just concerned citizens?

[dwer]

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/12/1439811/gun-advocates-warn-that-new-safety-measures-could-forment-the-next-american-revolution/?mobile=wpRead more... )

Comments

[rimpala]

Maybe the threat of civil war or revolution would mean a little more if the people threatening it ever do anything

[nairiporter]

Here is one South African who agrees.

[rimpala]

That has to be confounding as hell, in other parts of the world the threat of civil war is probably horrifying... here it is simply laughable.

[cheezyfish]

http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1643533.html?thread=131460365#t131460365

I'm curious, does the link to the Southern poverty law center detailing right-wing terrorism that hardblue linked to not count as "doing anything?"

your question begs an answer

[rick_day]

The answer is...we shouldn't. This "gummit goin' git our gunz" rhetoric has been around since George Goddamn Washington.

Let them threaten. My government will protect me from those who would want to take away my right to *not* keep and bear gunpowdered projectile ejecting devices.

I postulate that the right to keep and own a musket was mighty important back then to get the 'gun nuts' to side with the revolution. Muskets were used to feed the family, and scare off varmints, not to possess 50 for defense.

The 2nd Amendment Crowd, like most right wing position groups, play loose and fast with history when citing the right of unlimited and unfettered gun ownership.

You want to see what a society looks like with unfettered 2nd Amendment rights?

[notmrgarrison]

And an "unfettered" First Amendment would mean we have speakers inciting riots at every protest. And when they repealed prohibition that allowed 12 year olds to buy hard liquor.

[rick_day]

then you agree some sort of sane, fair and reasonable controls are in order, to protect the majority from the tyranny of the minority (and vice versa?).

Every right has a boundary within its framework. Extremists have a difficult time with this concept.

[notmrgarrison]

I'm fairly certain there already are rules in place that don't allow 12 year olds to walk around with machine guns.

[underlankers]

We have no reason to yield to the threats of cowards who hide behind the law of fire and sword to disguise their own cowardice.

[squidb0i]

But enough about antigun zealots.

[brother_dour]

Soooo...let me get this straight:

The Left has kittens when someone picks ONE bad example and portrays that one bad example as typical- let's say, for example, Reagan's 'welfare queen'. Yet it is perfectly acceptable for the Left to portray all gun owners as Alex Jones-level lunatics. I should not have to tell anyone that the "erhmahgerdguncontrolrebellionrebellionrebellion" idiots are not any more representative of gun owners than Adolf Hitler is representative of Germans.

Hypocrisy is hypocrisy.

[underlankers]

Given that Hitler found any number of willing followers who stained their souls with appalling mass murder and opened one of the worst and most gruesome wars of aggression in human history, never apologized for it in any meaningful sense, and only started feeling bad about it when they started losing.........at least the Soviets were overthrown by the peoples of the USSR as a whole. Germans were a cowardly vile race of savages who had no qualms whatsoever in slaughtering people in the tens of millions, and in seeking successfully to avoid responsibility for all their own mistakes.

Of course the West, in its infinite wisdom, picked the people who'd made the USSR a superpower to lead the first line of defense in WWIII if it had ever happened so it had to justify picking losers somehow. Hence the gross and malevolent lie of the 'Good German.'

[rimpala]

Of course, humans are a vile species of monsters that kill each other and destroy it's own habitat, it shits where it's eats in the largest and most destructive sense. To determine which among this species is the most worthy or unworthy race is futile to me.

[brother_dour]

I wasn't aware that Germans stopped being Germans after 1945. But, yeah...now I can certainly see how you can with no hesitation or misgivings lump all gun owners in with the likes of Adam Lanza and James Holmes.

[devil_ad_vocate]

I own a gun, and no one is advocating taking it away from me. But let's be honest. The United States stands alone among the "first world" democracies in suffering an unending siege of gun craziness. The Second Amendment's "well regulated militia" phrase is interpreted by many gun enthusiasts as their right to define themselves as the potential saviors of America. They are not primarily interested in just protecting themselves from home intruders, or our children from getting slaughtered. They are the self-designated minority of Americans who will make war against the American government - to overthrow it by force - if they deem it necessary. And a bunch of them are NRA members - with a sizable number of them in leadership positions.

[rimpala]

They protect the citizens interest by killing their offspring.

"With friend's like these..."

[brother_dour]

I'm more worried that the gun control Left seems to want me to be a noble victim. I see enough people here and (even more so) on the AATP Facebook page that seem to have, let's say, a very optimistic opinion about the police's ability to be everywhere, all the time. Or a dogged desire to dismiss any number of documented examples of a person defending themselves or others with a firearm as unimportant. That opinion worries me far more than any magazine capacity ban.

[cheezyfish]

I have personal experience that even if the police are close by, they are always to late. I lived on the same block of a district police station in Chicago. It took them two minutes to respond to a shooting in front of my apartment (I could have walked to the police station in about the same amount of time). This of course ignores the 911 calls that were reporting the fighting several minutes before the shooting took place.

Additionally, criminals have no fear of the police. A few weeks ago I was eating a Jimmy Johns down the street from the Chicago police headquarters (not the same as the district police station mentioned above) when I hear a couple bangs and and then a bunch of police vehicles drive by with sirens. Turns out a guy started opening fire down the street in front of a bunch of police officers. The idea that police are effective at protecting people is a bit ridiculous.