GAO: Voter ID laws suppress voting, not fraud

Post Reply New Topic

/\ The LGBT thingy again.
Well, since we're derailing I might as well take a turn.
In the past 2 years I've become considerably less "homophobic" than I used to be. Rest assured it's not from being exposed to this forum, though. It's simply a matter of me being smart enough to know an unwinnable war when I see one. Moreover, it's the fact that LGBT rights are constitutionally protected under the life liberty and pursuit of happiness thingy (yeah yeah, I know that's from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, but you get the picture). I'm not pro-LGBT and you'll never see me in one of their parades but I've grudgingly learned to sit back and live with what's coming and what's already here.
This brings us to YOU who have become noticeably more anti-gun in the same timeframe. Yeah, you tapdance around it, slither to and fro, etc, but you keep blindly going back to the party line while at the same time claiming not being partisan.

Just sayin.......

Well, I'm delighted that you're much less homophobic than you had been. Believe it or not. back in high school and my college years, I was very stupidly homophobic, as young men are stupid just for the sake of being stupid. But in later years, I was exposed to members of the LGBT community, beginning with one of my oldest friends who later was my best man, when he came out. From that point, I had to ask myself, "Why do I hate people who have never hut me?" thereby directing me to a new outlook. Today, my circle of friends has expanded to include other LGBT people, including my wife.
As for gun rights - as I've stated more recently, it's a subject I'm hardly that interested in, but which only gives me a headache when expressing my opinion about on this forum. If you and Dox, and others are as headstrong about gun rights as I am about civil rights in regard to race and sexuality, then so be it. I've already stated that I am no longer going to argue about firearm rights - and I have not.

What you need to remember is that when it comes to guns, Raptor and I are educated on the subject, and the vast majority of the people we argue with are not, which forces us to repeat ourselves constantly and shoot down the same fallacious arguments and misinformation over and over and over again for years, and that kind of repetition would make anyone a bit cranky, especially when the membership turns over and we have to start all over. Further, a lot of the people who make these arguments are condescending and rude, in spite of the fact that they're talking out of their collective asses, and often have never handled a real firearm, especially common amongst our non-US based anti-gunners. Can you at least acknowledge why it might by frustrating for guys like Raptor and I who have spent years on this one issue, to have guys like you who admit to not particularly caring and not knowing a whole lot, weighing in and expecting to be taken seriously?

I would like nothing more than to have someone argue the issue with me on equal footing, and have looked for that person all over the web, from the Truth About Guns to Democratic Underground, and I have to conclude at this point that they simply don't exist, that anyone who actually bothers to learn about guns comes to similar conclusions to mine, which is why you'll never find an anti-gun gun expert. I could buy that most people who are interested enough to learn are predisposed towards guns in the first place, but the complete knowledge asymmetry is pretty unprecedented, I've certainly never seen anything like it on another topic. Hell, amongst the crazier end of the anti-gun spectrum, mere knowledge of firearms is suspect and despised, such as the Englishman who's very first interaction with me here was to proclaim how fast he'd report me to the police because I knew too much about guns...

Last edited by Dox47 on 13 Oct 2014, 2:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sure, I'll concede you know more about the mechanics of firearms than I do. But those of us who don't agree that gun ownership is an unlimited right have our right to speak our minds, too. But as I said, I don't eat, breathe, and sleep the gun rights issue as you and Raptor seem to, so I'm hardly invested enough to want to argue the point anymore.
Incidentally, the way you feel about gun rights is the exact same way I feel about voting rights, and marriage quality, and it's on those points I will never back down on to the forces of reaction. Which is why I know Bernie Sanders is 100% right about voter suppression.

I think you know full well that my knowledge goes well beyond the mechanical details of firearms, but since there is neither a degree in nor a market for a 'history of firearms regulations and their effects' major, I ended up going the practical route as far as my formal education goes, but if there were such a degree, I could probably teach it. Sure, you're free to voice your opinion, just as creationists are free to voice theirs, just don't expect it to stand up when the people who actually understand the topic show up.

