I realize that I have completely spent the peak years of my intellectual capacity having made no greater contribution to the advancement of the human race than a few hundred Slashdot posts....
Few hundred? You loser. I was up to almost 4,000 before the new discussion system kicked in and took away my ability to see my total post count.
Unless they're actively campaigning against the second amendment-- and as far as I've ever heard, they're not-- it's not hypocrisy, just directing resources where they're needed.
I'm sorry but for an orginization that claims to be about civil liberties to come out and say that regulating a natural right "doesn't raise a civil liberties issue" is extremely hypocritical and deserves nothing but scorn.
There are other organizations, like the NRA, the CRPA, the Firearms coalition, several dozen PACs, and many more, defending second amendment rights. I'm much more worried about attacks on the other nine.
There are also other organizations actively working to infringe on our second amendment rights. I'm not aware of many organizations (other than the Government;) actively working to undermine the other nine.
They don't bother with the second amendment because there's another group NRA dedicated to that amendment alone.
Actually, no, they don't bother with the 2nd amendment because in their own words: "In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue."
Thanks for playing though. Next time trying actually reading their position on the issue before opening your mouth.
Doesn't seem hypocritical to me for them to devote their energy to the 90% of the bill of rights that needs defending, and not the 10% that has a large and active defense already.
"In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue."
That doesn't seem hypocritical to you? The regulation of a right that has existed for hundreds of years and which is enshrined in the Bill of Rights isn't a civil liberties issue? I wonder if they take the same position on the so-called "free speech zones"?
Since when have the NRA been interested in defending The Constitution? They are quite happy to see the whole lot go, apart from the 2nd amendment, and the government know this. The NRA are the ultimate hypocrits.
Got any evidence to back up your claim that the NRA doesn't care about the rest of the Constitution? Either way though, they've never claimed defending all civil liberties as their mission. The ACLU has and that makes them hypocrites.
The NRA will be the first in the queue for the free blackshirts when the shit finally comes.
Do all ~4.3 million members get blackshirts or just the organization?
Only because a bunch of "progressives" got the bright idea that we needed more "democracy". The Founding Fathers rightly feared the power of the mob and took steps to mitigate how much damage it could do. If you want to limit the influence of the media let's start by repealing the 17th amendment and flogging those that want to get rid of the electoral college.
Isn't that what we brits used australia for in the first place?
And you used America to get rid of your puritans;) Seems pretty ironic that your convicted criminals were more loyal to the Empire than your religious zealots.
I really don't understand it. Have we really fallen so far so fast?
This isn't a popular opinion but I think it's a natural consequence of people turning to Government for all manner of problems that Government wasn't originally intended to deal with. In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
If they block everyone, they reason, the sites will go out of business and the exploitation will stop. That's admirable.
And if we outlaw drugs, people still stop using them and drug abuse will stop. That's admirable.
But... since I'm an American.... I would rather let the people go to these sites, determine who is getting their jollies off looking at this stuff, and then let's round up all these sick f--- people and kill them.
That thought has occurred to me as well. Why block these sites when you could presumably get warrants to see who is going to them and actually investigate the people breaking the law instead of trying to impose a censorship scheme that will never work anyway?
Unless they're secretly fighting for individual gun rights, they're not hypocrites.
They profess to fight for civil liberties yet ignore part of the Bill of Rights? They read every single part of the Constitution as broadly as possible when it fits their agenda while simultaneously claiming that the 2nd amendment is a "collective" right? They consider every single mention of "the people" in the Bill of Rights to refer to individual rights except for that one time?
*I don't go as far as some of you guys in the states with my ideas, I just think that we should move back to a controlled licensing system, with mandatory training and testing with specialist trainers at a gun club before you get a licence.
The reason that many Americans are leery of such requirements is that gun registration/licensing schemes have historically wound up being used to direct gun confiscation schemes a generation or two later. Off the top of my head it has happened in Germany, Russia, Canada and New York City. I'm sure others can think of more examples.
