From what we now know about Bryce Williams, what he needed most was advice and help; what he needed least was a gun.Quote:
Originally Posted by martin48
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From what we now know about Bryce Williams, what he needed most was advice and help; what he needed least was a gun.Quote:
Originally Posted by martin48
Good, if sorry, summary of where you are with gun controlQuote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...stacles-remain
In the last two weeks here, a five year old boy, and a three year old, were killed in drive-by shootings. The city is in a deep mood, right about now.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index...ral_arran.html
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index...ral_arran.html
Maybe I won't be popular for this, but people getting shot is not the fault of guns. I blame people growing up in broken families, apathy for education and respect for the comminity, bad parenting, the glorification of a life of crime, drugs, and the constant victim mentality that is rampant in most urban areas now. All of this is a recipe for high crime rates and unfortunately, innocent people will get hurt. It is sad because the killer(s) will probably get away with it. Why? Because there is a rule in urban environments unless the police are shooting you. The rule is SNITCHES GET STITCHES.
Guns Don't Kill People, Bullets Do.
___this ad funded by Gun's Without Bullets.
There is a problem with telling slack jawed rednecks and hopped up gangbangers they are wrong: they don't care what you think. They actually think they have opinions and can pursue happiness as they see fit. You can't tell people they have to lock up their guns because they might hurt someone, and then say people can abort lives because that's the mother's business. Sometimes 49% of the people aren't wrong, they see things differently than the 51%. Sometimes the mother sees the transsexual in the family a lot more dangerous than her five gun totin' brothers.
Before you can eliminate Cops with guns and Armymen with bombs you have to eliminate Thieves with guns and ISIS. There are entire black neighborhoods that will not cooperate with the police because they believe that the cops represent a society that has abandoned them. Transsexuals who get jobs doing porn or prostituting themselves say it is the only way they can make it in a society that has no room for them.
Of course you can dictate from high moral ground, but you can't legislate from on high. If the People want to kill fetuses and murderers and terrorists and each other in the pursuit of a more perfect union then you can't bypass the will of the people to make them all move forward. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
In other words, if the Democrats try to tell half the country they're stupid, they will lose half the country. Not wise.
I guess this passes for good news in Cleveland. A 10 year old, who was a passenger in a car, was shot, but unlike the 3 year old earlier this week, he will live. However, he will have to live with seeing the person next to him, the car's driver killed before his eyes.
On the subject of abortion. I am against it in principle. However I also understand that i should not have the write to dictate my will, into someone else's life, especially since I have never carried a fetus inside of me. I had a practical experience once. I was visiting a woman, who had three young children, who was pregnant. She was yelling at the kids in what I viewed as a harsh manner. Meanwhile, she had a phone call and appeared to be arguing with the caller, who she said was the children's father. She did mention that she planned on terminating her pregnancy. I did feel the I was in no position to tell her how to conduct her life. I would have seen her perhaps, one more time, and that was it. So who are we to tell someone else, how to live their life. I see so many people complain about the public having to support children.
PROTECTING OUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
Donald J. Trump on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Interesting that 99.9% of all gun crimes are committed by criminals and not law abiding citizens
The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.
Isn't this a tautology? It's also the case that all accidental shootings involving guns involve accidental interactions between people and guns.Quote:
Originally Posted by AshlynCreamher
Gun ownership is not a God given right nor a natural right, as guns are a relatively recent invention definitely post- dating God and the evolution of terrestrial primates. Indeed it is the second amendment that creates the (rather outdated) right to bare arms for the purposes of maintaining State militias.
I just saw on MEET THE PRESS a Reporter saying that as far as abortion goes, the Republicans are going to "die on that hill" which means I think that although abortion is really a terrible thing, even most Republicans feel deep down they don't want to raise a million kids that their own Mothers don't even want. Being a GOOD PERSON is hard fucking work. The Republicans are only talking up this issue now because Hillary IS pro-choice incarnate, and they want to throw bloody fetuses on her pants suit.
Back to guns, nobody is going to argue that they do bad things, but just like booze, and drugs, and laziness and greed, people like their vices. The War on Drugs was a dismal failure. Even if gun laws close loopholes and outlaw 100 round banana clips, murder rates will still soar in Chicago.
Cigarettes ....I used to smoke 'em, but I'm glad they've been quietly taxed and litigated out of fashion. I think it will be easier to litigate sugary foods out of existence than guns. But that can only happen with a Democratic Congress and Presidency. You have to choose your battles. You have to have them won before they're even fought. It has to be carried out under the public's radar. And gun control in the USA is a losing fight. These Yanks be crazy, Bro.
