:^))
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Trump’s plan to dismantle national monuments comes with steep cultural and ecological costs
"At the end of the day, while Trump’s order trumpets the possibility that monument downsizing will usher in economic growth, it makes no mention of the extraordinary economic, scientific and cultural investments we have made in those monuments over the years. Unless these losses are considered in the calculus, our nation has not truly engaged in a meaningful assessment of the costs of second-guessing our past presidents".
https://theconversation.com/trumps-plan-to-dismantle-national-monuments-comes-with-steep-cultural-and-ecological-costs-77075
It's all about the Benjamin's baby
The Cold War’s toxic legacy: Costly, dangerous cleanups at atomic bomb production sites
Seventy-five years ago, in March 1943, a mysterious construction project began at a remote location in eastern Washington state. Over the next two years some 50,000 workers built an industrial site occupying half the area of Rhode Island, costing over US$230 million – equivalent to $3.1 billion today. Few of those workers, and virtually no one in the surrounding community, knew the facility’s purpose.
https://theconversation.com/the-cold-wars-toxic-legacy-costly-dangerous-cleanups-at-atomic-bomb-production-sites-90378
Before the US approves new uranium mining, consider its toxic legacy
https://theconversation.com/before-the-us-approves-new-uranium-mining-consider-its-toxic-legacy-91204
To slow climate change, the US needs to address nuclear power’s dismal economics
https://theconversation.com/to-slow-climate-change-the-us-needs-to-address-nuclear-powers-dismal-economics-90003
He covers the use of prescription drugs for mental health issues and the problems they can cause related to current gun assaults and empathy.
But he doesn't touch on how self help groups have really helped people in that regard. Especially with mental problems and street drugs and alcohol. It's not referenced in this article, but N/A - narcotics anonymous is world wide just like AA - Alcohol anonymous >>.....>> and Here as well. Both these groups have probably helped and prevented more deaths than all the mental facilities combined totals.
Bottom line is if you have problems don't grab a gun to settle your issues, seek help. You'll find that there are a bazillion other people that are struggling with the exact same issues you are.
Alcoholics Anonymous works for some people. A new study suggests the alternatives do too.
The study shows why we need more addiction treatment options in America.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/5/17071690/alcoholics-anonymous-aa-smart-lifering-study
What charts r u looking @ Zardiw? Not 2 call u out or anything like that, I'm not even trading the stock. But woosie what a day as far as volume. On the 1 day 5 minute chart [1st one] clearly the bottom bounce is @ .001 which it just did @ eod for a triple bottom bounce on the day and the majority of shares bought @.0011 / .0012 Hard to judge a chart on just one day of activity, in the OTC after three days you start to look at longevity if it's still in play, so maybe take a good hard look at it on Wednesday midweek. For the 1st day, it's looking pretty strong on the technical's.
HOPE IS NOT ‘A’ STRATEGY: IT’S THE ONLY STRATEGY
The icon of the Republican party, former President Ronald Reagan, once said that “America is too great for small dreams.” Today’s strategy-makers would do well to remember this. The “hope is not a strategy” mindset results in inaction and paralysis, while a strategy of hope inspires creativity and bold action. Until recently, America understood this, and it used hope as the cornerstone of a strategy that built a world of unquestioned American dominance. America’s strategic challenges are weighty and varied. They demand a healthy dose of hope in our strategy.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/hope-not-strategy-strategy/
Trump to Sign Taiwan Bill Opposed by Beijing
Congress urging high-level visits by U.S. military and civilian officials
Considering the Obama administration did absolutely jack squat about China building artificial islands in the south china sea, and then militarizing them. This is a good first step in sending China a message the they don't control the United states and that we will stand up for our allies.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/trump-sign-taiwan-bill-opposed-beijing/
Certainly looks that way Seminole Red,
Lockheed Martin to Develop Laser Weapons for U.S. Navy Destroyers
By 2020, Lockheed Martin will deliver a high-energy laser that will be installed on a U.S. Navy destroyer.
The U.S. Navy's next laser weapon will break new ground for high-energy lasers. The Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin a US $150 million contract to develop, build, and deliver two copies of a new laser weapon for use on destroyers.
The new laser weapon system is called the High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance (HELIOS) system for the way it integrates three distinct capabilities.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/military/lockheed-martin-develops-helios-laser-weapon-for-us-navy
At Kadena Air Base, the elephant in the room is North Korean
"The fact that airmen are talking and learning about North Korean capabilities doesn’t portend that war is imminent, or even likely. The stated vision of Pacific Air Forces is to provide “combat-ready American airmen,” which involves preparing military options, including for worst-case scenarios.
Those options could include anything from increasing engagements with partner nations — like the Cobra Gold exercises in Thailand this February — to Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy’s threat of “rapid, lethal and overwhelming force” made this summer in response to a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launch".
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/kadena-air-base/2018/03/02/at-kadena-air-base-the-elephant-in-the-room-is-north-korean/
Good point ONEBGG, back in 2014 there wasn't any push back to Russian aggression in Ukraine, not even selling them weapons which the Trump administration is doing now I might add.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-tank-killing-missile-fight-russia-ukraine-759745
What is DARPA doing in Ukraine?
This is not the first tie between DARPA and Kiev. The Ukrainian government has hired Tony Tether, who led DARPA for the entirety of the George. W. Bush administration, to help lead a reorganization of their science and technology efforts, something Tether in a LinkedIn post said was necessary in part because so much of Ukraine’s S&T facilities were in the territory seized by Russia.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/03/01/what-is-darpa-doing-in-ukraine/
crazy horse 0 your 10 point article brings up some legitimate concerns to be sure especially in law enforcement. But your tenth point citing author Jon Rappoport is a spot on link and needs to be posted in it's entirety, because he brings up a very valid point. Psychotropic drugs [SSRI's] can be directly linked to violent acts in society, and it's not really covered at all in the media that I've seen. If you want to selectively blame guns for all the violent ills in society, then you would be misinformed and totally bias in your assumptions.
"Dr. Joseph Tarantolo is a psychiatrist in private practice in Washington DC. He is the president of the Washington chapter of the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians. Tarantolo states that “all the SSRIs [including Prozac and Luvox] relieve the patient of feeling. He becomes less empathic, as in `I don’t care as much,’ which means `It’s easier for me to harm you.’ If a doctor treats someone who needs a great deal of strength just to think straight, and gives him one of these drugs, that could push him over the edge into violent behavior.”
