Cut the shit. Your religious devotion to your fetish objects is born of the fear of them being taken away from you, combined with the fear that “Red Dawn” is a documentary, combined with the fear that some “bad guy” will try to assault you - but not of the fear that somebody will actually get hurt *because *of your actions or inactions.
You are projecting your psychoses on others. A classic pattern, but one which can be cured.
Re Heller? You’re leaving out the part where the right the Court “discovered” applies only to “traditionally lawful purposes”, such as self-defense in the home. Here, this is easier to read
You’re very good at leaving out important things, aren’t you? Dishonest little shit. :rolleyes:
I fear any of my rights being truncated, why don’t you?
You must have me confused with someone else. You keep making arguments against positions I have not taken. I don’t ever remember vieqwing the world through Red Dawn lenses, if I had, then I would not be a supporter of licensing and registration. You just want to demonize anyone that supports gun rights as some sort of whacko. Or maybe you really see things that way, which is even more worrying.
Yeah? Do they have a cure for your condition? If it works on you maybe it will work on the other Republucans.
So you STILL think the prefatory clause limits the operative clause? :rolleyes: Aren’t YOU the dishonest little shit here?
So where do they say that the second amendment is about the national guard?
Or are you now conceding that I have an individual constitutional right to keep and bear arms without regard to my involvement in the national guard? A right that may not be infringed by the state or the federal government unless it meets a constitutional standard.
I think you have been spoiled by having the facts on your side on way too many arguments (just by virtue of being a liberal) that you don’t know what to do when they are not.
I deplore the thousands of gun deaths that occur in the real world every year, why don’t you? It’s because you hold your fantasies and your fetish more important than life itself, don’t you? What else could it be?
[qutoe]You just want to demonize anyone that supports gun rights as some sort of whacko.
[/quote]
It isn’t demonization if it’s presenting simple facts. Deaths are facts. Encroachment of your liberty to cause those deaths is not a fact. But you fear the imaginary one, and not the real one, while insisting it’s the *other *guys with a mental problem.
Maybe you could get somebody to read the hard words for you.
The Militia Act of 1903 is still in force. Look it up sometime. What, you want your imagined interpretation of Heller to be all the jurisdiction that exists on gun control? Sorry, not out here in the real world, fool.
Keep on stroking that barrel, fetishist. Just don’t be shocked when it kills somebody - somebody who, by the odds, is likely to be close to you.
“No, YOU"RE the irrationally frightened one!” indeed. Projection again. :rolleyes:
Civilization is moving ahead, and leaving you behind. Someday you may come to realize why, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I’m done with you. If all you want is a yelling match and to hurl insults at each other then I will try to acommodate you.
In case you haven’t been following the conversation, people die because of many of our civil rights. People die because of the 4th amendment too This is kind of the point of the thread, people like you are fucking hypocrites.
The reason you can’t differentiate between the thousands of gun deaths that are caused by previously law abiding citizens and gun deaths caused by people who aren’t supposed to have guns (like felons and wifebeaters) is because you don’t really give a shit about the facts. You do not care to differentiate between a law abiding citizen and a criminal because in your twisted little fucked up mind of yours, there really isn’t very much difference, you’re nearly equally scared of both. Of course this doesn’t count suicides, which we can discuss if you want.
The reason you imply that I’m going to shoot my family because I have a gun is because your entire argument basically boils trolling at this point. Don’t be surprised when someone kills your spouse and rapes your children while you watch because you so deathly afraid of an inanimate object that you have imbued it with evil spirits and you have no means to defend yourself.
Civilization? You don’t know your head from your asshole, how the hell do you know where civilization is headed? But good luck on trying to repeal the second amendment.
IOW, “Winning!” How much are the tickets on your Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour?
People’s deaths are a tragic outcome of many other civil rights issues. The ability to cause people’s deaths is the very fucking purpose of gun ownership. Calling that a “civil right” is outrageous, something only a demented gunstroking pervert could call realistic, much less compare to the advance of civilization.
As I said, I doubt you’ll ever be able to understand that.
The dead are dead either way. There is no difference outside your own perverted fantasies.
