Placing your phone in your pocket to record audio discreetly works great, unless you're moving a lot. When you're sitting or standing still, the audio is almost perfectly clear.
182 karma · joined February 7, 2017
Do you have a source for this?
The U.S. was paying about $400-500 million / year, not an insignificant amount of tax dollars to go to an organization that chose to help China at the U.S.' expense by lying and covering up necessary information.
$ curl icanhazip.comIt sounds like it would be a great project.
Thanks.
Remember, legal immigrants (from Mexico or anywhere else) tend to be among the strongest opponents of illegal immigration.
Thanks for your thought-out response. Just from reading your post I still don't see how you're arriving at some of the conclusions you are, but I'll research your angle.
Cheers!
* You can read the Bill of Rights for yourself and see that all 10 Amendments are to protect the citizens from the government abusing its power against them. Why would the 2A be the only Amendment to grant the government a right?
* Why does the government/military need a right to own arms? Of course the government can own arms, that's part of it's job. The 2A was created to preserve that right for the people so the government could never take it away.
I'm not trying to shout my "talking points" online. I really would appreciate answers to these questions, since I don't see how you can justify your opinion.
(Also, to nitpick your suggested alteration: The BoR is about God-given rights that nobody can take away without just cause. That means, for example, that I can say whatever I want no matter how hateful it may be. I don't have a right to join an organized force however, especially one that necessarily has restrictions on membership - fitness, intelligence - so using your suggested text instead would be problematic)
And do you really think that the Founding Fathers wanted to limit gun usage to military members?
* The 2A was created to protect the citizenry from a tyrannical government, whether it was foreign or domestic; allowing only the government to have guns would work against that.
* You can read the Bill of Rights for yourself and see that all 10 Amendments are to protect the citizens from the government abusing its power against them. Why would the 2A be the only Amendment to grant the government a right?
* Since when does the government/military need a right to own arms? Of course the government can own arms, that's part of it's job. The 2A was created to preserve that right for the people so the government could never take it away.
Also, you're ignoring the part about citizens being allowed to keep their arms.
> The evidence that these guns existed is scant
Yes, but the idea of them existing was enough to interest Congress, who tried to order 100 of them. They backed out of their order due to the cost. If they had existed at a reasonable price, one can assume Congress would have gone through with their order.
> The world of the Founding Fathers in 1788 was a world very similar to the world of 1688 and 1588
You're discounting the technological advancement of that era just because we've had more inventions in recent history. Innovation happened slower back then, but there were still large improvements in technology during the Founding Fathers' lives. Ben Franklin, who was one of the Founding Fathers himself, invented a lot of stuff during his life.
> You are looking at this with 21st century eyes
So are you. One of the reasons American citizens haven't had to bear their arms (some exceptions[1][2][3][4]) is because we have them and are able to use them if necessary. Few people are willing to die for a cause, and far fewer are willing if they have reason to expect their death will be in vain, and for their side to lose.
People are only willing to give up the rights they have now because they don't know what it was like without them.
> I am pretty sure that if you walked into the Constitution Convention of 1787 and laid out an AR15 and said, "One day a young man with this weapon will walk into a school and kill 20 children and 6 staff members with one of these and mass shootings happen with regularity." I am pretty sure the 2nd Amendment would be a lot different and a lot more clear.
We definitely agree that the Founding Fathers would be horrified by modern society. However, I don't think their reaction would be to limit firearm ownership. (Probably, they would probably want to know why tax dollars are going to the federal gov't to create public schools and why adults failed the kid) Would they have also changed the First Amendment to limit religion to Christian/Puritan variants? Probably not; they created the Bill of Rights to acknowledge rights that no human can morally take from another person, since the rights come from God*.
Ultimately, we can't prevent others from causing harm. Making black powder is easy and cheap, and tossing some fireworks in a pressure cooker or a pipe is something anyone can do. If we could hypothetically remove all guns from the entire world, badguys would cause harm through other methods, such as bombings or vehicle attacks[5]. We need to fix the root causes of these evils, not ban the weapon(s) they currently use so we can feel good about doing something.
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Lastly, I'm assuming you made this mistake in good faith but implying that our priority for minimizing mass murders should be banning AR-15 style rifles is misleading. Most mass shootings are committed with handguns[6]. So why not ban handguns then? Because in America, guns are used in a defensive manner far more often than they're used to murder people[7][8].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff (not an endorsement, but it's relevant)
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Korean_...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack
[6]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/06/16/why-...
[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use
[8]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Not true; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun#Early_rapid-firing...
> In 1777, Philadelphia gunsmith Joseph Belton offered the Continental Congress a "new improved gun", which was capable of firing up to twenty shots in five seconds [...] Congress requested that Belton modify 100 flintlock muskets to fire eight shots in this manner
1777 was 14 years before our Bill of Rights was ratified, and 4 shots/second is faster than an average person can fire any semi-auto weapon, including an AR-15.
Also, do you really think the Founding Fathers didn't envision technological advancement? Of course they couldn't have predicted exactly what our current technology looks like, but I'm sure they saw the progression from clubs to swords to guns and expected weapons to continue getting more effective. How could anybody not expect technology to advance over time? It's literally been doing that since the beginning of the world.
Under a reasonable interpretation, whether one supports the 2nd Amendment or not, "Arms" covers (at least) anything an individual U.S. soldier might use in war; this includes full-auto weapons, suppressors, night-vision goggles, body armor, grenades.[1]
[1]: If we were shipping items to a foreign country to help them in war, would a news editor be comfortable using the term "Arms" in the headline? If so, the 2A probably protects its ownership by American citizens.
> Copyright 2019 3 Dumb Idiots. Please don't sue us.
I know they aren't representative of most republicans in general, but r/The_Donald is definitely not upset right now.
* O'Rourke $8.4M
* Harris $1.6M
* Warren $1.3M
* Booker $800K
* Sanders $685K
* Klobuchar $365K
* Yang $120K
* Buttigieg $10.5K