Comments

1
Here comes the Gun Fetish Death Cult...3...2...1.....
2
Guns might make us safer but people with guns sure as fuck don't.
3
If we want to preservate freedom in this country we must has more untrained shooters blasting away in thise malls. Lay down a heavy fire and these crimanals will be afeared to show they faces. The Proud Amerucans defending us should probably bring in they guns and start shooting in advance just in case any miscreants are lurking on the premises.

Remember: more guns means more safety. Blam blam blam, that's the music of freedom.
4
What does the Stranger Suggest?

There's been many good very long comment threads recently about the gun issue. Should I go reread them? Or generally forget about those threads and believe something completely unique will be said in this current thread?
5
Nothing can be done. There, I said it. Whenever the right wing insane asylum controls an issue, people die and society pays an appalling price. Fucking sheep.
6
Oh give me a fucking break #4.

You know what could be done, the American people know what they want done.

But we're ruled by the gun lobby in this country, and a minority of brainwashed hicks with a penis substitute fetish.
7
@4
"What does the Stranger Suggest?"

This isn't about suggestions.
This is about getting more page hits.
A lot of people here have specifically identified shotguns as being okay for non-military, non-police to possess.
Because it's really about showing that you are a "good" person by being anti-"bad" people.
8
@4 Then why do you even come here? Do you like to sound the fool?
9
There were 14 gun murders in nearby Baltimore the past two weeks. How come mention of that?

Oh that's right, black people.
10
@7
I've said it before on Slog, I'm as much "good" as I am "bad."
If you want to divide the camps into "good people" and "bad people," have at it.
11
The 'shotguns are acceptable' compromise comes up when the gun nutters (correctly) note that a madman, intent on murdering, can do so without ANY gun -- leading gun restrictionists to recognize that the automatic and semi-automatics are what make the madman's efforts far too effective.

We arrive at: a madman, intent on murder, is not all that more dangerous with a shotgun vs. without. Ergo: shotgun ok(ish), particulalrly if that compromise gets us somewhere sane regarding restrictions on automatics, semi-automatics, and mega-capacity ammo clips.

12
@4: the stranger strongly suggests that you go infest a forum more suited to your obvious talents, such as Justin Bieber videos on youtube.
13
I'm for massive expansion of open and concealed carry laws everywhere in this great land of ours. Still for background checks, mandatory safety training with annual refreshers, mandatory liability insurance, and expanded mental-health treatment programs, too.

But no civil or uncivil debates on the merits of guns, whether in Congress, the media, or on the internet, will change the American mindset now. The only thing that will do that is an ever-rising tide of accidental discharges, parents killing children, children killing siblings, gruesome suicides, and people deliberately opening fire in public places on the slightest provocation.

If this makes you nervous, just avoid malls, theatres, coffee bars, public transit, schools, and workplaces. Hard to do if you want an education or need an income, I know, but you have to set your priorities.

Everything you need is available on the internet, including home espresso machines. You can fill the idle hours perfecting your portafilter tamping technique.

Just please, if you take your gun out with you, use a proper holster and don't stick it in your pants. Shooting yourself in the dick will move public opinion in the wrong direction.
14
@10
This isn't about your actions. This is more like racist and sexist jokes.

How many Mexicans does it take to
How many women does it take to
How many Catholics does it take to
How many gun nuts does it take to

It's about someone insulting a different group in order to show the members of their own group that they're "good" because they don't like the different group.
15
@7: You don't get to talk about facts until you stop denying the facts. States with high rates of gun ownership tend to have high rates of suicide also. Admit it.
16
It's becoming more and more clear that the NRA is simply the political wing of a terrorist clique.
17
@15
My internet stalker who makes thinly veiled suggestions that I kill myself, you are making my point for me.

First off, Japan and England contradict your claims as I have pointed out in the past. Why are you claiming American exceptionalism?

Secondly, you had to be corrected on whether a negative suicide existed or not
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…
"This doesn't mean that the number you added was negative,"

Thirdly, you have no idea what a negative correlation is
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…
"There is no such thing as a negative suicide, but there is such thing as a negative correlation."

I have an internet stalker.
And my internet stalker likes to make thinly veiled suggestions that I kill myself.
18
For once I would like one of these anti-gun Authoritarian statists types, i.e., the staff of Pravda...I mean "The Stranger" :) to answer some hard questions:
Concealed carry laws are better now than ever before and it is easier now than ever for a person to legally carry a gun. Yet gun crime is at an all time low: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/0…

If gun control works to lower the gun violence rate, than why is that the case?

