He is armed- with very dangerous ideas. Ideas are more dangerous than guns.
and see, that’s my point. Many are willing to erase the 2nd Ad- because they don’t use it. They will feel safer.
But those self-same people hold the 1st Ad sacred- even tho the proliferation of certain ideas is even more dangerous.
It’s pure hypocrisy. “I dont use the 2nd, so get rid of it, but I used the 1st all the time, so it must be held scared.”
If it’s a pro-gun rally, the act might be tactless, but it’s farther removed from a reasonable suspicion that a crime is afoot than usual, and there are extra First Amendment protections that are at play. The police should not detain and investigate the peaceful participants.
Do you support licensing drivers, ensuring they meet certain levels of skill and attentiveness before letting them drive?
Do you support making drinking and driving illegal, even if both are separately legal?
Do you support anti-smoking laws, so that the damage that smokers do is only to themselves, and not to others who have to share a space with them?
If not… okay, that’s odd, but fodder for another thread.
If so, then since you support placing rules and restrictions on things, even if you don’t support banning them, then why is it such a stretch to consider that others may feel the same about guns?
Since you keep on harping on this, forget all the other stuff: eleven people got “scary’d” to death today.
I guess they must’ve found that gun even more intimidating than I do, because I’m still breathing.
It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Today a right-wing racist zealot was able to kill 11 people and wound several more because he had “a gun that you think is scary.” A right-wing zealot last February 14 was able to kill 17 and wound 17 more because he had “a gun that you think is scary.”
I can’t stop right-wing racist zealots from being right-wing racist zealots, and neither can anyone else. But what we can do as a society is limit the firepower they have access to. But you say no, your extremely debatable ‘right’ to such a weapon is more important than their right to walk the earth, rather than be six feet under it.
You want your AR-15 more than you want those people to be alive and whole. What more is there to say?
Okay, I’m not sure that that makes any sense. Ideas are not dangerous, it is what people do with ideas that are dangerous. A right wing zealot is not a danger as he types furiously away at his keyboard. A right wing zealot can be dangerous when he is carrying around a gun.
There have been protests where the police have been very clear that participants are not to bring any weapons, or things that can be used as weapons, this includes guns. I would not detain or investigate anyone the lawfully peaceful participants.
Yes
No
Some of them. I oppose others.
It’s not “a stretch to consider”. I already know that a very vocal minority would like to ban guns. The position RTFirefly is arguing in this thread is that we should impose a total ban on AR-15s. Presumably he’d also lump similar firearms into this ban as well, although he hasn’t exactly delineated where he would draw the line.
I accept some restrictions on firearm ownership. We already have quite a few. I don’t think the good caused by banning AR-15s outweighs the bad.
We’ve beaten the other three to death in this thread, and I’ll let you scroll up and see what I’ve already written.
As far as alcohol is concerned, we’ve already tried Prohibition once, and it didn’t work. However:
Alcohol in conjunction with cars causes a nonzero number of deaths to people who didn’t do the drinking and driving. In this, it’s quite analogous to guns in that other people pay the price. We’ve done a lot to reduce that price. I remember when saying ‘designated driver’ would have drawn blank looks. I remember when “don’t drink and drive - you might hit a bump and spill your drink” was actually considered funny.
We could do a lot more, of course, like modifying the built environment so that you could walk home from the bar, even if you lived in the 'burbs. (But that would be soshulism :rolleyes:, so it doesn’t happen.) But the thing is, we tried to reduce the number of deaths due to drunk driving, and we succeeded.
But since there are still a nonzero number of drunk driving deaths, heaven forbid that we try to do something about gun deaths.
Seriously, the general argument, “there are more than zero deaths due to X, so we just have to accept the number of gun deaths we’ve got” is a pretty stupid one, isn’t it?
I want my car more than I want that too, and my beer (well, I don’t drink, but I think the rest of you ought to be able to), etc. I don’t see anything "abominable in any of those positions.
Yes, we can make it illegal to promulgate right wing racist hate messages. Oh, but that would violate the 1st Ad, yes?
And I dont have a AR15. But the 30 million Americans who do own one are less dangerous than the 15 million Americans who are racist haters.
Feel free to propose such a remedy if you think it’s preferable.
Maybe you didn’t notice that there’s a nontrivial overlap between the two sets.
We tried banning assault weapons too, and it didn’t work either. Do you have some other proposed regulations you’d like to discuss?
I am heartened to see a conservative gun-rights supporter discuss his discomfort with certain behaviors of rifle owners. I’m hoping this kind of discussion can help the USA move toward more sensible compromises on gun ownership and use.
I’ve read only through post #20 but wanted to post my optimistic thoughts before I read more. It’ll be interesting to see what lies ahead. Most folks here, on both sides of this debate, have the capability to discuss this reasonably and intelligently. Sometimes people don’t opt to use that capability, alas. I’m going to try to be better about this, myself. I hope I’ll have company.
In what sense didn’t it work?
In the sense that if you try to regulate guns in a small area that has no control over the surrounding area with a total lack of such regulation, it’s as if you have put a 2 inch square bandage over top of a 6 inch long cut. Look! Bandages don’t work!
There never was a US synagogue massacre like the one we saw this morning. Just as there never was a US church shooting as deadly as the one which killed 26 in Texas the past November 5. And both involved the AR-15.
As for there being few murders with rifles, with a large portion of murders, the local police never report the weapon to the federal government.
Of course I know AR-15 owners are not going to give up their weapons. I personally favor requiring weapons to be destroyed, by the police, when the owner dies. The bumper sticker "I will give up my gun when they pry my cold, dead fingers from around it” needs to be taken literally.
In the sense that it did not discernibly reduce the lethality or injuriousness of gun violence.
Surely you realize that before the 1994 assault weapons ban, hardly anyone owned the guns that were then banned. That’s why it was politically possible to pass the ban, and also one of several reasons why it would be absurd to expect a statistically measurable effect.
It didnt reduce violent crime.
Going back to the original question I do think there is as **UltraVires **and **HurricaneDitka **discussed back in page 1 space for a criterion of circumstantial appropriateness. Walking by the side of a rural road, slung across the body on the back? Probably no big deal. Middle of a main city avenue, carrying at port arms? Maybe you got some splainin’ to do.
Not too long ago there was a guy who walked around the landside of the Atlanta airport terminal with an AR-15 loaded with a 100-round drumjust to make the point it was all legal. Well, that being true does not negate that it was an extremely obnoxious way of making his point. All things considered, this display at the airport should at the very least get the authorities to come up and have a “all right, Fudd, what’s up?” chat. Which is apparently what they did and nobody had to be arrested.
However, that guy and others like him seem to have as their particular quest the normalization of unlimited, unrestricted open carry, arguing that it’s up to the other people to get over it. Their clear aspiration is a society where they are not to be ever asked “dude, what’s with the weaponry”. But in reality, all rights are subject to reasonable rules of time, place and manner. If I set up a stack of amplifiers on a flatbed to play a tape of my objections to a tax raise at 120 decibels while driving through a residential zone, I may get busted for disturbing the peace and that does not violate my freedom of speech.
To me this is also worrisome in that yes, much of crime prevention is based on observing things that seem abnormal or unusual and making sure all is right. ISTM random civilians tactical-carrying loaded ARs and AKs in the &^%$# airport terminal or near the school or down the middle of the shopping mall has to be considered as abnormal and unusual and worth a few questions that deserve answers.