After watching Texas Goober Rick Perry opine about the needs to arm people everywhere and carry you weapons with you everywhere for safety I just have to say -- slow down on the fearfulness ... it's not good for our safety nor good for happiness. Here's my response: • I REFUSE TO BE AFRAID!!! Gun violence happens. Auto accidents happen. God offers us no promise of a mortal tomorrow. There's a chance I or someone I love will have an encounter with an armed gunman who can snuff out a life. I can't control that. I won't cower in fear. I can control that. If we try to live in a bubble, arm ourselves and be so constantly watchful of potential danger we give up our freedom, a few bad guys have won. Terrorism is ineffectual if we refused to be terrorized. An expert on statistics once said "Americans worry exactly the right amount. They don't worry about the right things, but they worry the right amount because eventually something gets everybody." Wear seatbelts, avoid smoking and places where the air is polluted by secondhand smoke, follow reasonable restraint with food you know is bad for you and you've done things that will be at least 1,000 more likely to prevent a premature end to your life than you will by packing heat.
That would be a better response to Obama's call for curbs on the 2nd amendment. But at least you have the right idea.
No reason to live in fear, Crockett. All kinds of crime rates have dropped precipitously over the last 20 years. You're less than half as likely to be murdered in the U.S. than you were in 1991. The Link If you've never been convicted of a crime, your chance of being murdered is minute ---- far less likely than you would be killed in a car wreck.
The vast majority of fear is being manufactured by the media. Everyone is vying for attention and scary noise seems to get some in this society. Turn off the TV and the all the social media nonsense and ask yourself what there is to really be afraid of. The answer is: almost nothing. And the actual threats, as noted above, are mostly beyond our control.
My arguments aren't ********. The point (which you intentionally miss) is that weapons of WAR designed to quickly and efficiently kill large numbers of humans don't need to be widely available. These things go way beyond self-defense, hunting, or sport. Everyone -- including you -- would agree that schizophrenics and jihadists shouldn't be able to head down to Cabela's and drive home with a flamethrower with a fuel tank that holds thousands of gallons of napalm. So for as long as some of these weapons have existed, we've had laws to limit public availability. From 1994 to 2004 we didn't sell assault rifles (though, as you know, we didn't take those guns away from citizens who already had them). I just don't have a lot of patience for histrionics that characterize any discussion of the issue as "Obama is curbing the second amendment." It's lunatic fringe nonsense. Again, I'm a gun owner.
Merry Christmas to you Hookem123! It's not me pissin in my britches or calling for the greatest deployment of armed personnel since WWII.
How old are you, 123? You need to get over yourself, dude! You continue to make a fool out of your sorry-***-self and don't even have a clue! Laughing in your face, little pissy girly man!
Horn89, I disagree with your conclusions about the Second Amendment. Just because some of the founders may not have supported the right for individuals to have weapons of mass destruction (though the most pro-liberty founders likely would have) that doesn't mean they wouldn't support someone's right to have an assault rifle or high-capacity magazine, which are far cries from a WMD. (Newtown involved a high-capacity magazine. Nagasaki involved a WMD. As bad as it was, Newtown was a relative cakewalk.) Nevertheless, your argument isn't garbage either. The Second Amendment doesn't guarantee an absolute, unqualified right to bear all forms of weapons. Interpreting it as such would render the reference to a "well-regulated militia" superfluous. Accordingly, there is room for debate. However, the biggest problem with the gun control advocates is with the merits of specific gun control proposals. I've been following politics since I was a teenager (about 22 years), and I've never heard a reasonable argument out of a gun control advocate. I’ve never heard them address the fact that there’s no correlation between strict gun control laws and gun crime, and if anything, there’s at least an arguable correlation for the reverse. Why does Washington, D.C., which has the strictest gun laws in the US have such high crime, while Vermont, which has the most lax gun laws in the US have virtually no crime? That’s a legitimate question for which the gun control advocates seem to have no answer. Anytime I’ve heard gun control advocates talk about gun laws, they seem to presume their effectiveness. They use rhetoric like “dealing with guns” or “taking guns off the streets,” as if banning guns or a type of gun would automatically mean the gun would become unavailable to a would-be shooter. There are over 300 million guns and around 4 million assault rifles in the U.S. How would gun control laws keep any of these weapons out of the hands of shooters, especially since no one is proposing confiscating weapons from current gun owners? Furthermore, there’s an illegal infrastructure that has enabled the illegal importation of 12 million human beings and untold millions of tons of drugs to enter the United States and could be used to import illegal weapons. I’ve never heard a gun control advocate address either of these points. Keep in mind that David Gregory of NBC News was able to acquire a high-capacity magazine and use it in his broadcast in Washington, D.C. Link. That was a crime. If gun control actually worked, then how was he able to do that? Since they can’t point to any positive results from any individual states or cities banning weapons, they often turn to European nations, which generally have strict gun laws and low incidence of gun violence. However, they never seem to be able to address the fact that gun ownership has never been a part of most European nation’s histories, and in fact, some of their nations have in the past confiscated privately owned weapons. In other words, they really have taken guns off the street. They’ve actually dealt with the previously-mentioned issue or never had to deal with it in the first place. What I do hear the gun control advocates do a lot of is ridiculing. They make fun of people who disagree with them and portray them as illiterate hillbillies with small penis issues. They make the NRA look like a bunch of crazy zealots. (Anybody who’s actually worked in the policymaking process knows that in the gun rights realm, the NRA is actually the most moderate gun rights group. Go talk to the Gun Owners of America or the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. To them, the NRA are a bunch of ******* and sellouts.) At least in my experience, when a political group or force spends a lot of its time ridiculing their opponents, it's usually a diversion to keep from having to address problems with their position that they don't have an answer for.
cmt bringing up the rear of the ladies day out parade. Lazy assed, do nothing, looking for a hand out Obama voters, and another one pissin' her britches about hand guns.
LTT, you were bullied in school, weren't you? Think how much worse it will be when my guns are taken away and there is no one to pull the bully off your pantie-waist. Or just continue with your Obama non-thinking program.
Deez, although I don't think you and I will agree with one another on this issue, I appreciate your response. Not going to take issue with much of what you wrote, though I would comment on this:
Just thought I would endorse the OP with the qualification that I'm also not interested in forcing someone into a bad situation with a "one size fits all" approach. I don't own a gun and don't see many if any instances where I would need one, but not everyone lives the same life that I live. The problem with statistics is that they often make blanket assumptions. For example, the idea that I am more likely to shoot someone I know than a bad guy (which I always thought was a pretty misleading statistic anyway) rings pretty hollow for an unarmed woman walking home alone at night in a bad part of town. It's of little comfort to know that the crime and level of danger in her area is really not representative of the rest of the country or that her ability to responsibly own a hand gun is judged by a minute fraction of people who have made tragic mistakes.
I have been firmly convinced for a long time that 123 is a stealth liberal trying to make conservatives look idiotic. He's just way too textbook stereotype perfect. Note the times he's gotten flack from the right leaners on the board.
