Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 466

As a conservative leaning guy, I don’t get the GOP’s wacky stance on the gun rights issue. The 2nd amendment says:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This means the right to state militias, and, more broadly, the allowance of regular citizens to own guns. It does not mean that things like bans on assault rifles are somehow illegal.

That being said, this emotional political response to incidents like these are wrong. Here are some facts on violence:

“‘From 1993 to 2015, the rate of violent crime
declined from 79.8 to 18.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older’, says the Bureau of Justice Statistics in its most recent comprehensive report (published last October, using data through 2015). ‘Over the same period, rates for crimes using guns dropped from 7.3 per 1,000 people to 1.1 per 1,000 people. The homicide rate is down from 7.4 to 4.9.’”

As the son of a VA tech shooting survivor, I find it deeply offensive when people try to politicize these emotional events. We should all repudiate people who make blanket statements like “all gunz stockpile them now!” and “guns must be banned now now now stop the killing !nra bad!”. We need leaders with common sense, who can pass common sense laws that can sensibly regulate the firearms we are allowed to have as a natural right. We should stop listening to politicians who try to emotionally bait people into supporting them.

What is the right time to have this conversation, if not after shootings, where people are most engaged in the issue?

TV’s Frink said:

What does “firearms we are allowed to have as a natural right” mean?

Also the NRA is evil. That doesn’t change depending on if it’s the day of a shooting, the week after a shooting, or two months after a shooting.

We are allowed to have firearms as per the second amendment. Not sure how that’s hard to understand.
Everyone knows that lobbyists are evil.

yhwx said:

What is the right time to have this conversation, if not after shootings, where people are most engaged in the issue?

Mass shootings are rare and not a good example of gun violence on average, that’s why it’s not a good time.

SilverWook said:

What was the state of the art in firearms when the second amendment was written? A musket?

Yes, exactly. This is why we need common sense regulations on firearms.

Don’t mass shootings happen almost every day? Far from rare.

YodaFan67 said:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This means the right to state militias, and, more broadly, the allowance of regular citizens to own guns. It does not mean that things like bans on assault rifles are somehow illegal.

Granted, my knowledge of the US Constitution is minimal but doesn’t the old-timey phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” translate to “A well run military, is necessary to the security of a free country”. Who would disagree with that? (except dictators and the British monarchy of the day).

Does it say somewhere else that “free state” specifically means “the right to state militias” and not as it reads?

TM2YC said:

Granted, my knowledge of the US Constitution is minimal but doesn’t the old-timey phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” translate to “A well run military, is necessary to the security of a free country”. Who would disagree with that? (except dictators).

The courts.

The course have decided that the “militia” part is irrelevant to the meaning of the amendment. It’s just an introductory phrase, say the courts.

Does it say somewhere else that “free state” specifically means “the right to state militias” and not as it reads?

Our Constitution is pretty vague, so resolving a lot of the vagaries is left to the course.

^what yhwx said. The constitution (as far as I can tell, I’m certainly no legal expert) is essentially saying, “the right to self protection, coming from the people specifically, is important.”

The idea of popular sovereignty–that people are at the top of the governmental pyramid, is basically the foundational idea of the constitution. The idea that people can take care of themselves and not need a nanny state. Most of the founders would probably be disappointed by our ginormous military and bloated central government (Hamilton being an exceptions)

SilverWook said:

I can only think of one or two from the 80’s versus how many we’ve had in the space of two years?

I see your point but with all due respect I feel that you are missing the underlying issue. Gun violence has gone down in recent years. That is a fact.

These mass shootings are committed by people with major mental issues. Adam Lanza spent his time locked in his room on deep web boards talking about school shootings. The VA tech guy had become obsessed with violent porn and violent video games, even going so far as to buy armour so he could dress up like the killers in the games he played. The Orlando guy was a radicalized Muslim who was also apparently quite confused about his sexuality (which was in obvious contradiction with his extremist beliefs). This guy we don’t know much about yet, but it seems he was likely an obsessive gambler, and his father apparently had run-ins with the FBI. Mental health is what causes these atrocities to be committed.

This is just my opinion, but I think the fact that these shootings have become so common is evidence of how sick our culture has become. The deep web is littered with horrible child abuse and torture videos. Person-to-person interaction is decreasing daily. Social Media leads people further into loneliness. The first world is safer and richer than it’s ever been, and yet people seem paranoid of ISIS, global warming, illegal aliens, etc. Granted these things are problems, but nothing to loose sleep over.

Can we change this? I don’t think so. I actually think we’ve entered a state where life is too easy, so easy in fact that it messes with our natural instincts. The hardest things in our lives are traffic on the way home, not having enough money to upgrade to a 4KTV, etc.

Yet for some reason politics is more desperate than it’s ever been. Socialism, the altright, and various fringe groups are gaining popularity. They all have in common a sense of paranoia about our mostly uneventful western world.

It seems there are no heroes anymore that we can all rally behind…but perhaps that is because there are no more villains?

In other news, the president continues to be an ass.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/puerto-rico-trump-hurricane.html

WASHINGTON — President Trump ventured on Tuesday to a storm-ravaged American island territory where residents have felt neglected by their government, telling local officials that they should be proud that, so far, only 16 people are known to have died in Hurricane Maria.

“Sixteen versus in the thousands,” Mr. Trump said, comparing the storm’s certified death toll to the 1,833 killed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. “You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud.”

It was a well-worn routine for a president on his fourth visit to a disaster zone in two months: a pep rally-like briefing with officials in an aircraft hangar, a quick drive past twisted houses and uprooted trees and a brief, friendly encounter with victims of the destruction.

And like his earlier travels, it had its peculiar moments: He also gently tossed rolls of paper towels into a crowd that gathered to see him at Calvary Chapel, outside the island’s capital, San Juan.

This time, however, Mr. Trump flew into a different kind of turbulence. Over the weekend, the president lashed out at the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, after she complained that the federal response in Puerto Rico had fallen short of the responses in Texas and Florida. She was not mollified after meeting him.

“The first part of the meeting was a public-relations situation,” Ms. Cruz said in an interview with CNN about the briefing she attended with the president. While she said the White House staff was helpful and receptive, Mr. Trump’s communications style sometimes “gets in the way.”

“I would hope that the president of the United States stops spouting out comments that really hurt the people of Puerto Rico,” she said, “because, rather than commander in chief, he sort of becomes miscommunicator in chief.”

Man I came in here ready to fight about guns but nothing really jumped out at me as something to rail against (except obviously disagreeing with the “ban all guns” camp).

YodaFan is making some good points, so props to you dude.