Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
monolith
climber
state of being
|
|
Dirty dishes in the sink. OMG! What swines!
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
The rest of us just don't want to get shot and have no faith in the Die Hard vigilante wanna-be garbage popularized by our culture.
Then you should immediately move to someplace where that is not a real threat.
Like, pretty much ANYWHERE in the USA that's not a few well-known inner-city armpits. Beyond a FEW such places, your odds are astronomically low that this great horror you FEAR is ever gonna happen.
The irony is that people like you apparently LIVE IN FEAR of this incredibly unlikely event happening, yet you accuse people like me of living in fear of other unlikely events happening.
The difference between US is that YOU fear the everyday, law-abiding citizens. While I simply prepare for the random CRIMINAL event. YOU want to live in a protected little bubble, while I realize that we do not.
You are more likely to be illegitimately shot by a COP than by any citizen-gun-carrier. Your fear is directed at ENTIRELY the wrong demographic. At least my realism is directed at the demographic that is actually a threat.
|
|
zBrown
Ice climber
|
|
Amen bros and sisses. Evbody needs to get on board.
My experience balances it all out as to who threatened whom:
1 - Black kid with a gun at a proposed 'gang' fight
2 - Laguna Beach PD
3 - Redneck mutherfkker driving up 395 in a truck like the one above
All guilty as charged.
|
|
The Chief
climber
Down the hill & across the Valley from......
|
|
|
|
The Chief
climber
Down the hill & across the Valley from......
|
|
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
If I wear a vest festooned with sticks of dynamite down a public street with no intention to detonate, am I still amended "unalienable" ? ...
I've repeatedly answered this sort of question.
WMDs do not provide a credible response to an INDIVIDUAL threat in the USA (at least not yet). (Oh, and if you have a problem with your scenario being called a "weapon of MASS destruction," then NOBODY should be calling a 4-or-more shooting a "mass shooting.")
Unlike a gun with a 13-round mag, with a big pile of dynamite, it's an "all or nothing," big-boom or nothing affair. There can in principle be no precision or "aim" with such a response. A gun can in principle deliver an individual response to an individual.
Furthermore, you would never imagine a cop employing such a response, and the citizen armaments should map onto the armaments of the cops (for reasons I've also explained elsewhere).
So, let's keep it in perspective.
|
|
Psilocyborg
climber
|
|
Removing all guns will not fix our utterly broken society. Our utterly broken society is a Petri dish for ISIS's idiology.
Republicans and democrats are a bigger threat to this country than ISIS. United we stand, divided we fall. Duh.
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
These rights are Constitutionally inalienable, like air to breath and water to drink.
Jim, I'm not sure what you're after. I don't think you are asking questions in good faith, and phrases like "constitutionally inalienable" don't even make sense.
|
|
fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
|
|
Funny how well simple language can easily divide otherwise intelligent people.
"Gun Violence"
"Muslim Terrorists"
Both of the examples above are nonsense used to simply divide and distract. See if you can keep track of how many times one or the other are used in current propaganda outlets (i.e. anything on the teevee).
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
If me as a human is allowed into the USA at our mutual border, the rights afforded by the American Constitution are inalienable.
The "inalienable" rights the US founders believed in are not expressly mentioned in the constitution; a subset are mentioned in the declaration of independence. Inalienable rights are not dependent upon any government, nor can they be "afforded" by any document, including the US constitution.
It is too huge a topic to discuss on a forum: why/how you come to have such rights. But our founders based the principles of this nation on the fact that persons do have them. Thus, the US founding documents acknowledge rather than "grant" or "afford" these rights.
That sounds like even though I'm not classified as American, I'm still protected by the American Constitution and Bill of Rights while on American soil.
You are talking now of something like legal protections, and you seem to be headed toward positive protections rather than talking about negative rights. Furthermore, the way things presently work in this nation is often a very far cry from the way the founding principles would imply. So, as a "tourist" in the US, if you are looking for inconsistencies between the way you could expect things to work here and the way things actually turn out to work, you can certainly find many.
You talked about buying a .357 magnum for self-defense. I honestly don't know what legal rights you have in that regard. I have a number of friends here from Canada with green cards, and they are legally able to purchase guns here. But I don't know about gun laws for non-residents.