If the status of the Second Amendment is fait accompli then why does the NRA feel the need to spend so much time, money and effort on the issue? There are a lot of things that won't be changing anytime soon (e.g. tax exemption for Churches), but public opinion on guns is definitely in flux. It used to be that nearly 50% of households had a hunter who owned a rifle or two. That number is way down. There are more firearms in the U.S. today than ever before, their ownership is concentrated to way fewer households.
I don't have the facts and figures on whether or not gun ownership is good or bad for the American way of life. But I'm sure TEAM OBAMA has.
The reason the ONE PERCENT is the ONE PERCENT is because they were the most motivated players on the free trade field. They used every advantage they had. They made it happen. If the ANTI-NRA folks want to have their way, they're going to have to get off their asses and make it happen. If the Indians want to change the name of the Washington Redskins, let them take their casino money and buy the team.
Free Speech=Talk is Cheap.
and they had every inheritable advantage (which doesn't necessarily entail they were the most motivated, or had the best ideas or are in any measurable way the most deserving).Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
It's like all accidental deaths with cars involve accidental interactions between people and carsQuote:
Originally Posted by trish
Should we start banning cars?
No, but we should of course regulate them. Make laws about who can drive them. Make people take periodic tests. Renew their licenses. Outlaw cars that a dangerous. Make people wear safety belts. Hire police to closely monitor their use on the public highways. Fine people who speed, drive recklessly, etc. We should do this not because all accidental deaths with cars involve accidental interactions between people and cars (because that would be true even if there were zero motor accidents). We should do it because there are an inordinate number of motor accidents every year that can be prevented by the appropriate regulation.
Still, why do you think its so interesting that 99.9% of all gun crimes are committed by criminals? Isn't the number 100%? Isn't it just a tautology? Surely the relevant fact here is that there are a hell of a lot of gun crimes committed every year and a hell of a lot of accidental shootings and a hell of a lot of suicides committed with guns...all of which can be minimized with the appropriate regulation.
We should ban concealed cars. Someone can suddenly pull a car out and drive it at youQuote:
Originally Posted by AshlynCreamher
..........Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
The solution is realizing there is no solution. There are millions of Americans who have absolutely no business owning a gun, or driving a car, or having children. Add booze to that equation, and try and litigate that mess. A perfect society would have to begin with taking away people's money and freedom.
Of course there's no perfect society where all accidents are prevented all crimes are subverted. If that's the problem of course there's no solution. But that's the problem you continue to pose. More practical people seek ways to optimize our current practices to mitigate and minimize undesired outcomes. There are scores of solutions. We brought traffic deaths down over the past decade or two. We can easily do the same with gun deaths.
Just make sure you're not robbing Peter to pay Paul. Today's cars drive like sewing machines, it cost me 800 bucks to change the starter! That may be safer than a V-8 and 75mph speed limits, but it's also testicle shrinking. If you castrated all the men, the world would be a safer place.
“Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.” -Bob Barker
Why would I rob Peter to pay Paul? If I'm unscrupulous enough to rob Peter, I'm surely going to find a way to short change Paul as well. Maybe I'll cut the balls off both those bastards and run away with Mary.
Rare picture of Peter and Mary together
Jeez, could you please get serious for one second? You and Ashlyn are exactly alike. You scream for Bernie and Donald but you will eventually vote for Hillary and Jeb like everybody else. Abortion is murder and illegal immigrants are illegal. That is true for Obama, and it was true with both Bushes. And Reagan. Big fish eat little fish, and we here at PORN.COM are all little fish. We scream that a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk cost four bucks each, but we buy them just like everybody else. I have no solution for this that will actually work. So I remain a loser with my baloney sandwich and glass of milk and porn. Eating the cake they give me.......polishing my .357.......Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
And you, Martin......mocking Christ on the cross........God.....Quote:
Originally Posted by martin48
Certainly notQuote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
We forgive you....Quote:
Originally Posted by martin48
I saw what you did there! :dead:
Let me slip out of my skin tight leopard print buttslinger pants and say that there is a reason the politics/religion section is down here in the basement, it's funny to me that people who are so concerned about people being blown away with guns trivialize abortion, and vice versa. And it's not ALL GOOD up in the porno section either, everyone I've known in the Adult Entertainment business have disastrous family values, lots of problems there. While I believe every problem is finite and solvable, the only logical solution to life is death, that's the beauty of GOD.
