Number of anti's on THR?

[budney]

I think I see where you are going with this, but my inference from his several posts is that "rights" don't have anything to do with it. Rather, his logic or rationale is based on ability.

In other words, "I'm going to rape you because I can." I hope that isn't Omahanew's position, but there are people out there who basically believe just that. I don't really know what to say to them, except: that's why firearms were invented. To equalize the victims and enable them to defend themselves. It's firearms that enable the victim to say, "You aren't going to rape me, because I can defend myself."

--Len.

 

[Fosbery]

Omahanew wrote:

In 2003/2004 there were a total of 24,070 firearm offences in England and Wales of which 57% (13,822) involved air weapons. That's 10,350 "real" firearm offenses for a population of 52 million+.

In the US in 2005 477,040 victims of violent crimes stated that they faced an offender with a firearm.

Hich would you prefer?

Those are not the figures I was using. I was using deaths and injuries caused by the criminal use of firearms. In 1988 in Britain there were 410 deaths and injuries caused by the criminal use of firearms. In 2004-5 there were 4,140. An increase of over 1,000%.

 

[BHPshooter]

You: "confiscation has always led to tyranny or genocide or both"

The last time I checked Great Britain wasn't a hot bed of either.

Me: Wait for it.
What you're essentially saying right now is that Summer does not necessarily lead to fall, and that fall won't necessarily lead to winter.

You: That doesn't make any sense at all

Only for those with no basic grasp of literacy. Our friends, the Canadians, Britons, and Aussies will have tyranny and eventually genocide. That much has been historically proven.

But then you come and say, "Not necessarily." It is as inevitable as the change of seasons. As surely as the sun will set, they will be faced with tyranny and eventually genocide. Wait for it.

I think that's about all I'm going to say in this one. I tire of arguing with points against someone who thinks a proper rebuttal is "Nuh-uh!" If you want to have a real debate, give us some cites, sources, and proof. In the meantime, I can have a more productive and well-reasoned debate with my Labrador.

:banghead:
Wes

 

[budney]

Our friends, the Canadians, Britons, and Aussies will have tyranny and eventually genocide. That much has been historically proven.

Unless the people get smart and rearm, of course. But it's also historically proven that people never wise up until too late.

--Len.

 

[pharmer]

Interesting thread. Those on the "pro-gun" side have no problem with the concept of freedom and rights even without government or laws. The "antis" postulate that rights and freedom are "nonsense" absent government, laws, or "consensus". Joe

 

[anygunanywhere]

Rights and Freedom

First, I agree with the Fumegator, for as I have often read and is often quoted, those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. Over 100 million dead prove it, and nothing an anti can cite can counter 100 million dead as a result of their actions and those like them.

When I think of rights and their source, I am forced to think of myself alone in the wilderness and exactly what would I need/require in order to remain alive to do what I want to do. Keep in mind that as long as what I am doing or striving to do never affects that other individual in the world, then I am free to kill and eat whichever Zebra I want and defend myself against whatever sabre tooth tiger I need to with out interference from anyone.

I can make and use whatever weapon I want to protect myself.

I do not have a right to health care except possibly to pick those medicinal leaves for that sabre tooth cat wound. Mom grunted that those leaves would help but they burn like fire.

The hominid over in the next valley has that round wheel thing he is riding. Looks cool, but if I do not make one or barter for his, I have no right to it.

Where I think my rights came from is really irrelevant. Whether they came from the sun god I offered that wooly mammoth spleen to last summer solstice or the thunder god who scared hell out of me last night, why do I care? My rights are mine, you can not infringe.

Be prepared for the consequences if you do.

I have no right to drive, to fly, health care, watch a big screen TV, or beat you to a pulp just for giggles.

I do have the right to be free, to live, to love my family, and to defend myslf and overthrow corrupt and tyrranical governments. I like the idea of wandering around in the wilderness since I do not need any government.

Antis need governments. They need governments to protect them. They are an unnatural result of governments. If there were no governments, there would be relatively few antis. They would be sabre tooth tiger poop and would not be producing much progeny because natural selection does have good points as well.

Anygun

 

[Sniper X]

I am the biggest ANTI you will ever find, I am ANTI anyone who thinks that if they take our guns away it'll do anyone any good!


I think the biggest thing un-liked about anti types is they can not have a debate with any of us here, because they only have knowledge of "feeling based" non facts, and ultra left un-truths and outright lies.

They can not have a debate without it turning into a total attack on us and our lives and containing slang from the liberal gun haters playbook like,

If guns are legal to carry, we will revert to the old west where people have gunfights out in the street. you=know, you have all heard them all from different people, but exactly the same lame arguments.

These people have a mental defenciency that lets them be weak minded enough to beleive the lefts drivel about guns.

I can tell you that being 49 and shooting and hunting since I was 7, I have never met more polite, intellegent people than those who are "gun people", and have never met an true leftest ANTI who wasn't a total hater of most everything, and all of those of us who have guns.

