urbanSTL

rights are artificial social contracts. one only has a right to do or own anything insofar as society allows it through consensus or apathy. as for government determining what we can or can't do or own, that is exactly the purpose of government. it's amazing to me that so many seem to romanticize the wild west, and comments like "if you try to take my gun i'm gonna shoot you" are about as misanthropic and selfish as they come.

urban_dilettante wrote:rights are artificial social contracts. one only has a right to do or own anything insofar as society allows it through consensus or apathy. as for government determining what we can or can't do or own, that is exactly the purpose of government. it's amazing to me that so many seem to romanticize the wild west, and comments like "if you try to take my gun i'm gonna shoot you" are about as misanthropic and selfish as they come.

I assume you aren't directly referencing me as I've never threatened any sort of violence or retaliation for gun legislation, but I figured I'd respond that not all of us believe in the idea of social contracts or even government at all. The government doesn't/shouldn't "allow" people to do anything. We "allow" the government to do things.

audac1ty wrote: Basically, the cat is out of the bag. Guns are here and no amount of regulation is going to stop criminals from having them. It didn't work for alcohol, it doesn't work for drugs, and it won't work here either. If if you rounded up every gun that's out there on the street today, closed every gun store in the country, and made gun ownership illegal, people would still get guns.

It would make guns harder to get, which would have an impact.

audac1ty wrote: The reality is, we're never going to be rid of guns - the only real debate is how we deal with that fact.

The reality is we're stuck with a population that would rather see a million innocent children die in a hail of gunfire than be forced to provide their real name when purchasing a gun, the only debate is for entertainment purposes.

jstriebel wrote:

bprop wrote:

jstriebel wrote: We could also just get rid of the second amendment.

The right to bear arms isn't a natural right. It's a right granted in the first set of additions (or amendments) to the Constitution of the United States. It doesn't have to be permanent.

That someone seriously believes that the Bill of Rights actually grants rights to citizens is frightening

Yes, obviously I'm an uneducated idiot that has no comprehension of the world around me. I'm a danger to society.

Please tell me what words I should have chosen. Feels like you're picking nits here.

Is it because the constitution lays out how the government can operate rather than how citizens can operate? Fine. Fair enough.

Watch me re-word it and still make the same point.

The right to bear arms isn't a natural right. It's something a right the first set of additions (or amendments) to the constitution stated couldn't be infringed on by the government. That doesn't have to be the permanent stance of the constitution.

Sorry again that my slightly incorrect wording caused you so much scare. I hope you made it through.

Thanks for admitting your fallacy.

You're right; it doesn't have to be the 'permanent stance' of the Constitution. This is why I suggested that if you want to grant the government greater latitude in governing the right to keep and bear arms, that you should fight to amend the Constitution and additionally repeal the second amendment. I would actually support such an effort.

^It's a non-starter.

My posts here were never about genuinely possible solutions, unfortunately.

Only that I think guns are bad, that we'd be better off without them, and there is no inherent reason we have to be allowed to have them.

It's a shame that a new amendment repealing and thus clarifying the second amendment is a non-starter, though. It's plain to see that the intention of the amendment was to allow the people to organize a militia if the need to defend their status as a free state arose. It wasn't granted for entertainment, to defend one's personal property from one's neighbor, or anything of the sort.

We ought clarify this, but we won't because too many people in this country have an irrational lust for guns and will protect their ability to own them no matter what it means skewing.

Shooting in Lucier Park this evening. 6yo and adult male both hit in leg.

KSDK reports the girl's father died.

audac1ty wrote: I assume you aren't directly referencing me as I've never threatened any sort of violence or retaliation for gun legislation, but I figured I'd respond that not all of us believe in the idea of social contracts or even government at all. The government doesn't/shouldn't "allow" people to do anything. We "allow" the government to do things.

audac1ty, i was referring to one of Aesir's comments. regarding your comment above, that we allow the government to do things is exactly my point. nobody has a god-given right to bear arms, nor a god-given interdict. people empower government through social contract to either allow, disallow, or regulate things like gun ownership. not to be dismissive, but it doesn't really matter if you, personally, believe in government or social contracts because you're part of a society whose constituents overwhelmingly do. and they do because they like the structure, comfort, and relative safety that government provides more than they like being nomadic hunter-gatherers and settling disputes at sundown via six-shooters.

