Summations Only

Hi Voltaire30, and welcome to the fray Curiously unarmed non-violent protest "overthew" the British colonial government of India and resulted in democratic self-rule by the Indian population: perhaps you should read about some history, including Ghandi.South Africa has recently changed government through unarmed non-violent protest and now has democratic populist government.Egypt has recently changed government through unarmed non-violent protest and now is working to build a democratic populist government.The emancipation of women voters in the US was accomplished through unarmed non-violent protest.The civil rights movement in the US accomplished it's goals through unarmed non-violent protest.Currently we have unarmed non-violent protest in the form of the Occupy Wallstreet movement and it's branches around the world to change the way banking and big money investing is done to a manner that is more fair and just.Using guns just allows governments to justify using guns in return.Armed insurrections often result in replacing one despotic government with another.It is possible to live without guns.Unarmed non-violent protest creates change by evolution of government rather than by revolution. Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : ...Edited by RAZD, : evolution

Hi crashfrog, Correct. What you can construe from this and from articles in the constitution ...:

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Article I - The Legislative Branch
Section 8 - Powers of Congress

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To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

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To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

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Article II - The Executive Branch
Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

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The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; ...

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Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791.

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A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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... what you CAN construe is that the National Guards of the various states are the modern militias in question, organized and trained by state, armed, organized and disciplined by congress ... and the place where civilians can enroll to get proper training and then keep and bear arms.The second amendment is curiously silent on whether or not these arms can be taken home, presumably leaving that up to the states that are running the National Guards ( militias), and it is also silent on regulation of general gun ownership, again, presumably leaving that up to the states, a position that is upheld in the supreme court.Currently it seems that our militias are busy fighting foreign wars instead of the regular army, navy and air force, due to a Bush slight of hand hid the pea executive order.Somehow I doubt that a citizen turning up with an automatic hunting rifle would be welcomed in Iraq, nor would I expect the State Department would be happy if he became an incident of one kind or another.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : underline for emphasisEdited by RAZD, : clean

Hi Voltaire30, It's even funnier that you buy the faux news spin on it rather than actually look at the live video feeds from the sites. Populations ranged from kids to grandparents, many working jobs and doing the protests in shifts, some thinking it was important enough to quit their jobs and go full time. Many unemployed workers were also involved.Of course direct experience is always better than news feeds, especially now in the conservative owned informercial news age.You also buy the "take away money from productive individuals" bs of the conservative spin. Hilarious. What they were protesting for was fair and just taxation, so that the rich give as much as they do. They were also protesting for getting the criminals that caused the economic crunch to be prosecuted and have their day in court.Perhaps you think white collar criminals should be exempt from the rules that apply to the rest of us because they are "productive" even though all they produce is sheets of paper with paperhouse money.Productive is when you make a product not a house of cards. No the protest worked because the British government could not ignore the protest in the international awareness - they did not like being shown as the oppressors. You think they were not oppressive? I suggest you do some research. Which was not done by, but deplored by, those involved in the non-violent movement, the one that succeeded. Which is why Ghandi also worked, just back then there were real news reporters reporting real news to the world that was not filtered by boss editors to the whim of conservative owners.It just happened faster with the public media. Really? Seems you don't know much real history. Every see how the Native people were treated as they were forced into tiny reservations with barely marginal living conditions?Did you watch the PBS special on the freedom rides and the bus burning and beatings at the start of the civil rights movement?Are you aware of the numbers of people that were killed ?Are you aware that it took news of these burnings beatings killings before the US government got off their butts and enforced things in a just way? Try the states of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. We have this curious system here where states have the first crack at maintaining peace and order their way.Also look at Arizona and their "concentration camps" of immigrants today. Police states can exist in pockets as well as nations. What is moot about having governments use guns to attack unarmed citizens in suppressing a peaceful protest being seen world wide as unnecessarily oppressive and wrong compared to justified reply to armed rebellion? You don't seem to get the point. Which is why government change by evolution rather than revolution, through non-violent peaceful protest rather than armed conflict, to build on what is good in current government and altering what is bad, ends up with better results.The changes in governments that have been achieved through non-violent protest are massive, and always trend to better civil rights, just look at the improved government in the US where the baby was not thrown out.Armed insurrections just do not have that history. They are much more likely to end in another round of despotic government just with different people at the top. South America, Cuba, just some examples. We'll just have to disagree on that. You seem to have a fundamentally entrenched belief that things are better with guns. This prevents you from seeing the possibilities of non-violent protest, even when presented with evidence of their productiveness. You didn't finish.Unarmed non-violent protest creates change by evolution of government rather than by revolution, building on what you have to improve it. This can occur in any form of government, even oppressive police states. It may not happen in a lifetime, but a trend is established that grows roots and branches. It does not try to accomplish everything at once, just relieve the most egregious conditions first.Added by edit: BTW -- can you tell me how the "former soviet union" was transformed into the current political states and whether that involve an armed citizenry? Was it by war?Or did it occur peacefully, non-violently ...Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : ..Edited by RAZD, : added by edit at the end

