JAD_333

Think Arnold Schwarzenegger. Heavy lifting will get you there.


Forget being president. You have to be born here. I wasn't either. But the upside is that you have a ready-made excuse for not having succeeded in your fantasy.

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To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

antimony

Well, if I am not going to be the American Prez, then I want to be this guy:



I am just wondering how I can align that to my supposedly liberal leaning

I am going to have one of these in every sector.

Ironduke

No offense intended, but how old are you?

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The Buck Stops Here

antimony

The wrong (or right?) side of 30

Ray

I do hope the election does not become a muck raking instrument.

Let the best man/ woman win.

As far as I am concerned, the foreign policy affects the world and one wonders which one would be forceful enough to enforce some disciplined approach to the world problems wherein forces out to create chaos are kept in check!

Now that there is some semblance of order and nations are falling in line, the momentum has to be maintained.

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Army5339

Eh, how a politician views the population in regards to firearm ownership speaks volumes about them and the rest of their views. Either as citizens to be trusted or subjects to be lorded over. Anybody who would remove the citizen's ability to deter tyranny isn't to be trusted.

antimony

I think the keyword is "control", rather than prohibition. Any good gun control law would deter guns appearing in the hands of irresponsible members of societies, such as felons, addicts, alcoholics and the like while not deterrng gun ownership by law abiding resposible citizens.

Furthermore, I believe that in this day and age, there are enough legal means to counter state actions without resorting to the Anti-Federalist view of using popular militia to counter state tyranny.

Also, what about those citizens who are not interested in bearing arms? Would the arms-bearing population then not be in a poistion to lord over these unarmed citizens, especially if no check is done to ensure that irresponsible members of the society do not get arms in any way?

I am sure there would be countless threads in WAB on this. I would be hapy to thrash this out in those threads, without further hijacking this one.

gunnut

Right. All gun owners agree with that. The problem comes when certain laws prohibit ownership of ANY gun within a city, like the DC law or the one just passed by SF, prohibiting the ownership of all handguns. In this case, the "slippery slope" argument holds water. More and more restrictions appear in the books with every passing year. Law abiding citizens have less and less freedom. Meanwhile, crooks don't care. They're crooks.

Can you guarantee that? Now and forever?

Those are called criminals. We already have laws against their kind from owning firearms. Law abiding citizens don't lord over their fellow citizens who don't own arms. In fact, law abiding gun owners are far more likely to come to the aid of their fellow citizens. I have no proof of that. Just my gut feeling.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

JAD_333

I take your point, although DC's gun law bans private ownership of handguns, not long guns.

What's interesting here is that there are gun control groups who oppose DC's law and some leading liberals as well.

Supreme Court to hear challenge to D.C. gun law - Los Angeles Times


The Supreme Court can't continue to avoid the issue. They have to define "arms" and the connection between "a well regulated militia" and "the right to bear arms". IMHO, the word "right" would not have been used if the framers of the constitution had meant that possession of guns was to be limited to times when a militia was needed.

What does Obama say about all this?

Army5339

The Democratic party in general is not a friend to legal firearm owners. Some individuals in Congress are, but the general momentum of the party is towards more restrictions on law abiding citizens. Not that the Republican party currently is that much better.

Certain gun control groups opposed the DC gun ban because it was headed towards the Supreme Court, which would have nationwide legal ramifications for similar bans. Better to lose DC than to lose all of them. They had a feeling that the Supreme Court would overturn the DC law, which I feel that they will do.

Obama is not a fan of firearms in the hands of regular law abiding citizens.
Barack Obama on Gun Control

He might shift his view around for the election, talking about hunting, tradition, and sportsmanship, but the Second Amendment is not about those things. You would never hear a prominent Democratic politician, much less a Presidential candidate, acknowledge that it is about an independently armed citizenry thwarting tyranny from the state. It is difficult enough to get that from a Republican candidate.

If a politician either doesn't believe that the citizens have the right and responsibility to have the ability to forcibly overthrow tyranny, or doesn't believe that tyranny could come from their government, I could never find myself voting for them. Obama falls into that category.

antimony

The arguements, I believe are also to keep guns out of the hands of less responsible member of society, who may be law-abiding but who may not be stable enough to handle and operate a gun, like habitual alcoholics.

It might seem like a paradox, but I gained new respect for gun laws when I first fired a gun. I remember thinking that no way something this much of power should not be made available to every yahoo who wants it.

Without going into "now and forever" I would say that I would trust a stable democratic society not to degenerate into state sponsored tyranny; I would not make any such bets about pseudo democracies/ non-democracies. For e.g., I woulld say that i would not need a gun to protect myself against state tyranny in US and most of Western Europe, but for Pakistan and Iraq (and I am ashamed to say, some parts of India) all bets are off.

Would love to see some data around this. I would think that carrying a gun would make one naturally more belligerent, within the wide margins of being "law abiding".

Kansas Bear

JAD, you weren't born in the states??

gunnut

The DC gun law bans the ownership of handguns. Long guns must be stored "in pieces." They cannot be in the assembled state. What kind of assenine law is that?

The SF gun law bans the ownership of handguns within city limits. I think the law requires owners to turn in their handguns. There might be an injunction filed against this law. I'm not too clear on that.

gunnut

We already have those measures in place. Have you ever bought a gun? There's a ton of paper work, a test to take (in CA at least), need to demonstrate how to physically manipulate the gun you are interested in buying, a 10 day waiting period (in CA), submit a thumb print to the state, and a background check.

The problem is we don't know what will happen in the future. What guarantee do we have that our government won't turn on the people? Or to a lesser extent, what guarantee do we have that our government will be here to protect us from the criminal element? American laws state that the police is here to enforce the law, not to protect the citizens. In fact they are not obligated to do so unless it's in the course of discharging their duty to enforce the law. Only you can prevent a crime from happening against you or those around you.

I certainly believe so. Of course there will be a number of people who will become more belligerent. But there are more good people around than bad people. And if we are more open to concealed carry, bad people just might think twice about committing crimes. Gun ownership isn't about getting into shootouts with crooks on a daily basis. Gun ownership is about the deterant of crime. Most crooks don't want to get shot just like most people don't want to get shot. If the chance of him getting shot is high during a crime, he just might forego this opportunity.

Army5339

I will try to find the stats I have read before, but that at least in Florida, people who possess a concealed carry permit are far less likely to commit violent crime, much less crimes involving a firearm, than most other statistically significant groups.