Oh yes, Mick is going places. Stupid places.
Here we go again with Gun Control. Yippie skip, it’s worked so well so far, LET’S DO MORE GUN CONTROL. Fucking shitbags. Even though a large population of law-abiding gun owners exist, let’s make laws that turn people into criminals. What a good fucking idea.
Again, for anyone reading this, I am a moderate liberal. I am a fervent 2A supporter, and I do not believe in ANY gun control laws. This nation existed for ages before gun control laws, just fine. We don’t need them. I support social welfare, and if you argue that guns make people into killers, all of ours are defective. If a society wants to protect its own against criminals, the best way to do that is arm the populace. Gun control laws don’t work. They only restrict law abiding citizens. Criminals will always get guns. As an atheist American, I have a right to defend my life, loved ones, and property with firearms.
Gun control is bullshit, and it’s bad for ya.
EDIT: Weird. Don’t know what was causing the 403 errors.
Thanks for fixing.
Also, I don’t think Mick should drink that beer. That chick is putting off a weird vibe.
uh oh… She’s setting him up for something isn’t she…
DON’T DRINK IT! DON’T DRINK THE KOOL AID–ER, BEER! DON’T DO IT!
Once again, I fear, we are about to see that there is no such thing as an easy, healthy, casual sexual relationship with CRAZY PPL.
Mick, be sure to check your range for boiled rabbits, at home..
Is it disturbing that I heard that in a ‘holy roller’ voice?
Testing… Testing… Is this thing on?
Ah, good. Wine, delivered by a dweeb… Can’t be good for your health. Or manliness. 😀 Other than the wine, I’m getting a distinct “Hotel California” vibe here…
Yeah, I don’t buy the “Criminals will always get guns” argument. Criminals will always try to break into your house, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your door to make it harder for them. Studies have also pointed to a link between more extensive background checks and fewer firearms deaths.
Make that “criminals will always be able to get guns, despite laws to the contrary.” As for studies, I can produce “studies” proving that Little Green Men live underground on Mars. Doesn’t necessarily make it so. There’s also a non-zero population of people who have been wrongfully denied the ability to effectively defend themselves based on NICS’ say-so, so if the actual goal is TO SAVE JUST ONE LIFE, then it’s a miserable failure.
I will further add that Gun Control is a civil rights issue. Wealthy people have ALWAYS, even in places like Chicago and DC, managed to get armed retainers, and arm themselves, if they so chose. Who can’t arm themselves easily and lawfully in those places?
The poor.
What population segment(s) is/are massively over-represented amongst the poor..?
I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a road map at this point…
So, yes – Gun Control can be framed as racist.
Can be, hell, it’s based on racism. The US had zero gun control laws until Reconstruction, when the landowners suddenly realized that some freed slaves might come looking for payback.
Ah. It’s deeper than I knew. Time for some research…
Thank you.
Well, there were any number of antebellum laws that absolutely forbade slaves to keep and bear arms, even with their owners’ permission. But those were generally slave control laws, not gun control laws. A single Duck Duck Go search led me to this page, and this quote
The source most often promoting this sort of information are the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Jews were one of the groups most involved in the civil rights struggle, no doubt in part because the Shoah had reminded them that it’s incumbent on everyone to be protective of others’ rights. And they will do their best to link various gun laws to panics about various minority groups, e.g., Gun Control Act of 1968 was to disarm Blacks (or alternately, that the language was taken directly from Nazi legislation), the Sullivan Act to disarm Italian immigrants, and so on. They’ll also claim that gun confiscation/a disarmed population is a prerequisite to genocide.
Doubt you can find those little green men studies in, say, the Journal of Preventative Medicine. But that’s alright, I understand that the gun control issue is a religious one for some folks and it’s based on faith, not evidence.
What do you want?
The flaw in your argument is “guns.” If (theoretically) there are no guns, there will be no murders with guns. So what? There are fewer cricket bats in the US than the UK, therefore there are fewer deaths with cricket bats. There are less bars in A-stan, therefore, there are less drunk driving deaths in A-stan. So what?
Your unhealthy psychological obsession with guns blinds you to the bigger picture of the larger number of non-gun crimes, where a large, fit person can abuse a smaller or unfit person with impunity.
It is far harder to stop crime than commit it. That’s what guns are for.
Unhealthy obsession with guns? *I* have an unhealthy obsession with guns? Sure, that’s me, not you.
