Am I A Egotistical Piece Of Crap?

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, Gerolf said:

@Dark Pulse I strongly disagree with your stance on the 2A. If the 2A was referring to the national guard as the militia, then how would they protect us from a tyrannical federal government when they answer to the president above their governor? That’s why they’re NOT the militia the 2A is referring to, that’s why it says the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed, because the militia is to be composed of the people, WE THE PEOPLE, not the national guard, police, or hunters.

It wasn't referring to the National Guard as the militia, probably because the National Guard didn't exactly exist in 1791 - it was technically born in 1824 in New York, and only became truly national in 1903. No, the "militias" it was referring to were state-level militias - remember, the USA is basically supposed to be a commonwealth of nominally independent states, with some oversight by a larger, federal government. The Second Amendment basically says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, because a state requires a militia to defend itself. No more, no less.

 

However, things have evolved. Since we now do have a National Guard, and the country as a whole has lost some of its identity as a commonwealth of independent states, the importance of a state-level militia is decreased, but they still exist - however, these are just like the national services in that they are professionally-trained soldiers, not just a bunch of guys grabbing their guns to go and fight off some enemies.

 

Also, "We the people" are in the National Guard, Police, and State Militias all over. You do not stop being a citizen if you are part of the military or law enforcement. But unless you can just walk up with your (legally registered!) firearm and automatically join the National Guard/State Militia/etc., you can't seriously claim that state or federal military forces are militias anymore - they're military.

 

1 hour ago, Gerolf said:

The founding fathers were not dumb people. They saw innovation in firearms within their own lifetimes. There is absolutely no evidence to support that they had no idea that weapons would evolve beyond what they were at the time of writing the constitution, but there’s more historical evidence of weapon technology during the revolution that proves they probably knew it wasn’t just going to stay one way forever.

Making this argument is like trying to claim that President Lincoln should have predicted the atomic bomb, or that we should be able to predict the weapons and transportation of society in the year 2197. It doesn't work that way. We have no idea what the world will look like, especially given that we've gone through at least two major disruptive technologies in our lifetime (the Internet, mass communication), and there's bound to be at least one or two more (Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetics) in the next handful of decades.

 

They were relatively ordinary men. They couldn't predict the future 150 years from now any better than we could. Sure, we can make educated guesses, but they're still guesses, and no guess can account for something developing that will truly change how things are done. The first truly successful, sequential-fire automatic gun that got widespread use was the Gatling Gun, and that didn't get invented until 1861. You can find things that predate this (the mitrailleuse comes to mind), but these still needed to be at least partially manually operated (namely, loading).

 

This is one of the problems when you don't update a document - any vagueness is rife to be misinterpreted. In the Second Amendment's case, it's even worse, because people only remember the second half, and don't remember it's linked to a clause in the first half. Read in an entirely different way, the Amendment does not say who gets to own the guns, what kind of guns, how many guns, or anything like that - just that they won't be infringed so that a militia can be formed in times of defensive need.

 

I'm sure that slaves in the South would love to know that they had the right to own a gun. Oh wait.

 

1 hour ago, Gerolf said:

You’re entitled to your opinion on “people don’t need this or that to defend their homes” but we could go steps further and find a shit load of things people don’t “need” for their day to day lives, but they have them anyways, and no ban or reform is going to stop much of anything, just like it failed to do with the AWB of the 90s.

Primarily because assault rifles aren't exactly weapons you carry to your local stick-up, robbery, or drive-by. They're big, clunky, make a lot of noise, hard to hide...

 

What the AWB would have prevented is massacres like Las Vegas, or possibly Sandy Hook. Either way, this says absolutely nothing about the need for universal gun registries or background checks before anyone can buy a legal gun, anywhere.

 

You're never going to stop every gun crime, even with the best of measures, even with the most secure ones, and especially not now that 3D printing will allow for the creation of disposable one-shot weaponry. But you will reduce a fair bit of it.

 

1 hour ago, Gerolf said:

It’s also easy for someone to say what someone needs or doesn’t need for home defense and hunting if you’re not a hunter or gun owner, and if you are a gun owner, then you’d think you’d understand why people say things like “they’re coming for ALL of our guns”. Maybe not in one clean swipe, but when they keep changing the definition of assault weapon with each proposed gun control legislation, what would stop them from including whatever they wanted under that description? Eventually, they will get around to the gun you deem “acceptable” for home defense and hunting, and there will be nothing for you to do beyond be complacent at that point. 

