designating what he considered to be armor piercing, which would give an anti-gun administration the ability to ban rifle ammunition without even bothering to pass laws.
This is the sort of lie that masquerades as “common sense”.
As an example of common sense legislation, he mentions the gun show loophole specifically. There is no such thing as the gun show loopwhole, it’s a lie created by the gun lobby. Laws at gun shows are the same as they are anywhere else. I bought a gun at a gun show and had to go through the same paperwork and background check. A few years ago a law was proposed that would supposedly close the gun show loophole and what it essentially would’ve done would be to outlaw gun shows. Among other things, it made minor technical violations by any seller at a gun show punishable by jailing both the seller and the organizer of the event by many years. Under those conditions, no one would ever organize such events. It was designed essentially to end gun shows. A “common sense” solution to a non-existant problem.
The references to hunters and sportsman is just the sort of divide and conquer bullshit the gun control lobby tries. They know the casual hunter/asshole crowd doesn’t really care about gun rights, just about their own interests. So they give lip service to placate their respect for hunters while banning some other sort of gun. Fuck those assholes, by the way, who are only interested in gun rights in as far as it directly affects their hobbies. A significant portion of the NRA’s support base is made up of those people and it’s one reason I generally don’t like the NRA. The second amendment has nothing to do with hunters or sportsmen and any politician pledging their support of them is a good indicator that the politician doesn’t support the second amendment at all.
If you’ve seen me in the Obama threads, you’ll note that I’m generally pro-Obama, so I’m not someone who is going to spew whatever Republican talking points there are to tear him down. His gun control stance is troubling. What you’re defending as him conceding things to gun rights advocates is the exact same sort of bullshit that Sarah Brady types come up with.
Since the decision today was 5-4, can you rightfully accuse Obama of being a left-wing extremist(my words) without saying the same thing about the four Justices who voted the way they did?