Guns make it easier to kill people (that’s kind of their purpose). Do you think that fellow texting in the theater would be dead if the other patron hadn’t been carrying a gun? Impulsive killings with guns wouldn’t turn into impulsive killings without guns, they’d mostly turn into assaults without guns.
Would he be any less dead if he’d been stabbed to death? Or beaten to death? Or are you suggesting that no one ever assualts anyone with fatal results without a firearm?
Hmmmm.
May I suggest Lindy Biege Musings on an alternative welfare system
http://youtu.be/MkM1KAQkzsU
Also good stuff on swords, spears, global warming, and much more
Playing devil’s advocate, this nation existed for ages before federal social welfare programs, just fine.
Not really. A lot of kids and elderly died of starvation before the 1900s.
And they don’t now?
But that wasn’t even the point. He said this nation existed just fine, not that it was Paradise.
Nobody has had to starve since Norman Borlaug’s green revolution; when they did (especially in large numbers), it was usually their government’s fault.
JL, I’m actually with you on the need for social welfare. There is no human society without this need. But governments are pretty bad at it. There’s always fraud, no matter who’s in charge. A private charity gets its funding cut off when fraud is made public, something no government agency ever has to fear. A government welfare office fights waste, fraud, and profiteers by making everyone jump through more hoops and wind and unwind more red tape, because governments work by laws and rules, not the judgment of men (any such judgments are only admitted in litigous disputes, and swiftly become rules and laws, to be applied without judgment in the future). They do not and can not account for their hoops and red tape as the waste that they absolutely are. Private charities are generally better able to balance the cost of hoops and red tape against the costs of fraud, and are better able to make use of volunteers, who engage in the work firstly for love of the poor. While government social workers may share this motivation with volunteers, their primary motivation will always be their compensation package. If you’re a cynic, you’d agree that any government agency exists to obtain funding and meet its payroll, and that it will only do other things after having done those two.
> But governments are pretty bad at it.
When left to their own devices to let the poor rely upon charity, national populations and churches are even worse.
And if not a governmental authority to enforce welfare… then who? As noted, the populace sucks at it. Greed is a common factor in the lives of the absolute majority. The private charities you note? Do you REALLY think those are created solely for the love of one’s fellow man? Or is it just another business, and a tax-free one at that? Those charities have payrolls too, y’know.
I have zero issue with a government redistributing wealth to keep the poor from becoming life-or-death desperate.
Why do you think the government isn’t shot through with greed, when it’s a common factor in the lives of the absolute majority? Why do you think people can always be trusted to behave as good citizens with guns, but there is an absolute requirement for laws to enforce social welfare? You already know government employment doesn’t make a person worthy to carry a gun; why does it make them worthy to take from the rich and give to the poor? Why does the government have a mandate to make us love the poor? Do you think that love can be mandated by law? If so, why?
You really have no idea how voluntary civil society can handle poverty and medical care, because government action squeezed it out of doing so long before either of us were ever born. Prior to the Great Depression, welfare and insurance were both handled largely by mutual aid societies, which included as much as 40% of the adult male population. They provided health care, life insurance, and unemployment benefits for their members at very low cost. They were mostly funded by members of the middle class, with significant funding from the working poor. Of course, they had to be stopped.
First came the AMA, an organization devoted to rent-seeking by doctors through prohibiting competition. Between 1904 and 1918, they used protection laws to close just over half of the medical schools in the US, particularly those which served women and minorities, and then they likewise sought to shut down the graduates of those schools. Many medical boards also forbade their members to have a lodge or mutual aid practice. It became impossible for most of these societies to put a physician on retainer, as had been their practice.
Next came the for-profit insurance companies. Through the purchase of state legislators, they passed the Mobile Law in 40 states, which imposed a requirement that these societies show a continuous increase in reserves in order to offer life insurance benefits. This was contradictory to their best practices, which was to keep working capital as low as possible. They also imposed a requirement that no other group medical insurance plan has ever had to meet: all members of mutual aid societies providing medical insurance had to undergo health examinations in order to receive benefits.
Since mutual aid societies were the overwhelming choice of poor immigrants, nativists also did their best to stir up moral panics, claiming that many of them were seditious, which was true of about one percent of them.
Charity Navigator and similar services estimate that 70% of charities spend no more than 25% of their budgets on buildings, paperwork, regulatory compliance, investigations, compensation, and so on; 90% of charities spend no more than 35%. The median (i.e., half spend less) is 10.3%. Sure, there are profiteers and cheats. They deserve prosecution and should be required to return funds and then some. How many of them do you think get far more in government grants than private donations?
