Yeah, it’s like the fox being free not to eat them “sour” grapes.
Please tell me, what percentage of gun owners are members of the NRA? What percentage would be required for them to speak reasonably as if they had a mandate from gun owners?
Based on those trivialities, would it be fair to say that there are no restrictions on gun ownership you can accept? If not, what are they?
No dodging. There are more people than me or you in our society. Would you agree that your side’s stance has cost you (plural) credibility that you used to have in our society?
Does anyone else have rights that ever come into conflict with what you see as your rights? Such as, oh, I don’t know, the right not to have their lives endangered by you, for instance?
And the gun manufacturers are deeply thankful to you for that.
Do you understand that others have rights as well?
Sure; but they don’t include a “right” to be “safe”- to have a limitless veto of others’ freedom based on your fears.
Doesn’t that swing both ways?
To clarify your thinking: Who represents a *real *threat to whom? :dubious: Are there or are there not tens of thousands of people really killed by gun-carriers every year? Were their fears, and the fears of others not yet killed, imaginary or based on fact?
Where in your philosophy do the rights of other people even exist?
Tens of thousands of women are raped by strangers every year. Maybe men should have to wear chastity belts in public.
No ducking. Either answer the question or admit you have no answer.
Fine; other people have the exact same rights I do. I don’t consider it a violation of my rights if others carry guns. I expect reciprocation.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves;16685665
Do you understand that others have rights as well?[/QUOTE]
Do you?
No ducking, do you deny the positive utility of being armed and able to defend oneself?
People like me who support the RKBA don’t cater to hoplophobes and people like you. Your opinion or perceived notion of anyone’s credibility is irrelevant.
Which means that this isn’t a debate or even a discussion-This is a rally.
Not at all. However, that isn’t the only right in play, is there? No ducking. Is there?
Is that what you would say to all the victims and their families? That their views, since they differ from your own, were “irrelevant”, that they had no rights to equal your own right to carry, is that it? Yes or no, and explain please.
You’re either still ducking or you’re not understanding the question; I’ll assume the latter. Does anyone else have a right to be safe from you?
Like going out in public without getting shot? Freedom isn’t just about guns.
You have an odd definition of “debate”. It doesn’t mean “insult”.
But to respond, the horrendous tyrant was banished over two hundred years ago. There’s been a few changes in the world since then. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?
Right. I have the “absence of necessity” to carry a gun because I don’t have to worry about being threatened by someone else with a gun. One of the benefits of living in a modern civilized country is the freedom from random violence. A lot of people in the world, like in Somalia for example, would dearly love to have that freedom, even though they already have the so-called “freedom” to carry a gun. For them, carrying a gun has nothing to do with a fluffy, rainbow vision of freedom and everything to do with necessity.
Every year, about 80,000 Americans find out they don’t have freedom from gun violence either.
If you don’t need to carry a gun, why would you?
Maybe you could get it in Somalia. Gun restrictions are a little more relaxed there.
Explain the bolded part please. As I stated last time you posted something similar, membership is growing. What is the NRA ignoring from it’s membership? I see them fighting for their members at both the state and Federal levels. What exactly are you seeing?
The NRA listens to its members. It is not beholden to the American public.
With Elvis or other hoplophobes there is no debate or discussion. It’s not like I’m under the false belief that he would ever modify his beliefs. Like Der Thris - whenever anyone actually engages them it’s not for them, but for other readers. That’s the impression I get at least, YMMV. **Elivs **asked what rights have been given up and should be taken back and when Kable answered honestly (without ducking!) they are dismissed as trivial and evidence that no restrictions would be acceptable. That’s a ridiculous excuse for a debate. No, there is no debate with people like Elvis and other hoplophobes.
I’d be glad to have an actual debate - and have in prior threads. Just not with Elvis. That would be as productive as having a debate with the crazy person muttering to himself on the bus. Like I said, his feigned concern over perceived credibility is a poorly crafted ruse. People who support the RKBA don’t care what people like **Elvis **and other hoplophobes think. At all. His opinions are like…lint. Feel free to take a poll, it could be, “Do people who self identify as supporters of the 2nd amendment and the RKBA care what **Elvis **thinks?” But for the sake of other readers who may see his ideas and think they go unchallenged - that’s the only reason at all to respond.
Did someone give you a phrase a day calendar? You must think that saying “no ducking” is some clever tactic for you to use it so much. Like it’s some kind of gotcha! Obvious question has an obvious answer - there are many rights in play of course. Now your turn - Which do you think is greater in an average year, the number of people who defend themselves with firearms, or the number of people who are killed by firearms?
A person’s status as a victim adds no weight or credibility to their beliefs in our system of laws more than my own. We evaluate our laws based on their merits, not anecdotes from selected victims. If one of those individuals who was a victim believed that they could have prevented a tragedy had they been allowed to be armed, would that sway you? No ducking!
Where does one enjoy this freedom?
When you put it like that :rolleyes:, you’re not very free either. You’re told to stay under the speed limit, stop at red lights, not to murder, rape, torture, kidnap, etc, etc. It’s a bitch being under the yoke of civilization, innit? Let’s you and me head off to Somalia. We can do whatever we want there, even rape and murder. Well, as long as the warlords let us and no one murders us first, but hey, freedom!
You have none to offer, only empty boastful phrases and Words of the Day.
That isn’t *avoiding *a discussion at all, it’s holding it up to the light - where it shrivels.
You’ve certainly got a lot of personal invective to offer instead. Not very creative or literate invective, though.
Such as? Was there a thought behind that “answer”?
Been over that many times, and no, you’re not getting spoonfed; you can do your own homework. Hint: It’s the latter, by far.
But you offer it no *more *than you offer anyone’s who does not agree with you.
We’re talking the broad totals, not any one individual, even though you would obviously feel comfortable denying the existence of tens of thousands of deaths per year if there were only one to support you. And that’s even though the answer you’re fishing for involves you’re being dead instead. How is that preferable?
The freedom not to have to be concerned with anyone else’s rights, to have no responsibilities whatever to anyone else? Nowhere. Most people learn that a pretty early age, btw.
Bone, that’s really over the line. That’s attacking the poster and not the argument. Don’t do this again.
Warning issued.
However, bonus points for use of the world hoplophobe.
How safe do you want to be? Just what do you want to forbid me to own? Knives? Noxious household chemicals? An ax or a machete? A baseball bat or a steel pipe? Power tools? Do you want to forbid me to take boxing or martial arts lessons? Or weight training so I won’t be too muscular?
There’s a series of science fiction stories by Jack Williamson about a race of robots called the Humanoids. They were programmed to protect the human race from itself- and they did so by enforcing bans on even the most innocuous things that could conceivably cause harm. That’s the absurd extreme of demanding to be “safe”.
Sooner or later you simply have to accept that there’s no such thing as safe as you apparently mean it, except that fortunately most people don’t mean you harm and can be strongly deterred from trying, by either self-defense or retribution from the state.