When the Right is Right: A Left-Wing Case Against Gun Control
Gordon Barnes and Robert Hadley
In the wake of the most recent mass shootings in California and Colorado, once again there is a reflexive push for national gun control legislation. Unlike the now quite common school shootings, these most recent acts were directly political – an attack on an abortion clinic and a coordinated attack on random civilians at a disability center, purportedly inspired by the Islamic State. Because these recent attacks have significant political ramifications, gun control advocates appear to sense that by connecting their advocacy to other discourses – the desire to defeat “terrorism” and to protect women’s reproductive rights – they can expand the popular base for gun control, and overwhelm the right-wing argument for gun ownership as the right of a “free” people.
Only a few days after the San Bernardino shooting, the New York Times printed its first front-page editorial in ninety years, advocating gun control as a way to check “spree killings,” which “are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.” This new discourse for gun control – preventing forms of political violence that both the Left and the Right abhor – indirectly reveals the strongest argument against gun control: an armed population serves as the only political check against the greatest purveyor of violence and terrorism of all, the bourgeois state itself. Leftists, who claim to be distrustful of the present state which is constantly engaged in class warfare, must not be carried away by this line of argument. Rather, they should embrace widespread gun ownership, especially by proletarians and sectors of the working poor, as a necessary condition for social revolution.
The current debate around gun control in the United States has been framed in terms of juxtaposing the desire to mitigate wanton acts of gun violence with the democratic rights won during the American Revolutionary War. On the one hand, the center-left, represented politically by the Democratic Party, have frequently called for stricter gun control measures. After the recent mass killings in Colorado and California, they quickly renewed past proposals to ban automatic weapons and to install tighter regulations on ammunition sales. At the same time, the right-wing in this country, typified by the Republican Party and buttressed by even more unsavory political actors, have consistently upheld the apparent rights granted to US citizenry in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. However, the ratified version of the amendment, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” is arguably devoid of any notion of individual rights to bear arms.
Although an honest review of American history shows that this provision was intended to support a collective militia under the guidance of elite political power, the US Supreme Court has ruled that this right does in fact extend to individuals. When the amendment was adopted on 15 December 1791, the logic of the measure was not, as conservative positions often espouse, to check against the power of a potentially tyrannical state. Rather, the amendment was put in place to bolster the state’s propensity for proactive violence. Indeed, the “militia” was theorized as a tool to help supplement the military regulars in times of war and social strife. This is most effectively evidenced when one considers the brutal and genocidal westward expansion of the fledgling US state in the aftermath of independence.
Yet, with the Supreme Court ruling that the right to bear arms extends beyond the formation of militias to individuals, the original purpose of the Second Amendment has become irrelevant. The individual right to arms is an enfranchisement that opens up a reinterpretation of the Second Amendment, grounded in a logic that stresses gun ownership as a means to check the potential tyranny of the state. This formulation is ubiquitous in Republican and right-wing political discourse. Most rightists either support the status quo in the United States or have a reactionary ideal that they wish would come to fruition, and they consciously support the individual right to bear arms as a political means to establish their coercive power as a group. The Left, particularly the radical and revolutionary Left, must eschew any liberal notion that the right to bear arms is anathema. On the contrary, the right-wing embrace of individual rights to armaments should likewise be championed by the Left, albeit for dissimilar reasons and for a distinctly different end.
Historically, the right-wing argument for popular gun ownership has been almost entirely reactionary and racist, for example, enabling genocide against Indians or White supremacy under Reconstruction. In spite of this history, there is a potential for the radical Left to win over portions of pro-gun right-wingers. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and bank bailouts, many, mostly White, working-class and lumpenized right-wingers organized Tea Party gatherings in protest that blended outrage at Wall Street with strong defenses of gun ownership. Frequently, they showed up to rallies with loaded guns in hand, and they were ridiculed by liberals as a dangerous reactionary force. But where was the left-wing reaction to the abuses of Wall Street? Why didn’t the Left see this defense of violence, exemplified through the American mythology of the “Tea Party,” as a viable option or as a route to challenging the power of the superordinate elite? Certain layers from the Right, typified by the archetypal “redneck,” can and must be won over to the Left if viable social transformation is to be achieved. What we are talking about here is organization along class lines, permitted that White rightists are not involved in organized racism (such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Brotherhood, or any of the myriad White-pride and racialist political groups in the United States).
Certainly, the discursive threads around the Second Amendment at present do have a racist core, and it would be naive to think that these widespread White gun owners are a revolutionary vanguard in waiting. But how would new gun control legislation restrict gun ownership by these feared sections of the populace? In practice, any new legislation is likely to grandfather the present-day distribution of gun ownership. Rural and suburban populations will have a vast arsenal for the foreseeable future, and the urban poor would be locked out forever. Thus, the Black proletariat, inevitably an integral part to any revolutionary struggle in this country, will be put at a severe tactical disadvantage. The only logical strategy for the Left then is to politicize White working-class gun owners, whilst simultaneously encouraging the urban poor to be armed in conjunction.
The Left, typified by centrist liberals, but also by purportedly radical elements, engages in racism when it implies that gun ownership in urban areas would only embolden gangs. In reality, gangs are essentially commercial enterprises that enable the poor to survive by exploiting unfulfilled markets. The illicit drug trade is the most commonplace example. The popular television show The Wire humanized gang members by showing how, in the end, they are not that different from other organized institutions like the police, corporations, and the mafia. Gang members are well aware that they are only at the bottom of the extant economic system, fighting for the scraps, and we cannot assume that their armed power will always remain politically irrelevant and counter-productive. On the contrary, looking at the historical formations of Black and Latino gangs in urban quarters in the mid-twentieth century reveals quasi-Leftist associations for self-defense against racists and the police.
The right-wing itself is increasingly attempting to align itself with non-gang-affiliated racial minorities in the urban poor by suggesting that they too have the right to gun ownership in order to protect themselves against gang and inner-city violence. This argument is especially pronounced in cities like Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., where gun control laws are particularly draconian. While liberals remain largely patronizing and obtuse on this question, the radical and revolutionary Left must recognize this popular desire for gun ownership and struggle to expand access to weapons. They should not abuse the rightist logic of self-defense from some nebulous, racialized boogeyman, but should advance gun ownership as a form of self-defense against the capitalist state and its arbiters of power, categorized most concretely in the form of the police.
