Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[hector13]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Because the ATF is obviously the only government agency to ever be involved in controversial sting operations and failures of protocol in the history of the world ever.

What was your point?

Probably the general libertarian and American ideal that government power needs to be reigned and limited whenever possible, because they'll always end up using it in nonideal ways

That argument could be applied to the wide availability of guns, too.

[Shadowlord]

Sure? A legally mandated and defined/regulated paramilitary organization (e.g. militias) is to be allowed to have and carry firearms, for the protection of the country against threats to its freedom. Would be the more or less direct translation.

Exactly. A legally mandated and defined paramilitary organisation, one man is not.

Here's a pertinent article I read this morning:

People need firearms proficiency to defend against young soldiers of a standing army who might be, in Madison's words, "rendered subservient to the views of arbitrary power." Hamilton also elaborates on ideas that would later lead to the Second Amendment, and particularly the notion of a well-regulated militia. He is unambiguous in Federalist 29 on the point that people have a right to their weapons, and that they need not attend formal military training to be part of a militia, which would be "as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it."

By definition, then, a "well-regulated militia" would no longer seem to include the National Guard, which does require formal and sustained military training by the regular Army. At any rate, in its present incarnation, the Guard — as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan — is a "state" force in name only. In practice, it is a part-time Army Reserve: a national army that happens also to be used for natural disasters in home states.

Hamilton writes further of the requirements of militia members:

Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. [Federalist 29]

So: If the whole point of the keeping and bearing of arms is to stock "well-regulated militias," why not mandate militia membership in order to own a gun?

Before this suggestion is dismissed out of hand, I assert that the extremist so-called "militias" in Oregon, Ohio, and elsewhere — these people who live on compounds and confront federal agents — are not militiamen but rather insurrectionists. Insurrectionists should be excluded from this discussion. They surrender any claim to the designation "militia" and any place in civil society.

Proper militias would be comprised of sane men and women who own guns and wish to comply with state law. (And that is key: Militias belong entirely to the states, who regulate them accordingly.) Militias might be formed voluntarily based on like-mindedness and geography. Never forgetting their purpose — the common defense — hunters in north Louisiana, for example, might form their own militia — which in practice would exist as a kind of society or association. State regulation of militias would seek to prevent the radicalization of any such group and thus suppress insurrectionists. Likewise, state laws and local governance from within a militia might find better luck in implementing piecemeal the gun reforms that confound federal legislatures.

It's a good article, worth reading. (And kindly do not attack it on the basis of only what I have quoted, because then you'll feel embarrassed if it was addressed already in the article)

Guns are no longer a necessary good like they were back in 1600-1900 when people were pushing the frontier and had to defend themselves and their families from wildlife and Natives.
Now that there is no frontier then what's the point of a gun for anyone who's not a Hunter/Policeman/Soldier?

So you think that murdering people in order to take their land from them was a "necessary good?"

[Sonlirain]

I meant "good" as an object.
You know... shipping goods down the river?
Importing/exporting goods?

But yeah if you were traveling west back when the unclaimed frontier was a thing having a gun on you wasn't just a good idea but a sign of common sense.

[Frumple]

...  think the point SL was making was about that whole "unclaimed" thing.

[Strife26]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Because the ATF is obviously the only government agency to ever be involved in controversial sting operations and failures of protocol in the history of the world ever.

What was your point?

Probably the general libertarian and American ideal that government power needs to be reigned and limited whenever possible, because they'll always end up using it in nonideal ways

That argument could be applied to the wide availability of guns, too.

It could, but it'd take some rhetoric gymnastics to be effective. Power in private hands is a different kettle of fish from power in government, especially when mucking with the private bits necessitates more power for the public parts.

[LoSboccacc]

because in the US anyone aged 17-44 is part of the militia. they are THE militia.

[Antioch]

Yes, because an empowered ATF is a splendid idea.

Because the ATF is obviously the only government agency to ever be involved in controversial sting operations and failures of protocol in the history of the world ever.

What was your point?

Probably the general libertarian and American ideal that government power needs to be reigned and limited whenever possible, because they'll always end up using it in nonideal ways

That argument could be applied to the wide availability of guns, too.

It could, but it'd take some rhetoric gymnastics to be effective. Power in private hands is a different kettle of fish from power in government, especially when mucking with the private bits necessitates more power for the public parts.

The largest difference difference is that the government is a democratically elected body, whereas a lot of private institutions such as for example businesses are have no obligation to be so. Why one wants to take power from democratic institutions and distribute it to non-democratic institutions is beyond me.

[Strife26]

Because those nondemocratic organizations, at least in theory, don't have the power of the government behind them. The will of a corporation isn't enforced by men with badges.

