and I would venture 99.8% of the pro-2A supporters here voted for the winner. (Likely a few trolls will vanish)

Gun control is not the be-all-end-all issue, I would venture it is not even top three for the majority of us. At the risk of speaking for others, we strongly support individual rights, RKBA among them, but liberal economic and social positions are more important, barring a direct assault on individual rights.
Should there be an attempt at a new AWB, the pro-2A members will vigorously oppose it, yet at the end of the day will still be Democrats.

would never see the light of day in the Repuke controlled House, and Sen. Majority Leader Reid, himself a strong 2A supporter and an opponent of the AWB, will never let it come up for a vote.
So, our OP can gloat all he wants, nothing has changed.

"we strongly support individual rights, RKBA among them, but liberal economic and social positions are more important, barring a direct assault on individual rights." (Emphasis mine.)

In my years here on DU, I have seen so many people of the pro-gun persuasion gloating when Democrats are defeated or found to be corrupt. I don't agree with your 99.8% assessment -- I doubt it was even 50% -- but it is truly wonderful to see people taking your stance here. It is truly welcome.

by both sides.
All of us, pro and anti, believe all rights have limits. We just like to have little discussions as to where those limits lie.

Mind you, this is from only one thread. The first two are mine, so your slur against me is demonstrably false:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117222584#post50
No point in donating money to people that piss on the President, while accepting Mitt's AWB.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117222584#post60
I can't speak for GSC, but I'm certainly voting Obama in November.

And your swipe at other DUers is just as phony:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117222584#post44
Star Member Atypical Liberal (4,889 posts)
44. If I was a single-issue voter, I would not have voted for Obama.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117222584#post63
GreenStormCloud (8,382 posts)
63. I'm not a single issue voter.

I reserve the right to gripe about positions he has taken, while agreeing with other ones.

Protip: Spend less time spreading "Truth", and more time seeking truth...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117284984
Pro Second Amendment progressive votes Obama...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117285047
Once again, I just voted for Barack Obama.

so you speak just fine for me.

My local gun shop will probably look like WalMart on Christmas Eve. Why do I always wait until the last minute?

they're both really nice but the Akers is extremely nice. It took me 2 months to get it actually which sucked but the quality is just outstanding.

It was an enjoyable night - what made it extra pleasurable was watching how concerned/excited my 14 year old son got watching the election returns. He is going to be a political junkie like his dad!

I voted for him, and every other Democrat on my ticket, save one.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that just because there are bigger fish to fry right now than the second amendment that people suddenly are willing to let it be ridden over roughshod.

Right now a lot of people, like myself, are willing to risk the second amendment because there are much bigger problems to face and it is unlikely that any legislation can get passed on the issue anyway.

But if politicians start pushing anti-gun legislation and you may find that you are wrong about gun control not being a political loser. I will not support a politician from any party who actively works to undermine the second amendment.

...why didn't the congress pass a new, permanent AWB before the 2010 elections? You know, to stem the tide of the Tea Party?

Why wasn't this a huge pillar of his campaign?

Face it, it's not a topic people run on.

Rates of violent crime in this country have been dropping for about 20 years.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

it says it is the same.

Methinks you only read the headline and rushed back here to post. Next time, might I suggest -reading- your own article?

For example:

A far higher rate than any other first-world nation. That's about twice as many Americans as died in the worst single year of Vietnam, and about three times as many as 9-11, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined.

The fact that there were 30,001 gun deaths the year before doesn't mean it is not an epidemic.

30,000 deaths include homicides, justifiable homicides, accidental homicides, suicides, "death by cop"... It's a false number, and I'm certain you know it. Likewise, 30,000 people a year, no matter how you try to swing it, is tiny. Minuscule. It sounds big on paper, but when you're talking a percentage so small as to be statistically insignificant, it's hard to understand why you even keep throwing it around.

Likewise, even assuming your 30k number is solid and not being used for a moral argument instead of a factual one, that still means that for every gun death, there are ten thousand gun deaths that -do not- happen. That's above and beyond almost any margin of error for scientific basis as a percentage, and those numbers certainly do not speak of an "Epidemic".

