Be a post whore!

[Lola Bunny]

Again, so sorry to hear, MTP. I hope you'll on the road of recovery and stay on it.

[Shawnee123]

Hale yeah! I keep remembering i'm off work all next week. It will be scramble time when we go back but it's worth it for the break. On a football Sunday, I remember reasons to like my job.

[ZenGum]

I just learned that the indigenous people of Vancouver Island are the Kwakwaka'wakw.

Go on, say it. Three times, if you still aren't smiling.

[Lamplighter]

Their village is on banks of the NicNakPadiWak River.
It's there so everyone can see when the old man comes rolling home.

[infinite monkey]

Is it really frightening or really hilarious how the gun-nut crazies are going absolutely berserk at the slightest hint that some sort of gun control (i.e. more than we have) has been given leverage in light of the most recent massacre?

We have examples of a couple of them here. If the cellar is a microcosm of the world, then you can maybe make projections on the ratio of gun-nuttiness to responsible, thinking, intelligent gun owners in this country.

Let the foots and the likes in the world have their guns. You hear no nutty crazy blatherings from those who aren't, well, nutty crazy. You know, the ones who give the impression of severe post-traumatic stress, 'shell-shockiness' or just plain inexplicable and complicated nuttiness.

The nuts have convinced me who the dangerous owners are: most likely to start shooting from their cabin on top of Paranoia Hill at anyone approaching in case they are there to talk about reasonable gun laws. Talk about it? Have those difficult conversations? No, not until their guns are pried from their cold...eh, you know the rest.

Yee-haw.

[Lamplighter]

The gun-nuts are losing the PR battle.
... and eventually guns will either be banned completely,
or there will be more and more Ruby Ridge events.
One way or the other they are the losers.



The only possible alternative I see is for the so-called "sane gun owners"
to begin dialog with the rest of the community, to get rational gun control.

For example, given a man who has a wife and children, and he wants to have his guns,
but she sees danger and wants to protect her children and herself.

Which is more important, life and freedom from fear ... or... owning a gun ?
Whose rights will prevail ?

If sane gun owners can not answer such a question, guns will eventually be banned completely.

[Griff]

There are at least two kinds of gun nuts in this country, those who crazily arm themselves hoping for Armageddon and those who believe the country can be disarmed. You need both kinds to get Ruby Ridge/Waco events. In a country as thoroughly awash with arms as the US you won't get confiscation because it would be a bloodbath. Ibby was on to the problem/answer in one of the gun threads. We have to address the cultural problem of gun fetishists of which we have more than one type.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Griff

There are at least two kinds of gun nuts in this country, those who crazily arm themselves hoping for Armageddon and those who believe the country can be disarmed. You need both kinds to get Ruby Ridge/Waco events. In a country as thoroughly awash with arms as the US you won't get confiscation because it would be a bloodbath. Ibby was on to the problem/answer in one of the gun threads. We have to address the cultural problem of gun fetishists of which we have more than one type.

I agree with most of your post, except it was not people opposed to guns
that brought about Ruby Ridge... it was the government.
The gun-nuts cannot not win such fights.

I'm not saying there is only one way.
A large part of the "cultural problem" is already being overcome... gradually.
People are law-abiding, and there lies the current support of "gun rights".
But gun owners are being seen more and more as a reactionary minority.

A change in the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment will be
advocated and accepted as a matter of individual safety and
for the "public good", so blood-bath confiscations are not inevitable.

Rational gun owners can either help solve problems, or lose their war.

30

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

A change in the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment will be
advocated and accepted as a matter of individual safety and
for the "public good", so blood-bath confiscations are not inevitable.

I think you're going to have to get an amendment to the Constitution to do this part successfully. You will always have holdouts who will feel their mini Armageddons are supporting a Constitutional principle. With an amendment it would be their fellow citizens limiting their rights not an "activist" judge.

[DanaC]

The thing is, that part of the constitution was written when there was a strong desire to defend the nation entirely through a citizen militia. As opposed to a standing army alon the lines of the absolutist European model. Also as a bit of an inheritance from the British culture, whose obession with citizen militias and fear of standing armies was a regular political bugbear throughout the 18th and into the 19th century.

The inadequacy of citizen militias having proved itself time and again, America now has one of the largest and best funded armies in the history of mankind.

Citizen militias were in part a defence against a possibly overweaning state. But they were never meant to be a potential defence against a massive standing army. They were supposed to negate the need for such. And they were supposed to be armed with a firelock rifle by their hearth, which would be picked up and put down again as needed in defence of their freedom.

At no point could the people who drafted that constitutional right and obligation have forseen the destructive power of modern weapons, nor the existence of such a well-armed population running alongside a gargantuan standing army, set within the context of a seemingly ever increasing militarism in popular culture.

Nor could they have envisaged a time when an individual of ordinary means could easily achieve an arsenal to rival of that of an entire militia regiment.

[ZenGum]

Indeed, I think this brings up the strange reverence that many Americans have for the constitution. The Founding Fathers may well have been "right" for their time, but things change - technology, economics, culture, human behaviour. Yet some people (remember Radar? He was way out like this) take it as axiomatic that The Constitution Is Always Right.
The argument then becomes about interpretations of the constitution, which are generally ways of trying to bend it to what each protagonist thinks it should mean.
It reminds me a little of rabbinical debates, where you start from a given text and build interpretations upon it. You may argue the interpretations, but must not challenge the master text.
Not every one is like this, but it's a common pattern.

[Griff]

The Constitution became a quasi-religious document during the Civil War when religious rhetoric was used to justify the immense loss of life. Lincoln created a permanent Union from an organization often seen as a temporary convenience by his contemporaries. People who call this a Christian nation often look to that rhetoric for ammunition in the culture war. It is quite impossible for some religious to separate their God(s) from their Country or its founding documents. That said, we do have an often ignored Constitutional mechanism that would be very appropriate to use especially when addressing questions specific to previous language.

[Chocolatl]

I know that, by virtue of its title, this thread cannot be found guilty of thread drift, but if it could, I'd say this level of coherent conversation would be thread-drifted-out-to-sea.

[infinite monkey]

It was beautiful, really. Who knew me avoiding the gun threads to express my latest observation on the subject while shielding myself from a cruel attack would result in an actual conversation?

I guess it's hard to transport a huge arsenal from thread to thread.

Now i must venture out into huge snow drifts, hit the bank, the grocery, and get some books to stick my nose in. If only i had a fireplace i would be uber content.

[Griff]

Guilty!