Time for Some Common-Sense Publishing Controls
Yes, that musty old document is, as Ezra Klein says, over a hundred years old. How could any modern person understand it, and why should we pay any attention to it?
Bob Owens has pulverized the notion, of course. The Second Amendment isn’t (just) about hunting or even (just) about self-defense, though the former was a new right that the Founders had expanded from the gentry to the common man, and the latter was perhaps viewed by them as the most fundamental human right of all. No, they wrote that amendment because they recalled the manner in which the War for Independence had begun less than a decade and a half earlier. As Owens notes, the battles of Lexington and Concord were still recent history and fresh in their minds. They had been set off by a British attempt to seize an armory consisting of weapons that could be used against them in a revolt. That is to say, militarily effective weapons.
But since actual history seems lost on these people, I’ve decided to take a different tack, and ask them why (ignoring Ed Schultz’s less-than-compelling ad hominem argument that the entire racist/sexist/intolerant Constitution is ignorable) the Second Amendment is technology dependent, but the others not. A decade or so ago, when Fox New’s Bill O’Reilly was ranting about this terrible new-fangled Internet thing, that allowed people to write whatever they want and insult wise and esteemed talk-show hosts, and have it read by other people, I decided to take on opponents of both the First and Second Amendments with a little satire, which was apparently lost on some people at the time:
When the Founders wrote the First Amendment, they could never have conceived a technology that would allow anyone to publish anything at any time, at almost no cost, and have it readable by millions instantaneously.
…But surely the Founders never intended for every single citizen to be able to exercise such a right–in their wisdom, they would have known it would lead to chaos and unfettered thought. They couldn’t possibly have imagined the rapid-fire distribution of dangerous ideas made possible by twenty-first-century technology. Why, some people might have even put forth the absurd notion that free speech is the right of everyone.
…Let’s be reasonable–of course it’s fine to let people have typewriters, and copiers, as long as they don’t have a paper magazine of more than a quarter-ream capacity, and can’t print more than two pages per minute in high-density color. There are legitimate uses for such things–printing up book reports for school, making PTA meeting notices and party invitations, and the like. We respect the rights of those who wish to indulge in such innocuous, if pointless activities, long a part of the American cultural tradition (though it would certainly make sense to register such devices, in case they’re stolen, or lest they’re used to express some untoward or scandalous thought).
…But the Founders would realize also, just as Bill O’Reilly and I do today, that no one, other than the police and politicians, needs the kind of “idea assault” publishing capability offered by word processors, blogging software, and even fifteen-page-per-minute ink-jet printers, which really have no legitimate use–they only propagate calumny and wrong-headed notions, tragically damaging innocent celebrities’ egos, sometimes permanently.
…Yet, when people propose sensible regulations over this, we hear hysterical cries about “freedom of expression,” and “from my cold, dead fingers.” But surely the far-fringe First Amendment absolutists are misreading it–there is a hint of a shadow of an umbra of a penumbra in there, easily accessed by referencing the Second Amendment. Bearing this in mind, it is more properly read with the following implicit preface: “A well-regulated press being necessary for the security of the State and self-important talk-show hosts, Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”
Clearly, viewed in the light of that implicit purpose clause, these were not intended to be individual rights, any more than they were in the Second Amendment, because obviously, the Founders wouldn’t have meant one thing by the words “the right of the people” in the one case, and a different thing in the other, particularly in two adjacent amendments.
There’s a lot more at the link, but clearly, and particularly in light of all of the irresponsible reporting and pontificating on what the Founders intended, by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and others, it’s time to rein in this out-of-control media. How could the Founders have foreseen cable television, or television at all, in which irresponsible, uneducated, ignorant people could fill Americans’ heads with rapid-fire historical nonsense? I say we restrict Ed Schultz to only two hundred ignorant words per hour. If it saves just one life, it’s worth it. Maybe we should consider a thirty-day waiting period after a tragic event for Whoopi to shoot off her mouth it. We should interdict at the border weapons of mass distraction and misinformation like Piers Morgan...."
The left/liberal future for America:
http://www.rightwingnews.com/column-2/how-they-disarmed-our-british-cousins/
Thanks for that link. I read about this case a few years ago and could not find this specific one to send to a friend who doesn’t think the politicians really wish to take ALL of our guns away – and cried baloney when I cited this particular case to him. That article illustrates perfectly how the progression from ‘a modest hand gun ban’ creeps up to include just about every class of gun – and how someone protecting their home from invaders (villains) becomes the villain himself in an illogical role reversal. We’ve already seen it here too many times – and will see it again more and more often.
Folks – I keep saying this over and over – and I’m going to keep saying it as long as the second amendment is under assault (no pun intended) and the first amendment is still available to me. Republican and Democrat politicians throughout the land want to hamper our ability to defend ourselves and our loved ones. Why? for the same reason Great Britain and Australia have – and why Canada has severely restricted them – and it isn’t GUN CONTROL – it is PEOPLE CONTROL. They worry that our guns will be turned on them. Why? Because we might violently object to some of their actions – motives.
Admiral Yamamoto said his worst fear might be an order to invade the American Homeland – WHY? Because there’d be a rifle behind every blade of grass. Any politician that thinks in a similar vein may be as great a threat to this country as Yamamoto ever was. And more insidious.
And lest you think that removing guns from a society lowers the rate of violent crimes read this:
http://www.wnd.com/2001/03/8340/
Hows that gun control working out for you Piers Morgan? HUH??? Don’t want to talk about that do you?
The only ones who benefit from a ‘gun free’ society are those who seek to do harm via criminal or evil behavior, including those who seek total control over the population! And the only ones who will be harmed are innocent citizens, most especially defenseless kiddies!
Armed guards, or teachers/adminstrators could have stopped the carnage but that is not in the left’s interest. And those who seek the evisceration of the 2nd Amendment want to ultimately do the same to the 1st, but will hardly tell the tale. But the fact that the left is gunning for silence of criticism of Islam via the UN, deeming ‘Islamophobia’ a ‘crime’, tells us all we need to know.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/07/when-authentic-revolutionaries-hold-the-reins-of-american-power-centers-via-the-most-radical-regime-in-u-s-history-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
They’d be all too happy to oblige you with shutting down the internet.
Please revise to prevent them from bloviating on TV and you’ve got something that will get their attention.
Heh.
You over looked how Obama used the internet to get elected twice.
Doesn’t mean Obama and the Democrats would not be in favor of restricting the internet for us peons or removing what little anonymity we have in order to track us for political campaigns or political intimidation.
Like we overlook how the big shots of the Left all have armed guards, and in many cases, concealed carry permits?
They would love to restrict the first amendment, as long as they have enough control of the courts to only censor right-wingers. And if you thnk that can’t be done, it’s happening in Israel right now (albeit on a limited scale).
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163556
Freedom of speech is only for the Left. I thought everyone understood that. As far as freedom of religion goes, hah!
Just as Obama was crafting “rules” for the use of drone attacks in anticipation of a Republican administration should Romney have prevailed. How he uses them is reasoned and wise. How others “might” use them needed his learned hand and counsel to curtail their use.
Apparently, the rule book was discarded once he won reelection. And, like so many other things, this was unearthed ONLY after he was safely reelected.
Oh, there you go, using common sense. The next thing you’ll probably say is that people cannot practice their own religion because it is too dangerous. The Bill of rights are probably just a game, out-moded thughts:
http://billofrightsinstitute.org/resources/student-resources/play-games/life-without-the-bill-of-rights/
What would they say if we applied their logic to the First Amendment.
Look closely and dismay. Their logic has already been applied to the First Amendment. They just don’t call it restriction of speech, thought and opinion.
They have successfully achieved social acceptance of their attack on freedoms protected in the Constitution. They did it by appeal to the good will of citizens and willingness to repent their sins. But only after the application of the limits. Unilaterally, by fiat, de haut en bas, became part of the culture.
Informally in lieu of direct formal application to the People. Requirement for amendment to Constitution/Bill of Rights as spelled out in the document that protects rights of Americans. Protects them specifically from over-arching government or self-appointed arbiters of behaviours.
These who managed this abrogation of protected rights didn’t call it limits on free speech, etc. They called, they still call it Political Correctness.
Note this limit on citizens applies as planned ONLY to those citizens who do not bend the knee and bow the head to their requirements. In other words to Independent Americans. Nor do they apply it to their propaganda machinery of their Party Line.
We need to ban high-capacity magazines. No one has any legitimate need for a copy of Mother Jones with more than 10 pages.
Hilarious! And the NYT should be restricted to no more than 4 pages, 2 pages on the weekdays and 4 for the weekend edition.
ya- real funny stuff. Little kids shot full of holes – you guys want to diminish the debate to the absurd. Merry Christmas.
Everyone is saddened by the deaths of children at the hand of a mentally insane young man but not everyone is trying to turn it into a political issue to take away our rights and freedoms while imposing “solutions” that would have done nothing to prevent the crime in question.
Pointing out the fallacies of gun control advocates and the media (or is that too redundant?) is not taking delight in the deaths of innocents.
Gun control isn’t about preventing violent crime or mass murders, because it does neither, but it is about a moral opposition to guns regardless of any facts that shoot down these claims or basis in reality. If someone has a moral opposition to guns and would rather people be beat to death, or stabbed, or burned then say so but don’t push the fairy tail that all will be well in the world and violence will cease to exist if we ban guns, because it wont.
That’s a fifth grade argument.
“Tell Johnny his sister is ugly.”
“Oh, we didn’t tell you, his sister is very sick.(*)”
Completely irrelevant to the issue. Gun Control Kills. It’s an irratinal religion. And the right to bear arms keeps fascists like yourself from obtaining complete control over our lives, or at least it slows you down.
(*) Original version: “His sister is a cripple.”
irrational
Same thing happens at abortion clinics every day, except they use blades, vacuum cleaners and poison. Until you’re out there protesting abortion, you have no right to complain about these school massacres.
Using dead kids to hide your power grab. Real nice. Merry Christmas to you, too.
