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I'm Right, You're , and I Don't Care What You Say.

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Image result for childish insults

Firstly I'd like to start this debate by stating politely that you're all , I don't care what you say and I'm smarter than you all and therefor right.  

  1. I'm not here to debate, I'm here because Facebook just doesn't feel engaging enough for my troll argument style.
  2. I don't like any of you and I'm more interested in sowing dissent and hatred than proposing new ideas, principles or perspectives (The traditional intent of debate)
  3. If you argue facts and logic with reason then I'll simply ignore your arguments and instead I'll resort to my ultra-weapon: The insult.  I'll insult every facet of your argument, mock you, suggest and imply that there's something intellectually wrong with you and ultimately attack and degrade your character instead of your argument if I even address it at all.
  4. I don't know how to properly cite references and so I'll insert them wherever and whenever I want and I'll use Wikipedia as my foundation reference whenever I please.
  5. Not only do I not recognize what a logical fallacy is but I'll constantly use them to prove my points and I don't care how loudly it speaks to my lack of character and civility.
Ultimately I'm an internet troll and not interested in debate, I want to degrade debateisland.com into a slog replica of reddit or the comment section of youtube where we can all trash talk each other instead of engaging in formal and civil debate.  

*Satire*

You know who you are.
ZeusAres42PlaffelvohfenZombieguy1987
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"If there's no such thing as a question then what kind of questions do people ask"?

"There's going to be a special place in Hell for people who spread lies through the veil of logical fallacies disguised as rational argument".

"Oh, you don't like my sarcasm?  Well I don't much appreciate your stup!d".


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  • CYDdhartaCYDdharta 1823 Pts   -  
    DebateIsland charades, that's an interesting idea.
  • I cannot entirely agree with everything here though. The reason being is that from my experience while you do have some trolls here that do tend to make the most noise they only make up a small percent of all those on the site, including both of which are active and inactive.



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  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @Vaulk

    From Twitter:

    Guns are killing our...  *Christians in church *Jews in synagogue *children in school *store customers *mall shoppers *concert fans *movie audiences *restaurant patrons ...and all Senate Republicans can do is keep kissing the #NRA's blank... #GunControlNow


    "where we can all trash talk each other instead of engaging in formal and civil debate."

    The Second Amendment, as its currently written, isn't formal or civil.

    It's just the opposite, it's formal and civil to the NRA, and the pro gun extremists, and to the weapon manufacturers in the U.S., along with the Far Right Pro Gun supporters crowd. 

    But it lacks, formal accountability for all of the Guns in the United States, legal and illegal.

    And it lacks formal representation, for those who don't own guns, or for those, who don't want to owns either, while some of those owners, who own legal guns, and illegal guns have, killed some of the citizens, of the U.S., on a daily basis, either through mass shootings, or the other gun violence crimes.

    I'm pro family, and pro Public safety, in the face of the Second Amendment, as it's currently written, being, that it lacks full representation for the United States, as a whole. 

    No one with a legal or an illegal gun, has the right to infringe on the Rights of those they have victimized through their gun violence crimes, do they?

    The Second Amendment, also doesn't have any language of the sort, that legitimatimizes the gun violence crimes, of the legal or illegal gun owner, does it? 

    It says, that citizens have the right to bear arms, and that that right shall not be infringed on, and that's it.




    PlaffelvohfenZombieguy1987ZeusAres42VaulkAlofRI
  • VaulkVaulk 813 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    It's comical but not entirely unexpected to see someone who wasn't identified... voluntarily assuming the mantle of the people represented in the body of my post.  This wasn't my intent but it is now lol!


    "If there's no such thing as a question then what kind of questions do people ask"?

    "There's going to be a special place in Hell for people who spread lies through the veil of logical fallacies disguised as rational argument".

    "Oh, you don't like my sarcasm?  Well I don't much appreciate your stup!d".


  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Vaulk

    That's the best pro gun argument, that @Vaulk, that you could think of? 

    "It's comical but not entirely unexpected to see someone who wasn't identified... voluntarily assuming the mantle of the people represented in the body of my post.  This wasn't my intent but it is now lol! "

    I didn't assume anything. 

    But your entire pro gun opinion, isn't supported by the Second Amendment, is it?

