Shooting instructor dies after being accidentally shot by girl

[bankside]

Actually they are not expected to be able to overthrow the US military just to be able to resist tyrannical actions by the government long enough to force a moral dilemma in said military. If their cause is just enough, a significant amount of the military forces will be sympathetic enough to cause the military to become unreliable and threaten full blown civil war, something no tyrannical government wants. If their cause is not just then they will be defeated plain and simple. In either case, the American people will know of their cause and judge it appropriately. The fates willing we should never have to come to a point where such an armed resistance would be necessary for it would mean that the entire system had failed.

In some hypothetical time of tyranny, people shooting at the military while flashing their NRA membership cards and waving a copy of the constitution around is not very likely "to force a moral dilemma in said military."

If their cause is just enough, a significant amount of the military will not follow unethical illegal orders anyway. The entire trouble with this ridiculous US system is spelled out in the last sentence of your quote. It has nothing to do with "the fates willing" whether or not ordinary people will become victims of their own government. It has to do with the actual effort those people make to maintain a free and open government at all times. Fate and chance have fuck all to do with it.

I've said this before about the US constitution in general: in commonwealth countries we don't especially limit governments with a piece of paper whose meaning we argue in the courts, we limit governments by giving them unlimited theoretical powers but then electing smart principled people to wield those powers, and expecting them to do their jobs and mind the lessons of history.

And about the second amendment in particular, with respect to this anti-tyranny argument: I think it breeds a terribly complacent mindset in the US: government doesn't matter because if it gets bad enough we can always shoot them. That is a stupid way to run a system of governance yet that seems to be the case. People don't engage. They don't protest. They don't demand reforms. They don't join unions. They just expect very little of their governments, and when pissed off they just go polish their guns and wait for the day when the troops come over the hill. If Americans tried anything at all other than merely bitching about government while clinging to their guns, they'd realise how extremely out of place a gun is when talking about any kind of meaningful government reform.

A gun is not a policy tool. It is only an agent of political change in a failed state. And the only way a state can fail is if its people allow it through its complacency.

You'd think a country that gave the world some profoundly beautiful language in "we the people" would have a little more awareness that the "assholes in washington" got there because of "we the people."

 

[bankside]

I take it then that some people in here believe that sports cars and fast bikes should be mechanically governed at 80mph since that's as fast as one called legally drive anywhere in this country? A Kawasaki ZX14 can break the law on any US interstate in 1st gear, ergo it has no use other than to break the law, ergo nobody has a reason to own one, ergo nobody should be able to own one.

That is how your logic sounds to me.

No, more like, if you want to have a sports car like that, keep it on a private track and go as fast as you like.

If you want to roll it off the private track into a public street, nobody's "taking your rights away" if they make you get a licence first to prove your own skill, nor if they make you register the car you want to bring onto the street. If enough people with fast cars drive shittily on the public street and health and safety are an issue, the government can regulate the cars themselves, say by making owners install a street mode sensor to limit the speed for use on public roads, and if they pull you over doing 200 kmh because you didn't install the sensor, then they can confiscate it. And when you say you didn't install the sensor because you need a fast car to outrun the Eventual Possibility of Tyrannical Government, they can laugh at your reasoning. At not one fucking point in that whole scenario have anyone's "rights been taken away." It's just nonsense.

 

[Zu-Mendel]

No, more like, if you want to have a sports car like that, keep it on a private track and go as fast as you like.

If you want to roll it off the private track into a public street, nobody's "taking your rights away" if they make you get a licence first to prove your own skill, nor if they make you register the car you want to bring onto the street. If enough people with fast cars drive shittily on the public street and health and safety are an issue, the government can regulate the cars themselves, say by making owners install a street mode sensor to limit the speed for use on public roads, and if they pull you over doing 200 kmh because you didn't install the sensor, then they can confiscate it. And when you say you didn't install the sensor because you need a fast car to outrun the Eventual Possibility of Tyrannical Government, they can laugh at your reasoning. At not one fucking point in that whole scenario have anyone's "rights been taken away." It's just nonsense.

The only public property correlation for this would be concealed carry, which is already licensed and regulated out the wazoo. I agree that otherwise firearms should be kept to private property, such as ranges, hunting grounds, and non-populated land. I also agree that people should be required to receive training in the safe operation of firearms before being able to own them. I could even agree with registration of firearms with the police for the express purpose of aiding in criminal investigations, but I don't trust the government with that info as it has turned into confiscations in every single country that implements it. Crippling the effectiveness of a firearm through methods such as magazine capacity limitations and California's mag release crap is also not something I'll compromise on.

We're really not that far apart in this debate, if your feelings on guns mirror your post about sports cars. I wouldn't have any problem sitting through a training course (though considering I have a CCP it would be largely a redundant waste of time) if I could get assurance that the regulation of my ability to purchase civilian small-arms ends there.

Regulation wouldn't end there though, would it? You can't blame people for not giving an inch when the opposition is blatent about their desire to take a mile.