Another blogger on the left wonders why Democrats champion firearm prohibition

[DispositionMatrix]

The Great Contradiction: Why American Liberals Ought to Oppose Gun Control

These are all correct assessments. Defending and supporting the most vulnerable sectors of our society is a necessity for any liberal political cause. But here’s a secret: if you are defending and supporting somebody, you don’t remove their ability to defend themselves. You may be a pacifist, but the world is a violent place – particularly if you are black, or gay, or poor.

Gay clubs are shot up. Mosques are bombed. Jews are ran down in the streets. We cannot place our lives in the hands of the state. In times of crisis and in times of danger, we cannot place our faith wholly in an institution that has not given us reason to trust it. The status quo of law enforcement is rather grim: the police are often disconnected from the communities they are expected to serve, and many that infiltrate their ranks are outright megalomaniacs. And even when the police are well-intentioned, they often struggle to provide adequate assistance – whether that be the thousands of unaddressed murder and sexual assault cases, numerous cases of police incompetence, or the nearly ten minute average emergency response time.

This underlines one of the most inane contradictions in today’s political discourse. It is clear that our government, from the municipal law enforcement all the way up to the highest echelons of the federal government, is unable to adequately protect all Americans equally. That is, in fact, one of the core critiques of our society made by the left. So the question is – if our government is a brutal, violent institution, headed by a (as many of my peers assert) white supremacist, what incentive do I have to allow said state to restrict the ways in which I can defend myself? If the police routinely carry out racist attacks against the black community, what incentive do they have in outsourcing their own safety to said police?

 

[Dadstoys]

It's not a hard concept to grasp.
You can't successfully suspend the constitution and declare yourself supreme ruler when a large portion of the population is armed.
Look at people like Hillary and Maura Healy .
They don't consider themselves public servants.
They consider themselves your rulers.

 

[67ray]

IIRC the Pink Pistols grew in popularity exactly for the incidents that occurred like that described here

 

[MAGA99]

Ssshhhh, let them keep digging!

 

[Radtekk]

Why do we keep telling the liberals how to win?

 

[Tinkermatic]

This thread should have more responses. I realize that this forum is for the most part a giant echo chamber, but this is good logic. Regardless as to whether or not we agree with the political alignment of one another, as gun owners and supporters of the second amendment we should all be using words and arguments akin to this. Be it Pink Pistols or Black Panthers, organized groups utilizing and hopefully fighting for our second amendment rights are our allies.

 

[Glockster30]

Even if one doesn't agree with all of the author's assertions?

 

[Nick Fury]

A truly amazing take on the bizarre contradiction that encompasses the liberal democratic party. I’d like to think that once exposed to the OP many would realize the errors behind gun control but then I remind myself how spineless and structure guided the ones that surround me are...

 

[Boris]

I'll tell you why, because mentally defective people don't grasp logic and make their decisions based on emotions. And here you are trying to figure out why logic doesn't work.

There is also a class of people who pander to the former and those who want to, because politics of fear works best and are very lucrative careers. Obesity and doctors are scary, but guns are scarier still, hence efficacy of the movement.

 

[drgrant]

"Because people like your liberal friends keep making excuses at the primaries like "there are more important issues than gun rights" and you don't call them out on it, and then you say nothing when the pols you vote for
court the urban retard vote by sucking for more gun control. Oh, and lest we forget, some of these pols are part of the problem- they profit HEAVILY off the suffering of the people you supposedly think they help, That's why. "

Ironically the same type of making-excuses problem is often true on the jingoservative side as well. If that wasn't a problem on the right, the right would have "welded the hatch shut" on gun control a long time ago by passing a bunch of laws that limit abuse.

-Mike

 

[Cipher]

Across all boundaries and creeds the fundamental right to bear arms is a tune we can all sing to.

 

[not new guy]

Gun control as a mainstream liberal cause makes no sense, but it doesn’t have to because gun control is a built in part of the party platform. You separate it from the platform by not voting for it. You get people to stop voting for it by making it uncool. You make it uncool by making being pro gun cool. You make being pro gun cool to the leftists by pointing out that guns are the only way to defend America from the evil extremists on the right.

Easier said than done of course, but I feel like the pro gun concept is already catching on among the younger progressive crowd. Any time I see a post with cool gun stuff on a site like imgur I expect all the SJWs to lose their minds in the comments but that’s not what happens. They reject the right, but if you separate guns from the right they’re cool with them. It’s the older dems and the liberal leadership that’s always kicking and screaming about guns.

 

[headednorth]

Honestly I dont want leftists to be armed. History has shown it's not such a great idea.

