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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (142223)	1/30/2002 10:46:50 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578813

It does by opposing almost every bit of legislation that would restrict gun ownership and usage in this country. And this opposition is done aggressively with a lot of money. Most legislation in this area would cause more death not less. Also the NRA does not oppose all restrictions even though it does oppose most. Furthermore the NRA is one of the strongest voices calling for enforcement of some of the gun laws that have not been well enforced. And even if more guns in private hands did kill more people and the NRA neved did anything to make things safer (neither of these thigns are true) the NRA would still have a first ammendment right to state its case. And if the 1st ammendment didn't exist it would have other constitutional and legal rights that would prevent it from being treated as a terrorist orginization if it does not try to use violence to support its case. And if you don't believe me, then talk to someone who has lost someone to a gun... Why don't you talk to someone who was saved by a gun, or had a loved one killed, or was raped or beaten up because they didn't have a gun because they were not allowed to take it with them due to gun control. The NRA was supposed to meet in Denver about that time, but after Columbine, it was told to get over it. One of the reasons why school shootings can take out so many people is because people are not alowed to have guns at school so there aren't as many people who could take down the killers. By the time the cops arrive a lot of people are allready dead. In another situation a school shooting was stopped by a vice principal who went to his car to get his gun and then stopped the killers. However he was not treated as a hero but rather as a criminal for having a gun in school. There is an indirect correlation between the NRA and every gun death and injury in this country. Bullshit. More deaths are prevented by the NRA through its safety programs, its campaigns to enforce laws against criminals using guns (unfortunately its hard to stop this but atleast the criminals can be locked up and kept off the streets a bit longer because of these laws) and by its supporting the right of people to have guns to defend themselves then are caused by people who would not have had guns if it wasn't for the NRA. The criminals would have guns if the NRA disappeared but less law abiding citizens would have guns and less of them would receive proper safety and accuracy training. There was an incident here a couple of years ago that shows the effect of guns... Incidents like that are less frequent then defensive gun use and less frequent then many other forms of accidents. It would be like saying that some horrible car accident means we should have cars, or the fact that someone slipped in the shower and injured themselves means we should require permits and waiting periods before anyone can buy, install, or use a shower. Last year, they killed nearly 30 thousand people in the US alone......I dare say that's probably more than terrorists have killed in the last ten years throughout the world. I consider that pretty massive destruction. Mass destruction means one weapon causes mass destruction, not all of them throughout a large country that has a lot of them over the course of a whole year. Its also true that they where used at least hundreds of thousands of times to defend people from crime. Does that make them "weapons of mass protection". What is terrorism......its the product of actions taken by a group of humans whose intentions/agenda result in the widespread loss of lives and encourage terror in people. Loosely drawn in that manner, the definition fits the NRA. 1 - What distinguishes terrorism is not its aims but its methods. An anarchist or a neo-Nazi that tries to persuade people is not a terrorist if they don't use violence. 2 - The NRAs actions result in more lives saved then lost, and it does not encourage anyone to engage in terrorist or criminal actions. The undelying point of all of this is that the NRA [unlike terrorists] may care that a lot of people are dying because of its agenda.... It doesn't care that a lot of people are dying because of its actions for the same reason that I don't care that the moon is made out of blue cheese. BTW - Can I get a yes, no, an "I don't know", or a "I'm not going to tell you", about my question - "Does the 1st amendment apply to people that you don't like? And if such an organization existed now would you support bombing its headquarters and rounding up or killing all of its members? I would work to restrict its power. How exactly would you do this? By campaigning against it and supporting an opposing agenda or by really treating the organization and its members as terrorists? " Edit - And would you still support this action if the organization did not actually promote smoking but just the right to smoke? BTW such groups do exist, so I suppose they are next on your anti-"terrorist" hit list." Yes.....smoking and smoking guns both kill. You are a lot more totalitarian then I thought, unless being on a terrorist hit list mearly means you will denounce these groups and oppose their agenda with words and perhaps money, but not with violence and arrests. Do you think that the government should ban the production of or the consumption of tobacco? Tim