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Post 05 Mar 2018, 10:06 am

danivon wrote:
Ray Jay wrote:
We have a Second Amendment so we can protect ourselves from ... the government.


And I'm trying to understand how this applies in the existing world to the case of semi-automatics.

As am I. Ruby Ridge and Waco suggest that even semi-automatics are useless against a determined government. The government has weaponry that renders personal firearms utterly redundant.


So, let's seize them so that innocent people cannot protect themselves from criminals!

What Ruby Ridge showed was how out of control our government can be.
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 10:07 am

freeman3 wrote:Otherwise...firearms should be highly regulated and those that can inflict too much harm on fellow citizens...banned.


Because it's okay to suspend the rights of those who have never broken the law and have no mental issues.
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 10:11 am

Again, why don't you guys decide what is okay for an American to own.

Muskets?

Revolvers?

Semi-auto pistols?

Single-barrel, breach-loading rifles?

What is amazing is how none of you is saying government should be held accountable for its failures. None of you see the government's failure to protect students in a densely-populated area as the government's fault. Somehow, it falls to an inanimate object. It is the trouble.

I disagree.
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 10:47 am

Doctor Fate wrote:So, let's seize them so that innocent people cannot protect themselves from criminals!
No, let's control them so that criminals are less likely to have them.

What Ruby Ridge showed was how out of control our government can be.
[/quote]That was nothing. No Gun Ri, Mi Lai, Fallujah, Wounded Knee, the Tulsa Race Riots...

Besides what always strikes me as ignorant is US gun advocates suggesting that it was a lack of guns that led to the Nazis. That is Bull. The Nazis came to power partly because they had guns before they were in government. The Freikorps and the SA were armed private militia that undermined the government of the time. The Nazis actually relaxed gun controls in 1938 (except for banning Jews from owning guns, but by then they had a willing populace ready to persecute Jews).
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 10:53 am

Doctor Fate wrote:What is amazing is how none of you is saying government should be held accountable for its failures. None of you see the government's failure to protect students in a densely-populated area as the government's fault.
Wrong.

On page 1 I responded to your line "Tell you what: you explain what a bang-up job the government did in this case, then I'll defend the gun control laws, or lack thereof." with
So there can't be an issue with both? Clearly in hindsight, Cruz could have been intercepted more effectively by law enforcement.
and later:

Yes, it would be great if the police and FBI always upheld the laws using the powers they do have. I don't know if they are fully resourced to do so, what actual evidence they had to go on, etc etc. But Cruz is not typical. Paddock in Vegas gave no real reason for law enforcement to be concerned. Several other mass shooters have not really displayed much of a pattern - although domestic violence, particularly against women, is often a factor.


Doctor Fate wrote:Somehow, it falls to an inanimate object. It is the trouble.

I disagree.
So, can you start to actually talk about the data now? Or just more and more cliché and attacking your straw man of our positions instead of substantiating your banal assertions with evidence?
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 11:59 am

When the government goes after White people like at Ruby Ridge and Waco...it's the precursor to the police state. Seminal moments for White militias, providing rallying cries for the far-right against the excesses of an out-of-control government intent on taking away people's guns and imposing a liberal agenda benefiting undeserving minorities...

When the government goes after black people...it's Tuesday.
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 12:48 pm

Fate
We have a Second Amendment so we can protect ourselves from, among other things, the government.


The Atlantic
...The idea that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to create a citizenry able to intimidate the government, and that America would be a better place if government officials were to live in constant fear of gun violence. If good government actually came from a violent, armed population, then Afghanistan and Somalia would be the two best-governed places on earth
.

It would be odd indeed if the Framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had written an amendment designed to give individuals the right to liquidate the government they were setting up. In fact, having been through a revolution, they had few illusions about the virtues of violence. When they gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, the original Framers were very aware that armed bands of farmers in Massachusetts had revolted against the state government only a few months earlier. Washington, in particular, found the news of Daniel Shays's rebellion in that state so disturbing that it contributed to his decision to come out of retirement and help frame a new national charter to prevent such outbreaks.


After becoming President, Washington himself led a national army into Western Pennsylvania to suppress a rebellion against the new federal tax on whiskey. (This is the only time in American history a President has served as Commander-in-Chief in the field.) In a subsequent message to Congress, he showed precious little sympathy for "Second Amendment remedies":


George Washington:
[T]o yield to the treasonable fury of so small a portion of the United States, would be to violate the fundamental principle of our constitution, which enjoins that the will of the majority shall prevail. . . . [S]ucceeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done; it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate the ill-conduct of the insurgents, that their malevolence was not pointed merely to a particular law; but that a spirit, inimical to all order, has actuated many of the offenders.


https://www.theatlantic.com/national/ar ... nt/241298/
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 1:20 pm

fate
We don't live in a bubble. People get harmed. They are harmed by drunk drivers. They are harmed by insane people driving trucks. They are harmed by insane people planting explosives. They are harmed by many thing

And in most instances, government has responded to the harm and attempted to reduce the harm.
Drunk driving laws and enforcement. Safer vehicles mandated by federal and state standards. Seat belt usage laws. Air Bag laws. (There were over 15 deaths per million people in car accidents in 1930. Today its down to 1.18)
Restrictions in access to explosives and to materials required to make explosives. (Especially after the Omaha domestic terrorist incident)
If the US government followed the same pattern of response, then gun deaths would be going down.
But that would require two things:
- a willingness to look at factual information.
- a willingness to react to the facts with the same concern for prevention that government saw with cars, and explosives. (Something the kids at Lakeland seem to feel isn't happening.)

