Tell me gun control advocates: how can a dictator be stopped without arms?

Great Debates
61

Perhaps Chile would have become prosperous anyway, and a lot of people wouldn’t have been tortured and murdered.

Listen to yourself.

  • Pinochet ‘deserves credit’ for ‘re-instituting democracy’.
    Who on earth (I could put that more strongly) overthrew it in the first place?!

  • Pinochet ‘deserves credit’ for 'establishing an effective free market system ', (and earlier) ‘Would you be happier if Chile were poor and totalitarian?’.
    I expect I’d rather be alive under Allende, than dead under Pinochet.

You’re seriously suggesting that the benefits of the market economy are worth mass murder?! :rolleyes:

62

Freedom - an interesting concept. You are not free to murder in the USA as I am not free to murder in Australia. You are not free to murder because the rest of America has the right to be FREE of that fear.

Freedom is (in a Democracy) the right to live within a set of laws and ethics established by the majority to protect the rights of that majority. I think one of those rights is the right to be FREE of the fear of my children being shot dead in school.

I served alongside Americans in Vietnam to defend one form of freedom. I don’t think that your freedom is any different to mine. A dead child is a dead child.

63

RubberEntropy, it may be a hard-earned and well-tempered right to own a gun in Australia, but over here in the U.S.of A. gun ownership is a religion, dammit! :slight_smile:

64

[slight hijack]
I’m afraid that I call this something else altogether. It certainly fits my definition of “infringement”. The thing about the “legitimate need” is usually what gets me the most. I own a number of firearms - some I have what you might be generous enough to define as having a legitimate need for, but I also own some simply because I wanted them for one reason or another.
[/end slight hijack]

65

It’ll come. With all the apparent self-righteousness going on over there, you’re BOUND to get SOMEONE who wants to shoot up a school.

You can call it Stanley for all I care, it’s still an infringement of rights.

66

RubberEntropy, welcome to the Church of the Holy Bangstick, where the 2nd Amendment is absolute and above all other rights. Freedom of speech can be tempered by reasonable restrictions on shouting “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre. Freedom of assembly can be tempered by laws concerning public safety and appropriateness. Freedom of the press can be tempered by libel laws and others too numerous to mention here. But the precious Right to own guns is absolute and must never be infringed upon by the needs of society, and can never be compromised by those other so-called “rights” that some Commie must have snuck in the Constitution while our Founding Fathers were out shooting dinner.

67

Hi Spoofe

It’ll come. With all the apparent self-righteousness going on over there, you’re BOUND to get SOMEONE who wants to shoot up a school.

Absolutely correct ! Fortunately the sick son-of a bitch won’t be able to get hold of a gun too easily.

Anyhow, nuff’s a nuff for this little piggy. Czarcasm is correct, I seem to have committed some form of blasphemy and as the right to religious freedom is also extant here in Australia, I will bow out gracefully before someone identifies me for the dangerous commie I so obviously am and comes over to free the world of oppression with the SKS he just sorta wanted to have.

68

RubberEntropy:

Czarcasm nailed it right on. We Americans view our constitution as almost a religious document. I’m not quite sure why. It might be related to the incredible amount of religious fundamentalism and Biblical literalism, but that’s just speculative. Still, there are millions of Americans who would agree completely with the following statements:

The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it. (A popular bumpersticker)

The Constitution says it, I agree with it, that settles it.

You’ll find Americans willing to vehemently defend absurd ideas like the electoral college, for no other reason that the fact that it’s in the Constitution, and our brilliant, omnipotent Founding Fathers wouldn’t have put it there if it wasn’t right. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself whether anyone today would be arguing to put the e.c. in the constitution if it were never there in the first place.

I’m sure if we go back to 1912, we’d find thousands of newspaper editorials and letters to the editor fervently opposing the 17th amendment, coming up with all kinds of reasons why electing senators by state legislatures rather than directly was the only logical way to do things.

