If the fukin Media had any damn balls THIS is kind of headlines we would read.
B/c of the NRA's lobbying for Castle/Stand your ground laws along with ALEC in our country, we had a man with a criminal record posing as a vigilante & a young man, only 17, that was MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD walking home in the rain, his only weapons being Ice Tea and Skittles.
The NRA has gotten away with far too much bullshit, like this law and others of this nature for far too long all b/c they stretch to the Nth degree the meaning of the 2nd Amendment to bounds where it is no longer recognizable nor Constitutional.
Repugnicans are whores for the NRA and far too many Dems are their bitches. I hope they feel accomplished in causing the death of a Beautiful, Innocent, Intelligent young man. A strong soul who had his life before him & was killed b/c of a power grab by the NRA!
We have the power if NOT to defeat the NRA then to diminish them.
We are not asking for the elimination of all guns in the nation. God knows, I am Southern and we have guns. Just about everyone in my family has a gun and even one of them was formerly with the DOJ and my dad was a decorated officer and Sergeant.
What we want is STRONG criminal background checks and mainly these Gun shows (traveling Guns-R-US) to be BANNED. It is criminal that anyone can go to these shows and buy a gun NO matter who they are.
Look at Europe. They have very strong Gun law enforcement and guess what ? They have very little gun crime. It would seem we would have the same common sense about such things.
I would love to see Americans go against the NRA b/c their actions are directly responsible for TRAYVON MARTIN no longer walking our Earth, but I won't hold my damn breath either!
Fuzzy agrees. More commies are needed to balance the discourse flooded by conservative idealists who think that having an assault rifle in their home makes it safer. Thanks for sharing your thoughtful insight.Looks like the commies are out.
I'm sure it was satisfying for you to mock Coconutz, but the above post doesn't really do anything for the argument I believe you're trying to make. The fact is that there is a possibility that a responsible gun owner may one day make a difference in your life.
As an anecdote... my cousin saved my uncle from being killed by an angry bull by shooting it with a shotgun. I think that is an example of a gun owner acting in a responsible manner and saving an innocent life.
FYI.......cutting and pasting entire articles without attribution is against forum rules. Your reply was written by Alan Keyes, not you.The Second Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders
merely to allow us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our
hearts content. This is not to say that hunting game for the family
dinner, or defending against personal dangers, were not anticipated uses
for firearms, particularly on the frontier. But these things are not
the real purpose of the Amendment.
The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of
abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural
rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That
is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill ofRights.
In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being
systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty, to
resist and overthrow the power responsible. That duty requires that we
always maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if necessary,
something that it is very hard to do if the government has all the
weapons. A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is a fundamental
DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.
In our time there have been many folks who dont like to be reminded of
all this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the word
people in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it doesnt mean
in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. They say
that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse, and instead of
putting in states they put in people. And so it refers to a right
inherent in the state government.
This position is incoherent, and has been disproved by every piece of
legitimate historical evidence. At one point in Jeffersons letters,
for example, he is talking about the militia, and he writes, militia
every able-bodied man in the state. The militia was every
able-bodied man in the state. It had nothing to do with the state
government. The words well-regulated had to do with organizing that
militia and drilling it in the style of the 19th century, but militia
itself referred to the able-bodied citizens of the state or commonwealth
not to the state government.
It would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear
arms to state governments, since the principle on which our polity is
based, as stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government, at
any level, can become oppressive of our rights. And we must be prepared
to defend ourselves against its abuses
The movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to
our capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also
part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human
beings are capable of moral responsibility. This is a second and deeper
reason that the defense of the 2nd Amendment is essential to the defense
of liberty.
Advocates of banning guns think we can substitute material things for
human self-control, but this approach wont wash. It is the human moral
will that saves us from violence, not the presence or absence of
weapons. We should reject utterly the absurd theory that weapons are
the cause of violence.