    You have your right, to own your gun, and your right, of that not being infringed on, and that's the entire extent of how the Second Amendment, can be used by you, isn't it?


    So the rest of your pro gun rhetoric, can't be defended by the words of the Second Amendment, can they?

    The only individual, defending the rest of your pro gun argument, is YOU, yes or no?

    So reiterating my previous point:

    (No one with a legal or an illegal gun, has the right to infringe on the Rights of those they have victimized through their gun violence crimes, do they?

    The Second Amendment, also doesn't have any language of the sort, that legitimatimizes the gun violence crimes, of the legal or illegal gun owner, does it? 

    It says, that citizens have the right to bear arms, and that that right shall not be infringed on, and that's it.)

    Because, the Second Amendment, as it's written, doesn't support, the actions of the legal, or illegal gun owners, does it?


    @Vaulk ;

    And, it is comical, to see how you and they (the NRA) work the Public, via your separate pro gun messaging tactics or strategies?

    I'm ex military and I know, a Public flanking manuver when I see one. 

    Why not go to Twitter, and express some Social media support to the NRA?

    Tell them about our Public debate, and invite them to come be your wingman? 

    And, I can laugh out loud ahead of time, because now, you're going to pause, and regroup, to rethink your next strategy move.

    Because I know you won't go to Twitter, and lament to them, about this conversation?



    ZeusAres42Zombieguy1987
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Vaulk

    From Twitter today:

    Replying to
    The inability to accept criticism is a sign of weakness.
    2
    Replying to
    What? Coming from WAPO?
    1
    Replying to
    Hah! Dang Communist of San Francisco
    Replying to
    The bloody NRA continues to stand in the way of common sense gun laws.
    8
    6
    The Left has no common sense.
    1
    9
    1 more reply
    Replying to
    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment - The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened."
    brennancenter.org
    1
    3
    "Unregulated" -- of course that's exactly what they intended. There was no ATF in 1789 -- no firearms regulatory bodies of any kind (no FDA, EPA, etc. either). Even New York had no police. Buying a gun in 1789 was between you & the village gunsmith (who made it by hand). "
    ZeusAres42Zombieguy1987
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • TKDB said:
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Two words: Wrong topic! My advice is read what's being said in the op more than once to try to understand what's being said.
    Also, remember that it's nothing to be ashamed of if you happen to need a bit more time to comprehend what's being written.
    PlaffelvohfenZombieguy1987Vaulk



  • Zombieguy1987Zombieguy1987 471 Pts   -  
    TKDB said:
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Two words: Wrong topic! My advice is read what's being said in the op more than once to try to understand what's being said.
    Also, remember that it's nothing to be ashamed of if you happen to need a bit more time to comprehend what's being written.

    He's a troll... Don't expect to ever be on topic

    ZeusAres42Plaffelvohfen
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @Zombieguy1987

    @Plaffelvohfen

    @ZeusAres42

    The NRA organization isn't trolling on the Second Amendment, to support their own organization?


    Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, and Seth Ator, are the Mass murdering trolls, who killed people with their guns, and spat in the faces, of those who are pro family, and pro Public safety, when it came to their safety, being that the Second Amendment, doesn't share equal or fair representation towards the rest of the Public, that doesn't own a gun, or guns. 
    PlaffelvohfenZeusAres42Zombieguy1987
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Vaulk

    @Plaffelvohfen

    @ZeusAres42

    https://theoutline.com/post/3530/the-nra-is-just-openly-trolling-at-this-point?zd=2&zi=oycenv57

    "The NRA is just openly trolling at this point

    They would like you to know that they are extremely Not Mad; however, they are in fact Very Mad."


    "POWER

    The NRA is just openly trolling at this point

    They would like you to know that they are extremely Not Mad; however, they are in fact Very Mad."



    The NRA is just openly trolling at this point

    They would like you to know that they are extremely Not Mad; however, they are in fact Very Mad.
    Via Shutterstock
    POWER

    The NRA is just openly trolling at this point

    They would like you to know that they are extremely Not Mad; however, they are in fact Very Mad.