But again, I'm not railing against rifles, or pistols, or even shotguns. Those are all weapons that have purposes of hunting or self defense. Does an AR-15? How about a P90?

 

Any reasonable person can tell the difference between an automatic weapon, and a non-automatic weapon. It's very literally "If you hold down the trigger and the gun does the rest, it's automatic." Nobody's saying you can't have pistols, rifles, shotguns - you just can't have automatic pistols, automatic rifles, automatic shotguns. That's military-grade hardware, and you're not in the military, and if you are, it's the government's gun and you're just assigned to use it until you leave the service.

 

I've still yet to see a single good answer from someone on the opposing side of the issue as to why assault weaponry should be freely legal and purchasable for use. It always seems to devolve to blind "We're allowed to own guns" Second Amendment stuff (which virtually never acknowledges the first half of the Second Amendment), or "The AWB failed, so why try again" (which ignores that your average street robber is not going to usually be packing a hard-to-conceal weapon), or "They'll keep redefining it and come for them eventually" (which is pure scaremongering bullshit).

 

And for the record, I have uncles and grandfathers who are/were avid hunters and sportsmen. I'm admittedly not one myself, but I did pick up a thing or two from them - and they damn well didn't feel the need to have more dakka when they hunted.

[DNSKILL5]

The fact that you think the AR-15 is an “automatic weapon” like the P90 and that it works as “ you hold down the trigger and the gun does the rest, it's automatic." says all I needed to know and we can leave it here.

Let’s just agree to disagree, because I won’t be able to convince you and you won’t be able to convince me. 

[Doomkid]

Political argument on DW? Nostalgia central right here!
 

I get so sick of all the euphemisms and beating around the bush that happens in these arguments, it’s sort of why I got sick of them in the first place, but when in Rome..

 

The idea that the right favours free speech more than the left does is hilarious. I keep hearing from all these people about how they’ve been “cancelled by the left”. And I after they’re cancelled I keep hearing from them.. and keep hearing from them.. Almost as if the whole “cancel culture” thing is an overblown talking point used to get people to fear monger about the big bad left, when there’s practically no meat on the bone when you actually dig into the issue. If it’s so prevalent.. why haven’t any of these people who have been cancelled, been fuckin’ cancelled? Having to “slightly rebrand” or lie low for a couple weeks or whatever because you said some blatantly hateful shit does not count, let’s just be forthright about it.

 

Trumpster said people who burn the flag in protest should be put in jail, to the tune of lots of hoots and hollers from the right. They give no more fucks about free speech than the left does. You know that “bastion of free speech” Parler that has recently opened up as a “more open minded alternative” to twitter? You get banned over there for making any left leaning talking points, lol. It’s far more anti-free-speech than Twitter ever has been. By and large, both factions just want a complete echo chamber and wants to control the narrative that is fed to the populous at large.

 

When it comes to war.. is it even a question? Republicans are the ones scared of those mean brown skinned people over there in the Middle East. The right wingers (and democrats) in power love using the smokescreen of “spreading democracy” to fool their low education voter base into thinking we’re spreading “good old fashioned white culture to those desperate hellscapes” when really it’s just a ploy to extract as much oil as possible and keep that war machine raking in the US taxpayer dough. 
 

edit: LOL on the topic of war, how did I forget that the right wing are so terrified of transgender people that they won’t even let them fight and die for our military? Even when someone willingly says “I’m going to hand over my life for the sake of genocidal capitalist ventures” that’s still not good enough for the right wing if your sex isn’t perfectly aligned with your gender identity! Talk about a self-defeating ideology...
 

It’s not the left who want to keep those scary Mehicans down where they belong, last I checked. The more extreme end of the right wing are constantly talking about how “the blacks are just statistically more criminal” while ignoring any compounding factors such as racist policing, most black Americans being born in areas where infrastructure and education has fuck all funding , etc etc.

