More mythology on the Constitution

[piscator]

Which families, the families of the kids or the families of the murder victims?

While bereavement takes many forms, is nuance worth applying to a red herring posed by some upside down cat who reads about it in the news? I think not.

No one is saying that school shootings are a good thing. No one is arguing that the murder rate is a good thing. The argument I have when this comes up (and if I can be bothered to participate in the inevitable and predictable clusterfuck of these threads) is that the constant harping on about school shootings is an agenda driven red herring. We have over 55 million school kids in K-12, that does not count uni. The percentage of kids killed in mass shootings is minuscule compared to any other cause of death.

If anyone really wants to stop child homicides, or indeed homicides in general, they need to address the actual causes, which of course no politician is about to do because it strays perilously close to non-pc discussions of race, religion, and culture.

"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til we're all the same color."

[Hermit]

Fuck, no. The melting pot theory has been proposed around 1970



and was immediately demolished by Alexei Sayle, who argued that the right utensil is a pop up toaster.



I disagree with both. What we need is more guns. It's a proven fact that the more guns there are, the lower the murder rate. You doubt it? Compare Japan with the USA, then get back to me on the matter, thank you.

[piscator]

You're only saying that because AusAboriginals and Melanasians...Get on a plane if you want to be a picky bastard.

[Seth]

It's not just about criminals getting guns, it's about their mental stability...

Well, the obvious thing to do then is to deal with criminals and their mental stability issues, not infringe on the rights of the law-abiding and mentally stable, don't you think?

My bad, my post was unclear.

What I meant was that background checks etc. are not all about checking for criminal convictions, but also on issues which may lead the gun owner into a killing spree fuelled by mental health issues. Even allowing for non-criminal, non-mentally impaired Americans* being able to own whatever arms they want, surely there is room for some cleverly imposed restrictions to reduce your chances of gun massacres?

* There must be some, I suppose...

When you say "issues" what do you mean? As it stands those who have been adjudicated as mental defectives by a judge, those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, those who are habitual drunkards or illegal drug users (which includes pot) are already prohibited from possessing firearms.

Some states submit mental health disqualifications to NICS, some don't because those states know that such records are not only private medical information but that submitting them to the FBI without a court order can violate the patient's right to privacy and his right to keep and bear arms because the brush with which the feds painted the issue of mental health is unconstitutionally vague. Worse, what the "common sense gun control" crowd considers "common sense" isn't just to identify those who are known to have mental issues (which may or may not be violence related and may or may not predispose them to gun violence) it's to require (eventually) every person who owns or tries to buy a gun to first pass a mental health examination that the gun-banners create.

Their intent is to create a system that will by definition exclude as many people as they can manage to stuff under the umbrella of "mentally ill," regardless of what sort of mental illness it is or how it might or might not create an unreasonable risk to the public if the individual has a gun, that they can manage.

Once they get a vague definition of "mental illness" into the law, it can be expanded and reinterpreted to mean almost anything and thereby deny nearly everyone their RKBA. Ever get drunk at the office Christmas party and end up in the ER? Disqualified for life. Ever have a traumatic event that requires mental health counseling? Disqualified for life. Ever suffer from depression but are successfully treated? Too bad, disqualified for life. Ever get angry at your spouse and yell at her but not hit her where the police were called in? Disqualified for life. Ever abuse your dog? Disqualified for life. Ever get a DUI? Disqualified for life. Ever do a "cry for help" non-violent suicide attempt? Disqualified for life even if it happened as a morose teenager who received treatment and has been mentally healthy for twenty years.

The list goes on and on and on and is entirely mutable once the idea of "mental health" is inserted into the law as a precondition to exercising your fundamental right to keep and bear arms. It's an insidious form of not just prior restraint but wholesale denial of rights based on perceptions and speculations, not on any evidence that the person is likely to go kill other people.

At the moment a judge has to actually declare you to be mentally incompetent pursuant to due process (and a right of appeal) before your gun rights can be denied, which is exactly how it should and must be.

It's simply not acceptable to assume that everyone is insane in one way or another and force them to prove their sanity before they can exercise their fundamental rights. We wait until people actually demonstrate that they are incapable of properly exercising their rights before we take them away, and we only take them away after due process of law has been afforded them.

That, by the way, is why the "No Fly" list is an unconstitutional criteria for denying the RKBA. There are no published criteria for getting on the list, and one can be put on the list at the whim of some politician or bureaucrat without so much as reasonable suspicion much less probable cause, and there is no due process afforded to a person placed on the list. You can't even find out you're on the list until you try to fly and are denied, and there is no avenue of appealing it. People get on the list simply because they happen to have the same name and DOB as some terrorism suspect. Teddy Kennedy himself was on the list and had a hell of a time getting off of it and he was a US Senator.

[Seth]

So, the upshot of all this sanctimonious warbling about the fucking constitution and prior restraint is that more innocent lives will be lost to nut jobs with semi-automatic weapons...

Pretty fucked-up...

Not really, because we know full well that the alternative is tyrannical despotism that leads to millions of times more deaths than some individual nut job can manage. The only solution to a nut job with a gun is a law-abiding citizen with a gun in the same place, at the same time, who is willing to put his or her life at risk to defend others against armed nut jobs.

The problem with your screed is that it falsely implies that there is any other solution available to prevent armed nut jobs from killing innocent people.

There isn't, as events all over the world, including countries with the strictest gun control regulations and bans on the face of the earth prove without any doubt.

Even Japan, with both it's legal ban on guns and it's cultural rejection of guns suffered a Sarin gas attack in a subway.

