Regardless of whether private gun ownership is a good idea, every country in the world has a corrupt government in some form. European governments are no exception, and all kinds of rights violations happen there, just like in the US.
Speaking of which, many people who are extremely 'protective' of the 2nd amendment seem to not care all that much about the other amendments. I can't count how many times I've seen 2nd amendment supporters come out in favor of things like the NSA's mass surveillance. Anti-gun nuts do it too, of course, but it's just seemingly more of an eyesore when people pretend they care about liberty but then support policies that take us in the opposite direction.
If you force everyone to start analyzing the meta-strategy of the election
Most people vote mindlessly for a certain candidate that's part of a certain party. They have no actual strategy, and are incapable of formulating one. I do not see this changing.
The first step to fixing this is to switch to a better system like Instant Runoff Voting, approval voting, etc.
Hell, you could almost choose a voting system at random and it would almost certainly be better than ours.
Yes, that is what we want. It produces sane, popular (or at least noncontroversial) legislation and functional government that can respond to changing conditions effectively.
We've already seen that all it produces is a bunch of scumbags who want to violate the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.
Also, wishing for an elite ruling class doesn't seem very principled to me.
Electing a bunch of strongly principled politicians with differing views leads to gridlock and disaster.
Good. As we've seen, all the government wants to do is infringe upon our rights (TSA, NSA, free speech zones, protest permits, constitution-free zones, stop-and-frisk, etc.). That would not be a disaster.
What we have right now is a system that encourages the violation of our individual liberties, or 'compromises' them away; I'd rather have gridlock.
I'm confused as to how that's a reason. Untruthful videos or ones that don't tell the whole truth doesn't mean that filming the police is a bad thing. Using that logic, you couldn't film at all merely because there is always some chance of someone creating a shoddy video.
So that's not a legitimate reason at all, even if I were to think that any legitimate reasons existed at all.
I have no problem with the current drunk driver checks
Then you're anti-freedom. People should not be harassed merely because they could be committing some crime. If they have no reason to think you're committing a crime, you shouldn't be stopped. In the US, this practice blatantly violates the spirit of the constitution, but that doesn't seem to stop hypocritical morons who desire 'safety' more than the freedom they pretend to care about from supporting it anyway. So basically, they're opposed to the highest law of the land in the US and want the government to blatantly violate it, and they're opposed to the principles the US (or any free country, really) is supposed to stand for.
Obviously you don't like this solution, but the fact that one person doesn't like it doesn't mean it's bad.
Given the fact that psychology produces far too much bad science, and the 'experts' would rely on it, yeah, it's bad. Oh, and homosexuality was once a mental illness. You're just setting yourself up for arbitrary rights violations, where 'experts' arbitrarily decide that you're not enough of a person to own a gun.
You'll find that I'm far from the only one who questions psychology's status as a science.
Supporting the cause of freedom to the point of giving guns to people who are not responsible enough to handle them safely is insane.
It's not doing so that is insane to me. You've offered zero workable solutions, and your only solution is so unworkable that it's hilarious. And I think that freedom is more important than your safety, so I'd never support it to begin with.
What is left behind is a document that is interpreted by the supreme court (as defined by the constitution itself).
You might want to refer to Thomas Jefferson's words: "The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal"
Don't put the Supreme Court on some holy pedestal and act as if they're absolutely right. I have a feeling that that's where this was going. They've been wrong many times, and I doubt even you would agree with all of their nonsensical decisions.
Stopping mentally incompetent people from harming themselves or others is not punishing a thoughtcrime.
When you punish them by preventing them from exercising their second amendment rights because they think in a certain way that you do not approve of, you are, in fact, advocating that we punish people for what is essentially thoughtcrime. It disgusts me.
It's not perfect but it is far better than the alternative.
It's not just "not perfect," it is a horrendous solution based on pseudoscience that will lead to the violation of people's constitutional rights, and it has zero constitutional basis.
What you are suggesting is liek saying our justice system is not perfect, therefore we should open up all the jails and allow every prisoner onto the streets.
Nope. That's your own delusion. The justice system is a necessity to some extent, but preventing people who you don't like from owning guns is not. I suggest punishing people who do use their guns to hurt others, not preemptively taking away their rights.
It is also obvious to me that the constitution does not (and never did) apply to the mentally incompetent
How is that clear to you? You're arbitrarily deciding that certain people don't have rights. Unless the constitution explicitly says as much, you are wrong.
Children, the mentally incompetent, animals and plants are not responsible for their actions.
The constitution often refers to "the people." It says nothing about the mentally incompetent. Nor does it say that people lose their rights when others such as you arbitrarily decide they're not responsible for their actions. It's just an irrelevancy.
Face it. You're just trying to take away the rights of people you don't like, because freedom isn't something you truly desire. You don't even give a shit about what the constitution says; you just want to modify it with invisible ink and then pretend it never applied to undesirables.
