Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Wild Hoss]

Put that robber in your house, with the 9MM, and you have a .38 that needs reloading after 6 shots, then lets discuss. Even worse, give him a buddy that is packing the same weapon he has.

Unless you're a former Ranger or Seal that never misses a target, you're in trouble.

I don?t have a .38, and never would, because I don?t have the willingness to train with it. Instead I have a shotgun with Double 00 rounds that require far less accuracy, and I know the structure. He?s got pistol with more rounds...that he?s never trained with. He?s the one in trouble.

Unless of course he's got a buddy. Or hell, five. And they are trained assassins.

Or they catch me unawares, in which case how many rounds I have are irrelevant.

[iam416]

Re further gun restrictions, I think it worth noting that none of the 535 elected representatives and senators probably live in an area where home invasion is a real threat. It's pretty easy for them or anyone else to be high and mighty when it doesn't change their lives.

I don't need a gun in my neighborhood, statistically speaking, so it's of no consequence to me. If I lived in a shadier place then I'd definitely own a firearm or three.

[Wild Hoss]

My self-defense is not subject to your opinion or beliefs. Unless you are going to be my personal bodyguard, you really don't have a say in the matter.

...but my safety isn't subject to your beliefs either.

[The Oracle]

I don't know why "Pro 2nd Amendment" people act like nd Ipeople want to take their guns. I don't see the problem is making them harder to get and don't see the need for the heavy artillery. There's a lot of room to meet in the middle and no one is willing to.

[Wild Hoss]

That the Orlando Police may have bungled their immediate response (reportedly 3h to enter the building after the presence of an active shooter was confirmed ???) to the Mateen attack raises very serious questions as to the level of preparedness of police authorities to deal with this sort of thing. That's another issue that should be pounded home. Train the police to act once the attack is underway.

I mentioned this a few pages back. As I stated earlier, its the main reason I don't like the idea of Shelter in Place as a response.

Maybe I'm wrong, but after X number of these tragedies I suspect that most people would agree- in a rational state of mind- that they'd prefer the first responding LE go in, even if it several individuals are lost in the process. It might be the difference between losing 25 and losing 50.

[hack]

There is no one form of sharia law, but there certainly are constants. My favorite fact about the Saudi version: only thing admissible in court are confessions and the eyewitness testimony of adult males. Ideally you have multiple witnesses, but, failing that, if you have somebody willing to swear to the truth of their testimony, that's the same as having multiple witnesses. There is, last I checked, no written criminal code in Saudi. It is awfully difficult to overstate the extent to which that place is evil. And we have noone to blame but our own government for enabling them.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I think you're treading on the margins of this discussion Counselor.

Fine, you'd own a firearm or three if you lived in a neighborhood where home invasions have a high statistical probability of occurring.

I'm more interested in this quote:

So are all restrictions on speech. I'm perfectly fine if the Court adopts a 2nd A jurisprudence that mirrors the 1st A. That strikes me as consistent, rational and appropriate. Seems like you'd agree.

Like you to expound as I'm a little hazy on your point.

Are you interested in stating your views of the Patriot Act - good bad or just a fucked up piece of legislation? Viable alternatives if I read you right on this subject? The role of Government in protecting its citizens from these emerging mechanisms of warfare we know collectively as terrorism conducted at the behest, direct or indirect, of foreign entities.

[iam416]

And we have noone to blame but our own government for enabling them.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the evil exist whether we enable them or not. We ought not associate with those fucks, but their bullshit third-world fucked up society would be there with our without US support. So, you know, I tend to blame the source of their bullshit third-world, fucked up society and it sure as shit ain't the US.

Sharia has a lot of constants and it's baseline treatment of homosexuality and women are two of them. I don't much care if the punishments vary between 20 years in jail, being lashed, being stoned or otherwise executed. Fuck all that.

[Wild Hoss]

So are all restrictions on speech. I'm perfectly fine if the Court adopts a 2nd A jurisprudence that mirrors the 1st A. That strikes me as consistent, rational and appropriate. Seems like you'd agree.

Yes. There are also numerous restriction on chemicals as well, which could be used for explosives and whatnot, which we should all have available to us by a strict sense of Constitutionalism. The additional of common sense has precedent.

But...easier said than done.

[iam416]

Like you to expound as I'm a little hazy on your point.