Who TRIVIALIZED abortion? I may not think aborting a blastosphere is murder, but that doesn't mean I think that the decision to carry or not to carry to term is a trivial one. Don't you think the one-size-fits-all approach trivializes the issue? No allowance for the stage of morphogenic development, no allowance for the health of the woman, or the rights of the woman, no tolerance even for birth control devices or drugs that would prevent implantation! Nothing but abstinence. All abortions at any stage of development is likened to sucking the brains out of a baby. The It's-All-Murder approach does nothing but trivialize a complex issue and all for political purposes. Give me break!
Most abortions don't take place because of rape or incest, most of them happen because some chick gets knocked up and doesn't want some kid cramping her style for the next eighteen years. All those pregnancies were preventable, very preventable. They even have morning after pills now, too much hassle. Maybe instead of murder charges those girls should get misdemeanor fines. Like over-parking in an unauthorized zone.
My point is this is a very murky zone, it is not clearly anything. If you're going to go to the trouble of digging it out and throwing it in the trash, don't call it a blastosphere, like it's a kidney stone or something.
If you're going to call it anything, call it what it is; when is still just a few hundred cells along, it's a blastosphere...not a person, not a baby, not soul, not a even fetus. Instead of trivializing the issue, let's make some distinctions between phases of development and as well as practical, safe and effective modes of contraception vs impractical or ineffective modes.
The war against Planned Parenthood is a war against planned parenthood. What the right wanted all along is not just to end abortion, but contraception. Children are not blessings, they're to be used as punishments levied against women and girls who who think sex can be more than just for procreation.
http://nyti.ms/1KrEqrQ
A few thoughts on the right of women to have abortions
The foetus is not necessarily a 'person' with the right to live
a collection of human cells does not have the right to live just because it is of the human species otherwise amputating a limb would be murder
a collection of human cells only has the right to live by virtue of certain facts. These are either:
it has reached a particular stage of development that makes it a moral 'person'
it possesses certain properties that make it a moral 'person'
It is not always wrong to end the life of an innocent person
there are many cases where we have to choose which of two innocent people will live and which will die:
conjoined twins, where the operation to separate them may cause one twin to die
any case of a woman who had to abandon one of her children to save the other
'Potential human beings' don't have rights
only "actual" human beings have rights
The pregnant woman has moral rights too
under some circumstances these may override the foetus's right to live
these moral rights include:
the right to ownership of her own body
the right to decide her own future
the right to take decisions without intervention by others
the pregnant woman has the right to life - where not aborting the foetus would put the mother's life or health in danger she has the moral right to abort the foetus
Morality is never easy – but do we leave some choices to individuals?
That's a really great post on the issue. There is of course great disagreement over when the collection of cells attains the status of personhood. Assuming it's at some point prior to birth, then the latter part of your post kicks in. What right does a pregnant woman have to get an abortion after the fetus has crossed the threshold of personhood and there is not a serious threat to the mother's health? I think the personal autonomy of a woman is enough to justify the abortion even without a threat to her safety, and even after the fetus is a moral person. This is a position a lot of people would probably be uncomfortable with and so if they support abortion rights at that point they would be more likely to claim the fetus does not achieve personhood until after viability. Of course I do not know when a fetus becomes a moral person..perhaps when the fetus is aware of its existence...
The interesting thing about the cases of conjoined twins is that in the cases I've read about the twins will not survive without surgery. So it is a choice of either both twins dying, or the "parasitic" twin being excised to save the dominant twin. I wonder if courts would decide that personal autonomy would permit one twin to force a surgery if it meant the other would die but they would otherwise survive and live a compromised existence with one twin essentially stealing nutrition and vital functions from the other for their natural life? Probably not. We are much more comfortable with the calculus here when we end up with a net savings and we can defend the action on utilitarian grounds rather than personal autonomy.
Even if a fetus is not human, or women have rights, can Trish and Martin at least admit that an abortion occurs because of an error, a mistake, a boo boo, ??????? That there a no such thing as being "a little pregnant???" Step up to the plate, admit abortions are, if not illegal, at least BAD!! Jesus!
I am pro-choice, but I don't think all the millions of pro-lifers are wrong, they have a different point of view, they have different priorities than me. I don't even believe life has a beginning or end, I believe notions do, acts do.
I notice the Pope just talked about climate change and illegal aliens, but he didn't talk about abortions or pedophilia. I think maybe that Pope has an agenda!
If the blastopheres get a good lawyer and a sentimental judge they become human beings. And abortions become murder.
You cum shooting transsexual heathens need to put a clothes pin on those reproductive organs of yours and let the righteous family types judge what is right. You stick to your pornography and orgies where you belong. Do the world a big favor and get sterilized! Stay away from the children!!!!!!
