View Single Post
Old 12-11-2008, 08:06 AM   #200 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru
warrior bodhisattva
 
Baraka_Guru's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: East-central Canada
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crompsin View Post
Thing is... I like the choice to own a firearm. Choice is important as it represents the ideals of a free society. Smoking or non, car or motorcycle, pants or no pants... you have choices. There are consequences to some choices (such as eating babies or threatening your neighbor with a pitchfork) but the point is that our society generally allows us to first make choices and then deal with the consequences if the choices we make are unwise.
You can't smoke in a preschool; you can't drive your motorcycle through a shopping mall; and you can't go to a ball game without your pants on. You see, this is what some of us are getting at: You have rights to certain things, but there are reasonable limits. (And they aren't merely "as long as you don't infringe on others' rights.") You have the right to private property, but you cannot own certain materials that are banned from private ownership (specifically due to risk of public danger). This isn't an infringement on property rights; it's about reasonable restrictions.

They aren't trying to take all the guns away; they're merely limiting the availability of certain firearms. And, as has been mentioned more than once here, most Americans support that.
__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
Baraka_Guru is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73