 

Come on, let’s just be honest about it rather than beating around the bush - racism, xenophobia and a hawkish aggression toward all things non-American are really common on one half of the political spectrum. And it ain’t the left wing. Just the mention of objectivity better functioning healthcare will get buried under the cries of “communism!!” each and every time, because unsurprisingly McCarthyism resonates most strongly with those who have been convinced to fear all things foreign.

 

Are there some Uber-lefties on social media who will call you a “mansplainer” or some annoying crap no matter what you say? Obviously, yes. A pretty small faction who have no power whatsoever. Seeing self-proclaimed “big strong men’s men!!” shaking in their boots because a 5 ft 2 girl with pink hair who has zero influence over the modern cultural zeitgeist called them a bigot on Twitter is funny as hell, but it’s scary when you realise these people think far leftists are the ones in power, and that they’re “fighting back against that power” by supporting billionaires who couldn’t possibly give less of a fuck about the working class or the well-being of the average American.

 

Also, just to be clear on this, I’m talking about the more extremes of both ends. I think the fact that the average American doesn’t vote says clearly that most people don’t give a single, solitary fuck about any of this one way or the other, so for them my only criticism is apathy.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Doomkid

[dew]

3 minutes ago, Gerolf said:

Let’s just agree to disagree, because I won’t be able to convince you and you won’t be able to convince me.  

How about "fuck what you think", because that's your mindset and you're just trying to be polite about it.

[Smouths]

Sticking my hand in this pot of potentially boiling water to point out that the P90 was specifically designed as a compact personal defense firearm.

[DNSKILL5]

Just now, dew said:

How about "fuck what you think", because that's your mindset and you're just trying to be polite about it.

Okay? How about proving the AR-15 is an automatic weapon? There’s no reason for me to agree with something that is NOT true. I’m pretty sure it’s a semi-auto weapon, and there’s actually a difference but I assume you have no idea. 

[Dark Pulse]

3 minutes ago, Gerolf said:

The fact that you think the AR-15 is an “automatic weapon” like the P90 and that it works as “ you hold down the trigger and the gun does the rest, it's automatic." says all I needed to know and we can leave it here.

Let’s just agree to disagree, because I won’t be able to convince you and you won’t be able to convince me. 

Put a bump stock on that AR-15 and it very much is one, yes. To me that counts. Of course, they've since been banned, but there's still a whole lot of them in use, so it's going to take some time before this is no longer the case.

 

But yes, we're not going to convince each other at all. Agreement to disagree affirmed.

[DNSKILL5]

1 minute ago, Dark Pulse said:

But yes, we're not going to convince each other at all. Agreement to disagree affirmed.

Because despite our disagreement, we don’t have to resort to name calling or heated argument and CAN agree to disagree, @dew. I guarantee we’d (Dark Pulse and I) agree on most things outside of this, and I am adult enough to respect his viewpoint even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. 

[dew]

Just now, Gerolf said:

Okay? How about proving the AR-15 is an automatic weapon? There’s no reason for me to agree with something that is NOT true. I’m pretty sure it’s a semi-auto weapon, and there’s actually a difference but I assume you have no idea.  

I don't give a single flying fuck about any of this. You're using gun nut minutiae to pretend that guns simply cannot be regulated at all. It's a kabuki show. Hopefully this shit will get removed from American discourse since Russians accidentally disemboweled the NRA by honeypotting the leadership too much. If only they stuck to the guns and not the dicks.

[Doominator2]

Can we not get this thread banned? I'd kinda like to read it on my next lunch break.

[Doomkid]

Petition to lock rather than delete when it inevitably happens!!

[DNSKILL5]

There’s no reason to lock this thread, that conversation between Dark Pulse and I is now over. I respectfully disagreed with Dark Pulse and we moved on after stating our cases. I said nothing to insult him, nor did any conversation from him or I spark a heated debate between us. I admit I should’ve brought it to PM instead so that it would’ve been between us. 

[Doomkid]

Generally when threads show up like this where we all get our 10 minutes of soapboxing, they end up either locked or Post Hell’d. I prefer locking since you can at least review what people said rather than having it all cast into the abyss. Maybe it’ll keep going though, I could be totally wrong.

[kwc]

@DSC
Welp, after reading this entire thread...

I think it may provide a bit of context towards the turmoil you are feeling inside about how you politically/socially identify.

