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Originally Posted by Jim in CT;1129750OK. [B

So here are your arguments (not just you arguments, but what everyone on your side, is saying) against any proposals that are designed to make it harder to carry out mass shootings:

(1) I need my bump stocks and high capacity magazines in case the US military wages war against me (because that will allow me to stand up to Delta Force soldiers and Seal Team 6)
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No, I don't think the military, at this time, would war against me. At this time, I believe, or maybe foolishly hope, that our military commanders know that the federal military should not be used against U.S. citizens, especially on U.S. soil. It has been postulated that a President could order U.S. military strikes on US soil only in extraordinary circumstances. Citizens disagreeing with an administration is not an extraordinary circumstance. At least, not at this time.

(2) if we ban things like bump stocks and high capacity magazines, that's not a 100% guarantee that there will be zero mass shootings in the future, so unless the law is 100% perfect, it's not worth pursuing. Because unless you can save all lives, saving "some" lives is not a worthy goal.

No, it is not about numbers for me. It's about freedom. Those who destroy others freedom are the enemy. They are not free nor believe or support freedom. They depend on the victimization of others.

(3) if you take away things like bump stocks and magazines, we are irrevocably down the slippery slope whereby the feds will take my handgun and put me in a concentration camp. It's not possible to ban some things, without going to the extreme of banning everything. Moderation is not possible.

Moderation is a fine thing. It is especially good when applied to personal tendencies. It is not so fine in applying law. Law is definitive. Moderating what is defined blurs the delineation and leads to its dissolution. "Interpreting" law in moderate, fuzzy, indeterminate ways, is a sure way to use it as a means to achieve the opposite of what the law was meant to enforce. Or to make it a tool for whatever the interpreter prefers.

And there can be no end to moderation except extinction. What one has moderated can be further moderated, until it no longer exists. That is what can happen to law when it is moderated.

Laws can be amended, or removed, by consent of the governed, in a free society. Such changes must be defined.

(4) it's inappropriate to try and prevent mass shootings, because there are bigger problems in the world right now, and talking about addressing mass shootings, necessarily means that you don't care about people who die in other ways.

Never said any of that. Free speech, which I hope does not get moderated out of existence, is a wonderful, and historically rare, gift.

I was talking about this issue with some conservative friends of mine last night, all of them regurgitating slight variations of one of the above arguments. There is no talking to my friends on this subject, they just put their fingers in their ears and refuse to listen. It's like talking to Sandra Fluke about abortion.

I've listened to your arguments. They seem, to me, to be based on your emotional reactions to events, and a lack of trust in a free people's owning lethal things, especially things that can quickly kill in large numbers. Because some, who are not truly free but possessed by a need for power over others or are mentally deranged, will misuse lethal weapons, all others, who are free of such dangers and believe in and respect the freedom of others must be "moderated" in their desire to own various weapons.

You, and those on "your side", say we don't "need" such things. The "need" argument should not be used in order to restrict freedom. Being reduced to "need" leaves little to be free of and free about. And to further your arguments of need, utility, and danger, you, and "your side," bring in notions of buying nuclear weapons, or tanks, or other behemoth weapons . . . just in case, I guess, that could actually happen. Do you know of anyone who "needs" or even wants such things? Or how it is even possible to legally buy them? Do you "need" moderation of law so badly that you use such examples?

Even it were possible to buy ultra destructive weapons in times of peace, what about another possibility. You, or at least "your side" (whatever your or my "side" is) don't think we need to be concerned about government becoming tyrannical. (I realize that word applied to modern socialistic type government is antiquated, kind of kooky or conspiratorial.) But if it's possible for common folks in a modern democracy to buy weapons of mass destruction and then use them to kill huge populations, presumably for fun, or madness, or power, why is it not possible for a modern, democratic government, which can interpret and moderate existing law into means of restricting freedom, to also use its weapons to consolidate power in order to totally mandate what freedom is or isn't. If you wish to restrict the vast majority of common citizens in their right to arms for what you consider a noble purpose, how do you restrict a government from using its power, for supposedly benevolent purposes, over the people whom it is supposed to serve?

You want a "reasonable" moderation of law in order to save some lives. What is a reasonable moderation of government power over ALL the people? Is the power of the people to resist tyrannical government reasonable? What reasonable law gives the people such power to resist tyrannical force? Hand guns and limited magazines? What is the people's power if it is possible, by moderation of law, to limit the people's ability to defend themselves against government force?

Do you say that Democracy is the people's ultimate power? The power to vote? The last and most important resort? (They do vote in dictatorships.) Democracy is rule by the majority. Essentially, in its most negative state, it is mob rule. If the mob is cultivated by the government, educationally, financially, morally, philosophically, politically--as Progressive ideology strives to do--and has persuaded the majority that the ruler's "reasonable" fairness, largesse, and control, is right and just, the power of the vote is sealed into the hands of government. The vote is bought and paid for by that government and sustained by its propaganda of mass justice. "Freedom" in that instance becomes a word, if still even used, to mean what that government says it means. And, what Progressives mean by that word is what they prescribe. And the freedoms they promise, in order to keep the people happy, are government provided "freedoms" FROM such things as want or emotional or physical suffering. They are not freedoms OF something individuals inherently possess . . . and which the government cannot abridge or deny. By "interpreting," thus changing, the word into meaning what Progressives want it to mean, freedom, no longer exists unless they say it does.

If such a state of affairs has already been achieved, it may well be too late for those who believe in the ultimate value of individual rights to resist a benevolent despotism. The only recourse is the inevitable financial collapse of such a society. Which could lead to another revolution to return to a classically liberal one, or for society to further collapse into recent forms of harsher tyranny, or even ancient ones that could last for thousands of years.

Isn't absolute adherence to the Constitution, not a moderate interpretation of it, a means to resist such a collapse?

And isn't the actual purpose of the Second Amendment one of the expressed points in the Constitution meant to give the people the power to resist tyranny? If the people cannot be trusted to support the actual freedom the Constitution gives them because some very few of them might use their freedom to kill others, then the Constitution should, indeed, be a useless relic.

But can they, on the whole, if they understand what freedom really is, be trusted not to misuse the power given to them for defense against tyranny? If they can, so informed, be trusted, what is the danger of the Second Amendment in its actual meaning and intent? Why must it be submitted to the process of moderation, which will become incessant until the Amendment is erased?

I think your other suggestion of returning to moral and other values would greatly limit the abuse of the Second Amendment, as well as the abuse of the Constitution as a whole. We should actually educate our citizens, beginning in childhood, on the real meaning of freedom, why it is necessary for the fulfillment of wonderful notions that are used to despair it such as fairness, equality, and justice. It would help to teach them the value of economics and how economy can work to reign in not only their personal financial destruction, but to reign in government spending into fiscal unsustainability. It would help to teach them in depth the reasoning of and final drafting of the Constitution, how and why it protects real freedom, and the dangers of interpreting it on personal emotions and notions of social justice. And much more teaching of various values that create a successful society of free individuals.

But, in my opinion, avoiding that path because it is deemed too difficult, or because those who teach don't believe any of it anyway, and instead keep tinkering on meanings of words, changing history, marginalizing the Constitution, and embracing government as the answer rather than personal responsibility, furthers the path to tyranny with the constant little "moderations" of law instead of teaching and instilling liberty and right living.