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33,000 Sign Online Petition Promoting Guns At Republican Convention (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "An online petition on Change.org claims that constitutional rights are being denied to those who want to bring a gun to the fight for the Republican Party's future," reports CNET. "Though Ohio is an open carry state, which allows for the open carry of guns, the hosting venue — the Quicken Loans Arena — strictly forbids the carry of firearms on their premises." Citing a quote from the National Rifle Association that gun-free zones are "the worst and most dangerous of all lies," the petition has already attracted more than 33,000 signatures, though CNET reports that the whole petition is a satire they're attributing to the Hyperationalist blog. The petition appears to have attracted its last 8,000 signatures within the last 18 hours, shortly after its URL appeared on a web site for young conservatives.
If conservative gun lovers are right, it will be a peaceful convention.
If liberal gun haters are right, it will result in a massive shoot our and conservatives will kill each other.
So why does anyone object?
There are no alternative explanations to "shall not be infringed".
You can quibble all you want about what a regulated militia means, but the conclusion was as clear as day: The right to bear arms shall not be infringed.
BUT... ...private property is a whole other ballpark -- in this case quite literally.
It *is* the right of a private venue to set forth rules as they see fit.
So from one confirmed constitutionalist who believes strongly that the right to defend one's life can never be taken away by the State -- quit your whining folks -- this ain't public property.
Bad, bad, idea. And I say that as a gun owner. Horrible idea. Especially given the way Trump supporters have been riled up he past few months, if the convention finds any way to deny him the nomination we might find ourselves in a new Beer Hall Putsch. At the very least, it's asking for someone to get killed. Even taking away the current animosity within the GOP, a lot of people bringing firearms to a large public gathering is a very bad idea in general.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The Secret Service is not going to allow guns that close to the Republican nominee for president. All of the major front runners have some level of secret service protection at this time. The Secret Service is not going to take the risk that one of the "peaceful gun carriers" lied and is going to take shots at the nominee. Anything beyond that is hand waving.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
I wonder what would happen if they do get it pushed enough that they are allowed to bring their guns in.
Would there be more iron there than a foundry?
Let's say there were enough of these people afraid to be without a gun there, that we'll just say there were a lot of them. I don't know how large the crowd is expected to be, but let's say 15% of it is armed.
What do you think would happen if in the midsts of all this, somebody were to yell "GUN!" ?
I'm betting at least one or two yahoos would pull theirs. Then someone else would see them with their gun out, and possibly pull theirs and shoot. Then the lead infestation would probably occur with several people shooting in confused conditions crowded with people. Since in real world shootout conditions, even cops that have significant training for this kind of thing tend to miss a LOT, I'm betting just about the only ones not hit would be the shooters.
I really wonder how they'd respond to that.
I'll contribute some ammo, but they gotta use it or give it back afterwards.
I have some surplus guns they can use - all never used more than once. Same caveats as you, they gotta use it or give it back.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
My private property rights trump your gun rights (no pun intended). If I want to keep you from carrying on my property, I can do that. I can even use a gun to keep you from carrying your gun on my property. IMHO, the 2A only comes into play when the government interferes with you being armed on public property, or your own property, or somebody else's property with their permission. Thus, the arena is fully within its rights to bar firearms. If they wanted to have the Great 2016 GOP Debate and Gun Show (TM), they should have rented the Cow Palace.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What do you think would happen if in the midsts of all this, somebody were to yell "GUN!" ?
It would probably be a lot like what happened to the guy in a Florida McDonalds that yelled "Gun!" when someone carrying concealed accidentally pulled his tee-shirt up to get his wallet out, revealing it. The clerk just stared with a blank look, like "So what?" The customer offered to show his concealed carry permit. The manager came out and said, "We don't have a problem with people legally carrying in our establishment." The guy kept yelling "Gun!" and eventually the police were called. After determining that the guy screaming "Gun!" wasn't just attempting to create a public nuisance but was actually having a hopolophobic reaction, he was detained and checked into a mental health facility for observation.
