Cops say no:
And therefore, his right to bear prunes shall not be infringed.
Not sure what you’re getting at. Are you trying to imply that people don’t have a right to defend themselves, because police exist? Or are you just arguing that guns aren’t necessary for self defense?
No. Police exist because people have the right to defend themselves. And we empower certain people to carry deadly force in our defense. So we don’t have to. We are civilians. That we empower people to represent our right of self defense does not negate that right, but defers it, we choose not to personally exercise that right in favor of a professional force. The right remains ours.
In this context, access to lethal force is very defined, very selective. And it is not something one can simply confer upon oneself. If it is sensible for the ordinary civilian to take up lethal force to defend himself against his fellow citizens, we don’t have a civilization, we have an arena.
I have been frightened, robbed, intimidated. I am not immune to fear, nor make any special claims of courage or virtue. And I have totally lost my temper, I have totally mistaken a stranger to be a threat, I am entirely human. And I would not offer myself for you to trust me with lethal force.
If you, on the other hand, confer that power upon yourself, I can only hope that you do not suffer the same weaknesses that I do. I can only hope, because there isn’t shit I can do about it.
elucidator, we pretty much tried what you suggest, from about the 1930’s on when the Uniform Firearms Act was proposed as a standard for urban gun laws and adopted by several states. It was largely what gun control advocates are in favor of: strong controls on the sale of firearms, increased penalties for unlawful possession and misuse of a firearm, and no public carry of firearms except by special permit at the discretion of local law authorities.
But somewhere along the line it became apparent that the police could not hold up their end of the bargain, when despite gun control laws gangs and urban crime skyrocketed. Arguably it had only worked to begin with because for decades the police had exercised extra-legal power to brutally suppress people they regarded as members of the criminal element. After the '60s and complaints about police brutality led to reforms, the sort of summary nightstick-justice that had kept the lid on the pot was removed.
We tried an armed citizenry also, which is what prompted the UFA. Sauce for the goose.
I post this without comment, mostly because I can’t think of anything succinct and :rolleyes:, although appropriate, doesn’t seem sufficient.
Georgia town passes mandatory gun ownership law
It is a toothless gesture, a pointless thumb in the eye of gun safety advocates:
As has probably been said to you before, data is not the plural of anecdote. I am thoroughly convinced that playing the lottery is not a good investment, and several dozen youtube videos of people winning the lottery will not convince me otherwise. In the same way individual anecdotes of people being saved by guns doesn’t overturn the overall statistics that more guns results in a less safe society.
It’s mandatory unless you don’t want to do it. This is an interesting definition of “mandatory”.
But the exemption is for people “who don’t believe in owning firearms.” What if I think owning firearms is fine, but I just don’t feel the need for one myself? By the letter of the law, am I not required to own a firearm? Or should I lie and say I’m anti-gun so I’m not forced to buy one?
Any way you look at it, it is stupid though. And it’s in the news today so I figured it qualified. 
Well, you have to own one. It doesn’t say you have to have ammunition, or the firearm has to be assembled.
See, you need to get a gun so you can prevent the government from taking it away. Simple.
Even if we accept that your diagnosis of the cause is accurate, this is a cure? No, this is fear. This is internalizing fear, making it a part of your daily life. This is not the way forward, this does not lead to a more civil and less violent world. This is a shrug, well, that’s just the way it is, people never change.
Civilization requires courage, it requires that you trust people you don’t know. With it, the world opens up, without it, we are just very dangerous monkeys.
You don’t see the difference between what you said and what I said?
So you think I’m projecting because of something someone else said? Are you sure you know what the word means or do you think all everyone that supports the whole bill of rights share a hive mind.
Yep, we must all have a hive mind. I actually fondle my gun, I oil it up and I fondle it.
Just the ones with collapsible stocks and bayonet lugs because that would have made the difference.
We used to say this about Republicans but it applies to the anti-second amendment crowd just as well… They’re either lying or stupid (ignorant?).
So why does your side of the argument seem to instinctively reach for an AWB and keep reassuring everyone that they have no intention of touching handguns?
Of course, they want to save lives but they don’t seem to have any idea what would achieve that goal short of eliminating guns from society (see the "guns=bad mantra that keeps getting repeated around here).
I’m a registered Democrat and I know lots of Pittsburgh Democrats that share my opinion that the second amendment is every bit a part of the constitution as the first amendment.
I think a lot of them are ignorant and have no interest in changing that.
Sure, some of the ones that feel this way are hysterical about black guns but some of them are just ignorant.
Are you on the Princeton admissions staff?
If you were educated about them you wouldn’t feel the need to try to keep them out of other people’s hands.
You mean the study funded by the NIH? Didn’t we go over this in another thread. The medical profession is suspect generally because they have animus against guns generally. I think this conclusions in that study have been debunked, haven’t they (the whole owning a gun makes you 4.5 times more likely to be shot to death thing)?
God made men, Colonel Colt made them equal.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Every bullet you fire has a lawyer attached to it.
Did I ever tell you about the LA riots?
And your not granting Fred from accounting the police power, you are merely recognizing his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. You want to eliminate Fred’s ability to keep and bear arms, then go and repeal the second amendment (good luck with that).
And yet, despite there being more guns than ever owned by private law abiding citizens, the rate of violent crime has been steadily declining over the last few decades. Maybe the correlation between gun ownership and violent society isn’t as clear as you think.
Post a YouTube video of it. Proves about as much as taking the wildest possible example and pretending it applies to everyday life.
You see the one where the guy pulled the truck driver out of his truck and then another guy dropped a big ass rock on his head and did a victory boogie? What I realized when I saw that is that, had I been armed, I would have shot that man.
But that’s not my call to make. I don’t pretend to be entitled to carry lethal force, I don’t pretend I am entitled to kill. How about you?
By all means, change the world. America has an ingrained violence problem irrespective of firearms (we have more non-gun homicides than all homicides in western Europe and Japan combined). But banning guns will not magically instill peace and brotherhood into peoples’ hearts. I’m astonished at the number of people who think guns are dark talismans that whisper “Kill! Kill! Kill!” into their owner’s dreams at night.
And again, the baseless accusation that gun owners are motivated by fear. I do trust people I don’t know, including the strangers at the corner with the convenience store and bus stop where a robbery or assault is recorded at least a couple of times a month. I understand that 99+% of the people I encounter there are ordinary Joes who mean me no harm. My concealed handgun is the insurance against the day I might get unlucky. It’s because of it that I can afford to presume that the strangers around me are probably decent people.
I’m sorry you can’t trust yourself to carry a gun. But I think the truck driver in question would have been entitled kill rather than be killed himself.
Serious question. Can you explain why this is so?