       
    "Drew MillardFEB—25—2018 05:46PM EST

    Yesterday, the world’s worst party guests, the National Rifle Association, released a statement on its website addressing the number of corporate partnerships it’s lost in the wake of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting, a tragedy which may very well signal a turning point in the conversation about how guns are legislated in America.

    Before now, that conversation was almost completely dominated by the NRA itself, which in 2017 alone spent $5.1 million on pro-gun lobbying. One of the ways that the organization has accrued so much cash is by incentivizing memberships through acting as a Triple A for gun owners, arranging for corporate discounts and passing the savings down to their members. It’s a tactic that’s helped drive up its numbers in recent years, but as more and more companies sever ties with the organization, it may very well decrease the NRA’s ability to buy influence in Washington.

    In response to all of this, the NRA seems to have adopted an official policy of Extremely Not Mad, No You’re The One Who’s Mad Here. In their statement responding to the “number of companies [that] have decided to sever their relationship with the NRA,” the organization accused their former partners of “decid[ing] to punish” NRA members “in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.” Meanwhile, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch appeared in an official NRA video in which she very calmly and Not-Mad-ly criticized the media, stating, “People are slandered and libeled and defamed and smeared and characters are impugned simply because someone wants to present something untrue for the sake of an ideological goal. [...] That's not what our country should be about,” as anti-NRA tweets from various liberal commentators flashed across the screen."

    "On Facebook, the NRA continues to show how Not Mad it is by defiantly posting links to Loesch’s speeches and media appearances, and even going to far as directly respond to a single commenter for making fun of them:

    What we’re seeing now is the NRA entering full-on troll mode, doing the best they can to make outrageous statements designed to antagonize anyone to the left of, say, Tucker Carlson, presumably hoping that the responses their statements receive are so irrational that they make the NRA seem logical by comparison. It’s an attempt to distract from the fact that their current, anything-goes position on gun policy is quickly sliding into irrelevance. In other words, the NRA would really like to avoid having a conversation about guns."

    More educational material on the NRA and trolling.


    PlaffelvohfenZombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • TKDB said:
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Two words: Wrong topic! My advice is read what's being said in the op more than once to try to understand what's being said.
    Also, remember that it's nothing to be ashamed of if you happen to need a bit more time to comprehend what's being written.

    He's a troll... Don't expect to ever be on topic

    Well, I do sometimes wonder if he is a troll. But at other times I wonder if there is some condition he has to makes him post an inordinate amount of off-topic information. It's like he becomes strongly fixated on previous debates and people, and as such carries this fixation on to other topics that have no relevance what so ever to the current topic being addressed.

    I can't seem to fathom as to why a troll would want to waste their time posting that amount of irrelevant material.

    In any case, this behaviour that he exhibits is definitely abnormal.
    PlaffelvohfenZombieguy1987Vaulk



  • Zombieguy1987Zombieguy1987 471 Pts   -  
    TKDB said:
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Two words: Wrong topic! My advice is read what's being said in the op more than once to try to understand what's being said.
    Also, remember that it's nothing to be ashamed of if you happen to need a bit more time to comprehend what's being written.

    He's a troll... Don't expect to ever be on topic

    Well, I do sometimes wonder if he is a troll. But at other times I wonder if there is some condition he has to makes him post an inordinate amount of off-topic information. It's like he becomes strongly fixated on previous debates and people, and as such carries this fixation on to other topics that have no relevance what so ever to the current topic being addressed.

    I can't seem to fathom as to why a troll would want to waste their time posting that amount of irrelevant material.

    In any case, this behaviour that he exhibits is definitely abnormal. 

    What if he's actually a bot?

    Because his old account @TTKDB is exaclty like that ,but this one is even worse

    ZeusAres42
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42

    @Plaffelvohfen

    The NRA is abnormal, and they treat the Second Amendment abnormally?

    And the mass shooters, have treated, the Public in abnormal ways, by murdering kids, teenagers, students, parents, senior citizens, and Police Officers, with their legal, and illegally owned guns, their gun violence crimes in general?

    It's educational to watch who the NRA trolls on, verses who they don't?

    I could be wrong, but I don't recall the NRA on Twitter ever mentioning Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, or Seth Ator by name publicly, and denouncing, their mass shooters, gun violence crimes?

    Yet they'll call out Wal-Mart or Dicks Sporting Goods, and publicly troll on them?