Even with the abundant evidence that our founders got a lot of stuff wrong (slavery, women’s suffrage, election of the vice president, election of senators, etc.), many people still believe that the Constitution is a perfect document. If the Founding Fathers wrote that people should be able to own any sort of weapon under the sun, then that settles it. No debate or thought necessary. If other western countries like the U.K., Australia, Japan, and Canada seem to have survived decades of reasonable gun control without the government taking over and quashing individual freedom, well, they’re just “due.” Or the citizens there don’t realize how oppressed and violated they are. It couldn’t possibly be that reasonable people might just disagree on an issue, or that different countries might do things differently and still get good results.

69

Gee, Czar, I guess this is the first Gun Control thread you’ve ever seen (lest you wouldn’t post such a comment). Welcome! :smiley:

70

I have dropped out of this particular debate but would like to ask a couple of questions before I move on to other issues.

  1. Do any jurisdictions in the US have simple gun control measures such as proof of I.D and police clearance (ie no criminal record)?

  2. The US light aviation industry, which through Piper and Cessna once dominated the world market, was virtually destroyed in the 1960’s by no-fault liability litigation costs and is only now beginning to re-emerge. How come gun manufacturers seem to be exempt from litigation?

71

Freedom,
you seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to any form of gun control.

Of course Australia (or the UK) doesn’t inhibit reading, residence or worship.
Is this the biggest straw man ever on the SDMB?

As I posted earlier, one country where most of the men do own a rapid-fire high velocity military style weapon is Afghanistan.
There are some minor changes to the admirable freedoms of Western democracies, like restrictions on religion, dress and female employment. You don’t get to vote either.
Which system do you like better: Australia/UK or Afghanistan?

In case you still haven’t grasped the point:
The US is an excellent and free country because of the right to vote, have a free press and the freedom of information. If gun control came in, this would not make any difference.
Proof of that is available in many other countries.

SPOOFE (and others),

I understand that the Constitution is revered, and that there is a history of gun ownership, and some other social factors.
But don’t you feel embarrassed by Freedom’s definition of freedom?

72

And you seem to judge him based on his reaction in this thread alone. I can assure you that he’s proven his arguments’ merit in more gun threads than you care to think about.

His idea of freedom is that people shouldn’t have their rights taken away for stupid, pointless, worthless reasons.

What’s wrong with that idea?

73

Ask any of the mothers standing over the graves of their children if sensibly restricting access to firearms is “stupid, pointless, worthless”. It is simply beyond my comprehension that anyone could be so disconnected from reality and humanity to describe it thus.

As to “Freedom” It is clear that to some, freedom and anarchy are synonymous. Follow that path and you are soon bombing day-care centres in the name of freedom.

I always thought it was only dictators and tyrants who didn’t have to justify their decisions.

74

Glee, please re-read my posts. There were no statements comparing the magnitudes of the benefits vs. the harm [done by Pinochet]. I presented some facts, which you have not disputed.

75

If you’ll notice, my first reaction to thread was how ridiculous the OP was.

If anyone in this thread is embarrassed by my definition of freedom, let me just add to the fire by stating that I think the 17th Amendment is the biggest mistake in the Constituion, and should be repealed. Of course I also understand and support the reasoning behind the electoral college, so I must be incapable of “acceptable” thought.

FYI…

All gun shops must be licensed by the federal government. Any person, in any state who buys from a gun shop must have a federal background check completed on the spot. If you go to a gun show, you may be able to find private individuals who are not licensed. They are not required to run a background check. Any dealer at a gun show must run background checks for every purchase. I’m sure that in some parts of the country you can find gun shows with a lot of private individuals, but I have never even seen ONE non-federally licensed dealer that I was aware of at a gun show.

Then the states can pile on their own regulations. Here in NJ, I had to be figerprinted like a criminal, consent to letting them keep my prints on file for eternity, wait 6 months for them to run 3 background checks and pay around $80 for the privledge of jumping thourgh their little hoops. In addition, I have to go to the police station and ask permission every time I want to buy a pistol. If they agree, I get to pay some more cash, and I get 90 days to make a decision.

