Everyone needs to read Sarah’s letter at FireDogLake, and then hit every rightwing troll that comes here to answer the question. Are you trying to start a civil war? Yes or NO.
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Sarah is rather given to hyperbole, but we certainly do need leaders on both sides to speak out and to encourage civility in dealing with those with whom one disagrees.

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I’ve always thought what members of the police force supposedly have to say about gun ownership to be a sound proposal — namely, that you shouldn’t own a gun unless you’re thoroughly prepared to draw it, fire it once drawn, hit what (or whom) you fire at, and kill (or at least incapacitate) anyone upon whom you choose to open fire. A failure at any step in that process makes the gun just as much of a danger to oneself (if not more so) as it does to anyone who might be attacking or thinking of doing so, because the gun then becomes something which can potentially be taken away from and used against its owner.

A member of my family, a self-professed conservative(!), keeps (or used to keep) a gun in his house ostensibly for protection…but truth to tell, I very much doubt that he ever took it out on a practice range or even bothered to clean it. Fortunately, he was never presented with a situation in which using the gun might have been called for — but had he chosen to do so, I think it quite possible that he would have done himself more harm than good since I’m not even certain that it would have worked — let alone that he could have succeeded in incapacitating or killing someone with it.

I don’t have a problem, but there’s a vast array of disagreement inherent in the word “responsible.” The NRA went absolutist some time ago, opposing any regulation of any firearms whatsoever in all cases, no matter what. Since there isn’t a (responsible) voice advocating what (responsible) gun ownership would consist of out there, the correct debate just isn’t happening.

I would think that gun ownership should be the equivalent of getting a driver’s license. Prove you know the safety rules involved, prove you can use the gun correctly, get a license – both for the gun and the owner. Have the same rules everywhere. The NRA could even be included in the plan, since they run many gun safety and education classes.

But as long as they’d rather oppose even reasonable regulation, the issue will remain skewed – in certain legal jurisdictions guns will be regulated too heavily; in others not enough, with the laws swaying wildly back and forth depending on how the political winds are blowing this week.

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Bluestocking Says:

- since I know the historical reasons why our Founding Fathers thought it vital to include the Second Amendment in the Constitution -

All talk of further revolutions aside, when it comes to the purpose of the Second Amendment, I would tend to go with the clause in the Second Amendment that literally states its purpose, per the “minuteman” concept. The federal government couldn’t originally afford to supply their soldiers with weapons, so potential militia volunteers would need to BYOG. Any laws restricting personal firearm ownership would thus restrict the potential to muster up an effective militia ifneeded.

The situation is somewhat the other way around now – the military-industrial complex goes through vast amounts of money to keep the military supplied with mind-boggling levels of firepower. Personal weaponry is incomparable to what the standing army routinely keeps on hand; not only is it not needed to help, it couldn’t possibly be used to oppose it.

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angels81 Says:

Everyone needs to read Sarah’s letter at FireDogLake, and then hit every rightwing troll that comes here to answer the question. Are you trying to start a civil war? Yes or NO.

This is what I say about the whole “Texas succession” thing – TRY IT. The next civil war will last less than a month.

My favorite part of the whole smackdown was her last statement and leaving Billo with “you’ve got blood on your hands”, which he does.

The only thing I regret is that Walsh didn’t challenge Billo’s ridiculous statement that Tiller performed 60,000 abortions. That is pretty much impossible.

That has not been my assessment. As far as I can see, people here have no problem with “responsible” gun ownership. They do have a problem with owning assault weapons because there’s nothing “responsible” about them.

I think just the fact that the government KNOWS that the people are armed will prevent them from doing something stupid. And don’t say they wouldn’t shoot their own people – it’s happened before.

The idea of Americans owning guns and then taking on our government terrifies me. Those who are toting guns are much more likely to kill each other than anyone who is threatening them. Unless you go to a run range on a regular basis, owning a gun is probably not going to help you because you will not be able to hit what you think you are aiming at.

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As a result of reading the letter and recollecting the kind of rhetoric that people on the right — politicians, op-ed commentators, and your average poster-on-the-thread — have been using to make their point over the past two decades (which seems to have gradually growing more inflammatory as time goes on), I have come to the inevitable conclusion that at least half if not most of them would give one unqualified answer to Sarah’s question…

***YES***

I know there are some people, on the leeft as well as the right, who make a feeble attempt to fob off some of the rhetoric as a “joke” or as an exaggeration — but I for one do not and cannot. Perhaps it’s the fact that when I was studying for my degree in psychology, most of my professors happened to be Freudians…but I for one believe that people never say what they don’t to at least some extent mean, even if only subconsciously, because the words cannot come out of the mouth unless they have already been in the head and in the heart. The emotions simmering beneath the surface of most people on the right — judging by the overall tone of the rhetoric which has been issuing forth from the right (or at least the far right) for the past two decades of more — go well beyond what a reasonable person would call frustration, hostility, anger, or even fury. There’s really only one word which seems apropos to me — that word is rage, which is one of the most volatile and least rational of all human emotions. What other emotion could possibly provoke a supposedly normal and civilized being to describe another as sub-human — or to suggest that this other person deserves to be disenfranchised, arrested, imprisoned for life, forcibly sent into permanent exile, executed without trial, or damned to Hell for all eternity simply for cherishing certain political beliefs? I’ve had each and every single one of these sentiments (or worse) wished upon me personally and others like me simply on the basis of my political beliefs even though I never have and never would do the same — and as people like David Niewert have pointed out, I’m by no means alone in being the target of such eliminationist speech.

Yes, people often do take the anonymity of a screen name as permission to say things which they wouldn’t have the courage to say to someone’s face — but if anything, all this proves is that the feelings are there underneath the surface, even if this is not something that these people would ever admit to publicly and even if fear of earthly or divine reprisal is one of the things (or the only thing) keeping them in line. I said this several times over the last eight years, and I’ll say it again now — human nature being what it is, all that would probably be needed at this point to manifest those emotions into action would be a sufficiently charismatic leader or public figure who would sanction and perhaps even encourage such actions “for the good of the country”. That was one of the reasons why George W. Bush frightened me so much…some people seemed so willing to accept anything and everything he said without question that they probably wouldn’t have hesitated to drag people into the streets and shoot them if Bush had told them to.

Witch1, I saw a Maine license plate recently that read: “WTCY POO”. Loved it!

http://firedoglake.com/2009/06/13/memo-to-the-right-wing-put-up-or-shut-up/

We need an answer from you stat!