6/6/2002: PETA advertisement

[jaguar]

Site was interesitng, man, long list of anti-gun groups/companies/individuals/flowerbeds/corperations/foundations
. Seem to be lots of school groups, psychologists groups and victims groups, the kind pf people who ahve to clean up the mess afterwards *sighs*. Odd about that. The lobbying to liberals page didn't work which is what i was most interested in =( (anyone ahve a better link for it?)
FAQ was kinda brief. Interesting group. Am i the only one that found the use an what looks like an assult rifle mount/butt worrying?

Syc once again, i wonder how they came into being......
Argh, this is pointless.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by jaguar
Syc once again, i wonder how they came into being......
Argh, this is pointless.

How is this pointless? We are having a constructive discussion involving gun control. We may not agree on it, but there's no harm in talking about it, unless we go into shit like, "Well jag, you're a fucking moron for thinking that way...you Aussies are all alike!"

As far as the origins, pick one or more:

--Socioeconomic status
--Poor home environment
--Societal influences
--Bad genetics
--Bad decision making

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by BrianR
Maggie is not the only one here who openly owns a gun(s), will admit to it, carries one for personal protection, and generally supports the NRA. I am 100% right behind her (I love the womens' movement from here). She is doing a fine job of defending herself and her opinions without me muddying the waters.

But you never know who might be on her side without saying it.

Hence why I used a disclaimer.

I'm going to use Jesus in future hypothetical situations. "If Jesus had his trusty 9mm..."

WWJD?

[juju]

Originally posted by sycamore
Hence why I used a disclaimer.

I'm going to use Jesus in future hypothetical situations. "If Jesus had his trusty 9mm..."

WWJD?

Dude, that'd be awesome.

[jaguar]

One day we'll live in a socity where minorities won't need firearms to feel safe, where tollerance is the norm, where people can walk the streets in safty. Hell will freeze over first but it might happen.


best i could do, i was looking for another one.
I was looking for the one i knew of, it had the text "fucking crazy" under a pic of jesus holding a 9mm so i did a goodle image search for "fuck jesus". It came up with the MSN logo......

[elSicomoro]

Yeah! That rules!

Jesus: Holy Land Ranger

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by BrianR
Maggie is not the only one here who openly owns a gun(s), will admit to it, carries one for personal protection, and generally supports the NRA.

The NRA and I don't alwys see eye-to-eye. There are a lot of homophobes in the NRA, and too often the organization turns a blind eye to it. There was a lot of queer-bashing from Heston when he was campaigning against Clinton.

That said, we do have a lot of goals in common. And in general I get more tolerance of my queerness from shooters than I do tolerance of being a shooter from most queers.

[BrianR]

They haven't heard "An armed society is a polite society."

One is more inclined to be polite to anyone (not necessarily queer) who is known to be packing a gun, is one not?

wink

Brian

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by BrianR
They haven't heard "An armed society is a polite society."

Actually, they probably have. The issue seems to be that they have queers stereotyped as people who want to disarm erverybody, and who seek special privileges (a special "hate crime" category, for example) rather than *equal* rights.

They have to actually *see* and experience out queer folks who believe in the individual right of armed self-defense for all people to break that stereotype. That's one thing that the Pink Pistols is about.

One of the early reactions we often hear when folks first hear about the Pistols is "Oh, you just support arming gay people?", and they have to think a minute when our answer is: "No, we support the right of armed individual self-defense for *all* people. We place special emphasis on the importance of it for queer folk, since we're usually stereotyped as hoplophobes, and we believe that stereotype is dangerous to us as a group."

That's a little bit easier for straight people to understand than issues like "gay marriage" or "gay adoption", which come across as "special interest" issues. The difference is, of course, that there's not much controversy about the rights of *straight* people to marry or adopt (although there's still racial issues about adoption in some areas) .

But the individual right to armed self-defense is still *not* universally respected, even within the US. So when the homophobes find out the homos aren't all hoplophobes, it's a real conciousness-raising expereience for them.

Rosie O'Donnell, for example, has done *enormous* damage to efforts to reverse that stereotype. And most of the anti-gay rants I've heard in the armed citizen community have started off with Rosie-bashing. Rosie hasn't exactly been a poster child for gay pride, either.

Again let me emphasize: most of the armed citizens I've met are content in general to let queer folks live their own lives, even if they still have doubts about gay marriage or gay adoption. But the level of acceptance for queer folks within, say, the NRA, hasn't risen to the level where someone engaging in queer bashing in the context of a panel discussion at the NRA convention (this did happen quite recently) would be frowned on openly by those present.

[Nic Name]

Posted on Mon, Jun. 10, 2002

Court rejects review on gun ownership
BY JAMES VICINI
Reuters

WASHINGTON - - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stayed out of the politically charged debate on whether the Constitution protects an individual's right to possess guns, a position advocated by the Bush administration in reversing the government's long-held policy.

