The Goat Pen

Dr. Strangelove wrote:Maybe BO is confusing conservatives with libertarians. Conservatives generally stand and applaud when the govt attempts to control society's morality

Libertarians support abortion rights; conservatives don't. Libertarians support drug legalization; conservatives don't. Libertarians support assisted suicide; conservatives don't. Libertarians support evolution being taught in schools and keeping out organized prayer; conservatives want the biblical story of Creation taught and support organized school prayer. Libertarians more or less support open borders (so long as the welfare system is dismantled); conservatives are completely against it and worry about how non-whites are changing Amurrica. Libertarians opposed the Patriot Act and resist encroaching powers to spy on the citizens; conservatives adore police powers and will always oblige the govt so long as it claims that it's needed to fight TERROR (well, at least they did until Obama took office).

In all those cases and many more, conservatives fall on the side using the power of govt to enforce a very specific and very limited view of morality and what society should look like.

Not gonna use as broad a brush as DSL, but.....it's a as much a difference in state/local vs federal. I can post all day on Obozo's changes in views re: debt...marriage....abortion....Patriot act....as a community organizer/state senator, then as prez.

Al Gore was anti-abortion as a Senator, but "evolved" as VP with bigger goals, and conservatives are not so much anti-abortion as they are anti-partial birth abortion.....you even see a few repubs (in DC) now saying they're ok w/gay marriage. I don't personally know anyone one who wants to ban guns, but they're out there and politicians, especially in DC, will join w/them every time a Newtown happens. I don't doubt for one minute that most Dems and Hollywood big mouths that support gun control at these times are doing so for expediency only, and probably own more guns than I do. The bottom line on the 2nd A is that it was designed for protection against tyranny, not crime. Using grieving parents as props for a political agenda is as low as it gets.

The Newtown parents who are there believe in the cause themselves and volunteered to take part. So they are using themselves as props? Should the parents just stay silent, they have no right to try to guilt you into action?

The problem with the 2nd Amendment as a defense against tyranny is that the Founders had no conception of how wide the gap between the technology possessed by the State and that owned by individual citizens would get. Nor did they envision the existence of a huge standing army.

I believe the citizens of Newtown should be free to do whatever they want re: guns/assault weapons/magazines....just keep it local.

Remember us?

North Korea Moves Two More Missile Launchers to East Coast

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/ ... 1Z20130421

Fuck that midget

Honest to God, prof, I don't know what you're talking about when you say something like "2A supporters are fanatical in order to counter those hordes who want to do away with 2A." Help me out here...do you personally know someone who says you, Professor Tiger, should not have the right to own a firearm? Who are they...what are they like; what do they do for a living?

The destruction of the 2A does not necessarily take the form of "You can't own guns." The destruction of the 2A can also take the form of "You don't really have the right to keep and bear arms like the Constitution explicitly says. You can only own firearms as a privilege, subject to any form of restriction that we, the State, decide." This was the precise argument of the losing side of District of Colunbia vs, Heller and McDonald vs. Chicago.

A 2A that can legislated into insignificance, like DC and Chicago and NYC tried to do, is like a first amendment freedom of the press in cities that say, "All publications of newspapers, magazines, movies, websites and tv shows in this city must be approved in advance by the municipal ministry of publications approval. But in doing this, we are not nullifying the 1st amendment. Anyone who says so is subject to arrest."

Lucid.

Rare cogent point by prof...

(Reuters) - The two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, who police say engaged in a gun battle with officers early Friday after a frenzied manhunt, were not licensed to own guns in the towns where they lived, authorities said on Sunday.

In the confrontation with police on the streets of a Boston suburb, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were armed with handguns, at least one rifle and several explosive devices, authorities say.

We need another law that says if you break this law we are going to be really pissed and we'll pass another law.

Background checks before you buy a George Foreman grill.

Professor Tiger wrote:
The destruction of the 2A does not necessarily take the form of "You can't own guns." The destruction of the 2A can also take the form of "You don't really have the right to keep and bear arms like the Constitution explicitly says.

Heh @ explicitly. The Founders could have saved us all a ton of grief if they hadn't appended the right to keep and bear arms with the militia-clause. You know what they meant, I know what they meant, but they could have cleared things up better with some better punctuation or an extra line or two.

A 2A that can legislated into insignificance, like DC and Chicago and NYC tried to do, is like a first amendment freedom of the press in cities that say, "All publications of newspapers, magazines, movies, websites and tv shows in this city must be approved in advance by the municipal ministry of publications approval. But in doing this, we are not nullifying the 1st amendment. Anyone who says so is subject to arrest."

