March for Our Lives

[kidicarus13]

Good post

[Doc45]

communist

While I disagree entirely with her points of view that flag of Cuba dates to 1902, I would guess that’s her heritage. I know quite a few families of Cuban descent in Florida that are equally strong supporters of 2A as anyone here. They saw first hand how a communist Castro ruled and came to America to embrace all our freedoms. Unless I’m mistaken.

Just talked to one of my friends, they're outraged beyond description that she wears the flag though they get it's her choice. He knows that his friends don't associate him with Gonzalez and her group.

[crays]

Some of her words:

González had rejected the notion that she wants to “disarm” every American, stating that “At the end of the day, we don’t want people to have their guns taken away. We just want the people to be more responsible. We want civilians to have to go through more rolls of red tape to get what they want, because if any of that tape can stop those who shouldn’t own a gun from owning a gun, then our government will have done something right.”

Bolded for emphasis.

Sure... That's all you want...

[BPTactical]

Again: You know they will load you into cattle cars in a heartbeat.
Leftists have stacked mountains of skulls in the 20th century......what makes you think they are any different now?

[davsel]

Good article from Karl Deniger
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=233205

So Stevens Wants To Repeal 2A?

This is a debate I'd like to have take place.

In an op-ed published by The New York Times, Stevens, a Republican, said that students and anti-gun violence advocates should press lawmakers to take on the amendment.

....

"That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms," Stevens wrote.

"But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform," he continued. "They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment."

Let's cut the crap eh? Semi-automatic -- that is, self-loading, weapons are the majority of those in civilian hands today.

Essentially all pistols are semi-automatic. They reload automatically after each shot from a magazine, and fire one round with each trigger press.

Many common rifles are too. The inexpensive and amazingly common Ruger 10-22 is semi-automatic. It fires a .22 caliber round (as does the maligned AR-15), takes a rotary magazine, autoloads and fires one round for each press of the trigger. It's an inexpensive and extremely common target rifle along with being useful for depredation on rodents -- and has the friendly feature of using very inexpensive ammunition (you can literally shoot it all day at the range for $20 and not run out of ammo!) That's a tenth or less of the cost of most other rounds.

Many common sporting shotguns are also semi-automatic. Not only do a lot of people use them for shooting at clays (where reloading speed matters) they're also pretty commonly used to shoot at various fowl for consumption (e.g. turkey, ducks, pheasant, etc.) where a second shot at flying birds can be rather useful as well.

So let's have the debate on the 2nd Amendment. I don't think there's a snowball's chance in Hell that you could get 2/3rds of the House and Senate to pass such a repeal, nor could you get the requisite number of states to ratify it. But I'd like the debate to happen because then we can have a real debate on the issue of the 2nd Amendment, which the Supreme Court has ruled not only protects an individual right but we can demand the removal of nearly all of the existing 50,000 blatantly unconstitutional gun laws and regulations.

Specifically, I'm sort-of-ok with NICS but not as currently used. So let's redefine all of it, and let's go into detail.

I'll start; here is my position and I'm not going to change my mind:

1. Shall not be infringed is very clear and not subject to inserting words that aren't there (such as "except for weapons that I think look scary.")

2. The legitimate contrary argument is that someone currently under indictment, who has been charged or who is currently under post-release supervision for a crime can properly be considered a "prohibited person." So can someone who is currently addicted to a mind-altering substance, no matter what it is and whether it is prescribed or not. Finally, the right to keep and bear arms, as with all rights declared in the Constitution can be limited to those with a lawful and permanent right to be here in the United States. In other words we cannot impose our Constitution on a Mexican citizen.

So let's make it simple: We'll have the debate but this is the other side of it when Stevens loses.

