Pangloss, you, by your philosophy of life and antigun sentiments, are incapable of resisting genocide, to effect. You may open your mouth to deplore it, but that won't keep you out of the "shower." I'm sure lots of Jews (and Christian Scientists and Gypsies) hollered "No, don't do this!" even louder than you would.

How many live now?

Contrariwise, MaggieL and I, for two, are the ones who by the mere act of owning guns keep you safe from genocide (remember genocide sneaks up on its victims -- starts with a con-job, ends in an Auschwitz). Now why, exactly, should it be only we two to bear that load? You can do your share by attaining skill with firearms and other killing tools, Pangloss.

Pacifism or passivism makes you dead. We resent like hell the prospect of being dragged down to Gehenna with you! When it comes to stopping the Einsatzkommandos, for the avoidable hatreds that set them up were already present, and a basic emotion like hatred will always be among humans, there's nothing like a 7.92mm Mauser slug transecting the brain for doing the stopping -- and justice also, no?

The JPFO's argument that gun control (air quotes if you like, as "control" always takes the form of some sort of actual ban) is the handmaiden of episodes of genocide, sometimes taking decades before the slaughter happens (viz., Cambodia) has never been refuted or rebutted. The idea's been in the public arena for a dozen years now, and no counterargument has ever been put forth.

Before you try and dismiss me as some insensitive crank, consider that I am a decent man who is offended by pogroms. And I can help make one into a fizzle. What's your story? Can you actually claim to have a moral position? If you can't kill a State's barbarians, no you cannot.

I've considered that you were a decent man before, but not for very long.

Where Spexx errs here is that he thinks all deaths are equivalent: he is setting an Amish junior high schooler's death at the same value as Charles Carl Robert's death. He forgets: one was innocent. It is moral to value innocent life over that of the perp.

With defensive, proper, non-police uses of guns, and these are mostly of handguns because of their portability (a long arm you bear, a pistol you wear) running at about two and a half million annually -- mostly without a shot being fired -- Spexx's views are dangerously behind the curve and can get Spexx or his loved ones killed much more easily than, say, my views on the matter.

There is a LOT here that you simply don't know, Spexx. I can recommend you a reading list that will at least allow you to speak intelligently.

Ibbie, that you've developed an ego-driven teenager's dislike of me does not exactly erode my decency! LOL.

(I seem to have grabbed your post for quoting before you edited it. There may be illumination in comparing first and second drafts.)

My answer: No.

Your bathtub is more dangerous than my handgun.

I'm not opposed to all taxes. But one problem here is that too much of the taxes collected in Philadelphia are spent on the Mayor's cronys and other bullshit rather than on enforcing the law.

No.

Hey, same meaning, I just edited it cause the second sounds better.

And this isnt ego-driven, it's hatred-driven. Youre a genuinely bad person.

Yes, and homosexuality used to be *in* the DSM. Stuff goes in and out of the DSM for political reasons all the time.

I vote for someone to give Ibram a gun to shoot UG!:rolleyes:

Inciting another, especially an impressionable juvenile, to violence shows a lack of moral fiber and ethical responsibility on your part, Mari, not that I'm surprised.

You don't get to control the discussion. Who do you think you are, tw?

Do you understand that most legal defensive uses of firearms--about three-quarters of them--don't involve actually firing the weapon, but simply being willing to do so? When we include cases where only a warning shot was fired, the rate rises to 92%.

That's the major fallacy of the "guns have no purpose besides killing" crowd. Of course, those cases are almost never reported by the media, and are often not reported to the cops. Legal defensive use of firearms involving discharging the weapon is seriously unreported in the media as well.

Oh..by the way:

Exactly. Let's not forget pistol whipping.

This is my pistol
This is my gun
One is for whipping
One is for shooting bullets.:blush:

Especially the fact that she's voting for someone else to provide the gun. Ever the good Socialist... :-)

What? Suggesting a vote is socialist? :rolleyes: And I doubt that Ibram is going to go off on a murder spree because of a joking comment. UG might, though.:worried:

No, wanting somebody else to provide for the gun is. (Wanting to subject matters of personal responsibiility to a popular vote only gets a collectivist "honorable mention".)

It's amusing that the impulse is so deeply ingrained in you that you couldn't figure that out (even though the key phrase is italicized).

I think you could kill me with a gun. I'd like you to try to kill me with a rock or bat. :cool:

Where urb errs here is that he thinks he knows what Spexx thinks.

Yeah, I read in the liberal media about all the bathtub murders last year. Is my bathtub as dangerous as you without a gun?

Oh, so now your a socialist - you want others to help pay for the additional prisons you want. What a collectivist! (when the collection suits you).

