So, Allen Dershowitz just said……

[Smitty]

“Originalists” who believe in the 2nd amendment right to bear arms should carry guns similar to those in use when the law passed. You know, flint locks, etc.

Do you think that holds for other amendments as well? Free speech not allowed on the interwebs, television and radio because they didn’t exist?

Share This

[transplantella]

I’m willing to trade for flintlocks if the government is willing to trim back to the number of programs and agencies and departments it had in 1776.

Deal?

Share This

[EdSane]

Anyone else advocating for the racial and gender discrimination of the 1780s too?

Share This

[shed22]

What? No! It’s almost like believing in the Bible. Times are changing. Keep up.

Share This

[redblack]

smitty: it’s all in the intent.

jefferson said that the electorate should be well-informed, and that people should be able to convey information freely and widely. the internet keeps that tradition alive without the modern usurpation of freedom of the press by corporate america.

on the other hand, the well-regulated militia was not intended to be turned on its own citizens or its own government. it was meant to repel foreign invasion. but with the state of security in america, do we, the people, need to be armed against foreign invasion?

and a lot of people in the new world had guns – for hunting animals for food, not for terrorizing their fellow citizens.

and, yeah, that’s exactly what happened at sandy hook last week: terrorism by an insane criminal.

terrorists and insane criminals should not have access to modern assault weapons, and we, the people, should use our government to ensure that.

but if dershowitz wants to limit the criminally insane among us to possession of flint locks, i’m all for it. then, all you’d need to disarm them would be a squirt gun.

but no knives.

Share This

[JKB]

Who decides? That is, how would we identify the terrorists and insane criminals who simply haven’t yet acted violently?

For those who have, we already have law that felons can’t carry guns.

Share This

[DBP]

Dershowitz =

► washed-up gadfly

► attack dog

► hustler

This guy works for people like Claus Von Bulow and OJ Simpson on the convenient theory that rich people need the best lawyers money can buy. That is to say, rich people need him.

Although Dershowitz appears to be arguing for something I agree with here (stronger gun contol), he is doing it in the dumbest possible way, by equating an appeal to the Bill of Rights with this so-called school of Originalism. It’s a non-sequiter at best.

Share This

[JoB]

does this argument really merit a discussion?

we must be bored.

Share This

[happywalker]

Maybe it’s just me but…I think this Open Discussion has been very b o r i n g lately

Share This

[singularname]

If there’s going to be a “conversation,” which I see everyone talking about having, then that conversation involves all sides. If not, you just want a monologue.

As to the Second Amendment, change it, repeal it, if you want. It exists to allow citizens to protect themselves from both foreign and domestic terror–no hard-core scholarly based opinion there, just my own and one that won’t change. In exchange, it also “protects” terrorists (in the guise of the mentally ill, and the police, and all other government/military entities considered “above” the law). And why the terrorism? Because humans are just down-right overall RUDE, leading to more and more depravity.

I guess my driving thought is: Whatever gun control laws are enacted, apply them to EVERYONE–police and military, too.

As an aside, riffing off other threads on this topic, it pisses me off that Ausperger’s is so prominently featured as this person’s mental illness. The two young men I know with this “syndrome”–I can’t imagine how that association must make them feel, and a strong component of this syndrome is about their sensitivity to feelings. I wish the media would address this, of course only because they have already overaddressed this.

Most importantly, I so cannot understand why the terror against those innocent bright spirits. And why there is no place in my mind or heart to give any god any respect.

Apologies my thoughts are bouncing from theme to theme here on this larger topic. Too much to process still.

Share This

[JKB]

Check your tickets, they should say “Amygdala Monologues” Decorum varies by section. You can say anything you want from the cheap seats.

Share This

[HMC Rich]

No kidding JKB. Zero to Infinity in a split second.