None of that has anything to do with inalienable rights, unless you are asserting that you have an inalienable right to own a gun and that that right transcends the soil upon which you are standing. If that's your direction here, I would agree with you, but there are still legitimate legal ramifications as regards legal aliens ("immigrant" is not the correct term for short-timers or illegals).
Again, I don't know what you're after with this line of questioning. But, again, the way you are talking about rights and tying them to the constitution is not accurate. Also there is often a wide disconnect between legality (the realm of lawyers and politicians) and morality (the realm of rights).
|
|
Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
|
|
me as a human is legally allowed into the USA at our mutual border, the rights afforded by the American Constitution are inalienable.
All I can think of is this.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
|
|
Mr Brennan writes:
"That sounds like even though I'm not classified as American, I'm still protected by the American Constitution and Bill of Rights while on American soil."
As a foreigner, you only have the rights that a majority of Congress says you have. The rights in our Constitution are for "Ourselves and our Posterity".
|
|
philo
climber
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2015 - 11:23pm PT
|
MD1 I read your skreed and a few words of yours caught my eye.
Furthermore, the way things presently work in this nation is often a very far cry from the way the founding principles would imply.
Like the skewing of the 2nd to imply that every Tom, Dick and Joe the Plumber has a god given right to have semi-auto assault weapons with high capacity mags and hollow point rounds? You mean like that?
Somehow I doubt they envisioned "No Fly Lists" and "No Fly Zones" either.
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
" that all men were created equal and we're endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights". The declaration of independence, not the constitution guys.
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
Well, I'm going to bed, but I'll offer this.
Throwing morality into what defines legality is your red herring MB...
No, as my last post clarified, I am distinguishing legality and morality. I say that they often come far apart. I believe that you are the one who is "throwing morality into what defines legality."
I would question what you think is the distinction between a legitimate law and an illegitimate one.
You go on about where someone's liberty begins and where someone else has a problem with that at the beginning of their nose.
You'll need to clarify what you mean by that.
What is your point exactly about the rights that define an individual who finds his feet legally, 200 miles inland from any American border while being a citizen of another country ?
As I said, neither the US founders nor I believe that inalienable rights come and go based upon borders. They are bound to persons... inalienably, so they transcend borders and governments.
However, not all governments recognize this fact, and not all honor them. Over more than two centuries, the United States has drifted very far in terms of its understanding of, commitment to, and legislation in terms of these rights. Consequently, the US we see now is very, very different in this sense than the US that was designed and founded.
I don't mean at all that the original US was legally perfect. In fact, the institution of slavery itself indicates how difficult it is for people to form all and only principled laws. However, the biggest difference between then and now is that the founders at least understood and were committed to the principles, while today most people do not understand nor are they committed to the founding principles.
Thus, what legal rights an alien on US soil may or may not have today regarding self-defense could well come far apart from the founding principles. As I said, I'm not up on the laws regarding aliens purchasing and bearing guns on US soil. It is certain that Canada does not afford US citizens the legal right to bear guns in Canada that they have while on US soil. So, you see that legal rights come apart from moral rights.
The crux of the point I have made repeatedly is that if the US government so utterly violates its founding principles that in its laws it ceases to uphold, honor, and protect inalienable rights, "we the people" NO LESS possess those rights anyway. If these moral rights are not reflected in legislation, they do not thereby become any less fundamental moral rights.
"We the people" recognize that governments often fail to ground their laws in fundamental moral principles. And when this occurs, such governments become less and less legitimate and may be ultimately overthrown by principled people seeking to form another government that will again honor and uphold inalienable rights. The rights of revolution or abstention are themselves inalienable rights, as was explicitly stated as the most fundamental justification for our abstention from and ultimate throwing off of British rule.
So, if you are asking a legal question, I have no answer for you because I don't know the status of gun rights for aliens in the US. If you are asking a moral question, I would say that your right of self-defense does not abandon you at the border. If it could, it would not be inalienable.
|
|
philo
climber
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2015 - 11:25pm PT
|
Your on a roll Rick. Now tell us what those rights that are inalienable are.
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
Well phillo, since you angry rhetoric infringes upon most others lives, liberty and the pursuit of happiness I would assume that someday soon you'll have the right of silence and anything coming out of your pie hole can and will be used against you.