Again, if you would stop pretending that the constitution says a damn thing about "mentally incompetent" people not having 2nd amendment rights, and suggested that we amend the constitution, you wouldn't seem like such an idiot. But as it is, I see you as a traitor to the principles this country is supposed to aspire to. And yes, that means giving up most 'safety' for freedom.
No, I am saying that certain people can/should be determined not to be mentally competent, and therefore do not have the same rights as other people, due to the danger they pose to themselves and others. This has nothing to do with turning people into non-people, merely determining which people can be behave responsibly.
And you have failed to show a workable solution. You haven't even defined what constitutes as a "mentally ill" person. The current state of affairs is that it's trivial to be diagnosed with some mental illness because psychology as a field of science just doesn't produce quality research like other fields, and this will continue for some time. What do you suggest doing until then? How long will this take to get fixed, and how many people will suffer in the mean time? Or will you wait who knows how long before implementing your proposed solution?
By your definition of what constitutes support of the 2nd amendment, only a very small minority of Americans actually support the second amendment.
Correct. You'll find that I'm no fan of most people. We have the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, free speech zones, stop-and-frisk, constitution-free zones, unfettered border searches, DUI checkpoints, protest permits, the drug war, etc. Most people support at least one of those things.
It's not like we can ask them, but I'm pretty sure even the founding fathers that drafted the 2nd amendment wouldn't want mentally incompetent people with weapons.
It doesn't matter what you think they would have wanted. What matters is what they left behind.
1. That's not the *only* way you can determine that.
Do you have a credible method, or are you suggesting that we strip people of their rights for thoughtcrime?
2. Even having committed violent crimes before does not prove that someone will continue to commit violent crimes.
Yes. Agreed.
You think you can absolve yourself of denying people their 2nd amendment rights by detaining them against their will and simply saying "the owner of this building doesn't allow guns"? That's bullshit.
I think the constitution should be amended. That's another difference between you and me, apparently. I actually want to go through the correct processes to get this whole thing resolved, although I do not agree with taking rights away from "mentally ill" people. I also do not agree with unlimited punishment after one has served their time.
If a crazy person who has never committed a crime starts building a nuclear bomb, would you do anything to stop them? How could you? If they have never committed a crime, and since there is no way perfect way of determining someone is crazy, and the 2nd amendment is absolute in allowing people to obtain weapons of any kind. Would you just let them build the weapon?
That's a different problem (if it exists). The solution to this is to fix our system of determining mental competence and not simply assuming everyone is mentally competent to own a gun.
It's not a different problem, because these same terrible standards that our society uses to judge whether someone is "mentally competent" are going to be used for this.
Court systems are easily abused.
"too easily" There is also the question of if it's a necessary evil. Safety in this way is not at all necessary. Not even a little bit.
FYI, I'm opposed to anything the government can too easily abuse, or powers that it simply shouldn't have. Listing off other powers that could be abused isn't going to help you. If you managed to show me that a power that the government currently has is too easily abused or some other such thing, I would only agree with you. So don't waste your time. My position has absolutely nothing to do with anarchy, though I am an advocate of an absolutely minimal level of government interference. This is not such a case.
Most bullets miss people. That doesn't make it ok to shoot at people.
No, it doesn't, and that has to do with intent. If some *individual* decides to do that, then you may arrest them and handle that in court. But don't infringe upon an *entire group's* individual liberties simply because some of them are Bad Guys.
It's not punishment to deny gun possession to those that are not capable of bearing such a responsibility (e.g. children, mentally incompetent adults, and psychotic people).
You're literally turning them into unpeople and denying them basic rights that the constitution says they should have, and without even having a coherent definition of any of those things. The worst part is, you don't seem to be advocating for any sort of constitutional amendment. Unless you are, I'm even more opposed to what you're saying.
If you actually surveyed people in the "pro-gin crowd" whether they'd want guns in the hands of mentally incompetent people, I think you'll find that they generally don't.
Then guess which group they belong to? They certainly don't care about the 2nd amendment. Quit pretending to be a supporter of the second amendment.
Oh, some other thing I forgot to mention. In case it isn't clear, I believe that freedom is far more important than safety, so I'll never agree with your standpoint on forbidding "mentally incompetent" people from owning guns. I want to live in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," not a land where people mindlessly chant that phrase and then support policies that take us in the exact opposite direction. I'd rather risk letting 'undesirables' have guns than infringe upon their rights. Period.
As far as I'm concerned, if you're so scared of someone deciding to shoot people with guns (And really, the only real way you could determine if they're such a person is if they've done similar things before. Anything else is thoughtcrime.), they shouldn't be walking around freely to begin with, assuming they've committed crimes before. And if they are, they get the rights that normal citizens get.