 

[RPCVYemen]

Read Discourse on Method (1637), Principles of Philosophy (1644) and I would review his basis for analyitcal geometry and Scientific Method if you really want to know how smart he is. If you truly do like logic as you stated earlier you have some big holes that need filling.

An appeal to the intelligence of Descartes is not an appeal to authority? I have never questioned his intelligence.

You claimed the existence of such rights was a matter of "logic" for the believer, but not for the non-believer.

One of two things is true: the existence of such rights it either axiomatic or it is not.

If the existence of such rights is in fact axiomatic, then it can be accepted or rejected, but not proven true. It is in some sense "pre-rational" or "a-rational". That implies that it is not logical for the believer or the non-believer.

If the existence of such rights in not axiomatic - i.e., it can be "proven", the the state of the individual's beliefs don't have anything to do with the logic. Either the reasoning is correct, in which case it is logical for the believe and the non-believer, or the reasoning is not correct, in which case it is "illogical" for the believer and the non-believer.

So the assertion that the existence of those rights is somehow "logical" for the believer, and "not logical" for the non-believer cannot be true.

If you are really saying "I believe certain things about the nature of G-d and man, and from that set of beliefs I can derive a set of divine rights, and I understand that people who don't share that set of beliefs may derive any set of divine rights, or may derive a different set" - then we are in agreement.

I am not going to waste a few hundred pages of bandwidth retyping it or cutting and pasting.

I am not asking for hundreds of pages of proof - a quick sketch would be fine.

I will assert with some confidence from my fallible memory that Plato not only had no notion of the "inalienable rights" of the common man - he was adamantly opposed to such a concept! In the republic, the philosopher kings would determine the common good, and impose that on all society. Isn't that model in the Republic? Am I confused about this?

Mike

 

[budney]

An appeal to the intelligence of Descartes is not an appeal to authority? I have never questioned his intelligence.

Note: every reference to Descartes is not an appeal to him. It's a shorthand for copying his entire argument into the post.

--Len.

 

[Titan6]

Thanks Len.

Yemen- You asked for ''A proof'' Descartes has ''A proof''. The only thing that is axiomatic in the proof is your existance. If you accept that portion all else flows from there. Your non-acceptance of it will not change that.

You gotta put in your own work around here. So go read it and draw your own outline and conclusions.

 

[SSN Vet]

antis are like most other liberals....

they want to gain power and wealth by playing on other peoples fears and greed.

they promise the world and deliver more taxes and onerous inefficient government waste in return.

they run and hide from logic, choosing rather mindless rhetoric.

they always tell their audience that someone else is going to pay for the goodies they are promising.

biologist have a name for this type of critter.....parasite.

 

[SuperNaut]

Not so.

Hand-waving and lazy contradiction? I had hoped that you would address just one of the points I raised, I guess I expected too much.

On a lighter note; I sincerely hope that Omahanew is representative of the majority of antis as some have previously asserted, it would mean I've been drastically overestimating the opposition.

 

[RPCVYemen]

Note: every reference to Descartes is not an appeal to him. It's a shorthand for copying his entire argument into the post.

Citing Descartes mathematical works as a reference for a simple sketch of a proof is asked for is really just an attempt to obfuscate the issue. The exhaustive list was in fact an attempt to demonstrate that Descartes was intelligent, irrespective of the point in question. Did the mathematical works mention any proof of the existence of divine rights?

I fact, I have read Descartes and found him wanting - I never read his math, but the other stuff I have read was massively unconvincing.

The only philosopher I ever found really convincing was Nietzsche - I think he's right, but he seems to lead to madness and chaos. If I were to summarize his view (instead of listing all of his works and asking you to go read them), "rights" are really a construct that allows the weak to restrain the strong. They are this more of a social construct related the collective strength of the weak than anything else. In essence, rights are defined by whoever has the most power. [That's pretty dark, and I don't like it, but I suspect it's true.]

I suspect, though I have never read him, that I would agree with Edmund Burke's rejection of "natural rights". The "we hold these truths to be self evident" really means "because we said so".

Mike

 

[Titan6]

It is as I said. Having a debate with a nihilist is pointless. Even though he knows where his philosophy leads he still accepts it is a great truth.

 

[hso]

Folks, let us not make the mistake of tossing the word "liberal" around like it was some sort of perjorative. Liberal and Conservative don't mean much when talking about gun prohibitionists. There are Repub and Dem and all sorts of political party affiliations that have gun prohibitionists. They are either ignoring the data or fear mongering to constituants' ignorance.

Why should we have any form of gun prohibitions if we don't see any public health basis for them?

 

[Nomad101bc]

I dont see a need for any firearm restrictions. I dont see any relevance of us pro lifers being anti gun. I am a christian well armed and proud.

 

[benEzra]

Just because a lefty owns a gun doesn't make the rest of his opinion system better. People who vote for Nader and frequent DU are still dumb wether or not they like guns or not.

(This is in response to that poll image from DU)

As the DU'er in question, I'd politely ask you to define "dumb," please.