We haven't had 30K deaths in war in any year since WW2. The worst year of Vietnam was about 16K US deaths. I wasn't alive back then, but I'm pretty sure that nobody in their right mind would describe the toll from Vietnam as "miniscule".

Posts like this are great. Anyone who thinks that gun fanatics are not loony extremists simply needs to watch you try to pretend that 30,000 deaths per year is no big deal.

I wasn't expecting anything less. You're using the same argument as the "Think of the children!" people arguing against abortion, and providing nothing to back yourself up. Do you have anything of substance, or are you going to continue to hurl non-issues around?

You are suggesting that 30K deaths per year is not a big deal: "miniscule" in your words. This is an idiotic statement -- the only way you can think that 30K per year is "miniscule" is if you also believe the death toll from Vietnam was miniscule as well.

I am confident that anyone who reads these posts of yours will see your fringe extremism for what it is.

Likewise, you know that is what I meant, and I know you're no idiot; you are feigning ignorance after being called out on a logical fallacy to avoid admitting your fault. I have shown your error and you refuse to engage in any way other than avoiding and willfully misinterpreting my point. We're done here, at least in this subthread; You are wrong and I have shown you that. There is little else I can do here.

What "logical fallacy" are you talking about? My point is that you can only consider the impact of gun violence to be "miniscule" if you also consider the impact of Vietnam to be "miniscule". In fact, statistically, gun violence is much worse that Vietnam.

So which is it? Either Vietnam was no big deal, or gun violence is a big deal.

Or else you are going to ignore this point once again.

My money is on you ignoring the point. That's what pro-gunners tend to do when they have no answer.

We use Vietnam as a benchmark for war casualties when in point of fact, the only reason we do so is because of massive civilian distress over reported numbers of casualties. Likewise, that point is further illuminated by massive media coverage of the war itself, and because deaths in Vietnam were a direct result of governmental action and offered further pressure by essentially being a proxy war.

(Point of note to the inevitable jury: I am not saying that the Vietnam war, and it's associated veterans, are in any way insignificant; I am addressing the point as was requested by DanTex.)

Vietnam was, for all intents and purposes, a brushfire war made moreso by technological and social advances that highlighted the inefficiency of the armed forces and the general debacle that the entire war became. Vietnam was a mirror for the government and it's faults, made public by massive media coverage and the subsequent outcry only further cemented Vietnam's status. Without the media covering the war, there is a good chance that Vietnam would be nearly forgotten, on par with, or less than, Korea.


Point addressed, answered, and dismissed.

that you felt the need to put in a jury disclaimer.

I think that most people would agree with me that Vietnam actually was a very big deal in terms of casualties. That it was a senseless waste of lives. And those people also understand that we do have a gun violence epidemic, and it is a big deal.

But, I will concede, for those of you who think Vietnam was no big deal, maybe to you the fact that guns kill as many Americans every two years than died in all of Vietnam is no big deal either.

Call it "Watching my ass."

Most people would agree that Vietnam was a big deal because society conditions a moralistic empathy response when an established majority deems an object or an event morally reprehensible. It is ingrained and taught into us, but it is not natural, and in discussions of number of deaths, that empathetic response does not hold water nor should it be a marker of social policy or change. You know this, you're just hiding atop your Hill of Moral High Ground.

The simple fact that 155,000 people die worldwide every day... EVERY day... more than 10x the number of yearly gun homicides, proves that your insignificant number is just that; insignificant.

That's fine, and I think this thread has been a great demonstration of just the extremes you have to go to pretend that there is no gun violence epidemic in this country. Basically, you have to take the absurd stance that the casualties from Vietnam were not a big deal. I think it's great that you actually came out and said that.

As I pointed out below, the term "statistically significant" makes no scientific sense at all in this context. If you think that anything that affects less than 1 in 20 people is statistically insignificant then you are more clueless than I gave you credit for. Whether something is significant is a value judgement. I happen to think that the casualties from Vietnam were significant, and I think most people would agree.

On a side note, I would encourage you to visit the Vietnam memorial in DC. It might make you rethink how easily you can just dismiss 60,000 dead Americans as no big deal.