Russia has some of the strictest gun control laws on Earth, and yet their gun violence rate is MUCH HIGHER than the US:

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/09/23/…

Bottom line is this: SHIT HAPPENS! Psychos are going to go psycho and attempt to kill people using whatever means they can. The Boston Bomber used instructions he found online and a pressure cooker to improvise a bomb and killed three people. Where there is a will, there is a way.

HOWEVER, while offensive weapons are easily improvised, defensive weapons have to be ready the moment the situation calls for it. A bomber can always plan on how to use a bomb, a person defending her or himself doesn't have that option and has to have a device that can be ready in an instant for whatever situation that may come up. A gun is such a device.
19
Gun nuts are such drama queens. I suspect the reason they own guns is because they live such dull lives.
20
@19
The reason I own and carry a gun is because, unlike the staff of "The Stranger," I was not raised white in a white upper middle class suburb but was born and raised in an East Coast ghetto. I learned quickly that crime and violence happens and the left-authoritarian notion that we should "hug the criminals" and invite them over for "vegan brownies" just doesn't work.

I was robbed many times and attacked on the streets by random people. Now that I carry that doesn't happen anymore.
21
Thank you for the bio, collectivism dear. But your self-pitying recollections really aren't germane to the conversation, are they?
22
@20 - Sorry about your small penis
23
@17: You can lie all you want, but you will never get your dignity back. I promise to stop stalking you if you leave The SLOG and never return.
24
@17: And I would like to make a thinly veiled suggestion that you stop spamming like an asshole.
25
Increasingly, shooters are driven by the value of confirmed kill guns on the black market. Even if you serve jail time the value of the gun can almost make it worth it. That's why gun owners are so concerned about whether guns are returned or not after trial.
26
@21
You claimed that gun owners own gun because of "dull lives," I countered that many, including myself, do so because we lived in situations in which carrying a gun is advisable as opposed to simply living a "dull life". I apologize if you can't understand how that is relevant to the conversation.
29
The problem with guns are the people who fetishise them. Individuals who buy guns for protection have a much higher level of ambient fear than other members of the population. Inchoate fear of government, other races, a belief that they are surrounded by people and forces that want to hurt them. The brief of the second amendment has been conflated beyond all reason to support what really amounts to a persecution complex. For all the bombast and posturing one has to feel a certain amount of compassion for individuals who live every waking moment in fear. I can walk the same streets as these people without their fear or their guns, so who's the more free?
30
@28: Fucking spammer. You just repeat the same lines over and over again. You are the death to any conversation or discussion. I'm guessing that this is the point. I've flagged your post and I hope your account is banned. Come back some day when you have learned the subtle art of conversation that doesn't involve Ctrl-C followed by Ctrl-V.
31
Our Second Amendment rights were taken away? When did this happen?
32
Collectivism dear, a careful re-reading of my original post will show that I referred to gun "nuts", not gun "owners. Or don't you think there's a difference?
33
lord love a duck what a pointless thread. again.

look: with disturbing regularity, some loon grabs their legally-obtained gun and commits suicide publicly, but decides to take 1, 2, or 26 innocent bystanders out first, to make everyone know just how badly life wronged them.

the 2nd amendment absolutists say BFD, that's just the price we pay for all the other benefits of firearms. besides, it's rare.

not anymore it isn't.

whatevs is not acceptable.

34
@28: Oh yes please, tell others how to deal with disagreeing viewpoints. Throw the first stone, hypocrite.
35
Pro gun, non gun owner here. Why don't I own? Because I live I a nice Seattle neighborhood north of the ship canal, south of 80th. Put me and my family in Skyway, Renton or parts of Pierce county? Damn right I'd buy one.
36
@30: Oh I don't know, Unbalanced's post @ 28 is practically poetry with all that repetition. The words become meaningless, and it becomes aural sculpture.

37
@31 I wondered the same thing. The republican whackos claim they are threatened by the Govt. taking away their rights. The 2nd amendment was enacted, when? During the civil War? It has no relevance in 2014, there are enough pistols and rifles and ammo in the U.S.A. to blow up the whole country, for what? Give us back our 2nd amendment rights........W.T.F.
38
@ 37
The Second amendment was actually a part of the original Bill of Rights, many decades before the Civil War. And saying it is "no longer relevant" is just as absurd as saying the first amendment is "no longer relevant".
If the Second Amendment only applies to muskets and bayonets than the first amendment only applies to quill pens and the hand cranked press.
I will give up my "assault rifle" when the Stranger gives up its "assault press". Just as rifles that hold forty rounds weren't around when the Constitution was enacted, hipsters with blogs weren't around either. I give up my modern guns when the Stranger gives up its modern press. Deal?
39
SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.

Thank you Washington State!!!

