Do ( D )s sell more guns than ( R )s?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And when are the military allowed to operate to enforce the laws of the land on US soil?

Long story short - they're not.
And before you dribble on yourself spouting " exceptions! Exceptions!" ---
The simple fact is - if a President TRIED using Army troops on US soil, in armed conflict -against US citizens he' d very rapidly find himself on the wrong end of a gun - wielded by the very troops he ordered.
Any REAL service member, or former service member knows this.

Yeah, I'm just a retired CPO, what would I know about REAL service members. You spout so much sad sack shit.

---

Then you wouldn't be one of the people who claim they would fight to keep their guns, now wouldn't you.

I suppose the IF I were a participant in the insurrection, then I would be fighting against a government that didn't respect the constitutional rights of its citizens. I would be fighting a tyrannical government that was trying to disarm its citizens. The violation of constitutional rights combined with the effort to disarm the citizenry is a double whammy. We would have no real constitutional rights anymore, and we would be disarmed. I could imagine that being unacceptable to me.

Several people in this discussion have said that they wouldn't hand over their guns. I don't have to fight to keep my guns. I can keep my guns without a fight. But after keeping my guns, there is still the little problem of a government that I will feel has gone rogue.

What would they be doing that would be illegal?

---

"In 2006, Congress modified the Insurrection Act as part of the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill (repealed as of 2008). On September 26, 2006, President George W. Bush urged Congress to consider revising federal laws so that U.S. armed forces could restore public order and enforce laws in the aftermath of a natural disaster, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition. These changes were included in the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122), which was signed into law on October 17, 2006.[9]"

[onlinebiker]

A"retired CPO" huh???

Ya know - I' ve never heard a Chief refer to himself as a "CPO".

" I' m a retired Chief"

" I'm a retired Bosun' s Chief"

"I' m a retired Yeoman Chief".

But never "I' m a retired CPO".

The Chiefs I knew took as much or more pride in their rate than their rank.

......


But WTF do I know, huh??

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You know a lot of CPOs, do you? You are not very good as being an asshole, but I admire your persistence at that.

[Dr H]

Are you're saying people are willing to die for their guns? That's pathological.

Some are certainly willing to kill for them.

---

You do realize that "they" consists of of about 90 million very diverse people, not all of whom may be as intelligent and/or level-headed as yourself?

Sure, but our general resistance to shooting at people doesn't work because we're level headed, and continues to work even when the level headed response would actually be to shoot people.  I've been conditioned to fire, but wouldn't.  The whole insurrection thing really is a fantasy.  

I didn't say anything about an "insurrection".  But I know people right now who have taken pot-shots at trespassers, who would most certainly not hesitate to do so if they though someone was coming to take their guns.  Most people would probably try to dodge any confiscation law by hiding their weapons.  But 90 million gun owners allows for an awful wide breadth of sentiment.  Enough would be wiling to shoot to make a mess.

Ever trespassed on a farm in rural Maine?
Or a drug deal in Newark?

You ever watch those shows where it's a dea agent on the other end asking questions about hypothetical drug deals....? 

I spent my youth splitting time between north central florida and tampa bay.

And I've actually been shot at by irate farmers.
Not seriously, though, or I wouldn't be here now.

---

How about taking away people's cars, Brian? Cars kill as many people as guns. If we take away half of the cars, we will probably reduce car related deaths by more than half. 

Flawed analogy.

The purpose of a car is to provide transportation.
The purpose of a gun is to kill.

Deaths result from the use of both, but only in the second case
are the deaths the result of the object being used for its intended purpose.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"...From my cold dead fingers." Okay, mate, we'll do it your way.

[Yonadav]

---

How about taking away people's cars, Brian? Cars kill as many people as guns. If we take away half of the cars, we will probably reduce car related deaths by more than half. 

Flawed analogy.

The purpose of a car is to provide transportation.
The purpose of a gun is to kill.

