Can you support your claim? Where have I made the argument that the 2nd amendment means everyone should have endless rights to have whatever gun they want without restrictions on ownership? That is not an argument I have made - you are wrong.
Let’s see if I could blow your mind. I agree that there is no mainstream support to take away the right to own certain guns. I do think society has an interest in ensuring that people who shouldn’t own guns don’t. I also think it’s reasonable to have regulation. Odd huh, I write about the same thing you did, but my interpretation of that is different than yours.
But while you equivocate on the ‘right to own a gun’ what specifically are you talking about? Is anyone interested in taking away my right to own a center fire semi auto rifle with a collapsable stock and forward pistol grip that accepts a detachable magazine that has a capacity greater than 10 rounds? Quite a few people want to do that - and one of them is Clinton.
Here’s a simple question. What is a red herring?
Before you label my argument dishonest, I would suggest you try to actually understand it.
How about we talk about whether gun control is a good idea or a bad idea in another fucking thread?
This thread is about whether Hillary should constantly talk about how she doesn’t wanna take your guns, and whether that would help her or not.
And I think she should shut up about guns. She’s never going to convince the 2nd Amendment People that she’s not planning to grab their guns on Jan 21st. And talking about guns, even when she’s talking about how she doesn’t want to grab their guns, just reminds them that she’s going to grab their guns.
It would be like me getting on TV and promising to never, ever come to your house and strangle you in your sleep. The denial just convinces you of the opposite.
So she should shut up about guns. Of course she’d grab all your guns if she could, but she can’t, and she knows she can’t, so she’s going to shut up about it.
Trump isn’t exactly a fan of the 2nd Amendment People either you know, he thinks you’re all crazy hillbillies. If you told him the 2nd Amendment was how Muslims and Mexicans get guns, he’d repeal the 2nd Amendment in a second.
However, he’s not going to be president, Hillary is. So if you’re going to shit your pants over Hillary, better start shitting yourself now. If no Democrat can be acceptable to you, don’t be surprised to find that no Democrat supports you, and when Democrats win they’ll fuck you over. The NRA used to be carefully bipartisan, but when they turn themselves into an arm of the Republican Party they shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves on the losing side every now and then.
If you think principled opposition is what the GOP has become such that they can be an ethical “counterforce” to Democrats Gone Wild, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. Total obstruction is not justified. They refuse to discharge their constitutional duties in even giving a hearing to Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. There has not been a budget passed in years. The only thing the GOP supports is tax cuts for the wealthy and the elimination of “regulations”- no specific ones for reasons a, b, and c, no, it is regulations in general.
Why? Because the GOP has turned into The Enemies of the American Government party. Why? Because that is what is best for the wealthy. If the people no longer had a voice, if the government eschewed its constitutionally mandated duty to look after “the general welfare” of the population- something the GOP opposes at every turn in every way- if the American government were rendered toothless and impotent, why then billionaires and the corporate class could have free reign to do whatever they want. That is what the GOP has become, and I think it is anti-democratic and un-American.
As Justice Brandeis said so long ago, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Which side do you honestly think the GOP is on? Sorry, adaher, I think you are a valuable contributor to this board but you are really wrong this time.
I don’t see how a person can be a member of a well-ordered militia while on the no-fly list- that says they are not trusted by the US government and would not be accepted in such a role. But I agree that the way people get on that list needs a real close look, and may amount to an insurmountable obstacle to this idea. Maybe.
THIS post is what reasonable opposition looks like. I sure wish GOP congresscritters were capable of supplying such a nice list of actual reasons to support a position.
I agree that there is some ambiguity about Clinton’s positions on guns, since she has taken more than one. However, her convention speech position was something that (I don’t think) should be terribly alarming to gun lovers. She could do a better job of reinforcing what position wrt guns she is running on, and with the possible exception of assault rifles, it does boil down to, “I don’t want your gun!” (I don’t think the assault rifle ban will accomplish much other than maybe mollify some lefty voters and piss off a lot of NRA types)
I disagree that being very clear about her position on guns would make no difference. We have Trump giving speeches declaring Obama the founder of ISIS, Putin is a great guy, Hillary want to grab your guns. Hillary counters with, “I don’t want your gun!” Who are you going to believe? Well, I think that when it comes to a full-of-shit contest, more people can tell that Trump is winning than not. Campaign promises Can be broken, but it costs political capital. I think being clear on this issue will make it easier for her to move on to some of her other priorities- “What I really want is to take money from the wealthy and rebuild our infrastructure, send kids to college so this country can have a future.”