Using government data, Robert Woodson calculated in 1989 that real overhead costs in Federal welfare programs ran more than double their payouts. Michael Tanner used regional studies to back him up in 1996. There have not been significant reforms in how any executive-branch programs have run since that time. When you add in that paying taxes costs us about 65 cents (in the time we spend, the people we hire and the software we buy) for each dollar of revenue raised by the government, it gets harder and harder to justify the idea that the government does it better.
If the government only redistributed wealth in order to prevent the poor from becoming life-and-death desperate, I don’t think I’d be upset about it either. But wealth redistribution was first and foremost from the poor to the rich, like Archer Daniels Midland, Intel, Microsoft, General Motors, Chrysler, Boeing, Enron, Solyndra, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and so on.
I knew we’d seen that waitress before: http://ftf-comics.com/?comic=the-date-5
First, I love the strip. Second, I’m curious about your philosophy. You say that you believe in Social Welfare and then say that you believe that everyone should be allowed to own guns without restriction to defend their life, loved ones and property. You realize that social welfare is the government (looters) taking the property of the producers (anyone who pays taxes) at the point of a gun and giving it to someone else (moochers). How does that make sense.
If you don’t think it’s at the point of a gun, just try to not paying the taxes and see how many “gun toting” IRS and FBI agents show up at your house to take away your property and freedom. Just ask Willie Nelson.
BTW, if the redistribution is done voluntarily it’s called Charity, not Welfare.
God, here we go again.
No offense, but this is an oooooooold argument, and it’s stupid. Know what else I’m forced to do “at gunpoint”, under your argument? Wear pants in public. I am being FORCED to wear pants. Try walking around your local playground with no pants on and see how many armed policemen come by and knock the can of ravioli out of your hand and demand you wear pants. AT GUNPOINT. I’d rather NOT wear pants, rather not bow to the tyranny that keeps my perfectly natural body from being naked, but pants are mandatory, and forced on us… AT GUNPOINT.
Just as a nitpicky (but humorous) aside, no, pants are not forced on you. Kilt, swim trunks, ballgown (hur hur), sarong, loosely wrapped tablecloth…
I remember a quote from the Stand, regarding the laxity of California beaches: “You could wrap a bandanna around your wingwang and let your balls swing free and you STILL wouldn’t get arrested for indecent exposure.”
I’m still forced to cover my turgid penis and hairy man ass, in public, AT GUNPOINT.
When dealing with the government, there’s always an element of coercion and threat. Nobody’s going to shoot you for indecent exposure (or littering or parking violations or what have you), but you’ll be assessed a fine. The gun threat comes into play when you refuse to pay the fine, because the punishment for not paying fines is imprisonment. There is no jail, prison or penitentiary I know of in the US where they have no guns to control inmates.
See? LIKE I SAID. I have to put on pants… AT GUNPOINT.
Hey, I have no argument with you on the pants. You should be free to walk around stark naked if you want. You aren’t hurting anyone. Offending maybe, but not hurting and no one has the right to be shielded from being offended. You should be free to smoke weed or crack. Or hire some companionship for the evening. Or marry whomever you please as long as they can understand and sign a contract. Or put a gun to your head and end it all.
I am a libertarian and I believe that the only concern of the government and the only duties of the police should be to protect us from others that want to take our life, liberty or property through force, fraud or gross negligence. Period. That does not end just because someone else has a need that they can’t fulfill because of circumstance or life choice or because I have a need that I cannot fulfill. Life can be beautiful, but it can also be hard.
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake or another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. – John Galt (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand)
> I am a libertarian
And you sign off quoting Atlas Shrugged.
Good lord. Trying to preach to me about the evils of welfare, while quoting the work of a Social Security queen who didn’t even need the money.
No, I really don’t find your point of view interesting at all, nor do I find it original. It mirrors that of a jackass who stalked me online ten years ago, screaming that my mother and I should fuck off and die, since I was raised on welfare. (He has since done hard time for trying to burn a man’s house down for calling him a nerd.)
Put simply:
– You live in a society that has a government. Fuck “charity”. You pay money to live here. Some of that goes to the impoverished. Don’t like it? Fuck off to another country, or drop out of society.
– I have been to countries that have no social welfare systems in place. I have seen what happens when the impoverished get desperate. It’s fucking ugly, and I don’t want to live in a world like that.