Did I anywhere suggest that women who don't want to get pregnant deliberately get pregnant? If a woman is contemplating an abortion it may be because in a moment of abandon she had unprotected sex. This is the more likely scenario for young girls who are taught or forced into circumstances where abstinence is their only mode of birth control. Outside the Bible Belt most sexually active young girls wishing to avoid pregnancy are on the pill, use an iud or condoms. One can forget to take the pill. Condoms leak, sometimes tear, and in moments of abandon the couple may fail to use them. An iud can involve other risks and discomforts and so are less frequently used.
but no, not everything that is the result of a mistake is bad. An abortion may be in some circumstances exactly the right choice for a woman. It depends on the woman and her circumstances.
Yes the strident pro lifers who want to get rid of the right of a woman to choose and make effective birth control illegal have a perspective, an immoral perspective. They are simply wrong. I'm open to negotiate lot's of middle ground. But those who say it's all murder simply want to force their religious views on others. And that's wrong. It's a matter of wanting to control what others do. It's power tripping. If they don't want to use birth control or have an abortion they are free to live by the tenants of their religion. No one's forcing them to have abortions or to use the pill. But other women too should be allowed to decide according to their conscious. The choice is always a hard one. Too often people make the mistake ( and I think this may include you) that women who do choose to abort do it without conscience, without thought and without regard for the moral consequences. You are wrong. Rare is the woman who ever takes this choice lightly.
Many think abortion is a religious matter and having one is in defiance of the religious prohibition against the taking of a life. But to make this argument work they update the religious doctrine to declare life begins at conception. They then want to see this religious injunction made into law. Ironic that most these people are against the heavy hand of the law interfering in their other affairs. No legislator can enact a law for these reasons and remain consistent with the Constitution.
As for your characterization of the transgendered as whores and pornograhers, and your opinion that we should not be expressing ours: go fuck yourself. ;)
Hey Trishikins, how about expressing your real life photo on here?????Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
I notice the MOTHERS of the World have exercised their pro choice right to not even visit this site. And kids under 18 has exercised their zero-rights to not visit here. I'm kind of glad I don't have any bastards out there running around, but I'm not going to give my DNA to Ancestory.com either. Better safe than sorry.
You don't have to be a religious nut to hope the woman you marry doesn't start fucking everything in pants, or hope your daughter doesn't start exercising her constitutional rights to an abortion every six months.
I actually wonder how many transsexuals out there aren't whores and pornographers. Because all the ones I see are. I guess the ones I don't see are leading quiet peaceful lives. Abiding the Law. Maybe some of them are religious......... Those FOOLS!!!!!!
Both of these are pretty much mythological creatures whose existence is promulgated respectively by producers of porn (in the case of promiscuously cuckolding wives) and the producers of right wing talking points (in the case of girls who regularly use abortion for birth control). So if not a religious nut, what kind of nut is it who worries his wife and daughter will manifest myth?Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
Martin's post discusses this doesn't it? It's an interesting question to figure out when someone attains personhood status. Someone can have personhood status but so depend on another's bodily functions that the other person in some circumstances should be able to cut the cord (ie. conjoined twins). There's also a famous and elaborate hypothetical involving life support machines that is an "even if" argument in favor of robust abortion rights. I am not going to look for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
Anyhow, I think as a matter of policy there is nothing wrong with reasonable regulations requiring a woman to get an abortion within a certain period of time. If a woman can get an abortion before the fetus reaches any reasonable threshold of personhood status then it's unnecessary to argue that even in such circumstances a person's autonomy overrides the interests of someone dependent upon the use of their bodily functions for survival. But I don't think there should be any restrictions in the case of a genuine health threat to the mother, which is essentially a choice question, since the mother might otherwise die during childbirth.
What part of the word ABORTION don't you understand? You are aborting a life. It is located in the WOMB.
Of course they don't attain personhood if you go in there and cut them out. That's the whole point.
Hey, listen, parents are saps. Kids are a pain in the ass, have you ever been on a plane with one?
God, please kill me, right?
The weakness of this argument lies in its inability to decide what the moral core of the argument on abortion actually is, or indeed if there is one. Life is sacred, life is not sacred. It is wrong to take life, sometimes it is right.Quote:
Originally Posted by martin48
As opponents of abortion have argued, mostly but not always from the perspective of their Christianity, 'life begins with conception' and clearly, from a scientific point of view, this is irrefutable for as long as those cells continue to develop into the human being that ultimately emerges from the womb.