If you own a gun and he is threatening you with that axe, you are perfectly within your rights to blow his deranged brains out, or if you're like me you'll try and disable him instead of kill
You are much nicer than I am. If he is threatening my life I'm going to remove that threat as quickly as possible. Once that threat is removed I'll cease firing and tell the 911 dispatcher to send an ambulance along with the cops. If he survives then great but ensuring his survival should not be at the top of your priority list when he is threatening to kill you or your family.
yes I have been bored and thought through the classical canon of nightmare scenarios, you should too
Here's one: What if he has a friend and you just wasted several rounds trying to hit his arms or shoulders? Are you gonna have enough rounds left to defend yourself from his friend(s) until the police arrive? Personally, if he is threatening my life I'm shooting center of mass until he goes down. If he isn't threatening my life then I don't really have any reason to shoot him, do I?
Seems the intent of the 2nd amendment was to discourage america from having a large standing army that sapped resources and wagged the dog. If everyone has guns and there is an effective nationwide draft in the form of a militia, then the population of the US would be far more resistant to going to war.
It's too bad the population of the US doesn't want to go back to this model, because it would be very easy to implement something similiar to the Swiss model here. Withdraw from the rest of the world, keep a small standing army with the primary mission of training the state militia forces and retain our nuclear deterrent. Who is going to fuck with a country that has nuclear weapons and a firearm for every citizen? More to the point, if we aren't interventionists, why would they want to fuck with us?
Yeah, we'd lose our ability to impose our will on the rest of the World, but so what?
After Obama reversed himself on FISA I wrote his campaign demanding a refund of all monies I had donated to them. When I received said refund I donated every single penny (>$500) to the EFF. They do good work and unlike the ACLU they aren't hypocrites, at least as far as I can tell.
False-advertising a 10% sale, which the businessman refuses to honor, is fraud.
Yeah, it probably is, but at the end of the day he still has the ability to choose who to do business with. I get where you are coming from but I don't think we want to go down the road of the government forcing people or businesses to interact with each other against their will.
What kind of corporation lacks the power to overrule its own employees???
Doesn't Motel 6 operate under a franchise model? He might not have been one of their employees.
At least Discover was helpful, and returned my money.
Yeah, credit cards are great for that, aren't they?
It so happens that a lot of fatal accidents with guns in the US are caused by guns kept 'under the pillow' as well
Citation?
In other words, the rest of us is comparing civilized countries where the rule of law is upheld to other civilized countries and the conclusion can only be: liberal gun laws get a lot more people killed than strict gun laws, if properly upheld
That's an interesting conclusion. How do you explain how Norway and Finland (two European countries with a lot of civilian guns) have a lower murder rate than Luxembourg (virtually no civilian firearms to speak of) or Poland (very few)? How do you explain how Wyoming and Montana have lower murder rates than New York or California? Could it just be that crime is caused by socio-economic factors and the access to firearms has very little to do with it? I find it interesting how "correlation is not causation" is a standard refrain around here in every argument except those put forth by the gun control crowd.
The anti-social behaviour of people wanting to be able to 'defend themselves', at great cost to society at large, is despicable.
A) You haven't demonstrated any "great cost" to society, B) This statement borders on trolling and I'm surprised nobody with mod points caught it. If you are interested in looking at a real study here is an interesting one from Harvard of all places. They set out to disprove the notion that more guns = more violence. It's a pretty compelling read.
Amazingly enough so is gun crime in the United States but you never hear the advocates of gun control acknowledge that. You are more likely to have a heart attack in the United States than you are to be shot -- deliberately or accidentally. Clearly we need fast food control;)
Who are you kidding? Russia is run by the Mob, and they're not big on gun control.
That's kind of the point isn't it? Regular citizens aren't arm themselves at all in Russia (handguns are outlawed, rifles/shotguns are hard to get and useless for self-defense outside the home in any case) so they are at the mercy of criminal elements that don't give two shits that handgun they are carrying is illegal.
The manager made-up a bunch of lies about how I had sex with a maid (false)
Only in the South would having sex with a maid be grounds to get you kicked out of a motel. Around here it likely wouldn't even be noticed. Did she consent? Was she on her break? Then what's the problem?;)
The damn government which is *supposed* to help the People which created it, refuses to do its job and crack-down on dishonest businessmen
I don't recall cracking down on dishonest businessmen being part of the constitution. Your story sucks and I'd like to know which Motel 6 it was so I never give them any of my money but at the end of the day the motel has every right to refuse to do business with you for almost any reason they want. They don't have the right to lie to the cops like they but if they asked you to leave and you refused technically you are trespassing and the police would get called at that point.
