Nationwide A March For Our Lives

[henryp]

It's funny how when it's a right that isn't important to an individual, people who value that right are selfish assholes who have children's blood on their hands.  But when it's a right that IS important to them, everybody turns into Thomas Paine.
That's what it boils down to.  "The risks associated with the rights that I personally value are acceptable/the cost of freedom.  The risks associated with the rights I personally don't value aren't."

Rights are not absolute, including the 2nd.

The costs of exercising that particular right are external, in no small part borne by innocents.

When that is the case, society is definitely within their rights to curtail it.

Doing nothing accomplishes nothing but more dead people.

In my lifetime, more civilians have been killed by civilians using civilian-owned guns than in every armed conflict during that same period.  That includes the majority of the casualties in Vietnam.

I find it very sad - and very telling - that you apparently consider those million+ dead to be an acceptable cost to your right to own weapons of war.

And before you accuse me of not valuing this right or that - I am a veteran, former NRA life, former staunch RKBA advocate, former hunter, former competitive shooter, former concealed handgun licensee, and combat trained.  The current NRA agenda is extremist.  NRA rhetoric ("Tree of Liberty", "Come and get it", "Cold dead hands") are extremist positions, not to mention implicit threats of violence against the rule of law.

You don't get to tell me what I do and do not value.  The second amendment is not a suicide pact.

Defend that.  Defend over a million dead since 1967.

I dare you.

We are not going to allow a small minority of extremists who are happy with the status quo, or worse, want to roll back existing to law to stand in the way any longer.

Let me ask you directly - are dead innocents a legitimate cost of your unfettered 2nd amendment rights?

If so, fuck off, you are part of the problem, and we will solve it without you.

Here's why your 'defend that' argument is dumb.  If back in 1968, we implemented the rules people want now, instead of 1.5 million gun deaths, maybe we have 1.2 million gun deaths (arbitrary guess)  

The cost of having the level of gun rights Gun Control proponents want is probably over a million lives.  Why isn't the unconscionable level of gun death we'd have still had under your rules something you are daring yourself to defend.
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That's the joke.  Unless you are a gun abolitionist, which I think is a reasonable position to take, both sides of the argument believe in a level of freedom that costs people lives.  

Now if you said "Hey, let's try to cut back a little bit on the gun deaths in some common sense ways."  I think we'd get somewhere.  If we just accept people dying is a cost of the freedom to own guns.  But that's not what we have.  You're not saying "We could cut down from 30,000 to 25,000 gun deaths with a couple changes.  It's still a lot, but there is cost to freedom."

You're saying "DEFEND ALL 30,000 DEATHS!!! I DARE YOU!!! I DARE YOU TO DEFEND THEM!"  And then you make the case for gun laws that would result in 25,000 gun deaths, which I guess doesn't need defending.

If any of this doesn't apply to your position (maybe you're a ban all guns guy), that's fine.  It certainly applies to everybody that isn't a ban all guns person, which everybody assures people repeatedly "We're not trying to take your guns."