If Music Could Talk

Dr. Medulla wrote:Lest one think that gun manufacturers wear even a veneer of social responsibility: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... phone.html

http://jihanforbes.tumblr.com/post/1419 ... t-a-gun-at

Dr. Medulla wrote:Lest one think that gun manufacturers wear even a veneer of social responsibility: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... phone.html

Perhaps they are being socially responsible to people who legally CCW a gun to protect themselves. Giving people another choice to carry out their basic human right of self defense is being socially responsible. I suppose you can't tolerate that view though.

Dr. Medulla wrote:Lest one think that gun manufacturers wear even a veneer of social responsibility: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... phone.html

Probably the easiest way to not get children pointing at you and people staring is not to come packing to T.G.I. Friday's.

Wolter wrote:

Dr. Medulla wrote:Lest one think that gun manufacturers wear even a veneer of social responsibility: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... phone.html

Probably the easiest way to not get children pointing at you and people staring is not to come packing to T.G.I. Friday's.

Look, once the Bad Guys™ know that no one at Ruby Tuesday is armed, they will swarm and murder everyone there. Guaranteed. And you won't be able to enjoy your fried barbecue cheddar meat stick when you're dead.

I really don't buy the self defense thing. Being prepared to shoot and intruder or attacker are damn near non-existent. I have enjoyed using firearms and believe they should be a privilege to own. I don't know why there is no pragmatism on the issue. Why not have people have to go through the same sort of process that one goes through to get a driver's license? At least then we would have a chance to weed out the mentally ill or otherwise dangerous people.

There is only one tried and true weapon of home defense.

Boston, I would say because a driver's license is not a right. Would you also have people go through some sort of process to make sure the words the say, books they write, or music they make are consistent with what you feel is appropriate? Rights are rights. Freedom is freedom. Freedom means people can own, say, and do things I (or you) don't agree with.

SteveSatch wrote:Boston, I would say because a driver's license is not a right. Would you also have people go through some sort of process to make sure the words the say, books they write, or music they make are consistent with what you feel is appropriate? Rights are rights. Freedom is freedom. Freedom means people can own, say, and do things I (or you) don't agree with.

It is my belief that the rights provided by the second amendment get overly twisted and turned conveniently in order. What constitutes a well regulated militia? "Regulated" is a strong word and to me it implies so democratic checks and controls. I don't think it justifies someone like James Holmes (Batman killer) being able to mail order and arsenal without much regulation at all. I think, in reading the 2nd amendment, there is room for a thoughtful dialog. Unfortunately we are a black or white country these days and thoughtful dialog is a dream from days gone by.

Also, a buckaroo with a side arm sitting in the movie theater would likely not have stopped the tragedy. He would have just thrown more lead into the air. In these mass shooting scenarios the good guy with a gun argument doesn't really hold in my opinion.

I understand what you are saying Boston, it's just not consistent with The Constitution or freedom though. Well regulated today has a different meaning today than it did then. Today it would seem to mean controlled by an authority. Then it meant working and prepared. Look it up...I assure you the theater guy did not mail order a gun to his house. Media propaganda. A gun can be ordered by mail. It gets sent to a gun store where you do all the same background checks that you would do if you bought one in stock at that gun store....A good guy with a gun may have stopped it or made the situation worse. I don't see how that's the argument though. To me freedom is a black and white issue. The price of freedom is ugly sometimes. Just as the price of restricted freedom is ugly. Restricted freedom is also unconstitutional. While I do think freedom is a black and white issue, I think discussions about it and what it means can be helpful and educational.
Your friend,
Steve

SteveSatch wrote:I understand what you are saying Boston, it's just not consistent with The Constitution or freedom though. Well regulated today has a different meaning today than it did then. Today it would seem to mean controlled by an authority. Then it meant working and prepared.

Right, but back then the second amendment still meant deeply intrusive government regulation:

Yet we’ve also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.

For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ns/308608/

I think there are arguments for and against gun ownership as a means to protect oneself in the context of self-defense and an overbearing state, but the argument that the constitution originally provided a right to gun ownership without heavy regulation seems ahistorical. In any case, I don't see the Constitution as a particularly compelling arbiter of what constitutes one's rights or freedoms. Rights and freedoms are derived from natural law, not a piece of paper.

Flex wrote:I think there are arguments for and against gun ownership as a means to protect oneself in the context of self-defense and an overbearing state, but the argument that the constitution originally provided a right to gun ownership without heavy regulation seems ahistorical. In any case, I don't see the Constitution as a particularly compelling arbiter of what constitutes one's rights or freedoms. Rights and freedoms are derived from natural law, not a piece of paper.

It's always important to remember that if one wants to go originalist with the Constitution, its purpose was to increase the authority and power of the central government, that it was about taking power away from the states and people because the status quo was too open ended. It wasn't this crazy, radical document of freedom that regarded the national government as tyrannical, but dialling back the passions of both the Revolution and the Articles of Confederation. In was about imposing order and giving the national government a means of controlling dissenters in the populace. If a person really wants to be a libertarian with an eye to history, the Articles of Confederation is your stroke book, not the Constitution.

Dr. Medulla wrote:the Articles of Confederation is your stroke book

Especially the illustrated version.

Flex wrote:

Dr. Medulla wrote:the Articles of Confederation is your stroke book

Especially the illustrated version.

If you thought John Hancock's signature was big on the Declaration of Independence, he was using a massive pen for the A of C.

I've never understood originalists. If you have to go back to what things were like back then and really try to interpret what they really meant, don't you have to ignore that they were all slave owners?

matedog wrote:I've never understood originalists. If you have to go back to what things were like back then and really try to interpret what they really meant, don't you have to ignore that they were all slave owners?

Originalism is a concept pregnant with irony. It claims to be historic in nature—proper interpretation can only be understood by the historic circumstance of the Constitution's enactment—yet in then applying this principle to the present, it becomes an act of essentialism. That is, it willingly pretends that the events that occurred since each element of the Constitution (i.e., including subsequent amendments) did not happen or don't matter. Everything must be fossilized in amber. The American people to an originalist must be held hostage to the past, their own evolving history, needs, struggles, and accomplishments irrelevant. In denying the nation's history, it makes legal interpretation one of essentialism and counting angels on the heads of pins while figuring out, say, what Benjamin Franklin would have thought of automatic firearms, national healthcare, or Internet commerce. It betrays a fantasy of living in a time when heterosexual white male power was unambiguous and uncontested.