<p>I know that you didn’t make the Founder’s fallacy, but many who argue a strict constructionist view of the Constitution do to poor effect. Heck, those who argue for a more common law approach even do. I just think that we need to accept the fact that the state we have developed today is probably a teensy bit different from what the Founders set out to create.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that what would probably do the most to keep guns from moving out of the hands of those who deserve them to those who don’t are well designed regulations on the person-to-person transfer of firearms. Of course, that involves a significant state expense that just won’t happen when you have legislatures either focusing on quick and dirty solutions (bans) or cheap and easy credit claiming (strikes laws). Unfortunately, these are doing little to stop the flow from good people to bad people.</p>
<p>However, I also don’t think that unfettered movement of firearms necessarily solves the problems, either. The other, very liberal argument that if everyone has a gun, then everyone is safe probably doesn’t play out in reality.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that one of the worst problems with these debates is how little good research has been done on the topic. I’ll be more likely to decide either way once someone actually uses the data to good effect.</p>
<p>I have friends from India who still won’t come to the U.S. because they think the number of guns makes the place unsafe. I try to disabuse them of the idea, and they come back with the reality that all the deaths in Kashmir, all the deaths caused by train bombers, all the murders committed by naxalites, etc., in a country with a population four times our size aren’t even one fourth of the gun-related deaths in any single year. As to the Constitutional argument, they say our democracy must be awfully tenuous if it relies on the population being armed against the encroachments of their government.</p>
<p>I never said that guns should be illegal. The first 10 amendments are the Bill of RIGHTS. I believe owning firearms is a privelege, like a driver’s license and a bunch of other things you can think of. And the reason why is to prevent people like this below me.</p>
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<p>It should be privelege.</p>
<p>And on a side side note I don’t associate with UCLAri, l despise libertarians who basically believe that there should be a 100 percent free market and that we should just make the federal government spend millions on the military so we can bomb villages and destroy families.</p>
<p>Hey you are a Masters student, note the comma. I was just talking about libertarians in general. They don’t believe the government should have a significant amount of social spending or involvement in the economy. Just ramping up the military-industrial complex so they could drop bombs on the villages of Vietnam and the towns of Iraq to murder people. I should not conservatives also agree on that with libertarians.</p>
<p>And I don’t believe it’s a right. That’s why a hope the Supreme Court will drop the part about individual right.</p>
<p>You’ll have to pardon me, but I usually don’t associate commas (even comma splices) as being separations of entirely distinct thoughts. Mea culpa, notwithstanding the fact that you didn’t exactly make your intent clear.</p>
<p>And not all libertarians believe that. Just like not all liberals believe in PETA or food stamps. The broad brush that you paint with doesn’t allow you to deal well with the finer details, which are so often what makes the difference. I’ve met people at CATO who flat out said that they believe in less spending. On the other hand, I believe in a strong defense because I tend to associate more strongly with neo-realists like Waltz, Walt, and Mearsheimer, but I don’t necessarily think that the US has always handled its military role well.</p>
<p>Show me a libertarian or a conservative that isnt a wamongering military-hog and they may get my vote. </p>
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<p>Strong defense does not equal millions of spending that always backfires. The CIA is the biggest example of a failed department that should be abolished. We’re not any safer because of them or those other black funds. We’re not any safer when we have preemptive war in Vietnam that ripped apart our country. We’re not any safer when we have a preemptive war in Iraq and have soldiers rape 15 year old girls and torture prisoners through waterboarding.</p>
<p>However I do love Walt and Mearsheimmer’s paper on Israel. We shouldn’t give a dime to the Israeli government, they are of no strategic value to this country.</p>
<p>The CIA is, in many ways, still run like a Cold War old boy’s club, but I do believe that we need to do some “renovations.” This largely comes from my perceptions as someone who knows more than a few insiders.</p>
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<p>C’mon, stop with the outliers and focus on the trends. These sorts of comments are essentially meaningless, and meant to do little more than light fires. Stop. What’s more important is whether it served a strategic interest-- that’s questionable.</p>
<p>But please stop trying to steer this thread off the tracks. Please. This is not about any of this.</p>
<p>Sorry dude, UCLAri is right, I’ve never seen anyone use a comma like that, to separate entirely different thoughts. I think you are just trying to weasel out of associating UCLAri with absurd beliefs that he doesn’t hold.</p>
<p>The fact is, most libertarians do not believe in the same kind of strong military-industrial complex and foreign intervention that neoconservatives do. They believe in less spending, less government, less foreign intervention - exactly the opposite of what you’re spouting. I find it highly amusing that you think this.</p>
<p>As for the whole economic thing, I agree with you to an extent. Most libertarians I’ve met, however, support the role of a central bank, something I find key that is disagreed with in the most clearcut libertarian economic theory (The Austrian School). Many also have issues with the concept of externalities, and government’s role in preventing market failure. However, other than that, I find most libertarians to be far better versed in economics and its implications than people of other political affiliations.</p>