Hi DevilsAdvocate, It seems to me that there is a fundamentally firmly held belief in many that guns make you independently free compared to non-gun owners, that you are able to enforce your freedom personally without regard to others or any need for others. Frontier Cowboys on the plains pseudo-nostalgia.This is, of course a dissonant belief, at odds with the reality of modern life and the overwhelming development of arms in the militaries around the world.Canada, with essentially the same colonial history (other than evolving their independence from Britain peacefully ... ) does not share this Frontier Cowboy to the same degree (it exists a bit in Alberta I believe), but they have gun controls without much complaint and they have much lower deaths by guns.Yet we also have Switzerland with fewer gun related deaths and a high degree of gun ownership of military caliber (albeit with training and controls on ammo).The real difference has to be in the psychology of the gun crowd here, it seems to me, and that's where I come to see this idee fixe about gun ownership → freedom rather than gun ownership → responsibility: you can be irresponsible with your gun but they can't take it away from you?Enjoy

Hi Tangle, The US has some psychological factors IMHYSAO that lead to unreasonable needs to have and use guns: the image of the frontier\cowboy living large and free, regardless of their ability or sense of responsibility ... too many cowboy movies\tv?There is also likely a correlation to population density\concentrations.Enjoy

Hi Modulus These also involve high density populations with squalid environments ... not conducive to peaceful living. Gangs are a way of coping with population density, forming enclaves within populations, and keeping interactions internal to the gangs and confrontational with all outsiders.In the 70's I was involved in a study of noise pollution and we found a correlation between levels of background noise and violence (includes rapes and beatings as well as murders), but that the correlation was different for Canada and the US, so obviously there is one or more other factors, but they were strong linear correlations. Noise irritates people and this could account for the correlation.Enjoy.

Hi Voltaire30Thanks for proving to me once again that if you give someone something rather innocuous to react to that they will choose to focus entirely on that rather than the substantive arguments presented in the rest of the post. It gives you an out to vent emotion without dealing with the cognitive dissonance in the reading the post (avoidance behavior to reduce dissonance).For instance can you answer this question at the end of the post: It should be an easy question to answer as it is fairly recent history that can be found on the web.Of course it appears to completely gut your argument ... which is likely why you are avoiding it (cognitive dissonance at work). Which, curiously, by your own description is NOT balanced but conservatively biased. Are you aware that people who watch Faux Noise are WORSE informed about events than people that do not watch ANY news? CNN is a close second in this regard.Facts and evidence are not something to be balanced by opinions, lies and misrepresentations, and when one side of an argument is based on facts and evidence and the other is only based on opinion then proper news reporting should concern the facts and evidence and ignore the opinion -- that's fair. Owned and operated by conservatives ... with "pretty" reporters concerned more about image\appearance than covering news, reading scripts off teleprompters prepared in the back rooms, and horridly ignorant of most basic science and a lot of American and world history ... Except that I don't "buy into" any news -- it's all infomercials these days dependent more on ratings than reality.I go to original sources where possible, and international news when available.I'm old enough to know what real reporting was like. It is sadly missed.Enjoy.ps - see Liberal Media Conspiracy?, The "Liberal" Media and Your "liberal" media to discuss the "liberal media" mythEdited by RAZD, : questionEdited by RAZD, : ps

Hi Chaoticskunk This is standard operating procedure on all threads. It used to be that the software had problems after 300+ posts, and it also helps control for off-topic dilution.If a topic is deemed interesting, followup threads can be started (ie Gun Control II). It seems to me that liberals in general are more open-minded than conservatives and have fewer fundamental tenets .... but that would be my liberal bias .Enjoy.

It's not really about gun control, but gun responsibility: I have no difficulty with people behaving responsibly, whether that is with a car a gun or a piece of paper.The problem is when people behave irresponsibly, whether that is with a car a gun or a piece of paper.Many people on the gun liberty side of the debate have unreasonable -- inmhysao -- expectations of what that really allows.It is an unreasonable expectation that a person or even a small group of people could take on a fraction of the US Military and be successful in any real way. One need only look at history to see this.Part of this is because as soon as you start, media etc will brand you as a nut or terrorist type group (White Supremacist, Branch Dravidian, John Brown, etc etc etc) and general public opinion will turn against you.If you want to protect democracy and the American way you can (A) join the National Guard and (B) become involved in civic and public affairs -- you can protest what you feel are unjust actions by government and vote to change them. There is a place for military in government, to protect the nation against unreasonable attacks, but we do not need to be the biggest bully on the block, spending more than all other nations combined on the ability to kill people -- this is the US being unreasonable. We need to scale back on this for so many reasons.Violent protest accomplishes violence and bloodshed and does not in any way provide an avenue for a peaceful outcome that is necessarily better than before. Look at Syria -- who will end up there? Al Queda?. Guns and weapons do not ensure that the concepts behind the protest\insurgency\whatever are valid or desirable, just that they may (temporarily) be held in place by more violence.Peaceful protest can change governments by slower evolutionary steps that do lead to peaceful desirable outcomes. Look at civil rights here, Egypt, India, and many many more examples.The soviet union did not fall by violent means. The wall in Berlin was not torn down by war. Yes there are still political problems there, but they are better than before, and there is still possible further developments that build on the existing structures.Information and knowledge are much more powerful than guns/weapons in the long run.One last point I would make is that anyone who thinks that having weapons improves their argument are more like to have and use weapons in a dispute. Curiously forcing your opinion on someone else does not make it any more valid.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : end