Comment Re:weird (Score 1) 712
Gun ownership in the US for most conservatives is not about "freedom", quite the opposite, it is about removing other people's freedoms, such as preventing voting rights and more often delaying remedy and equality, with the force of arms and threat of violence, ruling by tyranny, balanced by artificial social graces to distract people with "form over substance" discussions about Southern hospitality. For the history of the US South, most populations with strongest gun ownership see themselves as part of ruling class, superior by birthright to people in their community they hate based on ignorant prejudice, even if gun owners won't admit how tyrannical feudal class structure they perpetuate has always been.
An example of who conservatives hate? The US Military. Texas, where Defense Distributed is based, was the last US state to decriminalize members US Military voting in elections, around 1942, but Texas still disenfranchised US Military members based on race, for being black, until 1965. At the other extreme, New York State provided absentee voting rights to all New York State citizens in the US Civil War, serving in New York State units, such as the election 1864, 80 to 100 years earlier.
In the US South, conservative gun owners voting patterns in Federal elections continues a history of using government to remove and prevent non-violent equal rights, and only accepting rights equality steps under profound duress of a coalition of many of "We the People", many of "the many states" (the liberal states), and Federal government, formed to actively oppose southern prejudiced laws backed with vigilante violence to enforce rights removal, and after violence and typically many high profile unjust homicides by southern gun totting vigilantes, as gun ownership in the US South comes from a history of ethnically cleansing American Indians from land to build farms, preventing slaves gaining their freedom, putting down slave revolts to gain freedom, raising insurrection against non-violent coalitions (of the people, many states of many US States, and Federal government opposed to oppression by Southern vigilantes), preventing black people and poor people using voting rights as well as accessing education, and so forth. Most conservative state gun owners do not elect leaders nor support candidates who support such broad and non-violent key freedoms, but rather conservative candidates almost always oppose and delay rights equality.
Notice how your reply quotes where from James Madison, a slave owner who very likely understood exactly what state militias in slave states were for, established almost 100 years earlier, a militia designed to kill slaves running away for freedom, or killing slaves organizing revolts for freedom against slave owners, but your quotes are from a politician typically directed and spun toward "the Citizens of New York", a state which did not have much slavery and passed laws to progressively ban slavery in 1799, and had already provided free black people owning land with the same voting rights in the New York State Constitution before that, in 1777.
If US conservatives (often gun "rights" activists) supported "freedom" and "fair and speedy" non-violent dispute resolution for all people based on high quality equality in the eyes of the law, instead of arbitrary violent dispute resolution, then they would support full voting rights solutions for all Americans, and similar rights equality, instead of actively preventing and delaying restoration of equality. This means conservatives would support ending Federal and State level disparities, such as:
* Restoring statehood and full voting rights for Washington, DC. (600,000+ fully taxed US Citizens, more than Wyoming.)
* Statehood for Puerto Rico (3.6 million people, would become the 28th largest US State.)
* Full voting rights for all smaller population territories, such as merging Guam, American Samoa, and Northern Marianas, with Hawaii.
* To assure high quality and efficient labor markets with fairer wages, US conservatives would restore wide scale immigration. Historically immigration was roughly 1% of the US population per year, but banned completely by Southern style US conservatives around World War I, only to recover slowly to 0.33% of US population per year in recent decades. Low labor price immigrants strongly encourage US women's rights, by providing key services such as affordable childcare, home improvement and maintenance, US agriculture, and US restaurants, key priorities for having well educated women in the US be most effective in the workforce while building the family life they also seek. The US manufacturing base largely died within two generations after the borders were closed to inexpensive immigrants, and may have only lasted that long due to internal migration of the deliberately impoverished from poor conservative states to liberal cities. Conservatives would also support drastic simplification for people coming to the US for education to stay here and improve our economy. Conservatives would also support effortless path to citizenship of kids brought here, and educated here, and attached to our communities and nation be become US citizens, and not confuse the misdemeanor of undocumented immigration with serious crime.
* Pro-Choice on family planning and abortion rights for US women, because it drastically improves the education level and quality of life of American women and their children. Higher education attainment creates higher life time incomes, and smaller more stable families is correlated with drastically less crime.
* Same Sex Marriage. For some reason conservatives typically create laws to punishing rights and finances of gay people, much like conservatives have other groups. This is flagrant prejudice of old in the current era.
* Penalizing new arrivals in some states, such as people born there, via property tax subsidy for long standing land owners by over taxing young families, and drastic market interference by preventing people from moving, because they want to retain subsidy, artificially driving up house prices even higher, is modern preclusive conservative policy, doing profound damage in states such as California. If conservatives supported freedom, opportunity, and effective markets, they would be leading the charge to remove laws such as California Prop 13.
