Registering Magazines
Apr08
on April 8, 2013
at 1:00 am
Chapter: April 2013
Characters: Archibald Q. Gunowner and his wife Brenda.
So I’ve been reading up on this Connecticut Gun Law passage, and if there’s one thing that strikes me, it’s that the politicians who voted it in look like this:
Seriously, I’m getting sick and goddamn tired of this current paradigm that lawmakers are allowed to pass laws on shit they don’t have any experience in whatsoever. Register hi-cap magazines? Good luck on that.
It’s ridiculous. We have white male conservative Christians trying to pass laws on abortion. We have the Demon Feinstein and her ilk trying to pass gun bans. At what point do we, the people, say “HEY! You have NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT! Sit the fuck DOWN and shut the fuck UP!”
Fuck it, here’s some Bill Hicks.
Seems to me that there’s a serious business opportunity here….
Get an laser engraving set and serialize magazines.
We can’t stop politicians from being stupid, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t profit from it.
You sir, are evil.
At least we’ll always have the wisdom of Hicks.
Better yet, weird serials.. as in when all are sorted by number it tells a joke or some such. Perhaps it reads out an interesting, somewhat older document.
Serial numbers with SQL injection code. đ
“OK, your serial number for this magazine is DROP TABLE OWNERS….”
Bobby? Is that you? Little Bobby Tables?
I was thinking of putting all serials with { [ ; , ” – [tab]
My AR magazine serial numbers are: ODO0DO0OOOD0, B8BB8B88B, ĺ¸(ď˝â´ăĄ)ĺ¸ , and ĺ¸(ಠçಠĺ¸)
Special characters can be fun!
Honestly, if they’re smart (ok, ~that’s~ a stretch), they’ll let someone like me come up with the serialization scheme.
I actually feel bad for the government drone here. Eventually she’s gonna figure it out after noticing they all have the same “serial”, and then she’s gonna have to keep registering them anyway because her bosses have even less contact with guns than she does. The quality of their “bosses” is one of many reasons I pity bureaucrats on her level.
Two things at work here. One is that most politicians and bureaucrats believe that they have a duty to run other people’s lives, since they are soooo smart, educated, and guided by their search for the “common good”, which is no more real than a unicorn (heh). The other is the persistent belief that one person’s opinion is just as good as another’s, despite the fact that one of those two has years of experience and the other may not know from which end the projectile comes out.
The sad part is that I can’t see the joke in this strip because it’s probably going to be too close to reality.
I’m not worried. After a few years, they’ll forget that magazines even exist…
“Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette said banning high-capacity in ammunition magazines would be effective in reducing gun violence because “the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.””
“These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available,”
I’m trying really hard not to give in and choke to death on my own laughter. That quote is speshul.
And this, my friends, is why people who know nothing about what they are talking about should sit down and shut up?
As someone who lives in Connecticut i feel the need to comment on your post today. Now before I get into attempting to explain why state politicians did what they did, you should know my politics first. First I do not own a gun, however I do support the second amendment. I have several friends that own guns, most of whom agree with me on how I feel about the gun laws, some who do not.
The portion of the new gun laws surrounding high capacity mags, I feel, is pointless. Everyone that already has one, still has one. It doesn’t remove them from the equation. Some responsible gun owner that owns a few of them could still be an irresponsible parent and not know that their kid has problems, and that kid can still go shoot up a school. So in effect nothing has changed. The ban on the sale of the AR – 15, I feel, will only hurt our states economy. The manufacturers in the state will most likely move on and take their jobs with them. And all the money they brought into the state economy will follow with them.
Now this is why I believe everyone involved knew EXACTLY what they were doing. 26 dead bodies, 20 of which were children. Not to mention the 100’s of other families that had someone enrolled in that school. Its these people, and their grief whose outrage spoke louder than the outrage of gun owners on the days leading up to passing this law.
Now the new gun laws are not all bad, they have some good point in them. Some much needed reform to the board of appeals, which had a two out of three overturn record when it came to denials. This included a woman whose listed of offenses would tell anyone with common sense that she should not be allowed to own firearms. Later this women, while enjoying a birthday party with her young child at the local Chuck E. Cheese, pulls her gun, chambers a round, and points her weapon at another mother because this other women attempted to reprimand the first’s child. So that needed to happen.
I actually feel that this law is a good compromise. Not in the sense that everyone is satisfied with the results, you can’t please all the people all of the time, but in the sense that both sides on an issue, any issue, came together, each able to put their mark on the bill, and have it quickly signed into law. If only the federal government could work so well. In fact, maybe they should take a lesson here.
