Mass Shooting Las Vegas...

[Littlejoe]

Are you trying to annoy me? I am really not seeing the point to rehashing this. I already specified what augmentations I would make - and I have no objection to the IT (not tech) making appropriate adjustments to the AWB so that Rogue can buy his scary looking single shot.

The problem comes from the all or nothing gun proponent side that won't make even reasonable concessions. See this whole freaking thread for proof - eight people dog piling two - one of whom agreed with them more than not! The AWB is just a talking point now - proponents want to use it as a means of reversing gun restrictions. They don't want it adjusted to ban only the weapons it was supposed to apply to.

I love you Sister in the Lord, but I'll never agree with you on this...(and that's fine, it's America) but I know 5 times more people killed in car wrecks (that I can think of off the top of my head) (11-1) and the one who was shot and killed happened just last month. And I know 2 people who died from electricity...so twice as many as guns. I'm sorry you feel dog piled on, but, we responsible gun owners get really tired of these same old cliche arguments.

And as for adjusting the ban to include "assault rifles" that makes little sense. FAR more are killed by handguns than any sort of rifle or assault rifle. In fact, two of my hunting buddies bring this gun to deer camp and hunt deer, turkey feral hogs and coyotes with it.
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[Teallaura]

The Founders did not care what weapons might exist in the 21st century. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, whatever those might be.

The Constitution is indeed not written in stone - that is why there is an amendment process. Let's follow it, shall we?

According to Sparky, that process would result in armed resistance. Jim's still on the 'natural right' thing, if I am following correctly.

[Teallaura]

It is still fallible men that are making the determination for the rest of us that owning guns is a natural right. Again, what makes a right, a natural right?

Yay! I followed correctly!

[Teallaura]

I love you Sister in the Lord, but I'll never agree with you on this...(and that's fine, it's America) but I know 5 times more people killed in car wrecks (that I can think of off the top of my head) (11-1) and the one who was shot and killed happened just last month. And I know 2 people who died from electricity...so twice as many as guns. I'm sorry you feel dog piled on, but, we responsible gun owners get really tired of these same old cliche arguments.

And as for adjusting the ban to include "assault rifles" that makes little sense. FAR more are killed by handguns than any sort of rifle or assault rifle. In fact, two of my hunting buddies bring this gun to deer camp and hunt deer, turkey feral hogs and coyotes with it.
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My preference would have been a complete ban on hunting rifles - that's what I've been shot at with and what has killed both my pets and my friends.

But I already said I'm not pro-gun control based on the safety argument - my argument is weapons are force multipliers that can and will be misused either deliberately or unintentionally and should have reasonable restrictions on their purchase, ownership and use. I'm perfectly willing to set aside my preferences because I am perfectly aware that they aren't necessarily fair - or best.

But I'd still like to see a world without hunting rifles.

[Teallaura]

Amateurs are not likely to be seeking out violent mobs to take on. There probably aren't a lot of non-rioters getting in the way of business/home owners defending their turf. It is certainly not an ideal situation, but that's no call to get all angsty about worst-case scenarios.

Tell Rogue - this was his idea of a good thing.

[Teallaura]

No. No-one was, since the terms weren't used until the late 1940s, and were defined based on post-war international organisations and alliances.

Also, Germany, until about '33 - '34 wouldn't have arguably been First World even had the terms been in use - it's economy was in tatters from WWI and Versailles.

[Littlejoe]

My preference would have been a complete ban on hunting rifles - that's what I've been shot at with and what has killed both my pets and my friends.

But I already said I'm not pro-gun control based on the safety argument - my argument is weapons are force multipliers that can and will be misused either deliberately or unintentionally and should have reasonable restrictions on their purchase, ownership and use. I'm perfectly willing to set aside my preferences because I am perfectly aware that they aren't necessarily fair - or best.

But I'd still like to see a world without hunting rifles.

Ah! As a hunter, I definitely disagree of course. I'm not going to be very effective hunting deer with a pistol...although I have actually killed one with my .40 cal S&W. Are we supposed to hunt deer with knives and pitchforks?

[Teallaura]

Look up McDonald v. City of Chicago. Basically it was decided that the 2nd was incorporated because of the due process clause of the 14th. They didn't incorporate it after the fact. They decided that it was already incorporated because of the 14th. Which means that the state laws were already in violation because the 2nd took precedence over the state laws and just were never challenged before.