Share This

[JoB]

know what zero to infinity is?

claiming that banning assault rifles and the easy accessibility of unlimited amounts of ammunition is an infringement on the second amendment…

Share This

[singularname]

I read endlessly about what the Second Ammendment isn’t, so what IS it exactly? Redblack goes into the IS, but it leaves out what I was taught, which includes nonforeign invaders (seems oxymoronish?)–the British. Since those long-ago days, our government has turned its official militia against citizens in the US AND abroad repeatedly. Relatively safe? Sure. Safe? No. Ask any black, Hispanic, or Native American man spotted in a West Seattle neighborhood after dark (at the very least) who “just doesn’t look like he belongs” (ref. several threads on this forum).

Isn’t it great we can sit in our warm homes with web access and talk about how safe we are while half the world burns under terror, a healthy portion of it brought to complete innocents by those to whom you would grant sole access to “assault weapons”?

Share This

[JoB]

singulname

i am no more in favor of the assaults carried out in the name of freedom by the United States in other countries than i am of the assaults carried out within our boundaries in the name of ______ .

and yes, i do know what is and has been happening in our poorer neighborhoods. i have chosen to live and volunteer in those neighborhoods most of my life.

But i still don’t want to risk a bullet through my head every time i walk out of my home to give some moron who wouldn’t know the first thing about how to use their weapons effectively to defend their neighbors in the event of “invasion” the right to own an assault weapon and unlimited ammunition.

Share This

[redblack]

singularname: police are not militia, and militia should not be used as police in a democratic society. police are civilians just like you and me, and, as such, they aren’t trained to put down insurrection and their forces and weaponry aren’t adequate to enact a military coup. that’s the way it should be, in my opinion.

unless we want our police to become a militia, it’s high time we stop pretending that a domestic ban on weapons of mass destruction is unconstitutional. and we have two well-regulated militias for both foreign and domestic insurrection or invasion: the national guard and the regular army. we don’t need a civilian militia, because we have evolved past that point.

in a society as diverse, free (almost to the point of anarchy) and violent as the united states, police are highly necessary. in tough economic conditions, people can become desperate and resort to crime, and mental health issues go unnoticed and untreated. that isn’t a great climate in which to allow easy access to assault weapons – unchecked over the internet, no less. if we address those issues, maybe our police can relax and stand down a little.

(personally, i like police. because there are some real wackos running around out there. i suppose it’s true that as a “white” man i have the freedom not to feel intimidated by them. but i also think that while there are high-profile exceptions, most police aren’t racist, profiling, bullying a-holes. they’re as kind or as mean as the rest of us. i prefer not to see them as authority figures to be feared, but as a necessary service to the community that i pay taxes for.)

the bottom line is that the second amendment doesn’t give us the right to more easily hurt one another. nonetheless, we have the highest incidence of gun deaths among industrialized nations at nearly 10,000 per year.

but i do believe that people should be able to own guns to hunt and to defend themselves, with the caveat that those weapons are registered and that their owners are well-trained, licensed, and evaluated regularly.

while there is an onus on ownership, the most important change in america needs to be that the manufacture and sale of those weapons is curtailed first, and then heavily regulated. it’s long past time to put the screws to the gun lobby.

because with power comes responsibility.

Share This

[JoB]

i may be forming a pattern here but…

ditto what dobro said

Share This

[singularname]

Hey y’all …

Just got back from a great zero-tech vacay with the family in New Orleans. Catching up here to see what Seattle happenings I’ve been missing.

(On that note, New Orleans at various [probably most] times is the homicide-by-gun capitol of the nation–sure you’ve heard–and there’s been a half-dozen or so times when a hand gun in the bedroom has been advantageous during house break-ins among my family’s abodes. I actually couldn’t imagine *not* owning a firearm if I lived there [in the house–I’m not interested in “packin'”], but the crime in general does seem to be sloooooooo…wly improving [not an opinion based on statistics, just the general climate you feel in all the neighborhoods]. Shotguns and rifles are overly common, but they are solely for purposes of hunting–big-time hunters down there and I’d guess those weapons are outnumbered only by fishing rods. This of course is part of the “conversation” due to the homicide numbers, but no one down there is gearing up to take on the government per se with “assault weapons,” that I know of anyway, although there is a huge “mind your own g-d business” mentality.” Perhaps this reflects the true meaning behind the Second? Now Texas! [a state I do adore]–mom’s side of the family–entirely different story. They’re totally gearing up but perhaps ironically they’re a much less “excitable” group of folks [except of course when I showed my aunt her “bunker” on Google Earth *lol*].) –And when the heck does a parenthetical go from an aside to a sidebar to a sideshow? And why am I so brackety, too, to boot?