You also keep overlooking the fact that *anyone* can be determined to be "mentally incompetent." Psychology produces mostly bad science, 'experts' can be paid off, 'experts' can be wrong, etc. Being a homosexual was once considered a mental illness, for instance. There are all kinds of problems with trying to restrict "mentally incompetent" people's rights, and none of it leads to a good result. It's just too easily abused, and I would never support such a thing.
And also, just like most gun owners won't murder people, most "mentally incompetent" people won't, either. If you support restricting them, you support collective punishment, which is absolutely intolerable. This is the sort of thing I'd expect from the anti-gun crowd.
Because children and the mentally incompetent share a lot of the same qualities, the most relevant to this conversation being the one where the constitution does not apply to them in the same way that it applies to mentally competent adults.
But it *does* apply.
Do you think free speech zones, the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, DUI checkpoints, stop-and-frisk, etc. are constitutional? You think something is constitutional just because judges say so, or it's accepted by our society? That isn't how it works at all.
Or is it really every single US citizen's right from newborn to psychopath to own a nuclear weapon?
Look, if you proposed a constitutional amendment that said the government has the power to restrict ownership of WMDs, I'd be right behind you. Until then, knock this crap off.
Why are you so desperate to compare children with people who are supposedly mentally incompetent (Which is defined by pseudoscientists and can be applied to anyone in the fucking world!)? Do you think this will ever change my opinion about the second amendment? It won't.
But yeah, I'm against treating children like little slaves. Let them go experience that nice, comfy world out there, and hopefully they won't end up flattened in the middle of the street. It's a problem that solves itself, really.
I think it's your right to buy a child a loaded handgun. But unless the 3 year old child is living by themselves somehow, the parent also has the right to mandate that the child has to give up the guns in order to continue living at the house. Just an example of exercising one's own private property rights. But if the parent had no problem with it, then neither would I.
You are also making a mistake by conflating parents and other private entities with the government. It is the government that has its powers restricted. If the government stopped that whole affair from happening, then there would be a 2nd amendment violation.
Oh, and parents refusing to spend their own money to buy their child something is their right. This is an example of government thugs violating people's constitutional rights.
The constitution refers to mentally competent adults.
The second amendment makes no such exceptions.
I think denying the 2nd amendment to mentally incompetent people is as legitimate as parents denying the 2nd amendment to a toddler.
Then you're just as bad as those people who oppose the second amendment altogether, rather than trying to amend the constitution to fit your anti-freedom views.
I don't think that's a "fair reading" at all; it doesn't say any such thing. If you don't like what the 2nd amendment does in its current form, push for a constitutional amendment. Ignoring it is not an option, which is what the government is currently doing.
Are you sure? It says nothing about psychotic people being an exception, nor does it imply it anywhere. If you don't like those people being able to own guns, move to amend the constitution, not just ignore it.
Oh, and I think it's patently ridiculous to claim that all "psychotic" people would kill someone. There are so many mental illnesses these days thanks to the pseudoscience known as psychology that most people have one.
Um, no... the NRA is still the only organization that FIGHTS for the 2nd amendment.
They don't do a very good job of it. In fact, they seem to do a very good just of 'compromising' away rights. For instance, I believe the NRA said that it doesn't have problems with restricting people with criminal records, or people with mental health issues.
If you take the position that the 2nd amendment means that modern weaponry is fine (Which I do.), then you can't arbitrarily decide that it doesn't protect certain weaponry that you find scary. Yet, many types of guns are banned, and certain people are forbidden from owning them. That's unconstitutional if you're using such an interpretation.
and have been far too willing to go mushy on the 1st and 2nd when their left-wing friends are stomping on them.)
I am aware that their interpretation of the 2nd amendment differs from ours, but when have they gone mushy on the 1st amendment?
If the government resumed the draft today, I suspect there'd be a lot of left-wing Obama supporters who'd SUPPORT the draft and turn-in anybody trying to escape to Canada!
Yes, typical hypocritical partisan hacks who don't give a shit about freedom. They exist on both sides. Another group that's pathetically hypocritical are those who say that they want small government and that the government is often incompetent and downright corrupt (So far, this applies to me.), but when it comes to things such as the NSA's mass surveillance, they say the government is full of perfect little angels who would never make mistakes or abuse their powers. Sickening.
Then you're not paying attention. Many people suddenly switch positions when the Other Team gets into power. Politicians who do this are obviously just doing it for political reasons, but many normal people do this as well.
Of course, there are also many people who are just authoritarian assholes at heart, and they support things such as the NSA spying from the bottom of their wretched little hearts.
You wish to impose your views on them -- or, more accurately, you wish to speak for them in place of themselves or their government.
You want that to be true.
In reality, I'm saying that even if they disagree with me that spying is a serious violation of people's rights, it will not affect my opinion. Imposing my views on them would be like holding a gun to their head. I suggest no such thing, and instead suggest that my own government not take certain actions. So I'm not speaking for anyone but myself, unlike you seem to be doing.
