Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We have a system of laws and civil liberties that require guilt be proven before taking away anyone's rights. Until such time as that proof of guilt occurs, everyone in America is innocent and allegedly in full possession of their natural individual rights. Combine that with 400+ million firearms in the hands of 100+ million firearm owners, and well, you have a badass bulwark against tyranny, but like any distribution curve, you'll have outliers, and at the "busted wires in skull" end of that curve, you have unfortunate, awful things occur occasionally.
But the math stands up my claim. Given our level of freedom to individually move about, unmolested by an intrusive government, and the sheer volume of firearm owners and what they own, we are spectacularly peaceful according to how little violence comes from all that firepower.
You operate on a guilt by association fallacy that because one person in 100 million misuses their own liberty, then the remaining 99,999,999 people are likewise guilty and must lose their freedom because they resemble someone who did a bad thing.
Luckily, unlike you, our rule of law doesn't operate on guilt by association.
And you can say scary sounding words like "military" or "assault" until the Sun burns out, and it doesn't change the rule of law because nowhere in the Bill of Rights is there an exception clause that reads "in case of scary words, all rights are hereby rescinded." There is a ton of wording, however, about all the limits on the government where the taking away of rights and property is concerned, as well as the explicit ban on ex post facto laws.
So bottom line, even with all your scary words and "if it just saves one life" guilt by association nonsense, if you want guns to go away, you have a major rewrite of the Constitution to get done, and then a total upheaval about how our entire country functions generally. Once that easy part is done, then you have the whole "go disarm the populace who now feels properly motivated to revolt" issue to handle.
I don't understand the need for guns to protect against tyranny, that just seems like an excuse. How do other nations survive without guns, makes no sense since we live in a democracy. I'm not against gun ownership just the level of fire power and lack of restrictions and vetting.
I never said every gunowner is guilty but in this country are more careful about cars and alcohol than guns. Yes a small percentage of gun owners are at risk, a large majority of the country isn't interested in doing anything. I guess we need to ignore mass shootings because they are a only small percentage. I have yet to hear a credible reason why anyone needs an AR-15 particularly an 18 year old, some states refuse to even impose red flag laws.
The framers weren't infallible, I think they may have changed their minds 200 years ago about if they could have foreseen an 18 year old with a military rifle would killing 20 innocent children.
We have 4% of the worlds population and 40% of the guns but sure it must be mental health it just couldn't be easy access to guns.
I don't understand the need for guns to protect against tyranny, that just seems like an excuse. How do other nations survive without guns, makes no sense since we live in a democracy. I'm not against gun ownership just the level of fire power and lack of restrictions and vetting.
I never said every gunowner is guilty but in this country are more careful about cars and alcohol than guns. Yes a small percentage of gun owners are at risk, a large majority of the country isn't interested in doing anything. I guess we need to ignore mass shootings because they are a only small percentage. I have yet to hear a credible reason why anyone needs an AR-15 particularly an 18 year old, some states refuse to even impose red flag laws.
The framers weren't infallible, I think they may have changed their minds 200 years ago about if they could have foreseen an 18 year old with a military rifle would killing 20 innocent children.
We have 4% of the worlds population and 40% of the guns but sure it must be mental health it just couldn't be easy access to guns.
FFS. Why do you keep repeating the same nonsense over and over and over again. What is this fixation with an everyday rifle that has been around for over 40 years ? One that is used rarely in firearms deaths ? If you were really concerned about peoples lives, you'd be focused on suicides first, since they make up more than half of firearms deaths, then next you should be focused on getting handguns restricted, since they are the most used firearm in homicides and crime.
It's laughable. You state you aren't against firearms ownership, then make a false accusation about "level of fire power" then focus on a rifle because of it's name and looks.
You'd gain my respect if you just stated you want all firearms restricted. Then I could understand where you are coming from.
FFS. Why do you keep repeating the same nonsense over and over and over again. What is this fixation with an everyday rifle that has been around for over 40 years ? One that is used rarely in firearms deaths ? If you were really concerned about peoples lives, you'd be focused on suicides first, since they make up more than half of firearms deaths, then next you should be focused on getting handguns restricted, since they are the most used firearm in homicides and crime.