    And that makes no sense, unless the NRA is pandering, catering, or coddling, to their apparent NRA members?

    And future, NRA members? 


    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42Plaffelvohfen
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    Get a life or change your meds because they're obviously not working... 
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42piloteer
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "

  • I hear music in the background. Or is that just me?



  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @Plaffelvohfen

    "Get a life or change your meds because they're obviously not working... "

    @ZeusAres42

    "I hear music in the background. Or is that just me?"

    Are the two of you probable NRA supporters?

    Because I know, that neither of you can disprove the below, can you?

    So you, can make statements towards me, being that you have NO way, of disproving my argument, do you?

    Thats why your statements, reflect the nature of your combined thinking?

    @Plaffelvohfen

    @ZeusAres42

    Your minsets, have betrayed you. 

    "The NRA is abnormal, and they treat the Second Amendment abnormally?

    And the mass shooters, have treated, the Public in abnormal ways, by murdering kids, teenagers, students, parents, senior citizens, and Police Officers, with their legal, and illegally owned guns, their gun violence crimes in general?

    It's educational to watch who the NRA trolls on, verses who they don't?

    I could be wrong, but I don't recall the NRA on Twitter ever mentioning Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, or Seth Ator by name publicly, and denouncing, their mass shooters, gun violence crimes?

    Yet they'll call out Wal-Mart or Dicks Sporting Goods, and publicly troll on them?

    And that makes no sense, unless the NRA is pandering, catering, or coddling, to their apparent NRA members?

    And future, NRA members?"


     
    PlaffelvohfenZombieguy1987ZeusAres42

  • I have actually seen something like what you’re talking about when I was visiting Spain. Have you ever been to Spain?



  • I am so, so, so wrong...…….
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    What's wrong, are you lacking a logical counter argument, that doesn't focus on me, instead of presenting an actual argument?

    Because the mess from you, is a trolling type of argument ploy:

    "I have actually seen something like what you’re talking about when I was visiting Spain. Have you ever been to Spain?"

    Your mindset is betraying you again.

    @ZeusAres42

    Are the two of you probable NRA supporters?

    Because I know, that neither of you can disprove the below, can you?

    So you, can make statements towards me, being that you have NO way, of disproving my argument, do you?

    Thats why your statements, reflect the nature of your combined thinking?

    @Plaffelvohfen

    @ZeusAres42

    Your minsets, have betrayed you. 

    "The NRA is abnormal, and they treat the Second Amendment abnormally?

    And the mass shooters, have treated, the Public in abnormal ways, by murdering kids, teenagers, students, parents, senior citizens, and Police Officers, with their legal, and illegally owned guns, their gun violence crimes in general?

    It's educational to watch who the NRA trolls on, verses who they don't?

    I could be wrong, but I don't recall the NRA on Twitter ever mentioning Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, or Seth Ator by name publicly, and denouncing, their mass shooters, gun violence crimes?

    Yet they'll call out Wal-Mart or Dicks Sporting Goods, and publicly troll on them?

    And that makes no sense, unless the NRA is pandering, catering, or coddling, to their apparent NRA members?

    And future, NRA members?"
    Zombieguy1987
  • No what else is wrong? The sound of telling a doctor the depression meds may be causing depression.
    'Something else that is so wrong things just doesn't piss me off because I am not a fluid like water to be piss off of an object.
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    TKDB said:
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Two words: Wrong topic! My advice is read what's being said in the op more than once to try to understand what's being said.
    Also, remember that it's nothing to be ashamed of if you happen to need a bit more time to comprehend what's being written.

    He's a troll... Don't expect to ever be on topic

    Well, I do sometimes wonder if he is a troll. But at other times I wonder if there is some condition he has to makes him post an inordinate amount of off-topic information. It's like he becomes strongly fixated on previous debates and people, and as such carries this fixation on to other topics that have no relevance what so ever to the current topic being addressed.

    I can't seem to fathom as to why a troll would want to waste their time posting that amount of irrelevant material.

    In any case, this behaviour that he exhibits is definitely abnormal. 

    What if he's actually a bot?

    Because his old account @TTKDB is exaclty like that ,but this one is even worse

    Well, that would explain the amount of irrelevant info being posted by him at such high volumes.

