As I said in an earlier post, being civilized is not having the mechanisms to inflict harm forcibly removed from your possession - - - being civilized is having those items in your possession but choosing not to use them. Such a concept is lost on collectivists and statists like you though; I do not expect you to understand.
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Good of you to define civilisation and then declare that your gun-ridden society miraculously fits that description!
Ever heard of the World Series Syndrome?
You poor thing, you really don't get it do you . . . A gun ban is "making an accommodation" for the criminals that dwell amongst us? Really, is that your argument?
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I suppose you see drinking laws as some kind of appeasement to alcoholics??
Actually I'm not arguing for a gun ban, just gun controls and a slow process to wean America out of its outdated gun culture.
Something like the 12 step program to get an alcoholic away from drinking.
There is no legitimate process to apply more weight or less weight to a provision of the Bill of Rights . . . It is not a buffet where one can take a little of this and a little of that and say, "no thanks" to one item.
The same reasoning that one uses to define the 1st Amendment must be used to define the 2nd, there is no sliding scale of protection . . . To borrow from Ingrid Newkirk,
a church is a newspaper is a house is a gun. Perhaps the Supreme Court of the USA can make the point more eloquently:
"As no constitutional guarantee enjoys preference, so none should suffer subordination or deletion.... To view a particular provision of the Bill of Rights with disfavor inevitably results in a constricted application of it. This is to disrespect the Constitution." -- ULLMAN v. US, 350 U.S. 422, (1956)
"[T]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This `liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . " -- PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PA. v. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) (quoting Justice Harlan In Poe v. Ullman)
What would be embarrassing is if you tell me the Supreme Court are a bunch of NRA wackos!
Perhaps that's true in your "will of the people" utopia where rights may only be exercised with permission from the magistrate. . . But not in the USA.
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So how come the Constitution was amended to make alcohol illegal?
Did drinking alcohol suddenly cease to be a God given right??
The right to arms is what is called a pre-existing right; the founders found the right being freely exercised before the Constitution was written and as no power was granted to government to impact the private arms of the citizen,
none can be LEGITIMATELY exercised. That concept is not of the NRA's construction, it is well demonstrated in our history and well represented in the decisions of SCOTUS.
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Ah pre-existing.
Sort of like the right to own slaves or the right to prevent women from voting??
Since drugs are banned I guess you are right! Really, how can there be a drug problem when their possession is completely - even for medical purposes - outlawed? It'll be different with guns though,
right?
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So now you're saying we should get rid of all those annoying, restrictive drug laws because those damn druggies just keep using them anyway??
BTW wasn't drug use a pre-existing right in the 1780's?