As you yourself said previously, the federal is higher than the state. When the federal recognizes rights of a citizen, the state cannot take that right away. That's just common sense. If they could then the federal constitution means nothing.

All incorporation is based on the 14th. Are you kidding me?

FYI - the Ninth has never been incorporated. Minus incorporation, the original findings stand - and the BoR was NOT originally applied to the states. The Court upheld that multiple times until well AFTER the passage of the 14th.

Translation: until incorporation, the states had every constitutional right to regulate and even ban fire arms.

[Teallaura]

Ah! As a hunter, I definitely disagree of course. I'm not going to be very effective hunting deer with a pistol...although I have actually killed one with my .40 cal S&W. Are we supposed to hunt deer with knives and pitchforks?

Bare hands. that way, it becomes an actual sport.

[Zymologist]

I already explained this - twice. There's a part of me that will never buy into 'responsible gun owner' for the reasons given. Intellectually, I recognize the problem - which is part of why I don't support abolition. I can recognize the unfairness intellectually - but that wasn't what I was talking about when this came up.

And only one of the people who discharged the gun was a friend - who in his carelessness, killed another friend. Neither of them were 'crap' - but humans aren't perfect and never responsible 100% of the time. A split second is all it takes with a gun.

So no, I don't really believe in responsible gun owners - or the tooth fairy.

Ok.

I'm a gun owner. I'm 28, married with three kids, a homeowner, an electrical engineer at a reputable consulting firm, and I've been financially supporting three households on my income for several months (one of which includes my widowed mother, who I will be supporting indefinitely). A disabled sibling lives under my roof, and if they need help with something (e.g., putting together a bookshelf, changing a tire, etc.) I'm the one they come to. I have cosigned for a friend's rental twice in the last two years, because he needed the help, we trust each other, and my credit rating is pretty good. Aside from being on the cusp of getting my P.E. license*, I've also recently gotten life licensed in two states and I'm actively pursuing a federal securities license, as well. I've managed to write a novel in the last year and a half in my down-time (I'm revising it from the beginning now). If you did a background check on me it would be so clean it would probably look suspicious; never had a DUI, speeding ticket, etc.

What would make me responsible? Getting rid of the guns?



*Montana requires a minimum of 8 years education and experience before one is qualified to apply to take the test, which is an 8-hour exam that I'm taking in two weeks.

[Teallaura]

As I said earlier, we need to control the people who use guns, not the guns. Make the penalty for misusing them so high that anyone would be reluctant to use them incorrectly. If you kill someone with a gun and it is unjustified (not in self defense) then give very stiff penalties. If it was done in the commission of a felony (burglary or robbery for instance) they should get the death penalty. If they are even carrying a gun during the commission of a felony, they should get 20 years or so.

But the way I read the 2nd, it is too broad. It protects the ownership and use of firearms and it sets no limits. Gun control laws are actually unconstitutional despite what the courts say. They actually have no say in the matter according to the very wording in the 2nd. We only allow the restrictions by pretending the 2nd doesn't say what it says. Which is a dangerous slope.

Forget criminal law - it's the civil side that needs correction. You (general) own it - YOU are responsible for it. It gets stolen because you didn't bother to lock it away, you are responsible for any and all damages done for the next year. ALL. No bankruptcy protection.

Gun owners would quickly invest in decent gun safes.

Conversely, if you did take reasonable precautions (decent safe, locked doors) and it still gets stolen, then that's the price we pay for a free society.

YOU fire that weapon, YOU are responsible for where the bullet ends up. No excuses - you shoot someone, you at a minimum pay damages assuming no civil or criminal action.

But all that controls the weapon, not just the person. If you want to own a weapon, then you have to feed and water it. You have to know where it is - and make sure it is secure when not on your person.

[Teallaura]

Ok.

I'm a gun owner. I'm 28, married with three kids, a homeowner, an electrical engineer at a reputable consulting firm, and I've been financially supporting three households on my income for several months (one of which includes my widowed mother, who I will be supporting indefinitely). A disabled sibling lives under my roof, and if they need help with something (e.g., putting together a bookshelf, changing a tire, etc.) I'm the one they come to. I have cosigned for a friend's rental twice in the last two years, because he needed the help, we trust each other, and my credit rating is pretty good. Aside from being on the cusp of getting my P.E. license*, I've also recently gotten life licensed in two states and I'm actively pursuing a federal securities license, as well. I've managed to write a novel in the last year and a half in my down-time (I'm revising it from the beginning now). If you did a background check on me it would be so clean it would probably look suspicious; never had a DUI, speeding ticket, etc.