You have proven that despite all odds, you will ignore science on both the meta and statistical level to justify your own worldview. Likewise, when confronted with a view that is not your own, you struggle and flounder until you can find a label to pin on them, and then run from the discussion. That, my friend, makes you a bigot.

The biggest mistake you've made in this thread is two words: "I think". What you think doesn't matter when discussing policy changes. Only numbers matter, and you ignore the ones that don't fit your narrative. A suggestion: Stop thinking, start reading.


I've been to the Vietnam memorial several times. It does sadden me, but at the same time, it gives me hope that in the future, hopefully people can look back to our history and tell their children why wars were so horrifically pointless, with only a few exceptions.

As I've pointed out, you have no idea what statistical significance means. Here's a hint: it doesn't mean "not very much".

I told you what statistical significance was, because statistical insignificance technically doesn't exist; it's a nonsense term, for the most part, but used in common parlance regardless.

And the science is this: For every gun that kills, ten thousand guns do not kill. You want to punish the ten thousand that do not, instead of the one that does. Your thoughts?

Guns are -capable- of killing. Simply because an object is capable of killing someone does not designate that object's purpose.


More to point: You are advocating restriction or denial of an object because an insignificant number of people are harmed by them each year, yet you ignore the fact that the vast majority (We're talking 99.99%) of firearms do not take a life. Methinks your ignorance is showing, friend.

And finally: Might I suggest remedial English classes? " Statistical significance is a scientific concept. It is not a nonsense term." Your own quote shows me saying "Statistical insignificance technically doesn't exist."

My argument is that 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence. You happen to think that is an "insignificant" number, which is a little odd, because I have yet to meet anyone of sound mind who thinks that the number of Americans killed in Vietnam is insignificant, and yet the death toll from Vietnam in its worse year was less than half of the death toll from guns.

It's really pretty simple. At the end of the day, it is impossible for any clear-thinking person to deny that the annual number of gun deaths is "insignificant".

You made some bizarre departure into pseudoscience, and you demonstrated very clearly that you don't have the first clue what "statistical significance" (or "statistical insignificance" LOL!) means. I'm not sure why you did that. It was certainly amusing. But it didn't change the argument at all.

can you show a link between suicide rates and gun ownership rates?

are multiple factors at play?

And, yes, there is plenty of evidence linking gun ownership to suicide. Here are some resources from the Harvard School of Public Health.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/

through healthcare reform.

It is hard to see how any gun laws will have an impact on suicides short of restricting access to guns to a huge swath of Americans.

My question was whether increased access to guns results in higher suicide rates. Have gun suicide rates steadily increased over the decades that gun ownership rates have increased?

As to your question, over the last two decades gun ownership rates have actually decreased -- they peaked in the early 90s. I would suggest you read some of the studies from that HSPH site I linked to and inform yourself on the topic, rather than just repeating what you read on gun blogs.

Safe storage laws. Mental health screening prior to acquiring a gun or gun license. And generally any laws discouraging irresponsible gun ownership.

you can't lose your civil rights in a subjective, non-judicial process. It is also way too broad - it will never pass strict scrutiny.

Besides - mental health professionals are not stupid. If they routinely said no then no one would go to them and the gravy train would end. It would be no different than doctors writing prescriptions for "medical" marijuana. It won't take long before websites recommending which doctors to avoid are up and running.

Don't see waiting periods having a major impact. If the suicide is impulsive then the likely hood of other means being close at hand are very high. If not impulsive, then the waiting period is irrelevant.

Safe storage laws are irrelevant if the person committing suicide has the key or the combo. Besides, such laws are unenforceable - short of routine household inspections, how do you know what storage I have?

And it's also no surprise that you don't think any gun laws would have any beneficial effect. You are one of our resident pro-gun extremists. Public health researchers and gun violence experts have a different opinion.

it is clear what you are up to - paint all pro-gun Dems as RW extremists so you can get this forum shut down.

Not going to work.

I've pointed you to a website with plenty of resources about guns and suicide, but instead of reading them, you are making some idiotic "points" like the idea that mental health screenings wouldn't work because the mental health professionals would somehow become corrupted, or that not having a gun around wouldn't stop impulsive suicides, which runs contrary to what many studies have found -- studies that you would have read if you checked the HSPS web site.

