Taboo subject -- gun-owning pot-smokers?

I'm on a college campus right now, and I could point out to you kids who are walking zombies. They have smoked so much weed, we refer to them as "burnt out".

I do not like any type of drug. We on the board frown upon mixing alcohol and guns, I would think that weed would fall into the same catagory. Just my two cents.

I do not smoke anything, or use any other drugs. IMHO, as long as the weed and guns are not mixed, there is no problems.

Every now and then, I like to open my car up and get it moving. Should I not own guns because I willfully disobey speed limits?

Pot use is stupid. I've never tried it, and never will.

I don't know any gun owners who smoke pot, and if I did, I wouldn't post about it on the web. I value my friendships more than that.

I'm against it being illegal, for a whole bunch of reasons -- not least of which is that I value my civil rights, and the War on Drugs has provided the gubmint with lots 'n lots of excuses to violate civil rights. Alcohol was once outlawed for all the same reasons drugs are outlawed. But drug prohibition is bad for all the same reasons alcohol prohibition was bad.

As for your last paragraph, see my sig. Having taken responsibility for my own moral choices, I do not find anything magical in the words "legal" or "illegal."

pax

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Personally, I have no problem with the concept of grown-ups using pot in a responsible manner, same as I have no problem with the concepts of grown-ups drinking in a responsible manner.

By responsible, I mean that car keys are hung up, guns put away, and not picked back up until sober again.

Professionally, I'm expected to look down on the mere possession of marijuana by anyone.

Because of the (admittedly silly) legal status of marijuana and the already beleaguered status of gun-owners in much of the media, I would ask that anyone who is a gun-owning pot-smoker PLEASE keep one or both of their stutuses private and not allow anyone to know; it can only hurt our cause.

The argument that smoking pot will make you a stoned shooter is no more feasible than the argument that the man with a couple of bottles of wine in his kitchen cabinet is likely to commit a heinous act with his guns or car keys. The mere ability to commit a harmful act does not mandate that you will commit that harmful act. To say otherwise is, quite frankly, to adopt the logic of the hoplophobes.


Disclosure: I have never smoked marijuana, nor used any illegal drug, in my life. The decision not to was not out of moral outrage, but out of respect for the serious complications that doing so could create in my life. I don't smoke even cigarettes, because I see no benefit and large deficits from doing so. I do drink in moderation, but with care and concern for the consequences of my actions.
I have one pretty serious vice, though: I'm quite involved with coffee. All kinds. Drip, espresso, perc, pressed, black, creamed, frothed, iced, frozen, and even the beans themselves. I have something akin to a coffee shrine in my kitchen. There are drawbacks to this: it plays hell with my groups.

Pot use is stupid. I've never tried it, and never will.

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Tomatoes are poison and the world is flat. Never is a very long time.



THC is a drug just as alcohol. Neither mix with gunpowder.

The problem is not specific to certain substances and it doesn't much matter if the substances are legal or not. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about alcohol, recreational drugs, perscription drugs, or over the counter medications.

It's much like driving. If you are under the influence, you are changing your perception of reality around you. In worse cases, it's enough that you cannot rely on your judgment of right or wrong anymore. In most cases, it negatively affects your emotional responses, your motor skills and increases reaction time. If you do enough, the effects can become semi-permanent.

IMO, when you allow yourself to become inebrated, you are willingly giving up the right for self defense (along with the priviledge to drive a vehicle). Not because of the law, but because you have hindered your judgement, weakened your physical abilities to be aware of your surroundings (sight, sound, attention to detail, etc) and reduced your ability to react to threats. To put it simply, armed or not, you make yourself vulnerable to attack and are just relying on luck to keep yourself out of trouble.

I do not do pot, I am for legalization.

I think the war on drugs has done far more damage to our society then the drugs themselves have. For that reason alone it is enough to end prohibition (it didn't work for alchohol, it isn't working for drugs). Add in personal responsibility/personal rights and it is an unjust law.

