Guns and stuff... [modified]

[soap brain]

No, it wouldn't. Nature gives you a natural want for self-preservation etc. You defend yourself because you want to live. You're naturally imbued with everyone else caring about themselves first and foremost. Rights simply do not exist unless defined by humans. Tell me, how would you define a 'right' outside of humanity?

Richard of York gave battle in vain.

[Dexterus]

There actually is no right per se, there's a definition of Freedom they believed in when they made it, that is Anarchy, anyone can do anything they like. On top of that Freedom they have Constitution to provide a filter as to what parts of that Freedom can't be taken away and on top of that the Legal System to remove/restrict parts of the Freedom and add unnatural State obligations/rights (State doesn't exist in nature, it's artificially grafted). So according to their definition of Freedom you could do anything, according to others that same Constitution has a different meaning. This is why most countries have a body that is supposed to clarify constitutional arguments between different branches, essentially between different people's view of what the base freedom implies and in theory they are a good thing, practice on the other hand ... This is why you will never ever manage to get a Constitution to be universally understandable in the same way and why this whole thing is pointless. As long as the view of the majority of the people on Freedom flows in a certain direction that's how the state will keep it if they wanna stay in power (and can't fool the populace).

modified on Thursday, March 20, 2008 8:35 AM

[soap brain]

Uh...thanks, I think.

Richard of York gave battle in vain.

[cp9876]

I also looked this up. I think the concept of

digital man wrote:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State

is irrelevant today. I can't imagine that a motley collection of civilians with a random selection of handheld weapons could contribute significantly to the security of the US against an enemy that had overcome the armed forces. You would be far better spending the money that civilians spend on arms on the national guard. What came out yesterday was the idea that gun ownership would protect you from a government that went mad. The Government cannot get out of control without the support of the armed forces, and I can't see that you would make a difference with a few guns when the armoured vehicles come down the street firing 25mm depleted uranium rounds at anything that resists. Your only hope is to turn the army, and if history is anything to go by unarmed people power may be just as effective (Philipines, Moscow). Anyway, the bottom line is that it is not my country and I'm not trying to tell anyone else how to live. I'm lucky enough to live in a very safe part of Australia, and I like the fact that there are very few guns here. There are very safe parts of America too, but I think it is sad that no matter where you go you can never get away from the guns (not even the Amish community was safe).

Peter "Until the invention of the computer, the machine gun was the device that enabled humans to make the most mistakes in the smallest amount of time."

[Stan Shannon]

My only point of disagreement would be the continued use of what is essentially a set of Marxist political defintions. The left has framed this entire debate as some kind of a contest between Socialism and fascism. It isn't. The debate is between Marx and Jefferson and always has been. There is nothing 'fascist' about corporations. That is a Marxist construct. A corporation is only 'fascist' if it allows itself to be used as a component of a national agenda of some kind. If it is simply acting in a way that increaese profits, it is behaving precisely as it should be. Free market capitalism is not the enemy of anyone aside from Maxist (who are threated by individual choice implicite in free markets), but the friend of all lovers of freedom.

Please excuse my refusal to participate in the suicide of western civilization

[R Giskard Reventlov]

A little pedantic but you are correct.

bin the spin home

[Ro0ke]

Many of these toxins you're talking about are actually the defense mechanisms of plants or animals. Nature doesn't give you the right to live, each person has the sole responsibility of surviving. As civilizations were established, laws came into effect to help enforce this.

[Stan Shannon]

Ravel H. Joyce wrote:

No, it wouldn't. Nature gives you a natural want for self-preservation etc. You defend yourself because you want to live. You're naturally imbued with everyone else caring about themselves first and foremost. Rights simply do not exist unless defined by humans.

Oh, a student of nietzsche. then. Not nature but will.

Ravel H. Joyce wrote:

Tell me, how would you define a 'right' outside of humanity?

I would argue that I don't need to. Humanity is a part of nature, the human mind is a part of humanity, and the concept of rights is part of the human mind. The universe is the sum of its parts, which includes the concept of rights.