If US conservatives were honest about freedom that they claim gun ownership signifies, they would acknowledge the historical purpose their political factions saw and likely still see in gun ownership, primarily useful for precluding "We the People" from "fair and speedy" non-violent dispute resolution, and concede that taking such basic rights from others is counterproductive and not what modern gun owners support, but this is not how their elected leaders vote, nor act. If we lived in a society that actually protected all peoples rights as equally, the Defense Distributed interesting innovations would not be so politically dubious.
An example of who conservatives hate? The US Military. Texas, where Defense Distributed is based, was the last US state to decriminalize members US Military voting in elections, around 1942, but Texas still disenfranchised US Military members based on race, for being black, until 1965. At the other extreme, New York State provided absentee voting rights to all New York State citizens in the US Civil War, serving in New York State units, such as the election 1864, 80 to 100 years earlier.
In the US South, conservative gun owners voting patterns in Federal elections continues a history of using government to remove and prevent non-violent equal rights, and only accepting rights equality steps under profound duress of a coalition of many of "We the People", many of "the many states" (the liberal states), and Federal government, formed to actively oppose southern prejudiced laws backed with vigilante violence to enforce rights removal, and after violence and typically many high profile unjust homicides by southern gun totting vigilantes, as gun ownership in the US South comes from a history of ethnically cleansing American Indians from land to build farms, preventing slaves gaining their freedom, putting down slave revolts to gain freedom, raising insurrection against non-violent coalitions (of the people, many states of many US States, and Federal government opposed to oppression by Southern vigilantes), preventing black people and poor people using voting rights as well as accessing education, and so forth. Most conservative state gun owners do not elect leaders nor support candidates who support such broad and non-violent key freedoms, but rather conservative candidates almost always oppose and delay rights equality.
Notice how your reply quotes where from James Madison, a slave owner who very likely understood exactly what state militias in slave states were for, established almost 100 years earlier, a militia designed to kill slaves running away for freedom, or killing slaves organizing revolts for freedom against slave owners, but your quotes are from a politician typically directed and spun toward "the Citizens of New York", a state which did not have much slavery and passed laws to progressively ban slavery in 1799, and had already provided free black people owning land with the same voting rights in the New York State Constitution before that, in 1777.
If US conservatives (often gun "rights" activists) supported "freedom" and "fair and speedy" non-violent dispute resolution for all people based on high quality equality in the eyes of the law, instead of arbitrary violent dispute resolution, then they would support full voting rights solutions for all Americans, and similar rights equality, instead of actively preventing and delaying restoration of equality. This means conservatives would support ending Federal and State level disparities, such as:
* Restoring statehood and full voting rights for Washington, DC. (600,000+ fully taxed US Citizens, more than Wyoming.)
* Statehood for Puerto Rico (3.6 million people, would become the 28th largest US State.)
* Full voting rights for all smaller population territories, such as merging Guam, American Samoa, and Northern Marianas, with Hawaii.
* To assure high quality and efficient labor markets with fairer wages, US conservatives would restore wide scale immigration. Historically immigration was roughly 1% of the US population per year, but banned completely by Southern style US conservatives around World War I, only to recover slowly to 0.33% of US population per year in recent decades. Low labor price immigrants strongly encourage US women's rights, by providing key services such as affordable childcare, home improvement and maintenance, US agriculture, and US restaurants, key priorities for having well educated women in the US be most effective in the workforce while building the family life they also seek. The US manufacturing base largely died within two generations after the borders were closed to inexpensive immigrants, and may have only lasted that long due to internal migration of the deliberately impoverished from poor conservative states to liberal cities. Conservatives would also support drastic simplification for people coming to the US for education to stay here and improve our economy. Conservatives would also support effortless path to citizenship of kids brought here, and educated here, and attached to our communities and nation be become US citizens, and not confuse the misdemeanor of undocumented immigration with serious crime.
* Pro-Choice on family planning and abortion rights for US women, because it drastically improves the education level and quality of life of American women and their children. Higher education attainment creates higher life time incomes, and smaller more stable families is correlated with drastically less crime.
* Same Sex Marriage. For some reason conservatives typically create laws to punishing rights and finances of gay people, much like conservatives have other groups. This is flagrant prejudice of old in the current era.
* Penalizing new arrivals in some states, such as people born there, via property tax subsidy for long standing land owners by over taxing young families, and drastic market interference by preventing people from moving, because they want to retain subsidy, artificially driving up house prices even higher, is modern preclusive conservative policy, doing profound damage in states such as California. If conservatives supported freedom, opportunity, and effective markets, they would be leading the charge to remove laws such as California Prop 13.
If US conservatives were honest about freedom that they claim gun ownership signifies, they would acknowledge the historical purpose their political factions saw and likely still see in gun ownership, primarily useful for precluding "We the People" from "fair and speedy" non-violent dispute resolution, and concede that taking such basic rights from others is counterproductive and not what modern gun owners support, but this is not how their elected leaders vote, nor act. If we lived in a society that actually protected all peoples rights as equally, the Defense Distributed interesting innovations would not be so politically dubious.