Cite? Based on your contributions here and in the thread linked by Fenris, you’ve got an awfully high bar to clear before I believe THAT.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
And don’t worry, you are nto alone in wanting to get rid of all guns in society, even if it really means only getting rid of guns int he hands of the law abiding. A lot of your fellow travellers feel the same way.
I don’t think the second amendment contemplates the sort of gun laws you have in mind. But feel free to come back after you get 2/3rds of each chamber of congress and 3/4ths of the states to vote to repeal it.
“Well, if you Northern abolitionists want to end slavery, why don’t ya’ll start a war about it, or something? Ha! Gotcha there, don’t I?”
You can’t be serious
[ul]
[li]Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. - James Madison,[/li][li]The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. – Alexander Hamilton[/li][li]Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? – Patrick Henry[/li][li]The great object is, that every man be armed. […] Every one who is able may have a gun." – Patrick Henry,[/li][li]That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms… – Samuel Adams[/li][li]The supposed quietude of a good mans allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside…Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them…" Thomas Paine[/li][/ul]
Yeah, he pretty much can. He’s as dumb as a chimp on crack.
Here’s another one of his…um…interesting…threads (he started it like 8 years ago and re-bumped it a few weks ago) about how Freemasons are a secret EVIL cult out to pollute the precious bodily fluids of the youth of America.. I fully expect he’ll get into the whole “they’re trying to beam rays into our heads but my tinfoil hat will stop them” level of crazy soon.
Or here, where he makes up a similar insane lie. (A kindergartner brings a gun to class, shoots three, Loonitooniverse’s OP? “Kindergarten too young to join the N.R.A. ?” and then he spends several paragraphs of incoherent froth about the NRA wanting kids to…something. Even gun-control types who were (and are) anti-NRA were embarrassed by Loonitunes tarditude in that one.
And there are tons others just like these. The crazy goes on and on.
Its (obviously) up to you to decide if you want to spend time and energy rebutting him Lumpy, but IMO, you’d be better off going down to the zoo, finding a howler monkey and taking turns flinging crap at each other. At least the howler monkey might have a chance of understanding you.
I am trying to understand what you are trying to get at. One of the reasons for the civil war was that there were all these new states and they were largely coming into the union as free states and it seemed like the abolition of slavery was just a matter of time. Slavery was going to end one way or another so the South decided that if they couldn’t make the rules, then they didn’t want to play by them anymore and they tried to take their ball and go home.
The demise of the right to bear arms does not have the same inevitability. Public sentiment towards guns ebbs and wanes but it never wanes low enough to allow the repeal of the second amendment and I suspect that it will not do so anytime soon.
Yeah, they’re all serious.
Their ability to read the minds of the founding fathers on this issue is no better than the Tea Republican ability to read the minds of the founding fathers on almost every other issue.
Unfortunately, his perspective is not uncommon and so we cannot afford to ignore it. It may be uncommon on the dope NOW but it was not so uncommon at the beginning of the debate back in December. It is a testament to the dope population that so many people changed their position on guns after being exposed to the facts. This is not the case in the rest of the world.
Why? It’s completely legal and therefore stupid, how? Would you say the same about a swat cop doing the same thing? I think not.
No it’s just your irrational fear of a lawful citizen exercising his rights that has you running for your big government pacifier.
Your inability to think notwithstanding, a SWAT cop carrying a gun has a context - we understand why he has a gun and in what circumstances he is likely or unlikely to use it. A random person carrying a large gun in a public venue where guns are not generally needed or used does not have that context; indeed, the one context most people do know about is people bent on mass slaughter. And since there’s no way of knowing whether the person carrying the gun is one of the 99 people out of 100 who mean no harm or the one nutter about to go postal, and given the consequences of getting the risk assessment equation wrong, fear of the stranger with a gun in the grocery store is actually the most sensible response.
Everyone’s lawful right up until they break the law; gun owners are peaceably carrying right up to the point they start shooting people. If mass shootings were passingly rare occurrences you might have cause to dismiss public concerns, but they’re not. Sure, the vast, vast majority of gun owners ARE sensible and law-abiding, but the guy who doesn’t understand why carrying an AR15 in Kroegers would upset people has already demonstrated one lapse in judgment; who’s willing to stick around for the next one?
Rare occurrences compared to what, is the question. There are several things that are basically only recreational toys that kill significantly more people than guns of all kinds, let alone mass shooters.
I’m responding to your sneering reference to the difficulty of changing the Constitution, as if that somehow made your case more intelligent. There is an unnecessary element of “neener-neener, whatcha gonna do about it, hey?”. Also false, as well, since it has long been established the simply interpreting the 2nd Amendment is much easier that changing the Constitution to fit.
I more or less expected you to catch that right away, I apologize if I have overestimated you, and promise it won’t happen again.
It’s easier all right; it’s also a travesty. How about we reinterpret the phrase “you have the right to an attorney” to mean “one of the cops at the station house will be assigned as your advocate”?
And we do our damnedest to keep those killings and injuries down, whatever it takes, in some cases including banning those things outright.
Guns? A lot of people *oppose with their very being *doing anything whatsoever to *reduce *deaths and injuries, and gloat about every success they have in *stifling *any such attempts. Now why do you suppose that is?
How many of those things kill more NON-PARTICIPANTS than guns? There aren’t that many cases of someone going skydiving and landing on an innocent bystander, squashing him to death.
Interesting choice. You are aware, no doubt, that the right to an attorney results from an* interpretation*, no such phrase appears. I approve, of course, because whether or not our Founding Fuckups intended it, access to justice depends on the ability to hire an attorney. Equality under the law then depends on providing an attorney for those who cannot provide one to themselves.
Be it travesty or no, it has been done, the 2nd Amendment has been interpreted to mean that you cannot keep and bear a Thompson submachine gun. By what semantic trickery is that not an “infringement”?
So, you are left with accepting the fact of infringement or demanding that all such interpretations be rolled back. And if you accept the fact of infringement by interpretation, your point vanishes.
The “Living Constitution” school has its advocates and detractors; I’m one of the latter. It makes a mockery of having written rules and principles, like Animal Farm’s “All Animals Are Equal (but some are more equal than others)”. I “accept” it in the sense that it occurred decades ago and there’s nothing I can practically do about it today, but it’s still wrong; and a lot of other people agree that it’s wrong, and they’re getting more vocal about it every year.
“Life is change, how it differs from the rocks.”
- Jefferson Airplane, Crown of Creation
Swimming pools/areas are kind of the elephant in the room on that, statistically. One could also make a serious case that more non-participant deaths would be prevented by requiring breathalyzer interlocks on all cars all the time.
Sure, except that your original claim was:
“There are several things that are basically only recreational toys that kill significantly more people than guns of all kinds, let alone mass shooters.”
For pools, I found this: from 2005-2009, there were an average of 3,533 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day.
Compared to: In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States.
Cars are certainly not “only recreational toys” and pools kill significantly fewer people than “guns of all kinds”.
Not that I really have a point here, I just think your original post was a pretty significant overreach.
And, of course, if your SO is totally pissed at you because you boinked her sister…again!..she is unlikely to pull out a swimming pool to waste your sorry ass. Plus, with drowning, there is time for your inner Jiminy Cricket to speak up in wise counsel, lose your shit for a few seconds with a gun, and its game over, man.
Swimming pools are designed to be splashed about in, guns, to punch holes in things, like, for instance, people. Malform follows malfunction.
The Constitution has a built-in mechanism for changing it, which is how it’s supposed to be changed. Reinterpretation is an intellectual fraud. Down that road lies sophistry.