peckman28
Active Member
"Arrogance is no substitute for leadership"
No s**t.
Jesus, dude. Get with the f***ing program. No unity, no win.
Period. No. F**king. Win.
Is there some point you think you're making?
"Arrogance is no substitute for leadership"
No s**t.
Jesus, dude. Get with the f***ing program. No unity, no win.
Period. No. F**king. Win.
Is there some point you think you're making?
This mentality is what has gotten us to where we are today. I'm sure this is what people thought in the 1930s when the unconstitutional NFA was passed. In the 1960s most of the GCA of 1968 was supported by even the NRA....it would stop there. In 1986 the Hughes Amendment was reasonable too. In 1994 the liberals openly said the AWB was "only the beginning". This doesn't even cover the disasters that have happened in states like CA or NY, bit by bit. It's long past time for EVERY American to pull his/her head right back out their ass and stop putting up with this nonsense. You don't go looking to compromise with communist heathens who hate your freedoms and want them gone, you remove them from power, utterly discredit them, and don't give them a chance to ever go on the offensive against you in the first place. No other strategy is acceptable.
As far as 2A goes, we aren't going to be where the Constitution says we're supposed to be until I am allowed to walk into the local Wal-Mart and walk back out 5 mins later with an Uzi (complete with happy switch) and a 40-rd stick mag along with 1,000 rds of 9mm for my amusement whenever I please. ALL forms of gun control enacted by the state and federal governments need to be GONE. My use of weapons is not the government's business until I harm someone with them.
OK. I agree with all that you say about how things should be, so let's make it really simple:
How do you propose that we are going to accomplish those things? Don't give me "shoulda, woulda, coulda" about what went on in the '30s or '60s. Tell me how you propose to change things, right now, to be the way we'd all like them to be.
A fair question. A lot of it is culture and messaging. We cannot afford to let the gun-grabbers take the moral high ground on any of this. They are immoral, we know it, and we need to effectively communicate it.
Compromise with them is unacceptable; their path leads to confiscation in the end and compromise, at best, slows us down on that path.
We need to pay attention to who we're voting for in the primaries, re-educate the people on the Constitution and why it's important, and demand that our founding document is adhered to.
This last point stands far beyond just guns. With all the serious examples of why you shouldn't be trusting the government that have made the news lately, I believe now is the time to change a lot of minds. We incrementally lost our rights to the point we are at now, and I don't believe they can be regained overnight.
It begins by drawing the line where we are, and then reorienting ourselves towards going back on the offensive and forcing the Constitution to be followed as written. It's not a "living document", it is the supreme law of the land and it must be obeyed. If every citizen thought this way it would change things dramatically in this country. Since most people have never taken the time to sit down and read the Constitution, nor the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, the beginning must be education. Informed people make much better voters/citizens than ignorant masses prancing around out there demanding their free "Obama phones".
I don't want to be Debbie Downer here, but these petitions have been ignored en mass by the white house, they started them at 25k, then to 50k, and now 100k to respond. And they have ignored petitions from all across the political spectrum even when they have hit the required number of signatures or just given them a meaningless answer and moved on. I'm not saying we shouldn't sign it, but let's be realistic about what it is.
Machodoc: Compromising with them to sacrifice more of our freedom, but just not as much as they demand, is plain stupid and has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual restoration of our rights. If you're serious about doing that, rather than just surrendering more slowly, then we can have a conversation. What you have repeatedly been seen advocating is just plain ridiculous. The ultimate goal is no more gun control of any kind, yet you want to compromise with these morons and you justify it by using an irrelevant tourniquet analogy? Absolutely unacceptable. The true believers on the other side will never be convinced by logic, but they are few. Most of the people in this country really don't care too much about guns, and they are the target. If we look like fanatics to the true believers out there then so be it. They want to see a fanatic, they need to check the mirror. Compromise and accommodation with the enemies of freedom is, hands-down, the most foolish strategy to possibly follow short of full surrender.
You are absolutely right about them being ignored. That's a given. I don't think anyone expects anything to change because of a petition--especially insofar as Obama is concerned. Yes, of course, he'll at best put out some sort of BS answer with the Biden spin on it.
But other members of congress watch the petitions that gain traction, and it's a way for them to see how voters feel about issues. There will not be any immediate change, and there may not even be a perceptible change, but every bit of a nudge in the right direction is worth taking.
Is that realistic enough? I don't think anyone around here has really expected any more than that. This tends to be a pretty realistic bunch, for the most part.
Can you be more specific about what you are saying? I'm not at all certain what you are talking about. I'm not in a position to volunteer to negotiate the surrender of anything ... whether I wanted to, or not.
I am all in favor of keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals, and I don't think that submitting to reasonable background checks is too high a price for us to pay to accomplish that (it takes about 5 minutes where I live). I'm a very staunch believer in the U.S. Constitution as being THE BASIS OF LAW in our country.
I recall saying something about a group (including you?) of guys thumping their chests about what they would do if certain of their rights were taken away (laws enforced), including hiding out in their bunkers and fighting to the finish. I pointed out that, realistically, none of those people were going to do that, and that it wouldn't accomplish a thing if they did. At the same time, I made at least one proposal about how the issue could be played, using the current rules of the game instead of chest-thumping claims that would never be carried out. Just because I look for legal (and constitutional) solutions, rather than making hollow threats about what I'm going to do if the rules don't suit me, doesn't mean that I agree with those rules. Some people have to frame the world so that anyone who doesn't agree with them 100% is their enemy. I'm not one of those people.
We are a country of laws, for better or for worse, and just because I might suggest a legal remedy, or even a compromise, to a political situation instead of blowing hot air about how I'd be ready to shoot it out, doesn't mean that I am not in favor of preserving our gun rights. I think that MD citizens are getting screwed. No doubt about that. But it's the voters and politicians of that state who are doing that, and any talk about armed defiance of the law is absurd. You aren't going to do it, nor are the 3-4 others who were making loud boasts about how they would do that.
I don't live in MD, even though my family was among the founders of the Calvert colony. I am about 1/4 mile from the state line, but I'm under a far more reasonable set of laws than MD has.
Are you making an effort to launch a slate of pro-2A candidates to take back the rights of MD citizens?
our problem is not that our message is wrong, it is not that we are in the minority, it is that the anti-gunners have the thing which we do not - immediate, full access to a complicit media and full support from them and their 24/7 news cycle. They control the "facts" and they never have to issue a correction.
[...]
That gives THEM a big edge in apparent credibility and undermines ours - regardless of the facts involved. I don't think we can win if we stick to traditional big media, given the cards stacked against us. I don't have any ideas on how to change that.