    It might look like what I was just doing to him just now was also being irrelevant, but I was actually trying to see if it is a bot we are discussing with by asking those questions. Bots have a hard time at answering certain questions, and they don't understand sarcasm.

    Perhaps it could be a bit of both bot and human activity going on here. It definitely does appear like trolling behaviour though. I mean I can't honestly think any human being would honestly spend that amount of time posting pages of rubbish in such quick successions, even if they were trolling. You are most probably right about some kind of bot-like behaviour going on here.
    Zombieguy1987Plaffelvohfen



  • "I Don't Care What You Say."
    Thank you, the pressure of you concern was begining to overcome me...................:joy:
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42

    Here, go troll on the NRA.

    https://membership.nra.org/MultiStep/Join?gclid=Cj0KCQjwh8jrBRDQARIsAH7BsXcME3oxmRVBH7hGZA2MQ4veP9nt1sq6m-lOrjkla3J7G5Sl5CT3AWoaAnkOEALw_wcB ;

    Or go to Twitter, and man up, and Call me out in Front of Twitter, and the NRA, if you're brave enough? 
    ZeusAres42
  • TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Here, go troll on the NRA.

    https://membership.nra.org/MultiStep/Join?gclid=Cj0KCQjwh8jrBRDQARIsAH7BsXcME3oxmRVBH7hGZA2MQ4veP9nt1sq6m-lOrjkla3J7G5Sl5CT3AWoaAnkOEALw_wcB ;

    Or go to Twitter, and man up, and Call me out in Front of Twitter, and the NRA, if you're brave enough? 
    What, are you or do you use a bot on Twitter too? Tell me the username of your twitter account and let's really find out if you really are a bot for certain or using one at least?



  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Here, go troll on the NRA.

    https://membership.nra.org/MultiStep/Join?gclid=Cj0KCQjwh8jrBRDQARIsAH7BsXcME3oxmRVBH7hGZA2MQ4veP9nt1sq6m-lOrjkla3J7G5Sl5CT3AWoaAnkOEALw_wcB ;

    Or go to Twitter, and man up, and Call me out in Front of Twitter, and the NRA, if you're brave enough? 
    Short post like this could indicate either human behaviour or automated. However, due to the defensiveness being exhibited here this could the actual human speaking. Or a mixture of both, like copying text into a chatbot, and pasting output. hmm?



  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42

    Are you an NRA puppet?

    You sound like a puppet:

    "Short post like this could indicate either human behaviour or automated. However, due to the defensiveness being exhibited here this could the actual human speaking. Or a mixture of both, like copying text into a chatbot, and pasting output. hmm?"

    I dare your scared mouth, to go to Twitter, and call me out, in front of the NRA?

    Your fear, indicates the stength of your spine @ZeusAres42.

    Go ahead?

    Scared @ZeusAres42.
    ZeusAres42
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Are you an NRA puppet?

    You sound like a puppet:

    "Short post like this could indicate either human behaviour or automated. However, due to the defensiveness being exhibited here this could the actual human speaking. Or a mixture of both, like copying text into a chatbot, and pasting output. hmm?"

    I dare your scared mouth, to go to Twitter, and call me out, in front of the NRA?

    Your fear, indicates the stength of your spine @ZeusAres42.

    Go ahead?

    Scared @ZeusAres42.
    Troll confirmed! Thank you for confirming this via your defensive post TKDB.

    BTW, I just asked you to give me your Twitter username, and yet I am the one that is scared lol?

    Finally, revealing your true colours eh?





  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    Here:

    Bring your troll talking self to Twitter, and let's have a debate over your pro gun rhetoric?

    "See what’s happening in the world right now
    Join Twitter today.
    Sign up
    Log in
    Follow your interests.
    Hear what people are talking about.
    Join the conversation.
    Log in
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Here:

    Bring your troll talking self to Twitter, and let's have a debate over your pro gun rhetoric?

    "See what’s happening in the world right now
    Join Twitter today.
    Sign up
    Log in
    Follow your interests.
    Hear what people are talking about.
    Join the conversation.
    Log inAboutHelp CenterTermsPrivacy policyCookiesAds infoBlogStatusJobsBrandAdvertiseMarketingBusinessesDevelopersDirectorySettings© 2019 Twitter, Inc. "


    Troll bot confirmed.
    Zombieguy1987



  • TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Here:

    Bring your troll talking self to Twitter, and let's have a debate over your pro gun rhetoric?