– I have never met a Rand Libertarian who wasn’t born into a privileged, upper middle class or richer, white family. It’s a mindset of uninteresting, greedy fucks who get butthurt that WAAAAAAH, SOME OF MY MONEY GOES TO PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T EARN IT WAAAAAAAH. You are spewing shit about ways of life you know nothing about, and it’s a philosophy that says “I got mine, Jack, fuck the poor.”
Again: not interested.
Also, you’re not curious about my philosophy whatsoever. You just want to preach. I’m not interested.
I’m sorry if my post came across as preachy. It was not intended to be. I was just posting my thoughts on the subject, my philosophy as it were, so you know where I am coming from. I am curious as to how you reconcile your conviction that people should be able to own weapons to protect their property but at the same time use the weapons of the government to take away the property of some to give it to others.
> I’m sorry if my post came across as preachy. It was not intended to be.
Then you are really poor at communication.
> I was just posting my thoughts on the subject, my philosophy as it were, so you know where I am coming from.
Feigning interest in my standpoint does not mean I am a priori required to be interested in yours.
> I am curious as to how you reconcile your conviction that people should be able to own weapons to protect their property but at the same time use the weapons of the government to take away the property of some to give it to others.
I don’t care, at this point. Next time, try opening the conversation with something other than a pushy salvo of right-wing-Libertarian agenda talking points that I’ve heard over and over and over.
I’d be a Libertarian if it wasn’t for people like you. You make Moderate Libertarians look bad. Learn from this and move along. There is no discussion to be had here.
Does that mean you’d tend to agree that Big Government is a bigger threat to your way of life than Big Business or Big Labor?
You’re saying all three of them aren’t one and the same, at this point?
I’d tend to say that when possible, Big Business and Big Labor buy favors from Big Government. Without Big Government, Big Business and Big Labor have a much harder time with competition.
For example, Patricia Woertz could hire privateers to blockade or sink sugar freighters from Australia, the Caribbean, Central, and South America, leading American soda bottlers to use Archer Daniels Midland’s corn syrup as a replacement. Or, she could drop $50k into the campaign chests of a few legislators on the House and Senate agriculture committees, and have them set legal import quotas, which has the exact same result, is a lot cheaper, and a lot more politically palatable. The congresscritters get the appreciation of American sugar cane and sugar beet farmers, who get to charge four times the world market price for their crops. And almost nobody ever notices when production of hard candy, which absolutely requires sugar, goes to Canada or Mexico, which don’t have these import quotas.
Big Labor could send legbreakers to threaten poor, low-skilled workers who ask only for low wages, and the businesses that hire them. Instead, they buy increases in the minimum wage with similar contributions , because their contracts specify wages not as $X/hr, but $(Minimum Wage + Y)/hr. As a side benefit, they don’t have to worry about being undercut by low-skilled workers, and they can (falsely) claim that they are helping the poor, who find their jobs being automated out of existence because, once minimum wages rise high enough, it’s clearly cheaper to automate, or get customers to do it, than hire the poor.
They could not do these things without Big Government. Big Government is a cudgel that any pressure group, on any point in the political spectrum, can use to either extort an entitlement out of others, or regulate their competition out of business. If you want to cut down on extortion and increase competition, you have to cut down the size and scope of government.
Yes I do. The main difference between government and other entities is that government can legally use force to achieve it’s goals. When was the last time you heard of anyone being forced to buy an iPhone or join the Teamsters at the point of a gun? Doesn’t happen. It’s only when government gets involved that the threat of force comes into play.
I get the message. You’re not interested in anyone’s viewpoint except your own. Anyone else’s is just stupid as indicated in your first reply. I think I’ll just wish you a good day and go back to enjoying your comic. Wonder what happens next….
No. I’m just not interested in yours. You’re boring and unoriginal, and I have no interest in discussing these topics with you. Bye.
> Or marry whomever you please as long as they can understand and sign a contract.
That’s kind of funny coming from the economic right of America when our government’s been heading right and towards America for most of 4 years and have brought in a rule that only people making over £18,600/yr after tax can sponsor spousal visas which means, roughly translated, that if you’re not in the highest-earning one sixth of the country’s population you don’t get to choose a wife or husband freely but have to pick one from the EU. Met the perfect woman for you and she’s Vietnamese or a New Zealander or met the perfect man and he’s Canadian or Chilean? Shit out of luck, beggar.