That said, as long as it is illegal it is stupid for anyone to use them. Not even getting into the health risks and the character issues (much like habitual drunks, there is a serious issue with a person who needs that "escape"), as long as it is illegal the risk should outweigh the rewards for anyone, especially a gun owner. If you are a student, you can forever lose your right to federal financial aid (as well as get expelled from school). If you are in the military, or work for (or hope to work for) an intelligence agency, it can end your career (or future career). Even civilian government positions can be risked by drug use. Of course there's the issue so dear to many of us here, if you are caught using drugs you can lose your guns, and your right to buy more guns, forever.

Still, I do believe it should be a personal choice.

My personal feeling is that owning guns is a serious responsibility and that willfully violating laws, no matter how "bad" the laws are ... is just not ethically correct.

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While I am certainly not arguing that the drug laws are on the level of my forthcoming examples, I cannot agree with your statement at all. Sometimes, the only ethical choice is breaking certain laws. "Willfully violating laws, no matter how "bad" the laws are...is just not ethically correct"? Wow, and I thought the abolitionists who smuggled escaped slaves to freedom were doing the ethical thing. I thought that Rosa Parks was doing the ethical thing. I thought the non-Jewish families in Europe who hid Jews from the Nazis were doing the ethical thing. Thank you for educating me. :banghead:

:banghead:

Weed is no different than alcohol and guns are much like cars in this respect. I have no problem with people smoking pot and owning guns so long as they don't use them at the same time.

Personally, I have no idea what people see in weed. I have tried it a couple of times when I used to hang out with a certain crowd and I found out it does nothing interesting for me. If I want to be hungry and sleepy I can skip lunch and work overtime. I get paid for overtime. I bet that if it wasn't illegal it wouldn't be half as popular.

I am for legalization for multiple reasons. Just because I think it's silly is no reason to deny it to others. If that was a good reason we'd ban boy bands, reality TV and political campaigns.

Drugs are bad, mmmmkay?

Quite frankly, I couldn't care less about what someone chooses to smoke, snort, inject, lick, or drink. In the course of my life, I've known a number of drug users, all of them functional members of society.

There is no functional difference between the arguments in favor of banning drugs and banning guns.

Anyone who denies this is either engaging in doublethink or hypocrisy.

Or that we all should simply live by our own moral code, and not worry about the silly laws forced on us by our government?

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Implicit in this statement is the assumption that the government is the ultimate moral authority.

You so don't want to go there.

I was simply curious how those who just to ignore some laws square that with the aspect of living with a firm belief in the Constitution (for those to whom the 2nd Amendment is important) of this country ... implicit in that, is that citizens will live within a framework of laws created by the government.

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I can't recall which case it was, and someone will be along shortly to back this up, but the Supreme Court has ruled that any law that is repugnant to the Constitution is inherently null and void.

Old Dog ~

So Pax, are you then saying that we all should just pick and choose which laws we shall obey? Or that we all should simply live by our own moral code, and not worry about the silly laws forced on us by our government?

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Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

The alternative is to believe that just because Hitler passed a law saying you must not shelter Jews from being hauled off to concentration camps, it was immoral to shelter Jews in Hiter's Germany. (Before I am confronted with screams of "that's different!", I'd like anyone who is tempted to say that to ask themselves, exactly how is it different? And who decides whether it is different or not?)

Whether a thing is against the law or not may dictate what you do on a pragmatic level. But it can have no effect whatsoever on your moral responsibilities.

Hmm ... I do value my friendships as well; having not identified nor "outed" anyone who would have anything to worry about or take offense (indeed, I've discussed this subject with them), I'm left to wonder why you made that statement.

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I made the statement to make it plain that I do not know anyone who uses pot, and that if I did, I wouldn't be posting about it on the web. Full stop.

pax

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. – Martin Luther King Jr.

So Pax, are you then saying that we all should just pick and choose which laws we shall obey? Or that we all should simply live by our own moral code, and not worry about the silly laws forced on us by our government?

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Well, that's life, pretty much. As long as you don't mind the fact that you're breaking the law, nothing magical is going to happen to you. Sure, there's a possibility that you might get caught breaking the law.

The fact is that whether or not we want to acknowledge it, this is life. If we break the law and don't get caught, we get away with it. If break the law but are morally justified (say, in an unusual case of self-defense), we can still be prosecuted. Law and moral are not synonyms.

I don't give a hoot about criminals. We all are criminals. I care about those who hurt others, willfully and unwillfully. If those are two in the same, all the better.