Just to be clear, I don’t support Trump in any way. I believe he must be defeated and that he really must lose badly, for the sake of democracy in American and for the sake of basic decency. This November I would really like to see something like the map all the way at the bottom of this page.
Although Trump has nominally taken a very hardline pro-gun stance, I don’t even really trust him on the issue of the right to keep and bear arms. He has–surprise, surprise!–not been terriblyconsistent on the issue (although it doesn’t appear from any of the statements listed on those web pages that he’s ever been a hardcore “gun-grabber”). As with abortion, I don’t get the impression he really knows or cares much about the issue of gun rights, and he is probably just saying what he thinks a Republican ought to say and what will appeal to his base.
Most fundamentally, I don’t think Trump believes in anything beyond Trump. He is utterly untrustworthy, unqualified, and utterly unfit to be elected dogcatcher, let alone President of the United States.
[/hijack of Hillary Clinton thread to talk about Donald #&@%* Trump]
The “2nd Amendment vote” is the gun nut vote. Most people who buy or own guns don’t do it in order to express their 2nd Amendment rights, and they don’t think Clinton is coming for their guns. She can’t get any of the gun nut vote and she doesn’t need any of it.
She doesn’t need to say “I don’t want your guns” because most people don’t think that. And it would turn off supporters who would be perfectly OK with her taking the guns.
Is it though? That would suggest that the construction industry makes up a large part of campaign contributions. No, these kind of earmarks are mostly about getting jobs qnd free shit for the incumbent’s district. Frankly, I’m more concerned about legislation that gets passed for contributors’ benefit than an extra bridge or library getting built.
Speaking of earmarks, this article claims that they were glue that held the parties together, and that banning them helped destroy party discipline and undermine the authority of party leaders, leading to the situation we are in today where our herd-of-cats Congress can’t get anything done. Getting rid of back room deals amounted to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The notion that our rights were granted to us by the government is pretty contrary to most constitutional thought. The rights in the bill of rights are a list of pre-existing rights that the people reserved to themselves. The only way those rights get taken away is if a super-majority of elected officials decide to surrender that right to the government.
The problem is that over the last few decades, gun rights have become a partisan issue. Its not quite as rigid as abortion but I can’t think of very many pro-gun control Republicans (there are significantly more pro-gun Democrats). And its is getting more partisan each election cycle.
Trump
She has a lot more going for her than predictability, even if everything that the Republicans are saying about her were true.
Lets assume for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton was going to ban abortions and Trump was going to make abortions free and readily available to anyone that wanted one (which is also clearly bullshit but lets just go with it). Are you saying that some people would not vote for Trump despite all the other issues?
See, I know a couple of guys who are like you- mono-maniacal single issue voters. Let’s be open here- I like guns, I own a couple, I support the 2nd, and most gun controls are useless.
But how can you throw away every other important issue:
abortion, using nukes, taxes, “trickle down”, no more putting our kids into debt for loans, voter rights, racism, and the list goes on & on- for maybe a few restrictions on buying more military style semi-auto rifles?
Would you support the KKK or the American Nazi party candidate just because they are pro-gun?
And, who is to say Trump is the big advocate for no gun control anyway? he was in favor of some gun controls in the past, more or less what Hillary is saying. He flipflops like a flounder on the pier, if there was another school shooting and public opinion ran heavily towards restrictions on “assault weapons” he’d sign that bill in a heartbeat.
So, you’re not getting protection for your gun from Trump, and you’re not getting your guns taken away by Hillary.
Of course there will be…his core of supporters who really aren’t in it for the issues anyway. It’s his personal cult of celebrity. Hopefully people on this board are a little more deliberate about their choices, though.
And another one is Trump. In fact IIRC Trump came out in favor of an assault weapons ban after Sandy hook and Clinton went into Radio silence and her husband wrote an op ed asking the Democrats to simmer down and not overplay their hand on gun control or risk losing elections and abandoning the rest of the Democratic agenda. The Clintons learned their lesson in 1994.
Yes, this bothers me too. The NRA board now includes guys like Grover Norquist. WTF does Grover Norquist know about guns and gun rights that he didn’t learn AFTER he joined the NRA?