You can lead one to water, but you can't make him drink
Posted on 09/11/2007 9:52:52 AM PDT by JZelle
Over the past 30 years, I've been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I've thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.
People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn't true. What I've chosen, in a world where there's never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician—or political philosophy—is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.
Make no mistake: all politicians—even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership—hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician—or political philosophy—can be put.
If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash—for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything—without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.
If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.
What his attitude—toward your ownership and use of weapons—conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?
(Excerpt) Read more at lneilsmith.org ...
PAy attn. No one had any at hand in Lexington and Concord.
Immaterial. Private cannon were available, and they were used to fight.
I'm curious about where you two got your belief that the 2nd was written to enable restrictions on the ownership of weapons or destructive devices known to an 18th century soldier.
Try exercising your curiosity and go find where I said anything like that.
At 106 you supported the concept that "no one had any at hand". That same idea sounds like the discredited book -- "Arming America, The Origins of a National Gun Culture" By MICHAEL A. BELLESILES.
I'd say your post was generated using the same techniques that he did. Have some coffee and wake up.
I think that most here have already 'woke up' to where you stand on gun rights. You stand for "background checks".
Thank you for your knowledgeable replies. I should have remembered it. The Fort Ticonderoga attack was very important in securing the north. Benedict Arnold was the first person to undertake naval operations (Lke Champlain) under American command. (Before he turned traitor).
You can lead one to water, but you can't make him drink
2) People are not bound by the constitution, the government is. (This is what "CONSTITUTESS our federal government.)
3) If you kookily say you are no longer bound by the constitution, why are you bothering to talk to me about it or even post on a thread about it?
4) I continue getting a kick at watching you try to somehow be "smart than the other guy" by arguing that the posession of Nuclear Bombs by individuals is a Constitutional protection. Please by all means continue damging your credibility while simutaneously entertaining me
5) Ummmm.... It would be illegal to shout fire in a crowded theatre if there was no fire correct? Yes there are points of free speech which are abridged.
Try nearly 0% --
100% effective would mean that there are no armed criminals. Somehow that hasn't happened.
It was a conclusion based on faulty logic, thus irrational.
More legalistic wordgaming. You can't fault the logic so you claim its "irrational".
Spunkets cries "Ridiculous!":
You're simply ignoring the fact that the IBC applies to the legal market only.
Amusing wordgaming, seeing that the rational objection to the "instant check' is that it infringes on the rights of only "legal" buyers.
You never were able to explain how an instant background check infringes on any right.
I did on another thread. You never refuted that explanation. - And you can't admit it.
At most all anyone can show is that it's a petty inconvenience.
Bull, the "Check" is an outright infringement on our abilities to buy arms.
That inconvenience is justified by the fact that the instant background check is near 100% effetive in excluding disqualified felons and crazies from the legal market. It's a moral thing that most people are happy to see accomplished.
'Most' brady types. -- Round you go again with the "legal market" ploy.
--- You lawyerly types are so caught up in your own bizarrely 'clever' applications of language, -- that you no longer understand common english law or logic.
Amazing! How about this language? You couldn't find your ass if it was handed to ya.
Thank you for showing your true stripe. -- Unable to make a valid point, you're back to juvenile tactics.
Whatever the federal government is allowed to have, the citizenry is allowed to have.
After reading the comments here, let me say that if Smith is a lunatic, I am in the same asylum.
I find myself to be in good company with him, tpaine, and William Tell and several others here.
No thank you is the politest thing that I can say to those who want to help us to look ‘reasonable’ and ‘sane’.
Let your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were out countrymen.
You stand for and support anarchy, by the use of faulty logic and pure BS to gut the Constitution.
Still working hard to be on the wrong side of history, I see.
Would it make you proud that the law worked and a law abiding citizen was killed but the killer didn’t get a gun in legal markets? Would it make the citizen any less dead? How about if that law abiding citizen was mistakenly denied the right to purchase the means of self defense?
The fact is that the bad guys will get guns. The laws that you support make it difficult for the good guys to get one to defend themselves.
