Just google “national guard disarming citizens in new orleans aftermath”. [/quote]
If you do that, the first result is a conspiracy theorist nut job site and the second result is this thread. I hardly think that constitutes evidence.[/quote]
:roflmao: that is funny. Imagine that, when you google something a lot of crap shows up along with the good. You will find pages of all different sources on it, some of which has original footage. Keep letting the “real” media spoon feed reality to you. Anything else must be conspiracy propaganda. The government wouldn’t dump radiation on cities to test the effects on innocent Americas would they? The military wouldn’t do various experiments on their own soldiers without telling them would they? The CIA never tested LSD on unsuspecting Americas in the 1950s. Of course not. The mainstream media didn’t broadcast it on the nightly news at the time. What kind of nut-jobs would believe that could happen?
[quote=“Tigerman”]
Well, I’m not arguing for arming everyone with anything they desire. But, I would much rather live in a society where I was free to arm myself within limits so that i could adequately defend myself and others against a knife-wielding madman.[/quote]
Are you still living in Taiwan? Do you think this would be a better place if everyone here could walk into a gun shop and arm themselves? (serious question)
So you don’t see the obvious fact that beliefs among educated persons in modern society have changed dramatically. Slavery being a particularly dramatic example but voting rights for women, worker rights, children rights, rights to education. They may have held very different viewpoints on these also. Some of these founders would have been sent straight to jail for crimes against humanity in the modern era!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jef … nd_slavery
While it seems that Jefferson opposed many aspects of slavery he owned hundreds of slaves and did not free them. It’s good to look at what people do as to what they actually say. He also had children with his slaves.
Since about 2000, historians widely believe that the widower Jefferson started a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings while in Paris. According to her son Madison Hemings, she became pregnant and agreed to return with Jefferson to the US after he promised to free her children.[45] After their return to the US, her first child died, but she had six more children at Monticello with Jefferson. Four survived to adulthood, and he freed all of them, informally and formally, as they came of age at 21.
All very serious crimes in the modern era.
You also don’t seem to get that it is circumstances and experiences that often shape a person. It made a lot of sense for the people who constructed the original constitution to include rights to bear arms. This is do with their system of defense at that particular time.
I’m not saying they wouldn’t hold the same views if they were somehow transported to now, most people don’t change their spots that much. But what I am saying is that if they were to have grown to adulthood and founded a new state in the 21st century their constitution would have been based on broader societies views and circumstances in the here and now.
I’ll take your word that this was a serious question. Of course I do not believe that this would be a better place if [color=#FF0000] everyone
[/color] here could walk into a gun shop and arm themselves.
But, I haven’t asserted any such thing. I’ve posted several times that i believe in reasonable restrictions. Such restrictions would be in regards to individuals and types of arms.
As I mentioned in the above post, they would have no choice but to change their views or they could be jailed for acting upon them in a modern society. Your blind spot is that the ‘extensive individual liberties’ are in many cases less than autocratic states such as China. Although the Chinese have a one party system and lack many religious and media freedoms, they allow women the vote, have mandated high school education, freedom from serfdom, have working rights of some form and in their own constitution (or whatever it is called) are supposed to treat all citizens of China equally, whatever colour, ethnicity or sex they are.
I understand that at the time these were really revolutionary ideas to put into practice, but now their views would be hopelessly out of synch with the times.
Of course I see that. But, perhaps not in the way that you see it. I am well aware that many educated people believe that our federal government should have a much larger role than it was originally intended. but, many people believe that we should stay true to the original intent of the FFs.
Look… The FFs knew of these unjust situations. And they allowed these situations to continue in order to unify the thirteen colonies/states. That they allowed these and compromised their beliefs does not negate the ideals that they nonetheless espoused loudly and clearly. The US Constitution and our founding documents clearly indicate the ideal that we have been striving for ever since. We have failed and we have back-stepped many times. But, the trajectory the FFs placed us on was plain and clear, and we have moved steadily in that direction, notwithstanding the recent (relatively) attempts to empower the govenment at the expense of individual liberties.
