Steve J

You know, most gun deaths in the US are suicide. https://www.thetrace.org/2015/11/gun-suicides-mental-illness-statistics/ and a relatively very few people are killed by rifles of any kind. More people are killed by knives and blunt objects. you can play with the numbers here https://www.quandl.com/data/FBI/WEAPONS11-US-Murders-by-Weapon-Type

I very much doubt that any "reasonable gun control laws" would leave privileges and freedoms unaffected, but throw out your ideas and I'll see if you are right. many laws I've seen either infringe or would be worthless in their effect.

The NRA only has the power of it's membership, which is many because there are a great deal of individuals who agree with their core mission as a civil rights advocacy group (and yes, it IS a civil right). That many people *should* have significant political influence. Democracy, remember? Your interpretation of the words "well regulated" are a literalish re-interpretation that ignores the historical context of the meaning of the phrase. The People bear arms so that the militias can be well regulated of their own accord, as opposed to an untrained rabble. The Right to Bear Arms exists for The People to enable the well regulation of militia, even if the States have all but abrogated it. The word "regulate" does not exist in the second amendment to grant the government the right to draw back a right it just acknowledged, and then follow it up with "shall not be infringed". What you are suggesting is textual nonsense. The conversation keeps coming up because we as different sides disagree, nothing more. Making it up that the pro-civil rights side of the gun argument as being the perpetual initiators of this because you feel they have some obligation to compromise is simply inane. If you don't like the debate, please stop having it. Well, banning the ideology would have quite plausibly stopped this. Had we, say, banned all ideologies that had even a tertiary connection to terrorism some time before 9/11 it would likely have prevented this. Once again, a terrible idea. My second devil's advocate idea is not flimsy, unless you choose to reject the well understood tendency for copy-cat crimes and the media's role in them. And no, there are certain sacrifices that should never be on the table. I reject the idea that the "certain inalienable rights" ought to be re-bargained because of notions that it will decrease crime.

Much of what you stated would rest on a vastly different take on what the purpose and meaning of "well regulated" means from that which I understand. I don't see us closing this gap. There are other ways to prevent this for sure. Please be mindful, I will attempt to play the "Devil's Advocate" of sorts in the next part, so please don't take these as serious policy considerations of mine.... 1) In this case you could have banned Muslims from this country. That would certainly have stopped this recent attack and would likely have prevented 9/11 (and as an aside, likely the ensuing Afghan and Iraq wars) 2) There seems to be a lot of plausibility to the notion that situations like Sandy Hook are "copy cat" fueled by the attention previous attacks have garnered from the Press. We could censure the press to prevent this sort of sensationalism from happening. [/End Devil's Advocate] Both cases would involve a very significant destruction of Civil Liberties. Both would have likely prevented deaths. I think both would have been very wrong to do and would not have been worth the cost in liberties. It was not my purpose to try to compare/contrast the value of the First Amendment vs the Second. The point I'd like to make is that every Civil Liberty bears a Social Cost, including the bearing of Arms.

How is this comment of yours not demagoguery? and no, there is no logic. your basic premise was that the pro gun-side is the initiator of these debates simply because they don't wish to compromise their Civil Liberties to suit your agenda. I dunno, maybe we should be allowed to own Bazookas? Even in the absence of the legality of that type of weapon, at the very least there is no compelling reason why the people's right to bear arms should be any further infringed.

This would be paramount to having to prove one's innocence instead of the presumption of innocence. This too is not remotely Constitutionally workable and opens up a lot of other slippery slopes.

\ A) you haven't been reading my posts. Please stop the strawmen.

There is ZERO logic to this statement.

Also, some have asked a very good question: why did we allow a person under investigation to have firearms? A: The Second Amendment is a part of the Bill of Rights, and is considered a Civil Right. You cannot remove civil rights except through due process of the Law. In this case, a trail for certain. 'Suspicion' alone simply does not meet that bar.

Science tries to tell us "what is", not "what we should do". Tyson is, of course, wrong. We have been exploring this for some time now. He and others simply haven't liked the answer we have come to.

Why limit it to other First World nations? And where exactly are these increased shootings happening? What are the gun laws there?