[Frumple]

Different assessments of what counts as a democratic institution, to a large extent. If the government isn't a legitimate democratically chosen organization, then it's fairly reasonable to distribute power to non-democratic powers (i.e. individuals, and by extension companies, etc.).

Whether or not there's an accurate assessment of legitimacy going on is a different discussion, of course :V

Though that's a fairly silly assumption, strife. Will of corps/businesses/etc. have been enforced by men in badges (and blackjacks, or an equivalent) for a long, long time. Private security and its historical equivalents (kneebreakers, etc.) are a thing. Though I guess it's more of an "In an ideal situation where the corporation isn't running rampant without external checks on it" thing. Which is fair enough, I guess.

[Sonlirain]

...  think the point SL was making was about that whole "unclaimed" thing.

Not if the way he worded it is anything to go by.
Also this is not the thread to talk about the colonists displacing the native people.
Especially over a misunderstanding.

[Shadowlord]

...  think the point SL was making was about that whole "unclaimed" thing.

Not if the way he worded it is anything to go by.

So you think that murdering people in order to take their land from them was a "necessary good?"

Did you ignore the entire rest of the sentence because you meant "necessary product" instead of "necessary moral good?"
It works either way. Yes, in your sense too - guns were a necessary product for murdering people and taking their lands. Yes, I have a problem with murdering people and taking their lands. I also have a problem with not murdering people but still taking their lands. This shouldn't be difficult to understand. It shouldn't be controversial either, and yet for some reason it is???

[Strife26]

Different assessments of what counts as a democratic institution, to a large extent. If the government isn't a legitimate democratically chosen organization, then it's fairly reasonable to distribute power to non-democratic powers (i.e. individuals, and by extension companies, etc.).

Whether or not there's an accurate assessment of legitimacy going on is a different discussion, of course :V

Though that's a fairly silly assumption, strife. Will of corps/businesses/etc. have been enforced by men in badges (and blackjacks, or an equivalent) for a long, long time. Private security and its historical equivalents (kneebreakers, etc.) are a thing. Though I guess it's more of an "In an ideal situation where the corporation isn't running rampant without external checks on it" thing. Which is fair enough, I guess.

Yeah, it's not an accurate assumption, unfortunately. However, a corporation is largely limited to ruining my life in a civil lawsuit, while the government gets a whole toolbox of nasty options to use.

[Shadowlord]

Different assessments of what counts as a democratic institution, to a large extent. If the government isn't a legitimate democratically chosen organization, then it's fairly reasonable to distribute power to non-democratic powers (i.e. individuals, and by extension companies, etc.).

Whether or not there's an accurate assessment of legitimacy going on is a different discussion, of course :V

Though that's a fairly silly assumption, strife. Will of corps/businesses/etc. have been enforced by men in badges (and blackjacks, or an equivalent) for a long, long time. Private security and its historical equivalents (kneebreakers, etc.) are a thing. Though I guess it's more of an "In an ideal situation where the corporation isn't running rampant without external checks on it" thing. Which is fair enough, I guess.

Yeah, it's not an accurate assumption, unfortunately. However, a corporation is largely limited to ruining my life in a civil lawsuit, while the government gets a whole toolbox of nasty options to use.

Corporations can also get the government to let them use eminent domain to take your land without permission. See for example Donald Trump, or oil companies who want to build pipelines (that one has lots of examples), etc.

[Frumple]

Yeah, it's not an accurate assumption, unfortunately. However, a corporation is largely limited to ruining my life in a civil lawsuit, while the government gets a whole toolbox of nasty options to use.

W... what? N... no, without a government there (or at least without an armed body of individuals or somethin' willing to enforce such limitations, which amounts to the same thing), that whole toolbox gets opened to the corps (and everyone else besides), and often more beside due to the simple dint of having even less impetus to listen to the general public than most governments do. Some significant portion of the reason we even have government is specifically to keep that toolbox out of the hands of less tractable systems of organization (such as, y'know, businesses). No government, and anyone with the ability to manufacture that mustard gas gets to get rid of that inhabited building they want to build over, if they're unethical or powerful enough to not care and/or not be stopped. And there pretty much always ends up being at least one.

Really man, if there's two things american (/world) history has taught us it's that we really don't want to let businesses off the leash, and that local resistance to them is often not nearly enough to stop 'em. Advocate for anarchy or minarchy as much as y'please, but for the love of the nonexistent gods de facto corporatocracy is not the way to go. At least in a system like ours a politician has to at least ostensibly worry about being reelected. Unfettered business just has to worry about whether they can acquire people to kill or cripple everyone that tries to stop them.

[Strife26]

I'm not arguing with that fact. I like the government being the only one with that toolbox. Certainly can't trust a private group with it, but we can't exactly trust the government with anything more than they absolutely need.