NICS remains but is "de-fanged" and all other gun control laws, from the NFA onward are repealed. The 4473 form is altered to ask the following questions only:

• Are you under indictment or have you been charged with a felony crime that is currently pending adjudication? (If so you cannot buy a gun.) This is easily checked via LEADS, to which all the current PoPo agencies both subscribe and submit information to. This is a literal 10 second check made by every single police officer before he pulls someone over (based on their plate) and then once again when he has their Driver License in hand.
• Are you under post-release supervision for a criminal offense (e.g. parole, probation, etc.) If so you cannot buy a gun since your sentence has not been served in full as of yet. Again, trivially checked since those records are in LEADS too.
• Have you been involuntarily committed or found mentally incompetent by a court or tribunal under due process of law, and has that disability not been found no longer present by same? Mental incompetence is not always permanent. However, mental competence is part of the free exercise of Constitutional Rights; one cannot use the "Free speech" defense to scream about snakes on a plane because you are crazy when there are in fact no snakes.
• Are you currently addicted to or required to consume, whether prescribed or not, any mind-altering substance including alcohol, prescription drugs or other substance whether legal or not intended to or with the primary effect of altering one's consciousness? This one is impossible to prove in most cases except ex-post-facto, but that's fine as it serves as a clear warning that penalties are present for violating same after the fact.
• Are you a US Citizen or lawful permanent resident and are you 18 years of age or older? That one is easy and proved with a citizenship-specific document (e.g. Real-ID driver license, Passport, Green Card, etc.)

At the same time federal preemption as is actually required and enforced under the Constitution when it comes to one's enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights. You cannot be required to obtain permission in advance to exercise your rights so the very concept of a "CWP" is outlawed. In short you may carry whenever and wherever you wish, concealed or openly, subject only to the government or a private party taking full responsibility both criminally and civilly for your security should same bar weapons. A government agency can bar carrying in a courthouse but the government is then responsible, legally, should you be injured or killed in same by someone with a gun or other deadly weapon and you are unable to defend yourself. Ditto for an airport. Likewise a private yet open to the public location such as a football stadium may bar firearms but they must take legal responsibility for your safety; if someone gets a firearm or knife through their security they are legally responsible both criminally and civilly for same. Ditto for a school; if a school district wishes to bar teachers and administrators from carrying they can but if someone comes into the school with a gun or knife the district is legally responsible for their failure to secure the building since they forcibly disarmed the adults.

This also instantly resolves the current dichotomy between places like Colorado, Oregon, California and Washington along with the majority of states regarding medical and recreational marijuana. As it stands now if you use cannabis in any form, even medically, you are legally not permitted to own or buy guns. I suspect the medical users of cannabis products ignore this routinely and some recreational users probably do too. At the same time there are no medical indications for alcohol and yet recreational, non-addictive use of alcohol is not a bar to firearms ownership. That's outrageous and must not stand.

However, if you are addicted to any mind-altering substance then penalties can attach. Why? Because someone who is addicted by definition cannot control their time and quantity of use and the 2nd Amendment, along with all of parts of the Constitution envision rights that humans with a functioning discretionary mind possess as that is the differentiating factor between a human and an animal (which can be owned, traded, sold, forcibly euthanized, etc.) Those who have dispossessed themselves of same, until they change that, can reasonably be constrained. That is, mental incompetence induced by drug abuse is still mental incompetence! While the current 4473's definition includes alcohol it does not so-state, and it damn well should since the single largest drug of addiction and mental infirmity in the United States, by far, is booze.

If you use a firearm in the commission of a crime then the imposition of enhanced penalties is not only perfectly fine it should be encouraged. Should we punish someone who holds up a liquor store with a gun more-severely than someone who does so with a mere threat or a baseball bat? Yes. Should we consider a mugger or rapist who uses a gun more-severely than one who uses their bare hands? Yes. Is felony assault with a weapon far more serious than the same crime committing without a weapon? Absolutely. And do criminals use weapons as leverage in committing their crimes? Yep, and because they do such should be treated more-harshly, including "serve every day" provisions such as Florida has now, than the same crime committed without a firearm.