Incidentally, guns are not my top personal issue, they're just the one I happen to know the most about that comes up the most often; free speech and criminal justice abuse are my most passionate personal political issues, maybe with executive overreach and the lack of transparency in government edging in. Show me a politician pushing gun control and I'll call them a moron and call for people to vote against them, show me a prosecutor knowingly putting innocent people in jail and I'll call them a monster and call for an assassination. Sadly, there's no way to concisely convey that attitude in the form of an Avatar.

Of course you have the right to argue your point of view. But here's a suggestion to the gun rightsers - perhaps they could garner more liberal support if they didn't support the right on every political point, and took to even taking up liberal causes. That way, the left wouldn't necessarily see them as the enemy anymore. It's tough to side with someone who rejects your non-gun rights positions at every turn.

You just don't get it, do you? Well, actually I think you do but are just so bent on toeing the party line that everything has to be sorted and tossed into the left and right ideology bins and anything not in the left bin must be evil. Here (and on other occasions) you admit to not knowing diddly on the subject of firearms yet take just about any opportunity to take a potshot anyway.
One one occasion you said it was because you have no need for something whose only purpose is to go "bang".
On another you said "I just don't want my kid getting shot". This is just a few.
Want me to go back and find 'em for ya?
The right to bear arms is an enumerated right. Even if you don't agree on the 2nd amendment then it would be covered under the 9th amendment. The 9th amendment would also cover homosexuality if it is a constitutionally protected right.
This is what Im talking about when I say that liberals view the constitution with blinders on: They claim to be all about human rights but only selectively.

You seem obsessed with drawing me back into a gun rights argument, but I won't take the bait, other than to say that I see nothing wrong with me saying that I don't want to see my daughter shot.
And as long as conservatives provide a haven for bigots, and support reprehensible policies such as voter disenfranchisement disguised as fighting voter fraud, I'll just continue tossing conservatism into it's bin.

No pro-gunner has said they want anyone's kid getting shot. You used it as a justification for whatever gun control you think you want, which is whatever liberal X told you we need.


Yep, that's partisanship for ya.
As we've gone over before, conservatism or the GOP does not intentionally provide a haven for bigots. It is not an exclusive by-invitation-only party. Look at some of the kooks that go under the title of liberal/democrat.
And we'll see how well you do at staying out of future gun control debates. You know you'll have at least two sets of eyes watching you.

^^^
I'm only stating a fact - I don't want my daughter shot. I never said "pro-gunners" wanted to do it.
As for conservatives allegedly not offering shelter to bigots - I'll raise you Nixon's southern strategy, which still has ramifications today. Add to that the fact that conservatives in the modern era have rarely been on the side of civil rights (again, with voter suppression laws). And when conservatives ever bring up the matter of racism, it's to spout idiocy like that it doesn't exist anymore, or that civil rights legislation is no longer necessary, or they bring up "reverse racism" by blacks. On a more individual level, you can bet that when some moron starts saying or posting something racist, it's doubtful that the person in question is a liberal. So you were saying conservatives don't offer bigots a home?
As for your threat/challenge about me jumping back into the fray - again, you're obsessive about getting me to break my resolution.

Sorry to interject but while no pro-gun person may have said this, their position boils down to something awfully close.

The simple fact is that no person's history or track record, no matter how long our how outstanding, can be a 100% accurate predictor of how that person will behave in the future. People can snap. They can develop mental illnesses that were not previously apparent. Even in the absence of these things, people who obeyed the law their whole lives can decide that for whatever reason, they are tired of doing so.

So the bottom line is that there is no guarantee of what a person will try to do with a gun once they have it, even if they are only given to otherwise law abiding citizens.

I don't think the pro-gun people really try and deny this. Its simply something not talked about much by either side, really.

Building from this, if we allow widespread possession of guns, from time to time there will be incidents where someone in possession of a gun is going to try to harm or kill someone with it. I can't think of any realistic scenario where gun deaths can be 100% prevented, or even close to 100% prevented, if we allow guns into the hands of large numbers of people. Some will eventually commit crimes with those guns Even suggestions along the lines of "if only everyone was armed, these things couldn't happen" *might* help to prevent some of these large scale incidents like Columbine or Sandy Hook from becoming large-scale to begin with, but would almost certainly not be able to reliably stop smaller scale incidents where there are one or two victims and the shooter can draw a weapon and start shooting before any other nearby armed person can react.