Consider, for example, the phony assertion that certain weapons should
be banned because they have no purpose except to kill people. It is
people that kill people, and they can use countless kinds of weapons to
do so, if killing is in their hearts where love of justice should be.
So lets get down to the real issue: are we moral adults, or are we
moral children? If we are adults, then we have the capacity to control
our will even in the face of passion, and to be responsible for the
exercise of our natural rights. If we are only children, then all the
particularly dangerous toys must be controlled by the government. But
this solution implies that we can trust government with a monopoly on
guns, even though we cannot trust ourselves with them. This is not a
solution I trust.
Anyone who is serious about controlling violence must recognize that it
can only be done by rooting violence out of the human heart. Thats why
I dont understand those who say save us from guns, even while they
cling to the coldly violent doctrine that human life has no worth except
what they choose to assign to it.
If we want to end violence in our land, we must warm the hearts of all
Americans with a renewed dedication to the God-given equality of all
human beings. We must recapture the noble view of man as capable of
moral responsibility and self-restraint of assuming responsibility for
governing himself. This is the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and
indeed of the entire American project of ordered liberty.
It is the business of every citizen to preserve justice in his heart,
and the material capacity, including arms, to resist tyranny. These
things constitute our character as a free people, which it is our duty
to maintain. And to fulfill our duty to be such a people we shall have
to return to the humble subjection to the authority of true moral
principle that characterized our Founders, and that characterized every
generation of Americans, until now. We must regain control of ourselves.
Most deeply, then, the assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is the
assertion that we intend to control ourselves, and submit to the moral
order that God has decreed must govern our lives. And just as we have
no right to shirk our duty to submit to that moral order, so we have no
right to shirk our duty to preserve unto ourselves the material means to
discipline our government, if necessary, so that it remains a fit
instrument for the self-government of a free people. The preservation of
2nd Amendment rights, for the right reasons, is a moral and public duty
of every citizen.
I shall go in search of those reports for the peace of mind for both of us.
Well that was easy enough..
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/eighthsurvey/8pc.pdf
Certainly America has more gun related deaths than the UK or Canada. Much of this can be accredited to gang on gang crime. However, to put things in perspective. The UK has, as a percentage of it's population, 133% more assault victims than the U.S., 326 times more drug offenses, 125% more rape victims, and 25% more total crime victims than the U.S.
Canada has 92% more assault victims than the U.S. , 164 times more drug offenses , 100% more rape victims, and 13% more total crime than the U.S.
So, as we can see, the lines of safety based on the restrictions imposed by gun laws are blurred at best.
Guns don't kill people by themselves. People kill people. And if the kind of person that would take another person's life didn't possess a gun, they would just do it another way.
Ur the best kind of angel ... a bright one.:tongue:The take-home message from this exercise: Just because you find numbers that agree with your point of view, doesn't mean those numbers are valid.
The Second Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders
merely to allow us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our
hearts content. This is not to say that hunting game for the family
dinner, or defending against personal dangers, were not anticipated uses
for firearms, particularly on the frontier. But these things are not
the real purpose of the Amendment.
The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of
abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural
rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That
is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill ofRights.
In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being
systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty, to
resist and overthrow the power responsible. That duty requires that we
always maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if necessary,
something that it is very hard to do if the government has all the
weapons. A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is a fundamental
DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.
In our time there have been many folks who dont like to be reminded of
all this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the word
people in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it doesnt mean
in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. They say
that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse, and instead of
putting in states they put in people. And so it refers to a right
inherent in the state government.
This position is incoherent, and has been disproved by every piece of
legitimate historical evidence. At one point in Jeffersons letters,
for example, he is talking about the militia, and he writes, militia
every able-bodied man in the state. The militia was every
able-bodied man in the state. It had nothing to do with the state
government. The words well-regulated had to do with organizing that
militia and drilling it in the style of the 19th century, but militia
itself referred to the able-bodied citizens of the state or commonwealth
not to the state government.
