March For Our Lives - We've Been Here Before....

[Guest Larstrup]

[Guest Larstrup]

This weekend, we all have the opportunity to support this movement. Its not unlike our own,  it's exactly what we once fought for.

OUR LIVES.

Please  Support these kids.

On March 24, at 12pm, the kids and families of March For Our Lives will rally on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today.

Join us in Washington DC or march in your own community. On March 24, the collective voice of the March For Our Lives movement will be heard.

https://marchforourlives.com/

And: view it here if you're not participating.

 

 

 

[RA1]

I am very sympathetic to the idea of stopping gun violence and especially as regards children.  However, what do they or anyone think can really be done to accomplish this?  New laws will not work.  It is already illegal to shoot or kill anyone.  Our constitutional rights can easily be at risk.

Some have suggested turning schools into a variation of airports.  As one should know, this is mainly window dressing and not really effective.  Just look at the number of guns and other illegal weapons that get through during any test of the TSA.   This could be a constitutional issue were it not for the fact that airline travel is not a right.  Going to school seems to be a right. 

I don't have a solution either but I am very leery of any that are likely to be proposed.

Best regards,

RA1   

[AdamSmith]

2 hours ago, RA1 said:

I am very sympathetic to the idea of stopping gun violence and especially as regards children.  However, what do they or anyone think can really be done to accomplish this?  New laws will not work.  It is already illegal to shoot or kill anyone.  Our constitutional rights can easily be at risk.

Some have suggested turning schools into a variation of airports.  As one should know, this is mainly window dressing and not really effective.  Just look at the number of guns and other illegal weapons that get through during any test of the TSA.   This could be a constitutional issue were it not for the fact that airline travel is not a right.  Going to school seems to be a right. 

I don't have a solution either but I am very leery of any that are likely to be proposed.

Best regards,

RA1   

Why does the rest of the world (largely) not have this problem?

Just wondering.

[JKane]

1 hour ago, AdamSmith said:

Why does the rest of the world (largely) not have this problem?

Just wondering.

 

Well, as John Oliver and Jim Jefferies and several others go into in great depth in videos available on YouTube, Australia started to.  But after one of these incidents shook them they stood up and enacted tough gun control laws, took back a shitload of guns.  Yes, people living in the outback and hunting still have guns suited to their needs.  No incidents since.  Same in Europe with similar laws.  Vastly less shootings in Canada despite similar culture (/dissimilar laws).  

Our main problem is the NRA which is wholly funded by the gun lobby which makes extra money every time there's one of these shootings because people decide they have to have the weapons used in the murder of children while they can still get them.  

NRA mostly uses their money, but also the argument it's the second amendment.  The latter is powerful but far more explicit amendments and even actual clauses are either ignored (emoluments clause, anybody?) or given conditions every fucking day.  Not the second though!  Except the first part of it, which is ignored...

The biggest problem with the second amendment as sacrosanct (of course ignoring the 'well regulated' and 'militia' parts) are two fold:

1) The intention of the Constitution was for the US to NOT have a standing army--hence wanting a militia and the idea they could appose a similarly equipped fascistic militia--as opposed to the most powerful military in the history of the planet...

2) The vastly increased lethality and speed of modern war-fighting weapons.  Because of the above, anything less than an AR-15 gives me exactly 0% chance to stand up to an A-10 warthog with hellfire missiles... (Lets ignore that a well armed and perfectly trained civilian's chance would still be 0.00X%.)  But that's the only possible justification.  Modern repeating magazine weapons would not be recognizable to the founders.  

And other countries don't allow them yet are perfectly stable, and countries where an AK-47 is more common than a textbook have their governments overthrown and people oppressed every fucking day.  

But nobody wants to truly think through these issues and admit the obvious instances of cognitive dissonance or outright hypocrisy in their positions.  Because they're told it's IN THE CONSTITUTION and HERE'S SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for your PAC.  

Any discussion gets shut down in ways that are intellectually bankrupt.  It's a mental health issue but NRA lobbied and banned the CDC from studying gun deaths even though it's one of the larger causes of death in the US.  And lobbied against and removed rules against mentally ill from getting guns.  And stop any kind of system that would actually enforce any of the few rules remaining on the books consistently.  

[AdamSmith]

21 minutes ago, JKane said:

 

Well, as John Oliver and Jim Jefferies and several others go into in great depth in videos available on YouTube, Australia started to.  But after one of these incidents shook them they stood up and enacted tough gun control laws, took back a shitload of guns.  Yes, people living in the outback and hunting still have guns suited to their needs.  No incidents since.  Same in Europe with similar laws.  Vastly less shootings in Canada despite similar culture (/dissimilar laws).  

Our main problem is the NRA which is wholly funded by the gun lobby which makes extra money every time there's one of these shootings because people decide they have to have the weapons used in the murder of children while they can still get them.  

NRA mostly uses their money, but also the argument it's the second amendment.  The latter is powerful but far more explicit amendments and even actual clauses are either ignored (emoluments clause, anybody?) or given conditions every fucking day.  Not the second though!  Except the first part of it, which is ignored...

The biggest problem with the second amendment as sacrosanct (of course ignoring the 'well regulated' and 'militia' parts) are two fold:

1) The intention of the Constitution was for the US to NOT have a standing army--hence wanting a militia and the idea they could appose a similarly equipped fascistic militia--as opposed to the most powerful military in the history of the planet...

2) The vastly increased lethality and speed of modern war-fighting weapons.  Because of the above, anything less than an AR-15 gives me exactly 0% chance to stand up to an A-10 warthog with hellfire missiles... (Lets ignore that a well armed and perfectly trained civilian's chance would still be 0.00X%.)  But that's the only possible justification.  Modern repeating magazine weapons would not be recognizable to the founders.  