Let's just hope you don't go off before that and create a mass casualty event as an angry white guy. Same thing with your bros the Craigster.
|
|
philo
climber
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2015 - 11:35pm PT
|
Hahaha Idiot wind.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.
Thanks Bob Dylan.
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
Like the skewing of the 2nd to imply that every Tom, Dick and Joe the Plumber has a god given right to have semi-auto assault weapons with high capacity mags and hollow point rounds? You mean like that?
Yes, I mean EXACTLY like that.
You never argue in good-faith. You care only for sniping, personal attacks, vile language and accusations, and every other dirty trick of the sophist.
I have repeatedly argued that the bill of rights has NO causal relation to the possession of inalienable rights. It is a TRAGEDY that supposed "Americans" even have to have this explained to them!
The entire bill of rights never should have been adopted into the constitution, as it HAS resulting in EXACTLY the confusion that Hamilton feared and argued against in Federalist 84:
"I go further and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?"
Jefferson famously argued FOR the bill of rights, SO suspicious was he of a federal government, because he wanted to make POSITIVELY explicit that the federal government had NO power in such matters, while Hamilton is proved right in his contention that a bill of rights by its very existence SUGGESTS that the federal government has powers beyond those enumerated in the body of the constitution that thus must be explicitly reigned in.
FAR safer, Hamilton (ironically, a federalist) argued, to depend upon the negation: that the government HAS NO POWER beyond what it has been explicitly granted: Don't positively list powers it doesn't have; instead, positively list what powers it DOES have, negate EVERYTHING else, and leave it at that.
The very fact that you (and too many others) believe that the right to bear arms DEPENDS UPON the 2nd amendment shows the abject confusion that is precisely what Hamilton sought to avoid! But the anti-federalists just HAD to have it, so the compromise was hatched. And the irony has come full-bloom, as now the very ANTI-federalism that got us the bill of rights in the first place had been undone BY the bill of rights and has blossomed into a RADICAL FEDERALISM based upon the confusion that these amendments GRANT RIGHTS and that the federal government can do ANYTHING not explicitly precluded by the bill of rights.
And thus we have a SCOTUS justice asking the fateful question regarding Obamacare: "If government can do THIS, then what can government not do?" And SHOCKINGLY, he answered his own question by ruling that the government CAN DO ANYTHING! Thus, in our lifetimes, we see the principles that BOTH the federalists AND anti-federalists alike sought to establish and protect instead trodden underfoot, as we are overtaken by a RADICAL FEDERALISM that even causes us to debate the meaning and legitimacy of CLEAR amendments like the 2nd.
The bill of rights does NOT grant rights. These amendments were written by ANTI-federalists to explicitly ACKNOWLEDGE and HONOR rights that pre-exist ALL forms of government, and to (attempt to) protect them from ANY federal intrusion! The federal government has NO constitutional power to infringe upon the right to bear arms, and that FACT is in NO way derived from the 2nd amendment. The right to bear arms (appropriate to the right of self-defense and of potential revolution) would exist INALIENABLY in the people regardless of the existence or removal of the 2nd amendment.
So, dicker and debate the 2nd amendment all you like. Even attempt to get it removed. But in so doing you only reveal your deep confusion about the nature of legitimate government and the history of the United States.
You'll quote a single, confused SCOTUS justice when it suits your purposes, but you are ignorant and confused about the founding history and the principles of rights and legitimate government enshrined in the founding of this nation.
If you don't like the implications of liberty, such as the fact that FREE people are not as "safe" as little sheep tucked into their warm little fold, then MOVE yourself to a nation of sheep.
The United States was NEVER supposed to be Europe or to be compared to the metrics of Europe. But if you want, say, France, then, PLEASE, go there immediately and be among the sheep that are just like you. While there, you can moan and snivel and cry about how the government didn't protect you from those bad, bad terrorists, as though UNARMED cops could do much of anything. Yes, GO to Europe and revel in all that "free" stuff and "safety." I hear that Greece was a great place to live until fairly recently, when the shoe finally dropped.
If you want European principles, then GO to Europe rather than to call yourself an "American" while doing everything in your power to undermine everything that made America so different from and better than Europe.
|
|
RyanD
climber
|
|
"Better"
Good one.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!