CDZ Another Question for Gun Owners

[Bob Blaylock]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry at the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

It's all a matter of upbringing and teaching. Of parents teaching their young, not only the necessary skills for survival, but of right and wrong. This worked fine for many, many generations.

Wrong-wing ideology has infested this nation like a disease, and has attacked the roots of marriage, family, and morality; and with it, the ethical and moral upbringing that once were almost universal.

The violence that now plagues this nation is not a result of easy access to weapons; it is a direct result of liberalism, and the moral decay which it has willfully promoted. And no purported remedy for this disease will be effective which does not directly attack this cause thereof.

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

 

[Fair&Balanced]

It's illegal for the felon to buy a gun.

Your "I'm a gun seller at a gun show" statement can be misleading in that it implies you are a dealer or in the business of selling guns. If so, you are required to do a background check. What many anti-gun advocates want to do is make it illegal to transfer ownership of guns without a background check. This means a father who gives his 13 year old son a single-shot .22 rifle for his birthday would be violating the law unless they both went down to a place authorized to conduct background checks. Same for a spouse who gives their other half a gift of a self-defense firearm. This is simply an underhanded means to register guns and track ownership, a required bit of information should confiscation as Hillary** proposed be put into law.

Red:
Believe it or not, my vocabulary is broad enough that the distinction between "seller" and "dealer" is not lost on me and I wrote what I meant. I don't really care whether one, or even a felon, buys or receives a gun from a dealer or any other kind of seller. I care that people who have no business/right legally buying a gun are prohibited from actually buying a gun.

From Politifact:​

1. Federally licensed gun sellers are required to run background checks. But not all sellers are required to be licensed. Some of those unlicensed sellers sell at gun shows.

Federal law requires that persons who are engaged in the business of dealing in firearms be licensed by the federal government. Obama’s goal with his new plan is to tighten the screws on who is included in that group.

Announced Jan. 5, Obama’s plan requires those in the business of dealing in firearms -- including sellers at stores, gun shows and on the Internet -- get a license. Once they’re licensed, they are required to conduct background checks on all buyers.

But private sellers without a federal license don’t have to meet the same requirement. Though this exception is often referred to as the "gun show loophole," it actually applies more broadly to unlicensed individuals, whether they are selling at a gun show or somewhere else. (Some states have implemented their own background check requirement beyond federal law.)

Bush’s argument centers on the fact that the loophole doesn’t single out gun shows.

A Bush spokesman pointed to a 2000 article by David Kopel, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. (The spokesman also cited a brief from Politico that made a similar argument to Kopel’s.) Kopel wrote that for decades, dealers have been required to obtain a federal firearms license. But those who sell firearms from time to time -- such as to a relative -- aren’t required to obtain such a license.

"Existing gun laws apply just as much to gun shows as they do to any other place where guns are sold," he wrote. "If you walk along the aisles at any gun show, you will find that the overwhelming majority of guns offered for sale are from federally licensed dealers. Guns sold by private individuals (such as gun collectors getting rid of a gun or two over the weekend) are the distinct minority."

Kopel, a law professor at Denver University, told PolitiFact that his own research was based on gun shows in Colorado in the 1980s and 1990s.​

Blue:
As for the matter of gifts, well, I realize that no law can actually stop that from happening if the giver trust the recipient will not betray the trust the former shows by making the gift. That said, if the recipient does betray that trust, there should be some legal means of criminal and civil recourse the state and individuals harmed by the recipient's gun use can pursue.

I don't have a problem with the transactions by which one comes by a gun be tracked, including the tracking of the gun purchased. We do precisely that for cars; I see no reason not to do it with guns. We have a right to own a gun. We don't have a right to own one secretly. Frankly, I think having a robust means of tracing the history of a gun's legal ownership will help inspire legit owners to keep better control over their firearms.

Of the 16,667 firearms reported [in 2012] as lost or stolen from federal firearms license holders, a total of 10,915 firearms were reported as lost. The remaining 5,762 were reported as stolen. In my mind, that's at least ~11K folks (assuming a 1:1 ratio between guns and gun losers) who have no business owning a gun. Be that as it may, if those lost guns show up somewhere, knowing to whom it last legally belonged is a good thing.

No one is going to confiscate cars.....confiscation of guns is a step governments use to keep people under control......so that is a non starter.