    "See what’s happening in the world right now
    Join Twitter today.
    Sign up
    Log in
    Follow your interests.
    Hear what people are talking about.
    Join the conversation.
    Log inAboutHelp CenterTermsPrivacy policyCookiesAds infoBlogStatusJobsBrandAdvertiseMarketingBusinessesDevelopersDirectorySettings© 2019 Twitter, Inc. "


    An ordinary human being would give me their twitter username if they wanted to debate on there. As other people might have noticed this hasn't happened here.
    Zombieguy1987



  • TKDB said:
    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    @Zombieguy1987

    The below is a very, very, educational article.

    There are said to be 5 million NRA members?

    In a country of 329 million citizens?

    So the majority of the Public, aren't NRA member's, which means the Public in general, gets to have the majority say, when it comes to the Gun Violence crime, conversation. 

    Right? 


    https://www.brennancenter.org//analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment?gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BMxkia6DZAPXv9ihzso23IHK0CVoR3Yxf-j-NUfKF7x9ZgW7CSmoXRoC6MUQAvD_BwE

    "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment"

    The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

    May 20, 2014

    Crossposted on Politico Magazine

    "A fraud on the American public." That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

    Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

    Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

    So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

    * * *

    The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

    The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

    “Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

    On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

    There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

    Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

    * * *

    Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

    What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

    The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

    Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

    The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

    The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

    Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

    Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

    "Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:

    “.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out."

    Two words: Wrong topic! My advice is read what's being said in the op more than once to try to understand what's being said.
    Also, remember that it's nothing to be ashamed of if you happen to need a bit more time to comprehend what's being written.

    He's a troll... Don't expect to ever be on topic

    Well, I do sometimes wonder if he is a troll. But at other times I wonder if there is some condition he has to makes him post an inordinate amount of off-topic information. It's like he becomes strongly fixated on previous debates and people, and as such carries this fixation on to other topics that have no relevance what so ever to the current topic being addressed.

    I can't seem to fathom as to why a troll would want to waste their time posting that amount of irrelevant material.

    In any case, this behaviour that he exhibits is definitely abnormal. 

    What if he's actually a bot?

    Because his old account @TTKDB is exaclty like that ,but this one is even worse

    Now, 99.9% sure TKDB is a Trollbot!
    Zombieguy1987



  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42

    Hey NRA puppet, you're not on Twitter yourself.

    Why is this?

    Because you're not brave enough, to decry the gun violence crimes committed by Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, or Seth Ator? 

    But you'll attack me and label me a trollbot, because that's the only pro gun counter defense, that you know how to push in my direction.

    That, and you NRA supporter mouth.

    Kids have been killed, by a Mass Shooters gun violence crimes, and you took the time to attack me with your trollbot word, because it's easier to attack me, than to defend the kids, parents, police officers, senior citizens, and students, who were killed by Stephen Paddock, Nicholas Cruz, and Seth Ator?

    @ZeusAres42, you're a sad, sorry, and desperate individual, who calls people names, because he's scared to defend people, who were killed by gun violence crimes. 
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited September 2019

    Hey Trollbot, You know, you sound a lot like my wife.


    Zombieguy1987



  • TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Hey NRA puppet, you're not on Twitter yourself.

    Why is this?

    Because you're not brave enough, to decry the gun violence crimes committed by Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, or Seth Ator? 

    But you'll attack me and label me a bit, because that's what you're about. 
    Do yourself a favour and give the game up now TKDB; almost everyone here knows who you are now!
    Zombieguy1987



  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    Hey NRA puppet, you're not on Twitter yourself.

    Why is this?

    Because you're not brave enough, to decry the gun violence crimes committed by Nicholas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, or Seth Ator? 

    "Do yourself a favour and give the game up now TKDB; almost everyone here knows who you are now!"

    But you'll attack me and label me a trollbot, because that's the only pro gun counter defense, that you know how to push in my direction.

    That, and you NRA supporter mouth.

