We have no rights.

[Monkeyleg]

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket here, but we really have no rights. At least not compared to the rights we had 100 years ago.

Want to buy a gun? Fill out the 4473 and, in most states, wait a couple of days until the Fed's run a NICS check on you.

Want to buy a subgun? First ask around to see if your chief LEO will even sign the Form 4. If so, pay the $200 tax stamp, and then pay ten or twenty times what the gun was worth in 1985.

Want to carry a gun for self-defense? Be prepared to spend a few hundred dollars on training, background checks, and fees. Assuming, of course, that you live in a state where such a seemingly simple but obnoxious process is the law. If you're in a no-issue or almost no-issue state, tough luck. You don't have any rights.

Want to complain about the above? Good luck finding a source where you can vent your complaints. Don't count on the newspapers to help you. They have their own agenda. Besides, they don't even have to pay taxes on the tons of paper they buy. The First Admendment, you see.

What about approaching your legislator (senator, representative, US congressman, or US senator) to address the issue of redress of grievances?

Good luck.Your chances of a one-on-one meeting with a representative or senator to the US congress are about as good as being hit by satellite debris.

Your chances on the state level are better. They're even better if you bring a check with you.

What if you don't like the replies you get from your elected representatives?

Well, you could raise money to try to defeat them in their elections. Oh, but there's that pesky thing called "campaign finance reform." If you have money to run ads, hire a very good attorney, or go to jail for criticizing Congressman Crook.

We do have rights. The problem is that exercising those rights can cost a person his entire estate, a problem not unfamiliar to the signators of the Declaration of Indepedence.

Back in the lattter part of the 1970's, I drove a truck for what was then the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper.

At the end of each shift, the drivers were required to fill out a vehicle inspection report for the mechanics.

On one such report, I wrote "the clutch pedal squeals when depressed (unlike the rest of us, who just whimper in quiet solitude)".

That may have been funny back then. It's not anymore.

 

[thrasher64]

I hear that..

Its a problem that comes with signing away your rights for privileges.

The change over has happened so slowly that the majority of the populous hasn't noticed. :banghead:

We need another american revolution. Take it back.

 

[tellner]

Well, no. We never did have any rights in any objective sense. Rights, citizenship, nations, honor, ethics, religious institutions (as opposed to the Ultimate Reality) and all the rest are fictions. They're magic, lies we tell ourselves. But when one of those lies is believed by enough people it really is magic. As long as it captures the imagination it is real. When people stop believing in it and acting as if it were true it disappears.

 

[thrasher64]

I guess that is the ultimate truth.


Just too many people comfortable with the way things are.

 

[Don't Tread On Me]

Which is why I am a Second Amendment purist and I believe I have the God given, Constitutionally protected RIGHT to walk into a 7-11 at 3.a.m and buy a fully automatic short barrel MP5 with suppressor and 200 tungsten core AP vest-busting 9mm bullets. And a Glock 18 to go with it.

No license, no NICS, no forms, no nothing. Nothing more than a regular American exercising his right. Nothing but the clerk, myself, and the lack of suspicion or the absence of state-sanctioned prejudice that I am a criminal or that I have criminal intent.

 

[Valkman]

So what's the point of this? If you don't like where you live, move! When I buy a gun I leave the store with the gun (wiith no NICS check), have a subgun and have a CCW. 100 years ago you may have had more rights but I'll bet you like electricity, Home Depot and supermarkets too.

I don't get this "everything sucks and there's nothing we can do" stuff. I moved from CA to NV years ago, and I've yet to see anyone in CA with someone holding a gun to their head making them stay.

 

[Panthera Tigris]

Rights are subjective. African Americans for example had little if any rights at all regarding firearms 100 years ago. For that matter their rights were pretty much just on paper. Most other non-white races had little or no rights in this country prior to the Civil Rights movement in the 60's.

All this talk about all of the freedoms "we" had 100 years ago has a bit of sour in it.

