On the Second Amendment – one sentence post
Gun registration, prohibition of assault weapons, and universal background checks do not constitute the prohibition of gun ownership any more than vehicle registration, prohibition of armed tanks, and universal drivers’ licenses constitute the prohibition of car ownership.
11/17/2020 @ 10:29 am
If the schmuck in this picture actually pulls the trigger, he is going to end up with a sprained shoulder or a broken arm, or a cracked skull. That’s a Mossberg 12 gauge.
11/17/2020 @ 10:55 am
I’ve been arguing for quite some time that shooters should be licensed like drivers and should be required to pass safety courses. Presumably the NRA would provide them, being as the NRA provides safety courses now. This might prevent accidents such as broken shoulders from recoil.
11/17/2020 @ 4:24 pm
That’s how it’s done up here. My handyman pictured in my post just took a safety course and asked me to be one of his “guarantors” on his license app. “Um, well, there was that machete incident,” I said, but I was just teasing. Crazy woman in his (yes) ‘basic’ trailer park complained once and he spent a night in jail – he’s still angry, since he thinks her unfounded accusation in the throes of drugs/booze/mental health should have got HER there instead. Worries that might be a prob with the license. Yes, he does have a machete, I forget now what he uses it for…but he IS a handyman and has *tools*. (I’ve seen a lot of him over the last 6 years & trust him, even w a machete.)
11/17/2020 @ 11:03 am
Agreed!!!
11/17/2020 @ 11:27 am
I saw some bullshit in a YouTube argument this morning. Someone said they were afraid of the Democrats because of the Second Amendment. I told them that no major Democratic candidate had ever advocated the abolition of the Second Amendment. Then I said this and I thought it was worth a post.
11/18/2020 @ 12:53 pm
I remind them that Obama was going to take all their guns, Clinton was, too, and what happened? No guns lost.
And what the holy hell is going on around here?
11/17/2020 @ 12:37 pm
and to take your automobile metaphor further, we are not permitted by law to drive on sidewalks or down the supermarket aisle while looking for greasy chips and sugary soda (had to get a little passive aggressive dig in there).
11/17/2020 @ 4:25 pm
I use this for the whole freaking mask thing too.
11/17/2020 @ 2:14 pm
There are a lot of things we aren’t allowed to do by law that make perfect sense and don’t indicate either a police state or socialism. One of them is not smoking indoors in public establishment. A requirement to, for example, wear a mask in the same establishments is no more legally unusual than the prohibition of smoking, particularly when both are done for public safety or, more specifically, airborne public safety. But people are getting a whole lot of strange ideas they apparently don’t bother to think through.
11/17/2020 @ 3:12 pm
I love President Obama’s term, “truth decay.” It is part of why important issues like this one are so hard to address. Those who pray to gun ownership take som many of these terms and take issue with them, like “assault weapon.” I’m sure you’ve seen it.
I’m licensed and trained out the wazoo. I fear the people that Trump empowered more than I ever worried about ISIS. But, going back into that world of gun ownership and training, I ran into a group that I did not know existed. Some of the loons scoff at licenses. They call it gaining permission…as opposed to their “god given right.” So, they take issue with every single concept that can be used to construct fairness or stability. It is exhausting.
Now, we have had gun nuts plan to abduct Governor Whitmer, and Scott Atlas telling the gun nuts to “rise up”…presumably to wreak havoc.
I agree with your position, of course. It is a rather complex set of ideas though. I worries the hell out of me that the people we are mainly concerned about don’t even accept the concept of licenses.
11/17/2020 @ 4:27 pm
To us up here, you Americans look RIGHT OUTTA CONTROL (and, dammit, it leaks across the border)
11/17/2020 @ 5:58 pm
Oh, completely. But a lot of us are aware of it.
11/17/2020 @ 6:46 pm
I doubt the US’s foolishness will ever bleed over into Canada…politically speaking.
Don’t get a news channel like Fox News. That’s at the root of our problem.
11/17/2020 @ 9:27 pm
I regret to have to tell you that many of us get Fox on our cable – most of our channels are American. There is also the internet. And I believe i read that the Proud Boys actually originated here! (sorry)
Further, we have recently voted trump-lite premiers in 3 provinces with their coterie of ‘conservatives’. I’m hoping an American turn-around will discourage this trend – we tend to imitate the US…) There are even rumblings about chipping away at our universal health system. (My eye surgery incurred no out-of-pocket.)
11/17/2020 @ 7:28 pm
Not believing in a gun license is like tossing off the keys to the family car to a 5 year old at the top of a freeway ramp.
11/17/2020 @ 9:28 pm
almost literally
11/19/2020 @ 12:20 pm
WaPo interviewed the seventeen year old kid who killed two protesters this summer. It’s kinda long for a news vid, about 20 minutes, but was interesting. I don’t know if they let you look w/o a subscription, but worth clicking for a try.
tl;dnr he bought the gun with stimulus money, thinks his life was in danger
11/19/2020 @ 1:21 pm
GH,
Please leave a link. WaPo is one of the very few things I am a subscriber to. I spent most of my life in the Washington area (moved there during HS), my business is still centered there, and I’m too angry at the Times from when a senior editor discussed a policy of theirs in an interview that he called “sophisticated objectivity.” It’s pure newspeak and dishonest as Hell, and it’s also an illustration of why the press isn’t the Fourth Estate any more. At this point, the problem is that objectivity and impartiality don’t overlap because one side is just too much worse than the other. If you’re impartial, you have to abandon your standards and forget about objectivity. Sophisticated Objectivity is actually sacrificing objectivity for impartiality. That’s the kind of thinking that led the Times not to have a cow when McConnell refused to vet Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Their lack of fuss was what enabled McConnell to subvert the process like that. If you support democracy, impartiality was an inappropriate – not to mention unpatriotic – response.
11/19/2020 @ 2:37 pm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/11/19/kenosha-shooting-kyle-rittenhouse-interview/?arc404=true
It’s on the digital version front page. I’m not sure how I feel about this new variety of journalism. While the vid gives far more information than was in the news about the two individuals, it was like watching an HBO true crime documentary.
It’s kinda long, longer than it would take to read an article, but if you stick with it, all the amazing quotes come at the end.
11/20/2020 @ 2:51 pm
@Greenheron;
“I’m not sure how I feel about this new variety of journalism.”
That’s because it’s not ‘journalism’.
11/20/2020 @ 5:53 pm
Were you able to watch the video Ron? What about it makes you say it’s not journalism?
It’s technology driven, a moving speaking article and reveals far more about Kyle Rittenhouse and his victims than reading words. There’s the tone of voices, the animated facial expressions, which aren’t possible in text. I didn’t find anything sensationalized or over-dramatized. It was like a short episode of Frontline. Do you think of that as journalism? I do.
It does feels weird to me to watch vids on the digital front page of the Washington Post. The NY Times is also producing these vids. I’m fairly old school and like a print newspaper and cup of tea. But saying the vids aren’t journalism seems dismissive.