It's laughable. You state you aren't against firearms ownership, then make a false accusation about "level of fire power" then focus on a rifle because of it's name and looks.
You'd gain my respect if you just stated you want all firearms restricted. Then I could understand where you are coming from.
It's like a cut and paste with the anti-gun folks. 'I am not against gun ownership but why do you need such and such.' As soon as they get rid of the such and such they go after another.
It's like a cut and paste with the anti-gun folks. 'I am not against gun ownership but why do you need such and such.' As soon as they get rid of the such and such they go after another.
That is exactly what is going on. First they start with a popular inexpensive rifle, get that banned. Then when there is no decrease in violence , go after all semi auto rifles and shot guns, then pump, lever, and bolt actions, then finally, they will go after handguns.
All while trying to bankrupt the firearms and ammo industry.
Look what happened in Canada.
In the meantime, what are they going to do about getting firearms out of the hands of criminals ? It's blatantly obvious, reducing crime and violence isn't the focus, disarming the law abiding is the end game. If they get their way.
I don't understand the need for guns to protect against tyranny, that just seems like an excuse. How do other nations survive without guns, makes no sense since we live in a democracy. I'm not against gun ownership just the level of fire power and lack of restrictions and vetting.
We are not other nations. We are the United States. We have a US Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Anti Federalist papers, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, countless letters and writings on bulwarks against tyranny from the men who wrote all of the above, and the rule of innocence until proven guilty. We also have civilian control over the government's military.
Everything designed for the People to have power over their public servants, not the other way around. But, should the government decide that 536 people in two buildings in DC get to rule over 330 million because they have a standing military...well, that's where the 2nd Amendment reminds them that their army is outmanned by OURS, and they continue to SERVE at our pleasure, not their own.
But to the point, here's how guns protect against tyranny - the armed civilian forces the tyrant into a very simple, very real binary choice. Either you leave the very well armed populace mostly in peace, minus a few petty tyrannies with your tax and intrusion laws, or you go all in and annihilate them and have nothing left to rule over, nobody to grow and harvest your food, nobody to do and make all the things that give the kingdom any meaning.
The reason it is binary is 100+ million armed people can and will fight back if you try to do it in increments, like sneaky "who me?" tyranny. All that does is create a war of attrition that Leviathan loses based on being outmanned roughly 100:1, and with the civilian populace in total control of the means and results of production in this country. An armed populace simply cannot be incrementally terrorized. At some point, they figure out who is the bad guy and there are way more of them than their are of Leviathan's infantry, a decent percentage of whom will switch sides at the first notion they are supposed to kill their family, friends and neighbors.
The narrative of "but they have tanks, drones, planes, missiles, etc!!" is not a rebuttal to my point, it's proof. Yes, they do have all those things, and our 100+ million armed citizens means they either leave us alone (mostly), or they break all that firepower out and crush us utterly. Because in just small arms infantry vs infantry...we win handily. If they do go all the way, the one thing that allows 536 old people to rule 330 million people disappears instantly. That thing is faith/belief that the government is right, justified and necessary. Take that faith/belief away, and they are 536 old, helpless morons who cannot do basic arithmetic.
That's the bulwark against tyranny. Not the guns, the bullets or even the will to use them. Nope. The bulwark is the choice the guns force upon them - leave us alone (mostly) or destroy any faith/belief that government is/should be in charge. They HAVE to have that faith. It all unravels without it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodnight
I never said every gunowner is guilty
You seek to take away all of their rights, and we only remove people's rights when we find them guilty of crimes. Call it what you like and dress it up in "no no, not all guns, just the ones the government doesn't want armed America to have because they are tyrants" rhetoric, but it is still taking away liberty and property, which is punishment reserved for the guilty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodnight
but in this country are more careful about cars and alcohol than guns.
No we aren't. Cars kill as many people as guns, and if you remove suicide, cars are actually close to double the fatality total of firearm homicide. You can operate, own and register a car at 16 years old, after a simple written test and one behind the wheel test.
Alcohol kills about 4x as many people per year as gun homicide. Only requirement for purchasing alcohol legally is to turn 21. Period. To buy/consume it illegally, you just need to have someone willing to provide it. Pretty sure 80% of the nation's high school students understand this concept pretty readily.
