Thanks for putting this out there. I especially like the part about setting an example.
We complain here constantly about government overreach, but no one is out demonstrating. No one is pointing out how the system include the military and police, and that these are the people who are often actively doing the bidding of those trying to push the envelope.
Stop allowing our agents in the government to use violence to spread the interests of our banking elite across the globe.
I dunno if that's what you meant.... but that's how it explodes in my brain when mixed with all the things I have concerns over.
Tanks, planes, bazookas and the like probably do need to be legal to own, but the cost is prohibitive. The reason guns trump those in terms of a free society is that those are weapons whose usage is largely strategic. You can park a tank close to a warehouse, or use it to blow a warehouse to kingdom come, but it is nigh useless in house to house fighting.
The problem is we have a large standing army and no militia, and people have become accustomed to this and also enamored of mocking the concept because there is little to any military training in the average person's life anymore.
But really, that is one of the problems the NRA and Republicans should address. Without taking the second ammendment seriously, they are going to lose this political fight for us by not insisting on the well regulated militia portion, and they are not interested because their consitutuency (Oh, and the Democrats as well) is actually the same group that want us enslaved.
I find it hilarious that this site is absolutely swarming with people who claim the government is often out of hand, then turn around and cry "paranoid" when people point out that, if the government is out of hand, you need to be prepared to fight its armed agents if it comes to that.
Not a single one of the revolutions that made democracy in the west a reality could have happened if the populace had not somehow found a way to arm itself. Why make that harder than it has to be?
I said, "Because the single most frequent precursor to totalitarianism is to disarm the population, or that part of it you are about to oppress?"
You said, "He gave guns to everyone but Jews."
...............................?
Exactly.
How would slavery in America have worked out if blacks had had guns?
The thing is you do not even try to read or understand. You have the media talking point embedded in your brain, and it just pops out of you anytime the trigger concept is put forward without conscious thought on your part.
I read this ridiculous blog the other day. Thom Hartmann... I loved his "Unequal Rights", but on this he is so obviously out of his gord it pains me to have to say I ever agreed with him about anything. Even in that article he cites specifically the fact that the concern was that in other nations militias had been disarmed, and thus rendered useless.
The history of the right to bear arms for this nation goes at least back to the Glorious Revolution, where the government attempted to disarm protestants so it could violate their religious freedoms. That's just historical fact.
I'll click the link, but I am about 99% sure this is the same one I read. It seems to have been released to every major lefty organization in the blogosphere within the last week.
Except that there are very specific reasons, well documented ones, as to why they included the second amendment. And none of those reasons are archaic.
Again, we now have a huge standing army and hardly any functional militia. We are in the perfect position to be overtaken by a populist totalitarian. This is not some wild eyed fantasy. This is how that happens. And you're practically begging for it to get worse.
Look, everyone with a heart beating in their chest hates to see these shootings, but there is good research that shows that these shootings happen in no small part because they happen where people are not allowed to carry their own guns. The solution that does not violate the second amendment is painfully clear. Legalize gun possession in all public places.
I have an aunt that takes her gun in her purse pretty much everywhere she goes. She has yet to blow anyone's brains out.
You might try having more faith in your friends and neighbors than you have in the very government you complain about violating your rights the other 99% of the time you are here.
I dunno. Name me another "lobbying" organization where the customer sends the lobbying arm of the industry money specifically so they can lobby? I'm not thinking of one off hand.....
Looks more like a corporate sponsor for a grass roots cause to me.
I'm hard pressed to figure out what part of this post isn't anti-second-amendment.
You're viciously mocking the largest pro second amendment organization in the country because they "gasp" made some video games that would introduce people to guns. The games, by your author's own admission, are significantly different in not being splatter fest games where you shoot at people. And yet your author acts as if it is the most ridiculous thing in the UNIVERSE that someone would think they are different from the video games the NRA complains about.
In what conceivable UNIVERSE does that make a lick of sense?