Lonnie, your kind became absurd years ago.
The 14th Amendment has also been relegated to the dustbin of history by the politically correct crowd. Section one reads as follows: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Kelso? Hah! Affirmative Action? Hah!
Actually it is clear that modern courts have read far more into the First Amendment than is in the text or was intended by the Founders. Joseph Story’s “Commentaries” of 1833 is instructive on both the First and Second Amendment. In the case of the First Amendment, the phrase (often neglected by its proponents) that is essential to its meaning is: “Congress shall make no law.” The Founders directed the First Amendment at the Congress, not at the States, nor at the Executive or Judiciary. Indeed, Story commented specifically that no one should doubt that the First Amendment permitted states to promote Christianity and support the Christian church. At the same time, Story was clear that the protection of the First Amendment did not extend to Islam or other non-Christian religions. Today’s broad First Amendment protection for all religion extends far beyond what Story contends the Founders meant.
About the Second Amendment, Story commented that the “well regulated militia” language of the Amendment seemed to be suffering from neglect. Story opined that allowing wide spread gun ownership might be problematic absent the organization provided by “a well regulated militia.”
Perhaps it would be appropriate to return to the narrow reading of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment that prevailed back in the Founders’ day. Indeed, the root in Conservative is “conserve.” Perhaps Conservatives should seek to “conserve” the late 18th century and early 19th century understanding of the bill of rights. That might be a true step forward on gun control and on free speech.
You’re right about the religious aspects of the First Amendment. The Federal government was prohibited from establishing a national church, but the states were not. Indeed a few of the states had official churches at the time the Constitution was ratified. This power was not taken away from the states because if they had tried, those states probably would not have signed it.
Don’t buy Story’s arguments. Only Congress makes federal law. The Founders championed religious freedom and individual rights to bear arms. The States ratified these rights.
Exactly! Congress makes federal law. The First Amendment imposed no restrictions on state legislatures. My point was that we might actually want to revisit both the First and Second Amendments to see if we can affirm both in a manner consistent with the Founders’ intentions. Isn’t that how Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas look at the Constitution? They look to see the plain meaning of the words as used by the Founders.
I find it amusing (and revealing) that american right-wingers believe that words have only a single meaning, much less a single meaning across a time-span of centuries.
Much like their belief that a blastoyst should have human rights.
Conservatives do not believe that words have only one meaning. Of course words mean according to their use in a particular situation. That is obvious. But it is also fair to say that authors of words intend only one meaning. People often choose to take something from a writing that the author did not intend, but that is the reader’s mistake. The ideal in communication is to express one’s intentions so clearly in words that the reader cannot by his own interpretation of the words miss the author’s intent.
Thus what I wrote is fair. If Scalia and Thomas and other judges want to read the constitution to discern the Founders’ intent, that is entirely proper. Whether that is possible is another question.
Words have the meaning they had at the time they were written, in the legal context of the time. When they said “misdemeanor”, they didn’t mean a traffic ticket, they meant improper conduct. When John Adams was called “obnoxious” it meant he was unpopular, not that he was a jerk. Otherwise you can change the ocnstitution by changign the dictionary.
You should like Justice Taney. He ignored the historical fact that free Blacks could vote in five of the colonies at the time of adoption as declared that the laws were not meant to apply to Black people (not slaves, all Black people).
By the way, why can’t it go the other way? “The experience of tyrrany in the 20th century teaches us that we must interpret the right ot bear arms more expansively.” “The new evidence from science teaches us to expand civil rights to the unborn.” “The moral degradation of our time teches us to interpret the establishment clause in a very limited manner.” See how you like it!
That actually isn’t Scalia’s idea, according to a interview with him I heard recently. He does not believe in delving into committee discussions. It would be more correct to say he does not believe in giving a meaning no reasonable person of the time (who understood legal language) would give it.
Your sophistry has become tiresome. Actually calling you a sophist is too kind; sophists knew they were peddling BS, I think you believe your BS. You’re like some of the union reps and arbitrators that I used to deal with who had only practiced in the communist controlled states, e.g., CA, and nobody had ever actually challenged their BS. I don’t know if you’re a lawyer or law student but you have a lawyerly argumentative style and you use that style to arrogate to yourself an unwarranted authority. Any half-assed advocate can make an argument that sounds good until it is challenged. Most of your arguments are mere subjectivist fallacy, also like most of the union reps I dealt with, in that you believe something, therefore it is true and the contradictory beliefs of others are therefore false. You’d probably be a lot happier over a dKos or some similar place populated with poorly educated, high self-esteem kiddies who know they’re smart because their teachers told them so and it is Bush’s fault that the only job they can get or hold is serving pizza or making coffee.
Your whole argument here about Storey and returning to a early 19th Century interpretation ignores the 14th Am. and subsequent incorporation jurisprudence. You think you’re being a clever little smartass poking conservatives with the pointy “Founders” stick and taking us back to the days when it would have been Constitutionally acceptable for a state to establish a religion, or ban one, ban guns or require them, and limit speech as the government saw fit.
I don’t know that the authors of the 14th Am. intended for it to do all the things it has done; I think they were mostly interested in preventing the slaveholding states from reinstituting slavery in another guise and making sure that the people who financed the Union war effort got repaid in gold rather than fiat paper. I can make a good argument that the 14th was never even properly ratified, but the courts have made extensive use of the 14th to extend the protection of the Bill of Rights to the states rather than just as a limitation on the federal government. If the 1st is incorporated, e.g., school prayer, the 4th, e.g., Miranda, exclusionary rules, and the 5th, e.g., Roe v. Wade albeit in tortured penumbras and emanations, then the 2nd Am. is incorporated and neither the federal nor state governments shall make laws infringing the rights of the people to keep and bear arms. As Judge Posner told Illinois, they need more than a rational basis to limit the rights of citizens to keep and bear. That doesn’t mean a state or the federal government cannot limit the rights to keep and bear but any infringement is subject to strict scrutiny, a compelling state interest must be demonstrated, and the remedy must be narrowly tailored to serve that interest only.
There is that delicate bit about incorporation. Of course there is also an emerging line of thinking that we need to look at basic grammar, things like subject, verb, and object, when interpreting laws, contracts, constitutions and the like. The fact of incorporation says nothing about the points I made vis Story. Whether you incorporate or not, you can still read the First Amendment, per Story, to allow the state to favor Christianity. Likewise, you can still decide that certain “religions” are not “protected.” The mistake in judicial reasoning has been that courts usually adopt too broad a reading of the term “religion.”
Story’s thoughts on the well regulated militia are also not affected by incorporation. His thought means what it means, the state should not abrogate its authority to regulate the militia. Regulation of the militia is the means to control guns. This can mean something basic like make gun owners muster for drill at regular intervals. A muster would be some thing a well regulated militia might do.
By the way, I am not saying that Story’s view from 1833 is the law today. I am suggesting that people who want something to “conserve” in the Constitution may want to consider what Story wrote. Story’s words can be aspirational.
As far as your experience dealing with labor lawyers, I cannot speak to that. For my part, whether someone is a Communist, an Episcopalian, an economist, a busboy, a soda jerk, a plumber, a tinker, or whatever, I tend to view them all as persons of good will with whom I can have an intelligent conversation. Prefer to engage with people with whom I disagree, because I learn more from them.
“Of course there is also an emerging line of thinking that we need to look at basic grammar, things like subject, verb, and object, when interpreting laws, contracts, constitutions and the like.”
The only place it is “emerging” is with the young arrogant asses who confuse their credential certifying attendence with an education. We old troglodytes have spent the last many years making our young high self-esteem, highly credentialled new hires learn how to diagram sentences. Since most teachers these days are dumb as stumps, they couldn’t teach BO- ring stuff like that.
A good question to ask in this context is this: who exactly was Story, and why should his views have had any credence?
He was writing decades after the Founders created the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Many Founders had quite different views from his on these issues. Find writings from the 1770s and 1780s by those people supporting Story’s comments, or find numerous other writers from his time saying the same things as he, and maybe we can assume he had some points.
In the absence of that, maybe we should assume that Story was the Huffington Post of his day and give his blather the same amount of regard.
Liberals elevate the unwritten, implied “right to privacy” to untouchable status: the Constitution prohibits any restriction on the unfettered right to abort your child at any time before birth. But they want to scrap the 2nd Amendment or give it an incredibly narrow interpretation that limits gun ownership to employees of the government, just the opposite of what the Framers intended. “Gun control” is just one of a long list of ways liberals want to (a) grow government at the cost of our children and grandchildren and (b) limit or abolish individual rights.
What the liberals want is something like the Communists the world over and the current Europeans have: a mealie mouthed document that allows dozens or even hundreds of “rights,” but not so much the natural rights that matter. People can curse in public, vast access to pornography via free (taxpayers supported) high speed wifi, can commit crime with little fear from citizens (who get arrested and charged to the hilt) nor government (can’t be bothered or be seen to be judgemental except against honest citizens), free health care (if rationing permits), living free (at taxpayer expense), abortion, right to have sex with/marry anyone or any thing you want, etc.
All these things are of course granted by government whim and can be snatched away. They aren’t the true natural rights government is supposed to protect. Small wonder they failed or are failing. The US is crumbling because we have been going down that same route.
I really don’t think the american right wing wants to focus on how you have unusually strong protection of hate speech. Really. It’s not a place you want to go.
Visitor from Mars: “Right wing?” For a left winger, just quoting one of the many ugly parts of the Koran is both hate speech and raaacist (like saying “Chicago”). I hope I have offended you.
I come from Norway, dear. We were attacked by a rabid idiot who had read (by his own admission) too many of your rabid american talking heads telling him all about how the muslims were taking over europe.
The fact that none of said americans had ever been to europe and subsequently had no f-ing clue didn’t stop him from killing almost eighty norwegian kids.
Your speech has consequences. So far you haven’t had to face said consequences. You do not want to draw attention to this.
Attacking first amendment rights in an attempt to defend/deflect from second amendment problems is not a winning strategy for you lot.