Instead, the gun lobby fights scientific research into gun violence. Why? Because there's already been enough scientific evidence to indicate the direction further research would lead...

So what does the research say? By far the most famous series of studies on this issue was conducted in the late 1980s and 1990s by Arthur Kellermann, now dean of the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and his colleagues. In one, published in 1993 in the New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the CDC, he and his colleagues identified 444 people who had been killed between 1987 and 1992 at home in three U.S. regions—Shelby County, Tennessee, King County, Washington State, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio—and then collected details about them and their deaths from local police, medical examiners and people who had been close to the victims. They found that a gun in the home was associated with a nearly threefold increase in the odds that someone would be killed at home by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

In 2015 a combined analysis of 15 different studies found that people who had access to firearms at home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered as people who did not.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... nce-shows/
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 3:35 pm

danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:So, let's seize them so that innocent people cannot protect themselves from criminals!
No, let's control them so that criminals are less likely to have them.


Laws are only as effective as government, see Stoneman Douglas shooting.
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Post 05 Mar 2018, 8:18 pm

Doctor Fate wrote:
danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:So, let's seize them so that innocent people cannot protect themselves from criminals!
No, let's control them so that criminals are less likely to have them.


Laws are only as effective as government, see Stoneman Douglas shooting.
So because the government messed up once, it is a complete failure?

The government failed to prevent 9/11. Maybe the solution is to legalise plane hijacking.
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Post 06 Mar 2018, 12:36 pm

danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:
danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:So, let's seize them so that innocent people cannot protect themselves from criminals!
No, let's control them so that criminals are less likely to have them.


Laws are only as effective as government, see Stoneman Douglas shooting.
So because the government messed up once, it is a complete failure?

The government failed to prevent 9/11. Maybe the solution is to legalise plane hijacking.


Let's talk about straw men, shall we?

Re the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the government en toto failed dozens of times. There's the school, the numerous times law enforcement went to the shooter's home, the cops that did not go in to the school, and the FBI failures.

And, you're missing the point: your "seize the guns" proposal misses not only legally, but morally. You want to put more responsibility on a system that fails. A more apt analogy: it would be like putting Bill Clinton in charge of the female interns.

Your second error in logic is re 9/11. The comparison fails. Murder is already against the law. No one is proposing legalizing it. In fact, having a weapon at a school is against the law. Cruz was willing to break that law, and many others.

Hijacking is as illegal now as it was on 9/10. Two things have changed: marginally better security and massively more aware passengers.
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Post 06 Mar 2018, 2:54 pm

Fate
Re the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the government en toto failed dozens of times. There's the school, the numerous times law enforcement went to the shooter's home, the cops that did not go in to the school, and the FBI failures
.

You can add to this list, the governments failure to regulate guns and gun owners with the same care that they regulate cars and drivers.
Regulation doesn't end car accidents. But it has been conclusively shown to pretty dramatically lessen the deaths due to car accidents .
Government fails when it doesn't follow up on this experience and protect its citizens from irresponsible gun owners and less safe guns,as it has so successfully done with vehicles and drivers.
Regulations and licensing around cars, also made policing vehicles easier. Same would occur with guns.
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Post 06 Mar 2018, 7:58 pm

rickyp wrote:Fate
Re the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the government en toto failed dozens of times. There's the school, the numerous times law enforcement went to the shooter's home, the cops that did not go in to the school, and the FBI failures
.

You can add to this list, the governments failure to regulate guns and gun owners with the same care that they regulate cars and drivers.


No, you really can’t. There is no Amendment nor Constitutional clause protecting the right to drive. It’s a privilege.

Regulation doesn't end car accidents. But it has been conclusively shown to pretty dramatically lessen the deaths due to car accidents .


Now, just imagine no one enforcing traffic laws, vehicle laws, etc. That’s what happened in Florida. If the law had been followed, the young man would have had a criminal record AND declared mentally unfit.

The much beloved STATE failed. Government FAILED. Get over it.

Government fails when it doesn't follow up on this experience and protect its citizens from irresponsible gun owners and less safe guns,as it has so successfully done with vehicles and drivers.
Regulations and licensing around cars, also made policing vehicles easier. Same would occur with guns.


Stay in Canada. Problem solved.
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Post 07 Mar 2018, 7:02 am

Fate:
Re the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the government en toto failed dozens of times. There's the school, the numerous times law enforcement went to the shooter's home, the cops that did not go in to the school, and the FBI failures.


I certainly agree that there was a massive failure of government in handling this. Although I have low opinions of government bureaucracies, I appear to have overestimated their competence. Their inability to respond to obvious dangers is staggering. Where's the common sense amongst all the policies and procedures? Has the ability to think and focus on doing an important job been beaten out of people?

As to the politics, it's hard to imagine a March on Washington with the rallying cry: "We want competent government".
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Post 07 Mar 2018, 10:16 pm

Ray Jay wrote:Fate:
Re the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the government en toto failed dozens of times. There's the school, the numerous times law enforcement went to the shooter's home, the cops that did not go in to the school, and the FBI failures.


I certainly agree that there was a massive failure of government in handling this. Although I have low opinions of government bureaucracies, I appear to have overestimated their competence. Their inability to respond to obvious dangers is staggering. Where's the common sense amongst all the policies and procedures? Has the ability to think and focus on doing an important job been beaten out of people?

As to the politics, it's hard to imagine a March on Washington with the rallying cry: "We want competent government".


To some extent, yes, competence has been defeated!

If Broward County was offered money to lower crime and obtained that money by having the Sheriff actively get passive on youth offenders, that is corruption. Competence demands honesty.