In my entire life, I have never had to fill out an ATF form 4473 for purchasing either alcohol or tobacco, but I have for every one of my firearms.
In my entire life, I never got fingerprinted or had federal AND state background checks run on me to purchase a car, alcohol, tobacco, etc, but I have for both buying my firearms and getting my CCW.
Not one of the car dealers or package/beverage stores I have ever purchased from has been required to keep a formal record of even one of my transactions for 20 years under penalty of ATF law, but every firearm dealer I purchased from has.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodnight
Yes a small percentage of gun owners are at risk, a large majority of the country isn't interested in doing anything. I guess we need to ignore mass shootings because they are a only small percentage. I have yet to hear a credible reason why anyone needs an AR-15 particularly an 18 year old, some states refuse to even impose red flag laws.
Red flag laws are intentional, institutional violations of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments, as well as the entire basis of the US rule of law. You have rights taken away via illegal seizure, without due process, and without being able to confront witnesses against you, and once so taken, you get your liberty and property restored only after you prove innocence, since your guilt is assumed. Red flags are anathema to our entire concept and system of US governance.
On the subject of mass shooting, if you remove the inner city violence that is the vast majority of mass shootings annually, and focus on what you and other anti-2A people think are the only ones, which are white kids with rifles who shoot up schools, ask not only the occurrence of such crimes relative to volume of rifles owned, population and total time since Columbine, but also the recidivism rate of mentally deranged white kids with rifles who shoot up schools. It's zero, btw. The only repeat offenders in the mass shooting game are the folks in the gang/drug wars who spend HOURs in jail before being released back into the wild, over and over until they get killed themselves, and that is a handgun game, not a semiautomatic rifle one.
Do I know exactly how to prevent a mass shooting? Nope. I cannot say what will work, but I do know what won't work, which is taking away my liberty and property when I have done nothing wrong in my entire life, or that of 100 million other people who are similarly innocent. I don't worry about how to keep others safe, I worry about how to keep me and my family safe. At no point did taking your rights away ever occur to me as the best way to keep myself safe. We clearly think differently on that point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodnight
The framers weren't infallible, I think they may have changed their minds 200 years ago about if they could have foreseen an 18 year old with a military rifle would killing 20 innocent children.
We have 4% of the worlds population and 40% of the guns but sure it must be mental health it just couldn't be easy access to guns.
The Founding Fathers gave you everything you need to change your mind later, while actually following the process. It's called Article V of the US Constitution, and if you want to update the document with modern sensibilities about how to take away the explicitly protected rights of both the States and the People, all the instructions are right there. Granted, you need 51% of the People in 38 of the States to agree to surrender their rights under your tyrannical paradigm, but if your ideas are as popular as you believe they are, I'd imagine amending the Constitution to take away gun rights should be no big effort. Right?
We are not other nations. We are the United States. We have a US Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Anti Federalist papers, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, countless letters and writings on bulwarks against tyranny from the men who wrote all of the above, and the rule of innocence until proven guilty. We also have civilian control over the government's military.
Everything designed for the People to have power over their public servants, not the other way around. But, should the government decide that 536 people in two buildings in DC get to rule over 330 million because they have a standing military...well, that's where the 2nd Amendment reminds them that their army is outmanned by OURS, and they continue to SERVE at our pleasure, not their own.
But to the point, here's how guns protect against tyranny - the armed civilian forces the tyrant into a very simple, very real binary choice. Either you leave the very well armed populace mostly in peace, minus a few petty tyrannies with your tax and intrusion laws, or you go all in and annihilate them and have nothing left to rule over, nobody to grow and harvest your food, nobody to do and make all the things that give the kingdom any meaning.
The reason it is binary is 100+ million armed people can and will fight back if you try to do it in increments, like sneaky "who me?" tyranny. All that does is create a war of attrition that Leviathan loses based on being outmanned roughly 100:1, and with the civilian populace in total control of the means and results of production in this country. An armed populace simply cannot be incrementally terrorized. At some point, they figure out who is the bad guy and there are way more of them than their are of Leviathan's infantry, a decent percentage of whom will switch sides at the first notion they are supposed to kill their family, friends and neighbors.