So no I don’t agree with everything that was put into law, and, as illustrated above, some of the things sound better on paper than in practice, but every person in CT whit a facebook picture of themselves with their shiny new AR-15’s shouting “Fuck you Connecticut Law Makers. I got mine!” is a huge slap in the balls to town that suffered what I hope everyone can agree was a terrible tragedy. They might as well be saying “These few “Luxury” gun accessories are more important than that kid you lost that one time” Now I say “luxury” because I’m pretty sure, although I can not say for certain, that your gun works the same whether you have accessories on ban list or not. And before you start in with any technical specs or proofs that it indeed does work better, I am 100% certain that it is not better enough to justify 26 murders.
So I guess if you are looking for someone to blame someone for some of the stupider pieces of these laws, blame the kid who shot up the school. Blame his parents for not hugging him enough. Blame the families of the victims who (justifiably) overreacted in their grief. But don’t blame the people who just want to do right by the people who elected them into office. It is their job after all.
This was a well-thought-out response, and I only have one major question, which is the same question I always have:
How does this stop a criminal from getting anything on the ban list?
Obviously, it does not.
This was indeed a well-thought-out response. Unfortunately, for the people of CT and the rest of the nation as well, it is still wrong.
This legislation was enacted by people making decisions based on emotion, not logic, and lobbyist contributions, not constitutional principles. This was not a good compromise. In the field of constitutional rights, there is no good compromise, because any compromise is an erosion or infringement, as in ‘shall not be infringed’. In the end, this will do nothing but harm to the people of Connecticut.
I got the impression that Jon wasn’t trying to argue that the ban list was good. Instead, he seemed to be mostly talking about how it’s refreshing to see a legislative body achieve something â anything â without degenerating into endless partisan feuds and how people tend to cross the line between political opposition and ignoring/making light of tragedy when they talk about laws like this so close to shootings. Yes, the results were mostly stupid, but things like appeals process reform will probably outlast any misguided, unconstitutional, or unenforceable provisions that were added to get wider support.
It doesn’t. No gun law ever does, of course. No point in belaboring the blindingly obvious.
I have to say I think this admittedly stupid legislation was necessary. As a bone tossed. Look, the stupid Connecticut tragedy did happen, and Something had to be Done..people were fairly rabid in their desperation to somehow fix the unfixable, prevent the unpreventable (i.e. insane people murdering the innocent)
So we toss the misguided but genuinely suffering Connecticut parents a bone. a Something.
It’s sad and it’s wrong that we have to put up with this.
But..price paid, I say. Find a way to live with it.
If we’re lucky, and rational, then this is as far as it will go.
So, the legisture’s excuse is “Look what you made me do?” Fitting — the excuse of domestic abusers worldwide.
You’re right, we should never blame the politicians for passing stupid, ill-thought out laws. They’re just public servants! Blame anyone else, but not them. It’s not like they’re the ones who wrote the laws or anything.
They’re not the ones who write the laws. The actual text of most legislation, at least at the federal level, is written by lobbyists.
Horrified yet?
Federal, yes, but this is talking about state legislation. A lot of times state legislation is written by whichever local politician wants to make a name for himself/herself. That’s not to say that they aren’t helped out by lobbyists, however.
Well, I would reserve a little of the blame for the voters who keep reelecting these imbeciles, not to mention screaming for them to “Do something!” in response to every perceived crisis. As much as I despise politicians, we are supposed to be a self-governing republic. If voters not only fail to hold politicians responsible for their stupidity but actually reward them for it, it’s unreasonable to expect anything but more stupidity.
Murder is illegal, and it was comitted anyway. What is the point in depriving an entire population of something because one person might misuse it illegally? Worse still, depriving an entire population of _part_ of something, because it might make it _slightly easier_ for one person to use it illegally?
“I am 100% certain that it is not better enough to justify 26 murders”
How, oh how, does owning something justify someone elses actions? Their ownership of gun parts has NOTHING to do with how someone elses uses their own.
If I own a car, I justify road rage. If I own a kitchen knife, I justify stabbings. If I own a computer, I justify spam. If I own a house, I justify burglery.
I’m sorry but I don’t think logic works how you think it does.
I’m sorry for whatever happened to you in your life that lead you to believe you could say “good compromise” about a law that reduces your rights while at the same time does NOTHING to actually provide any protection, by your own admission.
Quick! Pass “look how much tougher we are than all those other states!” legislation and ignore the real problems!
I think the obvious answer is that all hi-cap mags sold in CT from now on will have to have a serial number…..;)
But the law states that all existing hi-cap mags have to be registered now.