Therefore, the Right would be wise to be more careful in its push to expand gun ownership in urban areas. Given the recent prominent cases of police killings of young Black men, Black activists are increasingly stressing how many Blacks feel as though they must be armed to deter an openly racist police force that minimizes their lives and has no compunction about killing them. The leadership of the largely liberal Black Lives Matter movement, of course, is attempting to co-opt these voices back into the traditional Democratic Party platform, but it may be too late. Black gun ownership is becoming politicized again, and this is an important development in American politics. Politicized Black gun ownership is by no means new. Liberals have essentially attempted to curtail any justification for gun ownership in Black communities in order to prop up and bolster the gun control agenda.
To be clear, gun culture in the United States lends itself to extreme paranoia and is often inflected with overt racism. The National Rifle Association’s political line is a prime example of this. For the NRA, gun ownership should be provided for the White working- and middle-classes, and their rhetoric is suffused with a division of “good” and “evil,” constructing fears of brutish non-White criminals who would invade the homes of White families and kill them. This is, of course, nonsense and an implicitly racist formulation, and it is understandable why such politics would be rejected and mocked. Therefore, the Left, and especially liberals, are seemingly content with the established dichotomy of gun ownership as backwards and reactionary, and they support gun control measures as some sort of “progressive” position. Yet, if we consider the history of politicized gun ownership from a left-wing vantage point, it is abundantly clear that access to arms is integral to rapid social transformation, particularly in regard to Black political mobilization.
Although it did not begin with the conflagration over slavery in the United States, Afro-American adoption of arms as a form of politics reached its apogee in the years just prior to the outbreak of war, and during the Civil War itself. Free Afro-Americans as well as slaves swelled the Union ranks (either as a direct force within the Northern army, or as a supplementary/non-aligned force independent of it) and engaged in the military struggles that brought about a crushing end to chattel slavery and the social power of Southern slavocracy. After the conclusion of this Second American Revolution, Black men attained suffrage via the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. During this period of contention and at the apex of Radical Reconstruction in the US South, newly enfranchised ex-slaves armed themselves as they travelled to polling stations to protect their newly-won citizenship. Within a decade or so of the defeat of Radical Reconstruction in 1877, the question of Black gun ownership was answered with Jim Crow legislation. Blacks consistently lost their right to bear arms, and this process coincided with the meteoric rise of organized racism with the second wave of Ku Klux Klan organization in the early 1900s. Without access to guns, Southern Blacks were terrorized, lynched, and murdered in record numbers.
Access to arms was one of the main ways in which Afro-Americans in the U.S. South were able to defend themselves against the pervasive lynch-mob terror of the early and mid-twentieth century. It is pure liberal fiction that it was simply peaceful civil disobedience that was able to advance the civil rights struggle. Rather, it was the militant action of various groupings of Afro-Americans alongside mass mobilization and, at times, violent self-defense. The most concrete example of this was the formation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1964. The Deacons for Defense were an armed group of Blacks, organized out of the church, that had the direct aim of counteracting the state-sanctioned terror of the Klan as well as elements of the police (often involved with the KKK when not on the clock). Made up of various individuals from the surrounding area, many of whom had served in the Korean War, one of the first tasks of the Deacons was to disrupt the practice of “nigger knocking,” a fairly innocuous form of racial intimidation practiced by the Klan. But of course, as one would expect, the Klan, the police, and other racists deployed many other violent methods in order to intimidate Southern Blacks as well as those allied with the wider civil rights struggle. Another of the originating tasks of the Deacons was to defend the Freedom House run by the Congress On Racial Equality. CORE, like many liberal civil rights organizations, was devoted to the precepts of peaceful protest and civil disobedience. After a multitude of attacks on their offices, however, CORE acquiesced to the Deacons’ insistence that they provide armed protection from the incessant racist assaults. The Deacons would eventually drive out the Klan and help bring about equal hiring practices at the paper mill in Bogalusa (where many of their original members worked). This was successful only because the Deacons had access to arms. Without such access, the quick and decisive defeat of the Klan and the state apparatus that supported them would not have been achievable.
Examples of Afro-American gun ownership as a means of self-defense against organized racism as well as the state are abound. Robert F. Williams’ NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, organized a gun club in order to train members in armed self-defense in the face of increasingly violent attacks waged by the forces of reaction, specifically KKK nightriders. Going against the NAACP national leadership, Williams advocated armed self-defense in the face of violence as a logical solution to the problem of organized racism in the U.S. South. Other civil rights leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Malcolm X also advocated armed self-defense and Black gun ownership as a way for those engaged in transformative social activism to protect themselves from individuals and groups from reactionary social stratas. Without guns, the victories of these stalwarts of the civil rights movement would likely have been truncated, if in fact they were to have any success at all. Furthermore, the possession of arms to defend and expand basic democratic rights has been deployed by other oppressed groups. The American Indian Movement is another prime example, as is the Lumbee Tribe in 1958. At the Battle of Hayes Pond, in North Carolina, some 500 members of the Lumbees defeated a contingent of Klansmen who had begun meetings in the Maxton area. Again, if guns were unavailable to these people, the Klan would likely not have ceased activity in the area.
The left-wing political defense of gun ownership has historically not only been grounded in race. There is also an authentic class-based defense of gun ownership that liberals ignore. The White working class has also deployed firearms in socially progressive ways in the past. And while the current stereotype of the politically backwards “redneck” persists in liberal and broader Leftist discourses, this is an important history to remember. In the great labor struggles in the North and Midwest between the 1880s and the start of the Second World War, various union struggles implemented something akin to workers’ defense guards. These armed guards would prevent scab labor from undermining union struggles, and more importantly, would physically protect union members and cadres from the attacks of the police, company thugs, and the various security firms (most notably the Pinkertons). This pseudo-revolutionary usage of arms for progressive social gains and in labor struggles was a common tactic. Some of the highlights include the Haymarket Affair, the 1892 Homestead strike, and the 1934 Minneapolis general strike. It is essential that the working class, specifically the doubly oppressed Afro-American section of this class, have access to arms. Revolutionary minded folks must be able to adequately defend their gains and themselves against racist thuggery, conservative/reactionary political movements, and anti-labor tactics. In addition, the marriage of the capitalist state with many of these unsavory forces further underscores the necessity that the working class and revolutionary-minded allies be armed and prepared to defend themselves from the aggressive actions of state actors and reactionary forces alike.