The problem is this.....the individual buying the gun illegally is the only one actually committing an illegal act......I don't care if you sell a gun from a private collection occasionally without a background check.....this is not the method that criminals get guns and even if it was.......you can arrest the criminal for the actions they take with the gun or the simple act of finding them with the gun....

The obsession with punishing normal gun owners...to the complete ignoring of the actual criminal is simply nuts.

Again....why don't we insist on background checks for computers before we sell computers or electronic devices...if the goal it to prevent criminals from committing crimes we should be doing that.........since sex trafficking, child porn, identity theft, theft of state secrets, and any number of crimes use computers........if it was stopping felons from committing crimes then computers should be tracked the same as you guys want guns tracked....even more so.....

We already have laws on the books...if a felon is in possession of a gun, arrest him and put him away for 30 years. Normal, law abiding gun owners are not subsidiary branches of law enforcement....we are not required to and are told not to engage in law enforcement on our own time....but for this.....you guys want us to become Jr. cops.......on our own dime.......

If you want to police felons at gun shows....do it the right way...devote actual police resources to attempt to buy and sell to individual sellers...identifying themselves as people who cannot legally buy guns...and then attempt to complete the sale......hit the guy with a huge fine if he tries to sell the .22 rifle to someone he knows can't buy it...don't destroy his life......

Also....you have the anti gunner bait and switch.....you guys think it will only apply to private sales.....but the anti gunners have passed that....and are now switching the terms....they want background checks on all transfers of guns....that means you can't borrow your dad's shotgun to go hunting next weekend..if you both don't go down to the gun store to get background checks........you can't have your brother keep your guns at his house while you are on vacation...without going to the gun store and paying for a background check...first, to give them to your brother, and second to take them back when you get home......

The best method......go after the actual criminals who actually, intentionally break the law. If you catch a felon with an illegal gun......don't just give him a year and a half for good behavior......send him away for 30 years....that will actually dry up criminal use of guns....

If that is your goal.....

If someone uses a gun to rob a liquor store......send him away for 30 years.......that will dry up gun crime.....

if that is your goal.....

If you hate guns...and the people who own them...continue to target normal, law abiding gun owners with law after law that doesn't stop a single actual violent criminal or mass shooter......and you will continue to have people murdered with guns....

Is a buyer of illegal drugs also a criminal?

Yes. Drugs are illegal to sell....guns are not........

Not the question. Someone stated that the guy who buys a gun unlicensed without a background check, like in the back aisles of a gun show, isn't a criminal.

Using that distorted reasoning, people buying illegal drugs aren't criminals, either.

In states where background checks on private sales are not required, they are NOT criminals Howey,

 

[320 Years of History]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and http://www.grammar-once-and-for-all.com/punctuation/parenthetical-expressions/) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general.


Wrong.....you stated...

The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young,

You said not young..which I would guess means...not young people......

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

No one said it was acceptable......it is simply put into perspective with the number of people who legally own guns, the actual criminal status of the thugs doing the shooting, since they cannot buy, own or carry guns under existing law...making one wonder how making it more illegal for them to carry guns will have the effect you guys claim it will have....since they get around background checks, cannot be licensed to own guns in the first place and are not legally allowed to register guns...all solutions the anti gunners have stated they want to address those 8,124 murders....

We have put up actual solutions....catch a felon with a gun.....30 years in prison. That will actually work, and has the added advantage of going after actual criminals...not law abiding gun owners.

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and http://www.grammar-once-and-for-all.com/punctuation/parenthetical-expressions/) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

And you are wrong.....the majority of those doing the killing...are already banned from guns....and nothing you or the other gun grabbers have pushed forward would change the situation.

And so, you would increase penalties and regulations on people not committing these murders...in order to have absolutely no effect on those who are committing the murders...and you complain about us?

And the fact is that as more Americans have bought, owned and carried guns.......our gun murder rate has dropped...which means that gun ownership is not the issue in gun crimes......so you aren't even focusing on the actual problem.....

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

And, of course, you haven't thought that through....all of the gun research on defensive gun use over the last 40 years....shows that lives are saved with guns...so your "if it only saves one life" is a foolish point to make since by all the research, guns are used to save lives more than they are used to take them....every single study shows this...even the ones used by the anti gunners......and even the studies by the anti gunners, the ones they embrace....show that guns save lives vs. take lives at a 13 to 1 rate.......

