.

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

The most accurate thing posted to this thread so far.

Don't you see that you answered the first statement with the second one? You might not like that but the language is quite clear. The second amendment restricts government from restricting our rights with regards to weapons. Our rights are restricted in many ways. I'm not intending to argue all of the aspects of the issue, just stating that it is done.



Yeah, I'm not going to overly argue these points with you because we both have a different foundation for our opinions. The constitution did go to some lengths to diminish slavery. If it were to go further, it's likely it wouldn't have been ratified at all. One needs to consider that all of the wrongs in the country couldn't have been settled until after the formulation of an effective government.



I think it extremely condescending to imply that "minorities" aren't able to comply with basic voting laws such as providing an ID. I would think that the likelihood that someone too lazy or indifferent to obtaining ID would be voting is very small anyway.



Sure, I guess said daycare worker could kill 16 babies with a screwdriver. Screwdriver screening for all it is.



Well, basic English helps us come to a rational interpretation of the amendment, inconvenient as that may be for your argument. John Adams did give a good argument for you position, though: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."



Actually, no, that wasn't your point.





I have not been arguing that the mentally ill should be allowed to purchase firearms, although I'm not conceding anything on that matter, but that requiring screening is an overreach. Comparing that to operating motor vehicles on public roadways seems to be another overreach.

Unfortunately the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles still won't let me drive a Formula 1 car to work. I keep stressing that I'm legally licensed to drive, but they're insisting that it's somehow different.

It's almost like some sort of regulation is in place to stop a person like me from being able to drive an absurdly powerful vehicle on public roads, just like how there's regulation in place to keep some mentally handicapped people from driving.

You're suggesting that it's a false equivalency, but it's not. The false equivalency is when people suggest that gun fatalities and automotive fatalities are somehow similar to one another.

EDIT: Because I know you're a sped and I have to point this out, I'm not really saying any of this in response to you, but as an original thought brought on by your inability to understand analogous statements.

Self-defense.

No second-amendment rights necessary. (Just an EE student with pepper spray.)

It would be interesting to see how this guy obtained a firearm:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Pacific_University#2014_shooting

(In case it's not clear, I'm talking about a different, more recent shooting, not in California.)

Quite often it is simply borrowed or stolen from someone (usually family or a friend) who obtained it quite legally. So the way to make firearm purchase screenings/restrictions effective is to make certain that you don't have any friends or family with any possible mental health issues.

I'm just going to leave this here.

How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment

IMO: Regardless of the why or how the NRA has shaped gun law in the US, the laws sorta make sense even to non-gun owning liberals. Yes it was originally about state militias, but since those have mostly dissolved or currently represent a very minimal military presence it would fall to individual civilians to organize and revolt if needed.

Meh, Politico ain't exactly the most objective source of news. In addition, the guy writing the op-ed is a former speech writer for Bill Clinton.

Of course, that doesn't mean he isn't right, so I might read it. The fact that the only negative reviews for his book on Amazon seem to be by conservative partisans (I hate that word) also wins it some points in my book.

When it comes to constitutional interpretation, strict literalism* is just going to get you a boatload of contradictions and absurd results. A prohibition on private ownership of anti-tank weaponry** isn't an infringement on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms just because you've unilaterally decided that we don't have to think about what the framers actually meant by the word "arms."

*based on the rather silly premise, no less, that the only literal meaning of which the word "arms" is susceptible is "weapons of every possible sort."

**or, hey, let's really take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: strategic nuclear weapons



Wookie's probably going to be pretty mad when he finds out you used his account to post something this stupid. I imagine he'll also want to ask you, as Mentat did, why we should require people to prove anything in order to exercise a right.

That makes no sense. I've not argued that the screening that is in place for legal firearms sales should not be in place and it would seem extremely consistent that I hold the same position for voting with the added position that I don't believe minorities are less capable than white heterosexual christian males (the presumed majority) of following the law.

