Commodore Oakius wrote:n7axw wrote:As for the right to seceed, that is now settled, not with legal arguments but in blood at places like Gettysburg, Shiloh and so on. Consequently there is no right of sucession, whatever the framers might have intended to start with.
Actually, and I am sorry to split hairs, but there are current petitions out there to succeed from the US. It is still not illegal. Personally I think it would be wrong to do so, and I think they South was wrong to do so as well, but the legal right was, and technically, still is there. Moral arguments, while right and just, and I support them, don't come down anywhere in the legal realm.n7axw wrote:As for the gun arguments, ccould we please have some practical sense? No one, least of all me has any particular objection to guns in the possession of responsible people, but look at what we actually have:
1.criminal gangs in some our cities who actually outgun the police who are trying to apprehend them.
2.Deranged individuals who wander through college campuses and yes, even grade schools shooting kids...easy access to guns guaranteed.
3.people who live in dangerous neighborhoods afraid to let their children out to play for fear they will be shot.
Gang, the way we tolerate this crap is both outrageous and stupid to say nothing of morally reprehensible. On a personal level, I find it offensive when the pro-gun people talk like their right to bear arms is more important than my right to walk down the street without the fear of getting shot.
Don
I completely understand and agree however, on your 3 points:
1: Gangs with guns will not be curtailed by limiting gun laws. In fact there are arguments that if certain guns are unable to be sold in the pubilc they are more likely to be found in the blackmarket since they have no legal outlet.
2: You are right deranged individuals should not have access to guns, which is why we have the current laws in place for background checks and mental health checks. And if you are refering to Sandy Hook with the middleschool mentition, they were not his guns but rather his parents,a nd they should have controled them better with his history of mental illness. It could have avoided that tragedy.
3: Dangerous neighborshoods tends to go with gangs, not always, but they tend to, with guns anyway, and that is blackmarket guns bought by criminals, not legally purchased fire arms.n7axw wrote:I Gang, the way we tolerate this crap is both outrageous and stupid to say nothing of morally reprehensible. On a personal level, I find it offensive when the pro-gun people talk like their right to bear arms is more important than my right to walk down the street without the fear of getting shot.
Don
I am a firm believer that I have the right to do anything I want, as long as it doesn't infringe upon the the life, property and pursuit of happiness of my fellow citizen. My bearing arms or not bearing arms will have no effect on whether our not a neihborhood with gang violence will be safer or not.
We should be dicussing the honorverse here and I'm a bit sorry I involved myself in this discussion. But since I did, I will make one more comment. Morality and law have always been closely inter-related. Law frequently is made because someone believes that something is right and convinces others that something should be legal or illegal.
As for guns, does your comment mean that nothing should be done? Do we really have to tolerate kids on the streets with AK-47s simply to avoid regulation on the right to bear arms? Is a background check to purchase a gun at even a gunshow such an onerous requirment that we simply accept the consequences of the crazies by doing nothing?
You comment that your personally bearing arms would have no impact on these other problems, and to some extent that's true considering you as an individual. But the question as a whole is larger than you, so will you support the needed precautions such as background checks so we can at least sort out the criminals and mentally ill?
Finally you comment that they can get their guns on the black market. To some extent true. But let's drive the black market as deeply underground as possible so that as few people as possible can access it.
Nothing I have said will completely solve the problems. But we might be able to drive the numbers of gun related violence down. Would not the possibility of saving some lives be worth the effort even if we can't save everybody?
Don
), it's hard to blame them. They have this immense legal and regulatory structure, which has accreted like a huge coral reef over centuries and which by and large (and by Solarian standards) has worked remarkably well over that stretch of years. If someone starts changing bits and pieces of it in any major way, then they run the risk of the entire thing flying apart. Some may argue this would be a good thing, on the basis that whatever replaced it had to be better, but no one has repealed the Law of Unintended Consequences in the Solarian League any more than they have repealed it anywhere else. So Kolokoltsov and the others probably deserve to be cut at least a teeny tiny bit of slack when it comes to resisting fundamental change to the system.