 

[WeedWhacker]

So what's the point of this? If you don't like where you live, move! When I buy a gun I leave the store with the gun (wiith no NICS check), have a subgun and have a CCW.

Clark county (where Las Vegas, Nevada is located) isn't so hot for gun rights, either. ALL "weapons capable of being concealed" in the county must be registered (the yellow stars/blue cards), and the yellow stars/blue cards must be carried with the "weapons capable of being concealed" at all times. Yes, it is infinitely better than California, but Las Vegas isn't a freedom-lover's paradise.

The fact that you don't need to submit to a NICS check is due to your spending money and time to get a CCW to exercise your God-given rights, which is what Monkeyleg was pointing out. Applying for the CCW is the same as asking the gov't for permission to do what you already have the right to do.

The problem is that the deck is stacked against the rights culture, in that the vast majority of US citizens don't have a "freedom mindset" any longer. 'There oughta be a law' and all that. If the system is broken, the only other recourse is a change outside the system, and there are many of us, including myself, that, while recognizing the blatant infringement on our God-given rights, do not yet consider it worth the "blood of patriots and tyrants". Though that Liberty Tree does look thirstier all the time...

 

[The Scandinavian]

the vast majority of US citizens don't have a "freedom mindset" any longer

The concept of freedom doesn't really seem have a place in the civilised world anymore.

Where on the planet can you buy a parcel of land and just build a house on it, with plumbing and wiring, just how you want to do it, without getting any form of permission or permit?

How about buying a cow, and selling the milk at the market?

Aren't those are basic 'freedoms'? Yet in just about any place I can think of they would land you in serious trouble.

Isn't it impossible to have 'freedom' in a world where thousands of rules and regulations govern every aspect of our lives?

Maybe here in Europe we don't have it so bad - at least we don't have that most obvious insult to to concept of freedom, "zero tolerance". This seems to me just removing the freedom to make decisions.

 

[feedthehogs]

In any type of group with a chief, ruler, president, leader, etc, there are rules to be followed. So there is never really an absolute sense of freedom.

Even if you moved out into the middle of nowhere and lived off the land, you would still be subjected to the laws of the state or country where you were.

There is no absolute freedom anymore except in death, there are only degrees of freedom and for all its problems, the US is still a great place to live.

And what has already been said, if where we live is restrictive to our sense of rights, then there are more friendly states where we may go.

The only obstacle is the ability of ones mind to say I value my freedom more than the comfort of my current surroundings and I'm willing to move to a place of possibly starting over, downgrading my lifestyle and or possible hardships because what I believe my freedoms to be are valued above any comfort level I can imagine.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket here, but we really have no rights. At least not compared to the rights we had 100 years ago.

Oh boohoo. You weren't alive 100 years ago. You are looking at a nostalgia perception. 100 years ago, over 1/2 of the American population didn't have the right to vote including women and blacks and you talk about how we have less rights now than 100 years ago? You don't know what you are talking about.

110 years ago, folks were complaining of the lack of free land and how America wasn't 'free' anymore.

In 1906, most folks didn't have cars, regular medical and dental care, the 1911 pistol, and the population of the US was about just over 1/4 of what it is today with about 84 million people. In 1906, the vast majority of the population didn't even consider going to college and a tremendous number never came close to finishing high school...for those that had schools to attend.

You talked about your squeaky clutch of the 1970s. We all knew what you meant. In 1906, there were people in the US who had never seen a car, most had never been in one, or even knew what a clutch was.

In 1906, the life expectancy from birth for a male was 50 and a female 53. In 2004, the numbers are 75 and 80. If you were driving a commercial truck in the 1970s, you are at least in your mid 40s now. Had you been born in 1906, you would be well on your downhill slide with no much hope of too many more years ahead of you.

Times have changed, Monkeyleg, and you are nostalgic for that which you never even knew. Amazing.

 

[SSN Vet]

people gave up their freedom mindset......

when they gave up their self reliance mindset.

If you want government to take care of you, feed you, house you, and put a band-aide on your boo-boos.......then you will become their servant.

