What do you think of the gun control Obama is proposing?

But according to yours and Obama's, logic if we can keep one more citizen alive, then we should do whatever it takes. That means to keep illegal immigrants from killing another US citizen they should all be shipped to their home countries. It will keep more Americans from getting killed, the ends justify the means.

You have yet to establish that as a fact,

FBM wrote:

You have yet to establish that as a fact,

Come on now. You just posted your agreement with the plot to violate the civil rights of large swaths of Americans. Questioning the existence of the plot is silly.

And in any case, I did in fact provide proof of what the Democrats are doing. See this post here:
http://able2know.org/topic/307925-2#post-6103409

Oh, well, since you're not using empty rhetoric anymore, I have no choice but to crumble before the force of your impeccable logic.

No matter how much spin you put on it, the information in those links do not prove what you claim it proves.

I never use empty rhetoric.

Your choice is to either support civil rights or oppose civil rights (neutrality is an option too I guess).

More silliness. You recently stated your agreement with a post that attempted to justify the civil rights violations.

And the links very much prove that the Democrats started their plot by blocking disabled war veterans from buying guns if they cannot keep track of their bills, and now they are expanding their plot by blocking disabled people in general if they cannot keep track of their bills.

It IS taking weapons away from wounded warriors.

As for people who favor civil rights violations, what can I say. Some people are just bad.

Ideals are subjective I suppose. I think vigorous support for civil rights is ideal.

Has it been established that most people want to violate the rights of those who can't manage their finances? I'm expecting widespread outrage among those who value freedom.

But assuming for a moment that the majority hates our freedom, the majority is trumped by the Constitution. If the majority wants to violate people's civil rights, the majority loses.

Nonsense. Not keeping track of your bills doesn't mean you aren't a responsible gun owner.

Sure there is. The proper list of people who shouldn't have guns is: those people convicted of dangerous crimes in a court of law and those people who have been deemed a danger to themselves or others by a court of law.

The key points are that people are judged as individual cases, and they are given a fair hearing (with a defense) in a court of law.

Having our civil rights protected by an inflexible Constitution is the way things ought to be.

But this justifies my previous position that the entire background check system needs to be weakened and opposed. It is no longer being used as a way to bar dangerous people from having guns. The Democrats are now using background checks as a weapon against the American people themselves.

Actually quite a few Americans value America's freedom and civil rights quite passionately.

It seems unlikely that the courts will overturn a couple centuries worth of civil rights jurisprudence just because the Democrats don't like civil rights. It may well be that the Supreme Court will punt on the matter and refuse to hear the case though, at least until the Republicans pack the court with a bunch more conservative judges.

Luckily that should happen soon enough. Mr. Obama already wrecked his second term with his silly gun control nonsense, and now the Republicans are virtually guaranteed to win in 2016. I expect that 10 years from now we'll all be referring to Justice Scalia as "one of the old moderates".

Likely the first to go will be the Roe v Wade/PP v Casey stuff. The pro-lifers are a big part of the Republican base after all. But I'm expecting that after that we'll see a whole bunch of unconstitutional gun laws struck down.

Background checks might have once passed muster. But now that they are a weapon against the freedom of the American people, likely not.

I'm not arguing that any restriction is unconstitutional. The rules are that a restriction impacting people's Constitutional rights can only be for a compelling reason, and it must be limited in scope to so that its impact is minimized.

Since there is no valid reason for barring guns from people who can't manage their finances, such a restriction fails the rules that American courts have used for centuries when dealing with the vital rights of Americans.

And don't be so sure that the public shares the Left's dislike of America's freedom. Civil rights are pretty popular here.

Robert Gentel wrote:

If they can't keep track of their bills and lack the mental capacity to represent themselves then they likely lack the ability to be responsible for a firearm, both in securing it and in its reasonable use.

That is preposterous. Especially regarding reasonable use.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Sez you,

Here are the standards that the courts use to determine if a law that impacts civil rights is allowed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review

On the face of it, his proposed changes seem so unremarkable that it is surprising that he isn't getting more flak from liberals,

The people on the no-fly list not being able to fly seems like a much bigger infringement on their freedom than not being able to buy guns to me, but thanks for answering.

Baldimo wrote:

But according to yours and Obama's, logic if we can keep one more citizen alive, then we should do whatever it takes. That means to keep illegal immigrants from killing another US citizen they should all be shipped to their home countries. It will keep more Americans from getting killed, the ends justify the means.

I raised this inconsistency before as it respects Syrian immigrants and no one who is sympathetic had coherent response. It doesn't mean one doesn't exist, just that no one here offered it if it does.

Horse hockey. You don't get to make the rules about what other people's choices are, and over-simplifying a complex issue is a logical fallacy.

Try to construct an argument without logical fallacies, then you might get taken more seriously.

Only if we use your twisted definition.

You'll excuse me if I'll wait for the SCOTUS to issue a ruling,

rather than a random character on the internet who apparently doesn't know how to construct valid logical arguments.

If, as Robert has suggested, prohibition of gun ownership in the case of mental illness was limited to those individuals who have been committed to a mental facility through a court process, I might have far less trepidation, but the involvement of the government in our private medical records is a very slippery slope whether one favors such arguments or not.

If you don't trust this president in general, then you are not likely to trust him in regards to gun control. We know he would like to see private ownership of firearms greatly reduced, if not banned altogether, since he has pointed to Australia's gun laws as a model for civilized nations. We also know that despite numerous admissions in public that he did not have the power as president to unilaterally defy the will of Congress and extend effective amnesty to illegal immigrants he went ahead and did just that. It would already be a done deal if the courts had not blocked his efforts.