So any way you slice it...Americans carrying guns for self defense or keeping them in the home...save lives........more lives than are taken by criminals....even if you then throw in suicides....they still save more lives....then if you throw in accidents to boost your numbers, they still save more lives.......

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.

Selfishly devoted?......you demonstrate a lack of historical understanding....the atrocities committed against unarmed populations by their very own governments in the modern world easily vindicates the beliefs and understanding of the Founding Fathers and their inclusion of the 2nd Amendment to preserve the right to keep and bear arms......Germany, Rwanda, Mexico, the Armenian genocide, pol pot, mao, stalin.......

Mass murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing are only stopped and kept in check by the ownership of guns by the law abiding people of a country.....history shows this over and over.......

It is more selfish to throw away a Right that was hard won by our founders, and denying it to future generations who will likely not live in the same country that we do.......the Germans of the 1920s never saw the death camps in their future.......the Mexicans in shallow graves today just across our border dream of having the rifles they need to stop their government and their drug cartel allies....

You are the selfish one...who lives in the freedom provided by your anscestors who would deny it to future generations...

 

[320 Years of History]

No one said it was acceptable......it is simply put into perspective

There is no other perspective that matters more in my mind than the perspective that says "one person involuntarily dead by gunshot is one person too many, and any effort to impede implementation of anything that offers the chance of that one fewer person not thus passing is immoral and inhumane."

 

[320 Years of History]

Selfishly devoted?......you demonstrate a lack of historical understanding....the atrocities committed against unarmed populations by their very own governments in the modern world easily vindicates the beliefs and understanding of the Founding Fathers and their inclusion of the 2nd Amendment to preserve the right to keep and bear arms......Germany, Rwanda, Mexico, the Armenian genocide, pol pot, mao, stalin.......

Mass murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing are only stopped and kept in check by the ownership of guns by the law abiding people of a country.....history shows this over and over.......

Irrelevant.

We know that governments will have access to weaponry. We know that won't ever be stopped from happening. Nobody is talking about what may happen when a person willfully chooses to oppose their existing government. We all know that such a choice may lead to one's death, be it by gunshot or otherwise and one knows that is a real possibility when one willingly takes up the task of revolting against their government.

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.

They had long histories of mental illness......and if they are murdering innocent people, undiagnosed......or they were terrorists........

Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

No....again, you aren't thinking....I don't know of any 2nd Amendment supporter that believe that violent criminals should have access to guns.....iran is a violent criminal state...for example...they are the lead supporter of terrorism around the world...they are not normal big gun owners....so if anyone is wrong on this issue it is those people who think that we should disarm normal Americans while allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons...especially considering their statements of intent on using them to commit mass murder and genocide against the State of Israel...

 

[2aguy]

Selfishly devoted?......you demonstrate a lack of historical understanding....the atrocities committed against unarmed populations by their very own governments in the modern world easily vindicates the beliefs and understanding of the Founding Fathers and their inclusion of the 2nd Amendment to preserve the right to keep and bear arms......Germany, Rwanda, Mexico, the Armenian genocide, pol pot, mao, stalin.......

Mass murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing are only stopped and kept in check by the ownership of guns by the law abiding people of a country.....history shows this over and over.......

Irrelevant.

We know that governments will have access to weaponry. We know that won't ever be stopped from happening. Nobody is talking about what may happen when a person willfully chooses to oppose their existing government. We all know that such a choice may lead to one's death, be it by gunshot or otherwise and one knows that is a real possibility when one willingly takes up the task of revolting against their government.

That post was irrelevant.......yes...governments will have guns...which makes it all the more important to make sure the people have the same weapons...to keep the government from ever contemplating the mass murders we have seen and are seeing in these other countries....

 

[2aguy]

No one said it was acceptable......it is simply put into perspective

There is no other perspective that matters more in my mind than the perspective that says "one person involuntarily dead by gunshot is one person too many, and any effort to impede implementation of anything that offers the chance of that one fewer person not thus passing is immoral and inhumane."

So...according to your logic, we need to end the practice of medicine....since one person dead involuntarily by the hands of a doctor disqualifies all surgery....right? When kermit gosnell was murdering women in his clinic...that means the entire profession of medicine needs to end...to save one life...right......?

 

[2aguy]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

No....Iran is not unpredictable....they support terrorists murdering innocent people around the world....not an unknown quantity...they have specifically stated that they want to murder every Jew in the Jewish state...not an unknown quantity...they are essentially the equivalent of a convicted felon on an international level.......and you are the one who wants to ignore that status and arm them...while disarming normal, law abiding people who have harmed no one, and who have never threatened anyone...