You see, it's not just nut jobs with gun, it's nut jobs with any kind of weapon, from a rock to a nuke, who are the problem, and the only way to stop them is for someone to take them out before they can use those weapons on innocent people.

And when death at the hands of an armed nut job is imminent, the police are always just minutes away.

If you can't figure out the import of that simple fact, you're simply to fucking stupid to live and I hope the next jihadi on the list targets YOU. Then maybe you'll be illuminated.

[Tero]

>>know full well that the alternative is tyrannical despotism that leads to millions of times more deaths than some individual nut job can manage..<<

Ha ha! Marxism is coming and you can't stop it. You will run out of bullets and water before Government will.

[Seth]

Tell that to the families of the dead...

Gladly.

Dear families of dead children killed by mass murderers, I mourn your loss and suggest that you sue the school district or other venue owners and legislators who banned anyone other than the mass murderer from being armed so that they might defend the children you left in their care because for anyone to deny a person in charge of children the right to be armed in order to defend them is a heinous crime on humanity. You can also sue JimC because he's just the sort of person who doesn't care at all about your children or their safety, he cares only about his ignorant anti-gun agenda and is willing to dance on the graves of your children if it advances his cause, just like every other gun banning fucknut in this country does.

Oh, and get a gun to protect your other kids.

[Seth]

>>know full well that the alternative is tyrannical despotism that leads to millions of times more deaths than some individual nut job can manage..<<

Ha ha! Marxism is coming and you can't stop it. You will run out of bullets and water before Government will.

Maybe, but there will be many fewer Marxists or their useful idiots around by the time I do. I count that as a success because there are still far fewer Marxists in this country than there are Marxists...or Marxist useful idiots willing to die for the Marxist elite.

[pErvinalia]

No, it's bad. I just don't give a fuck after a day or two.
They're not my kids. They're not anyone's kids I know. They're not in my spheres of influence or concern. They're just abstractions.

They're the same for you, until you want to cynically use them in a futile attempt to win an internet debate about the constitution and internal politics of a country you've never been to.


Haji Kebab killing Americans? Grease the bastards and all their kin. That's an assault on me and mine.

I don't understand how it is any different. Kids you don't know or care about are dead.

[piscator]

One's usually a solo act of attention seeking suicide that generally solves itself, the other's an act of theocratic war against the society that's given the world more than any other.

You'll understand when your country is attacked enough and you start losing a thousand, two thousand, three thousand people at a whack. In the meantime, don't be obtuse and try not to dance on too many graves.

[pErvinalia]

That's just hyperbole. 9/11 was a fluke. No way anyone would have expected those buildings to fall. You're far more likely to die by a thousand other ways. Buying into the fear rhetoric is simplistic, and ultimately gives the terrorists what they want.

I'm not opposed to you hating fundamentalist Islam. I hate it too. I just find your view of not giving a shit about dead kids to be inhuman and offensive.

[pErvinalia]

The truth of it is, from past interactions with you, that you probably do care. You're just temporarily snotty coz people were making jokes about Merka.

[Hermit]

You're only saying that because AusAboriginals and Melanasians...Get on a plane if you want to be a picky bastard.

Did I really need to bracket my post with the tongue in cheek tag?

Your mention of our Aborigines and Torres Straight Islanders brings up another instance of a melting pot project, the Stolen Generations aka Stolen Children era, 1905 to 1969. It failed, but not for a lack of trying. Children were taken away from their Aboriginal parents by any means, but usually by force or at least the threat of force, and placed in Anglo-Saxon households. Why? In the words of the people in charge of the program in the areas where most Aboriginal survivors lived, it was to breed them out of existence.

• "Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white" - Cecil Cook, Northern Territory Protector of Natives
  
  "One factor, however, seems clear; atavism is not in evidence so far as colour is concerned. Eliminate in future the full-blood and the white and one common blend will remain. Eliminate the full blood and permit the white admixture and eventually the race will become white." - A. O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia

The project failed due to bureaucratic bungling and not enough effort being put into the scheme "only" between 10 and 30 per cent (depending on the area) of Aboriginal children were thus removed from their biological parents.

Eventually the topic of an official apology by the government came up. The usual gaggle of right wingers got their knickers in a knot about this. Some argued that the real motivation for taken the children away from their parents was to take them away from their harmful environment. Others denied it happened at all, and a third group was afraid it might give the natives standing to have the temerity to ask for compensation. Nevertheless, four state and territory governments did formally apologise. Four did not. In the following year the conservative Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard expressed "regret" about it all, but could not bring himself to utter the "apology" word. That finally happened in 2008 when Labor's PM, Kevin Rudd moved (in part) that

• We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
  
  We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
  
  For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
  
  To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
  
  And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
  
  We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
  
  For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
  
  We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
  
  A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
  
  A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
  
  A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

The motion was passed by both houses.

[piscator]

That's just hyperbole. 9/11 was a fluke. No way anyone would have expected those buildings to fall. .

When Al Q bombed the WTC in 1993, the goal was for the north tower to fall over onto the south tower. The bomb blew a 30m (98ft) diameter crater through 4 levels of underground car park, but didn't cut enough red iron to drop the tower. The bomb truck (VBIED) drivers, Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil, knew a lot more about the Koran than blast physics, and parked too far away from the load bearing structure of the building for the nitroglycerine/AMFO-initiated ureanitrate hydrogen enhanced device to do its thing like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Abdul Rahman Yasin designed it to do.

[piscator]

You're only saying that because AusAboriginals and Melanasians...Get on a plane if you want to be a picky bastard.

Did I really need to bracket my post with the tongue in cheek tag?
...


...


...


...


....

Yes, you aspie bastid, you did.