Somebody hold me back, before I start discoursing on the difference between the original Einsteinian concept of relativistic mass and the invariant length of a particle's momentum four-vector, or what it means to model an electron current in a conductor as a set of Landau quasiparticles in a Fermi gas.

The fact that I may disagree with the repubs and neocons on a number of issues does NOT mean I am dumb--nor am I a nanny-stater. And no, I'd never vote for Nader (he's too authoritarian on too many issues, and too clueless on too many others). Nor could I, in good conscience, vote for an anti, so I might find myself leaving a portion of a ballot blank.

Please careful with the stereotypes. Not every DU'er or non-conservative is an authoritarian nanny-stater.

 

[Owens]

Just another simple thought

"To them that believe, no explanation needed. To those that don't believe, no explanation possible."

Source: unknown

 

[budney]

I fact, I have read Descartes and found him wanting - I never read his math, but the other stuff I have read was massively unconvincing.

I'm not a fan of Descartes' argument either. But that doesn't make references to Descartes an "appeal to authority."

I suspect, though I have never read him, that I would agree with Edmund Burke's rejection of "natural rights". The "we hold these truths to be self evident" really means "because we said so".

"Self-evident" is always a matter of opinion. But if you want to molest me, you'll need to justify your action, which you won't be able to do. If you insist on molesting me anyway, well... that's what self-defense is for.

--Len.

 

[RPCVYemen]

Even though he knows where his philosophy leads he still accepts it is a great truth.

If you are referring to what I said about Nietzsche, I would call it a sad truth. Sad, but freeing!

In general, the truth is freeing! The responsibility for the values that I endorse is squarely on my shoulders - without reliance on external constructs whose existence I cannot reliably determine.

Back more to the topic, I suspect that the existence of "natural rights" or "divine rights" is not provable. If that is the case, then an appeal to gun rights as a derivative of some divine rights is not going to convince anyone who doesn't share your beliefs about the nature of G-d and man.

Mike

 

[RPCVYemen]

"Self-evident" is always a matter of opinion.

Precisely - a matter of opinion, not logic or proof.

Mike

 

[Titan6]

Yemen- You are missing the point. Your truth is no more or less verifiable than that of the Hindu's or Islam.You may see it as a great truth but in the end it also just a construct.

In the end it is really only your identity of self that matters.

 

[RPCVYemen]

You are missing the point. Your truth is no more or less verifiable than that of the Hindu's or Islam.You may see it as a great truth but in the end it also just a construct.

I accept that the construct that I embrace is no more or less verifiable than Hindu's or Islam's or Christianity's, etc.

The critical difference - as I see it - is an act of will to give meaning to construct. The meaning is not in the construct itself - but in our choice to embue that construct with meaning. I can (and do) chose a the ethics laid out in the Torah (and subsequent writings of the rabbis) as the ethics by which I want to live my life - as a choice of will.

To bring this back to the original topic (well closer anyway), with regard to the Bill of Rights, I can embrace the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights as rights I want to support/fight for, etc. That's why I am a member of the NRA and the ACLU. But I don't need or seek any kind of divine imprimatur for those rights.

I think there can be many rational arguments as to what exactly is mean by the 2nd Amendment.

Note that I do not agree with the notion that the only rational way to proceed in understanding what is meant by the Constitution is what was meant the founding fathers when the Constitution was written. That is one method for determining the meaning of a part of the Constitution. Note that it is not without problems.

The first is determining what the group of founding fathers meant - as opposed to one or two or twelve of them.

The second is knowing what an individual really meant. As a quick example, I notice that none of the folks who love to quote Jefferson's address the critical issue of his actions as President - he felt that he had the right under the Constitution to seize goods and property without warrants if he suspected that the owner might have the intention of violating an embargo that he (Jefferson) imposed on the New England states against the will of the people. Which speaks more powerfully to his understanding of the Bill of Rights - his actions or his words? Can you harmonize his actions and his words?

Further, Jefferson and Madison conspired together to extend the power of the Federal government to buy the Louisiana Purchase. Where the heck did either one of them find the federal power to do that in Constitution?

From these examples, I think that determining what even Jefferson and Madison really meant by the Bill of rights requires more than a quick troll through the Federalist papers.

A more fundamental issue with the "it means today what it meant when the founding fathers wrote it" doctrine is that the Constitution itself does not award any more power the the founding fathers in this regard than to any other Americans.

In fact, it may well be that the founding fathers intended the Constitution to be interpreted by three branches of government, with each branch exerting a check and balance on each other. Sound familiar?

Oops - a long compile just finished. Have to go.

Mike

 

[Carl N. Brown]

i tried to restrain myself, but failed.....

bartender: We're closing in five minutes. Want one for the road?
Descartes: I think not .... *poof*











(no its not original, but when i copy i copy good)

 

[budney]

Precisely - a matter of opinion, not logic or proof.

The axioms of mathematics are matters of opinion. By your definition, there's no such thing as logic or proof.

--Len.