No, I am against banning video games and software, and I think any self-respecting liberal should be as well.
The problem is that most "liberals" are not liberal. Tipper Gore, Jack Thompson and friends are 110% moonbats, and they all like banning videogames. I could probably come up with a laundry list of other famous and not so famous "liberals" who have been behind this kind of garbage.
Most "liberals" are not liberal in the truest sense of the word. . What has happened is socialists have adopted that word as a moniker of sorts to place a veneer on top of what really is authoritarian socialism, to keep dumb people in the dark about what they really believe in. Most socialists calling themselves "liberal" would be no different than the Nazis calling themselves "Keepers of peace and lovers of Judaisim". (There I did it, I broke godwin's law... ). It is literally that absurd- "liberals" calling themselves liberal is so absurd it makes me want to vomit.
I normally never self quote, but I'm going to do so to save some time here....
drgrant said:
The reason I say this is because in reality I've met very few "classical liberals" who I actually have a lot of respect for. The overwhelming majority of self defined liberals are state authority polishers, not minimal government types or left leaning libertarians. The state polishers are the problem in this country in terms of RKBA and a whole host of other issues. (There are plenty of right leaning state polishers too, to be fair, it just happens that the left has a larger proportional amount of them. )
Real liberals believe in charity and helping others but not by using the power of the state to STEAL things from other people a the end of a barrel of a gun (or the threat of violence) to redistribute them. (This is precisely what welfare and similar programs do via taxation. )
Real liberals believe in civil rights, all of them, not just the ones that don't "annoy" them like the 2nd amendment.
Real liberals don't believe that the state has the authority to regulate things like marriage- making the whole "gay marriage" issue moot.
A real liberal would offer you a bag of weed and an AK to take home with you, both acquired with the fruits of his/her own labor, not someone else's.
How many "progressives" do you know that are real liberals? Most of them are socialist frauds and just want to steal shit from others and believe in the power of the state to control your life to some extent or another, with the tightly held belief that most are too stupid to make their own decisions.
But I digress.....
zbrod said:
I think the reason people give for banning, taxing, or regulating one thing and not another is that some things concern purely the individual and have no effect on others, whereas other things do.
In some cases this is true particularly when the correlation between the thing being regulated and the harm caused is directly imminent/apparent. For example "someone owning and carrying a gun" is not in the same realm as "chemical companies dumping toxic waste directly into the public water supply". You can't prove someone just owning a gun is inherently bad. On the other hand it's not that hard to prove that dumping toxic chemicals into the water is nearly always bad, and at that, the effects are bad enough that everyone in that area suffers as a result, not just one little "pet" group of people.
That said, with things like guns/smoking/drugs/alcohol/video game bans the reality is most "regulation" is sourced from some vocal, pant shitting, knee jerk activists and a whole s**tload of people that are too wimpy/lazy to oppose the regulation. People just don't give a s**t if it's not their "thing" is not being stepped on.
Myself and others would say that video games don't harm anyone, so it is up to the individual whether they want to buy it. Others might argue that violent games cause kids to become violent, and thus become dangers to others. Some say taxing cigarettes is bad because if a person wants to kill themselves, so be it. But others would argue that we all end up paying for the health care those people end up needing. Some don't like taxes on gas, others say the pollution it causes costs us all.
That's all bullshit, IMHO. Those are things that don't directly affect someone else in an imminent manner. In the realm of civil rights, "possibly maybes" don't fly. It's not much different than you saying we should ban young black males from public buses because as a class of citizen they are statistically more likely to harm an innocent person. Even in the case of things like cigarettes/tobacco, why should everyone be punished for what is essentially a government created problem? (The gov has its tentacles so far into healthcare and health insurance that the system is inherently bad. In a free market the anti-smoking crew would be free to enter into an insurance policy where they are not effectively paying for treatment of smokers. )
Before you start typing, I want everyone to think of this hypothetical question: the person who lives next to you acquires some sort of (atomic or otherwise) large explosive that, if detonated, would kill you and your whole family, and destroy your house. This explosive is highly volatile and your neighbor is an incompetent idiot, so there is a good chance he will accidentally set off the explosive. But he legally owns it and it is on his property. Does he have a right to put you and your family in that kind of danger?
I basically agree with what Timber said... there are only so many choices. You have to do what you have to do regardless. It's not the state's job to protect you and your family from dumb people, only you can do that.
Even in a society with hard-core 2nd amendment protections, there are likely going to be non infringing restrictions- for example a passive law/regulation governing the storage of energetic materials.
If the above doesn't exist or doesn't work (say the hypothetical "cops don't care" scenario) then I would have no choice but to take matters into my own hands by some means or another. Whether it's talking to the neighbor or doing something that I can't write about on the internet. There are also other ways of dealing with these problems, people have to think outside of the box a little bit here.
BTW, you've got to at least acknowledge that this kind of thing is more or less an absurd corner case. If we change the nouns around I can create an equally dangerous scenario without a physical "bomb." What if that same neighbor told me something like "Some days, I think about filling my house with natural gas and lighting a cigarette and ending it all. " (BTW, this has happened probably twice in MA in the past 10 years.... some wackjob fills his house with NG and then blows himself up. ) Well, guess what. His house can now potentially be turned into a bomb. A bomb that no amount of regulation will ever stop him from owning. I could also replace "bomb" with "parnaoid schizophrenic brother who abuses drugs and alcohol and has loaded guns all over the house". What if that guy goes apeshit and decides he wants to invade my house and kill my family? Hell, even if the wackjob neighbor does nothing but set his own house on fire, he could still put my family/property in danger if the fire spreads. How far do we want to tease out the insanity?
![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
You're also making the assumption that anyone crazy enough to build a bomb that large in their house would simply not do it if they knew it was illegal, and that's pretty absurd on its face. History has shown that people who do things of gargantuan insanity don't really care about the laws in place.
Further.... We also
already have laws that would still punish people for their actions in these kinds of cases. Let's say some guy who lives in a dense urban community likes to collect live military ordnance (bombs) and stores all that crap in his house. While he is away on vacation, a fire starts and his house blows up and kills a bunch of people not on the property. You can bet your ass a court would have his ass in a sling for involuntary manslaughter- because it can easily be shown in a court of law that his negligent storage of those devices caused the death of the victims. It is trivial to secure a conviction for nearly anything if you can draw a straight. short line between someone's actions and a bad result. For example if some guy gives a 12 year old a loaded handgun and says "Hey buddy you can blow away all those kids bullying you at school with this" and then the kid goes out and does it, you have to be on some serious crack if you think the adult that provided him the gun in those circumstances is not going to get hung for something.
Most nearly any crime you can think of with a "bomb" or a "weapon" is already addressed in common law. Having laws that ban "tools" involved in these incidents is redundant, serves no purpose- with the exception of opening up the possibility of prosecuting people who happen to possess those tools who have caused no harm or don't intend on causing harm.
-Mike
![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