If you want to live (AND DIE) by your own devices, then you will be a free man.

I recently read a book to my kids that detailed the daily life of family farmers in upstate NY (way upstate.....Malone) in the late 1800's. These people lived by their wits and hard work, they made just about everything they needed with their own hands, they sold their surplus and purchased or bartered for specialty items and they and were not obliged to any man.

The chief obsticle to this type of life today, as I see it, is the one tax that you can't avoid........property taxes make you a slave to the cash economy.

 

[Refirignis]

Glad to see people realizing they only have privileges. A right is anything you don't need to ask permission to do. Now think of what you need a permit/license (privilege) from the government for: almost everything. Pretend that you have rights and you'll end up behind bars very quickly.

Oh boohoo. You weren't alive 100 years ago. You are looking at a nostalgia perception.

He doesn't mean it like that. He wasn't talking about how things in general were back then, only how rights were. 100 years ago there were almost 0 laws restricting our rights. No 23,000 gun control laws, not many regulations for everything. Getting arrested for victimless crimes were nonexistent.

Everything changed after 1933. There are a few reasons for that.

 

[Rev. DeadCorpse]

Times have changed, Monkeyleg, and you are nostalgic for that which you never even knew. Amazing.

You sound happy that we exchanged one set of protections for our Rights, for a handful of privileges. Wouldn't it have been better to enforce the protections for those Rights AND extend them to women and minorities? Instead of giving them up in the sheep like quest for safety?

Times have changed. Human nature hasn't. Give a hairless monkey power over its fellow hairless monkeys and that power will be abused. Learn from history, or be doomed to repeat it.

 

[hammer4nc]

Follow the money...

The taxing structure is the engine that makes all these government abuses possible. And, that system operates on a voluntary basis. I'm not ignoring the consequences for non-compliance, which are considerable. However, mass non-compliance with taxes is perhaps the best avenue for expressing one's dissatisfaction with the system. "Molon labe", referring to your tax dollars? A non-violent economic revolution, if you will.

A popular movement of that sort would quickly drive the cost of enforcement beyond what the system could bear. Political candidates would emerge that backed the movement. And reformed .gov policies would follow.

Food for thought. Feel free to flame me, but offer a better alternative solution.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A previous poster tried to link technical inventions with freedom-robbing government policies. What a false comparison, there is no way these two should be logically linked! I suppose every time a new invention comes down the pike, we should be expected to give up another freedom, as the price of this convenience?

 

[DBabsJr]

The taxing structure is the engine that makes all these government abuses possible. And, that system operates on a voluntary basis.

Watch the video linked in http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=243769 for more on this...

 

[up_onus]

WELL.
Its easy to see....
HOW LONG WILL WE HAVE LEGISLATORS MAKING LAWS!!!

Laws have been created for 200 years by our legislators...and all they want to do is make the legislative sessions longer! I mean, If you were making laws for 200 years, I would bet you would have a lot of laws (right reducing laws) created too!

I watch CSI (no relevence except the quote) and Heratio often says....
"We never close". mmmmhhhmmm...

 

[S.P.E.C.T.R.E.]

I agree with those who say we have it pretty good. I can buy any firearm I want, with the exception of suppressors and automatic weapons. I can carry a pistol for self defense anywhere I want legally, except for federal facilities. I have many freedoms that most people don't have.

That being said, we can't let up on our elected officials for one second. We must continually pressure them to support pro-2A legislation and attack antigun legislation.

We've made progress. Is it 40 states now with shall-issue? 2 with no permit requirements at all? AWB left for dead. I can mail order collectible guns (pistols too!!) and they arrive at my doorstep.

We just have to keep at it. I think all 50 states with CPL laws like Vermont and Alaska is a good start. Then we can survey the landscape and see where to go from there.

The Anti-gun group wants to chip away at our rights slowly so the citizens don't notice. We have to do the same in reverse. Opening the gun law floodgates would scare the common public, so we proceed slowly and carefully. We can win, and we will. Right now there are 300,000,000 people in this country. There are 300,000,000 guns. We're safe so long as we keep fighting.