RE: Airplanes and Firearms

Without knowing ANYTHING about the airplane liability cases, I’m going to hazard a guess for you.

I’m betting the airplane manufacturers were making a defective product. You expect to climb into an airplane, fly somewhere and then land safely. If the manufacturers were making a product that falied to acheive this, then they were making defective planes.

When you make a firearm, you expect to pull the trigger, and shoot off a round at high velocity. If the guns were blowing up in people’s hands, or shotting at 90 degree angles, then they would be defective.

Trying to assign liability to someone who manufactures reliable firearms according to the law and then sells them according to the law is crazy. It is nothing more than a tranparent attempt to legislate through the courts.

For another ANALOGY…imagine Ford getting sued for a drunk driver’s fatal 4 car pile-up.

Errrrrrrrrr… Wrong answer. Please play again.

You are not free to murder because the rest of America has a right to live.

Are you really advocating restricting freedoms based on whimsical fears?

The bottom line is that freedom does not mean perfection. It doesn’t mean that we are safe in our beds and cared for. It is a scary word that means you can fail or suceed. It means you are on your own. It means that you need to be self-sufficient. When you start to set-up a system where all decisions are centralized and all needs have been “planned for” and “provided for” by your government, then you have given up some of the basic ingredients that make up life.

Czarcasm…

Please note that there are THOUSANDS of gun laws. You will never find a supporter of the 2nd Amendment who will defend robbing a bank with a gun, or murdering someone.

You are such a moron. Your hit and run tactics won’t fly around here. Please crawl back in here and explain how you think I will “soon be bombing day-care centres.”

76

OK, fair point. Obviously his whopping ‘straw man’ was not typical.

Nothing wrong with that idea. I was distinguishing between the major freedom of democracy , which the OP claimed was threatened by gun control :rolleyes:; and the right to own weapons, which is up to the Government and depends largely on the voter’s views.

I would add that the UK licenses farmers to own guns to shoot on their private property, and that my school has a shooting range. So I understand that ‘properly held’ guns are possible; (e.g. our school rifles are kept locked in the shooting range, with an alarm linked to the police station.)
But after a shooting incident in Dunblane, the UK decided, for better or worse, to ban practically all handguns. They did this in response to an public outcry. This is indeed a ‘right’ taken away, but I don’t think it hasn’t altered the quality of life here - and certainly our forthcoming election is proceeding democratically.
You can certainly argue (and I know you have in previous threads) that sticking to your Constitution over guns is worthwhile, and I also remember figures being quoted that while the US had more gun deaths, they had less violent crime with other weapons.
But it’s not correct to dismiss the opposite suggestion as ‘stupid, pointless and worthless.’ It’s a suggestion to save lives, especially children. It might or might not work, but it should be debated.

However that can be on another thread (yes, I know it comes up regularly!).
It seems that most agree that democracy is **not **threatened by gun control, and that was the original suggestion for debate in this thread.

77

Well let’s state some facts:

  • the OP said gun control could lead to the overthrow of democracy

  • you claimed Afghanistan as an example of this

  • you claimed Chile as an example of this

  • the elected Allende Government was actually overthrown by the Army, backed by a foreign power. It had nothing to do with gun control!

Turning to another aspect of Chile:

Putting all these together strongly suggests you think the price people paid was ‘worth it’.
Instead you don’t consider the idea that the democratic Allende Government might have discovered the benefits of the free market peacefully!
OK, do you think the Pinochet years were good for the people of Chile?

78

Freedom,

Sorry I didn’t reread your earlier stuff. There have been some incredibly poor posters here, and I mistook you for one of them!

(It was a straw man though!)

79

Oh…and what, pray tell, benefits did Pinochet offer? Sites and specifics, please.

80

Well, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (except Romania), communist dictators were overthrown without guns. Unfortunately, as some other posters have mentioned, if the dictator has the army on his side, there’s not too much average civilians can do, guns or no guns, because even if people had guns, they wouldn’t have the level of armament or training that the army has.