Ragardless of whether one thinks drug laws are ill conceived or not, using pot as a gunowner is a pretty stupid decision. It places your legal RKBA in jeapordy every day.

Pot use, as is the use of any drug, is stupid. It decreases and/or eliminates your control of your mental and physical faculties. WRT to alcohol vs marijuana, though, I would say that alcohol is far more 'benign', simply because though one can consume a moderate amount of alcohol in, say, a social setting, and still function quite normally, the same can't be said of pot.

"My personal feeling is that owning guns is a serious responsibility and that willfully violating laws, no matter how "bad" the laws are ... is just not ethically correct. How does everyone else feel about this?"

I would disagree with this, however. Illegality does not equate to immorality.

Personal consumption weed is legal under Alaska state law...so are guns....

Personal consumption weed as I recall is not a crime under Fed law...

Solution...move to Alaska

WilddontbogartthatammopassitovertomeAlaska

Well, I've smoked it. It was a long time ago, back in the 70s, when it was practically legal and the only way to get in real trouble was to get caught selling. The effects of the pot alone are not any worse than being moderately drunk; however, smoking and drinking together can get you really messed up. I don't believe that its use leads to harder drugs, I believe that being mixed up in the illegal drug culture and running with people that use drugs leads to using harder drugs. I really don't see why alcohol should be legal and THC illegal, it's just politics.

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't do it anymore. At nearly 50 years old, I have enough trouble thinking clearly so I don't do anything to alter what's left of my mind. That includes drinking also, two beers with dinner at the steakhouse is about my limit now. Neither is worth loosing my CCW over. The main reason is my responsibility to take care of my family. When you have a family you have to be ready, at a moments notice, to take care of them. And I'm not just talking about the burgler/home invasion scenarios we like to talk about on the gun forums. What about accidents? What if my kid was playing football in the yard or wrecked his bike and needed first aid and/or transportation to the ER and I'm in the recliner too stoned or drunk to do it? If my daughter's car breaks down I have to be ready to go get her, can't if I'm too drunk to drive. I am responsible for the lives of others so I must be alert and able to think clearly at all times.

Everything in moderation. Don't mix the two (guns and intoxicants).
I experimented with a little of this and that in my youth...so I'll not pass judgement either way. There is a difference between booze and pot though. A cold beer or two can be consumed with little effect....while getting a "little" stoned is a tough task. However, I've never seen anyone get violent, or have the desire to be Dale Earnhardt while stoned. From the legal angle, I have no problem with someone getting stoned at home, listening to jazz, and gorging themselves on cheetos....there are far more important things deserving the attention of the police and courts.

My only problem with pot is that it is illegal.
Aside from that I would rather catch my kids smoking pot than drinking or smoking cigarettes for that matter.

MJ is not a gateway drug but to get it, as Wayne D said, you have to generally run with the gateway crowd.

The only reason I don't and wouldn't smoke dope now is because the goverment has determined that my employer has the right to invade the privacy of my urine to determine that I am a good upstanding citizen worhty of employment.

Old Dog ~

From an old post of mine:

I believe that certain truths are so obvious that they do not require an elaborate proof, and so obvious that it is all but ridiculous to attempt one. Among these truths is the obvious truth that all human beings are equally responsible for their own consciences, behaviors, and actions. I believe that all human beings have a right to live their own lives, to do whatever pleases them as long as it doesn't interfere with the basic rights of others, and to be free to make their own decisions about their own lives.

I believe that the only reason people agree to submit themselves to a government is to protect these basic and fundamental human rights.

Thus, government derives its powers not from force, nor from the moral obligation of its citizens towards it, but from the free, voluntary, and willing consent of ordinary people. The power of government comes from people who agree to be bound by it.

Because the government derives its power in such a way, and because the purpose of government is to protect those basic human rights, it follows that whenever a government no longer protects these rights, whenever a government begins to destroy these rights, that it is the responsibility of a good citizen to either change that government or to destroy it.

If the government does not or cannot protect those basic human rights, the only moral course that a human being can take is to participate in changing or abolishing the existing government.

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Agree or disagree?

pax

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -- Charles Austin Beard