Of course, it can be taken too far, but to say that any amount of foreign intelligence gathering is strictly immoral is pretty absurd.
It's also not my position. I just said that spying on enemies as fine, as long as there's some evidence that they're enemies.
Until you can provide some sort of definition of human rights which encompasses whatever privacy rights you're advocating, they really aren't.
I don't need to present to you a precise definition for a matter that's utterly subjective.
If you think your human rights are being violated by your communications being read by anyone except the intended recipient, then you're negatively impacted by Snowden's revelations about American foreign intelligence actions because these actions will now be studied, broken down, and copied.
Ah, that's what you meant.
You have not proven that I will be negatively impacted. I expect scientific proof, and nothing less. Not just statements from people who are adept at spewing forth propaganda, or yourself.
But even if it did lead to more spying on us, I don't want my own government to be part of that, and the first step is to stop your own government, so I think it's more than worth it.
What about if Snowden were a European and revealed domestic spying programs by the NSA which he only learned about through conducting espionage against the USA?
If he murdered innocent people to get the information and then released it, the murder would be the immoral part. We can't have a world where people's rights are respected when people violate other people's rights in an effort to stop others from violating people's rights, so the ends don't justify the means. However, if one did get such information, even through immoral means, then releasing it once those acts have already been done is fine. But that still wouldn't justify what happened.
With that said, I do not believe Snowden did anything immoral.
Someone has to know how to decrypt this information. The way of doing that is sent over the Internet, which can easily be MitMed. Copying the information is trivial, and there's no reason the user would know.
The principles that this country--the so-called "land of the free and the home of the brave"--is supposed to stand for are far more important than national security, even if we were to stupidly give them the benefit of the doubt by saying that collecting nearly everyone's communications effectively stops terrorists.
Anyone saying otherwise is taking us in the direction of a police state.
Why do you think you deserve more for a lousy $15?
I don't expect the ones I bought the product from to do anything more; you're misunderstanding something. They don't have to do a thing.
You don't own the data, you only have copy of it
Under current law, yes.
Just because you sit in a car does not mean you own it, although you have access to it.
In that case, you don't actually own the car. That would be closer to renting a DVD or something.
In this case, you do own the storage media.
According to your rules of possession, since you have access to the source code of your company's product, would it be completely okay for you to share that code with someone for a fee, or copy it to a Internet repository for free?
That really depends on whose equipment it is stored on. But if I have it, then yes.
So the creators have a right to make only $15 from a $100 million expense?
The creators have a right to try to make as much money as they want. The same as anyone else. They just don't get to do it through the use of government enforced monopolies that utilize censorship and suppress real private property rights. Instead, they should have to deal in the actual free market, and find new and innovative ideas to make money.
Wrong, censorship means access is so restricted that it's very difficult for anyone to obtain the movie.
Incorrect. Censorship takes many forms. Taking down a website is called censorship even if the information can be gotten elsewhere. If the information had to disappear close to 100%, then censorship literally would not exist in any form and the entire term would be pointless. Censorship is just the suppression of certain speech or data; it doesn't have to be effective. We see this all the time with people opposing mandatory Internet filters and calling it censorship. They're ineffective, yet it's still censorship.
You pirates keep coming up with the lamest and flimsiest excuses by twisting the meaning of commonly used words for things they were not intended for -- free speech, ownership of property, censorship.
Free speech, censorship, and private property rights are all at play here. And I don't think you're one to decide what they were "intended for." How that's even relevant, I don't know.
It's your own property with a lot of restrictions -- one of the main ones being no redistribution.
Yes, that's kind of the point.
If don't agree with the restrictions, don't buy it, no one is forcing you.
Sadly, copyright uses censorship as an enforcement method and restricts private property rights, which is true regardless of whether or not anyone uses anything. That's pretty much the only way to enforce it. That, to me, is unacceptable, regardless of how many products I choose not to buy or use.
I do not go in airports, and yet I am 100% opposed to the TSA. Something need not be mandatory for me to oppose it. And realistically, avoiding all copyrighted products is nigh impossible.
Explain how you can own something that cost $100 million to make by paying $15.
Very easily. By having copies of the data on equipment that you own. How much money it took to arrange the data is irrelevant, as those are costs they chose to incur upon themselves.
How can it be that you own the computer, as well as all the storage equipment, yet certain data on the storage equipment somehow 'belongs' to someone else, and censorship will be employed as a method of stopping you from transmitting that data to others using the equipment you bought?
In this case, they are strongly related.
Really?
No, you're a weasel.
The point is, the data is stored on the physical storage medium. Why they're charging what they do is irrelevant, because it's their property and they decide the conditions which you must satisfy in order for them to give it to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Regardless of whether private gun ownership is a good idea, every country in the world has a corrupt government in some form. European governments are no exception, and all kinds of rights violations happen there, just like in the US.