It seems to me that these proposals are simply a means by which Obama can check off a box relative to his legacy and possibly offer Democrat voters something to think well of their party for come election day...but I wouldn't put it past him to have something up his sleeve.

Robert Gentel wrote:

The people on the no-fly list not being able to fly seems like a much bigger infringement on their freedom than not being able to buy guns to me, but thanks for answering.

Which is why the no-fly list need to be completely re-examined and not be used to unjustly infringe further on Americans' freedoms.

I can't recall the precise % right now, but the number of people on the list who have absolutely no connections to terrorists or terrorist organizations (or even "affiliated" legal groups like certain bogus charities) is shockingly high.

What's more there is no documented process for how one get's on the list and no established process for getting off. The number of false hits is so high because the system operates on names not identities. If there is a known terrorist named Robert Gentel, every Robert Gentel in the world is likely to end up on the list. This is how Ted Kennedy and Steven Hayes, among other well known individuals, ended up on the list. No both of these individuals have or had DC connections so they were both able to get off the list, but you or I would not find it so easy.

So imagine you find out that you are on this list and are unable to fly where you, and then the authorities point out that being on the list also prevents you from exercising your constitutional rights as granted under the 2nd Amendment. What's next? You can't get a license? Who wants to take a chance that terrorists are driving trucks filled with explosives on out highways? You can't own property? Who wants to take a chance that terrorists are setting up safe houses across the land?

It's bad enough that this list exist with no judicial oversight and with no way set process for appealing the your addition to the list, the government, including our President, has the absolute gall to play to the public's ignorance and fear to achieve a political goal. Until they find out just how unreliable the list is and how screwed an innocent person is once they get on it, the public is generally in favor of banning people on the list from owning guns. Why not? They trust their government to get it right and if these people really are terrorists only an idiot would want them to be able to buy a gun. It seems like a perfect solution. However Obama knows just how unreliable the list it and how it operates, and once the public does too they change their minds about it being a good idea.

We aren't just talking about "not keeping track of your bills" here. That is a deliberately disingenuous way of putting it. You don't get on a list merely because you didn't keep track of your bills, you get on the list by a court declaring you mentally incapable of doing so.

It sounds like you are saying that a better list could be made, I was saying that there is currently no such list or legal instrument that is better.

Not gonna happen, you will not live to see the day that background checks per se are ruled unconstitutional. But I don't say that with any glee, I am not emotionally invested in this debate, I just don't see that in the cards.

I can see cases where I would agree with you and think that someone declared mentally unfit is still capable of being responsible of use of a firearm. Are you capable of seeing the possibilities that many people declared mentally unfit would not be?

None of the links you are citing support your ipse dixit, your interpretation of this specific case falling a certain way. That was my point, that there is no absolute truth that we can consult to determine constitutionality, there are processes and none of them are "just go with what that guy on that internet forum says".

Citing laws and processes will not adjudicate this, which is the point that I was making. You can be as certain as you want that this is unconstitutional but that doesn't matter, you and my opinions on that are just that and don't hold any special weight that settles this issue.

You won't get any argument from me. It's poorly run and I've long objected to the right to travel being incorrectly infringed upon. I see greater utility in applying this list to buying firearms though, because I do not see the right to carry a firearm as being as important as the right to travel.

Robert Gentel wrote:

We aren't just talking about "not keeping track of your bills" here. That is a deliberately disingenuous way of putting it. You don't get on a list merely because you didn't keep track of your bills, you get on the list by a court declaring you mentally incapable of doing so.

No. You are mistaken here. There are no court declarations involved at all. Disabled people are being added to the list solely because their disability checks are being sent to someone who takes care of their finances for them. All such people are being added to the list.

There is such a list. All that is required is that the list be limited to dangerous criminals and those deemed by the courts to be a danger to themselves or others. It is what has been used for a list all along before the Democrats started adding law abiding citizens to the list.

The Republicans are on the verge of packing the Supreme Court with conservative justices (I am presuming of course an inevitable Republican victory in 2016). It is inevitable that the Supreme Court will start upholding the Constitution.

Robert Gentel wrote:

I can see cases where I would agree with you and think that someone declared mentally unfit is still capable of being responsible of use of a firearm. Are you capable of seeing the possibilities that many people declared mentally unfit would not be?

Not when the declaration of mental fitness is based entirely on whether a disabled person cashes their own disability checks.

It is possible to look at a proposal and determine if there is a legitimate reason for doing it or not, and thereby accurately determine whether or not the proposal is constitutional.

The sloppiness of the no fly list makes it unconstitutional to use it to restrict ANY right. Someone really needs to get the matter in front of a judge.

While I certainly may be mistaken (have been many times before) I think your opposite absolutism (that there are no courts involved) is probably untrue and that some people on this list have been declared mentally unfit that way.

I'll take that as a no. I already conceded the case your blinders restrict you to viewing here. I was asking if you were willing to divest yourself of a bit of your absolutism and acknowledge the counter examples to your position. I guess the answer is that you are so far unwilling or unable to do so.

Anyway, I am not going to waste too much time trying to get you to show any flexibility in your viewpoint, ultimately we knew we weren't going to change each other's minds on this (nobody in this thread will likely do that) but if you aren't even willing to acknowledge that this is a subjective issue to interpret and that there is a process for determining this for the collective that might not have the same output as your own opinion then I suppose this is not going to be an edifying line of inquiry to pursue.

Sez you, the precise degree of sloppiness at which this occurs is not codified anywhere and this is just yet another instance of your personal opinion being expressed with inordinate strength of conviction.