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Vonsalza
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Never said you were. It’s a public forum. My replies are geared as such.
Yours just happens to match the libertarian view on drug policy, so the response and label is apt.
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Yours just happens to match the libertarian view on drug policy, so the response and label is apt.
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Vonsalza
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They were both raging successes by virtually any measure. During Prohibition, alcohol consumption and the social ills that accompany it very measurably went down.
They’re only failures if the goal is 100% perfect elimination of consumption.
An impossible standard…
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starshiptrooper
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Except your premise was based on the strawmen of “unlimited freedom”. It is also a redundancy. Either I am free or I am not.
The worst tyranny has always come from the state, something statists such as yourself are blind to.
The worst tyranny has always come from the state, something statists such as yourself are blind to.
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Vonsalza
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Another tiring false dichotomy…
You’re bound by law everywhere it exists. So by that reality, the only free people on the planet are those living in failed non-states like Somalia and soon-to-be Yemen.
The worst tyranny the world has ever seen has been consistently by the hands of men who felt they could do as they pleased…
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starshiptrooper
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On the flip side, organized violent crime got a big boost, honest businessmen were deprived of property and liberty, and ordinary citizens were turned into criminals despite not hurting another person.
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pnewton
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Again, no one is suggesting that there is a pro-nuclear ownership position. That would be needed for a straw man to exist.
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Vonsalza
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That’s not quite my understanding of Prohibition. Particularly your attempt at grasping with the whole “honest businessmen were deprived of property and liberty, and ordinary citizens were turned into criminals despite not hurting another person”.
As I understand it, instances where husbands were “tuning up” on their wives and kids also dramatically fell.
It’s almost like these things don’t happen in vacuums and there’s benefits on each side!?!?!?
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starshiptrooper
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When the law restricts the rights of people who have not infringed on the rights of others, then it is contradictory to freedom. Otherwise I am not “bound by law”.
Somalia and Yemen are about as realistic a depiction of my society as North Korea is of yours.
Those men are most dangerous when backed by the state.
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starshiptrooper
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I also forgot to mention that the government deliberately poisoned their own citizens.
Just because some people misuse their freedom does not justify your attempt to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. I am an individual person, responsible for my own choices and should be treated accordingly.
Just because some people misuse their freedom does not justify your attempt to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. I am an individual person, responsible for my own choices and should be treated accordingly.
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TheOldColonel
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You ask why private citizens can’t own a “submarine with nukes?” It’s because bombs are already illegal. Weapons of mass destruction are also illegal. Surely you are not saying a firearm is the same as bombs and WMD’s. 
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Vonsalza
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Uh oh. We might make progress here-
Infringement is EXACTLY what your opposition is arguing as happening.
For the rest of us, we still have to stop at the stop sign, even when it’s 3am and no one else is in the intersection.
They’re the only place on the planet that enjoy a lack of rules.
But I understand the critique hurts. Somalia espouses what many support as it pertains to government involvement and it’s recognized as an unambiguous failure by most.
They’re certainly dangerous when armed.
Which is why we should make guns harder to get
Yes it does. Oh, yes it does. That is one of the core function of law - to limit the degree of influence we can exercise over each other. To limit your “freedom” to blast the stereo in your apartment at 3am or to limit your “freedom” to not cut your grass and thereby reduce your neighbor’s property value.
Yes sir, it does because you’re affecting me.
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starshiptrooper
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My rifle will not affect you as long as you leave me and my property alone. What other people do with their rifles is not my problem. I hold no moral responsibility outside of not using my rifle to hurt you or your property.
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BoomBoomMancini
Guest
Yes, of course they are illegal and I believe they should stay that way. But if one of your rationales for supporting an unlimited reading of the Second Amendment is that it serves as a check on potential tyranny, then I don’t see why WMDs and bombs generally should be illegal. They’re very effective instruments of war that would certainly give a government pause before it started abusing its citizens. Why can’t an individual citizen have a dirty bomb?
If you balk at that reasoning, then presumably you agree that we have to draw a line somewhere when we balance individual freedom with social stability and safety. Now we can just argue about where to draw the line.
To give credit where credit is due, starship troopers seems to support an unlimited interpretation of the second amendment. I think that sounds like a nightmare world, but at least unlike Luigi he has the intellectual honesty to own the implications of his thinking.
If you balk at that reasoning, then presumably you agree that we have to draw a line somewhere when we balance individual freedom with social stability and safety. Now we can just argue about where to draw the line.
To give credit where credit is due, starship troopers seems to support an unlimited interpretation of the second amendment. I think that sounds like a nightmare world, but at least unlike Luigi he has the intellectual honesty to own the implications of his thinking.
