NRA Nonsense

Another popular bullshit line asks why should we bother passing laws – since the “bad guys” don’t bother with laws anyway. This sounds really savvy until you start to dig in. By that logic we shouldn’t outlaw murder either, because murderers don’t follow the law, right? But if it weren’t illegal, then we wouldn’t be able to put someone in jail for murdering someone. Right? And if we make owning automatic weapons illegal, we don’t have to wait until we catch you killing 49 people in a night club on a Saturday night. We can arrest you as soon as we see that you have in your possession a gun whose only use is to mow down dozens of people. This would of course prevent some number of murders by automatic weapon. NRA nonsense ☀

The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery 

The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “State” instead of “Country” (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that … and we all should be too.

What makes the AR-15 an assault weapon ☀

After another mass shooting in which an AR-15 most certainly posed a problem to many people trapped inside a nightclub, such a blasé approach to powerful civilian weapons may be harder to maintain. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a great 20th-century philosopher and a veteran of the first world war, wrote in his “Philosophical Investigations” that when “we employ the word ‘meaning’,’’ we are most often referring to the everyday purpose of some phrase. “The meaning of a word”, he wrote, “is its use in the language”. By that sensible if trivial standard: if an AR-15 can be used to assault large crowds of people, killing and maiming scores of them, on multiple occasions, it qualifies as an assault weapon.

Guns In America

“Friends, the conversation is indeed about guns. It’s about guns and America’s gun lust culture. It’s about guns because automatic and semi automatic guns/rifles offer individuals the opportunity to kill large groups of people at the same time. If it’s not about guns, then why aren’t we allowed to own bombs, tanks, and other mass killing devices? Because bombs offer individuals the opportunity to kill lots of people. You don’t hear anybody barking, “Bombs don’t kill people…” Why? Because it’s idiotic. And like bombs, guns/rifles with semi automatic to automatic capabilities that feature 30+ round magazines offer individuals the same chance, to kill lots of people. Yes, murder is something that people have always done, but your “Cain killed Abel” examples are irrelevant to this debate. Most scholars believe that Cain likely used a rock, stick, or bone to kill Abel. Had Dylann Roof walked into that South Carolina church with a rock or a stick or a bone or a knife or even a double barrel shotgun, the outcome would have been very different. Sure, some people will always want to kill other people, but our culture’s gun lust has aided in giving that individual the power to easily kill people, lots of people if he wants to. So, the conversation is indeed about guns, people’s access to guns, the places where people can carry guns, the kinds of guns that can be legally purchased and legally manufactured, the size and round capacity of magazines, and the culture of violence and gun-love here in America that is mostly unfounded in the rest of the world. And honestly, go ahead; call us progressive idiots or liberal minded morons or whatever you want, but the more you try to distract from what the conversation is really about–guns!–the more impassioned we become" Matthew Paul Turner ☀

2nd Amendment and Gun Control

“The grassroots adherents of Second Amendment fundamentalism may not work in law enforcement, but they do forcefully shape the political culture that indirectly keeps this country’s uniquely harsh criminal justice policies in place. The same politics of fear that has incubated our punitive hyperincarceration state also directly feeds these citizen-protectors’ positive, if delusional, self-image as brave and useful men. This passionate, self-interested attachment to a vision of the United States as violent and chaotic—even in the face of historically low crime rates—continually blocks the drastic reform that our criminal justice system badly needs. Our robust, everyday gun culture is part of the reason why punishment and protection are not just simply the goals of law-enforcement agencies but have come to be the guiding paradigms for government policy in general. (Sociologist Jonathan Simon calls this “governing through crime”; Carlson refers to the “seepage” of the state’s policing duties into a generalized civic duty.)" Have Guns, Will Liberate via azspot.net