It would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear
arms to state governments, since the principle on which our polity is
based, as stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government, at
any level, can become oppressive of our rights. And we must be prepared
to defend ourselves against its abuses
The movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to
our capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also
part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human
beings are capable of moral responsibility. This is a second and deeper
reason that the defense of the 2nd Amendment is essential to the defense
of liberty.
Advocates of banning guns think we can substitute material things for
human self-control, but this approach wont wash. It is the human moral
will that saves us from violence, not the presence or absence of
weapons. We should reject utterly the absurd theory that weapons are
the cause of violence.
Consider, for example, the phony assertion that certain weapons should
be banned because they have no purpose except to kill people. It is
people that kill people, and they can use countless kinds of weapons to
do so, if killing is in their hearts where love of justice should be.
So lets get down to the real issue: are we moral adults, or are we
moral children? If we are adults, then we have the capacity to control
our will even in the face of passion, and to be responsible for the
exercise of our natural rights. If we are only children, then all the
particularly dangerous toys must be controlled by the government. But
this solution implies that we can trust government with a monopoly on
guns, even though we cannot trust ourselves with them. This is not a
solution I trust.
Anyone who is serious about controlling violence must recognize that it
can only be done by rooting violence out of the human heart. Thats why
I dont understand those who say save us from guns, even while they
cling to the coldly violent doctrine that human life has no worth except
what they choose to assign to it.
If we want to end violence in our land, we must warm the hearts of all
Americans with a renewed dedication to the God-given equality of all
human beings. We must recapture the noble view of man as capable of
moral responsibility and self-restraint of assuming responsibility for
governing himself. This is the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and
indeed of the entire American project of ordered liberty.
It is the business of every citizen to preserve justice in his heart,
and the material capacity, including arms, to resist tyranny. These
things constitute our character as a free people, which it is our duty
to maintain. And to fulfill our duty to be such a people we shall have
to return to the humble subjection to the authority of true moral
principle that characterized our Founders, and that characterized every
generation of Americans, until now. We must regain control of ourselves.
Most deeply, then, the assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is the
assertion that we intend to control ourselves, and submit to the moral
order that God has decreed must govern our lives. And just as we have
no right to shirk our duty to submit to that moral order, so we have no
right to shirk our duty to preserve unto ourselves the material means to
discipline our government, if necessary, so that it remains a fit
instrument for the self-government of a free people. The preservation of
2nd Amendment rights, for the right reasons, is a moral and public duty
of every citizen.
It's possible a nuclear explosion in Seoul will kill the guy who was destined to assassinate me. So nukes may well make a positive contribution to my continued life.
Are you trying to up the lame quotient, or is that yet another positive by-product............?
What, you will shoot someone with your gun? You will "save" someone by shooting someone else with your gun? That's your "knight in shining armor" gun moment? Really?
Lame.
What, you will shoot someone with your gun? You will "save" someone by shooting someone else with your gun? That's your "knight in shining armor" gun moment? Really?
Lame.
OK, one more angle.
If you came after me and my family with a knife screaming that you were going to slice all of us to death, find another forum you fucking idiot.
You are right as far as too many guns are getting into the wrong hands. Criminals will always be able to get illegal lethal weapons. Law abiding citizens do not have that option. I own and carry firearms for personal protection. One day, someone like me may save you and or someone you love from one of those "wrong hands".
If you still believe that firearms should not be had by law abiding citizens, place stickers on your car and your house that say you don't own guns.
You don't have a legally-protected right to kill Random Person A to save Random Person B's life, as was your original argument.
Thanks, gymfresh. Fuzzy had heard about the 'vigilante' section of this code, but didn't know it was so unambiguous. It clearly encourages people to act as police officers, and not so much "stand their ground" as "run around and shoot people they think are committing a felony."Hmmm. Where I live you do.2011 Florida Statutes CHAPTER 776 JUSTIFIABLE USE OF FORCE
776.012 Use of force in defense of person.
A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony
Guns are so much easier and less messy....thats the problem.
Killing should be made more difficult, not easier.