Guns at Townhall Meetings

[THAC0]

the people with guns at the meeting are idiots.

If i want to carry a gun, which is my right, i'll get a concealed weapons permit and a discreet holster. No big deal, unless i need to defend myself.

If i want to look like an ass and show off how big of a man i think i am, i'll get an assault rifle or some other excessive amount of firepower, and make sure that everyone sees it. I'll also most likely get some of those fake testicile and hang them from the bumper of my truck.

which do you see happening at the meetings.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

the ban of selling automatic firearms was lifted in 2004.

I wonder who was gracious enough to do that? *sarcasm alert*

 

[THAC0]

You don't carry a gun if you are anywhere near the president. There is no discussion, there is no argument. If you have a gun in the same building as the president, you will be assumed to use it, whether you do or not. Why does this have to be explained?

agreed. You couldn't take guns into the buildings on my campus, you can't take guns on airplanes, YOU CAN'T TAKE GUNS NEAR THE LEADER OF THE COUNTRY!!!

these people make responsible gun owners everywhere look like jerks by association.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

BTW, as I said earlier... the point of having a gun for self-defense is not to shoot people. The point is to point it at them and watch them run the fuck off.

I wish that last part were so- in my state and I think in most, the laws concerning defensive firearm use very much favor the attacker rather than the shooter. Now this sounds good in theory, but in its present form it leads to absurdities. For example, If someone is running at grandma with an axe in his hand and murder in his eyes, granny would open herself up to criminal prosecution if she merely threatened to shoot. If she pulls the gun and the man surrenders, she will face prosecution, even though that would have been the ideal scenario. The way the laws are now, you must never draw the gun unless you mean to kill. And you can't wound the guy, either (only professional marksmen should attempt this, no matter how good a shot you are)- to be safe from the law, you must kill.

 

[TMAN10112]

Source?

Are you reffering to something in your town, a news story, or something about the rights of people to carry guns around in general?

 

[tyrolean]

snip

I've got to agree with this, hauling guns around is never a way to calm a situation just exasperate it. The right to bear arms is in place for defence not to threaten

That's a fair point.

But I was thinking about accidental discharge more than anything. The numbers say that if an American's going to shoot you, they'll probably do it entirely by accident rather than in defence or criminally.



There's no predicting accidental knocks, bad maintanence, design flaws, poor discipline or cheap ammunition.

I've learned recently from my instructor that it's actually what's being taught as "gun safety" is getting ppl killed.

If say, a hunter is out in the woods and has his gun loaded but no round chambered, his mindset is that the gun is unloaded and "safe". If he sees a deer and chambers a cartridge but doesn't shoot, he's likely to forget that there's still a chambered bullet in there when it comes time to clean the gun....presto! Accidental discharge. NRA instructors are starting to teach that a gun is Always loaded and Always treat any gun as though it is loaded

 

[Limerickx]

Because the same people who glibly swallowed the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, and all manner of lying, obfuscation, and criminality under the Bush administration are suddenly up in arms to fight government oppression because the new administration is "socialist" and wants to reform health care.

Did you ever consider that one can be for health care reform and against Obama's health care reform plan at the same time? Maybe you were too busy making sweeping generalizations to consider it.....

Your first post is a response to little old me? I'm honored. Now do me a favor and read what I said again. Upon doing this, and taking into account the context of the thread topic, you should realize that my previous post was not an indictment against anyone who's against Obama's proposed health care reform. (I'm not sure if I'm for or against it myself.)

Rather, it was directed at people who are up in arms about the issue (sometimes literally, as we've seen). These people who've let themselves be whipped up into a frenzy by what to any rational human being should be an obvious attempt at fear-mongering and disinformation by certain unscrupulous elements on the right (e.g. Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Rick Scott, etc). These people who are desperately, pathetically trying to channel the "don't tread on me" spirit of the American Revolution. These people who tromp around demanding their country back, convinced that they're freedom fighters resisting some new, unique phenomenon of government oppression perpetrated by socialist usurpers (who, incidentally, are also Nazis and communists). These people who stage protests while conspicuously armed as political gesture, as if to imply that they can and will resort to armed resistance if necessary. And over what, exactly?

Where were these cretins with their vaunted outrage when a false justification for an illegal war was being concocted and spoon fed to the American public? Where were they when all the illegal wiretapping and such, along with the Patriot Act designed to legalize as much of it as possible, was going down? Where were they when it was discovered that you could be held incommunicado in a prison camp somewhere and denied due process because the President declared you an "enemy combatant"?