Wait. In Heller or McDonald, was there a threat of arrest for those who challenged the bills as unconstitutional? And doesn't the FCC regulate a lot of what goes out in print and over the airwaves? There are all sorts of checks and limits on the 1A...doesn't means it's been legislated into insignificance.

bluetick wrote:

Professor Tiger wrote:
The destruction of the 2A does not necessarily take the form of "You can't own guns." The destruction of the 2A can also take the form of "You don't really have the right to keep and bear arms like the Constitution explicitly says.

Heh @ explicitly. The Founders could have saved us all a ton of grief if they hadn't appended the right to keep and bear arms with the militia-clause. You know what they meant, I know what they meant, but they could have cleared things up better with some better punctuation or an extra line or two.

A 2A that can legislated into insignificance, like DC and Chicago and NYC tried to do, is like a first amendment freedom of the press in cities that say, "All publications of newspapers, magazines, movies, websites and tv shows in this city must be approved in advance by the municipal ministry of publications approval. But in doing this, we are not nullifying the 1st amendment. Anyone who says so is subject to arrest."

Wait. In Heller or McDonald, was there a threat of arrest for those who challenged the bills as unconstitutional? And doesn't the FCC regulate a lot of what goes out in print and over the airwaves? There are all sorts of checks and limits on the 1A...doesn't means it's been legislated into insignificance. Good people differ over whether we've got too much freedom of speech, or not enough.

There are all sorts of checks and limits on the 1A...doesn't means it's been legislated into insignificance. Good people differ over whether we've got too much freedom of speech, or not enough.

Okay. Let me try to put it this way: Any serious and honest discussion of the causes of mass murder should include a discussion of the effects of violent movies and video games on the very few lunatics who are inspired by it to commit mass murder. There is likely a strong correlation there. (We'll probably never know, because the press and academia will never contemplate going there, but I digress....)

But there will never, ever, in a million years, be a movement that says, "In order to prevent another Aurora, or another Newtown, or another Columbine, we must enact national laws that appoint a national bureaucracy to decide the violent content of video games or movies. Many of these horrors were committed by people who watched thousands of hours of violent movies and video games. We must now regulate the content of those video games and movies to protect innocent life."

We will never see a proposal like that because we all know there would be an instant, deafening chorus from people who (rightly) love the first amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. They would respond to such a censorship movement by saying, "We would rather endure 50 Aurora's, 75 Newtown's, and 100 Columbine's, rather than than allow the precious 1A freedom of speech to be gutted by an intrusive, official federal government censoring office." And they would be right.

Supporters of the 2A simply ask for the same, profound reluctance to regulate the 2A that other people would (rightly) demonstrate by a similar attempt to regulate the 1A.

If only Hollywood would stop glorifying guns.

That's the NRA's job. Let them do it

Nothing like linking the bombings to a multitude of political ills...

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/b ... 90136.html

lol...who are the bigger diphsits? World Net Daily, long the favored website of PNN, or the North Koreans?

World Net Daily published an article last week accusing North Korea of being behind the Boston bombings. North Korea says World Net Daily is part of a huge American conspiracy to malign and frame North Korea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor ... net-daily/

Heh. The Norks are competing with our satire of them...and winning.

I don't know about a million years, but there is a board that rates the violent content of video games, if only to try to keep retailers from selling the most violent ones to minors.

Bill Seeks Stricter Enforcement of Video Game Ratings - Brett Molina, USA TODAY 1/18/2013

A House bill introduced this week seeks to apply stiffer penalties to retailers who sell or rent adult-rated video games to minors. The Video Ratings Enforcement Act submitted by House Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) would require ratings labels based on all video games and ban the sale of video games rated Mature or Adults Only to minors. Any violators would face a $5,000 fine.

The ratings bill is one of several pieces of legislation considered as the debate over violent video games following the shooting in Newton, Conn. presses forward. A state bill introduced in Missouri urges a sales tax on all video games rated Teen or higher by the ESRB, while other federal lawmakers such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are pushing legislation to explore the affects of violent video games.

On Wednesday, President Obama urged Congress to fund research exploring the impact violent video games have on children. "We don't benefit from ignorance," said Obama in a speech unveiling a broader gun control plan. We don't benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence."

Reaction? Knee-jerk..grandstanding...ineffective? "Video games don't kill people...people kill people?"

My first thought is how much money the video game makers need to spread around to counter this assault on their 1A right/target market.

Meh, video game blame will die a natural death with all the old people who never play them.