You’re the one attacking the First Amendment. This is not Europe and we are very thankful for that.
Aaaand my friend here has obviously not read the article to which we are all commenting. Thank you for playing. May I suggest the kiddie pool?
Yeah Mjuamm, he read it. Unlike you, he apparently UNDERSTOOD the point the Author was trying to make.
It appears to have sailed safely past your pointy, empty euro-head!
Yeah, what goes over this leftists bean, is that it’s argument, no matter how hatefully leftist, makes the very point of the article.
Okay…
I think I’ll give you lot some time to yourselves. You seem *really* confused as to whether or not you approve of the first amendment.
“I really don’t think the american right wing wants to focus on how you have unusually strong protection of hate speech.”
Well, it is obvious that you do not approve of the First Amendment.
Likewise it is obvious you are a little light between the ears in not recognizing that, with this article and, we conservative commentators, are mocking the leftist arguments against the Second Amendment by applying it to the First Amendment.
Unlike you marxist , we treasure both.
Ah yes, Norway the place where the far far left has disarmed themselves.
77 dead, so much for the leftist idiocy of leaving themselves unarmed. Yeah, we have too many of those nuts in America too.
Don’t forget that in addition to disarming themselves the Norwegians have permitted Muslim immigrants to run amok on a major rape spree. The forcible rape rate in Norway (as well as the other Scandinavian countries) has skyrocketed in recent years due to Muslim immigrants seeking to show their dominance.
Buzzsaw…
May I suggest you try getting our news about norway *not* from the same sources as Breivik?
Thank you.
That’s right Buzz. The approved state media doesnt cover these inconvenient truths, or spins, apologizes, and of course one of the favorites, misnames the culprits to disinform the public.
Oslo, Norway, Sweeden and Finland are wonderful multicultural paradises, where Jews are not fleeing Malmo, there is no Muslim immigrant rape epidemic against indigenous women who are seen as sluts asking for it, and there are no Muslim No Go Zones where police and fire and emergency medical and even postmen fear or refuse to travel. Diversity is wonderful, the best thing ever to happen to Scandinavian peoples, whom have no culture of their own, are xenophobic bigots borderline Nazis if they complain.
Bout sums it up heh, Mjaum?
Meanwhile the persecution and demonization of Fjordman continues….whilst youth of the Noweigan Labour Party (which Breivik targeted) praise Hitler and wish death upon Jews.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2012/11/youth-of-norwegian-labour-party-praise.html
Walking in a Leftwist Wonderland…
That is true Buzz.
Maybe our resident leftwingnut troll who claims to be from Norway can tell us if the following is a fair translation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6k9P7L3tYk
Lord knows this lefty is incapable of debate, so may as well make some use of it. Course then we would have to believe it’s answer to be honest. And honesty is not a trait progressive have.
Our poster from the Land of Quisling, the land which exports bundles of antisemitic doctors to the “Palestinian” regions to further befoul the Middle East, seems to think that the accuracy of news depends upon whether or not a madman reacts inappropriately to it.
This is reminiscent of those domestic leftists I have encountered who object to the news reported by Fox not on the grounds of its accuracy, but on the grounds that Fox has reported it. They seem to have lost the willingness and/or the ability to comprehend the concept of objective fact. But, of course, what can you expect from people who are on record as believing that self-mutilation of the genitals alters a person’s DNA?
You are linking to *Gates of Vienna* as a truth-teller?
Ye frackin’ gods…
As for the news,even then they were talking of “non-western”, not “muslim” immigrants. Which is not an excellent point, but still.
A better point is that the police later stated that they had been misunderstood.
“Grove generaliseringer om at Oslos voldtektsmenn er utlendinger og i hovedsak muslimer, er både feilaktig, utlistrekkelig og uheldig.”
Translation: “Coarse generalizations suggesting that rapists in Oslo are foreigners and mainly muslims are both wrong, insufficient and unfortunate.”
Of course, I am sure you, never having been to Oslo, nor to Norway, know better. As for me, I have lived a few hundred yards away from where Breivik’s bomb went off. I have walked past within the blast radius. I have cousins who should have been at the island. And I know norwegian muslims, too. One of them is the father of the cousin who should have been at Utøya.
So kindly take your (Godwin’d) crap and die in a fire.
“The land of Quisling”.
Wow. What a cut.
Quisling was a traitor *to Norway*. Not to any other country. You seem to be ignorant of history. I have no idea what you think you are saying with this.
As for the “news” from Gates of Vienna, they are usually just as ignorant and stupid as the title of the website.
The battle at the gates of vienna is supposed to have been the furthest the muslims got into europe. The problem is that this battle was not a religious war. And even if we see it as a religious war, “we”, protestants, were on the muslim side against catholic oppression! To, as GoV does, suggest that we now are fighting the same battle as then is …insane, at best. Certainly stupid and ignorant as well as counterproductive.
“die in a fire”
How very elegant, and childish.
I do not have to go to Norway in order to read the papers. Anymore than you have to be a US citizen to understand , at least statistically, what is happening here.
Yes, I am sure the Politi had to CYA(that is cover your ass, in case you are culturally provencial Mjaum) in the politically correct power structure of your Nation. Such does not change what the facts are.
Norway has what about 250,000 moslims? Yet they are responsible for the most rapes in your country. Is this not correct information? And if not, I am sure you can refute with the real statistics. Prove me substantially wrong, if you can.
Yes, the Police later changed their comments to comply with Leftwing Political Correctness….in order to preserve their jobs and future promotability/employment…ie their ability to provide for their family and children.
But the truth had already been let slip.
And more from a neutral and truthful source.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145161#.UNoHHbbVH-V
” The report was cited by an official Norwegian television station, which interviewed a victim who said that her rapist explained to her that his religion permits him to rape her.
According to the police report there was a total of 186 of known rape cases in 2010. These fall into various categories, the largest one of which is assault-rape, carried out by sheer physical force, of which there were 86 cases. In 83 of these cases the perpetrator could be identified by the victim. In all 83, the attacker was described as having “non-western appearance,” a laundered euphemism for Muslim immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, or Asia.
In other categories of rape there were Norwegian attackers as well, but they were still in the minority (Note: the translation of the Norwegian TV report embedded here does not make a distiction between “assault rape” and other forms of rape, and appears to confuse the statistics for 2010 with those for 2006-2010).
“
Fantom.
There are, in our little country, some 5 million people. There are about 60.000 muslims. (Which in itself suggests you have your data from somewhere strange, to be off by 300%.)
And our little country, with 60000 muslims, have a murder rate of 0.6 per 100000 people, compared to the US’ 4.2.
Which to me suggests that if you want to look for hell, you might want to look elsewhere than Norway. Breivik’s murder spree, suggested to him by the same kind of data you spread, murdered more people than are usually murdered in Norway over the course of *two years*.
We are not a perfect country. Who would want to be? We all have different ideas of perfection. But compared to the US? Heh.
You so want Europe to fall. Like Breivik you *want* a muslim invasion. Just so you can be right. Just so the “socialists” can be shown to be wrong. And that makes you insane and dangerous. Please go away and mind your own business.
Better get ahold of Wikipedia really quickly, Mjaum:
That’s at least twice the “60,000 Muslims” you estimate; given that the last figure offered is for 2009, three years ago, it is probably at least three times what you estimate.
Oops my post went right above Fantoms that this sub thread is responding to.
The murder rate in Norway is inching up and will climb with the increase in the immigrant non-European population.
The murder rate in Norway is comparable to the murder rate in the US State of New Hampshire, which is a state with lax gun control and a widely armed population…but which also remains a population that is White European Christian.
Europe is being colonized by Muslims…being aided and abetted by the Left and Leftwing Zeitgeist of Multiculturalism and Diveristy promotion, White Europeans as guilty and evil xenophobic Nazis. This is just the reality of the situation.
Jews are fleeing Malmo and increasing security everywhere in Europe. White European Christians are fleeing too, away from the new mini-Gazq no go zones, areas with concentrations of MENA Muslim populations.
So we have even more muslims, and yet we’re still not hell?
How odd.
I am sorry, but I did the runaround with your little neona*i subset of the right already in another thread, around the 22nd of July, 2011. You can surely find it if you want.
And yes, I called you that.
Depends upon what you mean by “hell”; for some, a burgeoning rate of rape and particularly of violent rape, traceable directly to the increasing Muslim population, would count as “hell,” but that apparently doesn’t matter to you.
Yet.
By the time it does penetrate your consciousness—or some tender orifices you might be saving for someone else—it will likely be long past the time you and your fellow citizens will be able to do anything about it.
Some of my posts have gone missing.
Here is a little Norweigan boy enjoying the vibrant culturally enriching experience of MENA Muslim immigrants…a hundred thousand Breiviks are on the way.
Maybe Mjaum could move to this neighborhood and enjoy that which she defends.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a4_1345217940&comments=1
Actually Mjaum, we were discussing rape, in your country it is called assault rape. I see you could not rebut what I brought and actually do not know how many moslims are even in your own country……….NICE.
And you call me ignorant. I have a better command of the facts in YOUR country than you do. I must admit, I am wracked with such hearty guffaws,that in addition to rolling to and fro upon the floor….my posterior seems to have detached itself.
Hard to even consider it fair to reply to you anymore. I feel like I am taking unfair advantage of someone who is non compos mentis.
However, I will point out a couple of things. Your homicide rate is low because Norway is 98% white. I have run the calculations in the USA removing the black and hispanic populations. And come up with a homicide rate of .84%, little different than your .6%.
You are wrong about wanting a moslim invasion. But putting ones head in the sand and ignoring reality will not wish away the truth. You think Anders Breivek was bad.. and he was. In my country, the USA… moslims committed the biggest act of mass murder..2997 people. And they used planes not guns.
Ah yes, Anders Breivik. 77 dead and 242 wounded according to Wikipedia. That is far in excess of any American mass shooting that I’m aware of.
