Open carry gun law making its way through Texas legislature

They don't? You seem to be hot to have open carry passed by the Texas Legislature. Should they pass that bill, and I hope they don't, along with the police chiefs of every major city in Texas, but should they pass it and the governor signs the bill, the government of Texas would be granting that right to you and the others who feel that their life isn't complete unless they can strap on a pistol and go wherever they please, showing the world that, by golly, they're packin'.

 

That's just semantics. If I tell you that I believe you have an intrinsic right and then I use my might to allow it, I essentially gave you that right since you wouldn't be able to enforce it on your own. If the US government fell today, would you still have all of those rights tomorrow? Maybe, if the next government said that you did but it's not a guarantee.

When Locke was writing about intrinsic inalienable rights, he was using a biblical justification rather than a philosophical one, if you are a Christian and you also believe that God gave men certain rights, then going along with Locke is fine, but that's still appealing to an authority to give you rights.

 

With all due respect I understand what I say may sound stupid to someone who may be asleep.
For your reading pleasure ---> http://www.c4cg.org/communis.htm

 

Awwwww yeah, I knew my gun lust was endowed from on high!

 

I've been waiting for this moment of open cray... er, carry...

They'll see you coming and know you mean business.

I'm gonna be rich selling these...

 

I understand that philosophy, I just disagree with it. You have only the rights you have the ability to enforce. A strong government is the great leviathan that tells it's people what their rights are and sets rules for them to follow and without that everyone would essentially eat each other....or rather that would be Hobbes argument to Locke.

Personally I reject the notion that people have intrinsic rights, there are only granted rights. It's easy to buy the notion of intrinsic rights while living in a country like America, but probably not so easy in countries like North Korea or Somalia.

 

No bullets going at the shooter who killed 32 people > any bullets heading towards him.


dividing by zero

 

When Thomas Jefferson wrote this, obviously it didn't apply to blacks or really any non landowning whites. People like to write fluffy stuff like this all the time as long as it benefits them. When it doesn't benefit them they want to b**** and moan.

 

The entity that holds the monopoly on violence grants you rights. Plain and simple.

 

Locke has no Biblical citation for the natural rights he professes: Life, Liberty and property.
If he is using the Christian God as his source then he is basing them on pure speculation because no where in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, did God state that every human has natural right to life, liberty and property.

 

The difference between Locke's "natural law" and "divine law" that someone like Thomas Aquinas would have supported is that "natural law" isn't explicitly stated in the religious texts rather it is "discovered by reason alone". Basically Locke studied the texts and inferred logically the laws that would be consistent with what he believed was consistent with a logical analysis of God's character. That's how he gets around having to directly source his laws and rights.

 

I believe I exist on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Bobby (I am an anarchist), but I agree wholeheartedly with Bobby on this.

What goods do your rights do if you don't have the ability to enforce them? If you have the right to property but you live in a society that has no government to enforce that right and you are not able to enforce that right either, then what good does the right do you? It is just a powerless empty concept.

So, if it is just an ephemeral thing without real meaning, why harp on it so much. Rights don't actually do anything, they have no efficacy in the real world. That being the case, I prefer not to talk about rights, since all it does is muddy the waters on actual discussions of pragmatism and things that actually exist in the world.

 

I never understood the obsession of many american with what some people over 200 years ago wanted.

Firstly they were not perfect (owning slaves for example), Why focus on what people used to think instead of thinking for yourself. I have always said that quoting people is the argument of the lazy.

Secondly they lived more than 200 years ago, the world is pretty different. And I doubt they could predict how different it would be.

Thirdly even if you do care about what some people thought over 200 years ago, you cannot ask them so you will never know what they truly wanted.

So overall who cares what the founding fathers wanted.

 

These gun threads are always the same. Automobile nonsense, knives and hammers nonsense, it's mah right nonsense, armed society is a polite society nonsense, and the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with moar guns for the good guys nonsense. It's a vicious cycle of nonsense.

If the OC for CHL holders passes I think you'll see a hell of a lot more 30.06 signs. It's one thing to be open carrying in some little town where everyone knows you but it'll be a much different deal when come and take it guy is wearing his 45 through the mall in Houston.

 

thats a really good point. why do we care so much about what they wanted? also there aint no such thing as intrinsic rights.

 

If only that made sense. But it doesn't. Firing in chaos in the public areas by dozens of people isn't greater than having one nut firing in chaos in the public areas.

 

Good guy with a gun is a myth...

Gun ownership and firearm-related deaths.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

A variety of claims about possible associations between gun ownership rates, mental illness burden, and the risk of firearm-related deaths have been put forward. However, systematic data on this issue among various countries remain scant. Our objective was to assess whether the popular notion "guns make a nation safer" has any merits.

METHODS:

Data on gun ownership were obtained from the Small Arms Survey, and for firearm-related deaths from a European detailed mortality database (World Health Organization), the National Center for Health Statistics, and others. Crime rate was used as an indicator of safety of the nation and was obtained from the United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends. Age-standardized disability-adjusted life-year rates due to major depressive disorder per 100,000 inhabitants with data obtained from the World Health Organization database were used as a putative indicator for mental illness burden in a given country.

RESULTS:

Among the 27 developed countries, there was a significant positive correlation between guns per capita per country and the rate of firearm-related deaths (r = 0.80; P <.0001). In addition, there was a positive correlation (r = 0.52; P = .005) between mental illness burden in a country and firearm-related deaths. However, there was no significant correlation (P = .10) between guns per capita per country and crime rate (r = .33), or between mental illness and crime rate (r = 0.32; P = .11). In a linear regression model with firearm-related deaths as the dependent variable with gun ownership and mental illness as independent covariates, gun ownership was a significant predictor (P <.0001) of firearm-related deaths, whereas mental illness was of borderline significance (P = .05) only.

CONCLUSION:

The number of guns per capita per country was a strong and independent predictor of firearm-related death in a given country, whereas the predictive power of the mental illness burden was of borderline significance in a multivariable model. Regardless of exact cause and effect, however, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Related article

 

Bread Kills!

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully half of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. Every piece of bread you eat brings you nearer to death.

5. Bread is associated with all the major diseases of the body. For example, nearly all sick people have eaten bread. The effects are obviously cumulative:

q 99.9% of all people who die from cancer have eaten bread.

q 100% of all soldiers have eaten bread.

q 96.9% of all Communist sympathizers have eaten bread.

q 99.7% of the people involved in air and auto accidents ate bread within 6 months preceding the accident.

q 93.1% of juvenile delinquents came from homes where bread is served frequently.

6. Evidence points to the long-term effects of bread eating: Of all the people born since 1839 who later dined on bread, there has been a 100% mortality rate.

7. Bread is made from a substance called “dough.” It has been proven that as little as a teaspoon of dough can be used to suffocate a lab rat. The average American eats more bread than that in one day!

8. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.

9. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.

10. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.

11. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

12. Newborn babies can choke on bread.

13. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

14. Most bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

15. In light of these frightening statistics, we propose the following bread restrictions:

q No sale of bread to minors.

q A nationwide “Just Say No To Toast” campaign, complete celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.

q A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.

q No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.

q The establishment of “Bread-free” zones around schools.

 

You're asking for people to use logic and reason. That's a lot to ask...maybe too much to ask for most of these people.