You are the delusional one....

 

[320 Years of History]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

No....Iran is not unpredictable....they support terrorists murdering innocent people around the world....not an unknown quantity...they have specifically stated that they want to murder every Jew in the Jewish state...not an unknown quantity...they are essentially the equivalent of a convicted felon on an international level.......and you are the one who wants to ignore that status and arm them...while disarming normal, law abiding people who have harmed no one, and who have never threatened anyone...

You are the delusional one....

If someone tells you the tooth fairy will visit you tomorrow, would you believe that as well and find a tooth too put under your pillow?

You truly don't realize just how foolish what you wrote is coming as the thought of one who is ostensibly a grown person. If Iran's leadership and people were of a mind to rid Israel of every Jew, don't you think they'd at least be acting to do so even before they get hold of a nuclear weapon? What do you think the folks who want to achieve that goal are doing? Apparently you believe they are thinking, "Oh, well, lookey here, Al-Opie, we have a nuclear weapon we're building, so whaddya say? How about we just wait on that goal." The U.S. didn't cease and desist on its prosecution of the war against Japan because its leaders knew they had an atomic weapon "coming soon to Japanese theaters."

 

[320 Years of History]

I think it's nuts that a minor be allowed to own, buy, or carry a personal firearm in peacetime, or during a war in which the U.S. has not been invaded.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788​

I agree with that principle. The problem as I see it is that people, young and not young, are just fine at learning how to use arms -- it's not as though basic gun use is all that hard "get" -- but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to. Any fool can shoot someone else when they are angry with the other person. It takes a wholly different level of maturity to refrain from doing so and finding other ways to resolve the differences that rile them.

but they aren't very fine at all at learning and applying good sense about when to use them and when not to.


How do you figure that? with 357,000,000 guns in private hands.....and less than 8,124 of them used to commit murder....we are not talking about normal gun owners shooting people...all of the research into who commits murder confirms this.....the myth of the gun owner who decides to commit murder simply because they have a gun is just that...a myth...those shooting other people have long histories of violence and crime that go back to their teenage years........


357,000,000 to less than 8,124.....not even close ....

The context of my first remark and my subsequent remark in this discussion was minors, not "people" in general. The Lee quote, in response to my remark about minors was "on point." Your subsequent remark that extended the context to people in general, however, is not. I have no idea why, given that context, you focused on the "not young" part of the appositive "young and not young," but alas you did. (Rules for Comma Usage and Parenthetical Expressions - Grammar Once and for All) But that's not what inspired me to bother replying to your remarks....

Green:
If one is of the mind that ~8100 gunshot killings is acceptable in light of how many guns are privately held, well, all I have to say in reply is that I find that sum unacceptable. Of the folks who find that figure acceptable, they and I are at an impasse and there's no point in either of our bothering to discuss the matter.

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period. I know it's going to happen occasionally no matter what we do, but every time it happens is one time too often and my view of human life is such that we owe it to ourselves as humans to get the figure as close as humanly possible to zero deaths due to involuntarily being shot.

You and others can present all the arguments and statistics you want, but that basic principle sits at the core of everything I think about guns and gun use/abuse. For the time being, that means that I find it acceptable that if some folks who've done nothing wrong may have to yield some of their right to own/have guns, or may have to yield some of the ease with which they may buy one, so that some of those ~8100 people don't die, then that's a concession/several concessions that must be made, if for no other reason than to in good faith and clear conscience try it/them in the U.S. and see if it/they work(s).

For me, it's not about whether folks die in mass shootings or single shootings. It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.) It's about doing whatever we can to reduce the number of people who die at the hands of a shooter when those folks were not anticipating that be the end of the time alive.

It'd be different were the context of the situation to fall fully within the realm of the natural world, or where all those deaths were purely accidental, but little about the "gun issue" falls within those spheres of events and circumstances. Therefore, it doesn't really matter to me what we try as a means to achieving the stated goal above; I'm fine with trying "whatever."

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place. Most importantly, I don't see how any God-fearing person or moral atheist can live with themselves and actually stand on a position that inherently depends upon the supremacy of one's 2nd Amendment rights over another's right to remain alive if there's even the barest chance that by conceding some of one's gun rights another person's life be not taken.