There is absolutely, positively nothing about this article that is not anti second amendment. It is nothing but a broad frontal attack on the credibility of the largest group in the USA that supports that amendment, and anyone daft enough to be a member or think anything mildly positive about it.
As if that weren't enough, the two articles linked are also ridiculously anti second amendment.
I have said this before, but just because I think it is so cute, I will say it again. Aztecs used to like to play a game, and the winner of the game got to be a human sacrifice.
Culture affects behavior.
The medical issue is just specious. My second favorite already used joke on this thread - what are the doctors going to do, prescribe you a gun safety pill? Or is it that doctors have special training in telling people, "Hey, keep that locked up would you?"
Putting practices into place where your doctor starts nosing around about what you own is just a violation of privacy rights, which you appear to dislike only when it involves a computer I guess.
Anyhow.... it's not like I am going to stop reading Techdirt over it, but trust me, you come across as anti second amendment.
Because Hitler took over before there were modern weapons and any such thing as democracy?
Because the single most frequent precursor to totalitarianism is to disarm the population, or that part of it you are about to oppress?
Seriously, where do you even live in your mind?
Democrats shriek the loudest about the possibility of their opposition being Fascist (although that seems to be changing). And yet you have no fear whatsoever that you will disarm the populace and then face a popular Republican fascist who will demolish your rights?
Fascinating.
I guess what's the most amazing as that you have this sense that you are intellectually superior while having absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
So very convincing when you post a hoity toity preachy post and then get your facts all screwy. But anyhow, just chuckle at me and try to take the post seriously anyhow, because it is important stuff.
I mean, seriously. We already jail a larger percentage of our population than China. Do we really need another excuse for Uncle Sam to come nosing around looking to jail some more.
I will say this in mild support of your general sentiments. Neither party has taken Section I Article 8 of the Constitution seriously for a long, long time. We now have exactly what the Constitution was designed to prevent - a massive standing army and no effective militia. So I suppose you are to be excused for having no clue what you are talking about in the historical sense concerning the need to protect one's self from one's government.
By the time the totalitarian is in place, it's too late. How long has China been like China is now? A looong, loooong, loooooooong freakin' time. Maybe always. Look into it. Is that the model you want for the world going forward? Or something more like what we have?
If you want what we have, you need to take some responsibility for it.
It's amazing to me how little people understand of history.
The right to bear arms has origins going back to the Glorious Revolution, when the government in England began disarming Protestants so it could more easily violate their rights.
What is happening in Libya and other places is the result of governments very much like the that being in power for a long, long time. When the power shifts a little, there is no consensus, and so everyone goes crazy.
With a populace that is regularly consulted about how they wish to be governed, this is not a danger, though I note our government is less and less concerned about how people WISH to be governed.
THAT is the issue. We could end up like Libya and other places if we continue to be pressed into subservience by our own government.
And no, it is NOT easy at all to put down an armed populace with tanks and bombs and so forth, because it is a decentralized threat.
Finally, last I checked Khadaffi (However they are spelling his name these days) is dead, so... there you go.
One of the right's complaints about Bush was he was soft on immigration. True. Obama is harder on immigration? I'll grant that, though I really don't care. My point is that no progress has been made on fixing immigration.
I just feel you are only disappointed in Obama insofar as he has not been liberal enough. I, on the other hand, am disappointed in him from every conceivable direction, and can relate to conservatives who have concerns like Barnes'. Of course, I never voted for him to begin with... I just happen not to have voted for Romney either. I left the darned spot blank for the first time since I was ... what, 25 I guess.
Sorry if I seemed huffy. I took a step away from the computer. LOL
I can't see as he did anything at all wrong. The accusation is he somehow inconvenienced JSTOR and/or MIT. MIT has their policy in place specifically to enable folks like Aaron. JSTOR is a business whose model locks important information behind a paywall - information that people need in order to be informed citizens. I find them to be the ones in the wrong, and the only good thing I can say about them is they were not the ones who pressed charges.
My understanding is he already apologized to them, returned(?)/deleted the downloaded articles, and even paid them some small settlement. This despite the fact that I imagine he feels much as I do that JSTOR is the one in the wrong, along with the entire IP infrastructure of our nation.
