Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

You do realize what the executive actions actually were, right? And that the bulk of them were "write some letters clarifying existing laws, do some research on various gun-related things, and oh yeah, appoint an ATF director"? Hardly a broad program like No Child Left Behind.

Also, I'd be interested to know which of the actions you take issue with, and why. Unless it's just the fact that this was a "unilateral decision" that has rustled your jimmies.

ETA: Damn, jeffd beat me to it. Ah well.

I think it's easy to be hard on a broad synthetic argument like that one, but that's not going to stop me from saying that it's an unsuccessful piece. I would also agree with you that the shifting definitions of state are not properly engaged in his article, both on a legal and popular level.

I would say the biggest thing to me is that he has a historical thesis without a historical argument. A bunch of quotes from dead people don't mean that you've engaged the existing scholarship on the topic substantively or that you're actually making an argument with any teeth, or even a consistent method. In this case, I don't think that people with any degree of familiarity with American history are going to be surprised that the prevailing legal paradigms of the time in terms of what was valuable and how it was protected were influential in crafting the specific provisions of the constitution. They are not going to be surprised at the extent of powers reserved to states as states, because in fact the degree of interdependency and sovereignty was very much a contested matter resolved largely through expedient compromises in emergencies.

Anyway, the problem is that it buries its main point "here I'm going to call pro gun people the descendants of slaveholders" under a bunch of history-like stuff to attach legitimacy to it that ignores a number of evolutions in both constitutional interpretation and gun rights specifically in order to land one below the belt. Doesn't matter much to me one way or another, and I'm happy to take a break from PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE for the nth time, but it wears thin pretty quickly.

So then as a new member who gets really fired up by political conversations I already have two strikes against me. Which is fine, but it seems like longer term that would lead to sort of an insularity or stagnation, no? Maybe I'm wrong or maybe that's a positive here, *shrugs*

I'd ask that you not put words in my mouth and look at what I actually said to jeffd - I pointed out that there are plenty of examples of similar snark laying around here and asked if perhaps his political viewpoint is coloring his opinion here. I even said it in a nice way and admitted that I do that all the time myself - I can handle mean (trust me) and I'm not putting myself up on a cross by any means.

Amusingly, his NDAA response was totally flipping Congress the bird, but they mistakenly gave him the room to do it with. Basically, they said he had to write an EO describing when to use all these powers liberals hated. So he did. It said "Never." The law didn't say he actually had to tell them to use them, just tell them when it was appropriate to use them.

A few of Obama's EO bullet points would be problematic (like putting officers in schools with federal funds) until you read the full text of them and learn that it's actually not an EO, just a letter asking congress to approve funding to do so. The one to the CDC is in theory problematic in that he's ordering them to do something they've been loathe to do due to existing law, but the law actually doesn't specifically bar them from the research. They've just been worried due to chilling effects from the wording, and Obama's declaring that they should do it and he'll take up the legal battle if anyone brings one.

What people are asking is that you respond to questions and bring up points if you're going to start a conversation. Linking an image and and a snarky comment to something with no actual political comparison is pretty much up there with Political Cartoons as far as functional discourse. Part of the reason people are piling on you is that it's nice to have alternate viewpoints. But if you just lob bombs and run away from backing them up, people will just start ignoring you as a useless poster. It's the backing things up part that people want. You previously stated you didn't like Executive Orders. People want you to back up which ones you find problematic.

Yeah, see, that right there. That's the problem. Less than twenty posts in and you're already insulting us all. Why the fuck are you here if you don't like the community?

If you start off with a chip on your shoulder, don't pretend to be surprised when people respond in kind.

Do Jeff a similar favor and actually read what he said to you. The problem isn't that you're using snark, it's that your snark is contentless, clumsy, and stupid.

People aren't mean to you because they disagree with you. People are mean to you because you're being a dick and making a rotten first impression.

Except you don't demonstrate that you get fired up by political conversations. You've dropped some drive by false equivalences in threads and then sped off into the sunset. If you were actually interested in political conversation I'd expect that you actually, y'know, converse.

Content free snark is not a conversation as evidenced by every Joss Whedon script ever.

Stop it. Just say whatever it is you want to say, but stop hedging in melodrama. There are two different political subforums in this place, and the same one that lets you make this thread about you instead of the topic at hand is the same one that lets me tell you you're boring the shit out of me when you do.

