Is this just the beginning? I mean of push-backs. It's from a Tea Party website. Is that supposed to be Feinstein on the end by Pelosi?
I think the idea is how the liberal agenda is a force more akin to the kinds of overnight upheavals you find in Banana Republics. One day things are a certain way, next day it's upside down fruit-basket-turnover. America has held together for two centuries as a Constitutional Republic designed to chain the government from runamuck behavior and drastic moves that derail most republics/countries. What Obama's group, which includes the Pelosi's, is setting about doing is to pitch to the public an emotionally-charged idealistic, almost evangelical agenda that portends to make sweeping changes of variety that usually is 'too much, too fast' and out-of-balance. Which you find in Banana Republics. A President of the United States today is the most powerful ruler in the history of the world. Up to any present day holder of that office, none before commanded a more powerful military or sat at the executive desk of a greater economic force. For my take on things, it pays not to go too fast. On anything. I see this President as wanting a legacy of having made changes no one else ever could, ie., the healthcare legislation. The gun measures is just part of it, but it of itself is being swept along with the same ferver and resolve to 'just do it' and 'do it now' -- but go that that speed on all the social and economics (health care being affecting both, and strongly) he is pushing. I think the artists on that very prejudiced (meaning politically biased) bit of journalistic illustration, are implying that: ALL the legislation is coming like a dust storm. It's not politics as usual. I believe the Constitution purposely wanted legislation to 'plod' along just so it did not overdo or go too fast or do too much. I never sweat over lack of legislation or Congress not moving on things. Hell, I don't want them to do ANYTHING most of the time. I worry my *** off when any President is pushing Congress for legislation. I like that line from the film, 'Contact.' "Slow moves, Nellie, slow moves." It applies to everything. Even spiritual growth should not go too fast. The consciousness can only take so much, in increments.
Look at all those evil shadowy Democrats hovering menacingly above a farm whose God-fearing residents are undoubtedly straight, white, Christian, heterosexual, and whose entire way of life is under siege! The nut-job eagerness for civil war depicted in that photo ("gathering storm..." Oooooooh...) and implied willingness to kill fellow Americans based on some fictional threat is sheer lunacy, and it should be correctly identified as such. Could someone tell me *specifically* which proposal by those oh-so-radical gun-control reformers strikes you as a "gathering storm" portending civil war? Criminal background checks for all gun sales? Reinstating the assault weapons ban? Restoring a 10-round limit on ammunition magazines? Eliminating armor-piercing bullets? Providing mental health services in schools? Allocating funds to hire more police officers? Instituting a federal gun trafficking statute? Seriously, if a totalitarian government decides to disarm the entire nation, then you can get your panties in a wad. That's not even REMOTELY what's being discussed, though the NRA is eager to falsely depict the discussion in order to whip its members into a frenzy. And don't tell me it's a "slippery slope" from criminal background checks (which have existed for decades) to a complete disarming of a nation. It's not. It's just not. Again, I'm a gun owner and have every intention of remaining one. But I also don't want raging lunatics and angst-ridden teenage boys to be able to drive to Cabela's and walk out with the tools of mass-killing that would make a Central American drug cartel proud.
Horn's comment is actually the one reason that I tend to doubt the motives of the administration. From everything I've read and seen so far, there is really no discernible difference between the dangers of semi-automatic rifles (most of which appear not even to be powerful enough to be effective at hunting) and the dangers of semi-automatic pistols - which dems claim over and over that they have no interest in confiscating or outlawing. The only rationale I've seen for this distinction appears to be that the rifles look like something a soldier would carry and pistols don't. So there really seems to be no reason to stop at rifles other than political expediency. Based on that, I have no doubt that semi-automatic pistols would be included if the dems thought they could get away with it. Several dem lawmakers have suggested including them, and as we've seen in the media, gun-owners have been targeted regardless of whether they own rifles, shotguns or pistols. So the next time we have one of these shootings, the response will be "see? we did it halfway last time and it didn't help."