If Breivik isn’t the poster boy for the abolition of gun-free zones, I don’t know who is.
We don’t have “protection of hate speech”. Rather, we don’t recognize the category. It is not illegal to say anything about any group of people unless you are directly inciting to riot, as per Al Sharpton.
The only Americans I know of who were incited to mass killings by “hate speech” were people like the unibomber, who was incited by the hate speech of the German-Briton anti-semite Karl Marx. Another person incited by such was the murderer of President Kennedy. (OTOH, his brother was murdered by a Palestinian Arab.)
Perhaps your part of the world is not worthy of the rights Americans have. Perhaps you should censor incoming speech, since Norway is neither mature nor civilized enough, according to your argument.
Mjaum, we have an innate and historically proven fear of those who are assigned to define what “hate speech” is. The problem is that the boundaries of “hate speech” keep moving. At the end of the day, “hate speech” is defined in the eye of the beholder.
There are many, these days it happens to be the Fundamentalist Islamist bunch, who deem anything critical of their own beliefs as “hate speech.” Once they become a significant majority, this would squelch free speech in ways that you can not even begin to imagine.
This is why the First Amendment to the US Constitution is without exception. We may not like what someone says, makes, writes, or presents. It can be as offensive as a Crucifix in Urine or a picture of Mohammad. Even the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church and NAMBLA have a right to voice their own hateful and disgusting opinions. In fact, the free speech rights of First Amendment’s to the US Constiution was written because the founders were concerned about laws against blasphemy.
We do not revel in hateful opinions. We do not endorse or approve of such behavior in any way. But they have a right to say anything they want as long as it is not an immediate and very credible threat to someone’s well being (a “hit-list” for example).
Meanwhile European countries are busy tying themselves up in knots attempting to mollify the fundamentalist Islamic community with hate speech laws. How well is that working for you? You have ghettos of Muslims who openly express antisemitic hatred and yet you don’t prosecute because in their eyes that would be “hate speech”. And yet you accuse the American right wing of hatred.
Basically, you are trusting your authorities to tell you what hate speech is. We don’t. That’s why we not only have a First Amendment, we have a Second Amendment that gives our distrust some teeth. A government should fear its people as much as an individual should fear government.
And yet with all this, there are people *on this very comment thread* who are signing a petition to *deport* someone from the US *for a political statement*.
I don’t think that your compatriots’ support for the first amendment is anywhere close to that for the second. And the first is infinitely more important (in my opinion).
And I have no need to know that you disagree. I am well aware.
My thanks for the rather more curteous post.
No, the 2nd is infinitely more important because it protects the right to own and keep the means to defend all other rights from infringement, including the Freedom of Speech.
Hate Speech Laws are a direct assault on the speech most in need of protection, political speech. They are a tyrannical abomination, full stop. Many a tyranny is the result of good intentions.
I am not aware of this issue, but is he a citizen? If he is not, you should be able to deport him for anything. If he is not, you shouldn’t be able to deport him at all.
We have come to learn that the Left can use all of the hate speech it wants, but any speech-restricting laws will be used almost exclusively against the Right. (And by the Right I mean the what used to be know as “liberals”, not your European anti-semitic hatemongers.) This appears to be the case here in Israel, where the main reason for the army (judging by such steps) appears to be to throw Jews out of their homes.
However, I disagree that you are losing your culture. Anti-semitism is alive and well. That’s the one constant in the Old World, whether it be pagan, Catholic, Protestant, Moslem, Communist, or postmodern – the Jews are gonna get it.
And yet, said petition is an exercise of 1st Amendment rights. Ooops, overlooked that one eh?
In the first place, most of us know that the White House petition site is crap and nothing more than a political ploy, not to be taken seriously. The only real value of the site is to give people a place to vent.
Heck there’s even a petition out there to build the Death Star.
I look at the Piers Morgan petition as simply a bunch of Americans telling the Brit interloper to go to Hades. We don’t need his, or any other European telling us what we should or should not do in our country.
MJaum, the difference between your point of view and ours is that you trust your government, and we have centuries of experience suggesting that we shouldn’t.
The free speech rights of the First Amendment of the US Constitution are without limitation on someone’s opinion of what “hate speech” is. We have watched with some concern at European efforts to mollify the Islamic Fundamentalists who consider anything critical of their religion as “hate speech.” The First Amendment was actually written with laws against blasphemy in mind. Yet Muslims continue to spew anti-semitic hatred, while criticism of their religion is often squelched.
We do not trust someone else to define what “hate speech” is. That is why the widely reviled Westboro Baptist Church continues to voice their hateful opinions against homosexuals. That is why the utterly disgusting North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a group dedicated to removing all age-associated consent limits for sexual relations, continues to exist for decades. This is why depictions of a crucifix in urine, or depictions of Mohammad are, despite their blasphemous nature, allowed to continue.
And to underline that healthy mistrust of government, immediately following the First Amendment, we have the Second Amendment: a right to bear arms. Most Europeans look at us and think we’re some sorts of backward barbarians. It is nothing of the sort. Trust your governments at your peril. Those of you who allow yourselves to be lead around like sheep are the ones who risk barbarism. It may take a few generations, but we know that despots such as Hitler and Mussolini are not as unusual or as rare as we’d like to think. Look at Achmedindjad. Would he still be in office if his people had a right to bear arms? I think not.
I hope and pray that in your lifetime and your children’s lifetimes, that there will be no despots. But we’re not the kind of people to trust in hope. We will make sure that they are well aware that if they abuse our trust they will leave. We will use every civil means to do so (yes I am old enough to remember when President Nixon resigned in disgrace); but if those means are exhausted, we will use force. And I think that if you thought of rights in the manner that we have, you would too. You are just too naive to admit it.
From what I see of US history, it is strangely not the groups who have *actually* been oppressed who are “gun-nuts”. Not the indians, who were wiped out, not the blacks, who were enslaved, not the japanese, who were put into camps.
The whites, however… The ones who *did* the oppressing. *They* want guns.
I find this …interesting.
Can you explain?
It’s quite simple: you read and believe the leftist propaganda promulgated both in the US and abroad. The leftist media does not interview, or report the opinions of, people who do not fit its narrative. It has attempted to characterize Tea Party demonstrations as “racist” and “violent” (both false); to characterize Occupy rabble as peaceful and nonviolent (false); to characterize ordinary straightforward speech as “racist dogwhistles” (false); to claim that the cosmetic tokenism of the Left represents “diversity” (false); to claim that the diversity of the Right is “tokenism” (false).
In the “gun debate,” as framed by the leftist media for whom you are a coprophagist, there is an attempt to frame those who wish to protect the basic Constitutional right of weapon ownership as “extreme” and to profile the spokespeople for this right along racial lines. Yet there is absolutely no basis for doing either of these things.
You *are* extreme. How do I know? I *live* in one of these places you claim is becoming so awful. Not happening. We’re a small country. We’re (as a country) rich to extremely rich. We move around a lot, we have family from north to south (East and west we don’t really have in Norway… Small, see?). If it was as awful as you claim, this could not be hidden.
What you claim is there isn’t there. Except for the people who claim they want to fix problems we don’t see by creating problems we most certainly do see.
We do not want your solutions! Even if we had the kind of problems you claim we have, we would still not want your solutions! Because to us even the basic republican is brown. Not of skin. Of shirt. And where you have only your paranoid ravings about communists, we were *invaded* by brownshirts. The communists? They freed the northern part of the country, and then they *left*. Because of Nansen. Look him up. We know that good deeds are not just their own reward. Sometimes they are repaid.
So thanks, but no thanks. Your solutions are a worse threat to who and what we are than any number of people of actual brown skin. Now could you go away and let Gork answer?
Classically Liberal European Christians are Fascists. – paraphrasing Mjaum.
There you have it folks. Pure hatred for your average White European Christian.
But then what do you expect from Redshirts like Mjaum. Anybody who opposes them is a Fascist. And opposing fascists with street violence is perfectly acceptable and laudable….see support for the Antifa and UAF, widespread amongst the Western Left. These groups threaten and perpetrate violence against any groups they dont like, which they label fascists…and they feel good about their street thuggery. Often you will see them in alliance with Islamists/Muslims…terrorizing indigenous European Classcially Liberal Chrisians (known as Brownshirts in Leftwing circles and Kuffar in Muslim circles).
One wonders what the hell this is supposed to mean. Nobody is proposing any “solutions” for Norway; if the great-great-great-grandchildren of the Vikings wish to make themselves voluntarily subservient to a Muslim soft invasion, that is surely the Norwegians’ own affair, however tragic such truckling to fascists may appear to the disinterested observer.
One does, however, wonder why this putative Norwegian seems to be obsessed by skin color—something which has been alluded to only by the Norwegian. One wonders, too, why this eager would-be slave thinks it has the standing to prescribe “solutions” to others whose concept of freedom is larger than its own.
Yes, because the demonization of a single ethnic group has *never* *ever* suggested any solutions.
Congratulations. Not merely a fascist, but a cowardly one.
Ive been reading up on Whiteness Studies, it seems that their are solutions being offered with regards to what to do with White Europeans….coming out of academia, no less, tenured professors, well paid, honored, and lauded. One being the minoritization of White Europeans in their own countries, via colonization, multicutlturalism, diveristy promotion, affirmative action, etc.
You mean like the way you are demonizing “whites”?
Sorry, my little fascist resident of Quisling Country, but you don’t get to work the massacre of Europe’s Jews for your own benefit.
Let’s see. On one side we have Finland, which was forced into WWII by the Soviets, and refused to expel the Jews from their army; and yes, the Jewish population fought to protect their country even though it meant fighting for the Axis. No nice Communists here, or almost anywhere else.
On the other side is Sweden, which murdered Jews in Poland in the 17th century or so.
I don’t have specific info on your country per se, but what you are saying seems to be an exception.
“The long night of fascism always seems to be falling on the United States – and always lands in Europe.” I see nothing that changes that.
