Originally Posted by mulp

You mean he didn't have a right to carry his guns into the university auditorium?

An interesting thing about the discussion on this topic is how impossible it is for those who presumably advocate for second amendment liberty to accept the cost of second amendment liberty. Lacking an argument, they resort to ad hominems.

And I think that some think I'm attacking the second amendment as interpreted by the gun nuts. I've concluded that to protect my speech rights and other rights I hold dear, I must allow people to carry guns if they want, not because I believe that guns will do anything to protect my rights, but because limiting the second amendment is the "slippery slope" to limiting free speech, right to due process, and all the rest.

To preserve the rights I hold most dear, my free speech and my due process, I must accept the cost of people having the rights to carry guns designed primarily to kill people. And I will recognize that all these liberties have costs, so I will seek to limit my exposure to the risks associated with these liberties.

I will not own a gun, noting that people with guns are far more likely to be shot or killed with guns.

I will not associate with people who are gun nuts, noting that people who play with guns are more likely to shot the people they play with.

The "brady" bills were/are about preemption, a view that somehow the government can figure out what people are thinking and thus what they will do and thus prevent crime. They make illegal thought crimes.

Well, Bush has decided that he is going to go into the preemptive crime fighting business because he can determine what people are thinking, and by government prosecution of thought crimes with the government's vast power, he can prevent crimes from happening.

The result is that Texans who think about bombs and guns and terrorism are merely guilty of violating certain laws controlling bomb making materials, while Muslims who read websites on bomb making are extremely dangerous criminals because those acts show they are thinking of terrorism and thus are terrorists that must be convicted for the crimes the government knows they will commit, if not convicted.

Of course, there is a qualitative difference in the nature of the two groups. One is seeking to commit virtuous terrorism: bombing gay bars and family planning clinics and the US, the other is evil terrorism: thinking that governments are infringing on the liberties of the oppressed.

Originally Posted by mulp

To preserve our second amendment liberty, five died in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall on Thursday afternoon in DeKalb. Twenty-one other students were wounded.

The gunman in this case, and the gunman at Virginia Tech that killed 32 people on that Blacksburg campus were exercising their constitutional second amendment right.

And people claim that the students at universities are liberals that are unwilling to die for their country.

What I wonder is why conservatives are unwilling to also die for their principles, to die following the US Constitution and its mandate that the US government merely defend the nation, and not engage in imperialism, imposing their values on others in other parts of the world. Conservatives would do well to listen to Ron Paul.

Yes, like the shootings on the VT and NIU campuses, 911 was a horrible crime, but we deal with crimes after they occur, and not before. That is the nature of liberty, the price of liberty.

For those who claim to love liberty and demand their second amendment rights, and then call for preemptive war and continuing to interfere militarily in the affairs of other nations are hypocrites or unprincipled or merely lying about their love of the Constitution and country.

Originally Posted by mulp

To preserve our second amendment liberty, five died in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall on Thursday afternoon in DeKalb. Twenty-one other students were wounded.

The gunman in this case, and the gunman at Virginia Tech that killed 32 people on that Blacksburg campus were exercising their constitutional second amendment right.

And people claim that the students at universities are liberals that are unwilling to die for their country.

What I wonder is why conservatives are unwilling to also die for their principles, to die following the US Constitution and its mandate that the US government merely defend the nation, and not engage in imperialism, imposing their values on others in other parts of the world. Conservatives would do well to listen to Ron Paul.

Yes, like the shootings on the VT and NIU campuses, 911 was a horrible crime, but we deal with crimes after they occur, and not before. That is the nature of liberty, the price of liberty.

For those who claim to love liberty and demand their second amendment rights, and then call for preemptive war and continuing to interfere militarily in the affairs of other nations are hypocrites or unprincipled or merely lying about their love of the Constitution and country.