I don't there's much more to expound on. I think the 1st and 2nd Amendments ought to be treated similarly by Courts. That is, they ought to recognize the fundamental Constitutional rights in each and that those rights are subject to limited infringements by either the Federal government or state governments.

Analogy-- "crying fire in a movie theater":"buying uzis"

[iam416]

There are also numerous restriction on chemicals as well, which could be used for explosives and whatnot, which we should all have available to us by a strict sense of Constitutionalism

I'd rather strongly disagree with you on that one. "Arms" as used in the 2nd A had a clearly understood meaning. It didn't, e.g., extend to cannon. It was quite specifically intended to protect firearm ownership after the States ceded control of militia to Congress.

Bombs, cannons, tanks, etc. are nonsense canards/strawmen that strict constructionists would never interpret as part of the 2nd A protections and that living constitutionalists would never read in b/c, heh, they're largely liberal are are far more inclined to re-write the 2nd A down to nothing than broaden it.

[Mike]

Shutting down the jihadist websites would be a good start in preventing/reducing radicalization among young adult muslim males. There are limits to free speech. I don't see how this couldn't be classified the same way as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.

[Wild Hoss]

I'd rather strongly disagree with you on that one. "Arms" as used in the 2nd A had a clearly understood meaning. It didn't, e.g., extend to cannon. It was quite specifically intended to protect firearm ownership after the States ceded control of militia to Congress.

Bombs, cannons, tanks, etc. are nonsense canards/strawmen that strict constructionists would never interpret as part of the 2nd A protections and that living constitutionalists would never read in b/c, heh, they're largely liberal are are far more inclined to re-write the 2nd A down to nothing than broaden it.

...so common sense does apply at some point, as I stated.

[hack]

Noted: homosexuality may be punishable by death (beheading with a sword), but...

Gay courting in the kingdom is often overt—in fact, the preferred mode is cruising. “When I was new here, I was worried when six or seven cars would follow me as I walked down the street,” Jamie, a 31-year-old Filipino florist living in Jeddah, told me. “Especially if you’re pretty like me, they won’t stop chasing you.” John Bradley, the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), says that most male Western expatriates here, gay or not, have been propositioned by Saudi men driving by “at any time of the day or night, quite openly and usually very, very persistently.”

Many gay expatriates say they feel more at home in the kingdom than in their native lands...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/

[Jeff Buchanan]

I don't there's much more to expound on. I think the 1st and 2nd Amendments ought to be treated similarly by Courts. That is, they ought to recognize the fundamental Constitutional rights in each and that those rights are subject to limited infringements by either the Federal government or state governments.

Analogy-- "crying fire in a movie theater":"buying uzis"

OK ..... it was more the context of your point as opposed to the interpretations of these two As.

Would you care to offer your view of the 4th A as it pertains to the question of the role of Government in Protecting it's Citizens .......?

The Patriot Act has been the subject of a huge amount of debate. Fifteen years after 9/11, the impact of the various administration's policies on the civil liberties of Americans is not at all clear. This is due in part to attempts by these administrations to limit public knowledge of their actions on national security grounds (as Jon correctly points out is BS). At the same time, the proposition that, as some critics have said (Jon and I have had this discussion previously), counterterrorism policies are placing fundamental freedoms in jeopardy and leading to massive violations of civil liberties.

In the context of current events and even historically, I see that as an overstatement. Constitutional protection of civil liberties, including the rights of immigrants, is proving much more resilient than in past periods of conflict. Despite a high degree of political polarization, critics of administration policies have been free to express their views in the media, on the internet, and through many public protests (that was not the case during both WWI and II). Civil libertarians and other critics have not been subject to prosecution, surveillance, or witch hunts. I'd argue that the extent of civil liberties in the US today reveals how much the country has changed since earlier times of war or crisis..... and possibly for the worse as our penchant for freedom, in all its aspects, is clearly being exploited by terrorists.

What is going on now - random acts of terror and in large numbers and escalating - is new in the context of warfare and the role of Government to provide for the national defense. I'm not sure the tools we have at our disposal to effectively wage war in this new era of warfare are adequate. Given what we are facing, intelligence may be - no IS - more important now
than it ever has been. How we go about collecting it and how it is used is an essential issue that I'm not at all sure is being faced rationally by both the people and their reps.