Summations Only

You've been fed a heavy dose of propaganda. Where do you think you are getting your opinions? Where is all that gun-phobia coming from anyway? You might try to trace the source. It's THAT attitude that's totally insane. And you don't even suspect it's just propaganda do you?

Not just watching them but influencing them as well. Not quite. I'm saying that if it is LOST COMPLETELY it would be a sign that He already HAS abandoned the nation, because He's letting such an important institution be destroyed. If the states succeed in pushing back Obama's attempt to further weaken the second amendment I'll take that as a sign that God is being merciful to us.It's all about how far down the road to total rejection of God and His laws the nation has gone and if there's still any possibility of us turning back to Him as a nation and regaining His blessings. We've gone very far down that road and are already under judgment but obviously haven't yet reached total ruin. The loss of the second amendment, I mean total loss of it, I'd take as a herald that we're headed toward total ruin as a nation.Obama's inaugural speech lauding gay rights I'm sure most of you regard as a sign of national progress, but Christians regard it as a sign of our being yet further down the road to God's judgment because it represents an official national-level violation of God's law. You can read Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 if you want to get an idea of the methods by which God judges nations, blessing them with prosperity and safety for obedience, and losses of all kinds for disobedience. Economic destruction is one form of judgment for instance. Vulnerability to enemies is another. Natural disasters are part of it as well. Of course you can often trace natural causes of all these things, chains of causality, but God's in charge of all of it and those scripture passages make it clear that obedience or disobedience to His laws is the ultimate cause.Economic collapse is a real possibility according to some.But I don't expect anyone here to do anything but scoff at the Biblical standards, which is of course the very attitude that is taking us down the road to judgment.But the churches are praying and I'm hoping God is hearing.========I just saw the news about another shooting, in Texas. All this happening like this around this time suggests conspiracy to me, to manipulate opinion against the second amendment, but I'm sure most here just take it straight as proof we need to get rid of guns.We'd need some really good investigative reporting to find out.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Good, no deaths.

This is rather a nonsequitur it seems to me. If a nation obeys God's laws it will be blessed, if it disobeys it will be judged.I don't believe the Supreme Court does what it was meant to do much of the time as it tends to create laws instead of interpreting them, and to my mind it's many times violated the Constitution by changing its meaning to suit themselves. For instance it completely made up the principle by which it imposed Roe v Wade on the nation, and freedom of pornography is a perversion of the first amendment. Those kinds of "interpretations" of the Constitution are a travesty and certainly are bringing God's judgment down on us."Hate speech" laws are another problematic area but I'm not up on what the Supreme Court has done on that score. Obama's speech perversely put gay rights in the same category as black rights and women's rights. He's not the Supreme Court but he's thinking just like them, perverting the Constitution to make it violate God's laws, which it does not in its original intent. And so on. I've never objected to having some restrictions and limitations on guns, clearly some are necessary. And I don't follow all the ins and outs of those limitations, I accept the opinions of sane gun owners and second amendment defenders. They know if the laws are wrongly encroaching on the second amendment or not. And the opinion from that quarter is that what Obama did is illegal and unconstitutional.And then you say that this that and the other sort of restrictions have been found to be Constitutional, and all I can say is if the sane gun owners and defenders I mention accept them as Constitutional I'm fine with them, but there's nothing guaranteeing that the Supreme Court is going to arrive at anything genuinely Constitutional.I don't usually get into the details on this subject, I simply oppose the emotionally-driven propaganda-driven denunciations of guns and the second amendment that always follow on these vicious shootings. Much of this sounds reasonable to me except the part forbidding guns in "sensitive places," because those laws are INVITING these crazed shooters into those very areas. ONLY the criminals are going to carry guns there while the good guys obey the law. That's a recipe for disaster.But again, I don't get into the details of this issue, I leave it to the gun owners and second amendment defenders.