A) it is not any sort of a given that a pitcher would fall off a cliff at 30, though it may be the beginning of their decline. You're not going to get anything resembling a prospect, so why bother?

gun killings are on the decline have been for some time, particularly after the liberalization of gun laws.

Here is a link that explains what the term "well regulated" meant to those of the 18th and 19th Centuries. http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm And a well regulated militia vs a modern solider is not exactly an "ant", I would think.

5) Fernando Abad, RP I don't get the mandate to trade this guy. He's only 30, not expensive, under team control and not likely to break the bank headed into arbitration. I agree he's not going to get much of a return because flash/pan middle relievers just don't...so why not get to the offseason to see if he could be an option next year. His arbitration value would be what? 2 million?

In the 18th and maybe 19th Century, it was pretty well understood that the militia would potentially consist of any able-bodied man. A "Well Regulated" militia would be predicated on those involved being practiced and competent, often with their own weapons, and ready to serve on short notice. It simply does not fit the idea that the State controlled the arms independent from the hands of the People. And as poorly as semi-automatic weapons in the hands of civilians may fare against modern soldiers, removing all firearms would certainly make the citizens' case all the much the worse.

Would a Latos pickup make any sense? used to be kind of a stud for Cinci. What happened?

yes, I actually did read that. And I agree you can't use this to dismiss experts out of hand. But nor can you refer to a consensus and expect it to end a discussion on things. I have never 'dismissed' the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. I think the consensus is flawed and am prepared to detail why that is.

If I have logical fallacies in my post, please point them out. My response was not intended to be smug. But you are completely wrong about that fallacy.

I actually think Nunez has some value. He is of course hitting over his head right now, but since he has been with the Twins his defense has looked a lot better. his 18+ UZR at SS last year is probably an outlier, but I think he's gone from a plainly bad infield defender to a mediocre one. His OF stats have been rather good! I think a number of teams look at him as a guy who could be realistically expected to hit around a 100ops while not being a complete failure in the field. He has "stopgap" written all over him, which is good because I'm fairly certain he was viewed as a castoff when the Twins acquired him. I have no idea what other teams would offer, however...

I'm not going to argue that the motivation is not largely political. It is, as elections are. From the purest of standpoints the GOP is trying to protect their voters from disenfranchisement just as the Democrats are trying to protect their own. and here is a story on voter fraud in MN, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/york-when-1099-felons-vote-in-race-won-by-312-ballots/article/2504163 over a thousand felons who did not have their voting rights restored were allowed to vote in the election that put Al Franken in the Senate. I agree that discovered instances of voter fraud have been rare, but we aren't looking for it either and it is not easy to find. that to me gives rise to too much plausibility of fraud. Addendum. here is a story from Wapo https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/ some notable quotes: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- given how close races can be these days, those are very significant percentages.

I don't know. what you quoted was simply circular reasoning, so I hadn't bothered with it. And that was mostly just a bunch of appeals to popularity/authority. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority You are obviously unaware that it's not only a grant dissenting climatologist risk losing, they risk losing their careers. It's happened a number of times What I think is sheer lunacy is the RICO prosecution of Exxon for the 'crime' of donating funds to groups that disagree with the 'consensus'. That has a sort of McCarthyism written all over it. ... BTW, are you even familiar with what the oft quoted 97% consensus is derived from? It's a fraud.

Did you or did you not imply that I believed minority votes ought to be oppressed if I did not agree with you? I'm just trying to figure out what level of trollishness is allowed here, and given that a Mod liked your post, It seems it is. I will remember that.

Lol. In other words, based on her husband's legacy she was able to move to NY to secure a Senator's election that was a very safe bet to win. And how successful would you say her tenure as the Secretary of State was? The Atlantic has a rundown of her other "qualifications" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/tracking-the-clinton-controversies-from-whitewater-to-benghazi/396182/ No the basis for her unqualification is her rank dishonesty, her link to cronies, her failure as a politician, her "charity", and so on. The idea that the resistance to her as a candidate is primarily or even marginally because she is a woman is your absurd imagination.

Really? then point out a set of standing voter ID laws that creates disparity. The one in TX was burdensome, but it was struck down. What else is there? And lets not pretend that the resistance to voter ID laws itself isn't mired in a desire for fraudulent votes to upset unwanted democratic results. Are the mods going to let this slip?