Speaking of which, many people who are extremely 'protective' of the 2nd amendment seem to not care all that much about the other amendments. I can't count how many times I've seen 2nd amendment supporters come out in favor of things like the NSA's mass surveillance. Anti-gun nuts do it too, of course, but it's just seemingly more of an eyesore when people pretend they care about liberty but then support policies that take us in the opposite direction.
If you force everyone to start analyzing the meta-strategy of the election
Most people vote mindlessly for a certain candidate that's part of a certain party. They have no actual strategy, and are incapable of formulating one. I do not see this changing.
The first step to fixing this is to switch to a better system like Instant Runoff Voting, approval voting, etc.
Hell, you could almost choose a voting system at random and it would almost certainly be better than ours.
Yes, that is what we want. It produces sane, popular (or at least noncontroversial) legislation and functional government that can respond to changing conditions effectively.
We've already seen that all it produces is a bunch of scumbags who want to violate the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.
Also, wishing for an elite ruling class doesn't seem very principled to me.
Electing a bunch of strongly principled politicians with differing views leads to gridlock and disaster.
Good. As we've seen, all the government wants to do is infringe upon our rights (TSA, NSA, free speech zones, protest permits, constitution-free zones, stop-and-frisk, etc.). That would not be a disaster.
What we have right now is a system that encourages the violation of our individual liberties, or 'compromises' them away; I'd rather have gridlock.
I'm confused as to how that's a reason. Untruthful videos or ones that don't tell the whole truth doesn't mean that filming the police is a bad thing. Using that logic, you couldn't film at all merely because there is always some chance of someone creating a shoddy video.
So that's not a legitimate reason at all, even if I were to think that any legitimate reasons existed at all.
I have no problem with the current drunk driver checks
Then you're anti-freedom. People should not be harassed merely because they could be committing some crime. If they have no reason to think you're committing a crime, you shouldn't be stopped. In the US, this practice blatantly violates the spirit of the constitution, but that doesn't seem to stop hypocritical morons who desire 'safety' more than the freedom they pretend to care about from supporting it anyway. So basically, they're opposed to the highest law of the land in the US and want the government to blatantly violate it, and they're opposed to the principles the US (or any free country, really) is supposed to stand for.
Obviously you don't like this solution, but the fact that one person doesn't like it doesn't mean it's bad.
Given the fact that psychology produces far too much bad science, and the 'experts' would rely on it, yeah, it's bad. Oh, and homosexuality was once a mental illness. You're just setting yourself up for arbitrary rights violations, where 'experts' arbitrarily decide that you're not enough of a person to own a gun.
You'll find that I'm far from the only one who questions psychology's status as a science.
Supporting the cause of freedom to the point of giving guns to people who are not responsible enough to handle them safely is insane.
It's not doing so that is insane to me. You've offered zero workable solutions, and your only solution is so unworkable that it's hilarious. And I think that freedom is more important than your safety, so I'd never support it to begin with.
What is left behind is a document that is interpreted by the supreme court (as defined by the constitution itself).
You might want to refer to Thomas Jefferson's words: "The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal"
Don't put the Supreme Court on some holy pedestal and act as if they're absolutely right. I have a feeling that that's where this was going. They've been wrong many times, and I doubt even you would agree with all of their nonsensical decisions.
Stopping mentally incompetent people from harming themselves or others is not punishing a thoughtcrime.
When you punish them by preventing them from exercising their second amendment rights because they think in a certain way that you do not approve of, you are, in fact, advocating that we punish people for what is essentially thoughtcrime. It disgusts me.
It's not perfect but it is far better than the alternative.
It's not just "not perfect," it is a horrendous solution based on pseudoscience that will lead to the violation of people's constitutional rights, and it has zero constitutional basis.
What you are suggesting is liek saying our justice system is not perfect, therefore we should open up all the jails and allow every prisoner onto the streets.
Nope. That's your own delusion. The justice system is a necessity to some extent, but preventing people who you don't like from owning guns is not. I suggest punishing people who do use their guns to hurt others, not preemptively taking away their rights.
It is also obvious to me that the constitution does not (and never did) apply to the mentally incompetent
How is that clear to you? You're arbitrarily deciding that certain people don't have rights. Unless the constitution explicitly says as much, you are wrong.
Children, the mentally incompetent, animals and plants are not responsible for their actions.
The constitution often refers to "the people." It says nothing about the mentally incompetent. Nor does it say that people lose their rights when others such as you arbitrarily decide they're not responsible for their actions. It's just an irrelevancy.
Face it. You're just trying to take away the rights of people you don't like, because freedom isn't something you truly desire. You don't even give a shit about what the constitution says; you just want to modify it with invisible ink and then pretend it never applied to undesirables.