You have yet to explain the difference, or how to tell it, despite being asked several times. Of course, you cannot - most gun death are caused by people who were “law-abiding citizens” right up to the moment they were not. And people die because of it.
Maybe someday you’ll be able to think up an argument that is deeper than an NRA talking point like that one. But you haven’t yet.
Okay, how many people do you think are dead because they had ready access to the means to do it, right there at hand, and submitted to the impulse that they would have regretted later?
Do you really want to get into the ever-growing list of deaths of children who got into Daddy’s gun case? There’s plenty of that. And how can you be sure nobody close to you will be tempted to commit suicide, and succeed because you have them there? Or that you yourself will never get angry enough at someone to feel any such temptation?
No, those are fears and fantasies, aren’t they, no matter how often they happen, while your fear of the gummint jackboots is real to you. Psychotic.
Don’t be surprised when the “bad guy” you’re imagining gets the gun away from you first and uses it against you. But no, that’s a fear and fantasy too, isn’t it, while your imagining yourself the hero is real to you. But how often do the facts fit the former case rather than the latter? Psychotic.
Look at the world outside American Rifleman Magazine sometime. Scary place, I know, but that’s where you’ll find civilization. Maybe you’ll get it someday.
At this point, Damuri, you have to realize you are engaging a crazy person right? I mean, not sarcastically in any way, but an actual crazy person. The kind of person that is muttering to themselves and screaming at others on the bus. I would avoid that kind of engagement simply because I don’t want to contribute to someone’s failing mental health or be responsible for aggravating their psychosis.
Because, and this is important, the 2nd Amendment does not say what the gun rights faction say it does. They have some statutes and case law on their side; they *do not *have an originalist interpretation of the 1787 Constitution on their side, however much they pretend.
In fact, every private gun owner who is not carrying a weapon as part of an organized and well-regulated official militia is infringing on the right of well-regulated militias to keep arms, and the federal government by permitting this behavior is in violation of the 2nd as written. So the gun rights [del]advocates[/del] liberals (call them, “liberals,” they love that) are just being ridiculous.
Now, I personally don’t have a strong opinion about the expansive case law around the 4th Amendment. I’m not sure a right to privacy is important, and I certainly doubt it is originalist. There is such a thing as an unreasonable seizure; but is there such a thing as an “unreasonable” passive, non-intrusive search? Does it even matter? So long as no one’s property is being altered nor seized, and nothing is being falsified, and no one is being unduly assaulted, is there really harm?
But that said, there is something deeply anti-democratic about doing constant passive searches, then charging a government contractor with treason because he says that the electorate in a democracy deserve to know they are being monitored. That is an insult to democracy itself, and arguably both insult and subversion to the republic–in spirit and in fact.
If it said “Because blue Martians always drink vinegar, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” it wouldn’t make any difference. An independent clause is an independent clause (leaving aside the whole issue of not understanding what the word “militia” means). This isn’t an issue of Constitutional philosophy, it’s one of sixth-grade-level grammar.
He may be making irrational arguments in the heat of anger, but that’s completely different from the guy you describe, who is probably schizophrenic.
It’s one thing to insult someone by calling them crazy, and another to pretend like they actually have a mental disorder. You’re insulting the actual people with mental disorder by associating them with this person.
Anger and irrationality go together inherently. With a sufficient level of anger, it is impossible to be completely rational, as your brain changes its focus to be on winning. It takes a monumental mental effort to be rational while truly angry, and someone is not mentally ill because they can’t do so.
If they were, pretty much everyone who posts in this forum would have such a mental illness.
I understand the gun nut position is this: "The Founding Fathers are completely infallible and their every word, nay the intent of their every word, is sacred until the end of time. However, these same infallible men put a clause in the (cue the heavenly choir) Second Amendment (thanks, heavenly choir) that means absolutely nothing and may be completely ignored.
I don’t style myself an originalist or a particularly unquestioning fan of the Founding Fathers (slave-owners and much else to criticize as they were). However, very relevantly to this thread, I think the government looking for reasons to ignore our written laws is a bad idea. The amendment says what it says. Intention is irrelevant. Either we have the rule of law and Constitutionally limited government, or we do not. You will appreciate that we do the next time your team is no longer in power.