I do apologize for my tone inasmuch as it seems to have struck a nerve with you though. It just seemed the tack you were taking was one of trying to find some little shred of something to give two sides to the story, whereas I really do not think that is warranted.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Awesome post
We complain here constantly about government overreach, but no one is out demonstrating. No one is pointing out how the system include the military and police, and that these are the people who are often actively doing the bidding of those trying to push the envelope.
Stop allowing our agents in the government to use violence to spread the interests of our banking elite across the globe.
I dunno if that's what you meant.... but that's how it explodes in my brain when mixed with all the things I have concerns over.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Asked and answered
The problem is we have a large standing army and no militia, and people have become accustomed to this and also enamored of mocking the concept because there is little to any military training in the average person's life anymore.
But really, that is one of the problems the NRA and Republicans should address. Without taking the second ammendment seriously, they are going to lose this political fight for us by not insisting on the well regulated militia portion, and they are not interested because their consitutuency (Oh, and the Democrats as well) is actually the same group that want us enslaved.
I find it hilarious that this site is absolutely swarming with people who claim the government is often out of hand, then turn around and cry "paranoid" when people point out that, if the government is out of hand, you need to be prepared to fight its armed agents if it comes to that.
Not a single one of the revolutions that made democracy in the west a reality could have happened if the populace had not somehow found a way to arm itself. Why make that harder than it has to be?
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
You said, "He gave guns to everyone but Jews."
...............................?
Exactly.
How would slavery in America have worked out if blacks had had guns?
The thing is you do not even try to read or understand. You have the media talking point embedded in your brain, and it just pops out of you anytime the trigger concept is put forward without conscious thought on your part.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
Next.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Slants and Observations
On the post: Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide
Re: Tom Dolan
That's hilarious.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
Google it. It's out on all the leftist blogs all over the internet.
Way to be a sheeple.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: This blog amazes me
The history of the right to bear arms for this nation goes at least back to the Glorious Revolution, where the government attempted to disarm protestants so it could violate their religious freedoms. That's just historical fact.
I'll click the link, but I am about 99% sure this is the same one I read. It seems to have been released to every major lefty organization in the blogosphere within the last week.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: This blog amazes me
Again, we now have a huge standing army and hardly any functional militia. We are in the perfect position to be overtaken by a populist totalitarian. This is not some wild eyed fantasy. This is how that happens. And you're practically begging for it to get worse.
Look, everyone with a heart beating in their chest hates to see these shootings, but there is good research that shows that these shootings happen in no small part because they happen where people are not allowed to carry their own guns. The solution that does not violate the second amendment is painfully clear. Legalize gun possession in all public places.
I have an aunt that takes her gun in her purse pretty much everywhere she goes. She has yet to blow anyone's brains out.
You might try having more faith in your friends and neighbors than you have in the very government you complain about violating your rights the other 99% of the time you are here.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: This blog amazes me
Looks more like a corporate sponsor for a grass roots cause to me.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
You're viciously mocking the largest pro second amendment organization in the country because they "gasp" made some video games that would introduce people to guns. The games, by your author's own admission, are significantly different in not being splatter fest games where you shoot at people. And yet your author acts as if it is the most ridiculous thing in the UNIVERSE that someone would think they are different from the video games the NRA complains about.
In what conceivable UNIVERSE does that make a lick of sense?
There is absolutely, positively nothing about this article that is not anti second amendment. It is nothing but a broad frontal attack on the credibility of the largest group in the USA that supports that amendment, and anyone daft enough to be a member or think anything mildly positive about it.
As if that weren't enough, the two articles linked are also ridiculously anti second amendment.
I have said this before, but just because I think it is so cute, I will say it again. Aztecs used to like to play a game, and the winner of the game got to be a human sacrifice.
Culture affects behavior.
The medical issue is just specious. My second favorite already used joke on this thread - what are the doctors going to do, prescribe you a gun safety pill? Or is it that doctors have special training in telling people, "Hey, keep that locked up would you?"