 

[not new guy]

An armed society...

 

[dingbat]

Why do we keep telling the liberals how to win?

Because ultimately it should lead them to stop being liberals.

 

[Jason m]

Funny, in one breath they want to defend themselves like most of us want, in the other they keep voting for the people that restrict rights.

Like a guy I know in Worc, he likes to shoot, owns and carries a G-19 cause he sees how the Jewish community is being targeted, he's Jewish. Complains that standard cap Mags are stupid hard to find and when found very expensive, but he worked for McGovern, has Pics of him with Kerry and Warren always votes Dem.
He cant understand he is his own worst enemy.

 

[milktree]

Even if one doesn't agree with all of the author's assertions?

If you find someone you agree with on 100% of things, you're probably looking in a mirror.

 

[Deleted member 67409]

Honestly I dont want leftists to be armed. History has shown it's not such a great idea.

Ever heard of something called the American Revolution? English Civil War? Glorious Revolution? In all three of those cases, armed leftists fought against statist oppression and won. In the chronologically last two, the instigators were members of the Whig liberal party.

 

[headednorth]

So the founding fathers were leftists? How's that? Regardless, I dont want today's leftists to be armed.

 

[Tinkermatic]

So the founding fathers were leftists? How's that? Regardless, I dont want today's leftists to be armed.

That’s a problem though. If we’re going to argue that the second amendment is a god given right that shall not be infringed, then you can’t say you don’t want leftists armed. You can’t have it both ways. It’s not a republican or democrat right, it’s a human right. The ability to defend ones self from the government or others is for everyone, left wing nut job or otherwise.

Edit- I realize you were probably just joking. However, my sentiments remain the same.

 

[Deleted member 67409]

So the founding fathers were leftists? How's that? Regardless, I dont want today's leftists to be armed.

The British political scene after the English Civil War was divided into a two-party system: Whigs on the left, who were the political heirs to the anti-absolutist movement in the English Civil War, and Tories (sound familiar?) on the right who supported Kings Charles II and James II and the monarchy. Charles II maintained popularity with most people during his reign but clashed with the Whigs on the question of whether or not the Duke of York (the future James II) would succeed Charles on the throne because James was Catholic. Charles refused to write James out of the succession and when James became king, the Whigs overthrew him in the Glorious Revolution and installed the Dutch stadtholder, who became King William III. The Whigs were liberals: they supported Parliament over the king, the creation of a written Bill of Rights (the English Bill of Rights), and the curtailment of absolute monarchy.

Fast forward eighty or so years and Britain still had two political parties: the liberal Whigs and the conservative Tories. In America, this political divide resulted in the Whigs being pro-Independence and the Tories being pro-Loyalist. The Whigs supported protection of civil rights and independence because the British government was infringing on what the Americans perceived to be their rights as freeborn Englishmen. The Tories supported either working for more representation within the political system or to follow London's lead.

If you notice, some towns founded after Independence are still named after Englishmen and English places, such as Pittsburg, NH. Pittsburg is named after William Pitt the Elder, a Whig (liberal), who supported what the Continental Congress was saying in 1774 and 1775.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham - Wikipedia

Similarly, Barre, VT and Mass, are named after an Irish Whig:

Isaac Barré - Wikipedia

So yeah, the Founding Fathers were liberal Whigs.

 

[fishgutzy]

"the police are often disconnected from the communities they are expected to serve"
Well, in the vast majority of democrat controlled cities, the police officers cannot afford to live in those cities.
Add the fact that the neighborhoods most in need of increased patrols often are the ones that attack the police the most, the disconnect is entire predictable. No sane police officer is going to move his family to a high crime neighborhood where the local put bounties on police officers.

The author fails to grasp the fact that higher violent crime rates is a designed in feature of their disarmament plans, not an "unintended consequence." The left truly wants only criminals to have guns. They want the police required to keep their weapons, if allowed to carry, unloaded and holstered until an officer is hit by live fire. They want ROE similar to what our soldiers suffer and die under and are prosecuted when those ROE are deemed to be violated even if the soldier would have otherwise died.

 

[strangenh]

Honestly I dont want leftists to be armed. History has shown it's not such a great idea.

Ever heard of something called the American Revolution? English Civil War? Glorious Revolution? In all three of those cases, armed leftists fought against statist oppression and won. In the chronologically last two, the instigators were members of the Whig liberal party.

Said in jest or in earnest, the better statement is, "I don't want any political, religious, ethnic, or other general group to be disarmed by action of the government simply because of who they are or what they believe. History has shown it's not such a great idea."