You don't pay Philadelphia taxes, so you have no right to complain. And the point about how they're spent? Nice straw man, Mags.:right:

I feel better now.:D

Maggie, stop taking yourself so damn seriously. It was a joke. Get it? J-O-K-E. While I don't advocate banning guns, I don't advocate giving them away for free, either.:rolleyes:

Heh! You gotta go to sleep SOMETIME! (That was a joke, too). ;)

My doors and windows have locks.;)

Many a true word is spoken in jest. You reveal more of yourself then you'd like to sometimes.

Dayum, maggs, I think she's right this time, chill out a bit dearie.

Probably have more luck with the rock or bat, most people can't hit the side of a barn with a bullet, they might shoot of a whole round and still not hit you. But one hard swing with a blunt object...messier and more painful too...
I would prefer death by bullet, not that it is at all likely to happen.

Those people who can't hit the broad side of a barn with a bullet probabaly won't be knocking you out with a bat either.

No, Maggie, you just have paranoid fantasies from reading too much Ayn Rand. Liberal does NOT = collectivist. I do NOT advocate turning the US into a socialist nation, only the Republic it was once intended to be. You're the one who is advocating the destruction of our personal liberties by saying torture, breaking the Geneva Convention, and throwing out the 6th Amendment is a wonderful thing. You reveal too much of yourself, also, Maggie. and your problem is that you're dead serious when you do it.

But its not worth arguing with you. You're a fundamentalist Neocon who worships Jr. as your savior.

I bet MaggieL is looking under bed every night before going to sleep. There might be a socialist there...

"A man with a gun is a citizen, a man without a gun is a subject. Our forefathers knew this to be true..... Why do so many of us question their wisdom?"

"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them." ~George Mason~

"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding." —Jeff Snyder

TJ on Disarming Public
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither
inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for
the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage
than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater
confidence than an armed man."
-Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria


“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.”
-- Samuel Adams, Debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87 (February 6, 1788).


“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”
-- Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 45 (Virginia Convention, June 5, 1788).


“God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed... what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.”
-- Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith on Nov. 13, 1787. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 12, p. 356 (1955).


“I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
-- George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 425-426, June 16, 1788

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person
were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified
in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would
be justified in silencing mankind.”- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard
even his enemy from opposition: for if he violates this duty he
establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ”- Thomas Paine,
Dissertation On First Principles Of Government

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” - Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

If guns are that important to maintaining freedom and liberty, wouldn't tanks, anthrax, nerve gas and nukular weapons be even better?

If guns are the critical factor to maintaining freedom and liberty, why isn't Iraq free? It's loaded with guns.

They're trying, don't you keep hearing the reports of more and more deaths there?

To (some of) them, killing Americans LEADS to freedom. Freedom from American opression.

North Korea should be very free, now that they have nukular weapons.;)

"People should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people"

How did I miss this? Esp. with my highly martial ancestry.

Or I might just content myself with giving you an Atomic Counter-Rotating Tittie Twister. With spray-can whipped cream. ;)

With the turn this part of the thread is taking, there might be some peripheral relevance to this in a thread I just started over in Philosophy: "Be Wary Of Strong Drink..."

No. And you'll just have to accept that, even if you cannot understand it.

I'm having a hard time keeping all the genuinely bad people sorted out. UG, are the the one who poops in tackle boxes or is that someone else? What, if anything have you done that's really really bad? Doesn't have to be poop related? Is there a mnemonic device that would help me remember that you are bad?

Um, can't think of one offhand. Probably a good sign.

This is the first I've heard of the tackle box thing. Sounds like a real eyebrow raiser.

UG, you'll just have to accept that I think you are nothing but a big-talking, annoying, brainlessly conservative, arrogant, lying, self-centered moron.

Wait, I forgot NeoMcCarthyist, bossy, mean-spirited, selfish, rude, inconsiderate, egomaniacal, snobbish, heartless... meh, I could go on for a while yet.

In one sense, they're a case study for gun rights. The most powerful army on the face of the earth has not been able to subjegate one of the most backwater shitholes in existence, because the occupants of that shithole have guns and a desire to keep us out.

If they had any sense to go along with their guns, they'd have some electricity and running water by now.

I'd say that culture has more to do with maintaining freedom and liberty, something we tried to tell George before he went in there. That said, I can't imagine giving up my weapon in a place like Iraq. I'd say the gun supports the culture but when the culture slips and the necessity for the gun appears I'd rather more stable folks were armed. The anthropomorphizing of these tools by the left is leading to a shift in the gun culture where only truly passionate right wingers will be armed. I'd rather the less politicized took it upon themselves.

It *is* the culture that keeps us free. So, by the time you feel the need to be armed, being armed won't protect you. When the culture slips you are doomed.

