Tens of thousands march, rally for gun control, against the NRA

If a private citizen of a country cannot understand the founding document of his country at face value, then that country is not subject to the rule of law, it is subject to the rule of the mob.

We are subject to the rule of law, therefore the Constitution must be comprehensible to the average citizen and what it says must be identical with what it means.

Try again, comrade. You're getting colder, not warmer. Believe it or not, you actually had a stronger "argument" accusing me of being a murderer than you did suggesting that only the small number of wealthy people who pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a law degree are qualified to tell the rest of us how to live.

Oorah

Weapons of war don't belong on our streets. Watch this video featuring courageous veterans who are speaking our for stronger, safer gun laws in America. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/gtKkwdspUU

— Giffords (@GiffordsCourage) March 24, 2018

The US had a military-style semi-automatic rifle sales ban from 1994 to 2004. 8 states currently ban the sale of military-style semi-automatic rifles including Mass.

The individual right to own a handgun or revolver at home for self-defense was found in the Constitution in 2008. The 5-4 majority opinion, Heller v D.C., proscribes a position of gun regulation in the law looking backward and forward. .

Before that, the right to bear arms existed only for the 'common defense' -- words you'll find in the Mass Constitution. In the US Constitution you find the words "well regulated militia" The second amendment was about disposition of rifles militiamen got from the government. the muskets they had on the farm were not the same and not suitable for war.

For reference, I JUST used a direct quote from it for my #marchforourlives poster pic.twitter.com/U1zAsLmuwv

— [internally screaming] (@thegraceharding) March 23, 2018

You can generally tell the rigidity of their thinking as soon as the start posting talking points and arguments made by fringe advocacy groups. To corroborate this, look at what the NRA and Gun Owners Action League say and you will see the same sort arguments being made by the Troll.

It usually begins with Constitutional arguments and then digresses into straw man examples. They make a provocation statement to explicit a reaction and then try to control the dialog by posing questions. Once you fall into their trap, they own the conversation.

You can see perfect examples of this on Facebook. They always employ a user name that is tailored or unique to a particular social media website. If you explore their language and talking points (instead of their user name), however, often you will find them posting the same nonsense on other boards.

While I am as guilty as others for periodically telling them to F off, I have also learned not to engage them in Q & As - that’s what they want. Ignoring them drives them batshit.

It's word games and misdirection in spades.

I love how he flashes up pictures of anti-aircraft artillery pieces and nuclear powered submarines when he says there should be limits on the 2nd Amendment. That's a classic straw man argument. No one is clamoring to own missiles and field artillery. Commonly owned guns that have been sold to consumers for decades and decades, on the other hand...

That's not the only straw man. His video is full of them. They usually go like:

Straw man gun nut: why should some criminals' misbehavior prevent me from having X to hunt and defend myself/my home?

Dude in video: why do you need an X to hunt and defend yourself?

Next straw man...

Here's the real answer to the dude in the video:

Because when we have X available for sale to law-abiding people, nearly no one misuses it. And not because no one buys it, lots and lots of people buy it and nearly no one misuses it. Whether X is an AR-15, a 30 round magazine, a pistol without a load indicator to the satisfaction of the MA AG's office....whatever. Nearly no one misuses them.

If only a small number of people commit criminal acts, taking stuff away from everyone else will not stop those people from having criminal intent. It may make it harder for them to act on that intent, but the cost of frustrating them is to misdirect law enforcement resources against all the nominally law-abiding people who now have their freedom curtailed. That is a misuse of government. A blunt instrument where a pen-knife is called for.

That was the purely utilitarian argument against the ban hammer. There is also a philosophical argument:

We are a free society. If I am a law-abiding citizen, it's none of anybody's business, government included, what I have in my basement or garage or on my person so long as I did not steal it from someone else and so long as I do not inflict any harm on anyone with it, whatever it is. Empirically, people who own guns and large capacity magazines generally do not cause any harm to anyone with them. By a very large margin. Thus a free society has no mandate to ban or confiscate those things from those people.

Focus on the people doing the misdeeds, not their chosen tools. We don't ban knives because some crazies (who were well-known to police as crazies) use them to cut up their former classmates in the public library.

Kids stood in silence at the Hawaii State Capitol holding the names of gun violence victims. #MarchForOurLives : @AnthonyQuintano pic.twitter.com/20MqVDJn0b

— Honolulu Civil Beat (@CivilBeat) March 24, 2018

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And they never convince themselves of their own lies.

And they certainly never do it if motivated by powerful emotions.

Rule of law is when the law means what it says. Rule of the mob is when the law means what 50%+1 feel it should mean, regardless of what it says. The number can be less than 50% if the mob does what mobs do, which is to try to intimidate with numbers that don't actually add up to 50%+1.

You don't want to live in a country where the laws don't mean what they say and don't say what they mean. Fortunately we don't live in such a place, we live in the United States, which has a centuries-old tradition of the rule of law and not rule of the mob, junta, or cabal, or smoke-filled back room.

It really isn't worth the time and effort to try to explain English to the willfully obtuse.

First I got some lady holding a dick sign up trying to change minds, and now I got some poster trying to convince me of something so simple that it is "not worth" time and effort to explain it.

You are right. It is not worth it. I can clearly see that. (Maybe you should alert Congress to your unworthy genius).

This is lamer than the pussy hat parade(100,000 hat marchers). But a little more amusing than the safety pin movement (140,000 pin wearers).

of the 2nd Amendment in concert with the 10th Amendment which specifically prohibits the federal government from exercising powers it is not explicitly granted means that just because the right to form a citizen's militia is enumerated does not make it the exclusive reason for gun ownership.

As in, "You have a right to join a well-regulated militia, and that is one reason the state cannot take your guns away."

it's raging.

First the perfunctory stuff: The weapons are exactly identical to hunting rifles. Same ammunition, same magazine capacity, same barrel length. Sometimes even the same exact lower receiver but with a black plastic grip instead of a walnut stock. Same achievable rate of fire too. If you want to ban AR-15s for any reason particular to it being an AR-15, you have to ban everything else too.

Next to the straw men (there are so many).

Misuse of the the US army by the federal government is not the only way society can be tyrannical. A lynch mob heading down your street is perfectly capable of taking away your civil rights without calling in federal troops. The pogroms may have been winked at by the Czar, but they were just private citizens looking to exact some justice.

Freedom of the press only applies to people who own printing presses? What about cake baking ovens? "Social consequences" as in a freeze-out from services generally available to the public and in extreme cases an economic death sentence are, indeed, not government action. That would make them extra-judicial punishments. Mob justice. We have laws in place and traditions to ensure that doesn't happen. Everyone's money is supposed to be green.