If you decide to educate yourself on the topic like I recommended and come up with something intelligent to say, I'd be happy to discuss. What you are doing is simply typing whatever first comes to mind to have some excuse for opposing any kind of common sense gun law, no matter how dumb. Not interested.

the solution to suicides is proper mental health care. That is my solution. It is one that will not only fix this problem but many others.

You don't like guns. We get it.

There is no "solution" to suicides. There are certain measures that can reduce suicide rates. One of them is sensible gun laws.

You continue to refuse to listen to experts in the field, instead going with gun bloggers and NRA talking points.

with a simple one size fits all solution - "rational gun laws."

There is a reason gun control is a smoking ruin in America - people like you and their "logic" are a big reason.

I have repeatedly pointed out that guns are just one of many factors. I say this over and over. You are the one that goes to absurd extremes to pretend that gun availability has nothing to do with suicide, even so far as to ignore all the studies and the experts on suicides. Anything to defend your pro-gun ideology.

As for why the gun lobby has been successful in the US thus far, here the answer is the same as why the oil lobby has succeeded in blocking any action on global warming. The right-wingers in the US are further to the right than what you find in most other countries. Like you, they ignore science and empirical evidence and are driven almost entirely by ideology, an ideology which places a lot of importance on "gun rights". The pro-gun movement is not based on intelligence or logic, it is based on ignorance. Just look at it's leaders.

I feel confident that we are on the right path. You have never been safer.

You were called "one of our resident pro-gun extremists" by Dantex.


Since hes already decided what you are, I would like to know, just for the record, of the current gun laws, which do you support, and which do you wish to see eliminated?

I think the answers to those questions may be quite illuminatng, and demonstrative of just how low our friend sets the bar when it comes to defining what constitutes " pro-gun extremists".

I would support background checks for private sales.

I would like to see national reciprocity for CCW.

Elegant proof that our friend there defines "pro-gun extremist" as anyone disagreeing with him on the guns issue.

and the sick will get better at hiding it. There are too many negative consequences to seeking care already. If a sick person is afraid of the doctor (or his records, or his bills), he can be become very good at concealing his problems from the only people who can help him. Trust me.

ALL of the following list of countries have two things in common: 1) Stricter regulations on gun ownership than obtain in the US, and 2) A higher suicide rate than the United States...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate


South Korea
Japan
Belgium
Finland
France
Austria
Czech Republic
New Zealand
Sweden
Cuba
Norway
Denmark
Ireland

For example, World War 1 had twice as many US deaths in +/- two years as Vietnam had in twenty...

solved by health care reform.

take away the suicides, justifiable homicides, suicide by cop, and accidental shootings and then what are number of actual criminal homicide numbers? And of those numbers, how many are thug on thug? Now, how many of those murders are drug related?
In the context of the population of the US, it is statistically insignificant and you damn well know that's what he meant.
Nice try at trying to demonize a fellow member, but that's what we've come to expect of you here.
Now go running to Meta and start a thread on how heartless we are here, after all, that's you M.O.

I'm not interested in any discussion about policies that affect me because other people decide to kill themselves.

There are many easy, effective ways to kill yourself if you are bent on doing so.

Public health experts include suicides when they discuss the gun violence epidemic. Guns are far more lethal than other suicide methods, and also easier. Studies on suicide have repeatedly found that access to a gun is a significant contributing factor to suicide.

Suicides (more then 1/2 of your 30,000) are not "gun deaths" but suicides.

Do you count people who jump off buildings as "building deaths"?
Intentional carbon monoxide suicides as "auto deaths"?
I bet not.

And this statement:
"If any other consumer product had this sort of disastrous effect, the public outcry would be deafening."

That include cars?

Do you realize the lines that I'm going to have to deal with to get her the present she wants?

*Disclaimer - No offense to "wimpy ass middle class white guys"*

I'm gonna have a bunch of wimpy ass middle class white guys pacing around the gun shop looking to buy an "Obama is gonna ban em, I gotta get one now!" rifles, scooping up whatever is on the shelf, standing in front of me that I have to deal with to get my wife what she wants for her b-day.

