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Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

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Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#71

Post by rooshdi »

BSousa wrote: post #56
embwbam wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American. I grew up in a conservative household so I think I understand where they are coming from. My understanding is that many consider the 2nd amendment to allow them to bear arms to protect themselves from their own oppressive government. The idea is that no government can become completely totalitarian without first disarming the population. And if they try, the people can revolt. That may be an incorrect u…

As I said, it was a supposition ;) I can understand having a license to own a gun (My dad owns a hunting rifle, and a handgun that was an inheritance from my grandpa which will possible pass down to me) but I was watching some news a couple weeks ago where they were showing a hearing on the senate (I think) and the people that went to talk there were defending that changing the laws to allow some guns but not others…

I'm American and the truth is we don't need automatic rifles, but there is a very strong history of firearms in this country and thus a very strong supportive lobbying group behind it fighting to strike down anything which has potential to weaken it financially. The protecting ourselves from 'the government' argument is pure nonsensical bullshit, as 'the government' already has more nefarious means of controlling the masses. Simply put, there are a lot of ignorant people in America supporting ignorant lobbying groups who care more about their money than morality.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#72

Post by cnlwsu »

bdunbar wrote: post #41
pessimizer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with the weird contracts, harder to buy.

I've bought a phone and a pistol this year. The phone was by far the easiest: pick it up, pay, walk out. The guns were a lot harder. Background check had to clear, the waiting period had to pass. Two trips to the store.

I own a pistol (for fun at the range) and a rifle (I deer hunt) and did not have a background check for either. One was private sale and one was gun show though.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#73

Post by knowtheory »

nnutter wrote: post #65
knowtheory wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what else works? Locked doors. More guns is not the only, nor necessarily the most effective, solution.

That obviously depends on the door. Do you really think your home offers physical security?

I think perhaps you misunderstand what locks are for.

Locked doors are deterrents. Governments and lock makers do not assume/guarantee that locks are unassailable, they guarantee that they are unassailable for some unit of time.

Active shooter situations are usually counted on the order of minutes, and when you're dealing with minutes, locked doors certainly do matter.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#74

Post by hemancuso »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #59
fakeer wrote: post #6

Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed). I still would like to understand few things. Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful an…

>But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -Thomas Jefferson You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and ga…

Given the massive mismatch of firepower, training and numbers between the government and the very best armed/trained groups within the civilian population I have trouble believing that anyone can still make this argument at any intellectual level.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#75

Post by giardini »

rickdale wrote: post #29

I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories. I understand there is debate about gun control and this and that, but we are having a much larger cultural problem here. The attitude of helping your neighbor or even someone less fortunate is slowly disappearing and being replaced by a fear for protecting what we have, as if someone else is after it. In my mind it's cyclical, if we help th…

"I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories."

Me too. But it won't end soon.

Currently every shooting in every city is a candidate for promotion to a national media campaign that is focused on gaining additional restrictions on firearms, especially at the federal level (but also state level: Colorado is at this moment passing new highly-restrictive state firearms laws).

Every opportunity to alarm the citizenry about firearms, every chance to get parents' blood-pressure up with false or real reports of gunmen afoot will be invoked by the media. It's both good for their business and it's good for their political agenda.

In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and the subsequent heightened public sensitivity as leverage to advance a long-present liberal goal to register and confiscate all firearms.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#76

Post by bmelton »

lolcraft wrote: post #51
BSousa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not american here so this is just a supposition. I think the main issue with it is related to the constitution. While the idea as far as I understand, was for citizens to bear arms and form a militia to protect against a foreign power, many of the people that defend the right to bear arms do so based on a limited knowledge of it (i.e.: 'The right to bear arms is in the constitution' but have no idea what comes next).…

It was also used, as I understand, as sort of legal allowance to form paramilitary parties with sort of like police powers. So you, as a citizen, could enforce laws when there was no police or army able to do so for you. For instance, in the days of slavery, the 2nd amendment was used to justify groups of armed thugs [1] that hunted black slaves on the run. I've never understood the logic behind Republicans of the 20…

To everyone who assumes that "tyrannical government" is always read to mean "our" government, here's a primer.

1) Everybody should (and probably already does) know that the United States was essentially formed out of that exact type of rebellion. The arms that won us the war of Independence were all provided by private citizens, just as the cannons were, the ships that formed our navy, etc. If we hadn't had private weapons, we wouldn't have had anywhere remotely enough arms to have won the war.

2) The provision allows us to defend against government tyranny, foreign and domestic. This means that we are allowed the right to bear arms to aid in the nation's defense, just as our framers did, in the event that we are attacked on our own soil. To those that would claim "like anybody's going to target the world's largest military" - who is to say that we'll always have a large military? In 100 years, who is to say that someone isn't elected that dramatically repurposes military spending. Arguments that may not be true now are not necessarily always going to be true.

