Callooh! Callay!1428010939

The 2nd amendment does not grant or create the right to bear arms. It restricts government from infringing on the right.

Rights don't come from the Constitution. The Constitution restricts the state from infringing on them. The 2nd Amendment doesn't "grant" you the right to bear arms. It recognizes that you have that right and restricts the state from infringing on it. A tyranny of the majority may strip you of your arms. But even repeal of the 2nd amendment would not strip you of your right to bear them.

Reading the comments and listening to Christie's comments, I was expecting to see a truly execrable video from the NRA. Then I watched the video. Yawn. "I always looked at Gov. Christie as a mindless hyper-right minion" ---- Of course you did. Don't feel too badly about it. Many on the right have been, and remain, just as clueless. (This message has been edited by Callooh! Callay!)

"His topic has to be approved by the funders such as NSF." That's not a restriction on his topic. It's a restriction on what he can do with other peoples' money. If only there were more such restrictions.

Who cares? Surely the earthworms. Your point is good. One wonders how much the rigor applied will sway opinions that are uniformed.

"No different for CDC experts" Actually it is different: the Air Force problem you describe is 1000 times greater. 10,000 among the active duty Air Force is a little over three percent of the force. 10,000 among the population of the US represents a little over three one thousandths of a percent of the population.

"But on this issue, nope! We want nuthin' but random uninformed opinion in makin' decisions!" That is an interesting point. And it's not just Marc-Antonian funeral orators burying assault weapons bans that raise it. There are folks who prefer rule by some wise authority to our messier democratic republican system. Random, uninformed opinion can be a scary thing. Look who it put in the office of the executive. But not all opinions are random and uninformed and there has already been research - must the research be government controlled in order to be valid?

"yeh do realize that that $10M to find root causes is in response to da NRA's request that we look into the violence in society, particularly video games and Hollywood movies, right?" Your respect for the NRA's authority seems a bit excessive. Granted, it's a decent organization that does some good. But it's not infallible. This request for looking into "root causes" smacks of diversionary tactic. One hope the "requesting" will be asking for donations rather than confiscating it from taxpayers. "And I'm in favor of research, eh?" Wonderful. When do we suppose they'll announce

Checkers or chess? The "actual Biden/Obama plan" is to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." "Request for $10M to study root causes" "Root causes," is a euphemism for "let's find something, anything, other than obvious truths that are unpleasant, inconvenient, and don't provide any reason for coerced collective action"

http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx http://eddieeagle.nra.org/information-for-parents.aspx

"But of course they didn't ban any research. They just banned spending tax dollars on it. There's a world of difference." Not in the minds of collectivists, unfortunately.

Food for thought? Yes, potato chips. Cheese doodles. For similar, even stronger, evidence of the futility of CCW watch this: the relevant portion kicks in at 1:23 Note well, even with pistol at the ready, and even though he apparently hits his attacker several times, the defender remains helpless as the Spirit of Anubis presses the attack. And this in spite of the fact that he is armed with a custom cartoon pseudo-luger that manages semi-auto fire with no apparent action other than a bit of recoil from firing what appear to be exotic super low velocity specialized a

That men started without laws is not evidence of the superiority of that state. Yes, the amendment was "just" an amendment... to the Constitution of the United States of America. That isn't a statement of its unimportance. Focusing attention on how someone must not be as well read or wise as you because they are concerned about collectivist tendencies, is flattering to their concerns. Please continue to focus argument on the interlocutor's assumed ignorance and lack of thought that is apparently so serious that he must be admonished not to "buy the crap someone is feedin' yeh. It's a

"Nutty stuff?" There's a good bit of it in state laws and local ordinances that already outlaw or restrict carrying knives or even owning some knives. A Fed imposed fixed blade knife ban sounds farfetched, but it does remind us of other authorities already "going there." Poseur-cons can employ satire to shield their smugular veins from knife-ban nannyism. But truth is stranger than fiction. For example, in Ft Lauderdale, one can carry a gun around a parade, but not a knife - unless they've changed that very recently.

Nation of laws, not of men. An Amendment to the founding document has a portion which stipulates: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Darn absolutists... don't they know that if they think 2+2 is 4 and some other absolutists think 2+2 is 13, that the reasonable answer absolutely must be something in between? So say absolute moderates.

I wonder if yeh are listening to yourself Callooh Callay?" Wonder? About me? I'm not interesting. The ideas, information, observations, examples, etc I share are... or not. But listening to the information, ideas, etc, I hear them quote another post in which we were told: "if yeh really believe in da risk of invading hordes then yeh need to run, not walk, to a mental health professional. And yeh definitely should not be allowed to handle a firearm." That's how they roll in the communities that have the "more community minded mindset" that you correctly noted I was "referri

"Physical Wellness online training" Imagine what great physical condition everyone would be in these days if online training really did improve physical wellness!

"gun violence" - People can engage in violence. Guns have no agency, violent or otherwise. Adapting the construction of the phrase "gun violence" to the method of murder most often employed in the murder of children, it would be "hand violence," sometimes "blunt object violence," usually at the hands of a parent. And yet people accept that this is acceptable collateral damage in support of families keeping government monitoring (which could predict and prevent such incidents) out of their homes for what appears to have no relationship to their right to be secure in their person

Innumeracy in America is incredibly common; so common, it afflicts hundreds of people! There were no sensational news reports about the hundreds of millions of firearms in the US that were not used in a crime last month. And if there were reports of how the number of children murdered by psychos with guns last year compares to number whose parent strangled or beat them to death (it's how most murdered children are murdered), they apparently haven't made much of an impression. Sometimes people use firearms for bad purposes. The number of such incidents in any given time period m

"Yah, Callooh, you said it. Easier for someone to shoot straight with a rifle." Yep, and Beavah you're right that the situation could have been defused even quicker with less danger to all, had one of the restaurant patrons had a weapon.

You continue to beg the question (original meaning BTW - not the one folks ascribe to it lately). I'm not convinced there is a problem to which it makes any sense to propose one of your old school conservative type solutions. You and the old school posse exhort me "Forward!" I respond with an eloquent... "huh?" And you bluster "Well then, you propose a way forward! Or are you part of the problem?" And of course, as a member of the "party of no" I say "no." Perhaps instead of loony muttering about the second amendment, you'd accept simple reference to it? Cops

"And da positive result was enhanced by da fact that Garcia didn't have an AR-15 knockoff, and apparently couldn't shoot straight with a handgun." Really? How did his not having an AR-15 knockoff help? (many of the "knockoffs" are as good and as pricy an the "real" thing BTW) He had a Glock-23. See one in action here: It's chambered in .40 whereas the AR-15 is chambered in .223. The .40 would likely be more effective at the distances he'd have been shooting (indoors and up relatively close). From further out the AR-15 would be more effective because it's long gun whereas t

An old school conservative issues a debate challenge in which he begs the question in exactly the way liberals and progressives would prefer: there is a problem about which the federal government must do something. And then to address it, posits a false dichotomy giving us a choice from the options that so called progressives and liberals pretty much always favor: more taxes and/or less freedom. Be it rhetorical flimflam or satire, it's an interesting specimen.

RE: "We can deny all we want, but we all have some type of "prejudice"; it just depends on how you perceive something and how you were raised. How we respond to that prejudice is the real problem, not having it." It's true that we're all much more likely to be influenced by factors that influence us than we are to be influenced by ones that don't. But how little such statements clarify can be clearly obscured in statements expressing not just prejudice about prejudice but also prejudice about how the response to prejudice is more problematic than the prejudice itself, as is done in the