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Vonsalza
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Im sure yours won’t. But someone else’s might.
These things aren’t like stereos where the abuse of one is just an annoyance. When rifles are abused people die.
This is why fewer and fewer people support your views with each additional mass shooting.
There’s an economy to this and it is swinging against those with your views. Praise God.
These things aren’t like stereos where the abuse of one is just an annoyance. When rifles are abused people die.
This is why fewer and fewer people support your views with each additional mass shooting.
There’s an economy to this and it is swinging against those with your views. Praise God.
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PetraG
Guest
Where did you get the idea that I work for the media? Are you saying it is the media’s fault for reporting on mass murders at high schools? Sorry, but that is news in most places.
Yes, mass shootings are a tiny percentage of homocides involving firearms, that is true. What is also true is that a person with access to a gun is statistically more likely to decide to commit suicide or shoot a member of their household with it than to ever use it in self-defense.
You say you don’t plan to kill yourself, but only to defend yourself? Cite a situation you can find in which a civilian (rather than someone deployed to a literal war zone) actually used a firearm in self-defense needed to be able to squeeze off an entire magazine at a rate of one or two rounds a second.
Let us be real: People buy AR-15s because they are fun, not because they need them. Is that their right, since technically they could also use one in self-defense? Sure. Let’s drop the pretense that anyone actually uses them that way.
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Vonsalza
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That’s why I have all mine.
This (surely) psycho-sexual self-defense fantasy that the gun nuts keeps tossing up in defense of the right to own slightly neutered military hardware is absurd.
The day the US government fielded Abrams tanks and Apache attack copters, the meager “defense against ‘tyranny’” that an AR-15 may have provided was completely washed away.
The only defense you have against tyranny is your vote.
Now, if you’d like to keep one for a SHTF scenario, I can respect that. But a .22 and/or bolt gun would serve far better in providing for long-term survival. And you’re STILL hopelessly vulnerable to a guy who figured out how to run and fire one of the government’s old Abram’s tanks
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PetraG
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Exactly. By the same token, the Boston Marathon attack and the Atlanta Olympic attack didn’t require any firearms at all. They were pressure-cooker bombs. Tell all of us women who like to do home-canning or fast cooking that we don’t need our pressure cookers because some people make bombs out of them, though, and you will have an uprising on your hands.That’s why I have all mine.
This (surely) psycho-sexual self-defense fantasy that the gun nuts keeps tossing up in defense of the right to own slightly neutered military hardware is absurd.
The day the US government fielded Abrams tanks and Apache attack copters, the meager “defense against ‘tyranny’” that an AR-15 may have provided was completely washed away.
The only defense you have against tyranny is your vote.
Now, if you’d like to keep one for a SHTF scenario, I can respect that. But a .22 and/or bolt gun would serve far better in providing for long-term survival. And you’re STILL hopelessly vulnerable to a guy who figured out how to run and fire one of the government’s old Abram’s tanks
Having said that, it doesn’t take a very large fraction of problems to have a lot of problems when you have (a) more than one firearm out there for every man, woman and child in the nation and those concentrated in far fewer than half of the households and (b) a society in which infamy is seen as a kind of fame that a person who feels like a comparative nobody might aspire to. That’s a bad combination.
I do think the desire for infamy has been the primary cause in the school shootings, with a desire to get revenge on those seen as social enemies thrown in. Get rid of the guns, and those bent on achieving infamy or vengeance will find a different way.
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Vonsalza
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It’s also made worse when those folks feel like government is some evil “other” rather than something that should be engaged because they’re a part of it, even when it doesn’t go their/my way (like any grade-school group activity…)
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Pup7
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Oh so true. (Wanted to clarify I was laughing at the image of all of us marching for the right to own a pressure cooker - please don’t take that wrong!!! 
)Not to mention fertilizer, alarm clocks, cell phones, and cleaning supplies.
Yep. Like the kid who stabbed how many was it? 15? in Pennsylvania in 2014.
Correction. He stabbed 22.
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PetraG
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I don’t know how you hush up information when a whole school full of victims may have known the assailant, but it would be the best if mass-attackers were met with “out of respect for the family, the name of the assailant is not being released. This was a sad little individual, revealing their identity would only embarrass their family, and the sooner their name and connection to this matter is forgotten, the better.” I think that would discourage copycats. Our society has decided that shame and the fear of shame serve no good purpose, but I don’t think that is true. Fear of shame is stronger than the fear of all sorts of other fates.
When shaming is never allowed, on the other hand, fame and infamy are the same thing.
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