An exchange I was involved in recently brought me back to thinking about something that is never far from my mind; namely the fundamentally different way some people feel about Freedom. There is a statement attributable to Benjamin Franklin that says, essentially, that "Those who would surrender essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." I was raised to believe that the truest definition of Freedom is through having the Right to take Responsibility for yourself. You have certain inalienable rights that are inviolable regardless of how many people think you should surrender those rights for what they think is "The Greater Good." Gun Control advocates, even if they acknowledge that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to be armed, still feel that the right is either obsolete and needs to be abolished or should be regulated essentially out of existence. They think collectively, not individually, and feel that all people should accept their rights being restricted or even eliminated outright if there's even a chance that doing so might make our society "safer". Well, I disagree and disagree fundamentally. I work very hard to exercise my rights responsibly and to respect the rights of others to do the same. When I am told I need to surrender my rights to that someone else can "feel safer" I reject that assertion outright. When someone says we "need" to ban guns or enact gun control and I need to accept my rights being infringed because they claim a "right" to not be shot or a "right" to feel safe I see that as one thing and one thing only: an assault upon my rights. I found myself thinking about what I would do if incontrovertible evidence were to be introduced that eliminating personal freedom could improve public safety; would I accept being stripped of my rights in the name of being safer? I can honestly say that I would not. Freedom is dangerous. Freedom has risks. We could dismantle the Constitution, eliminate the Bill of Rights, and impose a dictatorial, authoritarian state and most likely create a nation with lower violent crime rates and fewer homicides, and that nation would be a place I would not live. I would rather live in a violent, tumultuous - yet FREE - land, than live in a controlled, safe - but OPPRESSED one. I believe that is the very core of Freedom, and as such I will not accept arbitrary and capricious infringements placed upon my rights without a fight.
You give up freedom in the name of public safety every time you stop at a stop light. And a thousand other ways
Why are you giving up your freedom obeying traffic laws. I can not freely assemble on the highway. Can you see how basic this is?
Here is a women whose liberty to own a firearm led to her security https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/woman-uses-gun-armed-robbers/
Exactly! To heck with whether they've actually ever done anything wrong; they MIGHT some day! So, let's just throw all men in prison because they MIGHT commit rape some day! They've got the means, right? Such things simply demonstrate how precious Freedom is, and why we need to fight so hard to protect it.
this is a silly argument. you try to justify unconstitutional and idiotic restraints on liberty because people do give up liberty for the public good (such as giving up the liberty to drive 150 MPH through a school zone or shooting pigeons in central park with a Bofors gun) its like saying people agree to consume cyanide because they eat unhealthy foods silly argument.
civilized patriots sometimes can see giving up some freedom as a means to an important end. For the control freaks, getting rid of freedom is their end. Big difference
I remember old Elmer Fudds complaining that NRA was too hardline being in favor of handguns and Machine guns and concealed carry and open carry etc........ What I now refer to as Pro Gun Anti Gunners, they are the real enemy we need to fear.
I wish someone would remind those asshat road closing protestor types about the assembly on the Hwy thing.
Its interesting that in most of your "big govt" arguments you equate the trivial (stop light) with the extreme (gun ban), its either all or nothing.
Did you remember that pathetic now defunct group started by a hard core bannerrhoid called the "American Hunters and Shooters Association" or something like that. It was started by a Democrat party activist who was on the board of the Brady Thugs and it pretended to be a Pro-gun group that wanted "reasonable gun control" like magazine limits, semi auto bans etc. It died because people realized it was nothing more than a Trojan Horse and was a BM organ. But there is more and more of that. I call it the Ben and Jerry syndrome when those two left wing activists used to instruct hard core lefties to always preface a criticism of W by saying "I VOTED FOR BUSH BUT....." so now we get, "I AM A GUN OWNER but we Need to ban........
That's a poor understanding of how freedom works in general. Here's a better question to ask- what is your response to this hypothetical? P1. It is morally acceptable to do anything that does not kill another person or another way, if I don't kill another person, it is morally acceptable . P2. I shoot you in the leg and you are still alive. Conclusion: My actions are morally permissible.
This thread is about all or nothing. Total liberty vs total freedom. Neither exists in a society as is my point
Darn freaking right it is. In all seriousness, yes that's the problem. When we're talking about the 2nd amendment whether we should expand it or not, we're really talking about the concept of negative rights and positive rights. Is the government saying it won't do something or will it do something. The problem is that the way the constitution is written is such that it's a negative right. However that was 200 years ago when positive rights weren't popular but now we use them all the time to talk about things. Intuition probably says that most people say they have a right to freedom of speech, instead of the government not infringing upon speech. So it's balancing out those two. Nothing more and nothing less.
"It is morally acceptable to do anything that does not kill another person or another way, if I don't kill another person, it is morally acceptable ." I don't accept that P1 is valid. It is not morally acceptable do anything that does not kill another person. The limitations presented by Constitution are on the federal government, not the individuals.