When they ask where yours is, just say, “I don’t have mine anymore, I USED THEM ALL UP.”
(Thank you, Diana DeGette.)
Not a problem. Serialize them in Tengwar, which is base 12. Then you have your choice of pronouncing the serial number in either Quenya or Sindarin. Unfortunately, there’s not enough reference for the Black Speech to be able to pronounce it as they would intuitively understand.
If they’re going to make stuff up out of thin air, I don’t see why we can’t act in kind.
I didn’t think I would have to say this here, ever.
“You nerds are at 11. We need you back down at 4.”
so, you register a million hi-cap magazines. each.
it’s not like they’ll make you bring them in to check, and as you buy new ones out of state you put on an existing serial number. if they ask about non-existent magazines in some sort of “home inspection” you tell them you sold them out of state, to your friend in new hampshire.
I appreciate the bipartisanship and all but the abortion comparison is stupid. Just because there are idiots on the right doesn’t mean there isn’t a logical, scientific opposition to abortion. (which there absolutely is!)
Then don’t get one.
that’s the thing though. If you are denying someone else the opportunity for life, liberty, etc that’s not the same thing as smoking or owning a firearm.
Abortion by definition is the act of doing harm to a living being. While no one agrees when to call an embryo fully human, it says something that a society would prefer to kill (or eliminate… if that “k” word hurts feelings lol) its young for convenience. That kind of mentality is how Rome fell. Sure they were overextending their reach by having that empire, but when order is maintained in their capitol city by the senate keeping the populace happy with bread and games, society crumbles from within. The very barbarians at the gates turn out to be stronger. The scary thing is that the barbarians we face follow Islam, which has no qualms about having way too many kids.
Anyway, thanks for doing this comic. I often imagine what it would be like to bring a friend to the range to try out my guns. Then I remember I live in NY, where the only people who can shoot pistols without a permit are those under age 21. :/
> If you are denying someone else the opportunity for life, liberty, etc
See point 1. Again. A zygote is not a person. A blastocyst is not a person.
> While no one agrees when to call an embryo fully human,
You just tried to do exactly that. You stated that abortion denies “someone else” life. No. It kills an embryo. An embryo is not a person. Stop using dishonest terminology.
> it says something that a society would prefer to kill (or eliminate⌠if that âkâ word hurts feelings lol) its young for convenience.
Like every other mammal that kills its young when its life is not optimal to raise and nurture the young – we just have the intellect to do so BEFORE the offspring are born, and we don’t normally eat them.
> That kind of mentality is how Rome fell.
Now you’re just making shit up. Forget about the overuse of lead causing possible poisoning, forget the IMMENSELY expensive military that was spread too far, too thin, forget about ALL of the historical factors – let’s just lump the whole of the blame into panem et circes and somehow use this to justify outlawing a medical procedure that has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with you.
If you don’t approve of abortions, don’t get one. If you want to outlaw the right of others to have an abortion, you are being a nosy prick. Stop being a nosy prick. If someone else has an abortion, that is absolutely none of your business.
“I appreciate the bipartisanship and all but the abortion comparison is stupid. Just because there are idiots on the right doesnât mean there isnât a logical, scientific opposition to abortion. (which there absolutely is!)”
Just saying that doesn’t make it true, dickeyes. You need to provide some examples.
Righto. I’ll let that slide. How pissed can I get at a laughing otter on the internet?
So because the Supreme Court just up and decided when life began, it’s decided, then? You don’t have any thirst for the truth, in the spirit of scientific inquiry? http://www.amazon.com/Embryo-A-Defense-Human-Life/dp/0385522827 I’d give this a try from your library.
It amazes me how quickly people are willing to accept what they’re told for convenience. Just so guys can have sex with women they don’t want to have kids with?
I know. What cheek these brigands have, wanting to have sex with women without forcing them through childbirth! Thank goodness our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has told us that women have no autonomy over their bodies, and abortion and birth control hath been banned!
You link to a pro-life apologist book that starts out with the argument that a zygote is a person.
A zygote is not a person.
I did not come to this conclusion because I was “told” to believe it. I know this because I have studied biology. Do not try to condescend to me on this topic. A zygote is no more a person than a pine nut is a 200 foot tall pine tree, or an egg in your fridge is a rooster.
If you don’t like abortion, don’t get one.
If you try to take away the rights of others to enforce your morals, you are an asshole.
I am going to stay on point, no matter what ridiculous claptrap you try to distract me with. You have yet to directly address these three points. The reason why? Because there really aren’t any good arguments against these three points that I’ve heard yet. Care to try again?