Two things you should be aware of if you aren't already: everyone new is old unless proven otherwise, and no one gives a shit about how much you're being personally victimized by the core mechanics of forum discussions.

"The left's critique." Go ahead and answer jeffd's question.

So... is the NCLB image lidicrous, an appeal to emotion, or both?

I'm going with "deliberate troll, probably from Qt3's P&R" on this one.

btw Hanacker? This is a pile on.

ArtificialKid on the off chance you really are here in good faith and I'm the dick: you seem generally unaware that forum interaction is governed more by the forum rules. Every community has its own norms and mores, and this one is no different. A big reason you're getting a hard time is that you've come in, posted exclusively to P&R threads, offered very little in the way of actual content and have also displayed a bit of a victim complex. The latter might be understandable insofar as you're getting a hostile reaction, but the reason for the hostile reaction is that you simply aren't going to be given the benefit of the doubt the way someone I've interacted with in other forums would be. If you're someone whom I've had a pleasant time talking about Mass Effect 3 with or something like that, then I'm going to be much more likely to view your shitty Obama/Bush comparison in a positive light. I'd still think it's shitty, but I might take a pass on chastising you. Likewise if you're someone with enough of a body of work in the P&R forums such that I know you're not an empty-headed fool you'd get a similar pass. You're neither, and while your posting isn't violating any rules, you're definitely going against the community's norms and mores. You're perfectly within your rights to continue doing so, but in that case you should expect continued hostility.

Jesus, you're a smug douche. So I'll answer Alligator's identical question instead!

Honestly, I don't care if the executive actions are innocuous in and of themselves, it's the idea that a single person is directing federal agencies towards limiting an explicitly granted constitutional right that is rustling me, and frankly I don't see why it shouldn't be rustling you - how is that not a short circuiting of the spirit of the system? The facts that the person making this decision is a constitutional lawyer and that he has heaped criticism on the old guy for "writing some letters clarifying existing laws" makes it even more repugnant. Again, my position here is actually fairly moderate - it makes logical, practical sense to limit people's access to certain firearms, but this is the complete wrong way to go about it. More than that, I guess, a *dangerous* way.

Which EO is limiting an explicitly granted constitutional right? Be specific.

edit: which is to say that by my reading, none of the EOs alter gun ownership, or direct any agency to take any steps to further restrict gun ownership. Probably because an EO can't actually do that and be legal. The only EO that discusses ownership is not actually ordering any action, it's a request for congress to pass a new version of the AWB. Which is entirely appropriate, as it's requesting the Legislative Branch produce Legislation, and not a decree for the ATF to steal everyone's high capacity magazines.

edit2: Just to be clear here: Executive Orders are not even remotely one dude making law on their face. They are memos to people who are under the direct chain of command of the President. They are actually far less objectionable than the Legislative adding laws that directly order the Executive's departments to do or not do things, like the CDC ban on research. Executive Orders CAN be objectionable if they do things that alter, create or repeal legislation by Executive Decree. But as I said, that's rare and needs to be called out by name, and is also far less frequently abused compared to Signing Statements being used as a line item veto by decree.

That's UPPITY douche. Get it right.

Can you be specific about which orders/actions you find objectionable?

No I'm an old lumthemad poster! I have literally never been to qt3.

I understand and appreciate the desire not to engage with obvious trolls or other posters whose signal to noise ratio is low to zero, but I think you can make that assessment without sweeping generalizations about which forums a particular poster chooses to frequent most. Personally, although I enjoy gaming/etc, I tend to post the most in the political forums just because those are the topics that I usually find most interesting. Surely you're not suggesting that I'm an assumed troll unless I tell you about my World of Warcraft characters or my latest dark souls build?

This is an amazing nugget of cognitive dissonance. "No one cares how you feel, btw stop insulting us".

It's almost like the two things were said by entirely different people who think different things.

Off the top of my head there's one that calls for an additional background check before returning confiscated weapons.

Undead disc priest and I'm trying a faith build right now! So we are all bros now.

The Daily Show last night talked about the ATF and its powers (or the lack of) to police the current gun laws in the US.

No, no, it's pretty consistent. I care how I feel. It's you that I don't give a shit about.

Also, what LK said.

Wait, I thought that was an explicitly granted constitutional right? Because it's not like millions of lawyer-hours have been had in two centuries attempting to interpret that constitutional right, no, you're definitely certain it's explicit and that's that.