So let's have the debate Mr. Stevens and let's put the facts on the table. Yes, it sucks that 13,000 or so Americans are shot and killed every year on an intentional basis (that is, as homicides.) The rest of the alleged "gun violence" is actually suicide and the concept that banning or restricting guns would "fix this" is a criminal fraud Stevens and others have perpetrated; there is zero evidence that someone intending suicide would not choose another path if there were no guns.

However, it is also a fact that the "evil semi-automatic scary-looking" rifles people scream about number tens of millions in civilian ownership and yet among all rifles only about 1,000 homicides a year are committed with them. When limited to the "scary looking" ones the number is about one hundred per year.

Yes, there's a lot of noise in that number up and down but that's the average.

In other words this entire "movement" is a fraud as 0.7% of all homicides annually are committed with those "evil, black, scary-looking" rifles. Nearly all of the rest are committed with the same sort of weapon every police officer has on his or her hip.

Now, Mr. Stevens and others, let me put something else into the debate which you and everyone else have to face if you wish to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

There is a small but material percentage of Americans who can read English and believe the Founders included every word of the Bill of Rights and Constitution for a good, valid reason. They respect the lives spent from 1776-1789 and believe what was built thereupon is both valid and continues to this day. They know that it is a fact that the colonists possessed military-grade weapons, that the Crown attempted to confiscate the colonists' ammunition for same at Concord and they defended their personal and continuing ownership of those weapons and ammunition with their own lives. America exists specifically because they did so and if they had not America as a nation would not exist. You will not change these individual's minds with any vote no matter where it occurs or what form it takes; in their view the original Bill of Rights cannot be repealed as it enumerates rights that pre-exist government.

Those people will not give up or register one single firearm as long as they are alive.

There is plenty of evidence for my fervent belief that this is true; one need only look at New York state for "compliance" with the "SAFE" act, which required same. Current estimates are that only 4% of the weapons and magazines required to be either disposed of, registered or turned in have been. The rest of the owners have ignored said alleged "law".

Therefore anyone demanding more gun control or a repeal of the Second Amendment must answer the following question:

What are you going to do with the very large number of people who will not comply so long as they are alive?

In order to secure those weapons you are going to have to murder them. And it is not a few people who you will have to murder either -- conservatively we are talking about several million Americans, or several hundred years worth of firearm homicide victims.

If you are not willing to commit several million murders then shut up right now, because that's what you're going to have to do to get what you want. And if you are willing to do so then shut up about this being related to the murders committed today, including murders committed in a school, since you are willing to commit several hundred times more of those very same murders to get what you want.

Finally, one last point: The first such murders, if you get what you want, will be like shooting fish in a barrel.

As soon as those first murders take place, either by you directly or those who work for the government it won't be like that. Nobody with a working brain will sit quietly at home and wait to be slaughtered along with their loved ones, including their children.

Nobody with mental capacity greater than that of a young child would ever intentionally set the nation upon that course and nobody (myself included) will want to live in a nation where the inevitable outcome of that course of action will lead yet this is exactly the course of action those who wish to repeal the 2nd Amendment or start stripping weapons from the population on any material basis are advocating for.

We the people must demand that Stevens, David Hogg and the rest answer to this question before one more march takes place or one more TV appearance occurs and we must not stop demanding that answer so as to understand exactly what their true motivations are and expose said motivations to the public so they can be judged appropriately for what they are.

The motivation clearly is not to reduce the homicide rate as their demanded course of action is defined by the willingness and declaration of intent to murder millions of Americans in a wholesale slaughter.

[Squeeze]

[Rucker61]

One note of the number of deaths linked to "assault weapons" - using Mother Jones data (let's see them argue with that) only 265 people have been murdered in a mass shooting with one since 1998, over a twenty year period. In that same 20 year period the NOAA tells use that 675 people have died from lightning strikes and 899 people have been murdered by water.

[Fmedges]

Just out of curiosity what do you see as divisiveness? What could gun owners do to be less divisive on a topic where, as of yesterday, they now admit they want all of 2A gone? It seems like an absolute position that implies much future badness.