 

[Soybomb]

Oh boohoo.

I think monkeyleg's comments are quite important. We shouldn't get complacent and feel like our job is done if we ever have concealed carry in all 50 states or any other victory. What would your stance be? We should be happy with our rights only as restricted as they are now? Life is currently good so just be happy and not worry about what we might need tomorrow?

 

[real_name]

As usual, a chimpanzee's tea party rather than any concerted effort to achieve change in our favor.
The majority of people on this site are simply reactionary, argumentative blowhards that have no interest in affecting the agendas they freely espouse.

 

[another okie]

Newspapers here in Oklahoma have been interviewing people older than the state. Oklahoma became a state in 1907, so next year is our centennial. One old guy from near my home was asked how America had changed. He said "We've lost a lot of rights and gained a lot of weight." I think that sums up the 20th century pretty well in America, anyway. Affluence and loss of freedom.

 

[junyo]

Glad to see people realizing they only have privileges. A right is anything you don't need to ask permission to do. Now think of what you need a permit/license (privilege) from the government for: almost everything. Pretend that you have rights and you'll end up behind bars very quickly.

Not even close. You have the right to drive a car without a license, own a gun without any checks or permission, marry a horse, or build a house without permits. Now you can't use public roads for your unlicensed driving without risking a penalty, or own a gun without checks without manufacturing it yourself or risking penalty, or marry a horse and get tax breaks and civil benefits, or build a house without permits and expect to be hooked into POTS or the electrical grid. What's the argument, that it sometimes costs money to exercise a right? Nobody ever said that exercising your freedoms wouldn't have a cost. Because you've got freedom of speech doesn't mean you can yell fire in a crowded theater or insult someone without chancing a punch in the mouth. Because you have the right to bear arms doesn't mean that you have the right to obtain a weapon without certifying that you're not crazy or a felon. Short of cost and conveniance issues, (and if you're not in a socialist zone like CA or NJ, in which case it's your own fault) what rights do you not have today that you would've had 100 years ago? Realistically, all these anarchist laments about how pitiful and oppressed they are in a hellhole like America makes one wonder why such rugged individualists haven't surrendered NFPA standard wiring, paved roads, fire departments and indoor plumbing for the freedom of carving out a new, free homeland.

 

[Caimlas]

Rights are subjective. African Americans for example had little if any rights at all regarding firearms 100 years ago. For that matter their rights were pretty much just on paper. Most other non-white races had little or no rights in this country prior to the Civil Rights movement in the 60's.

All this talk about all of the freedoms "we" had 100 years ago has a bit of sour in it.

This is true, but if it weren't for all the things done to our society and country during that civil rights movement in the 1960s (and since) and in the name of 'liberty', I'd have an easier time thinking that the civil rights movement wasn't misguided, and that the cultural segregation of 100 years ago may not have been all that foolhardy.

 

[longeyes]

Let's say you're right.

Then it's a time for outlaws.

Enjoy.

 

[ctdonath]

Flip side: we have plenty of rights. Re: RKBA...

- You can buy anything you want (other than a post-'86 machinegun). A little paperwork to keep the polypragmatons happy, and it's yours. A few things require a little more paperwork (no CLEO? form a trust) and a $200 tax (which, at NFA item prices, isn't proportionally all that bad).
- "Shall carry" states have gone from almost none to almost all. Again, a little paperwork and you can carry what you want most places (and concealed means concealed).

In a state that forbids what you want to own or do? Move to one that does, or get politically active (it used to be legal in your state until someone else got politically active and got it banned).

Want a post-'86 machinegun? What are you waiting for? Don't just sit there whining about it, find a dealer willing to sell you one, submit a Form 4, and sue for your rights when it's rejected. (Crap, it's been 20 years and NOBODY has tried a straight-up challenge to 922(o)?)

Yes, there are ongoing attacks on rights.
Yes, there are some inconveniences.
After some 70 years of gun control, the worst they've done is make you fill out a piece of paper.