Again, if you would stop pretending that the constitution says a damn thing about "mentally incompetent" people not having 2nd amendment rights, and suggested that we amend the constitution, you wouldn't seem like such an idiot. But as it is, I see you as a traitor to the principles this country is supposed to aspire to. And yes, that means giving up most 'safety' for freedom.
No, I am saying that certain people can/should be determined not to be mentally competent, and therefore do not have the same rights as other people, due to the danger they pose to themselves and others. This has nothing to do with turning people into non-people, merely determining which people can be behave responsibly.
And you have failed to show a workable solution. You haven't even defined what constitutes as a "mentally ill" person. The current state of affairs is that it's trivial to be diagnosed with some mental illness because psychology as a field of science just doesn't produce quality research like other fields, and this will continue for some time. What do you suggest doing until then? How long will this take to get fixed, and how many people will suffer in the mean time? Or will you wait who knows how long before implementing your proposed solution?
By your definition of what constitutes support of the 2nd amendment, only a very small minority of Americans actually support the second amendment.
Correct. You'll find that I'm no fan of most people. We have the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, free speech zones, stop-and-frisk, constitution-free zones, unfettered border searches, DUI checkpoints, protest permits, the drug war, etc. Most people support at least one of those things.
It's not like we can ask them, but I'm pretty sure even the founding fathers that drafted the 2nd amendment wouldn't want mentally incompetent people with weapons.
It doesn't matter what you think they would have wanted. What matters is what they left behind.
1. That's not the *only* way you can determine that.
Do you have a credible method, or are you suggesting that we strip people of their rights for thoughtcrime?
2. Even having committed violent crimes before does not prove that someone will continue to commit violent crimes.
Yes. Agreed.
You think you can absolve yourself of denying people their 2nd amendment rights by detaining them against their will and simply saying "the owner of this building doesn't allow guns"? That's bullshit.
I think the constitution should be amended. That's another difference between you and me, apparently. I actually want to go through the correct processes to get this whole thing resolved, although I do not agree with taking rights away from "mentally ill" people. I also do not agree with unlimited punishment after one has served their time.
If a crazy person who has never committed a crime starts building a nuclear bomb, would you do anything to stop them? How could you? If they have never committed a crime, and since there is no way perfect way of determining someone is crazy, and the 2nd amendment is absolute in allowing people to obtain weapons of any kind. Would you just let them build the weapon?
Until the constitution is amended...
That's a different problem (if it exists). The solution to this is to fix our system of determining mental competence and not simply assuming everyone is mentally competent to own a gun.
It's not a different problem, because these same terrible standards that our society uses to judge whether someone is "mentally competent" are going to be used for this.
Court systems are easily abused.
"too easily" There is also the question of if it's a necessary evil. Safety in this way is not at all necessary. Not even a little bit.
FYI, I'm opposed to anything the government can too easily abuse, or powers that it simply shouldn't have. Listing off other powers that could be abused isn't going to help you. If you managed to show me that a power that the government currently has is too easily abused or some other such thing, I would only agree with you. So don't waste your time. My position has absolutely nothing to do with anarchy, though I am an advocate of an absolutely minimal level of government interference. This is not such a case.
Most bullets miss people. That doesn't make it ok to shoot at people.
No, it doesn't, and that has to do with intent. If some *individual* decides to do that, then you may arrest them and handle that in court. But don't infringe upon an *entire group's* individual liberties simply because some of them are Bad Guys.
It's not punishment to deny gun possession to those that are not capable of bearing such a responsibility (e.g. children, mentally incompetent adults, and psychotic people).
You're literally turning them into unpeople and denying them basic rights that the constitution says they should have, and without even having a coherent definition of any of those things. The worst part is, you don't seem to be advocating for any sort of constitutional amendment. Unless you are, I'm even more opposed to what you're saying.
If you actually surveyed people in the "pro-gin crowd" whether they'd want guns in the hands of mentally incompetent people, I think you'll find that they generally don't.
Then guess which group they belong to? They certainly don't care about the 2nd amendment. Quit pretending to be a supporter of the second amendment.
Oh, some other thing I forgot to mention. In case it isn't clear, I believe that freedom is far more important than safety, so I'll never agree with your standpoint on forbidding "mentally incompetent" people from owning guns. I want to live in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," not a land where people mindlessly chant that phrase and then support policies that take us in the exact opposite direction. I'd rather risk letting 'undesirables' have guns than infringe upon their rights. Period.
As far as I'm concerned, if you're so scared of someone deciding to shoot people with guns (And really, the only real way you could determine if they're such a person is if they've done similar things before. Anything else is thoughtcrime.), they shouldn't be walking around freely to begin with, assuming they've committed crimes before. And if they are, they get the rights that normal citizens get.