(I did take some time to think about the main point… been busy but I did reply in long form in the thread below. Thanks for staying on point)
Well sheeit man its biology that men and women are different! I get it I get it, we’re not backward savages and we shouldn’t be stuck with the human body’s shortcomings. I was going for the personal responsibilty angle there… don’t want pregnancy, dont get a girl pregnant. Guess the Ayn Rand school of thought is more in vogue that individuals shall be enslaved by no government, no person, no fetus. Also her thoughts on giving in to all your passions and forgetting self control, why should we be better than animals shagging because it feels good?
I don’t want to “enforce my morals.” No catholic would be justified in outlawing contraception because although it doesnt fit the church’s idea of the nature of the human being, it harms no one! The opposition to abortion is that it does harm to a developing human. In a pro lifers mind its not “enforcing morals” its simply murder is wrong regardless if one church is for it and anothe is against it. (Maybe abortion can be justified in the early stages…the science may convince me)
btw, Don’t lump me in with opponents of gay marriage in your mind please. For me, I realize gays exist and are human beings and I’m not “phobic” about them – if they want to have a tax benefit for living together, thats not a big concern of mine. Taking words in the english language like ‘marriage’ and saying it is something it isnt is more problematic to me. Once again, men and women are different and made to procreate… thats the continuation of a species via natural selection, whathaveyou. I’m not saying we cant be justified in avoiding procreation, but lets not deny basic facts. Marriage is what it is by existing as a tradition, the democracy of the dead so to speak.
Oh and another annoyance is assuming pro-lifers think women are murderers. The person holding a sign that says abortion = murder doesnt hate those women who have abortions. If anything they would have wanted to help them find a solution that didn’t involve ending the life of a developing human being (which may not have been a person, but is human by dna)
thanks again for putting up with me. You did show me I didn’t know everything. I’ve slowly been retracting myself from a political “party” mindset and taking a fresh look at things and this is proving to be another case where my previous positions needed to be fine-tuned.
> Oh and another annoyance is assuming pro-lifers think women are murderers. The person holding a sign that says abortion = murder doesnt hate those women who have abortions.
Right. We done here? I think we’re done. After you wax rhapsodic about how a fetus is a human being and killing it is murder, which you are oh so very morally opposed to… what, that doesn’t apply to the women you know who’ve HAD ABORTIONS? Tell me, what is your personal statute of limitations on murder? 10 seconds? If I kill you, should it not count because it would be inconvenient for so many people in my life to think of me as a murderer?
If you believe that abortion is, and I do again point out that this is YOUR word that you were slinging around, MURDER, then you should at least have the cojones to admit that this, according to you, makes every single woman you know who’s had an abortion a murderer. Possibly your mother. Or your sister. Or your daughter. Or your wife. Your cognitive dissonance on this is absolutely insane.
Worse thing is, it might not be so that white male conservative Christians always lack experience regarding abortion. Granted, it’s highly unlikely that they have personal experience (although not strictly impossible), but “fine for me but not for thee” is certainly a common enough notion.
There is nothing more frightening than a politician in a hurry to accomplish something…except a group of them in a hurry to accomplish something.
Obviously all the newly applied serial numbers need to start with 4Q2
You ask, ‘At what point do we, the people, say âHEY! You have NO IDEA WHAT YOUâRE TALKING ABOUT! Sit the fuck DOWN and shut the fuck UP!â’
The answer, unfortunately, is that many of us have been doing so for years … but Congress doesn’t give a crap and isn’t listening anyway. They’re far too deeply jammed in the echo chamber. They don’t hear anything that isn’t blind agreement with them.
On the whole, I’m beginning to think that maybe “distant and unresponsive” was better. At least it had that distant thing going for it.
God I miss Bill Hicks.
Our helpful state legislature here in maryland just passed equally stupid laws over the objections of the majority (seriously, we outnumbered the antis at each hearing/rally by sometimes as much as 50-1) including having an amendment that would have reduced “good time” for firearms offenders pass, then get some sort of backhanded “do-over” and be voted down by the Democrat majority.
They also enacted a magazine capacity limit that is even more pointless than Conneticut’s. As of October, you can no longer buy, sell, transfer, or manufacture magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds in the state of Maryland. So we’ll all just do what we’ve been doing, and go out of state to buy them, as the law does not prohibit possession. Makes perfect sense, right?
I feel like a lot of Virginia and Pennsylvania gun shops are about to send your legislators thank-you notes.
