> But it’s time to change something that made sense a long time ago...
Gun ownership, electoral college, for profit prisons (slavery), etc. Those are all things that made some sense back in the past but still exist.
Gun ownership, electoral college, for profit prisons (slavery), etc. Those are all things that made some sense back in the past but still exist.
With all the flaws current system have, governments are at least accountable (on paper) to the citizens. Corporations are not.
Private prisons are a clusterfuck where they take their "involuntary customers" for all the money they and their extended family got while still underpaying their staff and overcharging the tax payers. They often signed contracts with governments that included guaranteed minimal occupancy clauses.
Now imagine applying the same nice principles to other areas where currently the People (represented by their governments) are in charge.
"Thank you for calling 911, a service of Police Corp, a Comcast company. I see you got home intruders. We'll dispatch one of our associate Crime Fight Technicians to your location shortly. Please make sure you're home next Monday between 9m and 5pm to let them in. Would you like to sign up for our premium Home Intruder Plus coverage? Oh wait, I just saw you're located in an area we currently do not serve."
And the Industry Association of Fire Fighting Corporations would be lobbying government right now to change building codes to require more flammable materials in houses.
Police forces are heavily militarized because of the bonkers amount of money thrown at them in the name of the "War on Drugs" and more recent "War on Terror". Note the connection between "war" and an increasingly militarized police force.
Do you have to list all the things you aren't protecting your home with?
Gun laws haven’t gotten laxer in the last couple decades either - many states have strengthened them. There isn’t a clear connection between weak gun laws and mass shootings.
(That said, a total and effective ban on guns would of course stop mass shootings and other gun violence - if it could be implemented successfully)
But then, the cherrypicked, tautological nature of this goal is elided by gun control advocates--reducing gun violence without addressing the root social causes of violence is just a shell game.
A better response to mass shootings would be to desensationalize the media coverage, which since Columbine has been indulging the shooters' motives to shock society.
Incidentally though this whole thread is grossly off-topic and I expect it will be collapsed or detached.
And to the commenter who said modern militaries could never be stopped by small militias, you have only to look seriously at our adventures in Afghanistan and the fact that we're still there. The AK 47 is a less accurate, high-recoil stamped out piece of garbage compared to the AR 15, and it's all you need to stop a modern military in its tracks for decades.
The Taliban aren't joking.
You are grossly under-estimating what it takes to fight an insurgency. A military fighting in the same country on which it depends is vulnerable to attacks and sabotage on all its support infrastructure. You can't just carpet bomb areas of resistance because that creates more resistance elsewhere or destroy the country you're trying to control. It's a hard problem and on some level you have to get people on "your side" to win in any sort of long term sense.
Unarmed riot can be dispersed using tear gas etc, no need to kill the civilians. Armed riot requires actually killing the opposition.
While government will almost certainly succeed in killing the militia the international opinion is wholly different in that case. 10000 person protesters dispersed vs 10000 killed.
Any pro gunner will tell you that the 2nd amendment is sacred, except it’s first clause, that’s meaningless.
Look, I'm all for stricter gun laws, but at the same time not everyone lives in a (sub)(ex)urban area and a blanket ban simply will not work.
"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away"
The senate gives equal representation to each state.
The electoral college gives each state a degree of representation approximately proportional to its population, but the approximation is somewhat poor.
However, the Senate isn't "like" the Electoral College. The Senate is what makes Congress like the EC...or vice versa.
So if you believe the US isn't a collection of united states, which is why the senate exists and why the EC exists, then it is only rational to argue against both intuitions.
Not saying that's precisely my position...
In one hand you say it's a bad thing, on the other its OK. It's not logical and the only way I can explain it is being sore losers of the last election.
I keep hearing how Trump is going to destroy our Constitution, but I also keep hearing from leftist how we need to change the first amendment, the second amendment, and the EC.
You can sorta maybe make the argument that the elctoral college should be to make sure someone unfit shouldn't be put in, by using their sense of judgement. Well that obviously failed, and you are advocating getting rid of that potential benefit.
Why not get rid of the entire anti-democratic idea and just vote for the president.
Remember, this body of representatives was the one that managed to stall Obama's Supreme Court nominee until a new President was elected. That is a lot of power.
There will never be a President that everyone wants. The way to make the most people happy is to put into power the one that the most people voted for.
Why not get rid of the entire anti-democratic idea of voting for representatives altogether and just vote directly on issues?