Please excuse my refusal to participate in the suicide of western civilization

[Matthew Faithfull]

No, I'm not using the Marxist definition of Faschism but the definition of Mussolini who first put it into practice. 'The merger of the corporation and the state'. This has been forgotten by those who only remember Hitler's National-Socialism. The 'fascist' corporation is one which seeks to own and control the state, to take on the nature and powers of a state (e.g. Federal Reserve), to be above the law, beyond restraint by legal or political processes. International capitalism has taken on many of these characteristics by escaping from the authority or control of any single state, giving the excuse for international socialists to demand world government to control world corporations. Of course the very people planning for world government are funded by the world corporations who will nominate its members, fund its policy think tanks and implement its bought and payed for edicts. This is the modern face of international faschism, supported by socialists, packaged as inevitable globalisation. It is I agree the absolute antithesis of Jeffersonian nation self determination, equality under the law and free trade.

Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.

[Stan Shannon]

Matthew Faithfull wrote:

The 'fascist' corporation is one which seeks to own and control the state, to take on the nature and powers of a state (e.g. Federal Reserve), to be above the law, beyond restraint by legal or political processes.

That isn't true. Mussolini's 'corporatism' was the very opposite of that. It was the state controlling the coporations to achieve the objectives of the state - all the resources of the state being combined to achieve the will of the state. I'm not suggesting that there is not a problem with corporations trying to corrupt government for their own purposes, but that is not fascism.

Please excuse my refusal to participate in the suicide of western civilization

[realJSOP]

You do know that you're trying to have a discussion with a fence post...

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

[Ilion]

digital man wrote:

It got me to go back and re-read the constitution and amendments. It is still a great document and its sentiments are entirely fresh and laudable.

Notice, also, how *short* (how "high-level," rather than "nitty-gritty detailed") it is, amendments and all.

digital man wrote:

And, therefore, I have to admit that I am wrong in this one: whilst I don’t get the personal need for weapons I can see that you need have no other justification for doing so other than that which your constitution provides.

:cool: :rose:

[realJSOP]

It's easy to buy a tank, and there are many private tank owners. It's (almost?) impossible to (legally) buy ammo for it though. In that context, a tank is merely a motor vehicle. You can also legally own a cannon. I'm sure there's paperwork that goes along with those two examples, but you can own them nonetheless.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

[Ilion]

Stan Shannon wrote:

Lets at least be intellectually honest about the philosophical history of all this.

From a conspiracy-monger (and with socialistic leanings, at that)?

[realJSOP]

cp9876 wrote:

There are very safe parts of America too

Everything within about 150 yard unobstructed radius of my firing position is safe (except what I'm shooting at of course). Paper targets are in a extreme peril, though. :)

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

[Ilion]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

Gun control laws is an attempt to keep criminals from owning/using guns,

That's the *charitable* interpretation of the impulse to nullify others' rights.

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

Gun control laws is an attempt to keep criminals from owning/using guns, but being criminals, they already don't obey the law, so what's the point in prohibiting ownership? I refuse to forfeit my constitutional right to own a gun just because some asshole shot a convenience store clerk in the commission of a crime.

But, even if there are no nefarious hidden reasons, it's still an asinine impulse.

[Matthew Faithfull]

Maybe but still ( a + b ) = ( b + a ) . If the two are merged how can one say whose objectives they are persuing? Only by looking at who benefits financially in terms of gaining power. In Europe at least it is certainly not the states, they have become hollow shells, unable even to pass their own laws in many areas of policy. While the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) can write their own laws, hand them over to the European Commission and have them imposed on 27 states usually without debate and certainly wihtout the possibility of ammendment. In the US when the president wants money to fund whatever he has to get a vote through Congress but they can't give him the money. For that he has to go cap in hand to a private club who will lend the state, their dollars, at an interest rate they decide. If you ever wander where your federal taxes go, the answer is to pay the interest on that money previously borrowed. In effect a secret-membership club of ~20 people have bought the US federal government with its own money. This may not be classical faschism but that's hardly the point, the outcome, mass slavery to a pack of unethical thieving "£$%%^s is the same.

Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.

[Vincent Reynolds]

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. --Thomas Jefferson

[soap brain]

Nice one...

Richard of York gave battle in vain.

[soap brain]

Stan Shannon wrote:

I would argue that I don't need to. Humanity is a part of nature, the human mind is a part of humanity, and the concept of rights is part of the human mind. The universe is the sum of its parts, which includes the concept of rights.

So it is only humans that define rights? But saying that rights are a law of nature is saying that humans define laws of nature.

Richard of York gave battle in vain.