You also keep overlooking the fact that *anyone* can be determined to be "mentally incompetent." Psychology produces mostly bad science, 'experts' can be paid off, 'experts' can be wrong, etc. Being a homosexual was once considered a mental illness, for instance. There are all kinds of problems with trying to restrict "mentally incompetent" people's rights, and none of it leads to a good result. It's just too easily abused, and I would never support such a thing.
And also, just like most gun owners won't murder people, most "mentally incompetent" people won't, either. If you support restricting them, you support collective punishment, which is absolutely intolerable. This is the sort of thing I'd expect from the anti-gun crowd.
Because children and the mentally incompetent share a lot of the same qualities, the most relevant to this conversation being the one where the constitution does not apply to them in the same way that it applies to mentally competent adults.
But it *does* apply.
Do you think free speech zones, the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, DUI checkpoints, stop-and-frisk, etc. are constitutional? You think something is constitutional just because judges say so, or it's accepted by our society? That isn't how it works at all.
Or is it really every single US citizen's right from newborn to psychopath to own a nuclear weapon?
Look, if you proposed a constitutional amendment that said the government has the power to restrict ownership of WMDs, I'd be right behind you. Until then, knock this crap off.
Why are you so desperate to compare children with people who are supposedly mentally incompetent (Which is defined by pseudoscientists and can be applied to anyone in the fucking world!)? Do you think this will ever change my opinion about the second amendment? It won't.
But yeah, I'm against treating children like little slaves. Let them go experience that nice, comfy world out there, and hopefully they won't end up flattened in the middle of the street. It's a problem that solves itself, really.
I think it's your right to buy a child a loaded handgun. But unless the 3 year old child is living by themselves somehow, the parent also has the right to mandate that the child has to give up the guns in order to continue living at the house. Just an example of exercising one's own private property rights. But if the parent had no problem with it, then neither would I.
You are also making a mistake by conflating parents and other private entities with the government. It is the government that has its powers restricted. If the government stopped that whole affair from happening, then there would be a 2nd amendment violation.
Oh, and parents refusing to spend their own money to buy their child something is their right. This is an example of government thugs violating people's constitutional rights.
The constitution refers to mentally competent adults.
The second amendment makes no such exceptions.
I think denying the 2nd amendment to mentally incompetent people is as legitimate as parents denying the 2nd amendment to a toddler.
Then you're just as bad as those people who oppose the second amendment altogether, rather than trying to amend the constitution to fit your anti-freedom views.
I don't think that's a "fair reading" at all; it doesn't say any such thing. If you don't like what the 2nd amendment does in its current form, push for a constitutional amendment. Ignoring it is not an option, which is what the government is currently doing.
I support the 2nd amendment
Are you sure? It says nothing about psychotic people being an exception, nor does it imply it anywhere. If you don't like those people being able to own guns, move to amend the constitution, not just ignore it.
Oh, and I think it's patently ridiculous to claim that all "psychotic" people would kill someone. There are so many mental illnesses these days thanks to the pseudoscience known as psychology that most people have one.
Um, no... the NRA is still the only organization that FIGHTS for the 2nd amendment.
They don't do a very good job of it. In fact, they seem to do a very good just of 'compromising' away rights. For instance, I believe the NRA said that it doesn't have problems with restricting people with criminal records, or people with mental health issues.
If you take the position that the 2nd amendment means that modern weaponry is fine (Which I do.), then you can't arbitrarily decide that it doesn't protect certain weaponry that you find scary. Yet, many types of guns are banned, and certain people are forbidden from owning them. That's unconstitutional if you're using such an interpretation.
and have been far too willing to go mushy on the 1st and 2nd when their left-wing friends are stomping on them.)
I am aware that their interpretation of the 2nd amendment differs from ours, but when have they gone mushy on the 1st amendment?
If the government resumed the draft today, I suspect there'd be a lot of left-wing Obama supporters who'd SUPPORT the draft and turn-in anybody trying to escape to Canada!
Yes, typical hypocritical partisan hacks who don't give a shit about freedom. They exist on both sides. Another group that's pathetically hypocritical are those who say that they want small government and that the government is often incompetent and downright corrupt (So far, this applies to me.), but when it comes to things such as the NSA's mass surveillance, they say the government is full of perfect little angels who would never make mistakes or abuse their powers. Sickening.
Then you're not paying attention. Many people suddenly switch positions when the Other Team gets into power. Politicians who do this are obviously just doing it for political reasons, but many normal people do this as well.
Of course, there are also many people who are just authoritarian assholes at heart, and they support things such as the NSA spying from the bottom of their wretched little hearts.
You missed the point of my post.
You wish to impose your views on them -- or, more accurately, you wish to speak for them in place of themselves or their government.
You want that to be true.
In reality, I'm saying that even if they disagree with me that spying is a serious violation of people's rights, it will not affect my opinion. Imposing my views on them would be like holding a gun to their head. I suggest no such thing, and instead suggest that my own government not take certain actions. So I'm not speaking for anyone but myself, unlike you seem to be doing.