The story was related by the McDonald's customer with the CCW on a Youtube video (posted on /k/) and is most certainly still out there.
Have gnu, will travel.
I wish someone would petition for open carry of whip cream pies at all political events.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I've lived in the US all my life - I've shot targets in my backyard when living in Alabama... and I've also looked into a lot of history.
There's a lot of powerful ways to view history - the romantic iconography of a school curriculum, the spectacle and drama of television history, the open bias of newspaper history (seriously, old newspapers are hilarious), and the random suppositions and conclusions of academic history at various levels and locations.
The version I find most compelling probably Steven Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature - where it follows a trail of evidence I always saw hinted at the various levels of history presentation, but almost never really followed through on. That despite our large number of massive deadly conflicts, we really are getting less violent at every level of society. It's not some weak trend either - it's overwhelming and fascinating. But it's not a storyline that gels with most methods of conveying history, so it's something almost no one gets presented.
With that in mind, I find the whole song-and-dance we always go through with guns and appeals to history in our gun culture to be more than a little beside-the-point. Guns in private hands don't ruin everything, and they don't really statistically save that many people either, they just multiply the effect of the crazy people that exist in every society, but all societies seem to be getting measurably less crazy and (Flynn effect) better at abstract thought/problem solving over time anyway. Both the restrictions and the problems of guns are more a sideshow that we will continue to bounce across over time, until they're increasingly meaningless.
Tragedies will continue to happen, and we will continue to over-react to them, but they're all increasingly noise in the overall picture.
It's why I find little jabs like this pretty funny - we at large don't really want to push wild-west sensibilities as much as it might seem to the rest of the world, we just have partisans that want to push their ideals at any cost, as they realistically see their vision of their nation indelibly falling away from their ideals.
So cool - if some of these folks want to march with guns as an expression of their freedom - good on you, have a fun time of it, I suppose. The moment you use that freedom as anyone might fear, however, even your own partisans will come down on you like a mountain of bricks. Even in any events of pure violent fantasy made manifest came about - the society we've grown into at it's most 'conservative' won't support the same things our history allowed, and we're all far too unwilling to give up what our shared peace has given us so far.
I could certainly be wrong - but it's my best view on history/violence/guns I've seen so far.
Ryan Fenton
It's pretty disingenuous to assert that the prefatory clause of the 2nd amendment is the only part of the "Bill of Rights" that grants a power to the federal government in the guise of asserting a right, when all of the powers delegated in the original constitution were done so in the articles. Especially since the ninth amendment makes it clear that the point of listing rights in the Constitution isn't to put limits on them:
So where in the Articles is the power to decide what training is sufficient for a person to own a firearm?
Especially because today's guns can do substantially more damage than the guns did when the amendment was written.
Fixed artillery and ships equipped with cannon, capable of sustained bombardment on a city, were privately owned in that time. The weapons (long rifles) owned by private parties in the Revolutionary War were also significantly better than those used by the English soldiers. The concept of private ownership of powerful weaponry was not exactly a new concept back then.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
So many people always forget the first half. The amendment specifically states "well-regulated", meaning it is within the powers of the federal government to regulate militias and arms. Taken in context in the 18th century, "well regulated" probably means something closer to "well trained", but still, it is obvious that arms are meant to be regulated and dispersed through trained militias, and not just any random jerk has a gun. Especially because today's guns can do substantially more damage than the guns did when the amendment was written
I would invite you to read the federalist papers, which explain exactly what their intentions were.
It almost seems like you're arguing that since "well regulated" used to mean "In good working order", but doesn't anymore, we should disregard the intention and go with the current meaning that it wasn't intended to be used.
That isn't right. You would be subverting laws by changing language.
If anything would horrify our founding fathers, it would be our large standing Army and the general lack of self-reliance.
I don't know, I suspect for many of the founding fathers, it would be that we've allowed women and blacks to vote.
Which is why I don't think America should automatically hew to 200+ year old principles held by the founding fathers.