It's better to 'crack down' on these scumbags ourselves by refusing to do business with them and making sure as many people as possible refuse to do business with them.
Because everybody who questions Obama must be painted as a neo-con who agreed with every single stupid policy of GWB. That way can dismiss them without having to think about whether or not they are making valid points.
Love Obama or hate him he's using some of the exact same political tactics that most of his fans deplored when it was Bush using them. Claiming that he'll "halve the national deficit in four years" comes to mind. Yeah, he might be able to pull that off, but it really isn't that impressive when half of the current national deficit is still greater than the biggest deficits GWB managed to saddle us with. Nor is claiming that he's "removing politics from science" (the stem cell decision) -- hmm, when have Federal funds of any sort ever come without politics?
And don't forget a Democrat-controlled Congress was in power for the last two years of Bush's term and did exactly squat to mitigate his abuses.
It's worse than not mitigating them. They actively aided and abetted some of them. Obama had a hand in it too.
Today we set to find out, whether we can really build a Quassam rocket [wikipedia.org] on a budget.
I hope they are building them on a budget. 1700+ launches for 28 dead Israeli's doesn't seem like a good ROI to me;)
if we can successfully hit police station with it.
Why am I picturing Adam Savage saying something like "Alright, the way I figure it, we've got a 10% chance of hitting the police station, a 50% chance of it blowing up on the launchpad and a 40% chance of getting arrested! Let's do this thing!"
Then and now, I don't see why they have fences in the first place
You obviously don't live somewhere with a large whitetail population;) I've always assumed those fences have more to do with making it harder for animals to get onto the freeway and less to do with making it hard for humans to do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that I have completely spent the peak years of my intellectual capacity having made no greater contribution to the advancement of the human race than a few hundred Slashdot posts....
Few hundred? You loser. I was up to almost 4,000 before the new discussion system kicked in and took away my ability to see my total post count.
Pot doesn't cause memory loss, it's perfectly harmless. Hey, does anybody know where I left my bong? Could've swore it was right here a second ago....
Unless they're actively campaigning against the second amendment-- and as far as I've ever heard, they're not-- it's not hypocrisy, just directing resources where they're needed.
I'm sorry but for an orginization that claims to be about civil liberties to come out and say that regulating a natural right "doesn't raise a civil liberties issue" is extremely hypocritical and deserves nothing but scorn.
There are other organizations, like the NRA, the CRPA, the Firearms coalition, several dozen PACs, and many more, defending second amendment rights. I'm much more worried about attacks on the other nine.
There are also other organizations actively working to infringe on our second amendment rights. I'm not aware of many organizations (other than the Government ;) actively working to undermine the other nine.
They don't bother with the second amendment because there's another group NRA dedicated to that amendment alone.
Actually, no, they don't bother with the 2nd amendment because in their own words: "In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue."
Thanks for playing though. Next time trying actually reading their position on the issue before opening your mouth.
I'm not a fan of the ACLU for other reasons, but the last time I looked a their stance on the 2nd amendment, it was, essentialy,
Look again.
Doesn't seem hypocritical to me for them to devote their energy to the 90% of the bill of rights that needs defending, and not the 10% that has a large and active defense already.
"In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue."
That doesn't seem hypocritical to you? The regulation of a right that has existed for hundreds of years and which is enshrined in the Bill of Rights isn't a civil liberties issue? I wonder if they take the same position on the so-called "free speech zones"?
Since when have the NRA been interested in defending The Constitution? They are quite happy to see the whole lot go, apart from the 2nd amendment, and the government know this. The NRA are the ultimate hypocrits.
Got any evidence to back up your claim that the NRA doesn't care about the rest of the Constitution? Either way though, they've never claimed defending all civil liberties as their mission. The ACLU has and that makes them hypocrites.
The NRA will be the first in the queue for the free blackshirts when the shit finally comes.
Do all ~4.3 million members get blackshirts or just the organization?
Media is the most powerful branch of government.
