pipoman
pipoman's JournalThank you for the thoughtful response.
I have asked this question before and have only gotten argumentative responses.
I view it as a mistake to label people not being discriminated against as privileged. Privileged indicates, as the definition states, something unearned. We have not all received what we have earned. Those who haven't received what they earned because of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc. have, by the definition of discrimination, been discriminated against.
Discrimination can be, has been, battled. Privilege can't be had by all.
It has everything to do with it. .
The only sales which don't require bg checks are between 2 residents of the same state who aren't firearms dealers.
IOW sales between neighbors, friends, local classified ads, etc. There is no big money behind it. Manufacturers and dealers most likely would like the same restrictions on private sales as are on their sales, no? You can't name a single type of legal personal property which intrastate sale between private parties is regulated by the federal government. .none. Why? Because it is unambiguously prohibited by the commerce clause. States can restrict those sales, the feds can't.
This issue (the renamed "gun show loophole"
is the red herring. It has and does raise more money for gun control groups than any other issue. That is the money behind not making constitutional headway on the issue. .If the issue goes away so do a lot of donations to the big gun control groups.
I certainly object to many aspects of the prison system..
one of my biggest objections is that there are people within the US Justice Department whose job it is to try to extend prisoners stay. They do this by setting an inmate up in an impossible situation and waiting for the inmate to make the logical, yet illegal decision to join a "disruptive group"..which in itself will add time...then watch the prisoner and make subsequent cases for acts committed under extreme, life or death duress imposed by the "disruptive group" they were forced into through fear for their life...all caused by the maniacal games being played by "public servants"...it is a disgrace..
One example is a 20 year old man who was caught when he was 18 acting as a mule coming from South America into south Florida. He was a financially desperate college student who was doing well academically. He was a thin, 160 pound kid whose only defense was that his single mom had forced him, when he was young, to take Taekwondo and he became a blackbelt in his early teens. After his conviction he was sentenced to 5 years in Federal prison. He was transferred to USP Marion and placed in maximum security general population. His cellie was a black "disruptive group member" who immediately and repeatedly victimized him. He complained and was placed in the SHU for admitting to fighting. When he came out of the SHU he was put into a cell with a Mexican inmate who was trying to get into the Mexican Mafia. This inmate gave the young man to a leader of the Mexican Mafia as a gift. The leader victimized him, he fought back and ended up in the prison hospital after a severe, bone breaking beating. When he was released from the hospital, he was put in with a member of the AB. He started out doing jobs for his new cellie in exchange for protection..things like passing kites, smuggling his lunch out of the cafeteria to be given to members of the AB, etc. As time passed the AB asked for more and more risky jobs. One day the guards made an "error" and put him in the yard with another white inmate who virtually everyone on this board would know..a leader of an ally "disruptive group" to the AB...a group which the kid wasn't qualified to join because he didn't have the right ancestry...the "error" was that these 2 were the only 2 in the yard until the kid's first cellie and 3 other members of that rival gang. (Retrospectively the kid believes this was set up by SIS to try to kill the senior member of the other white gang who was causing constant legal problems for the Bureau of Prisons) He said he decided when he saw the situation he would rather be dead than live another day in these prison conditions, and he was going to take as many of his victimizers with him as possible. When the dust settled, the kid had taken a shiv from one of his attackers and killed 2 of them and wounded the other 2..saving his own life and the life of this infamous..known worldwide..leader of this ally gang. The leader immediately negotiated with the leadership of the AB for the kid's full membership in the AB. The kid became the assistant to an AB leader. While some of the requirements for membership were waved, the responsibilities of membership were not waved..in fact he was required to do more risky and dangerous jobs for the AB. At this point, he explained, he had to decide whether he would embrace the brand or risk retaliation for failing to do required jobs..he chose the former. When I was interviewing him he was up for release in 6 months, at 29 yrs old. He feared most coming back in, but the reality of his situation is/was that once out, the brand would contact him to do jobs on the outside..refusal results in bad things happening to the former inmate or the inmate's family. I don't know what happened to the young man..I would be interested to know..
Without the instigation by the Justice Department agents, this young man would have quietly served his 5 year sentence and probably never re-offended..immoral, offensive, and damnable..This entrapment is the norm in the Federal system, and the reason these gangs run the prisons..exactly the same things happen to young black, Hispanic, and Asian inmates..a dirty little secret of the Federal prison system..
As for race, it is the factor on where an inmate belongs among other inmates whether he likes it or not. The other consideration is that there are people in prison who are, IMO, inherently evil..they are the other reason new inmates can't peacefully serve their time. The policy of putting new inmates into maximum security general population until the "earn" a move to a lower security facility insures few will make it to the lower security facilities...it is backward, broken, and sorry..
Oh, and I suspect whom ever killed the prison warden did it under the extreme duress of the disruptive gang he/they was forced to join for protection many years ago..or possibly retaliation for the warden's role in his/their lifelong misery for a mistake they made many years ago..
I pay no attention what so ever
to what LaPierre says. I don't usually even open threads about the NRA because I don't give a rats ass what they say. I have studied this issue for many years and believe I have a very firm grasp on what has already been established limitations to the 2nd Amendment and to gun control. My opinions are based in hours of reading and none of the reading is that of the NRA. I find this issue so interesting, not because I maintain an "arsenal", but because it is the only enumerated right/civil liberty which is not supported, in it's most liberal sense, by the Democratic party...I find that fascinating as a devout and proven civil libertarian..
edit..A problem arises, and will polarize the process if it continues, when someone who, like me, has no interest in the NRA, unknowingly says something which is similar to something the NRA or LaPierre said/says because it is true, and is automatically labeled an NRA shill..
"a path to citizenship"
cannot be insurmountable or it is a waste of time. I am waiting on the edge of my seat and will help as many as I can afford to help..
Semi-automatic weapons are used extensively for hunting
and other lawful uses and have been for at least 8 decades..
Others may also say the Bill of Rights has nothing to do with "needs"..if we are going to only protect "needs", most of the Bill of Rights is unnecessary..
Yet more crickets,
not an utterance, regarding the elephants screwing in the corner. Elimination of mental health services for anyone who needs them. This is the most noteworthy change in this debate. This country has always been heavily armed...that has not changed. Since the beginning of the US there have been "mental hospitals", sanitariums, later on "state hospitals" to care for people with mental problems. There were certainly stories of cruelty in these places, most was the best science of the time. Now there is almost no possibility of being treated without a Mercedes full of cash or having committed a crime. Parents and siblings...people who love the person...can't get help for the person until the person does something criminal, then usually not long term help. This is what has changed.
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