Curtailment of gun ownership is a fetter to radical self-defense, and this seems completely lost on large swaths of the Left in this country. In fact, the origins of contemporary gun control legislation came from a “bipartisan” effort to disenfranchise Afro-American gun owners in California. When Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California, in 1966, they recognized that an armed membership was central to their organizational operation. The Panthers adopted a political position, similarly to some of their ideological predecessors, wherein access to arms was central to the struggle for progressive social gains, both in achieving them and in defending those that were already won. The fear of armed Black men and women in government buildings, in public spaces, and at political events across California led the then Republican Governor Ronald Reagan to endorse stricter gun control laws. In an early attempt to eviscerate the Panthers’ access to guns, the California State Legislature began to enact stricter gun control laws, prohibiting them from being brought into public buildings and challenging existing statutes that allowed for open-carry. This last point is particularly salient as the Panthers utilized guns in their self-defense patrols, wherein they monitored police actions against the oppressed sectors of the Black community in Oakland. The federal government went so far as to implement the notorious COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) as a means to disrupt and negate the influence of the Panthers once they had expanded nationwide. Granted, the COINTELPRO program of spying, misinformation, and using agent-provocateurs did not singularly target the Panthers, but its existence and implementation was the direct result of the organization’s growing socio-political influence, particularly amongst lumpenized and working-class Blacks in urban centers. The centrality of armed self-defense for the Panthers’ political program was a direct threat to the status quo in this country. The combined liberal-conservative fears of a Black organization, formed mostly from the working poor and lumpenized and utilizing arms to achieve their political ends, have morphed into a wholesale attempt to enact draconian gun control legislation. Gun ownership for the Panthers was at times fetishized to the point that it became the organizing principle of politics for some of the cadre. Despite this issue, and other internal problems within the organization, namely the rampant sexism, the Fanonian and quasi-Maoist political programmes, and the Newton-Cleaver split, the Panthers’ use of guns as a tool to confront the egregious actions of the state is something that was integral to challenging elite politics and ideology in this country, even if incipiently. Unfortunately, large portions of the Left, particularly liberals, fail to see this history as part of the socially “progressive” aspect of struggles for and by oppressed peoples.
In response to these well-founded justifications for gun ownership by minorities and the working poor, liberal defenders of gun control will often argue that the times have changed. They affirm the bourgeoisie state’s propaganda that “resistance is futile.” They see how even their rather timid, non-violent protests like Occupy Wall Street or at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City were infiltrated by undercovers and were met by massive militarized shows of force, and they cannot possibly comprehend how some assorted collection of small arms could have any relevance against such state power. Looking at the weaponry possessed by the modern state – extensive electronic surveillance, sophisticated “non-lethal” weapons of area control, precision-guided weapons, unmanned aerial drones, and weaponized robots – they assume that any violent resistance to the state would be easily crushed. As a result, even if they concede that violent protest was necessary in the past, nonviolent mass movement appears as the only possibility now. Such an outlook, however, does not understand the dynamics of political uprisings. In situations of chaos, the state cannot necessarily rely on the loyalty of its own forces, and controlling large urban centers becomes a challenge even for elite units.
At the beginning of the current revolution in Syria, for example, the state was unable to control many of its cities, despite possessing a modern military and sophisticated intelligence apparatus. Once there were defections from the military and theft of weapons from government armories, revolutionaries were able to seize large swathes of the country with small arms alone. Even the US military, with all of its technological superiority, had difficulty in urban combat and insurgency fighting in Iraq. In urban combat, for example, a single sniper can lock down and protect large areas. We cannot know exactly how resistance to the overwhelming inequality and political oppression in the United States will emerge, and there are a number of scenarios where all of the weaponry advantages of the state will be muted.
An armed populace also creates conditions that can protect social movements and radical political organizing outside of full revolution. The American state is now accustomed to using overwhelming force to break up protests against banks and against other corporate entities. While the Occupy gathering were disbanded by force, many people remarked at how the Tea Party rallies, despite the open carrying of weapons, were much more respected. If police had to fear that their violence against Occupy would have risked a shooting, they might be a bit more cautious in beating and arresting protesters en masse.
Liberals and even some radicals would articulate that social change should and can be accomplished via peaceful change. They invoke the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. But they often elide the legacies of Bhagat Singh and Malcolm X, both of whom respectively led contemporary movements at the times of Gandhi and King, but who recognized and advanced the case for armed self-defense. It is increasingly typical of gun control advocates to simply assume that agitating for laxer gun laws is the sole position of the right-wing. This is patently false as there is a rich history, both “at home” and internationally, of the Left using arms to defend its socio-political gains. It must be recognized that all drastic social changes are accompanied by violent episodes, even most dramatically by war, as for instance in the case of the end to chattel slavery in this country. The argument we are making here is not for a culture of revolutionary violence or for an aggressive politics of violence or assassination that utilizes guns to achieve its aims. Rather, we must recognize that in response to mass mobilizations that press against the status quo or entrenched political norms, the state will crack down. This was highly evident during the struggles in Ferguson, Missouri, and in the many protests against recent police killings in cities across the country. The Left should shed any notion that guns are an inherently reactionary tool. Social change accompanies violence in most cases, and the Left must be prepared to defend social gains. The attendant ethical concerns around gun usage and ownership, exaggerating the chances of being the victims of mass shootings, for example, are those of the elite (specifically liberal elites) forced upon the lower echelons of society. So, we must ask ourselves, can significant social change occur in our lifetime without violence, and is it ethical to consider armed self-defense when engaging in such a process?