Yes, thank goodness.

Reminder of ideas to reconfigure the park.

http://nextstl.com/2014/04/lucier-park/

Yes, the "social contract" is a fallacy perpetuated to excuse all kinds of bloodshed, pain, and injustice perpetrated by government towards innocent people. It was thoroughly debunked in the 1700's by Enlightenment thinkers not associated with a major government.

Since many politicians now believe it is OK constitutionally that voting right be restricted to voters with IDs, should we have something similar for gun rights? Shooter ID?

Suppose shooters were required to log into a database and show ID when they wanted to spend the next two hours or so shooting their guns for fun. And then what if every gun had some kind of "break the glass in a emergency" tech concept device that could go on a gun that you have to "break" to fire it in a way that showed it had been fired recently. Gun owners could break the device easily to stop crime, but for all other times they want to shoot guns, they have to log into a database and show some kind of shooter ID up front.

If you shoot a gun without prior log-in, it must be because it was an emergency to stop crime, (or it was a crime). Once the police arrive after the crime and confirm you were shooting in self-defense or whatever, they could confirm you had a "break glass" device that you just broke to fire the gun, and then give you a replacement device. But anyone caught with a gun not having the device would immediately have their gun confiscated. Something like that.

If you did pre-register and confirm your shooter ID prior to shooting the gun for fun, maybe the feds could either give you a code to bypass the device for X shots or X amount of time, or mail you a new device to replace the one you destroyed within a day.

I'm trying to find a way to use the newly allowed "show ID to exercise your rights" concept and apply to gun rights in a way that separates legitimate responsible gun owners from folks who just acquired a gun somehow and haven't had to show any level of responsibility with regard to using it.

How about admitting that they're both sh*t concepts?

Aesir wrote:How about admitting that they're both sh*t concepts?

They are both bad concepts, but his point that a lot of people who support one support the other isn't wrong.

With that said, it'd be a lot easier if you just had to go through some semblance of a process to acquire a gun in the first place. But for some reason that makes no sense to me organizations like the NRA fight tooth and nail against any regulation. I really don't get it.

Surely there's a reasonable compromise that allows guns while providing some safety checks.

Aesir wrote:Yes, the "social contract" is a fallacy perpetuated to excuse all kinds of bloodshed, pain, and injustice perpetrated by government towards innocent people. It was thoroughly debunked in the 1700's by Enlightenment thinkers not associated with a major government.

that some have used the social contract as an excuse to perpetuate injustice doesn't delegitimize it as a phenomenon. and i would love to hear how philosophers "debunked" the social contract in 1700's. philosophy isn't science. here's the reality: under government people do not have free reign to do as they please yet they largely accept those restrictions in order to enjoy the many amenities and protections that government facilitates. this is evident by the ubiquity of government and that rebellion occurs rarely and under extreme conditions of injustice. that is a social contract whether you want to admit it or not. it is an observable reality. we can argue about philosophy all day but simply positing that people have "natural rights" and "inalienable sovereignty"—while a warm and fuzzy sentiment—doesn't reflect reality nor does it debunk anything.

jstriebel wrote:

Aesir wrote:How about admitting that they're both sh*t concepts?

They are both bad concepts, but his point that a lot of people who support one support the other isn't wrong.

With that said, it'd be a lot easier if you just had to go through some semblance of a process to acquire a gun in the first place. But for some reason that makes no sense to me organizations like the NRA fight tooth and nail against any regulation. I really don't get it.

Surely there's a reasonable compromise that allows guns while providing some safety checks.