 

I imagine you are relatively young, so I guess I'll just say:

You are allowed to have strong feelings, just try your best to be true to yourself and to think critically about why you feel the way you feel, where it's coming from. 

While you think things through, try not to let some imagined looking-glass judgement as to whether you're being "strong" or "weak" in your resolve, you're figuring things out like the rest of us. As long as you are approaching things with a curious and critical mind, I don't think you should assign guilt to yourself, you're learning.

 

Also, most importantly, if you're feeling worn out, give yourself a break, you deserve it.

[Pseudonaut]

7 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Everyone remembers the second half of that statement. The first is forgotten by virtually everyone who cries "They'll take our guns." The only Militias in existence right now are the National Guard, Naval Militia, and the Reserves.

 

There are two types of militia: organized and unorganized. Your examples here are limited to the first type. More importantly, just to be clear, there's no part of the amendment where it says anything equating to "this only applies to the militia." If that was the intention, they would have written "the right of the militia to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

 

1 hour ago, dew said:

At no point you tried to integrate the words "well regulated" into your rant. And you know why, it doesn't suit your narrative.

 

In the vernacular at the time the second amendment was written, the phrase "well-regulated" basically meant "well-functioning." It did not mean "lots of lots of laws" or whatever else it is commonly thought to mean today.

 

22 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

The Second Amendment basically says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, because a state requires a militia to defend itself. No more, no less.

 

A bit of an oversimplification. There is a reason that it says "being necessary to the security of a free State." A non-free state could very well be defended with only state-authorized forces. A threat to freedom can and has come from governments within the U.S.; the battle of Athens (Tennessee, not Greece) is an example.

 

40 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

or "They'll keep redefining it and come for them eventually" (which is pure scaremongering bullshit).

 

A strange statement considering that gun laws in this country have been getting increasingly strict for a century. Advocates of gun control never quite seem satisfied for long even after getting what they asked for.

[Cacodemon345]

Another reason why the Republicans are bad: They apparently are waging a war on the 14th amendment and the outgoing president wants to end birthright citizenship in the US.

[CorianderCastor]

Why does Doomworld have such shit politics? This is important: Never idealize people, they will never be what you want them to be, but instead be who they are, and neither you nor them could ever change that.

 

As an American, I can personally tell you that any civilian that thinks they are part of either major political party is an idiot, even more so if they care not about local elections.

[Dark Pulse]

6 minutes ago, Pseudonaut said:

There are two types of militia: organized and unorganized. Your examples here are limited to the first type. More importantly, just to be clear, there's no part of the amendment where it says anything equating to "this only applies to the militia." If that was the intention, they would have written "the right of the militia to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

We are generally well past the point where we need unorganized militia, though. There is no pressing emergency that would require an unorganized militia, because we have organized ones, short of some kind of massive coup d'etat where the military is in on it. And if they are, well, no unorganized militia is going to stand up to a professional military, no matter what kind of guns or body armor they've stockpiled.

 

7 minutes ago, Pseudonaut said:

A bit of an oversimplification. There is a reason that it says "being necessary to the security of a free State." A non-free state could very well be defended with only state-authorized forces. A threat to freedom can and has come from governments within the U.S.; the battle of Athens (Tennessee, not Greece) is an example.

The last time this country had a non-free state would be around 1865 or so, when the Confederacy crumbled. 

 

That said, yes, there are times of rebellions and the necessity of the state-authorized forces to put things down, or clean things up. I didn't say they were useless, just reduced in importance - in other words, states (compared to the founding of this country) have ceded some of their power to the federal government willingly. And for anything truly bad, odds are federal troops and the National Guard would be mobilized anyway in order to enforce law and order, if the state could not or would not do so.

 

12 minutes ago, Pseudonaut said:

A strange statement considering that gun laws in this country have been getting increasingly strict for a century. Advocates of gun control never quite seem satisfied for long even after getting what they asked for.

Makes a bit more sense, IMO, when you consider how increasingly sophisticated, powerful, and deadly guns have become in that same period of time. The guns you can buy today are most certainly a lot more deadly and capable than the ones you could buy fresh off the market in 1920. Even stereotypical stuff like the Tommy Gun wasn't invented until 1928.