No. None of those issues feature equivalent irrationality and dangerous nonsense from "both sides" with public platforms and political representation. Climate change, say, has a nutcase pack of Republican freaks and Koch paid denial mongers actually dominant in the US Congress, and nothing of the kind even visible on TV for the "other side". The repeated canard of "both sides" is normally paid, organized, and promoted rightwing corporate authoritarian PR - look who it comes from: David Gregory types overseeing a TV landscape packed with rightwing spinmeisters, hired guns and paid shills and talk radio rightyranters, people who voted for W twice and thought Palin was unfairly picked on, birthers and Iraq War apologists and people who nodded their heads at Romney's 47% remark. The usual situation is sanity vs crazytalk, honest consideration vs lies and bs, wild paranoia and fantasy vs sober marshalling of facts, and so forth. Not two opposed packs of shitflingers with public venue access - just one, and opposed to it the various factions of the reality based community.billvon said:"Why yes. As I have now posted about fifteen times around here, this is one of the very few - and possibly the only - US political issue that actually seems to be polarized into two sides of equivalently irrational and hazardous extremists with public platforms and political influence."
Well, that and abortion. And climate change. And immigration. And health care.
With gun control, there are two.
That was one place you could go to find the wording of the 2nd Amendment in its common usage, a place you could learn what the term "well regulated" meant to the author who used it. If you don't like it, there were others mentioned. Pick one or two.write said:Let's NOT go to the British Navy Midshipman's manual and stay with the actual wording of the 2nd Amendment, shall we?
The citizens were expected to have armed themselves, of course, and they had been at the time mostly defending their frontier cabins and colonial towns for the past seventy or eighty years, rather than what was not yet a country.write said:And who is responsible for the well equipping of the general population, before they are called to defend their country?
Due process refers to due process of law as required of the State - recall that no man's liberty or property can be taken by the State without due process of law?write said:Of course we are a democracy and we have the Right to vote them out of office for malfeasance if necessary. It is called "due process"
In all of the debates, essays, and preliminary discussions leading up to the writing of the US Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights, which was written for that reason explicitly. The roots of the political theory go way back - to the Magna Carta, to the old Greek citystates, - and also to the personal experience of the Founders with the European monarchies, colonial governors, Vatican influence, Scotch-Irish political history, and such exemplars of alternative as the Iroquois Confederacy and Cherokee Nation right on their borders.write said:Where does it say that the State must be regulated in context of its citizenry?
Well regulated means among other things well equipped (among other necessary attributes, such as properly organized and coordinated). And militias generally disband in peacetime - they might or might not volunteer for some training or something between actions, but they aren't usually getting paid to stand around after the job is done. They're civilians - when the battle's over they pack their stuff (including their weapons) and go home. Sometimes before then, if they don't like the situation - George Washington did not trust them.write said:Exactly, but you are throwing in terms like "well equipped militia". How about training, pay, supplies, communications, in peace time?
Nonsense. Quite a few people want to take legal guns away from their current possessors, confiscate (say) all the handguns in Minneapolis (that was the explicit agenda of a major Party candidate for governor of Minnesota, a few years ago). Read back on this thread for examples, or listen to the TV, or read the newspaper.write said:This whole debate is ridiculous. When you buy a gun, have it registered, so that the government knows who to call in times of emergency or can identify the gun and owner if it was used in a crime. No one wants to take your (legal) gun
So does almost every other gun owner, and almost everyone else. We all know that, right?write said:p.s. I am a gun owner myself and I see a need for appropriate regulation