What would make me responsible? Getting rid of the guns?



*Montana requires a minimum of 8 years education and experience before one is qualified to apply to take the test, which is an 8-hour exam that I'm taking in two weeks.

Nothing. You aren't going to become the tooth fairy, either.

I spent a hour crawling home because of an idiot shooting at me. I found my cats and dogs dead with bullets in them not a hundred yards from my home. A neighbor dead for the crime of standing in his own living room while an idiot across the lake didn't have enough sense not to fire from a hill overlooking a lake. A friend dead because another friend tossed a shotgun into a car. Those memories aren't going away - and no, I'm never going to buy into something I've never seen where it counted.

Intellectually, I'll perfectly willing to allow that this is not reasonable. I would NOT argue that people should not be allowed to own guns merely because I don't like it. I'll even allow that responsible gun owners probably exist - but as an intellectual exercise. My gut still remembers differently.

You can take that issue up with the Koliaga Hunting Club.

[TheWall]

Bare hands. that way, it becomes an actual sport.

You realize dear are pretty strong right?
Humans made weapons to deal with the fact that animals and other humans had ways to hurt them.

[Teallaura]

In hindsight I think my post was more aggressive than Teal deserved. Sorry, Teal.

No prob.

[Joel]

That's fair. As I understand it certain anarchists, for instance, hold dual views on the concept of property ownership, distinguishing between private and personal property. Is that correct?

I've only heard that argued by socialists (saying they want to abolish private property, but not personal property), but I've never seen a good explanation for how they are distinguished. I suspect it tends to be just a way of persuading people to accept socialism. Like, "I don't meant to abolish your property. That's personal property. Private property is the property of evil capitalists, not us."

I think this is really the crux of the issue though. No, I do not agree that there exists natural morality, or at least, not as it's usually defined in a naturalistic sense as a morality that's based on how humans have evolved. I believe in an objective morality that's based in God's nature. There exist plenty of people who assert that there are no moral obligations, or at least, none that are objective in nature.

To be clear, by natural, I do not mean naturalism (and neither did the thinkers through millennia who argued for natural morality, natural law, and natural rights). I meant only what I said: that it isn't artificial: the creation of humans. Note that, in fact, it is secular naturalists today who are much more likely to argue that morality is mere convention or otherwise invented by humans. (But then how can they argue for any moral authority for a state or its statutes?)

Many natural law, natural rights, theorists have been Christians, and was greatly developed by Christians. Even those who discover natural law in human nature may in turn hold that human nature was created by God, and that the natural law derives from God's nature. Thus comes the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, "the Laws of Nature, and of Nature's God".

On the other hand there are and have been non-theist and atheist natural law theorists who similarly see natural law in human nature. The old theorists (both Christian and otherwise) always argued that it was discover-able by reason, and recognized (though perhaps imperfectly) by virtually every nation in history. And thus is acceptable in a secular government.


At any rate, you do agree that there is an objective ("natural" in the traditional terminology) morality. The next step is to a "natural" (meant in the same sense as above) law, that is higher than the man-made laws of states. This is recognized, for example, in the Nuremberg trials, where certain actions were recognized as inherently being crimes against humanity, despite there not being a corresponding man-made statute. Moral philosophers both Christian and otherwise for millennia have recognized that a certain actions physically injuring others (including their property) are inherently crimes (e.g. murder, theft). This subset of the natural morality was called Justice. By "inherently" I mean that people from cultures around the world and in history have recognized them to be crimes/injustice apart from having to invent an arbitrary law against them, and would recognize them as criminal if there wasn't a government, and recognize them as criminal if their government does them. On the contrary, it was understood that the (moral) reason for creating a government in the first place was to resist these crimes and to require reparation for them--to do Justice, presupposing that there already exists a law of Justice. Also people generally recognize that this law of Justice is a higher law than man-made statutes: that the latter are subject to judgement by the former, evaluated as just or unjust statutes. And a state's actions can be judged as unjust/criminal even if the state had declared them legal (e.g. Nuremberg trials). For millennia this higher law was referred to as "natural law".