You are confusing a perceived correlation with causation. In fact, throughout history, regardless of country, those who were disarmed were the ones who got preyed upon by others with arms. Yes it was true of the Native Americans. It was true of the Jews in Germany. It was true of the freed slaves of the southern US. It has been true almost everywhere. Disarming has never produced a peaceful result over the long term.
That is why the right to bear arms is a right to almost every US citizen (convicted criminal felons excluded). And it goes beyond just the individual. It is also the right to form police forces to defend a community. It even goes to the level of forming a National Guard on a state-by-state basis.
There are many men and women in this country who are trained, equipped, and ready to use these arms. This is how we keep the peace. This was exactly what the founders of the United States were thinking. If you care, try reading the Federalist Papers for background on what these men were thinking when they crafted the Bill of Rights.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Thomas Jefferson:
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.”
No, Gork. This has nothing to do with correlation or causation. The white man has not been oppressed in the US. The indians, the black and the japanese (-ethnic) have. Yet the white man wants the guns. Not the people who have *actual proof* that the white man will use his power to oppress them, because he already has. And he did so with all the military, legal and social force at his disposal.
In fact, if we look at history, we will see that the well-armed are never the oppressed, but the oppressor. Not the neutral guy. Not the guy who saves people. The oppressor. Being well-armed does not cause one to treat the unarmed well, or fairly. It becomes the tool of oppression. You will become (again!) the oppressors, as you have been in the past.
So, I suggest the following thought-experiment. Would you arm *everyone*, or just the people you perceive to be on your side?
Where do you get all this racist nonsense, Mjaum? Why are Leftist like yourself so obsessed by race?
MJaum, I have friends from all walks of life who you would consider a “gun-nut”. Some, like our President, are of mixed races, some are clearly of a straight African ancestry. Many are honorably discharged from Military service. Some are Leftist Liberals (no kidding!). Some are, yes, white, male, right wing nuts. Some are first generation immigrants from Russia, Ireland, Spain, Argentina, and Mexico.
I care not where these people come from or what politics these people have. I care that they believe in civil discourse and in the responsibility of bearing arms. We can disagree in a civil manner. But at the end of the day, we all care about our community, our state, and our country.
More than that, I can not ask.
I would not “arm” anyone. I would allow everyone to obtain weapons, except those who have expressed an interest in overthrowing the government or committing violence against a group of people.
No, the man with the gun is the one who saves people. This is true statistically in the US, but the media makes you think that they were saved with bare hands. It is one of the worst examples of media censorship in the US.
Shall we mention the oriental shopkeepers who had guns and protected their stores during the second LA riots? How about the Jewish partisans, whose first need was to find a firearm?
But go ahead, side with the Left. They only murdered 100 – 200 million people in a single century.
The native Americans weren’t disarmed, the already had weapons, just not weapons that could reliably defeat muskets and swords. The longest war in American history was the Indian War, which can be viewed as starting with the Massacre of 1622 and ending in the late 1880s. Individual tribes had their own wars, the Creek War, the Cheyennes, Apaches, etc. Over that period, repeating arms replaced single shot ones, and mobile cannon and Gatling guns provided a tactical edge to the Army.
As for the comment on weapons superiority generally correlating with victory, Exactly! That’s why the 2nd Amendment is crucial, widespread firearms ownership and proficiency defends democracy better than a disarmed citizenry ever could. Both the foreign invader and the potential domestic despot fear the rifle behind every blade of grass.
Where is the world do you get your U.S. history? From Zinn?
One of the main reasons for the 14th amendment was the forcible disarming of the Black population of the South, including returnees from the civil war. That is, it was to ensure the right of Blacks to protect themselves against White oppression.
Just finished signing a Deport the Smart Ass Piers Morgan Gun Control Freak from the United States- petition.
My Second Amendment rights..
60,304 so far and gaining thousands each day.
MERRY CHRISTMAS to an Asshole CNN millionaire gun control jerk.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/deport-british-citizen-piers-morgan-attacking-2nd-amendment/
On a more serious note-
Multiple Merry Christmases to all freedom loving Americans.
CNN loves to have foriegn experts of dubious integrity to correct and chastise the American rabble. But I fear we have grown weary of the Fleet Street hack accent. I believe the rabble longs to hear from a cute Irish redhead, maybe Mary Margaret from Galway, character certfied by the sisters at school.
I have to point out, since none of you geniuses have noticed, that asking the *federal government* to *deport someone* because of *something they said* is as textbook an example of a violation of the first amendment as it is possible to get.
Very impressive.
You position presumes that US Constitutional protections inhere to non-citizens present in the Country. Many of us don’t believe they do.
Is the constitution the law of the land?
Do you believe in equality before the law?
Because if the US were to claim that foreigners were somehow not accorded the protection of law… That’s an extreme position.
Seems you know as little about our Constitution as you do your own s’posed country.
The Bill of Rights, for instance, is in most cases rights reserved for The People. Now who are The People. Good question. That is answered right at the begging of the Constitution.
“We the People of the United States”
If you are from Norway say, you are not “the People of the United States”. You are the people of Norway on a visit in our lands subject to whatever restrictions we feel apropos under the law.
You have no intrinsic right to the Rights we hold for the People. You want those you must become a citizen.
The People have a Right to Keep and Bear Arms. That does not mean we must allow visitors to our Great Nation to be armed.
To wit.
http://www.vrolyk.org/guns/alien-laws.html
“Federal Issues:
In general, non-immigrant aliens are forbidden to possess any firearms or ammunition. But there is a big exception for a legal alien who:
…is in possession of a hunting license or permit lawfully issued in the United States
(See Title 18, USC Chapter 44, Section 922, part (y)(2) for details.)
Green-card holders and immigrant aliens who do not yet have their green card are both okay under federal law, although many people (including gun dealers, law enforcement officers, etc.) are not aware of the distinction or the hunting license exception, and erroneously think that either you have a green card, or you can’t have guns.
Also, non-citizen cannot purchase a firearm from a federally licensed firerams dealer unless they have been a resident of their state for 90 days. So, no, tourists on short visits cannot walk into guns stores to get “protection” during their trip. Sorry. (I’ve been asked that multiple times.)
”
Same same with regards to any other Right of The People. It is our discretion as to how and to whom we apply it to those who are not “The People of the United States”.
In fact, Elian Gonzales, poor boy, was deported by Bill Clinton to Cuba, in spite of the ruling of the family court, for precisely the reason you say. Basically, any government can deport any non-citizen for any reason, ant any time. I think the US does have certain restrictions for permanent residents, but they are accidental, not inherent.
What Art said.
Gary, I already *know* that what one of you says, more than one of you believes to be true. Would you like to make an actual point, or is that just too hard?
As I understand it, to be in the US as a legal resident for any length of time requires signing a document pledging to uphold the US Constitution.
Piers Morgan, a legal resident, has done the opposite by advocating a de facto scuttling of the Second Amendment. You can’t pick and choose which parts of the Constitution you wish to keep and which you wish to eliminate. Therefore, the proposal to deport him has merit.
Frankly, if people like Morgan succeed in their anti–Second Amendment agenda and guns are banned or greatly restricted in the US, it would be hard for me to have sympathy for analogous plans for the First Amendment right of freedom of speech and the press. These guys in the media will have undermined one amendment; why should the rest of us care about the amendment that enables their jobs after that?
And gutting the First would naturally follow gutting the Second anyway, just as night follows day. For kicks and grins in this context, search for proposals that have been floated for international licensing of journalists…
Great article!
The bottom line is, We need these weapons to defend ourselves,against anyone who is trying to disarm us, to enslave us. If they want them “Come and get them”. …. These people obviously don,t have our best intrests at heart.
Yes, we need to ban assault printers. No one needs such a destructive weapon of mass destruction. Books, and the ideas contained within, have murdered more people worldwide than any other weapon.
When the First Amendment was written, they only had a Gutenberg Press. It printed one page at a time. You had to manually set the type… letter by letter for each page. And it was distributed by foot or horseback. Our Founders never imagined that there would be assault printers capable of printing 600 pages a second… O the Humanity of the carnage it has wrought.
Especially on our children, who’s indoctrination in public schools by the progressive left is made capable with these WMD(weapons of Mass distortion. End the slaughter of innocent minds.
A British friend of mine visited me here before the election. Since folks in my part of the country are both largely conservative and intensely curious about foreign accents, she got pulled into a lot of conversations. One of those was about hunting and guns at a bar we were at. We spent a few hours in the car the next day, discussing the Constitution. What she couldn’t understand – among other things, lik why most of the Americans we were encountering were more or less scared of an Obama second term – was why we couldn’t just change the Constitution to say guns were no longer allowed. I explained what I could about the process, about why we put the rules in place to begin with, and what a kick-ass bunch of guys the Founding Fathers were. She got it after that – “oh, I didn’t realize America was structured so differently, that makes sense”.
That being said, couldn’t this be something of a cultural bias/ignorance on Piers Morgan’s part? He’s not an American citizen, he probably has no contact with anyone who’s not a raging liberal, what kind of knowledge could he possibly have about the way the country *really* works? Just a thought. He’s still obviously a libtard, but that aside, maybe he honestly doesn’t understand how our nation’s government works.
Do you really believe what you just stated? WOW
He is suffering under the assumption that he is one of the chosen. That he will be accorded the favor of the ruling elites. He is the ultimate Mr. Useful Idiot.
No, the British developed the Right to Bear Arms, to self defense, and as a means to defend oneself from government abuse. These Brits should know better, but they have been dumbed down and re-educated like so many others.
Actually, the same applies to American (and Israeli) jounalists. They honestly believe this stuff, and hardly know anyone who thinks otherwise. The worst is when they write about another country; no limits there at all.
I used to think the US was unexceptional, until I learned more about the rest of the world. Compare American and British (and Israeli) libel law. Canada has abrogated civil rights. A Rabbi in Israel was just fined for “criticizing a governemnt official” – a crime that only applies to the “wrong sort of people”, as he was attacking the holy grail – the ability of the army to expel Jews from their homes. If Jews have freedom of religion and speech in Israel, it is only because it is generally tolerated, not because we have it inherently.