Putting practices into place where your doctor starts nosing around about what you own is just a violation of privacy rights, which you appear to dislike only when it involves a computer I guess.
Anyhow.... it's not like I am going to stop reading Techdirt over it, but trust me, you come across as anti second amendment.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: This blog amazes me
Because Hitler took over before there were modern weapons and any such thing as democracy?
Because the single most frequent precursor to totalitarianism is to disarm the population, or that part of it you are about to oppress?
Seriously, where do you even live in your mind?
Democrats shriek the loudest about the possibility of their opposition being Fascist (although that seems to be changing). And yet you have no fear whatsoever that you will disarm the populace and then face a popular Republican fascist who will demolish your rights?
Fascinating.
I guess what's the most amazing as that you have this sense that you are intellectually superior while having absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
On the post: Carmen Ortiz Releases Totally Bogus Statement Concerning The Aaron Swartz Prosecution
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Ok not really, but it was still clever....
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
So very convincing when you post a hoity toity preachy post and then get your facts all screwy. But anyhow, just chuckle at me and try to take the post seriously anyhow, because it is important stuff.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
I mean, seriously. We already jail a larger percentage of our population than China. Do we really need another excuse for Uncle Sam to come nosing around looking to jail some more.
I will say this in mild support of your general sentiments. Neither party has taken Section I Article 8 of the Constitution seriously for a long, long time. We now have exactly what the Constitution was designed to prevent - a massive standing army and no effective militia. So I suppose you are to be excused for having no clue what you are talking about in the historical sense concerning the need to protect one's self from one's government.
By the time the totalitarian is in place, it's too late. How long has China been like China is now? A looong, loooong, loooooooong freakin' time. Maybe always. Look into it. Is that the model you want for the world going forward? Or something more like what we have?
If you want what we have, you need to take some responsibility for it.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
The right to bear arms has origins going back to the Glorious Revolution, when the government in England began disarming Protestants so it could more easily violate their rights.
What is happening in Libya and other places is the result of governments very much like the that being in power for a long, long time. When the power shifts a little, there is no consensus, and so everyone goes crazy.
With a populace that is regularly consulted about how they wish to be governed, this is not a danger, though I note our government is less and less concerned about how people WISH to be governed.
THAT is the issue. We could end up like Libya and other places if we continue to be pressed into subservience by our own government.
And no, it is NOT easy at all to put down an armed populace with tanks and bombs and so forth, because it is a decentralized threat.
Finally, last I checked Khadaffi (However they are spelling his name these days) is dead, so... there you go.
On the post: Carmen Ortiz Releases Totally Bogus Statement Concerning The Aaron Swartz Prosecution
Amen
"Or is it to appease the God of Capitalism, the Coin must grease the Palms of Due Process...." Awesome.
On the post: Carmen Ortiz Releases Totally Bogus Statement Concerning The Aaron Swartz Prosecution
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twisted
I just feel you are only disappointed in Obama insofar as he has not been liberal enough. I, on the other hand, am disappointed in him from every conceivable direction, and can relate to conservatives who have concerns like Barnes'. Of course, I never voted for him to begin with... I just happen not to have voted for Romney either. I left the darned spot blank for the first time since I was ... what, 25 I guess.
Sorry if I seemed huffy. I took a step away from the computer. LOL
On the post: Carmen Ortiz Releases Totally Bogus Statement Concerning The Aaron Swartz Prosecution
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
My understanding is he already apologized to them, returned(?)/deleted the downloaded articles, and even paid them some small settlement. This despite the fact that I imagine he feels much as I do that JSTOR is the one in the wrong, along with the entire IP infrastructure of our nation.
I do apologize for my tone inasmuch as it seems to have struck a nerve with you though. It just seemed the tack you were taking was one of trying to find some little shred of something to give two sides to the story, whereas I really do not think that is warranted.
Thanks for your response, though.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
It's an invasion of privacy. But I guess as long as the government isn't hacking your email, privacy is meaningless?
I just don't get it.
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