This is really more of a MPSIMS. I really don’t want to start a great debate, but given the subject matter and the posts that will inevitably follow, I’m posting this here just to save the mods a little work. I’m not here to debate ammendments or the idea that only lawbreakers will have guns if gun ownership became against the law.
I just want to share two posts that epitomize the fear I have about guns in our society, especially in these conceal carry days. From another thread about using your car horn…
and
Armed and easily-offended is a dangerous combination.
How easy is it to get through a day without offending someone? How long until one of those people you offend in the real world has a figurative hair trigger as well as literal one?
Many people (including most of those in favor of conceal carry as well as those opposed to all gun ownership) seem to miss the point of the 2nd amendment.
I read this as meaning that the people have a right to own (not necisarrily carry) firearms to protect their right to revolution. It was this right that the USA (and other modern nation sates) was born from.
So let me ask you this, Hey you! (or anyone else who wants in on this debate):
Do you oppose the right to own firearms, or the (more debatable) right to carry them?
Given the utter lack of the “Wild West”-style apocalypses predicted by the gun control crowd in oppostion in to CCW laws in states like Florida and Georgia, the argument falls flat.
If we allow the abrogation of a right because people may abuse it, then this doctrine has implications for speech, assembly, religion, press.
The idea is to criminalise and prosecute the offenders, not to prophylactically deny people their rights because some may abuse them.
Better by far perhaps to incorporate anger and conflict management in those who need it.
By the by: The Second Amendment is controversial, but the use of the phrase of the people marks it decisively as an individual right. It is a state and municipal matter to impose “reasonable restrictions” on gun ownership, though the compatibility of “well regulated” and “shall not be infringed” leads to furiously contentious arguments.
Well, at least free speech. You have to protect free speech for even the most disgusting examples. If you protect the most disgusting, then that insures that everybody else is covered.
I have guns that have been in my family for generations and have never been pointed at anybody. Does anybody want to protect my right to own them, or is it better that they are taken away from me because somebody else uses one in an illegal manner?
Something tells me that my rights aren’t going to carry as much weight.
My first post wasn’t trying to take a stand one way or another on the constitutionality of carrying firearms. I was just trying to frame a proper debate here. Concealed carry permits are mostly what I was talking about when I said “more debatable”.
As for what I think about bearing wepons in public:
Guns have the potential to cause injury or death. So do cars. Let’s say someone decide to use a car as a murder weapon. Society (and the justice system) would judge them as being to irresponsible to drive. They would lose their licence.
If someone uses a gun as a murder weapon they would also be found irresponsible.
See, those examples in the OP are what are known as “anecdotes”. Now, I won’t venture an opinion as to whether they happened or not, but it is important to realize that those are, at best, isolated cases, certainly not representative of gun owners in general.
This is the equivalent of saying that all postal workers should be forbidden to own guns because they go nuts, when it has happened on very rare occasions and those occasions were highly publicized, which lead to the stereotypical expression of “going postal”. There is a small but non-zero segment of any sample that consists of unhinged people, holding them up as the representative sample is dishonest. Postal workers do not “go postal”, the miniscule subset of lunatic postal workers “go postal”.
It makes for a good joke, or even a witty quip, but it’s simply not true. It’s also noteworthy that the people telling the stories are still alive to do so, demonstrating that perhaps the story is blown a bit out of proportion.
I’m one of the most tactless and blunt people I know, and I seem to manage just fine (and I live right near the California border, so that’s definitely something!). My views on guns are the same with drugs: you have the right to do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t affect anyone else. But you also have to take responsibility for your actions, and if it results in prison time, so be it.
I just have to mention that I am sick and fucking tired of people not taking responsibility for their own actions. “I was high” or “I was drunk” is not an excuse. “I was mad so I shot him.” is not an excuse. There is an actual population of people who cannot control their actions due to a chemical misfunction, and then there are just people who are terrified to step up and be an adult. Drives me insane.
Well, seeing as my life has been saved by a concealed weapons permit before, I’ll just say I’m totally in favor of it.
I worked at a pizza place in an odd assortment of positions: Driver, insider, manager. All of those positions gave me the probability of getting mugged or robbed.
One night the store got robbed while I was managing it and one of my drivers had a concealed weapons permit. The guy had a gun pointed at my forehead and wanted me to open a time-delay safe that I was completely unable to open for 17 minutes. He was going to shoot me and my driver shot at him instead. I know that this is anecdotal evidence, but I firmly believe in concealed weapons permits simply because I know several people, myself included, whose lives have been saved because someone had one. This list includes convenience store clerks, grocery store bank tellers, delivery drivers, and even police officers. So I’ll just keep defending my own rights to own and carry a gun, and keep pushing for harsher punishments for those who use them irresponsibly.
The Second Amendment doesn’t mean what you say it means, it doesn’t mean what I say it means, it means what the courts say it means. In Miller, the Supreme Court ruled that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of the state militia. The courts over the years have uniformly taken the collectivist position regarding this amendment. Although I happen to agree with that interpretation, what matters is what the courts say.
Those of you of the “no regulations, just jail violators” mentality, do you desire the same thing for driving? Why have drivers’ licenses and road tests when you can throw someone who violates the rules of the road in a way that someone gets hurt into jail. In either case, you don’t seem to be too concerned about the people who get hurt.
BTW, I am not in favor of banning guns, but in favor of rather stricter licensing and tracking of guns.
Read Miller. All the way through. Then read subsequent circuit courts that claim to cite Miller. In those sunsequent citations, there are snippets, at best, of Miller. In one (3rd Circuit, IIRC), the court fabricated a whole new interpretation of Miller out of thin air.
I can similarly use snippets of your own words from, say, a post in a thread about domestic violence to make it appear that you not only favor domestic violence, but actually engage in it (having read your posts on this board for some time, I can safely assume you are against domestic violence).
Miller did say that a weapon should resemble or be part of the ordinary equipment in use at the time, and found that there was no evidnece to support Jack Miller’s claim that a “shotgun with a barrel less than 18 inches” formed a part of such ordinary equipment. The reason there was no evidence to support such a claim as because neither Miller or his lawyer showed up for the Supreme Court hearing.
Jack Miller didn’t show because he didn’t give a damn; having just skated on a bogus gun charge in Arkansas, he skedaddled back under whatever rock the Treasury Agents had drug him out from under.
His lawyer didn’t show because Jack Miller and Frank Layton only paid him to defend them against the gun charge in Arkansas.
Furthermore, the court remanded the case for further review, which never took place as Jack Miller turned up dead not too long after, and his sidekick, Frank Layton, plead out to a lesser charge. So as far as U.S. v. Miller goes, the issue was never properly settled, just sorta dropped to die of its own “lack of interest.”
And IMO, this whole thread started as a rant, and should’ve went to the Pit.
