Hyperbole and syllogistic fallicies used in debates on gun control and the Second Amendment? Say it isn’t so! How can this be?
I frankly don’t agree with the o.p. on his views on the Constitution, but that doesn’t stake me in the camp of Michelle Malkin, who is both beautiful and blitheringly ignorant on essentially every topic I’ve ever seen her address. But why let that stop anyone from drawing false dichotomy and unjustified analogy from the argument?
Stranger
Well, I think you have to account for the fact that things look different from different perspectives, Little Nemo. And your position on gun control isn’t a particularly moderate one.
Therefore those reasonable positions may be anything but, from my perspective. From the perspective of someone who would be happy to see all guns banned, I’m sure they look too moderate.
Biden ridiculed the guy in the video. Now, he seemed like a perfectly nice and ordinary guy to me - and let’s keep in mind that this event was supposed to solicit comments from nice ordinary people. What did he do that was so awful that he deserved Joe Biden’s scorn? Nothing but be a gun owner, from what I could see, which means Biden likely scorns me too.
Biden shouldn’t scorn so many people, IMHO, especially considering that so many of those gun owners vote Democratic.
Would you mind sharing what Malkin’s position on gun control is? You know, the one that is so extreme.
I use a lock to prevent myself from becoming the victim of a burglary.
Yes, all those locks being turned every day, there shouldn’t be any burglary at all by now.
Right?
One would presume that a single instance of shooting a burglar should provide more prolonged crime-fighting effects than a single instance of locking your door. Isn’t that the whole point of owning a gun for self-defense? Or should I be jamming the barrel of a .357 in a hasp in order to secure my front door?
First, thanks for the information, catsix.
Second, if you know, is there a way to have the effect of a involuntary commitment removed from the NICS?
A lot of mental illnesses are permanent and life-long challenges. I don’t know of more than handful of schizophrenia cases where the disease went into ‘remission’ so to speak. But many mental illnesses are temporary. Post Partum Depression being the simplest one to highlight, I believe.
I’ll confess part of my interest in the question is personal. I suffer chronic depression and am considered disabled because of it. I have zero desire to own a gun, because I recognize that it could become a subject of temptation. I am, however, disappointed to find that another one of my rights has been taken from me, with no recourse to get it back.
I’m not saying it’s the wrong decision in my case. It may even be the right one. But I don’t think that all involuntary commitments are equal. And I don’t like that it seems to be yet another de facto punishment imposed on the mentally ill because they’ve gotten treatment.
I can’t agree with that. If it were clear and unambiguous, we wouldn’t keep arguing about what it means after all these years.
I don’t like guns, and find gun enthusiasts a bit pathetic. But I love the Bill of Rights, and would be very leery of anybody wanting to touch it.
And putting things in perspective, strict enforcement of traffic laws would probably save more lives than would getting rid of every privately-owned gun in the country.
(But Michelle Malkin is a silly cow.)
Michelle Malkin is an idiot. She’s just lucky Ann Coulter is around, or she’d get the title of the most whacked out right wing pundit. The guy in that YouTube video was freakin’ scary, and I though Biden called it just right. His gun is “his baby”? WTF’ingF???
As for the second amendment, I think it’s pretty much an anachronism. That, and the bit about quartering troops could be taken out of the constitution, and it wouldn’t bother me one bit. Of course, I’m just not into guns. But I can’t see us ever outlawing hunting rifles with our without the 2nd amendment.
What was so scary about the guy? That his video was out of focus?
Apart from that, I think he turned a phrase well. Car enthusiasts and boaters and motorcyclists call the objects of their enthusiasm their “babies” all the time. Why should a firearm be different? Just because it is more “scary”?
I think if Democrats are scared by that kind of talk it says far more about them than the gentleman that made the video. Like I said, he just seemed like a regular guy to me.
Am I being wooshed here or what? That entire block was written in such a sarcastic tone that I am terrified that somebody could’ve possibly taken it seriously – I was describing the status quo: Murder, attempted murder, assault and battery are illegal in all states, we try to lock up offenders, a lot of people think murderers should be locked up forever, although I certainly don’t. Despite all those things, murders, attempted murders and assaults are still committed. Some of those involve the use of firearms.
Almost any reasonable proposal for gun control of any sort must demonstrate that
A) a certain percentage of crimes that presently involve firearms that were at some point legally purchased within the US, would not be committed or would be significantly less severe if a firearm was not originally sold to the original legal purchaser.
B) There we not be a significant increase in other crimes as a result of the legislation, including things like illegal firearms posession.
C) The social cost of the implementation in terms of $$, public support and welfare and potential for destabilization of society must be justifiable by the above benefits.
Now this is all pretty neutral stuff. I think both sides should agree that the above is valid (although not the complete picture). Even if the two polar extremes can be modeled as above:
People who say all civilian gun ownership should be banned:
– Believe that A and B are true, and any A+B benefit, however slight, justifies any social cost at C, however big.
and/or
– Believe that A and B are true, and C is not all that significant.