My, my, my, where do I begin? O.K. let us suppose for a minute you’re mother doesn’t like you. Does she have a right to come up and blow you away? No. That’s what “Life, liberty and the persuit of happiness” is all about. What if you’re ten years old, and you break a window, can she throw acid on you until you expire? No. Doesn’t matter if you’re a minor, the same fundamental rights apply to you, since you are human. What if you’re five years old, and get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, can Momma cut your spine with a scissors and suck your brains out until your skull implodes? No. Doesn’t matter if you haven’t reached the age of reason, you are still a human being. But, according to current law, if you have yet to take your first breath, she can hire someone to do any of those things. The fact that you are here, reading this, means none of it happened to you, so ask yourself: why am I more deserving of protection than someone yet to be born? Abortion reduces children to disposable property. No ifs, ands or buts. Now be honest: is this really smarter or more consistant than registering magazines?
An apple seed is not an apple tree.
If you don’t like abortion, don’t get one.
If you don’t like other people getting abortions, it’s really none of your business.
Hey asshole, got any science to back up your opposition to abortion?
I would like to butt in here and give you the tip to debating abortion rights with people who post ridiculous bullshit like that. There are three points, and only three points to consider:
1. 88% of abortions are performed within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Fewer than 1.5% of abortions occur after 21 weeks. At that time, the “fetus” isn’t even really a fetus. It is a knot of cells that is just barely starting to gain human features at 12 weeks – at 7 weeks, which is the most common time chosen to abort, it is the size of a garden pea and looks like an egg yolk with veins. To say that abortion, during those time periods, is the same as murder, is to say that stepping on an acorn is the same as chopping down a 200-year-old oak tree. An apple seed is not an apple tree. A kernel of corn is not a grown stalk. And the most fun part? Women’s bodies eject fertilized eggs within 4 weeks all the time. All the time. Their bodies are not murdering a human being. They are ejecting a viable, fertilized blastocyst – big fucking deal.
2. If you don’t agree with abortion, nobody is forcing you to get one. Nobody. Go out and have as many pregnancies as you like. It’s one of the rights you have in this country.
3. If you don’t believe other people should have the medical right to have an abortion, however, you are a nosy fucking asshole who should mind their own business. It’s none of your business if other people have abortions, for any reason whatsoever. It’s not up to you. It’s not your life. It’s not your concern. It’s nobody’s business but the woman getting the abortion, and her doctor. Period.
Amusingly, many of the people who would outlaw abortion are the same who are staunchly against gay marriage. They claim that there are reasons to ban both of these things, you see, because the people who are against these concepts want to make the world better! This kind of thing should be outlawed!
Then they get pissed when they’re told they have to register their hi-cap magazines.
Here’s an idea: let’s keep ALL of this nosy shit out of the laws. Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get married to someone of the same gender. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t like 30-round mags for the AR-15? Don’t buy one. Don’t like guns? Don’t own any.
It’s kind of fucked up that these things have to even be pointed out.
I would like to respond in reverse order. #3: you brought it up in your post. I was responding to you. So much for “nosy fucking asshole.” If someone else starts throwing it out, I’m really not butting in, now am I? #2: I heard a statistic once that 80% of abortions are coerced. I would dismiss this because I don’t know where it came from, except the person who told me had had an abortion (which she will deeply regret as long as she lives), which she had been coerced to get. There goes women’s lib. #1: So, out of curiosity, when did you become human? At birth? When you turned 7? When you turned 18? I say when you were conceived. You use a number of plant analogies, but I ask you: other than maturity, what’s the difference? Different stages of the life cycle, that’s it. Suppose I were to extract DNA from the seed, would it be different from the tree? Would the cells function on different principles? The way they organize changes, but under a microscope they’re all the same. The law is already inconsistent on this point: Scott Petersen was charged with two murders: his wife Lacy and their unborn child. And right now the argument is being made that a woman seeking an abortion is entitled to a dead baby, so that if the child is born fully during an abortion, they still have the right to kill it. Which is my whole point: it isn’t about women’s rights, it is about killing children, and I have a big fucking problem with that. Tell you what, I’ll drop my opposition if there is a constitutional amendment to bring the law into consistancy: children are the property of their parents until the parent dies. None of this age-ist garbage, your parents either have a right to dispose of you, or they don’t. Oh, and as for the religious insinuations, check out godlessprolifers.org
> So much for ânosy fucking asshole.â
If you vote for laws that intrude into the private concerns of others that have NOTHING to do with you, yes, you are a nosy fucking asshole. You are no better than people who scream that gay marriage should be outlawed (or worse), or that having a 30-round magazine in your house makes you a possible murderer. I’m sorry if you think you have some moral requirement to try to tell other people what to do in situations that absolutely do not concern you, but that’s your prerogative – and if you do it, you will be called a nosy fucking asshole.