An armed society may well be the most impolite society you can possibly imagine.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard various L types say it was getting close to time to fight the system and taking up a gun is step one. Yes, there is a potential problem if you have a government armed and a population not armed. But as long as government is representational, there is a bigger problem with citizens armed and demanding to install the type of government THEY feel is best.

When anyone disagrees with you, your response is, to paraphrase, "you're not smart enough to understand". Sometimes, you don't express yourself well, sometimes there is just plain, old disagreement of opinion, and sometimes you're just downright wrong. But to you it's alway "the other guy is dumb". That's the attitude that is pervasive in conservative circles, and why I view most of them as assholes. But I guess you're just not smart enough to understand that...

Who is you white man? ;)

I'm conservative enough to want to maintain the culture we have. My anarchist streak gives me an intellectual urge to know, what would happen if?

Uppity citizens

What would happen if? Is that the national scale of, "hold my beer and watch this"? :haha:

Ibby is under eighteen, AFAIK. I'm fifty. I remember being seventeen, vividly I think. I remember being a boy before I was a man, and I remember how I thought as a boy, and how differently I thought as a man.

He's going to have to make the discovery that I'm the good guy for himself. Since he's not warped, merely not yet mature enough to impress a grizzled oldster with his maturity [edit: especially not just now -- I posted this before I read his two mini-rants, and I'm laughing as I type], and not unintelligent either, I think it is within his capacity to make the aforesaid discovery. I'm patient.

And I'm minded of what Mr. Dubois said of Johnny Rico in the Heinlein novel Starship Troopers.

So, Ibram's not old enough to think you're an asshole? I'm an adult--I'll co-sign for him: You're an asshole.

Those citizens would have to deploy some pretty heavy armament before that notion became a serious consideration. The government generally isn't worried about a citizenry with small arms overthrowing it. The city isn't worried about even it's armed police force overthrowing it; because, it can go to the State for National Guard support. The State isn't worried about it's armed National Guard overthrowing it; because, it can go to the Federal Government for Armed Forces support. The Federal Government isn't worried about the Armed Forces overthrowing it; because, there is a citizenry with small arms that could deny a total victory to the Armed Forces as it's experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Subversive citizens would need to use much more force to install a different government than the general population would need to prevent the government, if the government slips, from installing all different citizens.

Additionally, subversive citizens can pose as much danger (via domestic terrorism) to non-government personnel as to government personnel. Would you take away the non-subversive general population's ability to defend themselves with small arms? The subversives are going to acquire small arms whether they can be legally owned or not. The government can't even keep illegal drugs or illegal aliens out of this country let alone firearms. :confused:

Government does not deserve nor is it entitled to exist and operate with the comfort that the threat or possibility of revolution is pre-foreclosed. The point at which revolution is no longer possible is the moment at which government transitions from serving the people to ruling the people.

I want a gun for the simple reason that they don't want me to have one. Making government feel safer is not my job - making me feel safer is their job and I don't feel safer when they ask me to lay down my weapon while pointing theirs at my forehead.

While I respect that opinions differ, it still surprises me that people are willing to give up a right. And not just any right but the right to defend one's self. Ban guns all you want. Put me down for civil disobedience. And I'm past the point of parsing the 2nd Amendment. If the government doesn't care what it says then hey, neither do I.

Why does it surprise you? What percentage of citizens with the right to vote abdicate that right every election?

And harm millions with that decision.

WTF are you talking about? The government put the drugs on the street and hires the illegal aliens. :confused:

Many of you really don't look at things from other's perspectives, gays in fear of being bashed, those who carry large sums of cash for their work or just personal lifestyle, the disabled who are targeted for violence (yes we are) and cannot fight back, single women in areas of high crime.
& there has not been a non-lethal form of self defense that can drop a 300 lb man on steroids/drug or both like a .45 hollow-point can. Spray or electricity just pisses him off.
Until they invent it, Guns... and that is it.

The question is not whether or not it's logistically possible to overthrow a government with small arms, whether or not you are able to always avoid being victimized if you are armed, or whether the physical removal of all guns will somehow make us safer.

We are human beings, and as such we come out of the chute with two (among other) inborn traits: we're prone to violence, and we have the right to defend ourselves from attack. It's OEM. Society, upbringing, and circumstance exacerbates the violence, but that only reinforces the importance of our right to self-defence.

The Constitution reaffirms that right, but it does not grant it. What it amounts to is this: the government can't eliminate violence, so it has no right to deny us any means of defense we can conjure up, as long as exercising that defense doesn't harm innocents.

I didn't mean to spell defense with a C, but I think it makes me look Euro, and therefore liberals should automatically believe me.