When something progressive is achieved without violence, then the forces that the movement(s) were struggling against will remain in position to continually attack the social gains, without any fears of personal injury. For example, the Women’s Suffrage movement (which linked to broader struggles in feminism, that is to have equality between men and women) was victorious, but women, particularly non-White women, still represent a subordinate position in society. They can vote all they like, as can men, but it makes no substantial social difference. Abortion rights for women are under constant attack and have been since the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade (which was only piecemeal in nature since it did not protect women from state encroachment on their bodies after the third trimester). The near constant attack on a woman’s right to choose what she can do with her body persists precisely because the forces that oppose women’s rights are not intimidated, and were not destroyed. The (mounting) restrictions across various states are evidence of this, from minors having to get consent, fetal “person-hood” laws, mandatory waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds, bans on late-term abortions. The list goes on and on. Gay rights and gay marriage are still not universal, nor will they be anytime soon with such piecemeal reformism. Where there is success, there will be pushback and defeat, again and again, unless the powers prohibiting such advances are destroyed. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Black folks have been categorically better off after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The lynch mob now just wears blue, beige, or green instead of white. The success (if we can even call it that) of Lyndon Johnson signing the act came out of militant and violent struggle (of course, in addition, there was non-violent civil disobedience, but make no mistake, violence was a part of the movement and formed its threatening power). The exaggerated vision of a nonviolent Civil Rights movement is deployed by White liberals (and conservatives too) to elide the militant and violent struggles that were integral to the project of Black, Chicano, and women’s liberation.
Universalizing ethical standards about violence lacks coherence and is devoid of any relation to temporal or spatial realities. There is a domineering logic that is forced upon people and endorsed by many to be sure, which posits that right or wrong is based upon the ruling elite’s preferences and that individuals as well as groups that go against the dominant logic should be castigated. It is no accident that the current gun control push is being bankrolled by billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has set up “Moms Demand Action,” “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” and “Every Town for Gun Safety,” as astroturf social organizations. Money and power are trying to shape the terms of the gun control debate. And yes, drastic social transformation will be categorized as “wrong” and “violent” if it involves guns, but this is due to the prevailing logic established by the powerful. Simply put, the point of social change, particularly revolutionary change, is to strip the prevailing ideologies around how social relations, politics, and economics should be manifest and replace them with something new, something better, something that is more equitable and demonstrates parity for all. So yes, social change (particularly radical metamorphosis) is always “wrong,” and particularly so when the use of guns is involved, but it is only always “wrong” for a specific group, namely those individuals and groups that maintain power. Until we can collectively create a society that is truly egalitarian, progressive social change will always be “wrong.”
Gun culture in the United States is, of course, disgusting and largely reactionary in nature. Not many on the Left, even those who endorse gun rights, would argue against this. However, the problem that is becoming increasingly commonplace – the phenomenon of mass shootings – is not a product of access to arms, but a result of the conjuncture between a flawed understanding of how guns should be used socially (individual and familial defense, rather than radical, class-based self-defense) and a broader cultural degradation that includes social isolation and a flailing mental health apparatus. These issues should rightly be addressed by the Left, but in such a way that it does not treat the right to guns as something antiquated. One need look only at Switzerland, France, Norway, Sweden or Canada as examples of countries with widespread gun ownership that do not suffer from daily mass shootings. The issue is not the gun, but the culture. And culture, at least the dominant culture, will not change except through the transformation of material realities. So the choice remains to restrict access to arms in order to treat a symptom of a sick culture or to employ a different, more radical and egalitarian rhetoric in order to secure gun rights for the oppressed in their struggles against the daily aggression of the capitalist state. The latter is what the Left needs to do. And even if guns prove to be only an infinitesimal advantage in the struggle to transform society (this, of course, is highly unlikely), they will be necessary in defending any gains the broad swath of “progressive” political actions may conquer, particularly as US society and politics becomes increasingly polarized.
So what is at stake with this renewed push for gun control? Quite a bit actually. Honestly, one of the few socially progressive measures to come out of the first bourgeois revolution in this country was the Second Amendment to the Constitution and its now legal extension from militia to individual. We, on the Left, must use this circumstance as a strategic advantage in our struggles to transform society. This is not to say that rightist arguments are “correct” in their support and agitation for expanded access to guns. Indeed, as mentioned earlier in this article, they often advance racist and contrived views about selective “liberties” and about the protection of the (White) family from racialized social menaces. But, the basic tenets of rightist discourse around gun control are something that the Left should consider, albeit in a different fashion, for a vastly divergent set of end goals.
Should more gun control laws be enacted?
Background of the Issue
"Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted?"
The United States has 88.8 guns per 100 people, or about 270,000,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). America's pervasive gun culture stems in part from its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment, which states: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Proponents of more gun control laws state that the Second Amendment was intended for militias; that gun violence would be reduced; that gun restrictions have always existed; and that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions.
Opponents say that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns; that guns are needed for self-defense from threats ranging from local criminals to foreign invaders; and that gun ownership deters crime rather than causes more crime.
Guns in Colonial and Revolutionary America
Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. [105] Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. [105]
Some laws, including in Connecticut (1643) and at least five other colonies, required "at least one adult man in every house to carry a gun to church or other public meetings" in order to protect against attacks by Native Americans; prevent theft of firearms from unattended homes; and, as a 1743 South Carolina law stated, safeguard against "insurrections and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other Slaves." [105] Other laws required immigrants to own guns in order to immigrate or own land. [105]
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791. The notes from the Constitutional Convention do not mention an individual right to a gun for self-defense. [106] Some historians suggest that the idea of an individual versus a collective right would not have occurred to the Founding Fathers because the two were intertwined and inseparable: there was an individual right in order to fulfill the collective right of serving in the militia. [105] [106]
Although guns were common in colonial and revolutionary America, so were gun restrictions. Laws included banning the sale of guns to Native Americans (though colonists frequently traded guns with Native Americans for goods such as corn and fur); banning indentured servants (mainly the Irish) and slaves from owning guns; and exempting a variety of professions from owning guns (including doctors, school masters, lawyers, and millers). [105]
An 1879 sign in Dodge City, KS prohibiting the carrying of guns.
