smittyoneeach's Journal: Dodging Bullets

The president has been careful to avoid direct attacks on gun rights. But if he gets to replace just one of the five justices who made up the Heller and McDonald majorities, Second Amendment jurisprudence is likely to be strangled in its crib.
Two of those justices, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, will be octogenarians by the time Obama's second term ends. If they outlast him, our constitutional liberties will have dodged a bullet.

What are you going to do with that gun?

[fustakrakich]

What are you going to do with your gun? [theatlantic.com]...

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

THE TEXT OF the Second Amendment is maddeningly ambiguous. It merely 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.” Yet to each side in the gun debate, those words are absolutely clear.

I love the smell of post-facto confusion injections in the morning. It smells like a Lefty.
Start with First Principles: you retain the absolute right of self-defense.
The 2nd Amendment (the physical backstop

Re:

[fustakrakich]

We can stop playing now. The world consists of the conquerors and the conquered. The paperwork is just a formality.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

The modern conquest is substantially paperwork.
Or is Rome just going to roll across the Rhine again, by some pen-over-sword magic?

Re:

[fustakrakich]

"Either your brains or your signature would be on the contract."

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Godfather [wikiquote.org]

Remember Saint Ronnie?

[fustakrakich]

OOGA BOOGA! [wordpress.com]

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Please don't post pictures like that without telling me how to feel. The attempted manipulations may not work otherwise.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

How does that notion jibe with equality under the law?

No, really, you've got it all wrong

[damn_registrars]

Obama is paranoid the government is coming for his guns [theonion.com].

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

heh

Re:

[damn_registrars]

I figured since you made a funny I should make a funny, too!

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Sounds good to me.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

"Republicans are working to remove Bill of Rights challenges. . ."
Which explains why the GOP so masterfully stopped the confirmation of Kagan and Sotomayor, and the re-election of Obama.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

And besides, schmuck, what were the Supremes ever to 'do' but support the 2nd Amendment as written?

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

The last four words are all you need to know. The effort to muddy the water using the introductory phrases is merely a litmus test for knobbery.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

The effort to muddy the water using the introductory phrases is merely a litmus test for knobbery.

Is that all it was, an "introductory phrase", having no meaning?

And what exactly is an arm, anyway? Where is the language that allows any limitation on the private ownership of munitions?

Anyway, it's not going to matter if there continues to be a massacre a month, because sooner or later, moms and dads will come and gladly rip your weapons from your cold, dead hands. And there are more of them than you have

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

The phrase is perfectly clear in the language of its time.
This bogus attempt at injecting post-facto ambiguity is unpersuasive.

free market solution to preventing these ever-more-frequent massacres (if you believed in a free market)

Oh, fall off the planet! Product manufacturers can no more regulate individual behavior than the government.

Because I'll tell you what, your assertion that your "right" to own an M4 Carbine is worth an occasional mass murder of kindergartners is going to be harder and harder for

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

You do everything but hold the evildoer accountable, and seek to make ME the bad guy here?

I know it's not fair, but if you mean to hold on to your "Second Amendment Rights" then gun owners and manufacturers and lobbyists better come up with a solution. Because if you don't, you're going to lose those rights.

Remember, every time there was an existential threat (real or perceived) in the US, the Constitution was set aside, starting with our first president. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Bush put the Constitution sec

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

I know it's not fair, but if you mean to hold on to your "Second Amendment Rights" then gun owners and manufacturers and lobbyists better come up with a solution. Because if you don't, you're going to lose those rights.

I'm afraid you have no idea what you're talking about, and your cited example underscores how daft you are.
IF there was ever a moment to overturn the 2nd Amendment, that moment would have been Lincoln's.
However, there remains a proper, stated way to accomplish your end: the Article V Amendm

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

IF there was ever a moment to overturn the 2nd Amendment, that moment would have been Lincoln's.

Lincoln was busy getting rid of some other Amendments.

However, there remains a proper, stated way to accomplish your end: the Article V Amendment.

The proper, stated way isn't going to mean much if the social order continues to break down. Your constitution will be quite challenged in the Wasteland.

Look, I'm serious. And, I'm a gun owner. But people aren't going to put up with this mass carnage forever. A reck

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Here is something rational on the topic: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335739/facts-about-mass-shootings-john-fund [nationalreview.com]

Look, I'm serious. And, I'm a gun owner.

If you're interested in having credibility, then argue credibly.
It seems as though somebody has decided that a room full of dead children is a crisis too sweet to waste. God have mercy on the Left's ghoul squad.