It was more to do with the idea that individuals should be free and independent and rely on their selves and due to the deep distrust that the people held the government. Many Americans still believe in self-reliance and understand that the police cannot always be there to protect you and many still are deeply suspicious of the government.
Speculation.
The US’ FFs had big ideas, and I doubt that those big ideas would be much different at all if they were alive today. I am a product of modern society and I still believe in the big ideas espoused by our FFs. I wish the US would go back substantially to its roots.
I suggest that this is a contradiction in terms in the modern American society, where support for foreign military action of the federal government is usually very high, especially in areas where the distrust of government is supposed to run the deepest.
Are you sure people aren’t deluding themselves that they are for ‘rugged individualism’?
China doesn’t allow anyone to vote, except in very limited and local elections. China doesn’t treat all of its citizens equally. I will grant the Chinese the same benefit, however, that I gave the US:, i.e., that despite China’s failures to meet its constitutional guarantees, it is striving to meet the same. The difference I would point out, however, is that the US’ FFs made it very difficult to amend the US Constitution, while the CCP amends the Chinese constitution often and as it pleases and interprets very broad language in support of the government and against the individual Chinese citizens.
Wow. I strongly disagree. I wish we in the US would get back to our Constitutional roots.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
I suggest that this is a contradiction in terms in the modern American society, where support for foreign military action of the federal government is usually very high, especially in areas where the distrust of government is supposed to run the deepest.
Are you sure people aren’t deluding themselves that they are for ‘rugged individualism’?[/quote]
Of course. Nearly half of the US population wants a bigger federal government and less individual freedoms (depending on the issue, e.g., right to bear arms vs reproductive rights).
I wish we would go back to the ideals espoused by the US’ FFs and stated in the US Constitution.
I’ll take your word that this was a serious question. Of course I do not believe that this would be a better place if [color=#FF0000] everyone
[/color] here could walk into a gun shop and arm themselves.
But, I haven’t asserted any such thing. I’ve posted several times that I believe in reasonable restrictions. Such restrictions would be in regards to individuals and types of arms.[/quote]
Okay, instead of ‘everyone’, " if anyone without a criminal record (for violence?) or mental health problems severe enough to have required official attention could walk into a store and buy a handgun, or semi-automatic rifle ".
Do you believe Taiwan would be a better place if it had the same gun rights as the US?
Another question to pose, since Taiwan has a low violent crime rate, do you think that it proves that it is better not to go down the route of arming the population in the first place?
[quote=“Tigerman”][quote=“headhonchoII”]
I suggest that this is a contradiction in terms in the modern American society, where support for foreign military action of the federal government is usually very high, especially in areas where the distrust of government is supposed to run the deepest.
Are you sure people aren’t deluding themselves that they are for ‘rugged individualism’?[/quote]
Of course. Nearly half of the US population wants a bigger federal government and less individual freedoms (depending on the issue, e.g., right to bear arms vs reproductive rights).
I wish we would go back to the ideals espoused by the US’ FFs and stated in the US Constitution.[/quote]
Ok, I see where you are personally coming from. My main point was that the ideals were limited to a subset of people only (I’d forgotten to mention the miserable treatment of Native Americans earlier also). If the ideals were to encompass all the citizens (and non-citizens residents), well then they would not be so out of synch with the way society has developed to date. The other point would be that ideals have the habit of butting into reality, perhaps when the constitution was written this was what hampered their implementation, now the ideals are being perverted in other ways.
[quote=“Tigerman”]I’ve posted several times that [color=#FF0000] I believe in reasonable restrictions
[/color].
[color=#FF0000]Such restrictions would be in regards to individuals and types of arms[/color]
.[/quote]
[quote=“MikeN”]Okay, instead of ‘everyone’, " if anyone without a criminal record (for violence?) or mental health problems severe enough to have required official attention could walk into a store and buy a handgun, or semi-automatic rifle ".