Source: Saul Cornell, "What the 'Right to Bear Arms' Really Means," www.salon.com, Jan. 15, 2011
A 1792 federal law required that every man eligible for militia service own a gun and ammunition suitable for military service, report for frequent inspection of their guns, and register his gun ownership on public records. [101] Many Americans owned hunting rifles or pistols instead of proper military guns, and even though the penalty fines were high (over $9,000 in 2014 dollars), they were levied inconsistently and the public largely ignored the law. [105] [106]
State Gun Laws: Slave Codes and the "Wild West"
From the 1700s through the 1800s, so-called "slave codes" and, after slavery was abolished in 1865, "black codes" (and, still later, "Jim Crow" laws) prohibited black people from owning guns and laws allowing the ownership of guns frequently specified "free white men." [98] For example, an 1833 Georgia law stated, "it shall not be lawful for any free person of colour in this state, to own, use, or carry fire arms of any description whatever… that the free person of colour, so detected in owning, using, or carrying fire arms, shall receive upon his bare back, thirty-nine lashes, and that the fire arm so found in the possession of said free person of colour, shall be exposed for public sale." [107]
Despite images of the "Wild West" from movies, cities in the frontier often required visitors to check their guns with the sheriff before entering the town. [108] In Oct. 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory passed a law stating that no one could fire a gun without the mayor's consent. [109] A sign in Dodge City, Kansas in 1879 read, "The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited." [108] The first law passed in Dodge City was a gun control law that read "any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law." [108]
Federal Gun Laws in the 1900s
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre on Feb. 14, 1929 in Chicago resulted in the deaths of seven gangsters associated with "Bugs" Moran (an enemy of Al Capone) and set off a series of debates and laws to ban machine guns. [110] [111] Originally enacted in 1934 in response to mafia crimes, the National Firearms Act (NFA) imposes a $200 tax and a registration requirement on the making and transfer of certain guns, including shotguns and rifles with barrels shorter than 18 inches ("short-barreled"), machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers, and specific firearms labeled as "any other weapons" by the NFA. [112] [113] Most guns are excluded from the Act.
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 made it illegal to sell guns to certain people (including convicted felons) and required federal firearms licensees (FFLs; people who are licensed by the federal government to sell firearms) to maintain customer records. [114] This Act was overturned by the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Former Reagan Press Secretary Jim Brady sits by President BIll Clinton as Clinton signs the Brady Bill into law on Nov. 30, 1993
Source: Eric Bradner, "Hinckley Won't Face New Charges in Reagan Press Secretary's Death," www.cnn.com, Jan 3, 2015
In 1968 the National Firearms Act was revised to address constitutionality concerns brought up by Haynes v. US (1968), namely that unregistered firearms already in possession of the owner do not have to be registered, and information obtained from NFA applications and registrations cannot be used as evidence in a criminal trial when the crime occurred before or during the filing of the paperwork. [112]
On Oct. 22, 1968, prompted by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), and Robert F. Kennedy (1968), as well as the 1966 University of Texas mass shooting, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) into law. [115] The GCA regulates interstate gun commerce, prohibiting interstate transfer unless completed among licensed manufacturers, importers, and dealers, and restricts gun ownership. [114]
The Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA) revised prior legislation once again. [112] [113] The Act, among other revisions to prior laws, allowed gun dealers to sell guns away from the address listed on their license; limited the number of inspections the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) could perform without a warrant; prevented the federal government from maintaining a database of gun dealer records; and removed the requirement that gun dealers keep track of ammunition sales. [114]
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 (also called the Brady Act) was signed into law on Nov. 30, 1993 and required a five-day waiting period for a licensed seller to hand over a gun to an unlicensed person in states without an alternate background check system. [116] The five-day waiting period has since been replaced by an instant background check system that can take up to three days if there is an inconsistency or more information is needed to complete the sale. [114] Gun owners who have a federal firearms license or a state-issued permit are exempt from the waiting period. [114]
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act), part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on Sep. 13, 1994. The ban outlawed 19 models of semi-automatic assault weapons by name and others by "military features," as well as large-capacity magazines manufactured after the law's enactment. [114] The ban expired on Sep. 13, 2004 and was not renewed due in part to NRA lobbying efforts. [114] [117]
Federal and State Gun Laws in the 2000s
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and Child Safety Lock Act of 2005 was enacted on Oct. 26 by President George W. Bush and gives broad civil liability immunity to firearms manufacturers so they cannot be sued by a gun death victim's family. [114] [118] The Child Safety Lock Act requires that all handguns be sold with a "secure gun storage or safety device."[119]
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 was enacted as a condition of the Brady Act and provides incentives to states (including grants from the Attorney General) for them to provide information to NICS including information on people who are prohibited from purchasing firearms. [114] The NCIS was implemented on Nov. 30, 1998 and later amended on Jan. 8, 2008 in response to the Apr. 16, 2007 Virginia Technical University shooting so that the Attorney General could more easily acquire information pertinent to background checks such as disqualifying mental conditions. [120]
On Jan. 5, 2016, President Obama announced new executive actions on gun control. His measures take effect immediately and include: an update and expansion of background checks (closing the "gun show loophole"); the addition of 200 ATF agents; increased mental health care funding; $4 million and personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (used to link crimes in one jurisdiction to ballistics evidence in another); creating an Internet Investigations Center to track illegal online gun trafficking; a new Department of Health and Human Services rule saying that it is not a HIPAA violation to report mental health information to the background check system; a new requirement to report gun thefts; new research funding for gun safety technologies; and more funding to train law enforcement officers on preventing gun casualties in domestic violence cases. [142] [143]
Open carry activists in Texas pose with rifles.