So the simple fact is that unless there is some fundamental change (medical professionals can predict in advance people who will commit violence with guns? everyone wears body armor 24 hours a day? Ammo sales are strictly curtailed?) having guns widely available will result in innocent deaths. I can't see any way around it.

Meanwhile, gun-rights advocates demand that all or most people have access to guns - I guess because its very difficult to argue that certain people should get them while other people shouldn't. So while no pro-gunner may want anyone's kid getting shot, its a very foreseeable outcome that if you put guns in the hands of almost everyone, people's kids will get shot.

And the real problem is that pro-gunners are perfectly happy with that outcome so long as they get to own their guns and if kids get shot as a consequence of everyone owning guns, they're fine with it so long as its not their kid - or at least they're ok with it enough that no matter how many kids get shot, they still want to keep things the way they are or even expand gun rights / ownership. They may not realize it, they may not think about it in those terms, and they certainly wouldn't say it out loud that way, but that really is what their position boils down to. Its astonishing and shameful that this is not how the gun debate is framed - "Why is your right to own a gun more important than innocent kids not getting shot?" - but somehow this very fundamental issue never seems to be discussed.

It was a pointless thing to say given the discussion where you said it and only added an air of desperation to your growing anti-gun stance.


Nixon?s ?southern strategy??? Nixon as in Richard M. Nixon, elected to office in 1968? You've got to be sh*****g me. Slavery had ended 103 years before and segregation was in its death throes by 1968. The 46 years since things have been going along swimmingly in regards to racial relations and progress, especially in the south which is still predominately RED.. I?m not even going to bother to look up whatever lasting ramifications resulted in the ?southern strategy?. If there was a successful ?southern strategy? in the late 60?s the climate for it was created by your buddy LBJ. That's not saying that Johnson was wrong to champion racial equality but that he was too stupid to see that it had to be eased through a bite at a time, not forced through in a manner that would ensure backlash (i.e. the south going republican).
How much simpler does it need to be made?

If racism is the issue in the 21st century that you make it out to be there?d be justifiable armed uprisings as a result.


A threat, huh? How is it a threat or even a challenge? The fact is that I don?t think you can help but toss your 2¢ worth in when a future gun control debate is hatched. When you do, and that day will come, you'll be called out on it with this thread referenced, chapter and verse.
In short, don?t promise what you know you can?t deliver......

Define "liberal".

Yeah, right; human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria and whatever.

On the LBJ front - do you seriously think the south would change without ramming change down it's throat? You could argue that civil rights would have worked out theoretically without the backlash if things were taken more slowly. But considering how a hundred years had passed without any noticeable betterment for blacks in the south and elsewhere since the Civil War, I'd have to say they had waited more than long enough, and that deliberate action was called for. So no, the south wouldn't have accepted blacks as equals, and blacks shouldn't have had to wait any longer.
And incidentally, the fact that voter suppression directed at African Americans, college students, Latinos, and other groups who won't vote Republican exists at all is more than proof that the old south is still lurking in the shadows. I won't deny that there has been amazing strides made by white southerners in reforming their prejudices, but the fact that POS Neo-Confederate groups and Conservative Citizens council (who a few decades ago were called the White Citizens council) can influence elections is proof of that. And before you say these groups are on the fringe, the truth is, they and their supporters fill the ranks of the Republican, Libertarian, and tea parties. It's also from conservative politicians in both the south and elsewhere who use code words, such as welfare cheats, food stamp recipients, etc., when speaking about inner city minorities.
When you conservatives say racism doesn't exist today, I can't tell if your blind to the facts just because of the lack of sight which comes with white privilege, or if your blind by choice.

Your "argument" can be applied to literally anything, which makes it pointless and silly. By your logic, anyone in favor of driving is tacitly okay with kids getting run over, anyone in favor of knife ownership wants children (other than their own of course) to be stabbed, purveyors of buckets are tantamount to child murderers by proxy, ad nauseum. Basically, you're arguing that a man shouldn't be allowed to have a steak because a baby might choke on it.