> I heard a statistic once that 80% of abortions are coerced. I would dismiss this because I donât know where it came from, except the person who told me had had an abortion (which she will deeply regret as long as she lives), which she had been coerced to get.
That’s about as far from an intelligent argument as you can make. Amusingly, I can rebut with a similar example, and I don’t even have to make anything up: I was once told a statistic that over two thirds of AIDS deaths were actually caused by the drugs used to treat AIDS, and not the virus itself. This was told to me by someone I knew who was HIV positive, and was convinced that she was going to cure her infection by drinking enough Kombucha tea, and doing enough homeopathic medicine, without any clinically sanctioned meds at all. (She died 8 years later of AIDS.) Please, please, if you wish to be taken seriously, don’t bring this kind of weak-assed drivel to the conversation.
> So, out of curiosity, when did you become human?
You won’t like this answer – most people do not. However, from what we know of human development, *your body and mind are still cooking off for weeks after you are born.* You come out of the womb not fully ready. Your brain is not fully functioning. You do not have consciousness as we know it. When do you become a “person”? Well, if you mean legally, at this time: when you exit the womb. But my personal belief is that the act of living makes someone an intellectual entity, and most of us don’t become a “person” for the first year after their birth. This includes my daughter. You are born as a fetus that can survive on its own for a day at a time – you become a person when you gain sentience. And that does not magically happen the moment you exit the uterus.
> I say when you were conceived.
Then you argue that millions of women’s wombs kill a person every year, when they expel a fertilized zygote with their period. That is a ridiculous concept.
> Which is my whole point: it isn’t about womenâs rights, it is about killing children.
Pay attention, you, because I have a feeling you didn’t pay attention in basic High School Biology:
This is not a person. This is an embryo at 7 weeks, which is THE most overwhelmingly common time for a woman to have an abortion. It does not think. It is a cluster of unfeeling, unthinking cells. It is smaller than a garden pea. You want to argue that this is a baby? Seriously? You want to argue that this cluster of cells has rights, and to kill it is murder of a child? Are you out of your fucking mind? At this point, the embryo of a human is developmentally the same as the embryo of a chicken, a lizard, a cow, or a hamster.
> Tell you what, Iâll drop my opposition if there is a constitutional amendment to bring the law into consistancy: children are the property of their parents until the parent dies.
For all intents and purposes, in most ways, they already are, according to the law. So how about you get off that white horse, take off your imaginary shining armor, and stop trying to tell other people what to do in matters that do not concern you?
> Oh, and as for the religious insinuations, check out godlessprolifers.org
I don’t need apologist bullshit. I have already studied biology, and come to my own conclusions. Amusingly enough, you accused me of “believing what I’m told” because I believe that my studies have proven to me that no, abortion is not murder in any way, shape, or form. An overwhelming pile of human biology studies back me up on this. You, on the other hand, are parroting shit that you didn’t have to study at all. (If I’m wrong here, please cite your sources.) I have seen a zygote under the microscope with my own eyes. I have read THOUSANDS of pages on the topic of human biology. I have also, if you want to get apocryphal, like the story of your coerced friend, raised a child to the age of 12 years, and I was there every step of the pregnancy and the birth, as well as her first years on this planet.
You are pointing at a clump of growing cells, and screaming that it’s a human that has rights. It is not. I know this. So far, you have yet to give ANY compelling argument against my three points – you had to tackle them in reverse to try to reframe the debate, but again, I ain’t playing that game. I will not be distracted by bullshit. The three points again, are:
1. An embryo is not a person.
2. If you don’t agree with abortion, nobody is forcing you to have one.
3. If you want abortion outlawed, you want the government to restrict the rights of other human beings in a matter that does not concern you. It’s none of your business. This makes you a nosy fucking asshole.
Would you care to try one more time?
Sure, why not. What makes us human? Emotions? Even animals have them. The capacity to think? If that’s it, then retards would be subhuman. Two arms, legs, eyes, nostrils? The maimed or crippled wouldn’t have any rights then. Skin color? Nah, been there, done that, didn’t work. So remove it one more step, to stage of development. It still makes no sense. Your analogy of the oak and acorn was a good one, it is still killing a plant either way. The effort is different, the motive is different, the conundrum is the same. If you don’t inherit human rights until a certain age, do you also lose them at a certain age? Then maybe this whole idea of rights is airy fairy.