The worst anyone says about Hillary really is that she might have committed a felony with the whole email thing
Actually, no. The worst thing that can be said about her is that she is a corrupt, serially lying manipulator...
Actually, no. The worst you can say about her is that she is a reptilian from Zeta Andromedae who routinely dismembers, kills and eats small children and kittens, and who has explicitly stated an agenda of exterminating the human race, all except for the few kept to be eaten alive for food, of course. Oh, and that she secretly worships Satan. Wait, did I say secretly? Openly, I meant openly. Oh, and kicks puppies.
This is, of course, absurd, but it's little more absurd than anything else said about her. There's no particular evidence that she's a "corrupt, serially lying manipulator" other than the intensive media campaign saying so being put forth by the Republican machine.
"A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the health of the nation, the right of the people to keep and eat cereal, shall not be infringed.
Who has the right to eat cereal: a well-balanced breakfast, or the people?"
Quote from a slashdot Anonymous Coward in an older comment thread.
I'm constantly amazed that avowed National Socialists[1] who tried to forcefully dispossess the 1%ers of their day[2] are somehow no longer far enough left for people today. Not to mention the anti-historical belief that even recasting the Nazis as right-wing would somehow make up for Mao, Stalin and the rest. Or are the founders of Communism no longer left enough? I really can't keep track of history any more as quickly as it's being rewritten.
One would think that if you look out and the entire world is to the "right" of you that maybe, just maybe, you'd realize that you're at the far loony fringe? Then again, the leftward movement has always reminded me of lemmings, including the role of media fiction[3], with the film crews deliberately herding people right off the cliff.
[1] Better known by the German abbreviation, Nazi.
[2] Then, as now, the Jews are well represented in this population. Deservedly so, given how hard they've worked in spite of all the oppression they've faced from those who hate them, to achieve success on their own merits. Which, in retrospect, shows one why that minority ethnic group could be so hated by leftists as their mere existence is such a strong contradiction of leftist propaganda.
[3] Normal lemmings do not, in fact, run off of cliffs. This fact did not stop film crews from forcing them to do so on video.
I don't know, but I can give you a useful data point. My wife and I went to the annual NRA convention in Houston in 2013. Eighty-six thousand NRA members attended that year. Since concealed carry is legal in Texas, and since concealed carry could not legally be prohibited in the convention space (because it was owned by the city), and since it was in Texas (where gun ownership is high relative to most of the rest of the country), and since it was the NRA convention (so gun ownership among attendees was probably close to 99.99%), it probably represents the single largest non-military event in human history both in terms of number of guns carried by attendees and percentage of attendees carrying guns.
And what happened?
A whole lot of nothing. Three days of exhibits, conferences, speakers, events, etc. And a lack of people being shot.
The RNC convention in 2012 was expected to have 50,000 attendees. Assume 2016 will be the same. Even then, the number of people and the % of people who want to carry guns at an RNC convention is going to me MUCH less than at the NRA convention.
If they allowed it, even if they requested that people do it, it would be shocking if anything bad happened. In Texas, concealed carry license holders are more law-abiding than police officers according to the statistics that the Department of Public Safety is required to collect and publish as part of our carry laws.
The liberal hand-wringing over "what if" and "might" and "blood in the streets" when it comes to carrying guns in public is so so tiring.
Liberals object precisely because they know it will be peaceful, setting a precedent for wider lawful use of guns.
We Liberals have no objections to this. I like empirical evidence as much as the next guy; so let's run the experiment and see what happens. It really is an ideal test-case for the more-guns-means-more-safety hypothesis.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So, I read most of them. Politifact is entirely correct in that it relies on official sources and not on discredited Reagan era advisers' opinions.
Federalist papers also proposed:
1) Mandatory military training.
2) Standardized weapons and ammunition distributed by the state governments.
3) Conscription.
That's the meaning of "well regulated militia" during the days of Jefferson. The Second Amendment was clearly designed as a way to create an army (just look at the Third Amendment!), not establish rights to have guns as personal weapons for self-defense or hunting.