Ah, that's right. They were sitting at home, going about their lives, blithely confident that the administration responsible for these flagrant abuses of power was just doing what was necessary to keep the country safe.

Really? You feel confident that you can with, without hesitation, that every person who went to a town hall meeting displaying a firearm of some sort are cretins who did nothing during the Iraq war and are just being stirred up by misinformation? Thats a blanket statement that you are confident in making?

There are real reasons to be unhappy with the proposed bill, you said so yourself, so why do you assume that every single person you're insuting have reasons that are misguided?

Making blanket statements about people you've never met makes you look no better than the people you are trying to insult. You say 'my ideas are right, so if you protest for MY things (the war), you are doing your part, if not (only protesting health care reform), you are a 'cretin.'

What about people who participated in protests against the war and are doing nothing about health care? Are they cretins, or are they ok since they agree with what you think? What about people who are protesting both? Or neither?

 

[Cptn_Squishy]

We have a 2nd Amendment that says its legal to carry them in public.

The question isnt CAN you, the question is SHOULD you.

Eh, most of these friggin people bitching about how the government should stay out of our lives conveniently forget that when Bush pushed for warrantless wiretapping, these same people kept saying 'if you dont do anything out-of-line then you wont have a problem.' btw, you know what prevented warrantless wiretapping? it wasnt the congress, it wasnt the senate, and it sure as hell wasnt these all-of-a-sudden concerned voters.

it was the Supreme Court.

Obama could push these people out of the way of an oncoming car and theyd ***** that it was a foreign car.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Statistically, it's pretty clear that gun control laws increase violent crime. They create a situation where the only people who have guns are cops and criminals. When the latter come a knockin', the former will be glad to peel your corpse off the floor after they're gone. I live on the fringe of a ghetto in the DC area and I can tell you personally that there is no better security system than an unloaded pump-action. My best friend, who grew up in the ghetto, had his house broken into a half a dozen times growing up: then his did would rack his empty shotgun and the would-be thief would disappear like a ghost. Nobody hears about all the crimes that guns prevent.

I find this paragraph rather odd! First you say there's statistical evidence, then give us some non-statistical reasons and anecdotal evidence. And then you go on to explain how "nobody hears about..." which is almost as if to say that statistics won't show you damn near anything about your claim.

I imagine your "statistics", if they exist, are just correlations between crime rates and certain gun laws. If that's the case, you're probably not comparing apples to apples: you might as well just compare high concentrations of people and low concentrations of people as that tends to be the pattern of where gun laws are strict or lax. Why would that be? Because urban areas, especially ones with racial tensions, tend to have had worse experiences with violent crime in the first place, so they are far more likely to outlaw firearms. Just because they continue to have higher crime rates doesn't really say anything about gun laws other than that they aren't a magic wand against all crime (which no one so far as I know has claimed.)

 

[vonne]

from the US constition...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Now, can someone tell me what regulated militia these people belong to, what security threats to a free state are happening at these town meetings, and how is the debate on health care reform (not health care reform itself - seperate issue) can be considered a security threat?

 

[TMAN10112]

snip

I've got to agree with this, hauling guns around is never a way to calm a situation just exasperate it. The right to bear arms is in place for defence not to threaten

That's a fair point.

But I was thinking about accidental discharge more than anything. The numbers say that if an American's going to shoot you, they'll probably do it entirely by accident rather than in defence or criminally.



There's no predicting accidental knocks, bad maintanence, design flaws, poor discipline or cheap ammunition.

I've learned recently from my instructor that it's actually what's being taught as "gun safety" is getting ppl killed.

If say, a hunter is out in the woods and has his gun loaded but no round chambered, his mindset is that the gun is unloaded and "safe". If he sees a deer and chambers a cartridge but doesn't shoot, he's likely to forget that there's still a chambered bullet in there when it comes time to clean the gun....presto! Accidental discharge. NRA instructors are starting to teach that a gun is Always loaded and Always treat any gun as though it is loaded

Since when haven't they been teaching that?

I've never met someone (especially with expirience as an instructor) who didn't preach that like it was the word of god himself.

 

[Craig FTW]

It's an expression of their 1st Amendment rights in the form of a display of their 2nd Amendment rights. I assume. One could expect them to have the courtesy to keep them unloaded just so there's no possibility of an incident, but as long as nobody gets hurt I suppose it's not a problem.