Without comment, the justices declined to hear two cases in which the Justice Department last month said the right to bear arms does not apply just to state militias, a change in policy denounced by gun control advocates and praised by the National Rifle Association.

The Justice Department argued there was no need for the Supreme Court to get involved in the two cases, leaving intact federal appeals court rulings that upheld the constitutionality of provisions of federal gun control laws.

The Supreme Court last ruled on the scope of the Second Amendment in 1939 when it said the amendment protects only those rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well regulated militia."

That legal position still stands since the Supreme Court issued no new ruling. But in one of the cases the high court passed up on Monday, an appeals court did support the Bush administration position on an individual's right to bear arms.

The Second Amendment states: "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."

RIGHT SUBJECT TO 'REASONABLE RESTRICTIONS'

In a footnote in the two cases, Solicitor General Theodore Olson said the government now takes the position that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of the militia, to bear firearms.

Olson said the right was "subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."

The Justice Department has said it plans to defend vigorously the constitutionality under the Second Amendment of all existing federal firearms laws.

The administration's shift in position first surfaced in May last year in a letter by Attorney General John Ashcroft to the National Rifle Association. It was repeated in a memo sent in November to all federal prosecutors.

In one of the cases, the justices let stand a U.S. appeals court ruling that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to carry guns, but that exceptions do exist.

The appeals court rejected the arguments by a Texas physician, Timothy Emerson, that a 1994 federal gun law, designed to deny guns to people under restraining orders, was unconstitutional.

The other case involved an Oklahoma man, John Lee Haney, who was convicted of owning two machine guns. He claimed the federal law that bans the possession of a machine gun violated his constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

The Justice Department said the constitutional challenges and claims in both cases lacked merit and did not warrant Supreme Court review.

[jaguar]

Interesting....Sure sounds like legal war over there. Is gay bashing still a common thing? I've heard a few cases but nothign widespread. Same applies here, i've seen a few really offputting things here (one of my best friends and her gf kissing at a public train station copped some pretty nasty verbal abuse ) but it seems pretty isloated and rare.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by jaguar
Interesting....Sure sounds like legal war over there. Is gay bashing still a common thing?

In the NRA context , by "gaybashing" I meant verbal disparagement of queer folks.

*Physical* assaults against queer folk certainly do still occur. Matthew Shepard's case is notorious, and Danny Lee Overstreet's death in the Backstreet Cafe shooting in Roanoke VA ( http://speakout.com/activism/apstories/9977-1.html ) is a classic case where a gathering of queer folk was thought to be helpless because they were presumed to be unarmed.

The movie "Boys Don't Cry" documented a queerbashing multiple murder that actually happened. A lot of the other folks who died *without* their own movie are remebered at http://www.gender.org/remember ...including Joanne Lillecrapp, who was murdered in Adelade last November.

As for "legal war", there's been a dispute as to the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment ever since Miller. Olsen's statements leave some rather wide loopholes, but in general the Ashcroft Justice Department has come quite a ways in what I consider to be the "right" direction from the positions of previous Justice Departments.

The constitution of the Commonweath of Pennsylvania, where I live, is much clearer on this issue; we don't have that confusing paean to militias (a term that has changed in meaning considerably since Federalist times) in front of the clause affirming the right.

Section 21 of Article 1 says simply "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." Not much wiggle room there.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by MaggieL
Section 21 of Article 1 says simply "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." Not much wiggle room there.

There's ALWAYS wiggle room.

You can always have the right, but that doesn't mean that it can't be restricted, therefore preserving that right. Not that it SHOULD, but it COULD be.

[LordSludge]

The 2nd Amendment made sense when muskets were the pinnacle of weaponry, and it was reasonable to expect some sort of balance between the military power of the govt and of the people. It is now 100 years obsolete -- made so by the power of modern weaponry vs. the irresponsibility of Joe American.

Anybody who honestly believes a few handguns and assault rifles would have *any* chance of deterring a govt assault by anything more threatening than a letter opener-wielding battalion of postal carriers... is sadly, and ridiculously, mistaken. We need tanks, missiles, and tactical nukes! Now how safe would you feel knowing your drunk neighbor had a couple tactical nukes at his disposal? Not very. I believe, however, the 2nd Amendment gave that right, but it's obsolete and frankly (don't shoot me ) should be repealed.

The classic NRA anti-govt opression line is Grade A bullshit. The real reason: power vs. fellow citizen, whether that's vs. a potential criminal, bullies in a bar, or some schmuck boinking your wife. Now, whether "law-abiding" citizens should have that power is debatable, but not, I feel, within the scope or intent of the Constitution.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by sycamore


There's ALWAYS wiggle room.

You can always have the right, but that doesn't mean that it can't be restricted, therefore preserving that right. Not that it SHOULD, but it COULD be.

Which is what Ashcroft's guy was saying. My point was there's much less wiggle room in the wording of Commonweath constitution than in the US one, where the reference to militia has created an excuse for decades of confusion.