Q: What would Second Amendment bloviators (I – a liberal – would use that term to describe the pro-NRA caucus) say if we applied their logic to the First Amendment?
A: You can’t yell ‘FIRE” in a theatre.
none of the rights in the constitution are absolute. As a liberal I would like to make the right to life absolute – abolish the death penalty. Other than that every right should have limits. Does anybody think we have an absolute right to liberty? No more prisons, jails or insane asylums?
Please parade your MORAL RELATIVISM over at DKos or HuffPo, child.
are you unwilling or incapable of debate?
Incapable.
Most of our right-wing friends here merely comment for the gallery, in the belief that it increases their standing in the community. If they actually debated anything, they might lose.
It makes them quite amusing when they are forced into a debate because you laughed at their contribution. They don’t really know how.
Few here debate lefty trolls like you and Lonnie because it is a waste of electrons. If someone is more than five years out of school and still a lefty but not being paid to be a lefty, they’re simply too stupid to live and not worthy of debate. If they’re being paid to be a lefty, there’s no point in debating because they will never concede a point and are incapable acting in good faith.
I spent a lot of years across bargaining tables and in hearing rooms with lefty union reps and lawyers, many of them open communists who actually knew they were communists. I’ve never known one to ever admit that his position was wrong; the arbitrator was in the employer’s pocket, the public and the legislature were being misled by the media, some excuse always, and I’ve never known one to keep a bargain, even a written bargain, except by force. I rarely argue with lefties unless I’m being paid for it, but I do like to jeer at them.
I am sure you think you are insulting me, but all I see are excuses, and they’re not good ones.
And admitting you are a paid shill? Impressive. Way to get me to respect you.
Mocking someone is only fun as long as they seem human. Mocking a caricature is sort of pointless. I hope you get better.
“And admitting you are a paid shill? Impressive. Way to get me to respect you.”
Punk, I don’t want your respect and if we come into direct confrontation you WILL fear me. I’m the enemy, the person good enough at dealing with you miscreants to get paid for it. I wreck careers and lives, and I’d just love to do it to you.
Really? Can I get fries with that?
Only if somebody is paying, punk.
We could do without the dearh penalty. But then you wander off into la-la land. Come on back and read the Fifth Amendment.
I did. I don’t follow you. Please enlighten me.
Does that absolute right to life also apply to abortion?
an embryo should have no more rights than a body part – it is not a person
Blacks were denied their rights in a similar fashion. They werent full human beings, lacking in some areas.
You are the intellectual and moral ancestor of these folks…Eugencists, Racists, and Slavers.
WTF?
Slaves were considered property – free blacks were less than a person. It was all VERY VERY wrong. We amended the Constitution to fix those wrongs. You could not be any further off base.
Owning slaves is illegal. Owning a plantation, or a cotton gin, or a bullwhip, or a set of manacles, or a pack of bloodhounds, is not illegal.
Murder is illegal. Owning a gun is not illegal.
Indeed Lonnie Wild.
The unborn are considered less than full human beings and are accorded less than person status….so that their rights may be violated.
Yes, we need to amend the Constitution to explicitly state that the unborn are full human beings with full protection and equality under the law. That is the correct course of action. I agree. Meanwhile, it is VERY, VERY wrong to treat the unborn as less than persons…no matter than it is legal to do so.
Interestingly enough, the law is often incoherent in this area, depending on the person abusing the unborn and his/her rights. For example, if a man who punches a woman for the purpose of causing a miscarriage and resulting death of the unborn is successful can be charged with murder. The nex week, the woman can abort the unborn child for any reason whatsoever, and no charges will be brought against the woman, much less the doctor and staff performing the abortion. This exemplifies the current Anti-Male nature of our laws, in favor of women. And female supremacy is manifested in sexual harrassment law, abortion law, child custody law, and a myriad of other laws.
Mr Velocity –
Now we’re getting somewhere. If the conservatives wan’t to hijack the GOP (and the GOP lets them) go ahead and run on that platform. Go ahead and try to amend the Constitution to allow embryonic personhood. There of course will be opposition which will be trying to get elected. Good luck – I think you have a loosing hand.
It may not be politically popular….but it is morally righteous.
This is why I categorize you with the Eugenicist, Slaver, White Supremacist Jim Crow Segregationist.
At best you are an apologist for them. But it seems like you stated that a fetus is not a person and therefore you can treat them as you will. This is the same position as the Slaver, the Eugenicist, and teh White Supremacist Jim Crow Segregationist. The unborn are not full persons and thus are not afforded rights as persons.
Same ole, same ole.
In the future, the Abortionists will be looked upon with just as much revulsion as Joseph Mengele, Slavers, and White Supremacists.
Eggzacary Escape.
And they fail to see it.
It appears that Lonnie is attempting here to incorrectly cite the old “three-fifths rule” from Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution. If that is the case, Lonnie is dead wrong.
The “three-fifths rule” referred to the enumeration of slaves for apportionment purposes in determining the number of representatives; it had nothing whatsoever to do with determining whether blacks, as such, were “full persons” and certainly had no bearing on the status of free blacks.
Actually, the part about Free Blacks was the Dredd Scott decision, which was a great example of why it is wrong to treat the constitution as a “living document”. When the constitution was written, free Blacks could vote in several states, so Taney blowing smoke. This is why we need “original intent”.
You went back to la-la land. Human rights begin at conception. It’s not rocket science. Abortion creates so much renorse, but that’s a taboo subject. The best solution for a reluctant mother is adoption by eager parents. Ask Joni Mitchell, who had the pleasure of meeting the adult daughter she refused to abort.
That’s where you and every body else who thinks like this are total self-deluding fools. You have to be like that otherwise how could you look at yourself every day in a mirror ?
The moment the little tadpole hits the egg and takes hold is where life begins.
It’s not rocket science to understand that.
To terminate it after this point is simply committing legally sanctioned murders of convenience. More kids are killed everyday by doctors than all the mass shootings ever…
You are confused.
“Life” does in no way begin at conception. Both the egg and the sperm are just as “alive” as their combination. Which suggests that the term “life” is not what you are looking for. But of course, it is so nice to be able to be “pro-life”…
Now, would you like to tell me what *does* change at conception that would cause a blastocyst to be more worth protecting than eggs and sperm? Also, what are you going to do about all the conceived eggs that do not implant and are merely lost? Or the approximatly 50% of implanted fertilized eggs that never make it either?
You are ignorant and talking about issues about which you know next to nothing, and which would have consequences which even you would bitterly decry. Shut up and go learn something.
No Mjaum, it is you who is confused.
I notice that Norway allows abortion on demand in the first trimester and restricts them somewhat thereafter.
Lets turn your question around. What specifically happens between the last day of the first trimester and the first day of the second trimester to the baby in the womb to warrant such a change in protection?
Nothing really as far as the developmental stage of the human baby in the womb now is there. Which makes it nothing more than an arbitrary line drawn by Man. Nature draws the real line. Neither egg nor sperm make a human, or any other animal for that matter, until united.
Conception marks the point where the right to life begins. And any human intervention denying the natural course of that right to life has no real difference than what Anders Beivak did.
The laws of Nature, not Man is the only just position to take.
Yes, as most law-making nations do, we find it helps to have *clear* laws, so that one knows whether they have been broken.
And your side is the one who wants to change things to make “life begins at conception” into the Truth (that’s a kick to someone downthread, btw). So I am afraid the onus is on you to make your case.
I shall not be holding my breath. My hands are full of popcorn already. (Mixed metaphors. Ah, the shame.)
Well, at least you admit there is no difference in the right to life at any stage of development the law decides.
We used to have that on slavery here too. The law allowed it. Took a civil war and some Constitutional amendments but the Truth, that all men are equal under the law was served in the end.
I admit what now?
While I do like debating, I draw the line when you start making up stuff in your head. Especially about what I said or did not say.
So we’re done. Thanks for playing, dear.
Well, I’ll say this much for you. You sure reinforce the leftard stereotype. All mouth no brains.
Lonny, seek the services of a M.D. as soon as possible, it seems you are exhibiting the signs of a stroke. From your posts it is likely possible that at least half of your brain is malfunctioning…
That sh*t’s not funny – I hope Karma wasn’t watching you or gives you a pass on that one.
ps: forgive me – but that’s soooooo personal to me. I wouldn’t wish brain damage on the biggest dickwad in the world.
A: You can’t yell ‘FIRE” in a theatre.
A: You can’t shoot innocent people in a theatre.
We already have similar restrictions on guns as we have on words. You can’t shoot things and people with them willy-nilly. The limitations you complain are lacking do in fact already exist.
What you anti-gun freaks propose is equal to banning certain words pre-emptively.
And actually, you can yell ‘FIRE’ in a theatre if the theatre is really on fire.
good point – you guys should use that one more
Actually, you can yell “fire” in a crowded theater. If there actually IS a fire. I have no problem with it being illegal to fire a gun in a crowded theater either… oh, there already is one.
Restrictions on firearms should be just as few and rare as restrictions on speech.
You’re right. None of the rights are absolute. But that does not imply that they’re merely suggestions either.
So the question naturally comes up: What limits should the Second Amendment have? The goal is to have a right to arm oneself to a degree that local governments would think twice before coming after you. You also have a right to make your own militia or police forces to defend your community and to arm them accordingly. We don’t want an arms race, but we don’t want to have governments to consider busting in to your home or community without consequence either. And before you start telling fairy tails, there have been cases where that specific thing has happened.
We also do not allow former felons to possess guns. We restrict the use of firearms by minors. We restrict the sale of explosives such as dynamite and the ancillary equipment such as blasting caps. We even monitor the use of ammonium nitrate fertilizer because it is often use as a component of an inexpensive explosive.
I don’t know what sorts of things you’ve been reading, but there already are restrictions. They are judgment calls done by a political compromises. You may not like the results any better than I do. Compromises are often like that.
