[above image] : Abortion rights advocates protested the Supreme Court’s attack on women’s rights when it ended Roe. The Court is expected to intensify its attacks on democracy in the new term. Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
[above image] : Abortion rights advocates protested the Supreme Court’s attack on women’s rights when it ended Roe. The Court is expected to intensify its attacks on democracy in the new term. Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
Except for the fact that those militias were protection FOR the government rather than FROM the government and acting as an alternative to the standing army that the founders were vehemently opposed to and today’s right wing politicians worship.
Nobody seems to understand this simple fact while they’re too busy misinterpreting the 2A.
Yeah, some people tend to ignore sentences, historical context and reality itself in order to maintain that their near-religious obsession with guns is justified and about freedom and safety.
But at the time it literally was about freedom and safety. The colonists needed guns in every house to be ready to fight any empirical powers.
Now days it makes no sense considering the military and political might of the USA, but you can’t disregard Jeffersons words as out of context wrt to guns. Yes in those times they absolutely wanted everyone (white) armed.
Again: even assuming that, there’s a world of difference between the collective ownership and use of a militia’s weapons and personal ownership for personal use.
This is a quote from Thomas Jefferson,
“…The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants…”
No mention of guns or arming everyone. He was likely thinking of something like the French Revolution, which did NOT involve arming everyone with a gun.
You must really know what you’re talking about huh
Apparently to a higher degree than you do if you honestly believe those to be pro-gun statements or directly applicable to a world where the country has the most powerful standing army in the history of humanity 🤷
Yeah I’m sure he just meant like swords and sticks and stuff. Cuz that’s how we won the Revolutionary War!
Everyone knows that.
Fun fact: taking arms doesn’t necessitate personal ownership and use of said arms.
Yes I’m sure Thomas Jefferson, a man whose ideas are literally strewn throughout the constitution, in the wake of the REVOLUTIONARY WAR, just forgot about the 2nd Amendment when saying that.
Think about what you just said.
I’m sure he remembered the 2nd amendment just fine. The 2nd amendment that’s for protecting the state via militias with muskets and cannons, not personal ownership and use of firearms the likes of which they would have been unable to even IMAGINE at the time, let alone predict the consequences of.
For someone pretending to speak for the founding fathers, you sure like to ignore the carefully decided on text of the amendment they wrote in favor of a completely hypothetical interpretation that people who sell guns came up with 🤦
I never said that, but you ascribing scenarios that a long dead man had in mind as opposed to taking their words at face value really tells me that you really, really know what you’re talking about, a lot.
Now you’re just projecting. At face value, he doesn’t mention personal ownership of guns, nor does he even imply anything like that.
The reason I mentioned the French revolution is that other than the US independence war itself, it’s THE rebellion against the government of Franklin’s time and thus more likely than not he’s inspired by it and/or the aforementioned war fought by well-regulated militias, NOT individuals who owned guns for their own personal use.
Projecting what?
We are discussing a Thomas Jefferson quote, not Ben Franklin, and in the quote we are discussing he literally says “let them take arms.”
You’re projecting the fact that you’re unreasonably assuming he meant personal ownership and use onto me by claiming that I’m unreasonably assuming that he didn’t.
The fact of the matter is that “let them take arms” in no way means “let them personally own guns for their own personal use”.
In fact, given the historical context, it’s much more likely that he meant as militias fighting a guerilla war or using them in a coordinated revolutionary effort, neither of which necessitates personal ownership of guns.
The militias are a protection for a free state, just as it says. Not “the government” but a set of institutions that are built by the people, that work to preserve their liberty, that exist only so long as they continue that mission in good faith. “The government” may or may not be a part of that equation, many would argue, including people that are on your side of the spectrum politically, that the government no longer represents the people or protects their freedom at all, so protecting them would not serve the goal of preserving a free state.
Either way, regular people being armed with guns don’t realistically stand a chance in an armed rebellion against the most bloated military and police force in the history of humanity and having a gun makes you MORE likely to be the victim of government tyranny in the form of police murdering you (especially if you’re black), so the point is moot.
But that’s not what they’re talking about when they say the population need to stay armed.
No one will be targeting police. They’ll be targeting politicians and rich businessmen and women.
Of course you’re gonna lose against the army. Against bart okavanaugh? Not so much…
OK, well, maybe. if they’re so harmless in the face of a standing army then why not let them have their guns?
Because their guns are extremely harmful to themselves and their fellow people. Gun violence is the number one cause of death in children and it’s way up there for adults too.
I’ve looked at those stats and I’m not really convinced.
Half of gun deaths are suicides. In those cases, a desire to die is the cause of death. Something is deeply wrong in our society if children want to kill themselves in epidemic numbers, and we need to figure out what that is and fix it.
Out of the rest, it’s almost entirely violence from organized crime. That violence doesn’t go away if you ban guns, at best other weapons get used, at worst criminals just don’t obey the gun laws. When two rival groups are fighting over a crack dealing monopoly in a neighborhood, if you blame the result of that on the tools used you’re ignoring another real problem. Why is America so addicted to drugs. Just like with suicide, I think we need to figure out what’s driving that.
Something in our society is very very wrong, our society is sick and the symptoms are teen suicide (and veteran suicide and suicide as a result of divorce…) and widespread drug addiction. Guns show up in those dynamics simply because there are a lot of guns in America.
Big surprise there 🙄
A gun is one of if not THE quickest and easiest ways to do it and, in the case of more difficult and lengthier methods, people can and surprisingly often WILL change their minds before it’s too late. No such opportunity with a bullet to the brain and thus an abundance of guns DOES contribute significantly to the number of suicides.
True, but that doesn’t mean that making it easier for them to act on that despair isn’t a bad idea.
I’m gonna need a source on that.
Other weapons are less effective for easily killing, so their use in stead would significantly reduce the number of deaths.
As for criminals not obeying gun laws, the overabundance of (at first) legally produced and sold for personal use guns makes it much easier for them to illegally aquire and use guns than it is in countries with stricter regulations.
The tools used makes it easier to kill and thus makes them more likely to kill. To ignore that means excess deaths.
Drug abuse is mostly about genetic predisposition towards addiction, using the drugs to self-medicate or ignore other problems, or frequently both.
The main problems connected to drug abuse and drug dealing are societal issues such as poverty, lack of opportunity and an oppressive society not giving some people any other options.
So close! There being a lot of guns exacerbates those “dynamics” dramatically, so the logical approach is to deal with the root causes AND the aggravating factors such as guns.
In summary, more guns equal more deaths and thus common sense regulations are needed to save lives.
You’re going to need a source on the claim that most violent crime is in the furtherance of other profitable crime? You ever heard a phrase such as “if weed were legal then people wouldn’t kill each other selling weed”? I thought this was settled science. Is it so outlandish an idea that most people who kill do it because it is profitable for them to do so that you want me to google it for you?
Alright, so let me ask you, what does “common sense” gun control look like?