Damn it!

On the bright side, Obama is supporting jobs and creating wealth for the small business owner, and that makes me smile.

The local gun store is offering "gun-grabber" sales (their quote, not mine), and other savvy gun shops might be willing to use this to their advantage, and if you can cash in on the right-wing hysteria at a time when buying prices are lower, why not?

Evidence is right here in this group.

I voted straight Democratic ticket in Tarrant county 2 weeks ago.

Only people with your mindset, and who have the delusions of being a Zampolit, seem to think they get to define who is and isn't a Democrat, simply on the basis of whether or not their own guns.

You pretty much made it clear that anyone who owns guns isn't a "Real Democrat".

The pro-gun position is comparable to things like global warming denial and militarism.

like global warming denial and militarism. I said nothing about people who own guns. A lot of "gun rights" extremists would like to pretend that all gun owners agree with their right-wing agenda, but in fact, surveys show that most gun owners favor common sense gun laws that the NRA crowd would reject as draconian.

When the RW idiots were taking turns trying to "debunk" of the poll data that showed Obama as a clear favorite, it reminded me a lot of discussions I've had here in the gungeon, where the gun fanatics seem insistent on ignoring the scientific evidence when it comes to gun violence, and instead relying on "debunkings" written in gun blogs or NRA press releases.

"The scientific evidence when it comes to gun violence" is that it is an attempt to change the debate from one of personal rights to one of public health, so you can do an end run around the legislative system. And gun owners are not going to let that happen.

Since you and your fellow Gun Prohibitionists know you will never get the blanket ban you want on semi-automatics and / or handguns passed through direct means, that means your only other method is to completely re-frame the debate on other terms, which you hope will be more favorable to your side.

In that respect, you are just like the RW Anti-Choice people, who know they can not ever get their "Human Life Amendment" passed, thought they have trying since Reagan. So they have been chipping away at the Right to Chose by incremental and underhanded stealth tactics for the last 30 years. And unfortunately they have been very successful. We don't plan to let you repeat their success.

After the AWB ban in 94, gun owners have vowed to never let it happen again, The modern NRA is a direct result of the Brady Org stupidity, they thought, wrongly, that we would just take it and not fight back, that had to be the biggest miscalculation of the decade.
Turns out the Brady's were their own worse enemy.

30,000 people die every year from gunshot wounds. That's an enormous number. We haven't lost that many Americans in a year of war since WW2.

Like I pointed out above, surveys show that most gun owners support common sense gun laws. Wait, let me guess: you don't believe in polls unless they are "unskewed" LOL. The loony rhetoric about "Gun Prohibitionists" and the like that you find in the gungeon is restricted to a small and primarily fringe-right-wing part of the population, and not all gun owners. For you to try and pretend that all "gun owners" are on board with your right-wing agenda is the same as Mitt Romney trying to pretend that all "small business owners" support tax cuts for the top 1%.

The gun lobby is well funded and the NRA has been doing an effective job pushing the will of a fringe minority to the detriment of general good. But they went "all in" this election, and got clobbered. It's time for sanity to return to the gun debate.

It's one percent of one percent of one percent of the population, including deaths by cops and suicide and accident.. For every death with a gun, there are ten thousand guns that do not kill, as I pointed out above but you may have not noticed yet.

Gun violence is not an epidemic, no matter how much you wish it was otherwise.

There is a reason that public health experts are in near-universal agreement that gun violence is an epidemic, whereas the people who deny this are primarily NRA lobbyists and right-wing gun bloggers.

And the thing is, the fact that gun deaths occur at young ages relative to many diseases means that it's impact on life expectancy is further amplified. I made an OP about this a while back. The average American's life expectancy is shortened by a ful 104 days due to guns. As a point of comparison, lung cancer reduces life expectancy by 197 days.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117251262

And motor vehicles take off 160-odd. Everything we do takes off days of our lives, and very little will ever change that. Your own study admits that gun control is inconclusive in altering the firearm life expectancy impact, and admits such further on down.

I'm failing to understand your point, if only because your own study contradicts the notion that firearm control will change anything.

I gotta say, of all the dumb things I've heard in the gungeon, "people will die of other things anyway" might take the cake!