Unless the IDs can be obtained for free and are located in areas convenient to those who need to acquire them, Voter ID laws are essentially a poll tax. To obtain the ID one must take time out of the workday, and travel to the place where it is to be acquired, that travel time costs them money, both in transportation costs, and in opportunity cost of time they could be working (And I'm pretty sure that the biggest complaint that the right wing has about the poor is that they aren't working enough).

Oh, good, the "you're the real racists" shtick.

If Ford hasn't already addressed this to your satisfaction, the piece you're probably missing is that members of racial minorities are less likely to already own a photo ID that satisfies the requirements of their state's new photo ID law. I don't know how you'd have missed that, but you're giving me the impression that you need to be spoonfed, so I thought it was best not to leave that link unstated.

ETA: A word about your supposed "consistency." Screening for firearms sales exists to mitigate the actual, genuine problem of dangerous people easily obtaining firearms. Voter ID laws ostensibly exist to prevent illegal voting, which is virtually nonexistent in the real world. If you truly have any reservations at all about "requiring people to prove anything in order to exercise a right," I don't see the consistency in accepting it where it's done for no legitimate purpose.

wtf? lmao, of course they do. if they didn't have drivers licenses how could they manage their 40 minute commute from the suburbs where all the people live??

if you're so black poor illegal immigrant that you can't afford land to bring your own car and hundreds of dollars to pass a literacy driving test, maybe you aren't smart enough to vote?

What dog whistle? I don't hear a thing

You're trying to explain this concept to someone who proudly represents a group of people which simultaneously: a.) hates "pork", and b.) wants to spend even more money drug screening welfare applicants than the entire welfare program would cost without screening.

Neoliberals aren't evil or misguided, they're wholly stupid. You can't reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into. Even the greatest among them, their great thinkers, are all basic morons who adhere to neoliberalism for no reason greater than it feels more rational than the alternative. This is why I very, very long ago resigned myself to making like-minded people laugh instead of trying to fix them. Trying anything else is pointless.

The past 50 years is a parade of neoliberal failure, but it doesn't matter to them because they don't care about evidence or reason or records or anything that actual people like us care about.

What's really mind blowing is when you figure out that the ones at the top are actually doing this intentionally. They know that they are breeding more stupidity. The more stupid voters the better! They're much easier to predict and therefor control.

Neoliberals don't have the keenness of intellect to accomplish social engineering on that kind of scale. They are highly political, so they can accomplish the sorts of violent suppression of dissent and mass voter disenfranchisement we see throughout western countries today, but in the end they are untalented morons. Stephen Harper, the neoliberal prime minister of Canada, has a M.A. econ thesis on file at the University of Calgary. Try reading it some time. If you know anything about Keynesian economics you should recognize very quickly that he is an imbecile, and it's pretty much downhill from him into a wasteland of failed lawyers and senile actors.

Neoliberals aren't making more stupid people on purpose. It's just that stupidity is the default state for a person, and neoliberal is the same thing as stupid.

Well, not that I've read the entire article (I was just looking for a concise list of constitutional references) but the Wikipedia article Voting Rights in the US is informative. We see that people can vote regardless of race or gender. Obviously, then, there would be no reason for any documentation to support ones race or gender. We do see, however, that states can restrict voting to those that are citizens and 18 years or older. I don't see how requiring proof of ones compliance with prerequisites restricts their access to this freedom. I do understand the poll tax argument, I just happen to believe it's an invalid argument. After all, these people you seem to be describing certainly must have obtained some form of state issued identification when they applied for food stamps, utilized a check cashing lender, or bought a 40 at the convenience store. Just a little extra inflammation since I assume this is how you think I think anyway.

And, I wonder, if we research "mass" shootings by the mentally unstable versus fraudulently cast votes which would appear to be more prolific. Bet they both mostly occur in blue counties as well. I could be wrong, I'm not actually going to look it up. Maybe it will even become the crux of my argument.

