You are the one Zombie, who brought up slavery and abortion. The history of abolition is a battle of free thinking individuals against established religious ideals, as is the history of abortion.
Two children are about to die. You can save one, the choice is out of your hands and unimportant. Why would you save one when the other dies anyway? equatable to "Why would you enforce gun control to protect children when you're killing millions of children every day?" Your point is STILL invalid, even if I take YOUR (and clearly just your) opinion that abortion = killing children
Zombie, whether you just converted to Christianity, took it up out of a whim, or were a lifelong religious person it doesn't matter. It's a religious viewpoint. I'd wager the amount of atheists who think abortion is wrong is a number one can count on one hand. Regardless, gun control is not about how messed up you think the priorities of our government are Also, lol SJ
The slave thing was meant to be an analogy & I still can't see how aborting an unborn child isn't considered killing a child but it is irrelevant to gun control. I'll take my responsibility that I shouldn't have mentioned it in here and move on. I don't speak for anyone else (tea party or Christians or whatever) I should have just been more careful to keep my opinion on it from spilling over to gun control, I agree. I don't have the patience, time, or research to fight on with this so I'll step back. I just want to jump in without religion being attacked. I don't know all the facts of slavery & I don't claim to, nor do I claim to be the most intelligent guy here. I just don't think its right for the govt to support something that's wrong & I have my opinion on what's wrong just like you. Like I said, I'm not willing to go find proof, research, or type out my reasons so I guess I have no business in a debate. At least I brought life to a dead thread lol. Friends?
It's a waste of genetics, but not murder. The soul doesn't actually incarnate into the physical body until the first breath is taken. To commit murder or an act of killing there has to be a consciousness within that body, which there is not at the time of abortion. It's metaphysics, grab a pencil.
I disagree with you starship but I'll take it to pm's to keep from pushing this thread any further off topic.
Of course you disagree... who the hell would believe me when I say something like that? lol. But if you are going to try and convince me otherwise, it won't happen. I just spread information, I don't try and prove what I say is right... people can take it or leave it. I'm not here to debate about it either. [br][/br]Edited by merge: ^^^ He must be one of those people who thinks Elvis is dead
Spoiler [l-col][/l-col][r-col] [/r-col] Seriously though, our country could do with some significant changes being enacted (gun control being one of them). Tired of this status-quo **** that has been slowly tanking this country for decades.
haven't read through all of this and certainly won't get into any arguments here... but wanted to clarify something from the OP.. the media spins private sale as a "loophole" known as the "Gun show loophole" but really what they are doing with that orwellian double-speak is trying to make you think someone is getting away with something they shouldn't. It's not a "loophole" at all. It's your right to sell your own property and it supercedes any gun sales law. Selling someone your stuff is not a "loophole". You can go to a gun show and sell someone your own private collection, just like you can with ANYTHING you own as long as the thing is legal itself. In the U.S. of A. it will always be legal to sell your own stuff. PERIOD. And if they want to take our guns, they must think we are going to lay down. I say the Revolution was already fought and the reason we have this country in the first place is because of the right to bear arms. That right doesn't specify that it is guns, but ANY arms. The government may not infringe on your right to own arms, period. They can try, and they will fail. If they don't like the answer to the 1776 revolution, we can always show them who's boss AGAIN! And if you think any individual who is free (not in prison) is not fit to own arms, then you must keep them in prison or institutionalised. If he is "free" and can't own arms, then he is not actually free at all.
Gun control - needed. Gun ban - not needed. People need guns for self protection and hunting etc etc. Who the **** needs an automatic assault rifle. To hunt animals on their land? Bullshit. That **** should be banned.
@JKaddict By approving a government (social contract theory), we give our ability to do whatever we want without repercussion to the government so that the government can decide which actions best benefit the majority of the people. That is, if the government didn't act in majority interests, it would lose approval on balance and thus the ability to control us (see Rousseau's writings on the general will). So a full democracy acts, by definition, for the majority will. Which means you have no moral grounds upon which to stand and fight the government if the democracy votes for stricter gun control measures. Essentially, government-elected officials have the right to do absolutely whatever they wants as long as their actions support the general will (which you can take as betterment) of the people. So if the people or the elected officials of the people (the general will) support restricting arms in some fashion, they have every right to. Specifically to your argument, JKaddict, if you define the Second Amendment as preventing any sort of infringement on owning arms, it has already been broken repeatedly. If you wish to obtain a gun without a registration, the government will stop you. If you wish to obtain an RPG, the government will most certainly stop you. On your note to selling your own property, I'll make a (rather nasty) point, although the example itself isn't arms-related, it carries over well to the gun control argument. Say you are a child and you consider your virginity (body) part of your property. You could use that as a moral justification for becoming a child prostitute or to sell child pornography (I can sell my own property without government inteference, and my body is my property, so let me sell it). So the government must have a right to restrict the property that you can sell. EDIT: SJ ninja'd me on being allowed to own all arms while I was typing my long post..
I think you're mistaking what "the media" (I love it when people refer to anyone not themselves who say things they don't believe in as "the media") means by the gun show loophole. No one is saying they are doing illegal things and that is why they should be stopped. They are saying, the things they are doing should be regulated the same way licensed gun stores are. It is because they are legal it causes the "loophole" which allows the sale of otherwise hard to get weapons without the hassle of waiting periods, background checks, etc. The fact that you just said, "the right to sell your own property and it supercedes any gun sales law" doesn't strike you as a problem eh? Again, that was never the "loophole". If the private collector is licensed to own the weapons they own and are a responsible individual, all power to them to do what they want with what they own (within reason). It's the stage that occurs after they buy the guns and choose to sell them back to people that creates the problem ...except when your stuff is a national security risk, could lead to the deaths of others, is a stolen item, [insert rest of large list of things that make that statement stupid]. For instance, if you owned a nuke, and wanted to sell your nuke...then no, it's not legal to sell your nuke....or a stolen car...or a shipment of AK-47s. What is it with this kind of viewpoint? It's like the all or none mentality that thinks if some laws are passed trying to solve a problem then it is like just a matter of time until every single gun is illegal or something like that. That's not how this works and that is not what any legislator is suggesting. [insert argument about colonial soldiers, militias, Britain's overconfidence and incompetent generals] Also...they already do "infringe on your right to own arms". Don't you want to own an RPG? That's "an arm". How about a semi-automatic to full auto P90? Those look like cool arms. Shame they are already illegal to obtain. So why is it when discussion about further limiting what people can use to kill stuff with is uttered all of a sudden all arms are sacrosanct and above reproach (regardless of the obvious line that people who make this argument ignore when they talk about the weapons they are allowed to own) I love this viewpoint as well. "If they take our guns we'll revolt!" Yeah goodluck carrying out a civil war that none of the population dense cities will partake in and dealing with the government's airforce, national guard, army, etc. They don't need the guns people are bickering about. This isn't 1776, and there isn't near the amount of people that would "take arms" just because 1 of their amendments was being discussed. (I notice people aren't threatening to attack the government every time they pass a warrentless wiretap bill, internet censorship bill, or patriot act type bill which basically makes it ok to detain people indefinitely as long as they are suspected of "terrorism". How patriotic of you to just care about why you won't be able to buy a pistol grip for your automatic shotgun) ...I don't even know what that last statement means but I'm pretty sure it was also poo.
Or you know, you could just vote out the people in government you don't like. Yeah it's probably not as cool as storming the white house guns ablazing and having a huge shootout in congress, but it works.