Governments always disarm those they will soon abuse. That's not to say that all governments that disarm their citizens soon abuse them, but history shows over and over that general disarmament seems like a good idea to many... until one faction decides that it, and only it, is allowed to arm back up, and does so, or otherwise gets total control of the government.

 

[Deleted member 67409]

Said in jest or in earnest, the better statement is, "I don't want any political, religious, ethnic, or other general group to be disarmed by action of the government simply because of who they are or what they believe. History has shown it's not such a great idea."

Governments always disarm those they will soon abuse. That's not to say that all governments that disarm their citizens soon abuse them, but history shows over and over that general disarmament seems like a good idea to many... until one faction decides that it, and only it, is allowed to arm back up, and does so, or otherwise gets total control of the government.

One of the biggest longstanding fears in the minds of many Englishmen was the creation of a standing army that answered to the monarch. Why? With a standing (professional) army, the king could put down any revolt without needing Parliament's OK or the nobility's support. In the lead-up to the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and the American Revolution, the British Crown attempted to disarm both private citizens and militias in order to have more political control over the populace in preparation for increased centralization of power in the hands of the state.

It honestly is a shame that Americans know close to zilch about English constitutional history because its our history too. Up until 1775, it's our history and legal tradition.

 

[strangenh]

^^ Yes, indeed. Parts of our Bill of Rights were modeled (word for word in places) on some of the various proposed and enacted rights through English history.

 

[not new guy]

^^ Yes, indeed. Parts of our Bill of Rights were modeled (word for word in places) on some of the various proposed and enacted rights through English history.

Magna Carta & Constitution -- How Are They Related? | [site:name] | National Review

 

[ComradeSubutai]

Hey guys! I'm the author of this article. Hit me if you have any questions, suggestions, or so on.

 

[not new guy]

What is Degrees of Freedom?
Welcome to Degrees of Freedom. This is a political blog by yours truly – an edgy liberal college kid from Texas. The political program advanced here is an openly left-wing one here, so if that dissuades you, you may take your leave. I am, economically, a Social Democrat. As an ardent capitalist, I am interested in exploring the ways in which we can prevent capitalism from cannibalizing itself and giving way to radicalism. Capitalism is the engine that fuels the creation of wealth, and a sufficiently accountable and democratic state can ensure the blessings of the market are distributed in a just, equitable, and productive manner.

The goal of government, in my opinion, is to dish out justice – economic, social, and environmental. Content here focuses around that central theme: is there something in our society that is radically unfair? Is there an unequitable distribution of power? Is there some form of unjustified, institutionalized violence in society? The answer is typically yes, and we dive into the weeds to discuss potential policy resolutions.

This blog expands beyond mere economic policy proposals, though. I take great concern with government over-reaches, and find it worthy of my time to investigate matters of civil libertarianism. That means, in short, holding the government directly accountable to the people. The American democratic system is deeply flawed, and we see this in the often breathtaking brutality of our state – a state that gasses immigrants on the border, brutalizes its prisoners, surveils us endlessly, and refuses to hold its enforcers accountable when they murder people.

I am a feminist, a pacifist, an optimist, and an egalitarian. I believe in community, and I believe in the “social economy” – voluntary, cooperative economic institutions that exist within a capitalistic framework. I believe in the value of community, and persisting through the rapid atomization of American society.

Interesting. As self proclaimed liberals go you might not be so bad.

 

[headednorth]

That’s a problem though. If we’re going to argue that the second amendment is a god given right that shall not be infringed, then you can’t say you don’t want leftists armed. You can’t have it both ways. It’s not a republican or democrat right, it’s a human right. The ability to defend ones self from the government or others is for everyone, left wing nut job or otherwise.

Edit- I realize you were probably just joking. However, my sentiments remain the same.

I wasnt joking. They've literally discussed rounding us up and putting us in reeducation camps.

Let them stick to their principles and shun all those icky guns. I'm all for it. Seems kind of shady to me that all of the sudden they're doing a 180 and embracing gun ownership.

I dont want a single leftist to be armed in any way. They cant be trusted.

 

[Whutmeworry]

I wasnt joking. They've literally discussed rounding us up and putting us in reeducation camps.

Let them stick to their principles and shun all those icky guns. I'm all for it. Seems kind of shady to me that all of the sudden they're doing a 180 and embracing gun ownership.

I dont want a single leftist to be armed in any way. They cant be trusted.

I get that you don't want leftists to be armed, but assume you see the problem in forcibly preventing them from being armed provided they haven't committed a crime of any kind and are free Americans in a free society...