The point, of course, is that the US is the only first-world nation with epidemic levels of gun violence like this. Guns are nothing like, say, cars, which are an essential part of the economy and everyday life. There is no reason that we as a society should tolerate these extreme levels of gun violence, simply to appease a small extremist minority that rejects common sense gun laws that could get our rates of gun violence in line with the rest of the world.

Firearms violence is statistically insigficant when put in the context of what our population is, take away the suicides, which is a mental health issue, take away the justifiable homicides, take away the accidental shootings and what's left, the majority of homicides are thug on thug mostly related to the drug trade, end the war on drugs, and that number would drop significantally.

I have no idea what you mean by "statistically insignificant". It seems to me that what you mean is simply that you don't personally think it's a big deal. Gee, there's a surprise! A gun fanatic doesn't think gun violence is a big deal, whoddathunkit!?!?

Do you think that the toll taken on Americans by the Vietnam war was "insignificant"? Because the death toll due to guns is twice as high every year as the single worst year of Vietnam.

So either Vietnam is no big deal, or gun violence is a big deal. There is no middle ground.

Set of data large enough to represent the phenomenon or population being studied. By convention, a finding is called statistically significant if the probability of its occurrence purely by chance is less than 1 in 20 (five percent).


Therefore, gun violence is not statistically significant. According to, ya know, fuckin' SCIENCE.

The term "statistical significance" is generally used in the context of statistics to indicate that a phenemenon observed could not have occurred by chance alone.

It makes absolutely no sense at all to say that gun violence is not "statistically significant". The fact that it affects less than 1 in 20 people does most definitely not make it statistically insignificant.

I never said that I don't think it's a big deal, I deal with it every day. And take you gun fanatic talking point and place it where, you get the idea.

Vietnam was a big deal to me, I served 2 tours and it took a big toll on me mentally, so don't even go there.
The firearm violence in this country is a big deal, but when looked at in the context of the population, the numbers are statistically insignificant, and you damn well know that's exactly what I meant, but you just have to get your cheap shots in don't you?

Apparently he thinks that the death toll from Vietnam was -- and I quote -- "not a big deal".

My point is simply that the death toll from guns is twice as large as the worst year of Vietnam. Whether you consider that significant or not is a value judgement.

The firearms death in the country is a big deal personally to the people it affects, but when put in context of what the US pop. is, it is STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT.
I don't know how I can explain it any simpler.

As I pointed out above, the scientific term "statistical significance" makes no sense in this context. The fact that you put it in boldface caps doesn't change that.

What you really mean that only a small fraction of people are killed by guns. Whether that is significant or not is a value judgement. Apparently to you, the 30,000 people who are killed every year by guns are an insignificant number. The total number of Americans who died in Vietnam is around 60,000. Is that an insignificant number too?

To me, both Vietnam and gun violence represent huge and senseless loss of human life, and I would never describe either as insignificant.

if you don't get it, than you never will, everyone else here, I suspect, gets it, so that leaves me to believe that you're here for one thing and one thing only, to stir up shit.

I explained to you that the scientific meaning of "statistical significance" makes no sense in this context, and your response is to put it in boldface caps, as if that somehow substitutes for the utter incoherence of the argument you are making.

You might think that gun violence is insignificant, in which case you probably also think that the casualties from the Vietnam war are insignificant, because gun violence is worse. But I don't think many people outside the NRA bubble would agree with you.

I said that firearms violence is a significant problem to those directly affected, but when put in the context of what the pop. of the US is, the number is statistically insignificant.

In other words, the % is miniscule, I think it's something like 1/2 of 1%, that would make the number statistically insignificant.
I care about the number of shootings, I deal with it quite frequently, so don't you ever suggest that I don't care. I care far more than you do because I see it up close and personal.

As I said before, you don't seem to have the first clue what "statistically insignificant" means, and you are trying to compensate with font effects.

What you really mean is not "statistically insignificant" but "small", which is a value judgement. You are just using the term "statistically insignificance" to try and dress up your value judgement in pseudoscientific language, but ultimately all you are saying is that you think that 30,000 gun deaths per year is a "small" number of gun deaths.