Source: TruthVoice, "Texas Set to Approve Open Carry of Pistols," www.truthvoice.com, Apr. 19, 2015
In addition to federal gun laws, each state has its own set of gun laws ranging from California with the most restrictive gun laws in the country to Arizona with the most lenient, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign's "2013 State Scorecard." [121]. 43 of 50 states have a "right to bear arms" clause in their state constitutions. [101]
The most common state gun control laws include background checks, waiting periods, and registration requirements to purchase or sell guns. [121] [122] Most states prevent carrying guns, including people with a concealed carry permit, on K-12 school grounds and many states prevent carrying on college campuses. [121] [122] Some states ban assault weapons. [121] [122]
Gun rights laws include concealed and open carry permits, as well as allowing gun carry in usually restricted areas (such as bars, K-12 schools, state parks, and parking areas). [121] [122] Many states have "shoot first" (also called "stand your ground") laws. [121] [122] Open carry of handguns is generally allowed in most states (though a permit may be required). [121] [122]
Collective v. Individual Right: Guns and the Supreme Court
Until 2008, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld a collective right (that the right to own guns is for the purpose of maintaining a militia) view of the Second Amendment, concluding that the states may form militias and regulate guns. [47]
The first time the Court upheld an individual rights interpretation (that individuals have a Constitutional right to own a gun regardless of militia service) of the Second Amendment was the June 26, 2008 US Supreme Court ruling in DC v. Heller. The Court stated that the right could be limited: "There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited… Thus we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose." [1] [3]
A portrait of General Ambrose Burnside, first president of the NRA
Source: John Hathorn, "General Ambrose E. Burnside, May 23-1924-September 13, 1881," www.history.ncsu.edu (accessed May 11, 2015)
The US Supreme Court ruled on June 28, 2010 in McDonald v. Chicago that the Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the Due Process Clause, includes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and, thus, the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government, effectively extending the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment to the states. [123]
On June 27, 2016, in Voisine v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled (6-2) that someone convicted of "recklessly" committing a violent domestic assault can be disqualified from owning a gun under the 1996 Lautenberg Amendment to the 1968 Gun Control Act. Associate Justice Elena Kagan, JD, writing the majority opinion, stated: "Congress enacted §922(g)(9) [the Lautenberg Amendment] in 1996 to bar those domestic abusers convicted of garden-variety assault or battery misdemeanors--just like those convicted of felonies--from owning guns." [150] [151] [152] [153]
On Feb. 20, 2018, the US Supreme Court indicated it would not hear an appeal to California's 10-day waiting period for gun buyers, thus leaving the waiting period in place. [156] Justice Clarence Thomas said the Court should have heard the challenge, stating "The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court's constitutional orphan," in reference to the Court not hearing a major Second Amendment case since 2010. [156]
The National Rifle Association (NRA)
The National Rifle Association calls itself "America's longest-standing civil rights organization." [124] Granted charter on Nov. 17, 1871 in New York, Civil War Union veterans Colonel William C. Church and General George Wingate founded the NRA to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis" to improve the marksmanship of Union troops. [125] General Ambrose Burnside, governor of Rhode Island (1866 to 1869) and US Senator (Mar. 4, 1875 to Sep. 13, 1881), was the first president. [125] [126]
Over 100 years later, in 1977, in what is known as the "Revolt at Cincinnati," new leadership changed the bylaws to make the protection of the Second Amendment right to bear arms the primary focus (ousting the focus on sportsmanship). [127] [128] The group lobbied to disassemble the Gun Control Act of 1968 (the NRA alleged the Act gave power to the ATF that was abused), which they accomplished in 1986 with the Firearms Owners Protection Act. [127]
In 1993 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) funded a study completed by Arthur Kellerman and colleagues, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor in the Home," which found that keeping a gun at home increased the risk of homicide. [129] [130] [131] The NRA accused the CDC of "promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated," and argued that government funding should not be available to politically motivated studies. [129] [130] [131] The NRA notched a victory when Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, which deducted $2.6 billion from the CDC's budget, the exact amount of its gun research program, and restricted CDC (and, later, NIH) gun research. [129] [130] [131] The amendment stated that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." [129] [130] [131] The admonition effectively stopped all federal gun research because, as Kellerman stated, "[p]recisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out." [130] Jay Dickey (R-AR), now retired from Congress, was the author of the Dickey Amendment and has since stated that he no longer supports the amendment: "I wish we had started the proper research and kept it going all this time... I have regrets." [144]
As of Jan. 2013, the NRA had approximately 3 million members, though estimates have varied from 2.6 million to 5 million members. [132] In 2013 the NRA spending budget was $290.6 million. [133] The NRA-ILA actively lobbies against universal checks and registration, "large" magazine and "assault weapons" bans, requiring smart gun features, ballistic fingerprinting, firearm traces, and prohibiting people on the terrorist watchlist from owning guns; and in favor of self-defense (stand your ground) laws. [134] In 2014 the NRA and NRA-ILA spent $3.36 million on lobbying activity aimed primarily at Congress but also the US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Forest Service. [135]
The Gun Control Lobby
The start of the modern gun control movement is largely attributed to Mark Borinsky, PhD, who founded the National Center to Control Handguns (NCCH) in 1974. [136] After being the victim of an armed robbery, Borinsky looked for a gun control group to join but found none, founded NCCH, and worked to grow the organization with Edward O. Welles, a retired CIA officer, and N.T. "Pete" Shields, a Du Pont executive whose son was shot and killed in 1975. [136]
Gun control activists, including Mayor Vincent Gray, march in Washington, DC
Source: Bijon Stanard, "Let's Talk: Obama Speaks; Dr. King's March on Washington 50th Anniversary!," letstalkbluntly.com, Aug. 8, 2013
In 2001, after a few name changes, the National Center to Control Handguns (NCCH) was renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its sister organization, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, was renamed the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, though they are often referred to collectively as the Brady Campaign. [137] The groups were named for Jim Brady, a press secretary to President Ronald Reagan who was shot and permanently disabled on Mar. 30, 1981 during an assassination attempt on the President. [137]
The 2014 gun control lobby was composed of Everytown for Gun Safety, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Sandy Hook Promise, Americans for Responsible Solutions, and Violence Policy Center. [138] Collectively, these groups spent $1.94 million in 2014, primarily aimed at Congress but also the Executive Office of the President, the Vice President, the White House, Department of Justice, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. [138]
The most-recently available total annual spending budgets for gun control groups were $13.7 million collectively (4.7% of the NRA's 2013 budget): including Everytown for Gun Safety ($4.7 million in 2012); the Brady Campaign ($2.7 million in 2012); the Brady Center ($3.1 million in 2010); Coalition to Stop Gun Violence ($308,761 in 2011); Sandy Hook Promise ($2.2 million in 2013); and the Violence Policy Center ($750,311 in 2012). [133]
The Current Gun Control Debate
Largely, the current public gun control debate in the United States occurs after a major mass shooting. There were at least 126 mass shootings between Jan. 2000 and July 2014. [139] [140] Proponents of more gun control often want more laws to try to prevent the mass shootings and call for smart gun laws, background checks, and more protections against the mentally ill buying guns. Opponents of more gun laws accuse proponents of using a tragedy to further a lost cause, stating that more laws would not have prevented the shootings. A Dec. 10, 2014 Pew Research Center survey found 52% of Americans believe the right to own guns should be protected while 46% believe gun ownership should be controlled, a switch from 1993 when 34% wanted gun rights protected and 57% wanted gun ownership controlled. [141] According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll taken shortly after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, 66% of American voters support stricter gun control laws. [155]
https://gun-control.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006436
"Top Pro & Con Arguments" Continues...>>on link provided below>>
https://gun-control.procon.org/
"The Second Amendment"
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Such language has created considerable debate regarding the Amendment's intended scope. On the one hand, some believe that the Amendment's phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" creates an individual constitutional right for citizens of the United States. Under this "individual right theory," the United States Constitution restricts legislative bodies from prohibiting firearm possession, or at the very least, the Amendment renders prohibitory and restrictive regulation presumptively unconstitutional. On the other hand, some scholars point to the prefatory language "a well regulated Militia" to argue that the Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state's right to self-defense. Scholars have come to call this theory "the collective rights theory." A collective rights theory of the Second Amendment asserts that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns and that local, state, and federal legislative bodies therefore possess the authority to regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right.