Seriously, though, if someone thinks that mandatory psychological screening for firearms purchases is a good thing and ID for voting is bad, I don't necessarily think they're extreme or stupid or feel the need to come up with some witty Bill Maher-esque excoriation. I just think they're wrong.

False equivalence. I don't call neoliberals stupid because I disagree with them, I call them stupid because they are stupid.

You, who couch yourselves willingly in the pejoratives of the communists, but don't even know from where those words come. Morons, all of you.

Okay, so did you mean for this entire post to be one big non-argument?

Yeah, basically. In the time that I was gone I've learned that there is little value in debating something when there is no common frame of reference in which to debate. For example, if we have a fundamental disagreement on whether or not requiring ID during the election process is the equivalence of a poll tax, why debate the subsequent points? The same with regards to whether or not the second amendment applies to individuals or the state. At that point it just makes sense to agree to disagree (or call the person you have a disagreement with stupid if it makes you feel good).

From above:



So I'm glad to see I've helped you become a better person, in at least a small way.


P.S. The "no common frame of reference" is the lack of meaningful education. You're free to challenge that claim any time you want, although I somehow doubt you do. It's a lot easier to live your life pretending that poverty is a punishment from Jesus than confront the fundamental limitations of capitalism and the wantonly racist application of power by your preferred political party.

I have to give you great credit when it comes to how well you manage to position yourself. It seems to me that challenging your claim would lend undue weight to it but you've framed it so that I would seem to imply it carries such weight if I don't. Obviously, I can't do neither so I guess I'll just leave it unchallenged because I don't care to defend myself from assumptions made by someone that doesn't care to have meaningful conversations with people he deems un-fixable. Now that I think about it, in a way, we might have a little in common in that regard.

Yes, it's an assumption. I'm doing you the favor of assuming you aren't a malevolent person, and merely uneducated.

I'm well-enough versed in history to know that voter suppression and intimidation are the first recourse of neoliberals for as long as they have existed. I'm also educated enough about current events to know that the rate for voter fraud is essentially zero, and that the strongest advocates for voter ID reform are the same exact people responsible for the most appalling racial gerrymandering and attempted voter suppression in America, such as Florida governor Rick Scott. (N.B. the former GOP governor and a party chairman have both publicly stated that Scott is deliberately suppressing the Democrat vote, above any other concerns.)

So I have a lot of evidence and good reasons to think that stronger ID requirements are being instituted to suppress the poor and black vote.


So here's the problem, Wookie06. Either you already know everything I said above, in which case you secretly approve of these reforms in order to prevent poor black people from voting. Or, on the other hand, you feel that voter fraud is a much bigger issue than it actually is, and you have faith that the Republicans want these laws for honorable reasons, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.



Which is it? Evil, or ignorant?

I find it so hard to believe that I actually entertained posts like that in the past.

You never seriously did before, but at least you've grown enough as a person that you no longer pretend to even try.

Well here's the thing: No.

You know why you and I don't have a "common frame of reference" as to whether a voter ID is, for all practical purposes, a poll tax? Because I'm at least passingly familiar with the case law on poll taxes, and you're not. This is not a philosophical difference, it's a difference in education. This is you treating "well, I disagree" as an all-purpose shield.

Basically it's adding "lazy" on top of "stupid".

Well, yeah. It's "my opinion is as good as yours, because I happen to have it." **** arguments, I have preferences*.

*That the preferences in question happen to include cynical suppression of votes from one political party's core demographic groups is, honestly, a lower-priority problem as far as I'm concerned.

Mr. Professional Lawyer, I don't have to weigh your opinion as valid. My opinion is even more valid, because instead of arming myself with facts from reality, I make up random bull that feels right and then I aggressively legislate until my fantasies become real.

It's the neoliberal way.

^ makes their apocalypse-worship even more terrifying, doesn't it?

I'm doing my best to avoid accumulating wealth because I'm almost certain the evangelicals will kill us all before I can spend it.

.

.

don't be too condescending to Wookie06, it's not nice.

Also, I'm sick of posting this.