Deaths result from the use of both, but only in the second case
are the deaths the result of the object being used for its intended purpose.

You've been arguing eristic nonsense with people in internet forums for too long. I didn't make an analogy. That really clearly wasn't an analogy. It was a stone cold argument for saving a lot of lives. You think that we can't reduce the number of cars by half? Of course we can. And there's not much that anyone can do about it, since cars aren't constitutionally protected. If we make a goal of reducing the number of cars by half, then our society will make the necessary adaptations to having fewer cars. And it would save a whole bunch of lives. That's no analogy, brother.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yeah, but the idiots will still have cars.

[Amarok]

The number of things that kill people and the number they kill is aside the fact . Stopping something bad isn't a numbers game .

[Yonadav]

The number of things that kill people and the number they kill is aside the fact . Stopping something bad isn't a numbers game .

I agree that it is not a 'game'. But numbers matter. We should obviously devote most of our attention to life saving strategies that will save the most lives and do the most good. Gun deaths are bad. Car deaths are bad. Opioid deaths are bad. Environmental damage done by cars is bad. So if you want to prioritize strategy to save the most lives and do the most good, and that means that numbers so totally matter. If you have a raging fixation on one bad thing at the expense of priorities that would save more lives and do more good, that's a bad thing that should perhaps be stopped.

Let's look at three things that kill around the same number of people.

1) Gun deaths
2) Car deaths
3) Opioid deaths

Gun deaths have declined over the past 25 or 30 years by about half. About 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides. The US does not have an especially high rate of suicide, when compared to other nations. So it is unlikely that taking our guns away is going to reduce our suicide rate significantly. People who commit suicide do it with or without access to guns. Apparently, guns are just the preferred method when available. So if you take all of the guns away, you are going to save 1/3 of the deaths caused by guns-- at best. Many of the homicide victims might still be murdered; just not with a gun. And there are only half as many homicides as there used to be.

Car deaths have only declined by about ten percent over the last 30 years. So that's holding fairly steady. Cars are massively bad for the environment, and reducing the number of them is a goal for most environmentalists. And they kill about as many as guns do, so it makes a lot of sense to aggressively target them for reduction. Stars won't fall from the sky and planets won't fly out of orbit if we take half of them out of circulation. Society will adjust. Car pooling will become more widespread. Mass transit will improve. Having a car is not a constitutionally protected right. And the highways are mostly paid for by the trucking industry, and not your tax dollars. We can cut the number of cars in half by revoking the driving privileges of those who abuse them. You didn't signal before doing that reckless lane change? No more driving for you. The people who manage to keep their cars will be far more cautious drivers. Because there will only be half as many cars on the road, and because the drivers of those remaining cars will be the most careful drivers, then traffic fatalities are likely to be reduced by significantly more than half. I think it would reduce traffic fatalities by 3/4.  And there would probably almost never be a traffic jam anywhere.

I don't know what to do about opioids. I have some strange ideas about what to do about all addicts and drug violence. I'll go ahead and spill it. We should just let addicts be addicts. We should provide safe environments for them to be addicts. And by safe environments, I mean pleasant low security prison camps where pharmacists can administer their 'fixes'. Let them have pleasant little houses with gardens and whatnot. Let them have television and internet. We're not punishing them. We're just giving them a safe place to be junkies, where the rest of us are safe from them. If at any time the decide that they want to rehabilitate, then we will move them to a different camp for people who are going through detox and rehabilitation. If they complete rehabilitation, we can help them rejoin the rest of society. If they relapse, it's back to junky camp for them.

 We will shut down the cartels by going to the source and buying all that we need to supply our junkies and then some. That stuff is ridiculously cheap when bought at the source. The street value of drugs smuggled into the US will plunge, and the cartels will basically be out of business. The war on drugs will be over.

[Amarok]

A nice long comment but it doesn't change my point even if guns are a smaller death toll t they should still be dealt with or even take measures across the board at the same time .