A guy on Hardball said that last night and the othere two speakers frakkin laughed and yelled at him..
That guy made sense. And so do you.

 

[Oolinthu]

Your first post is a response to little old me? I'm honored. Now do me a favor and read what I said again. Upon doing this, and taking into account the context of the thread topic, you should realize that my previous post was not an indictment against anyone who's against Obama's proposed health care reform. (I'm not sure if I'm for or against it myself.)

Rather, it was directed at people who are up in arms about the issue (sometimes literally, as we've seen). These people who've let themselves be whipped up into a frenzy by what to any rational human being should be an obvious attempt at fear-mongering and disinformation by certain unscrupulous elements on the right (e.g. Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Rick Scott, etc). These people who are desperately, pathetically trying to channel the "don't tread on me" spirit of the American Revolution. These people who tromp around demanding their country back, convinced that they're freedom fighters resisting some new, unique phenomenon of government oppression perpetrated by socialist usurpers (who, incidentally, are also Nazis and communists). These people who stage protests while conspicuously armed as political gesture, as if to imply that they can and will resort to armed resistance if necessary. And over what, exactly?

Where were these cretins with their vaunted outrage when a false justification for an illegal war was being concocted and spoon fed to the American public? Where were they when all the illegal wiretapping and such, along with the Patriot Act designed to legalize as much of it as possible, was going down? Where were they when it was discovered that you could be held incommunicado in a prison camp somewhere and denied due process because the President declared you an "enemy combatant"?

Ah, that's right. They were sitting at home, going about their lives, blithely confident that the administration responsible for these flagrant abuses of power was just doing what was necessary to keep the country safe.

Really? You feel confident that you can with, without hesitation, that every person who went to a town hall meeting displaying a firearm of some sort are cretins who did nothing during the Iraq war and are just being stirred up by misinformation? Thats a blanket statement that you are confident in making?

While I would never say my statement applies to every single person who went to a town hall meeting displaying a firearm, yes - by and large, though I certainly don't make blanket statements likely, I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of people who did so (the ones that aren't paid astroturf faux-protesters, that is) are just that. A statement I'll gladly retract if you can demonstrate to the contrary.

There are real reasons to be unhappy with the proposed bill, you said so yourself, so why do you assume that every single person you're insuting have reasons that are misguided?

Making blanket statements about people you've never met makes you look no better than the people you are trying to insult. You say 'my ideas are right, so if you protest for MY things (the war), you are doing your part, if not (only protesting health care reform), you are a 'cretin.'

A health care bill you don't agree with being proposed and voted on, no matter how atrocious it may be, isn't criminal and isn't an abuse of power. Unpopular legislation, even if it's unpopular for a good reason, isn't illegal. The things I mentioned occurring under the Bush administration were. I didn't say you're a cretin if you're protesting something that I agree with and not something I don't - I said you're a cretin if you sit on your ass while true abuses of power go down, and then take to the streets over a bill you don't like and probably don't fully understand.

What about people who participated in protests against the war and are doing nothing about health care? Are they cretins, or are they ok since they agree with what you think? What about people who are protesting both? Or neither?

Those who protest health care but not the war/other Bush administration abuses: see above.

Those who protest the war, etc, but not health care: see above. Alternatively, they may just agree with Obama's proposed reforms (which is not, as you've repeatedly insinuated, what I think).

Those who protest both or neither: At the very least, they're consistent and thus not subject to my critique.

 

[Ell Jay]

Reminds me of that Simpsons episode...

"It has come to my attention that a number of you are stroking guns. I will now surrender the floor."

 

[eldubyar]

They may have the legal right, but if a liberal had brought a gun to a bush rally, the conservatives would have been screaming TERRORIST at the top of their lungs. Typical republican hypocrisy.

 

[vonne]

from the US constition...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Now, can someone tell me what regulated militia these people belong to, what security threats to a free state are happening at these town meetings, and how is the debate on health care reform (not health care reform itself - seperate issue) can be considered a security threat?

Your allowed to have a gun on you if you have a permit. And I'm sure your allowed to carry one in public, but I believe you need a permit. As long as it doesn't get everyone panicked, they should be allowed. And from what I saw, there wasn't any panic, therefor, just let them continue.

i understand the permit issue. what i dont understand is how this amendment has become so misunderstood, misused, and misinterpreted.