Those last two lines are most important. I use their position on guns and abortion as a short cut too. If they are right on those two, they are generally right on the other issues.
Pro life and pro gun pols typically are much less inclined to want to make your decisions for you.
(I know someone will point out the exceptions to me.)
“Having all the larger ordnance bought and owned by the governor and kept and cared for down at the armory just makes more sense.”
Not if the governor is the tyrant that is oppressing you.
Where'd you learn logic, a code dink seminar?
"How about if that law abiding citizen was mistakenly denied the right to purchase the means of self defense?"
There's a remedy in place. Besides that, the person should have thought of such a possibility before the threat became immanent.
"The laws that you support make it difficult for the good guys to get one to defend themselves."
No, that's clear in all that I've said. I only support those laws that do not violate substantial rights and keep the guns out of the bad guy's hands. Substantial rights does not include nukes. In fact a bozo with a nuke is an ememy of the US.
Hence the guns to go take them back. :-)
I don’t think that you are just interpreting his remarks, but twisting and misconstruing them to create your straw man argument.
He was referring to earlier times when we could purchase firearms over the counter and even over the phone without the nonsense of a background check. We have never been able to buy a suitcase nuke at the retail level.*
*If you have the right connections and enough money, I’ll get you one wholesale though. LOL
You can still use mail order and phone calls to get firearms. It just has to be sent to a local FFL to complete the transaction. That and the background check prevents putzes from buying them in that legit market. If you're so enthrawled with the good old days with no bothersome limits on the way things are done, how come your not complaining about the loss of right to pull yer pants down and take a dump anywhere you see fit to?
The freedom of speech never included harming people by giving false alarm, anymore than the right to keep and bear arms includes harming people by shooting them.
Is that too complex for you?
GulfBreeze also said: "The constitution is not a compact."
So the right enumerated in the Declaration of Independence about the people having the right to alter or abolish their government doesn't include me?
GulfBreeze also said: "People are not bound by the constitution, the government is."
Excellent. I think I'll go buy myself some slaves with the money saved from not having to pay my income taxes.
GulfBreeze also said: "3) If you kookily say you are no longer bound by the constitution,..."
You're the one claiming that Congress can decide that some arms are protected by the Second Amendment and some aren't. Your's is the attitude that frees me from being bound by the Constitution. I talk about it because there are others reading these posts who can decide for themselves which of us is correct.
You attempt ridicule me by stressing my argument that the Second Amendment protection includes nukes, but then fail to explain what else is not protected. You have decided to permit yourself and Congress to decide that some arms, including some that are not nuclear are not protected. You can't afford to get specific about such arms, because it soon becomes obvious that your "interpretation" of arms in the Second Amendment will not match anyone else's. The Brady Bunch claims handguns are not protected. The BATFE claims that short-barreled shotguns are not protected. The Congress of the United States has claimed that some rifles, by simply attaching a pistol grip to them, are not protected.
I made a posting in which I asked, if the Constitution included a right to vote for four-year-olds, would the Congress, the Courts, or the people be justified in ignoring such a thing simply because it is a bad idea? Or would the people be obligated to amend the Constitution?
The answer to that question will make plain whether the people are obligated to amend the Constitution to outlaw nuclear arms or other powerful explosives.
Why don't you answer that question?
I’ll trust 100 million adults to make their own decisions rather than trust a government hack to make my decisions for myself.
Individual decisions have little ramification beyond the decision maker. That’s not so for government decision makers. They are about the only ones unaffected by their decisions.
At the time the Bill of Rights was drafted the term “arms” was generally understood to be small arms, carried on one’s person; i.e. pistols, long arms and edged weapons.
No. It included powder, grenade, and canon.
“If you truly believe that the sane, rational men who established the Constitution and BOR.....”
By the standards of their time, they were not sane and rational, but extremists and radicals, even crazy. After all, they took on the world’s only super power. By the grace of God, they won and some of us still believe in the God given liberty that they secured for us even if that makes us appear to be insane and irrational today.
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