3) Historically, disarming a populace has in many cases resulted in the unfair abuse of those citizens. History is replete with stories where a population, or a segment of a population was disarmed, and those people were subsequently subject to tyranny, or abuse, or genocide.

Having a right to keep and bear arms isn't our only defense against tyranny -- in reality, a reasonable people should exhaust all civic means of defending against it first. When a persons rights are trampled, we have civic and legal recourses for those. As in DC v Heller and Chicago v McDonald, we learned that despite the state's belief that the 2nd amendment may be restricted in certain ways, there are legal recourses against those restrictions. Nobody in DC (to my knowledge at least) was launching an armed protest of handgun laws there, as they should not have.

That said, in the event that the system does not work, or if in 200 years time, it has been perverted to the effect that it does not respect the rights of its people, the 2nd amendment may be the last defense against tyranny.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#77

Post by nnutter »

buster wrote: post #32
cbau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple-- As an American, I have a right to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I don't want to give up any rights I don't have to. That includes the freedom to buy and carry a gun.

I'm not american but i think my own right for life, liberty and happiness would be violated being surrounded by weapon fanatics.. I really don't understand all that "uh, i need to defend myself" bullshit when i look at all the safe western countries with much stricter weapon laws. I think this is all not a matter of rights or self-defense or all that crap people tell me, it's just that most people can't cope with cha…

It's not the weapon that violates any of that it is the person using the weapon. Some weapons have purposes other than as a weapon but your argument would still imply that your right to life, liberty, and happiness would be violated so we should make forks, knives, bats, pans, cars, everything illegal. Slippery slope? Sure. There's a spectrum and everyone chooses where the line sits for them. I don't want easy access to nuclear weapons but I'm still OK with easy access to guns.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#78

Post by Tangaroa »

diegocg wrote: post #36
cbau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple-- As an American, I have a right to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I don't want to give up any rights I don't have to. That includes the freedom to buy and carry a gun.

That "libertarianesque" definicion of freedom commonly used in America is not shared or understood by many countries (not that it matters to americans, of course)

The definition of freedom in about a third of those countries is that you have the freedom to surrender your independence to God and the state, and if you step out of line they will kill you in public as an example to everyone else. The definition of freedom in another large chunk of the world is that the single-party state is the sole legitimate representative of the people and has the sole power to decide what freedom is, and people who obey the party line have plenty of freedom but if you step out of line they will seize your property "for the people" and throw you in jail on false charges.

I will take the American definition of freedom, thanks.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#79

Post by notdrunkatall »

nnutter wrote: post #66
notdrunkatall wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -Thomas Jefferson You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and ga…

The common response to that is that guns can't fight tanks, UAVs, etc.

The common response is idiotic. Perhaps the people who make it have not been paying attention to the news since 9/11.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#80

Post by damoncali »

BSousa wrote: post #11
fakeer wrote: post #6

Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed). I still would like to understand few things. Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful an…

Not american here so this is just a supposition. I think the main issue with it is related to the constitution. While the idea as far as I understand, was for citizens to bear arms and form a militia to protect against a foreign power, many of the people that defend the right to bear arms do so based on a limited knowledge of it (i.e.: 'The right to bear arms is in the constitution' but have no idea what comes next).…

Almost. The constitution enumerates certain rights that are specifically off limits to the government to give them extra emphasis - the Bill of Rights , which are the first 10 amendments to the constitution. The 2nd, of course is the right to bear arms.

An interesting side note is that there was a debate as to whether or not to even include the bill of rights lest future leaders attempt to nitpick their language and twist them into restrictions of the people. Or still worse, that they would be perceived as the only rights protected by the constitution. Never were they intended to be justification for restriction of the people. But back to the 2nd Amendment.

The purpose of the Amendment is steeped in American and Anglo culture and history. This is the best summary I know of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_...

The purpose of the amendment is quite certainly military in nature, and comes from a distrust of centralized government and a dangerous world in general. The authors wanted to make it totally crystal clear that the government could not subvert the people's obvious right to arm themselves and form military units, aka "militias".

The nature of the threat to which those militias could respond was pretty much anything - the security of the state. The federalist papers offer context here.

So yes, there is a constitutional basis for all this. But more than that it is a deeply ingrained part of American history and culture. People like to throw around the power of lobbyists, but that's not really it. The American people largely believe at a fundamental level that access to weapons is a strong and necessary counter to the existence of armed units within the government and elsewhere. The power of the gun lobby flows from that, not the other way around.

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