    Kids have been killed, by a Mass Shooters gun violence crimes, and you took the time to attack me with your trollbot word, because it's easier to attack me, than to defend the kids, parents, police officers, senior citizens, and students, who were killed by Stephen Paddock, Nicholas Cruz, and Seth Ator?

    @ZeusAres42, you're a sad, sorry, and desperate individual, who calls people names, because he's scared to defend people, who were killed by gun violence crimes.   

    Scared people like yourself, don't have a life outside of a debate forum.


    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42

    Then with all due respect towards your family, they have my sympathies. 

    "Hey Trollbot, You know, you sound a lot like my wife."



    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42

  • Haven't you figured it out yet? I can't be goaded into your silly trolling game on a topic that has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

    By all means, continue to post off-topic rubbish; I mean it's your forte!
    Zombieguy1987Plaffelvohfen



  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42

    And your family has my sympathies.

    Regardless of the mindful standards, that you utilize, to defend your arguments with.

    "Hey Trollbot, You know, you sound a lot like my wife."


    And my standards, are pro family safety, and pro Public safety, in opposition to your various non gun owning, pro gun standards. 

    Kids have been killed, by a Mass Shooters gun violence crimes, and you took the time, to attack me with your trollbot word, because it's easier to attack me, than to defend the kids, parents, police officers, senior citizens, and students, who were killed by Stephen Paddock, Nicholas Cruz, and Seth Ator?

    @ZeusAres42, you're a sad, sorry, and desperate individual, who calls people names, because he's scared to defend people, who were killed by gun violence crimes.   

    Scared people like yourself, don't have a life outside of a debate forum. 
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42

  • Hey, poisonous snake, please tell me where in the OP that this debate is a debate about guns and gun violence? You're the sad, sorry, and desperate individual that doesn't have a life which is reflected in your constant troll like behaviour of flooding other peoples debates with irrelevant off-topic sh*t.


    Zombieguy1987Plaffelvohfen



  • Zombieguy1987Zombieguy1987 471 Pts   -  
    TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42

    Here:

    Bring your troll talking self to Twitter, and let's have a debate over your pro gun rhetoric?

    "See what’s happening in the world right now
    Join Twitter today.
    Sign up
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    Follow your interests.
    Hear what people are talking about.
    Join the conversation.
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    Sir, this is debateisland.com, not Twitter.com



  • Zombieguy1987Zombieguy1987 471 Pts   -  
    @TKDB

    Get a life or change your meds because they're obviously not working... 

    Tin foil hat time here...

    What if @TKDB is in fact, a BOT!


  • CYDdhartaCYDdharta 1823 Pts   -   edited September 2019


    An ordinary human being would give me their twitter username if they wanted to debate on there. As other people might have noticed this hasn't happened here.
     

    Twitter is the last place an ordinary human being who know anything about it would try to get you to go to debate.  240 characters and limited link capability doesn't make for a very good debate format.



    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    You can always walk the higher road, regardless of what other people do. Even if someone cannot have a civilised discussion and respect their fellow human beings' opinions, you can be one who can.

    Debateisland is just a platform for discussions; how everyone uses it is up to them. I really like this platform, because on it I can connect with a lot of like-minded people - but sometimes I end up connecting with people who have little in common with me (in a negative way), and that is just life.
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42TKDB
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @ZeusAres42


    @Vaulk

    "It's comical but not entirely unexpected to see someone who wasn't identified... voluntarily assuming the mantle of the people represented in the body of my post.  This wasn't my intent but it is now lol!"




    Why don't you ask @Vaulk, he mentally came up with this forum, and said what he said with it, so chastise him.

    I'm Right, You're , and I Don't Care What You Say.
    in Education

    By VaulkVaulk 633 Pts September 5 Flag
    Image result for childish insults

    Firstly I'd like to start this debate by stating politely that you're all , I don't care what you say and I'm smarter than you all and therefor right.  

