841–850 of 957 posts
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If you have a gun in your house and are responsible with it, nobody will be at risk.
Hogwash. My military-trained father-in-law accidentally discharged his handgun inside the house while cleaning it. The bullet ricocheted and could have killed anybody. It was a manufacturing defect. All those guns were recalled and replaced 2 months later.
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Of specific guns, namely rifles designed for military use. Shotguns, pistols, and low-capacity rifles are still fine.
Yes you don't need AR-15 for basic protection.
What about any of the other rifles that fire the same exact cartridge but are not AR-15's? .223REM/5.56x45mm NATO, .308WIN/7.62x51mm NATO, etc... There's no talk about banning certain cartridges.
Are we just talking about banning a specific shape of a rifle? Why?
Do the people talking about confiscations and bans even understand these things?
Not to defend what the police have been doing overall during this protest, but in this specific incident you can see the protestors beating a police officer on the ground, and the protestor who got shot was swinging a metal pipe at the police officer that shot him.
The police are allowed to shoot someone in the leg. Lethal force is not the only option with a firearm.
There's significant high chance to shoot through arteries at leg shots.
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I agree. Similarly, most people who live in rural areas also have a need for guns to protect themselves adequately - from animals as well as malicious people - as police and other state protection can be an hour or more away when they try to respond rapidly. I prefer to focus on the Black Panthers use case because there is an interesting cognitive dissonance in the modern left in that anti-racism and gun control are…
Your litmus test is interesting - why focus on that single group of people? Maybe another litmus test should be "does this meaningfully decrease access to guns for a person who is planning a mass shooting?" I don't have any stats, and I suspect more single black women die than people at the hand of mass shooters, but you see my point - it's a game of tradeoffs and focusing on a single dimension is myopic.
It is certainly somewhat arbitrary, but I think it functions as an example of a group that is often physically disadvantaged vs attackers, institutionally disenfranchised, and has reasonable apprehension at the idea of relying on police protection.
Similarly, I like to think about economic legislation in terms of "how would this law affect the chances that a child born into the poorest neighborhood will one day become wealthy?". I think by framing it in a way that lets me imagine a hypothetical individual who is currently least-empowered, it allows me to consider things with a bit more empathy as I can imagine myself in their shoes rather than abstractly thinking about groups. Its hard to reason about fairly balancing many concerns of many groups with various levels of power simultaneously, so I think iteratively looking for laws that would empower the least-empowered can function as a sort of shorthand for moral reasoning.
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When we are judging individuals, it's important to judge with individual circumstances. Was THIS protestor being violent? Was THIS police officer justified in firing? In this case, there is one video that isn't getting much viewership which very clearly shows the protestor who was shot, chasing down and beating a police officer on the ground. The officer that fired was coming to the rescue when the protestor attacked…
The video shows that the police officer had his handgun drawn before he was hit with the pipe. Furthermore, the same officer was actually carrying a rubber bullet gun on him at the time. Why didn't he deploy rubber bullets at a distance, but instead charged in with his handgun drawn?
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Right, the states are not the same as the people. The right to bear arms is the right "of the people".
No, it's a right of a "well regulated militia", which was at the time run by the states. The militia wouldn't have been mentioned if it wasn't relevant, and it's only relevant if it's a limitation to the individual right to bear arms.
The militia certainly are relevant but how they are relevant is the question, not the answer. There are a lot of ways to argue about that, but the right of keeping and bearing arms is literally called the right “of the people” — it isn’t assigned to any other body and the founders certainly had the language to do so if they wanted to.
How we keep and bear the arms is a great question. To my own mind, it would be better if training were more front-loaded. Right now, you buy a gun to be able to get training — seems backwards. It could also be much better if more people held guns through equitable ownership of trusts with firearms homed at a range or other secure location. The net effect would be fewer, more varied and better maintained firearms. The trust also provides a locus for training standards, liability insurance and cooperation with law enforcement.
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Obviously this is very complicated. Protesters have rights but so do police officers —we hope both operate within the bounds of the law and then that politicians would do the work for a compromise. But, it becomes really complicated rather fast when rights get eroded. When the Russians were caught unprepared for war, it wasn’t “right” to send their young conscripts to war with antiquated arms against a modernized for…
Surrender? People criticize the French and others prior to WW2, but would it really have been better to fight unprepared and let a few tens or hundreds of thousands die right off the bat? Sometimes the strategic decision is not the emotional one. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -Wargames
Well, as a person of Russian descent I can say fk you with such offers. The Nazis had pretty clear goals for Slavic people. Hitler gave pretty clear picture in Mein Kampf what he planned for East territories, and there were no plans for anybody but Germans.
Here what Nazis did on occupied territories with people who "surrendered"
Sure, the kid was swinging at the officer, and I suppose that warrants the officer acting in self-defense. But another question is, what are the protesters supposed to do? The government has all the power, and can simply snuff out any resistence. If you just stand in the streets, they really don't care, they are going to take your freedom. Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator that just decided they were going to…
How many American military personnel would just be OK with being told by the President to take property rights and freedoms like that? Do you think they're mind-controlled idiots? It doesn't just suddenly happen, we don't have a totalitarian mindset, it would have to be very gradual and against people who are demonized as immoral or as a scourge on society, like Mexicans or Jews or liberals or Christians. Even then i…
We actually have some data about that. See this[1] comment for excerpts from a survey of "300 US Marine Corps soldiers". Short version of the results: 61.66% would not fire on US citizens if given the (illegal) order "I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government.", with 16% of respondents using very heavy pencil marks or writing comments in the margin for that answer.
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What happened before that one-and-a-half minute video to cause the protesters to chase down the officer?
I don't know - but is your question meant for us to prove the innocence of the victim here?
You argued that an incomplete video may convey a different story than what has been presented, but the best you could do to support your claim was presenting your own incomplete video.
If you care for the truth instead of forcing an agenda them the problems caused by selective editing don't cease to exist if you're the one doing the selective editing.