Only because a bunch of "progressives" got the bright idea that we needed more "democracy". The Founding Fathers rightly feared the power of the mob and took steps to mitigate how much damage it could do. If you want to limit the influence of the media let's start by repealing the 17th amendment and flogging those that want to get rid of the electoral college.
Isn't that what we brits used australia for in the first place?
And you used America to get rid of your puritans ;) Seems pretty ironic that your convicted criminals were more loyal to the Empire than your religious zealots.
I really don't understand it. Have we really fallen so far so fast?
This isn't a popular opinion but I think it's a natural consequence of people turning to Government for all manner of problems that Government wasn't originally intended to deal with. In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
If they block everyone, they reason, the sites will go out of business and the exploitation will stop. That's admirable.
And if we outlaw drugs, people still stop using them and drug abuse will stop. That's admirable.
But... since I'm an American.... I would rather let the people go to these sites, determine who is getting their jollies off looking at this stuff, and then let's round up all these sick f--- people and kill them.
That thought has occurred to me as well. Why block these sites when you could presumably get warrants to see who is going to them and actually investigate the people breaking the law instead of trying to impose a censorship scheme that will never work anyway?
Unless they're secretly fighting for individual gun rights, they're not hypocrites.
They profess to fight for civil liberties yet ignore part of the Bill of Rights? They read every single part of the Constitution as broadly as possible when it fits their agenda while simultaneously claiming that the 2nd amendment is a "collective" right? They consider every single mention of "the people" in the Bill of Rights to refer to individual rights except for that one time?
Seems pretty hypocritical to me.
*I don't go as far as some of you guys in the states with my ideas, I just think that we should move back to a controlled licensing system, with mandatory training and testing with specialist trainers at a gun club before you get a licence.
The reason that many Americans are leery of such requirements is that gun registration/licensing schemes have historically wound up being used to direct gun confiscation schemes a generation or two later. Off the top of my head it has happened in Germany, Russia, Canada and New York City. I'm sure others can think of more examples.
If you own a gun and he is threatening you with that axe, you are perfectly within your rights to blow his deranged brains out, or if you're like me you'll try and disable him instead of kill
You are much nicer than I am. If he is threatening my life I'm going to remove that threat as quickly as possible. Once that threat is removed I'll cease firing and tell the 911 dispatcher to send an ambulance along with the cops. If he survives then great but ensuring his survival should not be at the top of your priority list when he is threatening to kill you or your family.
yes I have been bored and thought through the classical canon of nightmare scenarios, you should too
Here's one: What if he has a friend and you just wasted several rounds trying to hit his arms or shoulders? Are you gonna have enough rounds left to defend yourself from his friend(s) until the police arrive? Personally, if he is threatening my life I'm shooting center of mass until he goes down. If he isn't threatening my life then I don't really have any reason to shoot him, do I?
Seems the intent of the 2nd amendment was to discourage america from having a large standing army that sapped resources and wagged the dog. If everyone has guns and there is an effective nationwide draft in the form of a militia, then the population of the US would be far more resistant to going to war.
It's too bad the population of the US doesn't want to go back to this model, because it would be very easy to implement something similiar to the Swiss model here. Withdraw from the rest of the world, keep a small standing army with the primary mission of training the state militia forces and retain our nuclear deterrent. Who is going to fuck with a country that has nuclear weapons and a firearm for every citizen? More to the point, if we aren't interventionists, why would they want to fuck with us?
Yeah, we'd lose our ability to impose our will on the rest of the World, but so what?
but i donate to EFF frequently too.
After Obama reversed himself on FISA I wrote his campaign demanding a refund of all monies I had donated to them. When I received said refund I donated every single penny (>$500) to the EFF. They do good work and unlike the ACLU they aren't hypocrites, at least as far as I can tell.
False-advertising a 10% sale, which the businessman refuses to honor, is fraud.
Yeah, it probably is, but at the end of the day he still has the ability to choose who to do business with. I get where you are coming from but I don't think we want to go down the road of the government forcing people or businesses to interact with each other against their will.
What kind of corporation lacks the power to overrule its own employees???
Doesn't Motel 6 operate under a franchise model? He might not have been one of their employees.
At least Discover was helpful, and returned my money.
Yeah, credit cards are great for that, aren't they?