    1. I'm not here to debate, I'm here because Facebook just doesn't feel engaging enough for my troll argument style.
    2. I don't like any of you and I'm more interested in sowing dissent and hatred than proposing new ideas, principles or perspectives (The traditional intent of debate)
    3. If you argue facts and logic with reason then I'll simply ignore your arguments and instead I'll resort to my ultra-weapon: The insult.  I'll insult every facet of your argument, mock you, suggest and imply that there's something intellectually wrong with you and ultimately attack and degrade your character instead of your argument if I even address it at all.
    4. I don't know how to properly cite references and so I'll insert them wherever and whenever I want and I'll use Wikipedia as my foundation reference whenever I please.
    5. Not only do I not recognize what a logical fallacy is but I'll constantly use them to prove my points and I don't care how loudly it speaks to my lack of character and civility.
    Ultimately I'm an internet troll and not interested in debate, I want to degrade debateisland.com into a slog replica of reddit or the comment section of youtube where we can all trash talk each other instead of engaging in formal and civil debate.  

    *Satire* 

    @Vaulk

    @ZeusAres42

    So can either of you tell the Public, what is civil or formal about gun violence crimes, killing citizens?

    Because what I see are individuals trash talking each other.
    ZeusAres42Zombieguy1987
  • piloteerpiloteer 1577 Pts   -  
    TKDB said:
    @ZeusAres42
       

    Scared people like yourself, don't have a life outside of a debate forum.


    "@TKDB ;

    I'm sure your life is endlessly fascinating, and you must have oodles of friends.  

    ZeusAres42
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -   edited September 2019
    @piloteer

    "@TKDB ;

    "I'm sure your life is endlessly fascinating, and you must have oodles of friends."

    @piloteer

    Are you using debate forums, as self justification devices, to justify your individual arguments?

    Who are your friends?

    Your computer, the internet, your cell phone, your home, and your individual mindset? 

    Are Vaulk, ZeusAres42, Plaffelvohfen, and CYDdharta, your friends?

    They're reliable, and pro piloteer oriented, right? 



    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @MayCaesar

    Yeah, your pro illegal alien, and illegal immigrant minded, right?

    Why couldn't the illegal immigrants, or aliens, have taken the higher road, and come into the United States legally, instead of illegally?

    Because, 22 million of them, took the low road.
    Zombieguy1987ZeusAres42
  • TKDBTKDB 694 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    There are 5 million NRA members, out of a country with 324 million citizens, who aren't NRA supporters.

    The trolls are obvious, and their arguments are obvious.


    ZeusAres42Zombieguy1987
  • AlofRIAlofRI 1484 Pts   -  
    The founding fathers left the Constitution open to change ".....in order to form a more perfect union. There have been many necessary changes to that Constitution, there will, likely, be more. The "right to bear arms" will likely  remain unchanged. That does NOT mean that just ANY type of "arms" will be allowed. When thousands of Americans are dying from a "Constitutional right" with NO restrictions, it's time to, again, "perfect the union" as IS allowed. I agree "mental illness" is partially  to blame, but that mental illness is accelerated by crazy gun laws! 
    A "tyrannical government" isn't going to be stopped by a bunch of buddies with M-16's, it has to be destroyed at the voting booth …. or by REAL AMERICANS with real families who are in control of the REGULAR militia (Army, Navy, Air Force). THEY have the power to save their families democracy and freedom , NOT a few "posse's"! The voting booth is the first defense which MUST be defended ... not being done at the moment. Making laws that make it easier for terrorists, BOTH domestic and international, (as happened in 2017), to obtain weapons IN America, is NOT a defense of the 2nd, it was a treacherous act!! 90% of Americans want background checks, nearly as many want assault weapons band, 70% of NRA Members agree! 
    Some people ride "Rice Rockets" (quiet motorcycles), some just HAVE to have the low rumble of a Harley to give them their thrills. That's okay. Doesn't kill anybody. Those that simply HAVE to have the rattle of an assault weapon to make them "feel like a man" are a minority. I didn't get every toy when I was a child, either, so sorry, but, the RIGHT to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is being taken away from too many Americans by "mentally ill" persons using "crazy gun laws". I believe in the Second, but, I believe we can STILL have THAT, and laws that will protect MANY, of those OTHER rights.

    WE have NO HIGHER mentally ill percentage than any other industrialized country. WE have a FAR HIGHER gun ownership AND death rate. It seems like that "computes", doesn't it?? Apparently, not to some. Maybe the smell of burning gunpowder degrades common sense? :frowning:

    CYDdharta
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