It's a bit grotesque that anyone would describe 30,000 needless deaths as a "small" number -- the total number of Vietnam casualties is 60,000, would anyone in their right mind describe that as "small"? -- but after reading the gungeon for while, very few things that gun fanatics say surprise me any more.

Civil liberties are not something to be done away with, and to suggest otherwise is the direct antithises of liberal and democratic lines of thought. The difference between America and the rest of the "First world countries" in regards to homicide rate is that America, moreso than the rest of the countries considered first world, consists of massive geographical, class-based and race-based differences. Looking through the list of some other first world countries, America stands out and alone as far as diversity among said lines go; the class lines are deeper, the race lines are stronger, the geographical divide is similarly massive, and only in America do you find urban centers as populous and densely packed, which brings up the psychological and social aspects of humankind living in close proximity. The comparison, while idealistic and perhaps almost naive, between first world countries and America cannot hold up given even a moderate amount of scrutiny of the overall composition and makeup of the country as a whole.

But I'll state my first sentence again, because it's important.

Civil liberties are not something to be done away with, and to suggest otherwise is the direct antithises of liberal and democratic lines of thought.

Guns have basically nothing to do with civil liberties. Just tossing around the word "liberty" isn't a very persuasive argument.

Gun policy is a question of recreation, hunting, self-defense, and public safety. And if you look at where we are versus where the rest of the world is, it is pretty much impossible to argue that we are doing fine. The fact is, we have a gun violence epidemic that is unique in the first-world, and no amount of "gun rights" absolutism can justify it. It is a senseless waste of human life.

"Civil Liberties: noun First Amendment guarantees, First Amendment Rights, freedom of expression, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, fundamental individual rights, guarantees from the Bill of Rights, human rights, individual rights, right to life, right to peacefully assemble, right to petition government for redress, right to privacy, right to property, right to worship "


Now, let's take a look at your statement about "Public safety". Let's see where that falls on the political spectrum...

Liberalism (by JFK: ) "someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties"

Now... Either JFK hated the Bill of Rights, or you are wrong again...

And putting it in boldface doesn't make it true either. The fact is, guns have pretty much nothing to do with freedom, or with participating in a democratic society, or anything of the kind. The idea that guns are a civil liberty is mainly restricted to right-wing Americans.

Freedom of speech, religion, expression, the press, etc., all of these are very fundamental rights without which it is pretty much impossible to have a free and functional democracy. Guns are mostly a matter of public safety, self-defense, recreation. In fact, trying to pretend that guns are an essential civil liberty trivializes the whole notion of civil liberties. It's sort of like the whole "freedom fries" thing.

"The blacks vote? Eh, we can do without that."


You don't get to cherry-pick civil rights and liberties that you do or do not agree with. That's not the way a functioning government works. Civil rights and civil liberties are set down in the foundations of government of a country at it's origin, and while the definitions may change over time, they remain.

Let me pose this to you:

Let's say you are a woman seeking a morning after pill. The pharmecist will not sell it to you. Who's morals are right?

You are a woman wanting an abortion. The government does not allow it. Who's morals are right?

You are either universally for individual freedom to exercise rights and choices in personal lives, or you are not.

Which are you?

Let's try and keep our eyes on the ball.

Guns have nothing to do with civil liberties, and they certainly have nothing at all to do with racial discrimination. Here's the thing: something isn't automatically a civil liberty just because you want it to be. Guns have nothing to do with maintaining a free society or a functioning democracy. They are not a fundamental right. They have nothing to do with abortions, or privacy, or birth control, or speech.

It is a matter of public safety, self-defense, and recreation. Trying to pretend that gun rights are basic civil liberties trivializes the truly important rights, like speech, fair trials, etc.

Given your lack of essential reading comprehension education, I don't see how you can understand this short of making it very simple, so I'll do just that.

Constitution outlines civil liberties. It does not grant them; they are considered natural simply by being American.

Constitution also says: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

So even IF you're right (and you're not), the Ninth Amendment would cover any exclusion based on the Bill of Rights itself.


I can't make it any simpler, friend. If I had to dumb it down further, I wouldn't know how to type.