You want to talk high school biology? How about basic logic? A whole bunch of cavemen got eaten by sabertoothed tigers, that didn’t give Ed Geine the right to turn a store clerk into a lampshade, no amount of bear attacks in Alaska have magically justified Jeffrey Dahmer eating homosexuals, the 1902 eruption of Mount PelĂŠe does not justify thermonuclear war, and a woman’s body having expelled a fetus does not give her the right to murder the survivor! C’mon, J, I read your comic, you’re better than this!
As for being your parent’s property under the law, what do you think mandatory education is about? Laws against incest and pedophilia? Legal emancipation at the age of 18 (or younger if a court grants it)? Say, Aaron Shaffhausen is all up in the news right now for murdering his 3 little girls, but hell, really its just a property dispute with his ex. Y’see why I have a problem with that? If you’re kid’s life isn’t sacred why should yours be? And if your life isn’t sacred, then neither is mine, which leads into how it is in fact my business.
If you can’t argue the facts, dazzle ’em with bullshit, eh? I already warned you that I am immune to such shenanigans.
> So remove it one more step, to stage of development. It still makes no sense. Your analogy of the oak and acorn was a good one, it is still killing a plant either way.
But not a tree. In this analogy, where acorn = fetus, and tree = child, you keep insting that destroying an acorn kills a tree. Semantics matter. (Also, an acorn isn’t a plant, either. You really were the top of your class in basic biology, weren’t you?)
Stay on point. You have yet to explain how this:
…is a person. Please point out to me what, in that photo, makes that a child. When you see that photo, you’re obviously observing details that I’m not.
A zygote or embryo is not a child. It is not a person. It is a clump of cells, and is no more thinking or feeling than a genital wart or a tumor. It has no thought processes, it cannot think, it is not a person.
> You want to talk high school biology? How about basic logic?
With you? Not really. You fail at both.
> A whole bunch of cavemen got eaten by sabertoothed tigers, that didnât give Ed Geine the right to turn a store clerk into a lampshade,
Case in point – if you want to argue logic, this is a non-sequiteur. It has no bearing on the argument, and is a logical fallacy.
> no amount of bear attacks in Alaska have magically justified Jeffrey Dahmer eating homosexuals,
See above.
> the 1902 eruption of Mount PelĂŠe does not justify thermonuclear war, and a womanâs body having expelled a fetus does not give her the right to murder the survivor!
See above. Abortion is not murder any more than lasering off a mole on your skin is murder. Do you seriously walk around all day, every day, thinking that millions of women are evil murderers? Really? Are you THAT judgmental? Do the women in your life who’ve had an abortion know that you think they’re a murderer?
> Câmon, J, I read your comic, youâre better than this!
Not only has no bearing on the debate, that’s a cowardly tack to take with me. Which comic? FTF? Because if you’d read any of my previous comic series in years past, you’d know that I not only support abortion rights, I also makes jokes about eating aborted fetuses. I’m better than this? You seem to have built up a very strange pile of assumptions about me, and they’re not based on reality. The statement above attempts to shame the other party – and I have very, very little shame, sir. I have no good reputation for you to damage, and I am famous for being a horrible bastard. So please, do tell me, how you think I’m “better than this,” you presumptuous swine?
> As for being your parentâs property under the law, what do you think mandatory education is about?
Not abortion. Stay on point.
> And if your life isnât sacred, then neither is mine, which leads into how it is in fact my business.
That isn’t logic. You took a long, convoluted path down Bullshit National Forest, and try to use this to rationalize why it’s YOUR business when women you don’t even know get a medical procedure that has nothing to do with you.
ONE MORE TIME:
1. A zygote is not a person.
2. Nobody is forcing anyone to get an abortion.
3. If you decide to MAKE this your business, and support banning a medical procedure that there is NO reason to ban (outside of religious garbage), you are an asshole.
Instead of using meandering diatribes about volcanic explosions, Jeff Dahmer, sabretoothed tigers, and human skin lampshades, how about you directly discuss my assertions? Could it be that without flailing your arms like a housewife watching her soap operas, your rhetoric doesn’t stand up to scrutiny?
Stay on point.
Just for the record because James didn’t explicitly address it besides using those debatese words that have never one in my life been observed to have persuasive effect in any discourse:
“A whole bunch of cavemen got eaten by sabertoothed tigers, that didnât give Ed Geine[sic] the right to turn a store clerk into a lampshade”
What James posted was not an appeal to nature as a measure of right and wrong. He’s saying that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that what we value about a person is absent from the kind of thing an prohibitionist abortion law would seek to protect.