Where did it say the person with the heart attack died of it?The conspiracy thoughts have to do with the TIMING of these events. It's just so CONVENIENT for the anti-gun people you know.Wait and see what information comes out about this incident, that's all.Getting that second shoorter who escaped into the woods would be important. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Am I not allowed to disagree with some of their interpretations of the Constitution without having to object to the Constitution's provision here? Some of their decisions have been screamingly contrary to the original intent of the Constitution. This is already an undermining of the nation when our laws are perverted like this.However, it seems to me I recall that Thomas Jefferson had a problem with the powers given to the Supreme Court as too easily abused.What I gather is considered to be unconstitutional about Obama's executive orders is that they ARE executive orders which infringe upon a Constitutionally given right of the people. In this case I leave the determination of the situation to the state agencies, governors, sheriffs and so on who oppose what he did. But I'm sure there are others here who know more about it than I do. People on my side of the issues I mean. In this case that statement is just silly sophistry because this sort of law FAVORS the criminal and restricts the noncriminal. Not quite what you'd think a law should do.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You seem to be confused, Taq. It's very possible for a nation to have laws that OPPOSE God's laws, and we have a lot of them these days, and that's very bad for the nation.It's also possible to have laws that are contrary to the Constitution even while claiming to be constitutional, and we do have those too.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I dunno, Straggler, you just continue to mix up what I said about having armed protection at schools with what I said about God's judgments and sorting it out is beyond me right now. Also a bunch of stuff you impute to me about global this and tyrannical that which since you don't quote me is just too hard to figure out. If I tried I'd just be guessing.Protecting schools is one subject, God's judgments are another. There's not a lot we can do against God's judgments except by His mercy -- the only real solution THERE is getting on our knees, repenting of our sins, asking for His forgiveness and committing ourselves to live by His laws. And doing all this AS a nation as well as as individuals. You can't just make up what God wants and there is no need to because He's told us clearly in His word what He wants and how He operates, and what He wants is that we construct our nations according to His laws and especially His gospel of salvation in Christ. This is a fallen world and nothing we do is going to prevent all forms of evil but if a nation determines to obey God He'll take care of the evils for us. And that includes being sure we have an intact second amendment for protection.

You can't turn the other cheek on behalf of children who are threatened by homicidal maniacs and that is not what the Lord's teaching means.

As I already very clearly said, we KNOW what laws are in accord with God's will by knowing what His word says and if we don't we can read it and find out. It's all there. Abortion is against His laws and calling it a "right" is a perverted justification of murder. And any "right" to obscene speech or pornography is a violation of His laws. In the early history of the nation, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law through an American version by someone Tucker laid out the basic laws as to be derived from God's law as found in the Bible. THAT was the original idea about American law. It was to reflect God's law. Now we have laws that outright contradict His laws. Even laws against the death penalty are against His laws because He clearly said to Noah that whoever kills man shall by man be killed. There seems to be no end these days to clever overturnings of the Law of God and yet people seem to think God should just be nice about it all. No, He brings judgment against a nation for such things. And we're way overdue it seems to me. Right. The Constitution can say blue is blue but if the Supreme Court says blue is really red then it's red. Yes, I understand that's how the sophistry goes. But it IS sophistry. The Supreme Court can and has violated the Constitution in the name of the Constitution. Kind of like the Red Queen's thinking in Alice in Wonderland. It's whatever she says the law is, doesn't matter what is written. Yep. Wonderland.

Hello GDR,
I went through all this with myself years ago and for a while tended toward pacifism, but came to the conclusion that the point of being armed is really more for protection of others including your own family than it is literally for SELF-defense. And after I'd read up on the history that led up to the second amendment (which I posted on this thread more than once, I think #57 was the first) I concluded that it's a necessity in a fallen world. Yes, Christians trust Christ to protect us but we can't just stand by and do nothing while others are hurt or killed. And besides, how many Americans (or Canadians) are serious Christians? Should they all be required to trust God?The Principal at Sandy Hook died while flinging herself at the shooter to try to stop him. Seems sad that she wasn't armed, she'd have been more effective, could possibly have saved many children. Of course guns were not allowed there.Also seems to me that just one or two armed people sitting in the theater in Aurora Colorado could have stopped that massacre, but that was a gun-free zone where the shooter could just kill and kill.Of course in both these instances if they weren't gun-free zones there probably wouldn't have been any shooter at all.You say you found no stories of guns saving anybody but there are such stories out there. Earlier in this thread I posted the video of the man with a concealed carry handgun who stopped a burglary by two men, one with a gun and one with a baseball bat, which you can see HERE.There's also Suzanna Hupp's testimony about how her parents would probably not have died in a shooting if she hadn't left her gun in her purse. It's not a success story but I think she makes her case.And I found these pages on my own search just now, looking for some incidents I’d recently heard about, of guns being used effectively for self defense:The first is Snopes reporting a story to be false that I'd heard, about an eleven year old girl who was said to have killed two intruders with a shotgun, but they did dig up three TRUE stories of children using a gun against an intruder: scroll down the page:
Did an 11-Year-Old Girl Shoot and Kill 'Illegal Aliens' Burglarizing Her Home? | Snopes.comAnother account I’d heard recently was about a mother with a gun hiding from an intruder in a crawlspace with her children and
this story appears to be true. One account of this story.Here’s a whole page of alleged self-defense shootings. I’m not going to make any claims for the stories since I didn’t check them out but if even a quarter of them are true you can’t say guns aren’t used for self defense. And if these stories are true there are most likely many other cases that could be discovered with some searching.And I have to include this long film, , In the Name of God I recently saw about the genocide in Rwanda back in the early 90s. It was a clear case of propaganda-drive genocide mostly engineered by the Catholic Church and I can't help thinking that it might not have happened if the Tutsis had had access to guns. Of course they probably would have been disarmed first, but the point is they were absolutely defenseless and it makes the case FOR means of self defense all by itself in my opinion.Of course you're going to have accidents if guns aren't handled properly or even when they are. But we're talking over 50 million households in America with guns while the accidental deaths are proportionally extremely small. And there must be millions of parents with guns in their houses whose sons don't steal them for killing people. Depriving the millions of a Constitutionally given right because of these rare occurrences is out of proportion. The fewer deaths the better of course, and I think anyone who can be shown to have been negligent about their guns should be prosecuted.During your lifetime and mine we haven't really seen much reason to have guns, but there's always the possibility that we WILL need them as soon as we give them up. I simply do not trust anyone who wants us to give up our only personal means of self defense.Jesus didn't advocate violence but he did suggest that his disciples allow themselves a couple of swords among them, showing that he didn't completely reject the need to be armed to some extent.AbE: Looked up the passage and I see I'd forgotten it's more direct than that, he actually tells them to get a sword: Edited by Faith, : to add last paragraph