People who say there should not be any restrictions on civilian gun ownership:
– Believe that A or B are false,
and/or
– C is too great of a cost regardless of the restriction.
Now to me it’s pretty obvious that somebody who wants to commit a crime using a firearm is unlikely to want to commit that crime solely because he or she has a firearm. It’s also pretty clear to me that if you reduce the total availability of guns the black market price of guns that are sold illegally will go up. Even if the increased price shrinks the market, higher prices usually means bigger margins, more profit per unit, and that means more people interested in making a buck. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what happens when suddenly more criminals with guns want to compete for a smaller market.
I’ve not seen the video. I’m on dial-up and really don’t care to wait for the time it takes a video to load unless it’s important.
I’m not one to claim that the guy is scary for the object of his affection, but unless he’s being a little self-deprecating with the comment that his gun is his baby I’m viewing him with the same :rolleyes: that I view anyone who uses similar terms to describe any inanimate object. It’s a fun joke or conceit, I think. But the moment such terms seem to be meant in a serious manner - then I start to back away. Gun, car, boat, even pets, it doesn’t matter. It does seem an unhealthy fixation on an object.
“My Precioussss!”
Groman, my apologies, I think I was the one wooshed. I’m not a normal participant in the gun control debates, in part because I find it hard sometimes to follow who’s presenting what seems to me a serious (but wildly outrageous) position and those presenting sarcastic ones.
nevermind
Come on. He was quite deliberately mocking the tone some nanny state busybodies take - “Won’t someone think of the children!”
I didn’t take it that way. The guy pulls out this big honkin’ gun to make a point. I wouldn’t want him for a neighbor, that’s for sure.
But it wasn’t as if he was physically brandishing it in your face. He was on a freaking video, using it as a visual aid.
If you get so bent out of shape over pixels on a screen, I’d hate to see how you’d react to the real thing.
The video was provocative, but it was hardly nuts. And people who think it is nuts are betraying their anti-gun hysteria, IMHO, just like ol’ Joe Biden. Fine if you are in fact hysterical, but since the Democrats have decided in recent years that gun control is a loser of a political issue, maybe a more measured response to the video would have been warranted.
And that does not mean Biden, whose mouth is the epitome of an uncontrolled weapon, should imply that this man needs “help”.
So what? I’m not asking for the guy to be arrested.
Eh. I told you exactly how I’d react to “the real thing”. I wouldn’t want him as my neighbor. If he’s living out in some survivalist camp in Montana, then bully for him.
Actually he’s living in liberal, reliably Democratic Flint, Michigan. One of its favorite sons is much discussed here.
I’m not in to marching in protest, even when it is a political issue I care about. I personally think there are better ways to express my dissatisfaction. So then should I support the removal of that right? Just because someone “isn’t in” to exercising a given right that’s a pretty piss poor reason to be “okay” with its removal. A huge portion of Americans probably never meaningfully use their freedom of speech, aside from just chatting with friends occasionally about political issues. However, even those that never exercise said right would be idiots to not care if it was taken away.
As for the OP, the reason slavery and gun rights can’t really be equated constitutionally is two fold:
Sure, by not tacitly speaking out against slavery, the constitution left it to the States. Which meant most certainly that some States would practice slavery.
In any case, the two are materially different, because the Constitution clearly talks about arms, but only vaguely talks about slavery. They are different because the constitution, had it prohibited slavery, never would have been ratified. They are different because the country clearly liked the idea of protecting gun rights, and that is why the amendment was ratified. A constitutional amendment protecting slavery specifically most likely would not have passed 3/4 of the states.
I said I thought it was an anachronism. The part about not being into guns was incidental, more of a “full disclosure” type of thing. I didn’t and wouldn’t support eliminating a right that I thought was important just because I’m not into the activity covered by that right. I’ve never burned a flag, and I doubt I ever will, but I still support a person’s right to do so.
In a strange way, you seem to be making the OP’s point here. The Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) are not like the tablets handed down to Moses from God, they are products of politics and compromise. The way I understand Little Nemo to be making his point, it isn’t that he views guns as almost as horrible as slavery, it is that a political document which was meant to forge consensus on difficult issues more than two centuries ago cannot be blindly regarded as free from errors in judgment or impervious to the march of history, and he uses the tacit acceptance of slavery, the absurd original method for choosing a VP, and more controversially, the 2nd Amendment as proof. I could make the same point about the fallibility of the Framers by pointing to the fact that 650,000 natural born American citizens living in the Nation’s capital do not have voting representation in Congress: I’m not qualitatively comparing it to slavery, but it is part of a list of things that show that even the Constitution is not a perfect document.
The question of whether the Second Amendment (or any other provision of the Constitution) is a good thing should be weighed on its merits, not on who wrote it or how long it has been in there. The Constitution is an outstanding framework for government, but thank god we’re allowed to amend it to periodically correct it. At least that’s what I understand the OP to be saying.
(And I’m not particularly in favor of tinkering with the Second Amendment, but the underlying point he made I think is extremely reasonable.)