The notion that all of the rights have limits is quite true. And the rights of the Second Amendment have been shaved many times by people like you. How much further are you going to risk shaving those rights for a false illusion of safety?
Do you socialists know the provenance of this much beloved quote of yours?
It comes from Holmes decision in Schenk v United States which upheld the criminal conviction of a man that was protesting the WWI draft. And the yell fire in a theater phrase was used as an analogy to his telling draftees to assert your rights and do not give in to intimidation. The “great” Oliver Wendall Holmes said that those to phrases represented a clear and present danger to the government.
as yelling fire in a crowded theater does to the attendees
It’s an absolutely disgusting opinion in service to government tyranny and clearly unconstitutional.
And yet, useful idiots love to throw the quote around as if it proves anything other than there own ignorance and obsequiousness to government.
Again, the question is what was meant at the time, liberally interpreted. We have wrongly expanded the first amendment way beyond what was intended. Clearly they meant to allow censoring any and all sexual content, for example.
The equivalent of what you said would be to allow banning guns in highly secure areas, such as the White House, military installations, and private homes if the owner does not wish it. I’m not aware that anyone has a problem with this.
You might try what we have in Israel. I don’t mean “right-to-carry”; we don’t have that nor do we need it because the soldiers are of many political persuasions, and they walk among us. But if you walk into a school or a bank or a supermarket, anything but a highly secure area, you are asked if you are carrying; if you are you are asked for a license. Upon producing the license, you are allowed in WITH YOUR FIREARM.
The Western Left is all over limiting Freedom of Speech via Hate Speech laws. They do it to protect non-Whites, non-males, and non-Christians. However hate speech directed at Whites, Males, and Christians is not only legal and tolerated, but subsidized, lauded, and encouraged.
There is a reckoning coming.
examples?
Would you like examples of Hate Speech Laws and prosecutions which are plethora in Europe or would you like examples of susbidized and lauded Hate Speech (often coming out of the Ethnic, Race, Women’s, GLBT Studies Departments of all our Universities…and likewise in our media.
any or all – gimme something – Please be reasonable, I’m hoping for honest, smart debate. Try to avoid being hyperbolic – it will not help your argument.
If you are this ill informed, I can merely inform you. There is no debate to be had with the ignorant.
Here are just a few names of the persecuted and prosecuted to get you started…
Lars Hedegaard
Elizabeth Sabaditch Wolff
Geert Wilders
Brigette Bardot
The International Free Press Society
Mr Velocity,
I know nothing about any of those things you mention.
“The Western Left is all over limiting Freedom of Speech via Hate Speech laws.”
extreme exaggeration
“They do it to protect non-Whites, non-males, and non-Christians.”
well, IF someone is it ain’t pervasive (I’d like to see your ‘proof’)
“However hate speech directed at Whites, Males, and Christians is not only legal and tolerated, but subsidized, lauded, and encouraged.”
by no means do even a small percent of either the right or the left engage in this type of disgusting behavior. Maybe you do – I don’t think I do.
YOU, sir, are either ill-informed or an extremely poor communicator.
I researched those obscure (to me and possibly only me) names. Seems to be a theme amongst them. Also last time I checked the 1st Amendment does not apply in Denmark, Austria, France, or much anywhere besides America.
just sayin’
Yes Lonnie.
You dont know. But that hasnet stopped you from opining about the evil opinions of those who are informed.
The International Free Press Society and especially The International Civil Liberties Alliance are filled with members who know even more about this than I do. I suggest you check them out.
Did you know that the Obama Administration is playing footsies with the OIC in implementing Blasphemy Laws which the West will be subject too? The Left which is so fond of criticizing Christianity and Christian organizations, traditions, and institutions, is working with Islamists to protect Islam from similar criticizm, labeling it Hate Speech directed at disadvantaged, minorities, etc. Here is one clue, Muslims and Islam are a worldwide power, with nearly 1/6ths of the worlds population and holding nearly 1/6th of the planet’s land territory.
It’s not that I am an extremely poor communicator, it’s that you are so ill informed that we have to start at remedial kindergarten level education, and work up from there, until you can understand the intelligent nuanced analysis and positions with regards to these issues. You havent a clue what is going on, so of course we sound like extremist haters.
Here is another topic for you to study.
Whiteness Studies
Here start at square one: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies
This stems form Critical Race Theory and other Leftwing Academic Projects, such as Feminism…which is coming out of the Studies Departments and being mainstreamed in the broader Humanities departments in our Universities. You can hear this stuff all over the MSM these days, as the talking heads are sourced from the Unis as experts.
Lonnie, I referened the Western Left, more succinctly the European Left.
The First Amendment has prohibited this assault in the US, but not for lack of trying. And where Leftwingers hold dominion in the US, for example on college campuses, (Hate) Speech Codes have long ago been implemented.
You havent heard about any of this of course because you are the product of the MSM which spins, lies, lies of ommision, buries stories, buries facts….etc to produce pulbic opinion which supports the Leftist agenda, viewpoint, cause, etc.
A modest adaptation of an old quotation –
First they came for the gun owners and I did nothing because I was not a gun owner.
Then they came for the Global Warming deniers and I did nothing because it was for our children’s future.
Then they came for the 1 percent and I did nothing because I was one of the 99 percent.
Then they came for me because my thinking was old and outdated and nobody said a word lest they be taken as well.
gee, that old La Salle ran great
You’re just as bad as they are. Worse.
Using government to control the behavior and property of other Americans is always tyranny, no matter your political ideology, party, religion, or lack thereof.
Coming to a conservative site to trash talk them w/o even trying to engage them in discussions of individual freedom and personal liberty? Conervativs do the same on lefty sites, too. Damn foolishness, that. It’ll only lead to violence and destruction, in the end.
Personally, I’ve found that conservatives, now and then, actually listen.
Progressives and liberals? They wait until the noise stops so that they can say what they want.
iow, both sides are reactionary and are often full of nothing but selfish, immature emotions – but the right is sometimes less prone to such outbursts, unless you’re talking to SoCons.
Talking to either side is often like talking to a wall. …or like trying to tell the wind to stop blowing.
That said, at least some on the right are willing to listen…even when they disagree.
People like you, left or right? You’re part of the problem. You’re not part of the solution.
guilty as charged (on the La Salle comment) – I’m making fun of Peter by comparing him to Archie Bunker.
Seems thats about all you are good at – or good for – is poking fun at people. Too bad you aren’t funny.
“Using government to control the behavior and property of other Americans is always tyranny, no matter your political ideology, party, religion, or lack thereof.”
I assume you don’t actually mean what you’ve written here. Simply because every single law *ever* is “using government to control the behaviour and property of other americans”. I could go on, but I am curious as to how you will twist to not seem like an idiot.
Your move. I’ll fetch the popcorn.
Warren is talking about the concepts of liberty this country is founded on. You want to play semantic games. Here, we think the goverment should fear the people. You need to grasp that if you want to understand the American experiment.
Gary…
What he said was stupid and wrong. And yes, it was so “semantically”. This is because “semantics” is (simplified) “the meaning of the words”. If he wanted another meaning, he should have used other words. He didn’t, so he got the hose.
It is not my job here to “play nice” with stupid people. Or to “respect their opinions”. I respect their right to have them. I even respect their right to be stupid, ignorant, opinionated and dead out wrong. Even their right to call me names, which they use (heh) liberally. Their right to have me make up in my head “what they really meant”? No such thing. Not gonna happen.
“What he said was stupid and wrong.”
Why… because You said so.
LOL, and you call others “stupid”.
What our liberal friends don’t seem to get – except when it concerns issues they’re focused on – is that the Constitution is our bulwark against the United States Government. The Constitution prevents the flawed human beings who make up the Government from DOING WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO US! And liberals want to make the constitution weaker by ignoring the bits of it they find inconvenient.
Think of Government power as a massive body of water and the Constitution as a dam holding it back. We can let a little water through – tightly controlled, enough to be useful. But we do not pick away at the stone and concrete foundations because once you weaken the dam the power of the water will wear it away. Eventually, the dam will break. The power of the water will hit us all at once. It will not be pretty.
So liberals want to do away with parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of “progress.” They want to take a shortcut directly to…whatever it is that they want. Gimme! Gimme now! Trouble is, that sets a precedent. You undermine an Amendment you don’t like. In a few years, a new President and a new Congress will (not might, but WILL) undermine an Amendment you do like. Vox populi will insist on undermining a few others. But nobody will care because they’re getting what they want, right now.
Nobody will care until the unintended consequences start to appear. You’ll wake up one morning to find your government is full of greedy, ambitious, flawed human beings who are ready to take what they want – from you. These will be people who NEEDED all those old-fashioned Amendments to enable them to govern without becoming tyrants. But oh, well – you told them it was OK to skirt around all those needless obstacles that those evil old white men set up to slow down “progress.” Now they have what you wanted them to have – a free hand to “make the world a better place. Better for some, as it turns out, but not so great for others.
Conservatives exist for the purpose of warning liberals about the consequences of abandoning stupid old obsolete stuff that stands in the way of “progress.” We’re supposed to remind them that those obstructions were put in place for a reason. Most of the time, most liberals don’t want to listen. They ALWAYS know that their “progressive” ideas are ALWAYS best – no down side or unintended consequences allowed. In exchange for our service as canaries in the coal mine, we get to say “I told you so” when liberal pipe dreams don’t quite come true.
very well stated – I don’t agree with it, but I get what you mean.
I love the quote from Churchill (I think it was Churchill) – Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Would you agree?
was replying to Bugs
Nothing better than satire when it comes to dealing with the press and the intellectually handicapped.
I doubt, however, its chance of reactivating their grey cells.
Very good article. I enjoyed it!
You are confused.
“Life” does in no way begin at conception. Both the egg and the sperm are just as “alive” as their combination. Which suggests that the term “life” is not what you are looking for.
Get off the kool-aid Majum. You are the one who is confused. I know where life begins. If you’ve ever had an abortion then I’ll call you a murderer to your face.