And other countries don't allow them yet are perfectly stable, and countries where an AK-47 is more common than a textbook have their governments overthrown and people oppressed every fucking day.  

But nobody wants to truly think through these issues and admit the obvious instances of cognitive dissonance or outright hypocrisy in their positions.  Because they're told it's IN THE CONSTITUTION and HERE'S SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for your PAC.  

Any discussion gets shut down in ways that are intellectually bankrupt.  It's a mental health issue but NRA lobbied and banned the CDC from studying gun deaths even though it's one of the larger causes of death in the US.  And lobbied against and removed rules against mentally ill from getting guns.  And stop any kind of system that would actually enforce any of the few rules remaining on the books consistently.  

Thank you.

There is also the factum that the current broad understanding -- misunderstanding, one should say -- of the Second Amendment as guaranteeing the right of private citizens to own any class of firearm, up to and including military-grade -- for the purpose of defending against potential encroachments from their own government -- was fabricated out of whole cloth and put about by Colt and by Smith & Wesson after the end of the Civil War, when their war-bloated sales volumes predictably fell off a cliff.

That understanding has nothing whatever to do with the Framers' intent in the Second Amendment, which as stated before was to ensure state militias had ready-to-hand arms to respond in the event of slave uprisings.

[RA1]

Every other place in the world has one or more problems, maybe just not "this" problem.  I don't look at the second amendment as a right to own guns so much as a "freedom right".  Most of those "other" countries don't have the freedom that we do.  Why else would many of them wish to move here?  Just to be a victim of a shooting?  

I am glad to have an open discussion about this issue.  As said before I am in favor of protecting our children (and other citizens).  However, remember that once when I was annoyed at work by MADD soliciting funds I told the lady that I am in favor of drinking.  She hung up in a huff.

Best regards,

RA1

[JKane]

The thing is everybody is agreeing to the basic freedom.  The gun lobby is funding the NRA to take it to the ridiculous extreme, touting that freedom instead of common sense.  No one needs a magazine-fed repeating weapon to hunt or defend their home.  Does a hell of a job on a cafeteria full of students though.  

[AdamSmith]

On 3/24/2018 at 4:50 PM, RA1 said:

I don't look at the second amendment as a right to own guns so much as a "freedom right".

As (presumably) a Constitutional Originalist, you ought to do your historical homework more thoroughly.

For the drafters of the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment was precisely not what you say it was.

It was instead a means to ensure that a standing militia  -- organized and directed by an individual state's government -- should have at ready means the "well regulated," which is to say well armed, capacity to respond -- UNDER STATE GOVERNMENT CONTROL AND DIRECTION -- the means by arms to quell any possible slave uprising.

I think that is in direct contradiction to your reading. Which, as noted above, was fabricated and publicized -- very successfully -- by the leading arms makers after their Civil War profits collapsed upon said event's cessation.

...Possibly the most evil perversion of the Founders' intent until Putin et al.'s late contribution to electing the Orange One.

[RA1]

State's rights have been stomped almost into oblivion.  However, what you suggest must be correct.  There have been no slave uprisings of which I am aware in the US any time recently. 

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

20 minutes ago, RA1 said:

State's rights have been stomped almost into oblivion.  However, what you suggest must be correct.  There have been no slave uprisings of which I am aware in the US any time recently. 

Best regards,

RA1

Any concrete examples of the fed gov stomping on states' rights? Here in NC, it has taken years and years and years of suits to finally get the federal judiciary to look seriously into the NC state legislature's Republican-engendered district gerrymandering in the most outrageous of ways along racial lines. Quite the opposite of what you say.

And one might observe that the absence of slave uprisings could just possibly be attributed to Abraham L. and the Emancipation Proclamation and the War surrounding those events.

Both of which preceded the fiction-building about the purported Original Intent of the 2nd Amendment by specifically Colt and Smith & Wesson, to try and build a public narrative that might help restore their War-inflated sales.

[RA1]

Here you go praising AL for freeing the slaves when it was really LBJ.  

Do you deny that it is the American way to build public narratives and pay off Congress critters? 

A long ago but early in my career example is the double nickel which was imposed by the federalies on the states.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

2 hours ago, RA1 said:

the double nickel which was imposed by the federalies on the states.

Forgive my ignorance? Please instruct.

[RA1]

The double nickel was the term applied to the federal mandated 55 MPH speed limit.  According to the Constitution this was a matter for the states but "leverage" in the form of reduced or zero money from the feds caused all the states to give in, one by one, some later than others (especially out west, where driving 50 miles for lunch is not uncommon).  

There are many other examples.  How did Eisenhower call out the National Guard for the invasion of LIT  (Little Rock, AR)?  Supposedly only the governor can do that.  Etc.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

2 hours ago, RA1 said:

The double nickel was the term applied to the federal mandated 55 MPH speed limit.  According to the Constitution this was a matter for the states but "leverage" in the form of reduced or zero money from the feds caused all the states to give in, one by one, some later than others (especially out west, where driving 50 miles for lunch is not uncommon).  

There are many other examples.  How did Eisenhower call out the National Guard for the invasion of LIT  (Little Rock, AR)?  Supposedly only the governor can do that.  Etc.

Best regards,

RA1

Agree -- somewhat -- with the above.

But the overriding thing (as only realized by Madison, some 20 years after the Constitutional Convention) is that what the Framers originally thought was a failing, in not achieving a precise definition of the separation of powers, was in fact the opposite -- that the genius of the American constitutional system is its ever-precarious, and ever-dynamic, contest and conflict among the various federal branches, and then among all the differing federal, state and local centers of power.

So political events & seasons of will will go back and forth. But your projection here that the federal layer holds all the power is very far from the real case.

[RA1]

The feds don't hold all the power, just more than their share.

Best regards,

RA1