So Prodigal, essentially you're saying that you oppose reasonable changes because you think they'll inevitably lead to unreasonable ones? That's really the point of my post. I mean, it's pretty hard to drum up opposition to those exact measures, isn't it? Criminal background checks, better mental health services, better police support, etc. -- It's hard to get reasonable people to fight those laws, so the NRA and the gun lobby has to rely on exactly the technique depicted by the original photo: instead of fighting the measures being proposed, let's pretend that your entire way of life is being threatened by the evil "left." BTW, I'm definitely not "the left." In the words of Charles Barkley, "I was a Republican until they lost their minds." In the last two elections, I voted Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.
I don't oppose reasonable regulations. I think most of the things he proposed were essentially either meaningless or won't really accomplish anything, but I have no issue with background checks being more uniform and strict, and anything that will help keep guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people is a plus - the problem is that I don't think what we're talking about now will do any of that. I think there are plenty of well-meaning people who simply hear "assault rifle" and get freaked out, whereas someone owning a pistol seems less scary. But for every thread like the OP with a looming threat of confiscation, there's a thread (not necessarily on this board) by someone with the underlying position that gun owners are by definition dangerous. Do you think that the paper's decision to map out all gun-owners in the region was somehow aimed at lessening criminal activity? It was based on the idea that gun owners are dangerous and should be identified and marginalized. So in that climate - one that people like Dianne Feinstein and other legislators have been fostering - it doesn't surprise me that gun owners are worried about their rights. The bottom line is that what we're doing will not keep guns out of dangerous people's hands. Unstable people will find ways to get guns as long as they are available - and whether it's an "assault rifle" or a semi-automatic pistol won't make any difference. And whether they have to pause three seconds to reload after 10 shots won't make any difference. At some point, if you're truly honest, the question needs to be that even if a 10-clip magazine somehow limits the carnage, it really doesn't do much for those first 10 people, and their lives are worth something too. So you're left with even more legislation and burden on innocent civilians that doesn't address the issue and we're going to be having this same discussion the next time a shooting takes place. And at that point, where do you go with it? More legislation, more limitations on guns and ammo, and nothing addressing the issue of bad/crazy people killing other people. And when someone tries to make suggestions to actually address keeping people safe, they get shouted down, ridiculed and marginalized as "not caring about kids dying." (Piers Morgan, I'm looking at you.) The suggestion about the option to post armed guards gets ridiculed by the same people who send their kids to schools with armed guards. We completely ignore every bit of common sense that we have and argue that armed security somehow makes schools LESS safe. I can only explain it by an irrational fear of guns brought upon by a society that truly believes that if a gun is present somewhere, eventually someone innocent will get shot by it. I would dearly love for the country to have an honest, rational discussion on gun violence, but we can't do that because it's viewed as a partisan issue by both sides and there's too much irrational fear and distrust for anyone to actually engage in a meaningful way. And at the back of it all is the national attitude that we cannot remove from society people who are mentally unbalanced and dangerous, and whenever any of them perpetrate an act of horror, we're going to publicize them, plaster their names and faces all over the papers and talk about the impact that their actions have had across the nation - and until that changes, none of this will matter.
Actually Liberals, who arent really liberal, but really socialist collectivists, the opposite of liberal want every organization to have equal parts straight, gay, bi, men, women, white, black, hispanic, asian, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Atheist, Raelian (yes) etc etc etc so society can have a truly holistic makeup that is fair to everyone... While simultaneously discriminating against anything that goes against that holistic world view.
Clean and 2003- Your posts are pretty awesome examples of straw man arguments. Instead of stating your own subjective opinions of what a liberal is, what you imagine a "liberal" might say, or what you imagine a "socialist collectivist" might state as their goals for the country, perhaps you could respond to the topic, which is gun violence and the proposed legislation dealing with such.
Vol, so you oppose all of 1 through 7 as listed above? It's weird -- Prodigal was just saying how hard it is to have a rational discussion.
How about enforcing current gun laws. That is a good start instead of politicizing shootings at schools, theaters, malls etc, and rolling out a wish list to give the appearance of doing something b/c you care about the violence. They don't give a damn about gun violence. Case in point is where is all the outrage for the high number of murders that occur each and every weekend in Chicago and other large urban areas ? There is none b/c it occurs by blacks on blacks or between other minorities and involves only 1 or 2 dead people during one particular incident. Freaking liberal hypocrites.
