From: Joe E. Dees (joedees@bellsouth.net)
Date: Mon Jun 07 1999 - 22:37:10 MDT
Date sent: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 22:02:51 -0400
From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <mike@lorrey.com>
Organization: http://www.lorrey.com http://www.artlocate.com
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: Re: META: Not another flamewar (BUT RE: a bit of GUNS & a bit of
(meta?) rhetoric
Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> "Joe E. Dees" wrote:
> > If
> > you are in favor of ANY such measures, please enunciate them
> > and your willingness to work for passage of them. Your comments
> > concerning mandatory gun ownership, except for those who would
> > be willing to stigmatize themselves in a manner not unlike those
> > who refuse to pray or stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in school,
> > from this very post, are below.
>
> As opposed to gun owners being stigmatized?
>
It is not an either/or. In fact, the legal possession of firearms would
once again become a matter of personal pride, for it would be prima
facie evidence of adulthood, nonaggrsesion and sanity.
>
> As a veteran, I know which I
> prefer. Let the treasonous little pricks get a taste of their own
> medecine. Like it or not, we are ALL part of the militia. It says so
> right there.
>
I thought that you were eliding your true feelings on the issue when
you denied believing in universal mandatory gun ownership. BTW,
the Constitution says people should have the right to keep and
bear since a well-regulated militia is necessary; not that
membership in it is mandated for every citizen. The people I want
to see on a purchase-prohibited registry are not people I'd like to
have at my shoulder when things got busy, nor would any
professional soldier want to serve with them.
>
> Are you conscripted to vote, to speak, to freely associate,
> to serve on juries, to be judged by your peers? If you were born here,
> you take it for granted, maybe you weren't told or taught about those
> things. If you immigrated, you were definitely taught these things as
> part of your citizenship naturalization. Your freedom of choice with the
> 2nd amendment is whether or not to be a Concientious Objector. You can
> keep your status private for all I care.
>
I am a military veteran, as you should remember.
>
> yeah it sucked you got drafted and sent to Nam, but hey, if you wanted
> to be a citizen, you did it, didn't you? You didn't run off to Canada,
> so you weren't totally against the idea of America, but if you didn't
> have the desire and the guts to be a CO, you picked up a rifle and did
> your dirty work just like everyone else. You risked getting killed or
> wounded like the rest of us. I personally don't care if you do your
> service to your country in the Marines or the Peace Corps, but I beleive
> to the core of my being that we will only remain the nation we are so
> long as all give something of themselves to their country, and follow
> the old Roman Republic maxim of "come home with your shield or on it, or
> don't come home at all."
>
You believe not in Athens, but in Sparta.
>
> The only measures I support are already in place, and have passed
> constitutional muster. Those statutes that don't should no longer be
> considered by rational Americans.
>
The measures I have profferred are logical, rational, reasonable,
specifically targeted and limited in scope and range. You may not
LIKE the fact that they make eminent sense, as this fact grates
against your own irrational quasireligious prejudices, but yet they
do to many rational people, here on this very list and elsewhere.
You have, at least, come clean and admitted that you oppose
denying children, violent criminals and the mentally incompetent
free and unfettered access to the means to efficiently commit long-
range mass homicide, because that is what you just UNDENIABLY
said. You can no longer avoid the label of absolutist extremist, for
you just superglued it on yourself. Your banner has become your
petard, and you are irretrievablyhoisted upon it.
>
> > >
> > > > >The concern about proper training is a valid
> > > > > one that even the founding fathers recognised, which is why
> > the term "well
> > > > > regulated" is in the 2nd amendment, which in that day and
> > age meant well trained
> > > > > and skilled. Its IMHO everyone's constitutional DUTY to learn
> > to responsibly use
> > > > > weapons because of this, unless they have a religious type
> > of reticence against
> > > > > violence even in defense, as is provided for Conscientious
> > Objectors, then they
> > > > > are exempted.
> > > > >
> > > Mike Lorrey
>
>
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