And in all honesty, the reasonable things aren't even on the table anymore for us to give, they are being given up willingly (e.g. FL BGCs, age limits, etc...). Look at CO and tell us what we could do to put the other side at ease? I don't know about MN, but here they won't let us protect the schools! They ignore Denver's casual violence, for now. We have BGCs, we have mag limits. We could give age limits on ARs but it will be ineffective and then we'll be talking AWB.


If you've had conversations with the other side you've probably experienced some of what I have. You remain calm and polite, acknowledge the concern and agree that kids getting murdered is unacceptable, cite facts/statistics, talk about why the US has 2A, and get called a child murderer once the talking points fail. Those talking points they've been given are designed to shut is us down which is why they get so angry when they fail. They believe them like a religion (most can't define an "assault weapon" but talk about them like nuclear weapons and are shocked when I explain the concept of semi-auto [wood vs synthetic, how common they are]). This was never a conversation and the people funding it are paying for an outcome.


I see it as a soft civil war and the differences are irreconcilable. Someone has to lose and someone has to win. If we walk away, we lose. And it's not just guns, it's coming to a head on guns because so many understand that is the red line. As gun owners that puts us in the middle of it all which is really shitty! If it were 1A it would be Christians and Libertarians (people in UK being arrested for speech right now btw). Imagine how divisive that will be when folks are told what they are/are not allowed to believe! Would it be appropriate to back down and say those on the side of freedom are being divisive because they won't bend their knee?


I could also give you all the examples of what the Left has said they would like to do to me and my family. I could show all the names I've been called individually and as a gun owner. I'm sorry gun owners have embarrassed you, but maybe you should look at the cost of losing. Throw in AntiFa and the global interest against Trump and I'm surprised at shots haven't been fired at this point.


This isn't getting healed and it isn't going away.


If it were just my hobby, I'd give it to them like a participation trophy. It's not a hobby.

What could gun owners do to be less divisive
Live in reality. Maybe it's just the fact that stupid people make more noise, but the whole "I can't wait until they kick down my door because then it's go time." That mentality is stupid at best. Gun owners as a group could never pull off the kind of measly rally that just happened in DC. All of these gun groups are their own worst enemy. They spend more time collecting money and fighting between themselves for membership than they do anything else. These groups are supposed to what? Escape the authorities where every they live and meet up in the woods to use their guerilla tactics to cripple the government and restore the Constitution? Give me a break. To accomplish this everyone would need to be self-less in their sacrifice. What do we see today? "We'll it's not my state so that sucks." "Only libs live in Commifornia". The exact opposite. The rights have already been infringed so when exactly is it time? "When it's time you'll know." All dumb shit that is said.

The reality of it is that we live in a society in which people are told every opinion (if you agree with me) matters. Feelings matter more than logic and security trumps freedom and privacy. Slowly most people are buying into it. Does it surprise you that the reasoning for the laws they want are grounded in feelings? Most people have internet accounts to share their actions or opinions throughout the day. I'm am not a fan of this, but then again who gives a shit other than me about my opinion? Our society clearly likes it.

In my opinion the judicial system, congress, the press and the military leadership are corrupt or at best not representing the "citizens" of this country. The patriot act destroy's the bill of rights and that's just the start, but what's the solution? At what point are you advocating for a way of life that no longer exists and the masses don't want it to exist? I don't believe that is today, but how many years? When I was younger I had to learn my lesson in doing and maybe the best way to learn is by hardship. I don't believe the government is hell bent on imprisoning and murdering it's citizens. After all who would pay them taxes?

You sound like you are doing great work, but the cards are stacked against all of us. Nobody cares about your logic so honestly it's just a waste of time. Our society as a whole has to come to the decision that it doesn't want the government to run out of control, but as it sits today it's not going that way.

[DavieD55]

Good post

+1

[Gman]

In that same 20 year period the NOAA tells use that 675 people have died from lightning strikes and 899 people have been murdered by water.

We must ban dihydrogen monoxide!