Yes, I am sure you would. Which says something about what kind of person you are, and why exactly you hold this position.
Yes, it does show he is an honest person willing to tell truth.
As opposed to the kind of person who wishes others to “die in a fire”.
A human is created at conception. That is Truth.
Oh. Truth. With a capital ‘T’.
Well, that’s me told, then.
(If you can’t tell, I am laughing at you. I am sure I am not the only one.)
Yeah, I know. People like you laughed at those who said Blacks were humans not property. Your kind has always been around.
Meh, in case you cannot tell….. I care about as much what you think or laugh at as I do what such as whooppi goldberg, micheal moore or any other far left progressive does.
Laugh away, it touches me not.
Oh dear… It is not the laughter that should touch you.
It is that you somehow believe that using the word Truth somehow makes what you say true. Or that you are on the side of truth and right when you have no words with which to express said truth.
I think that this, perhaps, is why you on the right do not understand the importance of the first amendment compared to the second. The rest of us are armed with words, and with a vote. You are only armed when you have a gun. To us, giving up the gun for a vote and a voice is an improvement. For you, it is not.
I would feel sorry for you, and even claim that this was a problem that we should look at, if I didn’t feel that so much of the ignorance that disarms you and leaves you helpless is self-inflicted. Still, it must be awful to be so scared of everything.
WOW! Such super enlightened powers of progressive uh.. er, enlightenment there Mjaum. Sure put me in my place.
Wish I had such powers… ah well, as a conservative such is not what the self proclaimed enlightened class… AKA progressives allow.
Poor poor me, somehow I’ll muddle through.
You make your own place, Fantom. You surely do.
I sure do Mjaum, I sure do. And right now that space is in your head. How I got there was easy, all I had to do was locate the “Space Unoccupied for Rent sign” and move right in.
Course your posting made that sign very easy to spot.
Of course you are, Pilate, and what’s more, no one cares that you’re laughing at us, because we know we’re right.
From an online petition against David Gregory for breaking a DC gun law.
Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has confirmed that the department is looking into allegations that NBC’s David Gregory violated D.C.’s gun banning laws during a recent taping of Meet the Press.
In a discussion about gun control, host David Gregory brandished a 30-round magazine purportedly for an AR-15 or similar “assault rifle.” The discussion took place on December 23, during the broadcast of NBC’s Sunday morning political talk show.
/So now a gun control freak has gone too far with his 2nd amendments rights.
Journalists beware,
Show and Tell might get you put in jail..
It gets better. Reports claim that Washington, DC, authorities warned Gregory not to bring in that magazine and display it on his DC–based show because of the law.
He and other arrogant journalists such as Piers Morgan think they are properly part of the elite and need not be bothered with such trifles as obeying the very type of laws they advocate for everyone else. The hypocrisy and stupidity—they hurt!
Breivik, among many other murderous things, is stupid.
So too are the Norwegian Left Wing who honestly believe that Samir Kuntar is a hero.
A plague on both your houses.
“die in a fire”?
Madge, you Norwegians are so funny. Good one!
Interesting that MJaum expressed the wish that people “die in a fire”; the term for a “burnt offering,” for “an offering consumed by fire” is…a holocaust.
BTW, during “the” Holocaust, when Norway’s population was just over 3 million, there were about 45,000 active Nazi collaborators—about 1.5% of the population. The Muslim population of Norway is currently around 3% of the population—i.e., about 180,000 of 6 million.
Interesting indeed. And intentional?
Either way, I opened up a new 6-pack of TrollAway and sprayed down my computer.
people “die in a fire”
Why do I suspect that MJaum will feel un-Danted?
/*cough* … at least at first
The left and the black robbed judiciary in the supreme court have conspired to misinterpret the first amendment. They insist that prohibition of the free exercise of religion is lawful and that even a prayer in a school by an individual student, or a nativity scene on state government property is equal to creating a law respecting the establishment of a religion.
The fourth amendment is virtually non-existent, or selectively applied. The sixth amendment… ha! The 10th amendment, again, is a relic. 11th amendment; don’t we have illegal aliens suing states? Of course the 14th amendment is selectively applied to support anchor babies. Frankly the whole constitution is in sambles, so why should we believe the second amendment to be sacred ground? It is to me, but I just had a nice Christmas dinner rhetorical throw down with family members about “assault weapons”. We are at a precipice dear citizens, and I don’t see enough will to change the coarse we are on.
There is no such thing as “hate speech.” “Hate speech” is an invention of the anti-free-speech gay-rights movement, designed ensure dishonest discussion by excluding opposing opinions from legitimacy.
There are unpleasant opinions—but the solution to such examples of free speech is more speech, not suppression or exclusion.
Quite true Buzz, and the corollary is that there is no such thing as being shot by a gun or hit by a car. One gets hit by a driver or shot by a gunman but the tool itself does not do the driving or the shooting. Yet we all know countless examples of sloppy journalists who write the former. The more such stupid lies are circulated, the more likely it will actually affect the way people think.
And the solution to firearm violence is (counter-intuitively) more firearms. The least likely place to be in a shooting is at a gun show or a gun store. Oddly enough, people tend to be very well behaved in places like that. I think it is because everyone knows that everyone else is probably armed with something and that the chances of anyone getting more than one shot at someone are next to nothing.
I have not heard any of the “gun violence” hysterics coherently explain why or how legitimate gun ownership should be in any way restricted as much as, let alone more than, it is already.
We may have a problem with untreated or unaddressed mental illness in this country, but that is largely due to leftists having destroyed whatever infrastructure for dealing with mental illness was formerly in place. Fine; let us, then, deal with the problem of undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. Restricting—or, rather, attempting to restrict—a constitutional right on the basis that the right has been abused by a smattering of untreated lunatics is moronic.
I did read of a shooting at a gun store a few years ago: a young man walked around the police care parked in front of the store, entered the store (door chime) pulled a gun and shot a single round into the ceiling. He fell with 14 bullets in him from no fewer than 7 guns.
If only our schools were so secure.
Anyone who has seriously looked into the matter should know that the Founding Fathers, who wrote the United States Constitution after all, wanted The People to have the same quality weapons as any standing career army in case a President turned that army on the people.
Correct.
Interesting in US vrs Miller. It was because a sawed of shotgun was not shown to be in use in any military that the Court ruled the way it did.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0307_0174_ZS.html
“The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.
”
I would argue they are wrong. Using the same judicial standard of “Strict Scrutiny” as used for every other Right of the People… particulary the Bill of Rights. I would have to say that it is unreasonable to deny any weapon less than a military grade arm which Miller would allow.
Short barreled shotguns had been widely used as ‘trench brooms’ in WWI. They were just the thing to have when clearing around a corner of a German trench.
Miller only failed to provide evidence of that use because he was dead.
DonM, I did not know Miller was dead at that time. That would explain why he did not show up.
The main point being is US vrs Miller predicates an individual right to own weapons that are common in use as an individual weapon in any military in the world.
My point being that under “strict scrutiny”, given that an individual may own true military weapons ala’ US vrs Miller, then there is no compelling State interest to deny weapons of lessor scope/capability.
Other interesting facts some may not know about US vrs Miller. Miller was a bank robber. Yet the fact that he was, not only a felon ..but what most would call a really bad felon, ……… that fact was not considered in any large part as to his Right To Keep And Bear Arms.
There was a growing consensus at the time of this decision that shotguns should be prohibited for military use exactly because of the indiscriminate carnage, such as agonizing wounding and slow, gory deaths (as opposed to clean kills), that they wrought during WWI. I believe one of the Geneva Conventions rules addresses this. Hence the decision saying that sawed-off shotguns could be restricted on the grounds that these are not proper military/militia weapons. The ruling made some sense in the context of its times.
Too many immature, unstable, irresponsible and downright insane people in this country to have absolute unfettered right to bear arms. Even gun zealots realize this when the support laws preventing convicted felons or individuals out on bail from having a weapon.
Depends on the felony. We have too many laws which reach that level. But on the whole, if a felon wishes to carry a gun they will. No law will stop them, so why make law which stops us?
As for out on bail. If they are dangerous, they should not be out on bail.
It is because of the insane or evil people that the rest of us much not have the right to bear arms infringed: So that when insane or evil people exhibit insane or evil behaviors they may be stopped forcibly, perhaps even with deadly force if necessary.
I would look at the ‘well regulated militia’ part, and note that the militia in 1795 was ordered to be equipped with pistols, swords, muskets, and cannon. Ships with cannon were to be privately owned, to permit the Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal.
I would further look at the ‘well ordered militia’ part and note that the militia includes the national guard (organized militia) and the unorganized militia (men between the age of 17 and 45, and veterans to the age of 65). We obviously need a change in Title 10, section 311 extending membership in the unorganized militia to women.
I have a fondness for old science fiction. The idea of common sense publishing controls reminded me of this from Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrella.
“I revolted,” said the doctor, “without knowing it. People can say anything they want on Earth, and they can print up to twenty copies of anything they need to print, but beyond that it’s mass communications. Against the law. I knew the law. No mass communications except within government. News is the mother of opinion, opinion the cause of mass delusion, delusion the source of war. The law was plain and I thought it did not matter. I thought it was just an old law.”
Neet, shall have to read that.
As for old… sigh. I s’pose you have read Heinlein, Poul Anderson? What I consider old is E.E. “Doc” Smith. Loved his “Lensman” series.
That quoted segment is just a little aside in the book that stuck in my mind.
Cordwainer Smith had a way with words, kinda like Jack Vance.
I also like Heinlien, Anderson and Doc Smith. I’ve always been fond of the Skylark of Space.
But I have to face it. I’m getting old.
“But I have to face it. I’m getting old.”
You an me both, you an me both. Life is short.
“What would Second Amendment bloviators say if we applied their logic to the First Amendment?”
Finally!!! The absurd are called out!
They read and use their Bibles in the same manner they read and use the constitution. They read and redefine anything they cherry pick to be self serving.
That said, both the First and Second Amendments protects “against” common sense.