Red:
I agree that, for the most part, adult folks don't just haul off and shoot others merely because they have possession of a gun and thereby can do so. I think some minors may be inclined to so that, but I don't know whether they actually do so.


Blue:
Do they now?

• Columbine
• Sandy Hook
• Orlando
• Dallas
• Baton Rouge
• "Philando" -- The guy had a "rap sheet" full of....wait for it....traffic violations. The cop who shot him is, well, a cop. As far as I know, he too had no criminal record.
  
  Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after a minor traffic stop, had no felony convictions, but being stopped by the police for small traffic hassles was a regular occurrence for him.
  
  New audio shows that he may have been stopped the night he died because police thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect due to the width of his nose.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.


Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

The very idea that we Americans should have unencumbered and supposedly inalienable right to the gun ownership while we should be the agents of encumbering that of other nations is just BS hypocrisy when considered in light of the dicta we espouse on a larger scale. Do you know what an inalienable right is? It's a right one has, is free to exercise/enjoy and is due no matter the political authority/system under which one lives. It's a right that is "bigger" than you, I, our families, our states, our nation or the body of nations and peoples on the planet. It is a right that is insoluble.

• We should do nothing to constrain the rights of Americans to use guns, but we must do "whatever" to constrain the right of other nations to have really big guns, such as nuclear tipped ICBMs.
• "So and so" is "nuts" or unpredictable or whatever and can't be trusted not to use nuclear tipped ICBMs against a target we'd rather s/he not destroy; therefore s/he should not have have them. On the other hand, as goes the only nation that has ever seen fit to use a nuclear weapon, it is somehow perfectly okay that it lots of them because, of course, the only thing that would inspire that nation to use them against others is an impediment to whatever the heck it thinks it wants to do, most likely something having to do with making money, that another nation won't let it do and of which the former nation has reached point of saying, "Enough. Be gone with you."

Unlike devout gun rights advocates, I don't have a problem with considering the right to bear arms a soluble right. It's not one I think should be be "willy nilly" vacated or taken, but I'm okay with taking it from individuals in general or specifically if other, the potential of preserving other and/or more important rights be in the offing.

It'd be nice to use the example one might take from measurements of gun use/abuse behavior and attitudes observed in other countries, but the reality is that those traits vary depending on culture. Some peoples and nations are more bellicose than others. Some value human life more than others. Some value tolerance more than others. Even in the same country, culture and what its people value varies with time. The culture of the U.S. in the 21st century is not the same as that of other nations nor is it the same as the U.S.' culture of the 18th century; therefore it makes no sense to any material extent use those cultures as surrogates for what may or may not happen in the U.S. were similar gun use/abuse provisions enacted. Were it so that attitudes and behaviors about gun use/abuse at such an intrinsic level of human existence that it be rightly ascribed as part of human nature, I would feel differently. But it doesn't and I don't.

It seems to me that there have been enough folks in recent times who have no history of violence and crime who also just "flip" one day and start shooting others that your claim cannot be true.

They had long histories of mental illness......and if they are murdering innocent people, undiagnosed......or they were terrorists........

Other:
When gun rights advocates begin to apply the same principles to large guns that they apply to what are, for all intents and purposes "big guns," I may think there is some measure of integrity to their arguments opposing the idea of restricting access to guns and ammunition. Well, you see the very same folks who say that everyone should be free to buy a gun are also the folks who think on a national level we should deny other nations the right to own very big guns.

Well, the principle isn't all that well considered if it works on the small scale but not on a large scale. The gun issue is not the same in nature as that of quantum physics and Newtonian physics, and even if it were, it would still require that the principles apply and "hold water" in "micro" and "macro" scale scenarios as do quantum phenomena. (Quantum effect spotted in a visible object - physicsworld.com)

No....again, you aren't thinking....I don't know of any 2nd Amendment supporter that believe that violent criminals should have access to guns.....iran is a violent criminal state...for example...they are the lead supporter of terrorism around the world...they are not normal big gun owners....so if anyone is wrong on this issue it is those people who think that we should disarm normal Americans while allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons...especially considering their statements of intent on using them to commit mass murder and genocide against the State of Israel...

Selfishly devoted?......you demonstrate a lack of historical understanding....the atrocities committed against unarmed populations by their very own governments in the modern world easily vindicates the beliefs and understanding of the Founding Fathers and their inclusion of the 2nd Amendment to preserve the right to keep and bear arms......Germany, Rwanda, Mexico, the Armenian genocide, pol pot, mao, stalin.......