And good god did the Founding Fathers do a great job of putting in ways to short-circuit the spirit of their own system. Fuck that George Washington guy for short circuiting the spirit of the system.

Can you just come out and state if you're another one of those stupid Tea Party motherfuckers that throws a little bitch fit every time the president does something completely fucking legal and within the spirit of the system, so we can get this over with?

What's objectionable about verifying if the owner of a weapon is allowed to have it? That said, the EO is this:

It's not an order to perform a background check. It's a request for congress to pass a law allowing the police to run a background check before returning it. There is no executive overreach in asking Congress to write legislation.

Wow, I had no idea what was going on in this thread. I'm going to slowly back away now.

That's not quite correct. Unless he is using the term "rulemaking" in an atypical manner (which I doubt, as it's a well understood term of art in the Administrative Procedure Act), what this means is that he will propose that the appropriate federal agency (ATF?) implement regulations, or modify existing regulations, in order to require a full background check before returning seized weapons. That being said, there's still nothing inherently nefarious here, assuming that the proposed rule will fit within some authority already granted by Congress to the relevant agency to enact regulations of this type.

It doesn't say require, it says give the ability to. It also doesn't say anything about federal agency, so I'm thinking it's much like the rest of the bullet points and backed by a paragraph of exact intent.

If it's just a rule to give the ATF the ability to run checks to return guns, that implies the ATF is currently disallowed from actually checking up on people they raid. On second thought, it's entirely possible we've neutered the ATF that much however.

Sorry, I had to post this for Eric T. Cheng: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BAsf8ZTCIAAVyIL.jpg

As an aside, to somewhat re-enter the conversation now that the gun control plan has been put out there. While I do dislike the idea of making use of EO's, can't say I disagree with any of those propositions being put forth in the EO list. Was quite surprised actually as I feared the non-gun-ban things put forth were going to be rather lame or minimal, but they look pretty good.

The non EO list of gun ban and magazine ban stuff however, meh...

God damn this stupid Facebook shit is getting annoying:

If only we just shrugged at car accidents and didn't attempt to figure out the cause after the fact and address any actionable items!

Actually the first one is quite good. The stupid argument gets used all the time how if the weapons we have now existed back then they would never have been covered under the 2nd amendment.

Haha FOX News isn't on that list I see.

But there are national and state campaigns designed around lowering drunk driving, plenty of government studies into drunk driving, and harsher punishment for driving while drunk, a couple of organizations built around stopping drunk driving (some of which receive federal funding) and alcohol itself has hundreds of well enforced laws pertaining to it's manufacture and distribution. All of which have culminated in a gradual, but very real, lowering of drunk driving fatalities.

Oh, this showed up on my facebook feed:


My reaction, if I may cut n paste: "Shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut up"

NO ONE IS TAKING ANY GODDAMNED GUNS AWAY, FUCK

"Quite good," is laying it on pretty thick, but if you want to throw in with the guy who can't spell "written," that's your prerogative.

Furthermore, Hitler not only didn't take guns away from his citizens in 1938, he completely deregulated the sale and trading of shotguns and rifles after years of private gun ownership being totally banned. So, you know, the complete opposite of what the nutjobs are saying he did. But nobody on the right ever lets facts and history get in the way of a good screaming fit, so...

If it is a stupid argument, it's because the counterfactual scenario it postulates is so impossible to imagine within the context of the time. What I mean is that imaging M4s during the 1790s requires a reimagining of the whole historical context, given how consequential modern weapons would have been to the Revolution and subsequent events. Counterfactuals soon run into difficulty when they cannot be plausibly constrained to the topic at hand.

I think it's a stupid image anyway, though, as it's hard to draw any equivalence between the scope and practical application of the First and Second Amendments, not to mention their intellectual origins.

Yeah it's a "quite good" image posted by people who signed a petition to deport someone for speaking under their first amendment right to argue against the 2nd amendment.

And just because you can't understand the argument that the framers of the constitution had no prediction of how the killing power of personal weapons would grow, doesn't mean the argument is dumb. It means you're dumb.

It's not like there's a pre-emptive ratio background check every time someone posts, it's rather that when someone makes a lot of noise with zero content all you have to do is check and see "huh, all posts are about politics" and connect the dots.

And in a broader sense you talking about your latest Dark Souls build is the difference between you being a random stranger talking politics on the internet or a guy I have my favourite hobby in common with. I'm a lot more willing to hear out the latter than the former.