Well, you know, if they pass a law forbidding the mentally ill from buying guns as they please, the government will declare all NRA members mentally ill and boom, backdoor gun ban. It's something I initially disregarded as a crackpot theory, but ironically the more the NRA protests this sort of thing, the more it makes sense to me to designate NRA membership a symptom of mental illness.

seems like almost every city is seeing a rise in homicides
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32995911

MarkHaversham wrote:

jstriebel wrote:

Aesir wrote:How about admitting that they're both sh*t concepts?

They are both bad concepts, but his point that a lot of people who support one support the other isn't wrong.

With that said, it'd be a lot easier if you just had to go through some semblance of a process to acquire a gun in the first place. But for some reason that makes no sense to me organizations like the NRA fight tooth and nail against any regulation. I really don't get it.

Surely there's a reasonable compromise that allows guns while providing some safety checks.

Well, you know, if they pass a law forbidding the mentally ill from buying guns as they please, the government will declare all NRA members mentally ill and boom, backdoor gun ban. It's something I initially disregarded as a crackpot theory, but ironically the more the NRA protests this sort of thing, the more it makes sense to me to designate NRA membership a symptom of mental illness.

The government will never automatically declare all NRA members mentally ill. The government could not even enact a single limit on guns for the mentally ill after a mentally ill person walked into a grade school and killed 20 children. Since the NRA is pushing the limits way beyond what the Constitution writers had in mind, I'm just wondering if there is an upper limit in the mind of the NRA. What is beyond the pale to the NRA? Will grenades be legal someday? Some of you seem genuinely excited by the coming 3D printing of plastic guns in your homes so they can't be detected at airports and amusement parks. At least when that happens, they can stop searching my wife at Busch Stadium because metal detectors found her metal knee.

gary kreie wrote: Since the NRA is pushing the limits way beyond what the Constitution writers had in mind,

I've come to really dislike this line of argument. It doesn't matter whatsoever what the Constitution writers had in mind. What matters is that guns are insanely dangerous and dangerously unregulated, and school children in the crossfire are paying the price. Whether Ben Franklin would've wanted a machine gun to defend his print shop from hooligans, or he acquiesced to southern gun nuts as a compromise, is of little consequence.

It's very hard to fight for the neighborhood you love when its being taken away by criminals. I talked to a lady yesterday in downtown as she told me that she was fed up with the crime particularly downtown & she hopes to move out of downtown by sept.1st. She has solid & valid reasonings. I just hope someday there can be a time when crime isn't as high as it is today in our future.
75 & rising is nothing to celebrate about. Cops can only do so much it takes for residents to have the will power to stand up for whats right.

St.Louis1764 wrote:It's very hard to fight for the neighborhood you love when its being taken away by criminals. I talked to a lady yesterday in downtown as she told me that she was fed up with the crime particularly downtown & she hopes to move out of downtown by sept.1st. She has solid & valid reasonings. I just hope someday there can be a time when crime isn't as high as it is today in our future.
75 & rising is nothing to celebrate about. Cops can only do so much it takes for residents to have the will power to stand up for whats right.

Do you have anything to offer beyond tired platitudes?

St.Louis1764 wrote:It's very hard to fight for the neighborhood you love when its being taken away by criminals. I talked to a lady yesterday in downtown as she told me that she was fed up with the crime particularly downtown & she hopes to move out of downtown by sept.1st. She has solid & valid reasonings. I just hope someday there can be a time when crime isn't as high as it is today in our future.
75 & rising is nothing to celebrate about. Cops can only do so much it takes for residents to have the will power to stand up for whats right.

Can you offer any more information? Some description of these incidents? The concentration of crime downtown is usually in the small pocket around the NLEC/Bridge/7-11 and they area of struggle.

I understand that not every gun-owner is this guy, but this is why it's so easy to get frustrated by gun advocates.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... tA.twitter

Like what is he even fighting for? Why does this matter?