Thoughts and prayers for Dadeville, Alabama this morning as well.

JohnInCarolina said:

http://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1647593279179964417?s=20

That's  because Trump told them to go there, as he spooged on their faces. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/opinion/nashville-shooting-guns.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The interview with the gent from Montana was particularly interesting.
 
https://youtu.be/LmJkxCpSKMY

We have social problems in America, mostly due to the turn away from god and religion..
Mental illness going untreated, and the closing of sanitariums as well.

MAGA republicans pushing 2A while warning against the tyranny of the government is like an arsonist telling you to stock up on smoke alarms and extinguishers.

WildmanWilson said:

nolaegghead said:

The gun rights movement really boils down to creating enough distrust of government (run by deep state george soros blood drinking evil libtards) to convince people that if they don't have weapons, they're defenseless against it and it's out to get everyone's guns so it can control the people.

All this is wrapped around a solution of authoritarianism.   Look at all the authoritarian countries out there.  They suck. 

I believe the Founders had a distrust of government and that's why we have the second amendment to start with. Only now, many of you are brainwashed enough to trust them with your life. Here's a little tip for you bub...all governments want more power. 

The Founders had a lot of beliefs that we have seemed to ignore for 200+ years. The Constitution relied on the expectation and formation of militias when needed because they were wary of letting the government keep a large standing army as they feared that it might be used in much the way a king used his army - against its own people. In fact, the Constitution expressly prohibits the formation/maintenance of a large standing army like we have had for the last 80+ years (Article 8, Clause 12). The Constitution only explicitly provides for the formation of the US Navy (Go Navy!).

Thus the 2nd Amendment starts with "a well regulated militia...". Ignoring the first four words of the 2nd is something that is only a recent interpretation. And we can be pretty sure that at some point in the next couple of decades there will be another more logical/reasonable interpretation in place.

Of course it wasn't too many years later that the formation of a rather small army did take root in the first session of the US Congress in 1789 (partly because of the poor performance of so many militias). But that's a whole other, and quite interesting, story. Nonetheless, in 1791 10 of the 12 amendments submitted to the states were ratified and what we call the Bill of Rights still kept mention of a militia as integral to the 2nd.

Interesting side story - one of the 12 amendments that was originally submitted to the states that did not make the cut was one dealing with Congressional pay raises. It wasn't until the 1980's that a researcher realized that that suggested amendment had not essentially "timed out" and thus a campaign was started to revitalize that amendment to have it ratified and it became the 27th amendment in 1992. So the most recent amendment to our Constitution was actually 200 years old. How cool is that?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413

Not surprisingly, where there are more guns, there is more gun violence.  

Botch said:

nolaegghead said:

Not surprisingly, where there are more guns, there is more gun violence.  

Same holds true with countries.

Not always.  Sweden, for instance, requires every single household to own a firearm, but their gun violence is low.
Over the past decades there've been attempts to at least do studies of the gun culture vs gun violence, in many countries throughout the world, but the nra firmly blocks even those studies (I have read independent comparisons, and the differences were very eye-opening).  

That’s a good point but a bit misleading.