Re:

[Arker]

It's not the slightest bit ambiguous to anyone accustomed to reading literary English of that time period. The militia was understood in the sense of the members of the population ready and expected to pick up arms in times of emergency. "Well regulated" in this context simply means practiced - it isnt enough to pass out weapons and ammo on the eve of an emergency, a well-regulated militia is one that has their weapons and sufficient ammo to visit the range, to get and stay in practice with their weapons. T

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

The mistake I made for years in contending with Lefties is assuming that they were arguing sincerely.
Lefty behavior comes into focus if you allow that they care not fig #1 for reason, and are pursuing pure nihilism.

Re:

[Arker]

It's easy to generalise like that, and easy to find some truth in it, but I still think the reality is much more complex. Both lefties and righties often seem to be quite rational on some subjects but completely irrational on others. Lefties tend to turn their brain off when exposed to the word 'gun' and it's hard to get them to turn it back on. But I live surrounded by people that do the exact same thing only the word is different. 'Gay' usually does the trick around here.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

There is nothing irrational about judging the tree by the fruit.

Re:

[Arker]

I am not sure exactly what you are trying to say, but it sounds like a broad generalisation on an entire class of people based on anecdote. Even with very compelling anecdotes, that still makes for bad policy.

My neighbors seem to think that if a man is ever allowed to sign up another man on his health insurance and make a formal commitment to him, this will somehow result in other men that dont want to do this being forced to do so. It makes no rational sense whatsoever, it's nothing but inchoate fear speak

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

You attempted to obfuscate (" I still think the reality is much more complex"), and I pointed to a simple principle, seeking to offer you some assistance cutting through the fog.

We don't allow a state church, and we shouldn't allow the state to usurp the church's authority to define marriage in the first place.

Here we're somewhat in agreement, though I'd offer that neither the church nor the state matter. Humans can, in the effort elevate Statism to the level of a church, legalize pretty much everything. Se

Re:

[Arker]

I was not obfuscating, but explicating.

The "sex with a mare" gambit is a very old one. If you put your mind to it there is no limit to the disgusting things that people just might do if they were free to make their own choices. If you want to live in a free society there is no other way than to accept that someone, somewhere might do something disgusting. In reality, very few people are at all interested in sex with a mare and the handful that are are unlikely to be deterred by law anyway.

"What is clear, ba

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

It's common to view the purpose of the sex organs as being reproduction, and simple to follow that view to its conclusion that non-breeders are therefore somehow defective and unnatural. But if this view were correct then the behavior simply would not occur - it would have been eliminated long ago if it did not serve a natural purpose.

No, really, the teleological point of sexuality is reproduction; anything else is peripheral, and attempting to conflate the means with the end marks you daft. That freewill

Re:

[Arker]

It is indeed the teleological view, but teleology itself is rather suspect.

'Would have been eliminated long ago' is actually rigorously deducible given a handful of premises. The genetic factor as I said seems more than adequately documented. Genes that are non-adaptive do not typically survive, they gradually become less common and then disappear. Nothing like that has happened or gives any sign of happening in this case - to the contrary. And once you start to think of how such a gene would work there is

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

'Would have been eliminated long ago' is actually rigorously deducible given a handful of premises. The genetic factor as I said seems more than adequately documented. Genes that are non-adaptive do not typically survive, they gradually become less common and then disappear. Nothing like that has happened or gives any sign of happening in this case - to the contrary. And once you start to think of how such a gene would work there is an obvious explanation for why.

I'm not understanding exactly why you're pr

Re:

[Arker]

Well I wouldnt say behaviour is determined by genetics - it's not that simple. Like racism and musical tastes, there is a genetic component that can be discerned but again it's not a simple cause and effect relationship but a much more complex one. For example, there is certainly a genetic component that gives us the ability to distinguish other human individuals visually which is extraordinarily fine-tuned and effective. That gene doesnt make us racists all by itself, but that extraordinary sensitivity to

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

I had a good friend who was a born again christian, and gay. The only way he could reconcile those two things was to be celibate. And he was. This points out the difference between behaviour and orientation. He could control his behaviour, but he could never control his orientation - he couldnt be attracted to females, or quit being attracted to males, the best he could do was simply to not act on his feelings.

It gets at the degree of intrinsic vs. extrinsic behavior you're supporting.
Clearly I don't know

Re:

[Arker]

You dont know the person, and I lost track of him a few years ago, and ultimately anecdote is not evidence anyway. It's there solely to explain where my head is at when I say things that I know must sound strange to you. For whatever it's worth I knew him well for several years and he struck me as one of the most sincere people I have ever met. He planned to die a virgin and for all I know he has.

I look at something like the amendment 1 that just passed here in NC and here is what I think about. I imagine D

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

We may be able to agree that the various tax/insurance/marriage laws/policies are pretty much jacked through the roof.
Now, if we can agree that those laws and policies are all messed up, why is the remedy more of same?
I'll straight up play the slippery slope card: things will only worsen with more societal chaos thrown in there: dogs & cats living together, while married to all manner of strange arrangements, none of which actually help perpetuate society.
Hence my veering libertarian on the issue of