If the same people take the position that it is morally wrong to terminate that life through an abortion because it is morally wrong to take life, the moral problem does not limit itself to the foetus, but to all of life, whether it is the tomato flourishing on the vine, a lamb grazing in a meadow, or the mosquito buzzing around your bed. The absolute nature of the judgement can only become practical for those who take the 'life is sacred' position if they then create a separate set of moral judgements -which they may claim are derived from God- for humans, animals, plant life and so on, and this indeed is how the development of human societies incorporated a multitude of dietary rules in order to take advantage of the food and drink that sustain life, even though eating animal flesh is not an essential need to sustain life; but it remains the case that Jews and Muslims say a prayer of forgiveness for the soul of the animal they are about to kill and eat.
A second moral dilemma for those opposed to abortion, moves on from the basic claim about the 'sanctity of life' to address those who for some reason -like the conjoined siamese twins- are in a perilous situation in which their lives are painfully insecure for reasons of nature; or who have suffered such grievous injuries that medicine and surgery offer no hope that life can be sustained. Yet even here some Christians (and Jehova's Witnesses) have argued that it is wrong to interfere because only God can make that decision so that the conjoined twins must be fed for as long as they can be until they die, and that the person severely injured must also be left to die, and if the doctors can mitigate the pain all the better, and because, crucially, it is not the business of medical personnel to occasion death, but to prevent it.
The third dilemma emerges with the contradiction between the 'sanctity of life' argument if the same people who advocate it support the death penalty and the use of military force in war; while a fourth, which is perhaps the most moral of them all, relates to the quality of life and whether or not the same Christians or Muslims (for example) who believe in loving communities, take care of an unwanted child born to a woman refused an abortion.
For those who take the moral argument for abortion as addressed in Martin's post, but who do not do so from a religious perspective, the right to take life can easily lose a narrow right as something essential at the time, to become a relative matter of choice, be it suicide, euthanasia, or war, so that this argument has no moral value at all, unable as it is to hold on to a secure concept of what the moral position on life should be, collapsing into a relativist -valid here, not valid there status which, for example, justifies a war against the Russians in 1853 but not in 2015. This might be pragmatic politics, but is it morality? Hans Morgenthau argued in his book Politics Among Nations that morality had/has no place in international relations.
There is an alternative way of looking at this, and that is to focus more closely on the law, where in the case of abortion, as also hinted at in Martin's and later in Trish's posts, the right of an individual is taken to be the primary interest. This shifts the moral argument from a general, sometimes vaguely stated theme about life, to an actually living person with legal rights, giving the moral content of the law a more secure foundation.
What has been clear from what some Republican candidates think from their Christian perspective, although I believe they may have changed their opinion, was revealed in the case of the girl in Paraguay who was (allegedly, as not proven in a court of law) raped by her step-father and who as a result became pregnant, but was denied an abortion. The baby was delivered by caesarian section when she was 11, presumably because a natural birth might have killed her. There are some difficult issues here -to begin with can a 10 year old decide if she wants an abortion or not? Second, because a 10 year old is not legally old enough to be regarded as an independent person, either her family/guardian or the state must make decisions for her and in this case her mother applied for an abortion which was turned down because in most cases abortion is illegal in Paraguay unless a life is threatened, which it was decided was not the case here. More worrying for Paraguay is the claim that at least 2 girls under the age of 16 give birth every day in Paraguay, though their precise ages may not be known but some may be much younger than 16.
If a focus on the right of the individual is the primary interest, this does not in fact remove the vexing problem of 'the taking of life' as quite clearly, unless it is dead, there is a foetus in the womb. Moreover, my own experience having known three women who had an abortion, one a close friend, is that the decision is not taken lightly, it can haunt the woman concerned for years after and is in every way a most disagreeable experience.
The fundamental problem that thus remains is that an abortion terminates life, but making abortion illegal takes away the right of an individual woman to make a decision about her own life as a free person, indeed, it takes away her freedom.
The sad fact of the matter is that abortion has been part of human society since earliest times, that infanticide has also been and in some parts of the world, still is a common occurrence (I am thinking of China), most commonly of all when the baby is born female. A pragmatic approach is to argue that if a woman has so completely rejected her pregnancy that she is determined to end it, she will find a way so that making abortion illegal just makes it harder for a woman to obtain one.
As a pacifist I am opposed to the taking of life on principle, be it abortion or war, but I cannot prevent either from taking place and only in my Utopia are all children born to loving parents, and thus I take the view that the law must guarantee the liberty of the individual, that in these cases we cannot grant legal recognition to a foetus but we can to the woman carrying it.
Ultimately it is she who must live with the consequences of her decision, whether it is relief or regret.