It so happens that a lot of fatal accidents with guns in the US are caused by guns kept 'under the pillow' as well
Citation?
In other words, the rest of us is comparing civilized countries where the rule of law is upheld to other civilized countries and the conclusion can only be: liberal gun laws get a lot more people killed than strict gun laws, if properly upheld
That's an interesting conclusion. How do you explain how Norway and Finland (two European countries with a lot of civilian guns) have a lower murder rate than Luxembourg (virtually no civilian firearms to speak of) or Poland (very few)? How do you explain how Wyoming and Montana have lower murder rates than New York or California? Could it just be that crime is caused by socio-economic factors and the access to firearms has very little to do with it? I find it interesting how "correlation is not causation" is a standard refrain around here in every argument except those put forth by the gun control crowd.
The anti-social behaviour of people wanting to be able to 'defend themselves', at great cost to society at large, is despicable.
A) You haven't demonstrated any "great cost" to society, B) This statement borders on trolling and I'm surprised nobody with mod points caught it. If you are interested in looking at a real study here is an interesting one from Harvard of all places. They set out to disprove the notion that more guns = more violence. It's a pretty compelling read.
Is blown way out of proportion by the UK media.
Amazingly enough so is gun crime in the United States but you never hear the advocates of gun control acknowledge that. You are more likely to have a heart attack in the United States than you are to be shot -- deliberately or accidentally. Clearly we need fast food control ;)
Who are you kidding? Russia is run by the Mob, and they're not big on gun control.
That's kind of the point isn't it? Regular citizens aren't arm themselves at all in Russia (handguns are outlawed, rifles/shotguns are hard to get and useless for self-defense outside the home in any case) so they are at the mercy of criminal elements that don't give two shits that handgun they are carrying is illegal.
The manager made-up a bunch of lies about how I had sex with a maid (false)
Only in the South would having sex with a maid be grounds to get you kicked out of a motel. Around here it likely wouldn't even be noticed. Did she consent? Was she on her break? Then what's the problem? ;)
The damn government which is *supposed* to help the People which created it, refuses to do its job and crack-down on dishonest businessmen
I don't recall cracking down on dishonest businessmen being part of the constitution. Your story sucks and I'd like to know which Motel 6 it was so I never give them any of my money but at the end of the day the motel has every right to refuse to do business with you for almost any reason they want. They don't have the right to lie to the cops like they but if they asked you to leave and you refused technically you are trespassing and the police would get called at that point.
It's better to 'crack down' on these scumbags ourselves by refusing to do business with them and making sure as many people as possible refuse to do business with them.
You've been wrong so many times that it's hard to assume you are correct ;)
So are you done yet or do you want some more?
On what basis are you assuming he's Republican?
Because everybody who questions Obama must be painted as a neo-con who agreed with every single stupid policy of GWB. That way can dismiss them without having to think about whether or not they are making valid points.
Love Obama or hate him he's using some of the exact same political tactics that most of his fans deplored when it was Bush using them. Claiming that he'll "halve the national deficit in four years" comes to mind. Yeah, he might be able to pull that off, but it really isn't that impressive when half of the current national deficit is still greater than the biggest deficits GWB managed to saddle us with. Nor is claiming that he's "removing politics from science" (the stem cell decision) -- hmm, when have Federal funds of any sort ever come without politics?
And don't forget a Democrat-controlled Congress was in power for the last two years of Bush's term and did exactly squat to mitigate his abuses.
It's worse than not mitigating them. They actively aided and abetted some of them. Obama had a hand in it too.
Today we set to find out, whether we can really build a Quassam rocket [wikipedia.org] on a budget.
I hope they are building them on a budget. 1700+ launches for 28 dead Israeli's doesn't seem like a good ROI to me ;)
if we can successfully hit police station with it.
Why am I picturing Adam Savage saying something like "Alright, the way I figure it, we've got a 10% chance of hitting the police station, a 50% chance of it blowing up on the launchpad and a 40% chance of getting arrested! Let's do this thing!"
Mission creep in a Governmental agency? Say it isn't so!
Then and now, I don't see why they have fences in the first place
You obviously don't live somewhere with a large whitetail population ;) I've always assumed those fences have more to do with making it harder for animals to get onto the freeway and less to do with making it hard for humans to do the same.