Do you believe Taiwan would be a better place if it had the same gun rights as the US?[/quote]
See my remarks above.
I believe that anyone wanting to own/possess a firearm should be trained and responsible. I think age, as well as criminal record and mental health, is a suitable factor for consideration (and I’m sure there may be others). I personally also do not believe that we should be permitted to own [color=#FF0000]any[/color] weapon… although I struggle with the idea of whether the 2nd amendment literally permits us to be armed as we please.
I’m not certain that Taiwan has such a low rate of violent crime.
Yes.
In principle, I favor freedom and liberty to the greatest possible extent for all individuals, so long as all individuals accept and assume an equal amount of personal responsibility.
[quote=“Gao Bohan”]
It is not politicaly feasible to seriously control guns in the United States. Nobody is going to challenge the current interpretation of the Second Amendment. Nor should they, since the original intent was to allow for and encourage an armed citizenry. The only way to control guns would be to repeal the Second Amendment and that will never happen, full stop.[/quote]
Well said, though I will say that the nature of modern weaponry has significantly changed the nature of “an armed citizenry.”
It shows though that the framers of the constitution, in their considerable wisdom, made ample provision for the constitution to be amended. Essentially, whatever they would think today about how the constitution applies to modern times is irrelevant, by their own design.
Well I would say that stranger on stranger violent crime is fairly rare in Taiwan, just from personal experience. Small things like lack of security barriers in taxis give an indication of this.
Then again it may be relatively rare in the US outside of gang related killings. Taiwan certainly does not have concentrated areas of violent crime such as you would see in other countries.
Quoting United Nations statistics with regard to Taiwan doesn’t really bolster your case though.
I think armed robbery is relatively rare. Other aspects of “stranger on stranger” crime I’m not so sure. There may be more “non-stranger” especially family-related violent crime as well, I’ve always thought.
I think given the lethality of guns, the homicide rate is a pretty good indicator for the purposes of this discussion though. I doubt that gunshots that don’t kill you are much or any worse than knives or blunt objects.
The real solution is to develop technology for temporarily disabling someone that’s so efficient and reliable that it renders pistols and rifles obsolete. Someone breaks into your home? Zap! Zap! Anyone approximately in front of you within thirty feet is harmlessly and immediately rendered unconscious for thirty minutes with 99% effectiveness. Turns out to be your teenage son trying to sneak into the house after a night out drinking with his buddies? No problem. You have a good laugh about it the next morning rather than crying your eyes out while making funeral arrangements and explaining to the police why you shot first and asked questions later.
Just google “national guard disarming citizens in new orleans aftermath”. [/quote]
If you do that, the first result is a conspiracy theorist nut job site and the second result is this thread. I hardly think that constitutes evidence.[/quote]
:roflmao: that is funny. Imagine that, when you google something a lot of crap shows up along with the good. You will find pages of all different sources on it, some of which has original footage. Keep letting the “real” media spoon feed reality to you. Anything else must be conspiracy propaganda. The government wouldn’t dump radiation on cities to test the effects on innocent Americas would they? The military wouldn’t do various experiments on their own soldiers without telling them would they? The CIA never tested LSD on unsuspecting Americas in the 1950s. Of course not. The mainstream media didn’t broadcast it on the nightly news at the time. What kind of nut-jobs would believe that could happen?[/quote]
In the interests of fairness, I decided to give it a second chance. This time, Googling that phrase actually brings up this thread in the first 2 results.
The third result also has stories on including
How Obama faked the bin Laden killing
How the US is going to surrender control of its military to the UN
Human sacrifices by the Illuminati
Plus all the usual stuff about Obama being a communist, alien invasions etc.
The only other result on the page that’s directly relevant and contains the same phrase has it in a quote from a site called Zombie Slayer.
