doctorhugo
Active member
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2011
- Messages
- 263
- Reaction score
- 56
- Location
- Long Island, NY
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
You've taken leaps and bounds to exaggerate the public interest to pose a threat to removing all guns. You can't go back and rewrite the Second Amendment. Sufficeth to say, as my stated opinion, that I believe that allowing the unfettered possession of weapons in schools because of the Second Amendment right is irresponsible. And that I perceive that irresponsibility based upon an individual's right to keep and bear arms to be a detriment to the overall public interest. I say that not as a "weak sister" Second Amendment supporter, but as a concession to reality with the specific points I made in my earlier posts. I have to demonstrate nothing. I'm not, in this opinion, arguing my case before the Court of Nine and, in this opinion, not even trying to convince anyone to join my view. I'm giving this opinion as my alternate view that wasn't really stated as I've framed it. If your position is that the public interest never enters into the making of "public policy" you couldn't be more wrong. The minutia of legal opinion and detail is for lawyers and jurists to wrangle over.Yes, but you need to demonstrate that public interest. Public interest in and of itself does not override individual rights. There has to be a quantifiable risk to the public at large. Now some of that isn't even true. Allowing guns in society in general means that there will be a certain amount of gun crime. Certainly the aggregated use of guns in this country has led to a non-zero amount of gun crime and thus there is an overall risk to the American populace by allowing guns to be legal. Yet we do not use that public interest to then strip all guns away even though if you could remove enough guns you would start to affect the overall probabilities of gun crime. So there is a limit to what we can do, even in "public interest".
Fine. One perfect example why I framed this as my "opinion". If and when I debate an opinion and validate it with source reference you'll know.This argument is not fiot for debate at this satge in my opinion. I do not beieve there are enough reasonably accurate and definable "experience" to formulate a valid right or wrong on. I recognized that up front. Your experience at your particular school may not be typical at all. Is it an inner, big city school? Is it a public university? Is it suburban? Is it rural? Is partying and binge-drinking prevalent? Is drug usage a common occurence? There are so many differing considerations that go to the type of youth at a particular school and your OPINION is limited, very much so, by your experience. I'm going to be 74 and I know what I read about and see on TV and I know one Hell of a lot of crap goes on in American schools as commonplace that was rare twenty or thirty years ago.However, as related to this debate, there is concern that what is being stripped away is being done so only by thoughts of assumption and supposition, not actual risks. What are the probabilities that any one of us can die on any given day? How is that probability affected by allowing or banning guns on campus? There has to be an effect there if you wish to infringe upon the rights of the individual. I've already stated that on my campus (in general in CO), concealed carry is allowed. There are bars, and young adults, and guns; yet there has been no shootings or anything of the like here. So obviously, just allowing adults to carry concealed, even on University property, does very little to our actual risk factors. If that is the case, then there is no "public interest", there is no legitimate argument by which you can authorize government force against the rights and liberties of the individual.
WHAT!We've already decided to be free, that in and of itself carries with it the greatest amount of risk. Small perturbations above and below that mark are not going to manifest themselves in significant increases/decreases to our overall risk and probabilities of death.
An absolutely irresponsibly idyllic and myopic perception unfounded in today's reality. Don't be too pertinacious about those pertubations...seriously. One day you might find yourself at high risk based upon bad judgement and assumptions. That last sentence of this comment makes you sound like a statistician who has decided that she has calculated the risk level in walking across the street just one time blindfolded and with earmuffs on to be 'acceptable'..., so you'll give it a try. Lots of luck kiddo. I'll just watch...thanks!