What I said is insane is the denigrating opinion you have about those who favor guns which can only be propaganda you got from somewhere and I wonder where. There's a very heavy agenda coming from somewhere designed to cast second amendment supporters as something on the level of vermin. Propaganda of this sort has been the tool used against many people to get them disarmed and hated and set them up for something, genocide, inability to defend against a foreign invasion, whatever.But as for the idea that "a gun-related tragedy can be countered with something else" I regard that as self-deception. You can't "counter" such an event by refusing to get upset by it or get carried away with ideas of self-defense, you are merely making yourself feel better, calming your emotions. If no more tragedies occur, fine, but there is no cause and effect relation between your attitude and that fact.But just out of curiosity, do you think Norway is any better prepared to handle it if another such incident DID occur? Why or why not, and what preparations have they made? And in America as well of course. As I mentioned to GDR in my last post we haven't had any reason to think we need guns in our lifetime, we're used to living in a peaceful society. We haven't had any reason to think of defending our schools until recently. A series of vicious homicides suggests that we may now have a reason. Giving up our guns and pretending there is no problem is NOT a way to "counter" such a situation. And again, the propaganda campaign against the most reasonable way to deal with the situation is so nasty it's clear somebody wants America disarmed. That's a form of gun-phobia. The history behind the second amendment that influenced the American founders who wrote the amendment, that I posted back in message 57, argues very effectively and rationally in favor of civilian ownership of guns. On the other hand you are arguing from personal feelings and a lack of knowledge -- that YOU "can't see anything good" in it. It's not informed by knowledge, it's feeling-driven, which is what it is for most on this thread. I wouldn't suggest such a thing. I do think you've been influenced by this propaganda machine against guns in America though, as so many here have been, this agenda to disarm whole nations by some pretty belittling insulting propaganda.

I see the Constitution as rule by law which SHOULD protect us against whimsical tyrannical agenda-driven Presidents and Supreme Courts, if they were true to its inspiration. It doesn't have to be perfect for that, it merely has to be respected AS law, and its own measures for changing it as the country acquires new perspectives ought to be respected and followed too. It's interesting that along with this vicious propaganda campaign against the second amendment there is now building up a similar propaganda campaign to denigrate the Constitution, as "antiquated," even as "evil." Value terms, not rational assessment, just emotional manipulation. Propaganda is never recognized for what it is, merely somebody's agenda put into a form that can sway opinion, using belittling judgmental terms. Demagoguery, manipulation.Thinking about that cartoon that RAZD posted, with this evil looking fat cat "gun industry" holding as a puppet an even more evil looking "NRA" on his lap, who holds a stupid looking "Congress" on HIS lap. THAT's propaganda.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