To prove him wrong, you need to establish that what we value about a person is present from some period before birth. That is the core disagreement at this point (the next two, if you establish this first point, being whether protecting that value is best or at all served by infringing on interests of other persons, and whether the particular measures proposed are proportional to be worth it).
Evidence and argument establishing that point has thus far not been forthcoming, so I’ll make up some strawmen:
If we don’t believe that the fetus is a person, we will lose that bright line and soon we’ll be gassing retarded people. Never was a bright line. We’ve seen this on the other end, at death, where the distinction is also hotly contested. Also fails to bring any generalizable solution in case of genetically manipulated human beings, cybenetically augmented human minds, or contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. (planning for contingencies is good!) As for retarded people, they will also fit the bill as per James’ standard of personhood with which I agree.
Our genetics – or rather our definitional, essential “humanness” – form a core part of our humanity, and that is what we value. Instant reductio ad absurdum: when I finally walk away from the computer for the morning and shave, I will intentionally cut off and cause the destruction of many cells every bit as infused with human genetics/human “essence” as any other cell in my body. It is not the categorical essence but the particular configuration of these materials that is valuable, and that configuration has not yet been made in a fetus: it is how we justify burying our dead.
The fetus will develop into a real person. A future interest is worth as much as a current one. I warned that these were straw men: the second sentence in bold is actually patently false at law for most purposes. Sacrificing present interests in the name of notional, irreal interests is bad policy
and something done by Communists and eugenicists.This was a very intelligent response, but I think you’re throwing raw eggs at the great wall of China.
alright then. I appreciate your sticking to the main point with your 3 bullets. Only the first needs an answer really, the 2nd and 3rd follow suit based on the answer to the first. Heh I’d probably use that last “asshole” bit myself on another topic.
The short answer seems to be that no a zygote is not a person, but it is human.
I really don’t want to bother anyone, my opposition to abortion was based on the idea of doing no harm to a human being in development. I see now that the more Randian viewpoint is in vogue-that individuals are not be enslaved by anything be it government, man or fetus.
They are completely human by dna-not a “clump of cells” which is a tired phrase. While they may be “developmentally” the same as a chicken embryo they’re definitely of the human species. Yeah wasn’t the greatest in biology but that much seems obvious.
My previous argument seems to have been combining what makes a human being… (the unique chromosome combination, etc) and what makes a human person (a philosophical point up for debate).
So I guess I should be happy with abortion only allowed up till 10 weeks. I don’t intend to hold any belief I can’t defend. Maybe I haven’t taken enough arguments from the other side. For my highschool government paper I had to decide whether or not the ’73 decision was justified on a legal basis. Most of the justices in the majority had the outcome of the case in mind beforehand and merely had to figure out the reason why (see Bob Woodward’s The Brethren). They weren’t too concerned about when life began. That was my point in saying why not look further into when a fetus can be viable and not just accept the status quo. err on the side of life and all…
Your point about brain development is interesting, but seems to lead only to a strange question about if we can kill (born) babies because their brains arent fully functionng? Not sure how that helps the argument. Might want to keep that to yourself if you’re trying to win a debate.
So in the end you did challenge me to defend/rethink my position which I appreciate. The legal case to outlaw abortion seems shaky up through 10 weeks. Afterwards, though someone really needs to draw the line when it is OK and when it isn’t.
> The short answer seems to be that no a zygote is not a person, but it is human.
That was never the argument. I’m not sure you want to play it that way, however, as it doesn’t historically go so well when the Right To Life crowd defends things like, say, the rotting, brain-dead husk of Terry Schiavo.
> My previous argument seems to have been combining what makes a human beingâŚ
Damn, and we were doing so well, too.
I will not concede that a zygote is a human being. Is it made of human cells? Yes. So is my hair, or my kidney. Neither of those things are a person or a human being.
> err on the side of life and allâŚ
I sincerely hope that, if you ever get cancer, you hold that same reverence for life for your tumor.
If you admittedly don’t have a solid grasp on basic human biology, would you not agree that you should probably remedy that before you start tossing around concepts such as life, cells, and human being? Before you start voting on legislation that directly impacts the rights of strangers? Before, even, you start forming such a hardline opinion on a topic that you don’t, as it stands now, grasp fully?
Good luck banning high capacity magazines with the current state of 3-D printing technology
Seen on Facebook–or somewhere:
“If abortion is murder, then a blow job is cannibalism.”
Right on!
*still giggling happily over that one*
Momentarily misread that as “gargling” :V