Of course, it can be taken too far, but to say that any amount of foreign intelligence gathering is strictly immoral is pretty absurd.
It's also not my position. I just said that spying on enemies as fine, as long as there's some evidence that they're enemies.
Until you can provide some sort of definition of human rights which encompasses whatever privacy rights you're advocating, they really aren't.
I don't need to present to you a precise definition for a matter that's utterly subjective.
If you think your human rights are being violated by your communications being read by anyone except the intended recipient, then you're negatively impacted by Snowden's revelations about American foreign intelligence actions because these actions will now be studied, broken down, and copied.
Ah, that's what you meant.
You have not proven that I will be negatively impacted. I expect scientific proof, and nothing less. Not just statements from people who are adept at spewing forth propaganda, or yourself.
But even if it did lead to more spying on us, I don't want my own government to be part of that, and the first step is to stop your own government, so I think it's more than worth it.
What about if Snowden were a European and revealed domestic spying programs by the NSA which he only learned about through conducting espionage against the USA?
If he murdered innocent people to get the information and then released it, the murder would be the immoral part. We can't have a world where people's rights are respected when people violate other people's rights in an effort to stop others from violating people's rights, so the ends don't justify the means. However, if one did get such information, even through immoral means, then releasing it once those acts have already been done is fine. But that still wouldn't justify what happened.
With that said, I do not believe Snowden did anything immoral.
Someone has to know how to decrypt this information. The way of doing that is sent over the Internet, which can easily be MitMed. Copying the information is trivial, and there's no reason the user would know.
The principles that this country--the so-called "land of the free and the home of the brave"--is supposed to stand for are far more important than national security, even if we were to stupidly give them the benefit of the doubt by saying that collecting nearly everyone's communications effectively stops terrorists.
Anyone saying otherwise is taking us in the direction of a police state.
It's an unprovable claim to begin with.
Why do you think you deserve more for a lousy $15?
I don't expect the ones I bought the product from to do anything more; you're misunderstanding something. They don't have to do a thing.
You don't own the data, you only have copy of it
Under current law, yes.
Just because you sit in a car does not mean you own it, although you have access to it.
In that case, you don't actually own the car. That would be closer to renting a DVD or something.
In this case, you do own the storage media.
According to your rules of possession, since you have access to the source code of your company's product, would it be completely okay for you to share that code with someone for a fee, or copy it to a Internet repository for free?
That really depends on whose equipment it is stored on. But if I have it, then yes.
So the creators have a right to make only $15 from a $100 million expense?
The creators have a right to try to make as much money as they want. The same as anyone else. They just don't get to do it through the use of government enforced monopolies that utilize censorship and suppress real private property rights. Instead, they should have to deal in the actual free market, and find new and innovative ideas to make money.
Wrong, censorship means access is so restricted that it's very difficult for anyone to obtain the movie.
Incorrect. Censorship takes many forms. Taking down a website is called censorship even if the information can be gotten elsewhere. If the information had to disappear close to 100%, then censorship literally would not exist in any form and the entire term would be pointless. Censorship is just the suppression of certain speech or data; it doesn't have to be effective. We see this all the time with people opposing mandatory Internet filters and calling it censorship. They're ineffective, yet it's still censorship.
You pirates keep coming up with the lamest and flimsiest excuses by twisting the meaning of commonly used words for things they were not intended for -- free speech, ownership of property, censorship.
Free speech, censorship, and private property rights are all at play here. And I don't think you're one to decide what they were "intended for." How that's even relevant, I don't know.
It's your own property with a lot of restrictions -- one of the main ones being no redistribution.
Yes, that's kind of the point.
If don't agree with the restrictions, don't buy it, no one is forcing you.
Sadly, copyright uses censorship as an enforcement method and restricts private property rights, which is true regardless of whether or not anyone uses anything. That's pretty much the only way to enforce it. That, to me, is unacceptable, regardless of how many products I choose not to buy or use.
I do not go in airports, and yet I am 100% opposed to the TSA. Something need not be mandatory for me to oppose it. And realistically, avoiding all copyrighted products is nigh impossible.
Explain how you can own something that cost $100 million to make by paying $15.
Very easily. By having copies of the data on equipment that you own. How much money it took to arrange the data is irrelevant, as those are costs they chose to incur upon themselves.
How can it be that you own the computer, as well as all the storage equipment, yet certain data on the storage equipment somehow 'belongs' to someone else, and censorship will be employed as a method of stopping you from transmitting that data to others using the equipment you bought?
In this case, they are strongly related.
Really?
No, you're a weasel.
The point is, the data is stored on the physical storage medium. Why they're charging what they do is irrelevant, because it's their property and they decide the conditions which you must satisfy in order for them to give it to you.