BUT NOT THE WAY YOU ARE MISREADING IT. You've actually twisted it completely backwards. YOU talk about any form of gun defense as some kind of hideous horror show, WHICH I'VE TOTALLY REJECTED AS YOUR OWN FANTASY PARANOIA PROPAGANDA AGAINST GUNS, but now you are going on as if your own paranoid fantasy of horrors is the same thing as the judgment of God I said I would expect if our gun rights are TAKEN AWAY FROM US, the OPPOSITE of your way of putting it all together -- having guns is God's blessing in MY scenario, but you are confusing your own horror picture of guns with what I said about my taking it as God's judgment if we LOSE them. Are you INTENTIONALLY distorting what I'm saying for some reason, or is your mind just totally shot? TAKING AWAY GUNS FROM CITIZENS IS THE MOST HIDEOUS EVIL YOU COULD POSSIBLY SUPPORT BECAUSE IT WOULD LEAVE THE NATION UNPROTECTED FROM ALL KINDS OF HORRORS THAT YOU AREN'T WILLING EVEN TO CONSIDER. ALL THIS ABOUT THE DANGERS OF GUNS THEMSELVES IS A PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TO DISARM US AND MISSES THE ESSENTIAL BASIC POINT OF THE NEED TO BE ARMED. I'M ALL FOR WHATEVER MEASURES ARE NECESSARY TO REDUCE GUN DANGERS BUT YOU ARE ATTACKING THE VERY HEART OF THE NEED FOR GUNS AS SELF PROTECTION AND PROTECTION OF THE NATION. I don't think you have any idea where your opinions come from either, you're just one of the mouthpieces as so many here are for a propaganda campaign whose ultimate goal is to destroy the US. What kind of nonsensical reasoning is this you are indulging in? GUNS DON'T CREATE THIS PROBLEM THAT YOU KEEP TRYING TO CLAIM THEY DO, the problem is created by an apparent increase in violence and these crazed murders, and your insane solution is to TAKE AWAY the ONLY methods that could possibly work toward stopping it. CITIZEN OWNERSHIP OF GUNS ISN'T CAUSING THE SCHOOL PROBLEM BUT IT MIGHT HELP PREVENT IT IF THE LAWS WEREN'T PRESENTLY MAKING IT SO DIFFICULT. Keep in mind that Americans have ALWAYS possessed guns as promised us in the second amendment. Always. My father had guns (he came from a Canadian homesteaded farm surrounded by wilderness where they were needed for many reasons) and he taught my brothers to use them. Nobody thought anything of it. LOTS of Americans have always had guns for many reasons and took them for granted.

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For a long time the nation has been peaceful enough that their necessity in terms of the second amendment has been more academic than real in anybody's experience.

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But NOW with real threats to public safety INCREASING, THIS is when you want to DEPRIVE us of the very use for which they were originally intended. AND YOU DON'T SEE THE INSANITY in this way the attacks on the second amendment always come up exactly when its need is MOST obvious. Here's this bizarre logic again. WHO'S "creating" this society you are talking about? NOT THE GUN OWNERS, but you are blaming the problem on us when we would be the solution to it. If violence increases to the point of being a general public threat, THAT'S WHEN WE NEED OUR SECOND AMENDMENT PROTECTION, but you people are so weirdly propagandized or mentally twisted you keep getting it backwards. First, you quote me but now your own distortions aren't on the table and that's still confusing. But I'm talking about TOTAL LOSS OF OUR GUN RIGHTS, I'm talking about BEING DISARMED, not just about gun controls, though I do see most of that as a step toward taking them away altogether. Second, I'm arguing FOR having guns to protect the nation while you are trying to equate having guns with the dangers to the country, the exact opposite of what I said, mixing up your own opposite horror fantasy with what I said just as I said above you do. Yes, I said all that, using the word DISARMED, which I see as the end result of all these fanatical gun control alarms that are always raised when one of these murders occurs. Gun controls aren't going to bring it about right away, but I'm talking about the END RESULT I see down the road as the REAL agenda of those who keep up the propaganda against guns.Do you actually think America doesn't have enemies who would like to see us disappear altogether? And you guys too. I don't think you have a clue about how your own wellbeing might depend on America's being armed.Stop equating what I've said about this with its opposite that comes from your own imagination about the dangers of guns themselves. Yes I said all that but how you characterized it was a twisting of it, and now of course that context is lost and my memory isn't all that great. Now you're quoting it but you misread it before and got it all confused with your own weird ideas and I'm sure you're now misreading it as well. IF WE LOSE OUR GUNS I'LL TAKE THAT AS A SIGN THAT GOD HAS ABANDONED AMERICA. Yes, I said that, but you made something else out of it altogether, a confused bunch of nonsense I couldn't decipher and just by adding in the phrase "any compromise" you've already distorted what I've been saying. I used phrases like "GOES UNDER," or "FALLS" and the point is that the nation is ALREADY under God's judgment and if we LOSE (LOSE, not "clompromise" LOSE) our gun rights I'll take it that His judgment has gone past anything we can do to restore the nation. GUN CONTROLS IS NOT WHAT I SAID. I'm TALKING ABOUT LOSING GUN RIGHTS ALTOGETHER. YOU ARE MISREPRESENTING MY POINT. But it does also have to do with SOME gun controls that effectively disarm us where being armed is NEEDED.You are quoting me loutside the context of your own misreading and that amounts just as much to a distortion of my meaning. Yes. Now remind me of all the ways you distort this. Yes, you've been fed that line, and AGAIN THAT IS THE BELITTLING DENIGRATING PROPAGANDA that is aimed at ultimately disarming people so that we'll be sitting ducks for the evbil powers in this world that you deny exist. Get enough people calling us "disturbed" and "extreme" and other emotionally incendiary value terms and you can contribute to getting us all killed. Thanks a lot.

I hope Norway's methods work.