Woo hah!
40
@38: I do find it hilarious that your asinine false analogy is based on the completely nonsense term "assault press." Did you coin that, or are you regurgitating that from RedState or some similar place?
41
@40: @38 is absolutely spot on with his analogy. If you can't see that, you're the one with the impairment.
42
i don't think the 2nd is irrelevant. i just don't think it has been properly interpreted. the first clause is there for a reason, and we're doing fuck all to regulate our militia well.

we infringe on the right of the people to bear fully automatic firearms. the precedent is there.
43
@40

Call it happy flower fun time press if you like. The point doesn't change. If we ignore the 2nd Amendment on spurious grounds like what kind of guns are made, changing times and so on there is NOTHING to protect your remaining rights but habit.

If you're so convinced that the 2nd is an anachronism you luckily have a vehicle for changing it. Get up a constitutional amendment movement, get the popular support to accomplish it. Until then, yes the attempts of Mudede and Goldstein to attack the bill of rights does and will bother me.
44
I'd suggest that all proposed laws incorporate as introduction the following:

Identify clearly the problem and the legal ability of the legislative body considering the bill to resolve that problem. Summarize the proposed solution, and then demonstrate how the new law will actually solve the supposed problem. And estimate the effect on the budget together with the mechanism for paying the additional expense. And prove that there aren't existing laws to resolve the problem.

I'd bet 70% of bills generally and 95% of gun control laws wouldn't pass that muster and we'd save legislative time otherwise wasted.
45
Max @42: Before you start pontificating about the "interpretation" of the second Amendment, you really ought to read the full opinion in Heller v. District of Columbia. The Supreme explain their interpretation and how they arrived at in in explicit detail.
46
The second amendment assumes that the US will have no standing army. I'm willing to give up the army so that you can keep your guns. What say?
47
@45: no thanks. i've had heller thrown at me by you all countless times. just because one SCOTUS rules on something doesn't mean that interpretation was handed down from Sinai.

i'm not pontificating when i use a term like "fuck all".
48
@47
"just because one SCOTUS rules on something doesn't mean that interpretation was handed down from Sinai."

So you only accept laws that were handed down by God? Or one of His prophets?

Because otherwise you are arguing that the SCOTUS is not the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
You can disagree with their conclusion.
But since you're confusing the meaning of the term "regulated" as used in the 2nd Amendment you probably don't have much legal basis for your disagreement.
49
@47

The point was that Heller contradicts the arguments most 2nd amendment opponents use. Now, you can disagree, just as I do with Wickard and the long line of cases it spawned granting the federal government effectively limitless power. Or the specific vile offspring of Wickard granting the feds the right to tell me to buy insurance I don't need to help others who do need it.

But you can't be intellectually honest and just dismiss it.
50
@47

The point was that Heller contradicts the arguments most 2nd amendment opponents use. There's no mention, other than the militia cause of why we have a right to own a gun, and carry it if we wish. (Kind of what 'bear arms means, to carry arms). No mention of personal defense or safety. Just the straightforward "the right to have and bear arms shall not be infringed upon". Not really open to a lot of interpretation, you'd think. But that ignores the will to extend power of any government, the threat to unbridled power an armed and irritated population presents, and the collusion of people like you in the usurpation of power infringing on the right to have and bear arms represents.

Now, you can disagree, just as I do with Wickard and the long line of cases it spawned granting the federal government effectively limitless power. Or the specific vile offspring of Wickard granting the feds the right to tell me to buy insurance I don't need to help others who do need it.

But you can't be intellectually honest and just dismiss it.
51
@29

That's probably the stupidest characterization of why I own guns that I've ever read on the SLOG. And that's saying something.
52
The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery, you dumb fucks.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the…
53
Ah, yes, another idiot who doesn't know the difference between the 18th Century and the 19th Century. And you call us dumb fucks?
54
@53...

Yes asshole, I do.
55
PS to the dumb fuck @ 53...

Instead of telling you how stupid your comment was, I'll let YOU figure it out.

Good luck.
56
@52
The whole "second amendment was put there to keep slaves in check lie" has been refuted TIME AND TIME AGAIN:
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics…

But, gun control was created, in part at least, to disarm blacks fighting for their civil rights and the Black Panther Party:
http://blog.independent.org/2013/09/18/t…

http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer…

Just think about it: why would a slave owner need to shut a runaway slave? Unless they have a method for turning a slave into a zombie, he is of no use to said plantation owner dead. This Myth doesn't even make sense. At least most left-authoritarian myths sound plausible.

The real racists here are the members of the Authoritarian-left, like most of the writers for the Stranger. They seem to think that African Americans are incapable of running their own lives and own communities and instead need a socialist government, run mostly by wealthy white liberals, to run their lives and communities for them.