Well, if this is going to be about the sticklings of grammar, let’s look at the actual sentence that was inscribed by the Fingers of The Founding Fathers atop Mt. Sinai:
[QUOTE=Bill of Rights, as passed by Congress in 1789]
A well regulated Militia**,** being necessary to the security of a free State**,** the right of the people to keep and bear Arms**,** shall not be infringed.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve emphasized the three commas in this Sacred Utterance. Grammatical purists might question whether this is even a valid sentence, but let’s ignore such insults to the Infallible Fathers.
The only real way to parse the sentence, IMO, is to treat the second comma as shorthand for “and.” This makes the entire middle portion of the sentence an adjectival gerund phrase, of no more relevance than a mention of blue Martians. The relevant text is thus just “A well regulated Militia … shall not be infringed.”
No mention of guns at all. Take that, you gun rights liberals!
But it has been “infringed”. There are weapons you can not keep and bear. As a practical fact, we have rendered that particular interpretation invalid, because we pretty much had to. Back when the arms to be born and kept were single shot muskets and people in Ohio were threatened by actual Indians, it made sense. Nowadays, it does not make sense.
And however pure and inviolate a set of words may be, they do not become sensible by a laying on of Founding Fuckups hands. There is not miracle of the Constitution, which renders us helpless to ignore the passage of time and the change of circumstance.
God did not write the Constitution, I have some doubt if He were even consulted. It is not a divine document, there are no such things. It is a human document, subject to human interpretation and the change of human circumstance. There is no risk that you might stand before the Throne on the Day of Judgement and be sentenced to Hell because you refuse to allow your crazy cousin Fred to own an anti-aircraft gun.
At the time, the absolutist interpretation made reasonable sense. Whether it was Mr Colt or Mr Maxim who rendered that moot is a question for lively, interesting and ultimately empty debate.
Ya know, Damuri, I would have considered that to be your basic internet hyperbole if you hadn’t just posted this:
I don’t know how you intended it but it certainly makes you sound like a man with an irrational attachment to his guns. Do collectors normally hang onto POS items?
For example, there are quite a few others who have rushed to buy AR-15’s not long ago for the reason that they feared they were about to be banned after Newtown. Yes, they actually consider “I gotta go spend a lotta money on something I don’t need or even want all that much to keep the gummint from taking it away!” to be “rational thought”. Yes, that’s the mindset at work among the fetishists.
Do you realize how dangerous this viewpoint is? Why even have the rule of law at all if anyone in the government can just declare that “circumstances have changed”? Would you like to be hauled into court for murder tomorrow and be told that you can’t have an attorney or see the evidence against you because crime has recently gone up and “human interpretation” has decided that it needs to be stopped?
This thread is a perfect example of what happens when the government just decides what laws to follow. No respect for the Second Amendment, no respect for the Fourth, no respect for the First, no respect for the general idea of procedural due process, etc. You either have a society governed by objective laws, or you don’t. Right now, thanks to decades of chipping away at particular laws that you don’t like and pretending this will have no general consequences, you don’t.
Yet somehow the British have managed for centuries to get by with no written Constitution at all. To subject ourselves to perpetual obedience to absolute literal adherence to the words of 18th century agrarian slaveowners in this post-industrial urban society is well beyond the bounds of silly.
The British have written law which they care about observing very much, though they also have much to criticize in their society. The Constitution is part of the law and the government must act within the bounds of the law and not just do whatever it wants. I’m not surprised that an Obama fan finds this “silly” (the only options at this point are to reject the fundamental principle of government bound by law or support Obama being put in prison for the rest of his life) but I am as dismayed and fearful of it as any other sane person.
Good heavens what has Obama done to warrant life imprisonment? Seeking to ensure that people have access to medical care?
What is silly (downright sick, actually) is the attitude that “gee whillikers, it’s too bad about those kids getting mowed down with a weapon that’s only useful in committing mass murder, but damn it, what can we do? These infallible Founders tied our hands for all eternity!”