Anyway … honing in on the “assault weapon” subtopic (and I do wish folks would be more specific on “assault weapon”–tossing around banning “all semiautomatics” would include my two-round shotgun for clay), I really, sincerely appreciate your thoughtful, earnest responses, including the conviction behind them (redblack, JoB). Something that really causes me to move toward my natural and/or taught extreme is *how* people speak to others on the topic. Those calling for a ban on “assault weapons” (whatever the extremity, or lack of, their ban suggestions take) completely lose my attention the moment I hear or read “idiots,” “crazies,” etc. when it’s being thrown at me or someone like me–i.e., someone whose opinion differs. Same is true when, say, posting on a forum and follow-up posters throw out semi-cryptic one-liners addressed to others but not to the person about whom they’re wanting to insult–it’s like middle-school lunchroom behavior (JKB, HMC Rich). I don’t go around the real world poking on the subject but when asked I answer honestly what I’m thinking, and I’ve had two folks since the Sandy Hook tragedy go off on “my stupidity” and disown me as a friend (I want to stress–I just briefly answered what my thoughts were and didn’t argue at all). It’s a turn-off and wholly unproductive, and I can’t respect their opinion anymore since I can’t respect them, and that puts me back in a hole of being less open to considering all sides, particularly the sides involving regulation, ban, and so forth. So … thank you for keeping me thinking and engaged and in a space of what can at minimum be a compromise for me, if not eventually a wholesale change of heart and mind. And I guess in the bigger picture my suggestion would be this is how you should continue to approach your side of the issue to make a real difference.

Ironically, those two work colleagues of mine who absolutely could not handle my “not completely in their camp” opinion are at this same moment vehemently posting everything they sniff up about video games *not* being an issue (this is the business we’re in). I’m actually not entirely in that camp, either, despite my self-interest in there being no connection between video games and real-world violence. In summary, there’s this psychology going on of extremism at any cost–in this case, if the NRA objects to weapons legislation *and* questions the association between video games and real-world violence, the whole damn baby is going to go out with the bath water. I just can’t get behind this “perfect thinking.”

Redblack … Your explanation of militia versus police is a great one for me. I agree. The key difference for me and how I react to it is I actually don’t like the police–I will not say I *dislike* them either, as I understand their role, humanity, and job description but, first-hand experience with them, in all my 49 years, has been somewhat over-the-top horrible–this from someone who’s biggest “crime” has been three speeding tickets in her life (I spent 29 hours in the King County Jail for one of those due to their botched paperwork). The first- and second-hand tales comprise an extremely long and epic list (I could of course type it all down “to prove it” but that would seem a narcissitic exercise); therefore, I think the only thing I do disagree with you on in an absolute way is that the intimidation (or racism or abuse of power or what have you) is limited to “high-profile exceptions.” I do know for a fact that problems with police “honor” are profuse and insidious–in my list, the rule rather than the exception. And thinking about all this now, I think it leads to a common opinion perhaps: Give a human a weapon and he/she has just elevated his/her self-worth to the more righteous, or more powerful. I think that works to both sides of the argument in some ways.

I’ll leave world history for another blather. *lol*

Okay … have rambled enough. I’m not a debater type or terribly articulate on a forum. In the end, however the country goes is how it goes, but I hope to be on the “righteous” side without the attitude or even realizing it.

Great weekend to all …

Share This

[redblack]

and happy new year to you, singuarname.

i’ll say this about police: i think they probably get a little self-righteous because they know that most people are afraid of them. imagine what your world would be like if everyone walking or driving by you is doing his or her best to pretend that they don’t see you and are generally looking guilty – whether they are or not. i imagine that stirs up all kinds of weird feelings in the people who decide to become cops.

i prefer to walk right up to cops and say, “howdy.” or i wave when i drive by them, like we’re old friends.

or ignore them like i do everyone else. :)

Share This

[Author]

Posts