As an African American myself I see the racism of this Authoritarian rag for what it is: the return of the "white man's burden." The idea that wealthy white statists have a moral responsibility to rule over blacks for the black's own good. This is the same notion that lead to imperialism and colonialism.

Want to help African Americans? Do for them the same thing that should be done for everyone else: limit the power of the state to jail, brutalize, and regulate them and their communities. No more jail time for women who have the audacity to bread hair for a charge without a permit: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story…
End the statists war on drugs (that was originally started by progressives, btw) and LET THEM OWN AND CARRY GUNS TO DEFEND AND SERVE THEIR COMMUNITIES ON THEIR OWN TERMS!

The white-supremacist Stranger newspaper, however, will never suggest that African Americans have the intelligence to run their own communities or form militias to patrol and protect their own communities. The real racists here, as usual, are the authoritarian-leftists.
57
@38 The original premise of the 2nd amendment is most certainly outdated. It has no relevance in this century. It is, however a redundant amendment, still law and we must adhere to it. I agree that your assault rifle is your personal property and you can do with it what you wish, but to think it's necessary to your personal safety is questionable. We have become a society of paranoid individuals that think firearms will keep us from ....what? If it comes to armagedon it will only be a matter of time before we will all be dead anyway. I'm quite sure that 99% of the citizens of Seattle don't have more than 3 days of food and water in their homes. No electricity, no water, no natural gas, these people will have no place to go in their B.M.W's Light a fire and eat their pets, I guess. Having a firearm will not help any of these people, or you with your assault rifle.
58
@56 Really?

Sally E. Haden, in her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, "Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators and students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45 - including physicians and ministers - had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.

And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.

By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.


http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the…
59
B.T.W. The Stranger doesn't write these comments, they only provide the medium for common folks to express their opinions, as bizarre as they seem to be at times, we all have our opinions and I'm grateful to have a place to express my views. So if @38 is going to ditch his assault weapons if the Stranger quits profiling gun nuts, I guess it's going to be a long time before @38 gets rid of his weapons.
60
@58
As I already proved, that is 100% bogus. Guns weren't needed for slave patrols (again, what use is a shot slave anyway?) but the second amendment was created because the British still had a few thousand troops parked in what is now Canada and America was worried about an invasion.

"Hummel’s response to the Second Amendment slavery theory? Don’t buy it. Hartmann’s argument is overstated “to put it mildly.” In particular, the argument suffers from “presentism, back-dated from the Civil War, where everything that happened prior in U.S. history was driven by slavery.”:

" Hartmann lifts this claim from the Carl T. Bogus article he cites, which in turn relies on Herbert Aptheker’s 1949 book, generally considered exaggerated even at the time it was published, before much additional research on slave revolts had made historians curious about their relative infrequency when compared with other slave societies in the New World. Nor were the few serious slave revolts during the colonial period confined to the South, with two in New York City (1712 and 1741)."

source: http://blog.independent.org/2013/01/30/t…

And why not talk about the STATE CONSTITUTION AS WELL?
"The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired"
Washington State Constitution, section 24
And Washington was NEVER a slave state.
61
That's my mall. I spent every Friday night there with my family growing up, and still pop by about once every month or so.

I also grew up learning to shoot. I love and respect a number of gun owners, including my father.

So I speak not as some anti-gun evangelist but as an informed rational citizen when I say *my right* to go to *my mall* without being in fear for *my life* should damn well trump your right to lock and load on a whim.
62
@61, obviously, you're very confused about what the word "right" means. You have no right to hang out at a shopping mall. Legally, that's a "privilege." Privileges are always trumped by actual "rights," and owning and carrying a gun is an absolute right, just as much as freedom of speech and freedom of religion are. Your argument fails.
63
5 blacks shot in Pioneer Square last night Charles.

Or what the MySpace community calls "Sunday night".
64
@62: Freedom of speech and religion are absolute rights, but they are subject to limits. Gun rights should be no exception.
65
@60...

You proved nothing sonny. I have the source material.

Put down your Allen West secret decoder ring and get real.
66
@65
Actually, I posted a link from Paul Finkelman, Phd, A LIBERAL professor who is FOR GUN CONTROL and is a LEGAL HISTORIAN, but he just understands that it is pure BS that the second amendment was created to protect slave owners. Here it is again, 100% disproving your myth: http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics…
Again, since you ignored it the first time:
Why would someone shoot a runaway slave? Wouldn't they want them alive to work the fields?
Also, what about the Washington State constitution? Washington was NEVER a slave state and yet it has a right to bear arm's clause.

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