Mass murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing are only stopped and kept in check by the ownership of guns by the law abiding people of a country.....history shows this over and over.......

Irrelevant.

We know that governments will have access to weaponry. We know that won't ever be stopped from happening. Nobody is talking about what may happen when a person willfully chooses to oppose their existing government. We all know that such a choice may lead to one's death, be it by gunshot or otherwise and one knows that is a real possibility when one willingly takes up the task of revolting against their government.

That post was irrelevant.......yes...governments will have guns...which makes it all the more important to make sure the people have the same weapons...to keep the government from ever contemplating the mass murders we have seen and are seeing in these other countries....

No one said it was acceptable......it is simply put into perspective

There is no other perspective that matters more in my mind than the perspective that says "one person involuntarily dead by gunshot is one person too many, and any effort to impede implementation of anything that offers the chance of that one fewer person not thus passing is immoral and inhumane."

So...according to your logic, we need to end the practice of medicine....since one person dead involuntarily by the hands of a doctor disqualifies all surgery....right? When kermit gosnell was murdering women in his clinic...that means the entire profession of medicine needs to end...to save one life...right......?

Boy, it's a good thing you aren't a fish for you took that bait hook, line and sinker and showed just ridiculous you can be with the lines of argument you'll present. This is done. I won't again make the mistake of paying you any mind.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

In my mind, nobody who is authorized to own a gun should ever use it to kill another person. Period.

·
·
·​

It's also not about whether folks die at the hand of a person with a criminal record or without a criminal record. It's not about the property one thinks one must defend. It's not even about whether I may save my own (or someone else's) life by using a gun in a defensive way, for as I see it, my ostensible passing at the hand of an assailant would be "worth it" if by my having given up part or all of my gun rights, I've allowed more than one other person to live. (One life, no matter whose it is, isn't more important than two or more other lives.)

If you truly believe that your life is no more valuable than that of a feral, subhuman criminal against whom you might have occasion to defend it, then I will not dispute that.

My life, however, is far more, valuable than that, and so is my wife's, my mother's, my brother's, my sister's, the lives of all my other relatives, the lives of everyone that I know, and, in fact, the vast majority of lives of even people I do not know.

Other than the aforementioned feral subhuman criminal, whose lives do you think you would save by giving up your gun rights? Who are you going to kill, if you have a gun, if you don't even have the guts to kill a feral subhuman in order to defend your own life or that of someone you care about?

It is irrelevant to me what the Framers wrote in the Constitution's 2nd Amendment or that they wrote it; we already know they didn't get everything right, and we know they lived in a different time, a time with different cultural mores, than we do. I don't understand how gun rights advocates can be so selfishly devoted to their guns and using them that they cannot consider that the 2nd Amendment may have, like other Constitutional provisions did, outlived its time, or that the Framers were just wrong to have penned the 2nd Amendment in the first place.

If the Second Amendment is outdated, or was in error in the first place, then the legitimate remedy is to amend the Constitution to overturn it. Unless and until this is done, the Second Amendment stands as part of this nation's highest law; affirming a right of the people to keep and bear arms, and forbidding government from touching this right; and government is acting illegally in every instance where it interferes with this right.

 

[320 Years of History]

Other than the aforementioned feral subhuman criminal, whose lives do you think you would save by giving up your gun rights? Who are you going to kill, if you have a gun, if you don't even have the guts to kill a feral subhuman in order to defend your own life or that of someone you care about?

If you'll rephrase your questions in neutral language, I'll answer them. As they stand now as leading questions, I won't dignify them with replies.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Other than the aforementioned feral subhuman criminal, whose lives do you think you would save by giving up your gun rights? Who are you going to kill, if you have a gun, if you don't even have the guts to kill a feral subhuman in order to defend your own life or that of someone you care about?

If you'll rephrase your questions in neutral language, I'll answer them. As they stand now as leading questions, I won't dignify them with replies.

I suppose that objection should not surprise me, coming from someone whose considers the life of the lowest criminal to be no less valuable than his own.

Reality is not neutral, so neither can the language be to describe it in honest terms.

In any event, my question was semi-rhetorical.

Obviously, you would not save anyone's lives by giving up your own right to posses weapons, unless you are someone who would have used those weapons to kill others.