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<p>That statement is comical. Ron Paul, the most libertarian of any primary candidate, has a less warmongering position than any candidate except the most extreme left-wing Democrats (Kucinich, Dodd).</p>
<p>I sincerely hope your posts were jokes, because they were some of the most misinformed I’ve seen so far on the thread.</p>
<p>I never understood how you can have issues with externalities. It seems so obvious. To me, it’s like throwing out marginal analysis-- sure, there are alternatives… but they ain’t very good!</p>
<p>I’ll open some other threads on the other topics, but to get it back on topic gun owenship should be a privelege like automobile licenses, not a right like speech.</p>
<p>Again, this is like saying that you have a right to privacy-- it’s only that way because our common law system let it be interpreted as such. You can’t legislate on what should be in the case of enumerated rights. You have to legislate based on what is. </p>
<p>Otherwise, rights become nothing more than suggestions. This sort of behavior is visible pretty clearly in dictatorial regimes. Part of the reason why our democracy is so robust is the fact that we, and our elected officials, take our rights so seriously as rights. Driving a car is a privilege because it’s not enumerated as being otherwise. Until we see an amendment to the constitution saying that gun ownership is a privilege, then it should remain a right, common law interpretations notwithstanding.</p>
<p>There’s no way short of an amendment to the Constitution (eliminating or radically changing A2) will gun ownership will be a mere privilege, like driving a car. Not to be cruel, but such thinking is a liberal pipe dream.</p>
<p>In fact, I would go so far to say that the high point of restrictive gun control is being ushered to the door, with the Parker decision now before the Supreme Court. If the SCOTUS decides as I think they will it will be come a LOT harder to pass willy-nilly restrictions (e.g. magazine capacity laws, faux assault weapons bans, pistol bans, punitive ammo taxes) than before.</p>
<p>What we will see, in the place of such restrictive laws are real, practical regulations on firearms such as no felons, no unlawful narcotics users, no serious mental illness and maybe even a requirement to have training when you buy a firearm for the first time, gun lock requirements, no guns if you’re under court-ordered temporary restraining orders and the like.</p>
<p>I see P2N’s anticipatory glee at having the Supreme Court give “his side” a big hammer as being an acknowledgment that the gun nuts can’t win the battle on its own merits. The “right” they demand the rest of us kowtow to isn’t one they could actually win in the electoral/legislative arena so they want to have it handed down from above so they can force everyone to give them what they want even if it’s a bad idea. </p>
<p>The problem with the “let everyone have guns except the bad guys” theory is that many “bad uses” of guns are committed by people who weren’t “bad guys” until they pulled that trigger. Part of the reason I started this thread (hoping that the constitutional issues would stay in the other one) is that I’d be interested to get reliable data regarding the actual beneficial (i.e. protective) value of individual gun ownership vs. the risk of intentional and accidental injury, bullying and death which does accompany private gun ownership. (And as should be obvious, I’m not talking about hunting rifles or legitimate target shooting guns, here.) It’s hard to form a valid opinion without reliable data.</p>
<p>All those arguments about states rights and judicial activism are arguments of convenience don’t you get it. Nobody in the vast right wing conspiracy talked about “STATES RIGHTS” when one of their crooks were in the White House these last 6 years. And none of them talk about it as ‘judicial activism’ when the court rules their way. Both these arguments are BS. The only shame is that if the Supreme Court and Congress had any balls Bush and Cheney wouldn’t be in the Oval Office they would both be in f’en jail for genocide.</p>
<p>Actually, I think it does win on its own constitutional and logical merits, but it will be nice to have the high court acknowledge that to shut the Brady Bunch up (for a few seconds at least) :)</p>
<p>As for the “electoral/legislative arena”, ask the democrats how the last AWB went for them. Also notice how reluctant they are to tackle it as one of their issues on this (or any other recent) election. Fortunately, I think Heller will force it as an issue.</p>
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<p>Yeah, well, thats just the way it goes. People aren’t born as criminals. But it certainly isn’t the majority. I can’t find specific stats for this, but most violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders.
[Bureau</a> of Justice Statistics Reentry Trends in the U.S.: Recidivism](<a href=“http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/reentry/recidivism.htm]Bureau”>Home | Bureau of Justice Statistics)</p>
<p>None of those school shootings were by repeat offenders. The people who shot up the buses and churches and malls these last weeks weren’t repeat offenders.</p>
<p>He said most, not all. There are always exceptions. Read the numbers and don’t just spout the opinions of deep thinkers like Sean Penn. I also like the way you have convicted people without either a charge in place or a conviction. That’s educated thinking.</p>
<p>Gottaloveucla, it’s called “innocent until proven guilty.” The general principle is that if you have not done something wrong, the government should not punish you. You are also trying to label hundreds of thousands of crimes by 4 cases. That’s not a very good argument.</p>
<p>Kluge, rifles and shotguns are responsible for more accidental shootings than pistols. Various surveys and studies have returned DGU estimates of between 70,000(IIRC) and 2.5 million. Unfortunately all of the studies have their flaws. IF the true number is somewhere near the middle, that is still substantially more DGUs than violent crimes commited with firearms. (I’ll go looking for that data…)</p>