The narrative of "but they have tanks, drones, planes, missiles, etc!!" is not a rebuttal to my point, it's proof. Yes, they do have all those things, and our 100+ million armed citizens means they either leave us alone (mostly), or they break all that firepower out and crush us utterly. Because in just small arms infantry vs infantry...we win handily. If they do go all the way, the one thing that allows 536 old people to rule 330 million people disappears instantly. That thing is faith/belief that the government is right, justified and necessary. Take that faith/belief away, and they are 536 old, helpless morons who cannot do basic arithmetic.
That's the bulwark against tyranny. Not the guns, the bullets or even the will to use them. Nope. The bulwark is the choice the guns force upon them - leave us alone (mostly) or destroy any faith/belief that government is/should be in charge. They HAVE to have that faith. It all unravels without it.
You seek to take away all of their rights, and we only remove people's rights when we find them guilty of crimes. Call it what you like and dress it up in "no no, not all guns, just the ones the government doesn't want armed America to have because they are tyrants" rhetoric, but it is still taking away liberty and property, which is punishment reserved for the guilty.
No we aren't. Cars kill as many people as guns, and if you remove suicide, cars are actually close to double the fatality total of firearm homicide. You can operate, own and register a car at 16 years old, after a simple written test and one behind the wheel test.
Alcohol kills about 4x as many people per year as gun homicide. Only requirement for purchasing alcohol legally is to turn 21. Period. To buy/consume it illegally, you just need to have someone willing to provide it. Pretty sure 80% of the nation's high school students understand this concept pretty readily.
In my entire life, I have never had to fill out an ATF form 4473 for purchasing either alcohol or tobacco, but I have for every one of my firearms.
In my entire life, I never got fingerprinted or had federal AND state background checks run on me to purchase a car, alcohol, tobacco, etc, but I have for both buying my firearms and getting my CCW.
Not one of the car dealers or package/beverage stores I have ever purchased from has been required to keep a formal record of even one of my transactions for 20 years under penalty of ATF law, but every firearm dealer I purchased from has.
Red flag laws are intentional, institutional violations of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments, as well as the entire basis of the US rule of law. You have rights taken away via illegal seizure, without due process, and without being able to confront witnesses against you, and once so taken, you get your liberty and property restored only after you prove innocence, since your guilt is assumed. Red flags are anathema to our entire concept and system of US governance.
On the subject of mass shooting, if you remove the inner city violence that is the vast majority of mass shootings annually, and focus on what you and other anti-2A people think are the only ones, which are white kids with rifles who shoot up schools, ask not only the occurrence of such crimes relative to volume of rifles owned, population and total time since Columbine, but also the recidivism rate of mentally deranged white kids with rifles who shoot up schools. It's zero, btw. The only repeat offenders in the mass shooting game are the folks in the gang/drug wars who spend HOURs in jail before being released back into the wild, over and over until they get killed themselves, and that is a handgun game, not a semiautomatic rifle one.
Do I know exactly how to prevent a mass shooting? Nope. I cannot say what will work, but I do know what won't work, which is taking away my liberty and property when I have done nothing wrong in my entire life, or that of 100 million other people who are similarly innocent. I don't worry about how to keep others safe, I worry about how to keep me and my family safe. At no point did taking your rights away ever occur to me as the best way to keep myself safe. We clearly think differently on that point.
The Founding Fathers gave you everything you need to change your mind later, while actually following the process. It's called Article V of the US Constitution, and if you want to update the document with modern sensibilities about how to take away the explicitly protected rights of both the States and the People, all the instructions are right there. Granted, you need 51% of the People in 38 of the States to agree to surrender their rights under your tyrannical paradigm, but if your ideas are as popular as you believe they are, I'd imagine amending the Constitution to take away gun rights should be no big effort. Right?
No we are not like other nations when it comes to guns, we stand alone in our violence and nothing ever changes.
No we are not like other nations when it comes to guns, we stand alone in our violence and nothing ever changes.
We stand alone in our freedom and civil liberty, and that has occasional downsides. One of those would be the innocent until proven guilty person abusing their natural individual right to keep and bear arms.
But when 1 in a million does a bad thing, nothing is gained by punishing the entire million, yet everything is lost.
Not only did GOODNIGHT's post not age well...we have recent evidence that those "pros" seem to cause a lot more collateral damage than those "novices".
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