In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court considered the matter in United States v. Miller. 307 U.S. 174. The Court adopted a collective rights approach in this case, determining that Congress could regulate a sawed-off shotgun that had moved in interstate commerce under the National Firearms Act of 1934 because the evidence did not suggest that the shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated milita . . . ." The Court then explained that the Framers included the Second Amendment to ensure the effectiveness of the military.
This precedent stood for nearly 70 years when in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290). The plaintiff in Heller challenged the constitutionality of the Washington D.C. handgun ban, a statute that had stood for 32 years. Many considered the statute the most stringent in the nation. In a 5-4 decision, the Court, meticulously detailing the history and tradition of the Second Amendment at the time of the Constitutional Convention, proclaimed that the Second Amendment established an individual right for U.S. citizens to possess firearms and struck down the D.C. handgun ban as violative of that right. The majority carved out Miller as an exception to the general rule that Americans may possess firearms, claiming that law-abiding citizens cannot use sawed-off shotguns for any law-abiding purpose. Similarly, the Court in its dicta found regulations of similar weaponry that cannot be used for law-abiding purposes as laws that would not implicate the Second Amendment. Further, the Court suggested that the United States Constitution would not disallow regulations prohibiting criminals and the mentally ill from firearm possession.
Thus, the Supreme Court has revitalized the Second Amendment. The Court continued to strengthen the Second Amendment through the 2010 decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago (08-1521). The plaintiff in McDonald challenged the constitutionally of the Chicago handgun ban, which prohibited handgun possession by almost all private citizens. In a 5-4 decisions, the Court, citing the intentions of the framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment, held that the Second Amendment applies to the states through the incorporation doctrine. However, the Court did not have a majority on which clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the fundamental right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. While Justice Alito and his supporters looked to the Due Process Clause, Justice Thomas in his concurrence stated that the Privileges and Immunities Clause should justify incorporation.
However, several questions still remain unanswered, such as whether regulations less stringent than the D.C. statute implicate the Second Amendment, whether lower courts will apply their dicta regarding permissible restrictions, and what level of scrutiny the courts should apply when analyzing a statute that infringes on the Second Amendment. As a general note, when analyzing statutes and ordinances, courts use three levels of scrutiny, depending on the issue at hand:
Strict scrutiny
Intermediate scrutiny
Rational basis
Recent lower-court case law since Heller suggests that courts are willing to uphold regulations which ban weapons on government property. US v Dorosan, 350 Fed. Appx. 874 (5th Cir. 2009) (upholding defendant’s conviction for bringing a handgun onto post office property);
regulations which ban the illegal possession of a handgun as a juvenile, convicted felon. US v Rene, 583 F.3d 8 (1st Cir. 2009) (holding that the Juvenile Delinquency Act ban of juvenile possession of handguns did not violate the Second Amendment);
regulations which require a permit to carry concealed weapon. Kachalsky v County of Westchester, 701 F.3d 81 (2nd Cir. 2012) (holding that a New York law preventing individuals from obtaining a license to possess a concealed firearm in public for general purposes unless the individual showed proper cause did not violate the Second Amendment.)
More recently, the Supreme Court reinforced its Heller ruling in its Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016) decision. The Court found that the lower "Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was wrong in the three reasons it offered for why the state could ban personal possession or use of a “stun gun” without violating the Second Amendment." The Supreme Court, however, remanded the case without further instructions, so this per curiam ruling did not do much to further clarify the Supreme Court's stance on the Second Amendment.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment
ONEBGG, let's just take a look at the subject matter at hand in depth, which is the topic of my post, "The Second Amendment" and it's historical ramifications in our country, since it's inception.
"The Second Amendment" is one of the most frequently cited provisions in the American Constitution, but also one of the most poorly understood.
The 27 words that constitute the Second Amendment seem to baffle modern Americans on both the left and right.
Ironically, those on both ends of our contemporary political spectrum cast the Second Amendment as a barrier to robust gun regulation. Gun rights supporters – mostly, but not exclusively, on the right – seem to believe that the Second Amendment prohibits many forms of gun regulation. On the left, frustration with the lack of progress on modern gun control leads to periodic calls for the amendment’s repeal.
Both of these beliefs ignore an irrefutable historical truth. The framers and adopters of the Second Amendment were generally ardent supporters of the idea of well-regulated liberty. Without strong governments and effective laws, they believed, liberty inevitably degenerated into licentiousness and eventually anarchy. Diligent students of history, particularly Roman history, the Federalists who wrote the Constitution realized that tyranny more often resulted from anarchy, not strong government.
I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations.
Consider these five categories of gun laws that the Founders endorsed.
#1: Registration
Today American gun rights advocates typically oppose any form of registration – even though such schemes are common in every other industrial democracy – and typically argue that registration violates the Second Amendment. This claim is also hard to square with the history of the nation’s founding. All of the colonies – apart from Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, the one colony in which religious pacifists blocked the creation of a militia – enrolled local citizens, white men between the ages of 16-60 in state-regulated militias. The colonies and then the newly independent states kept track of these privately owned weapons required for militia service. Men could be fined if they reported to a muster without a well-maintained weapon in working condition.
#2: Public Carry [CCW Concealed Carry - Mariner* Agrees with this one and opposes the author in that one CCW obtained in a state should be good in all states. This bill has passed the House and is in the Senate] The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act - I’m proud to lead the charge to advance national concealed carry reciprocity. I introduced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (H.R. 38) to guarantee our Second Amendment rights don’t disappear when we cross state lines. This important bill passed the House on December 6, 2017. It provides law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed and travel freely between states without worrying about conflicting concealed carry state codes or onerous civil suits.
https://hudson.house.gov/second-amendment/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/38/all-info?r=3
Latest Action:
Senate - 12/07/2017 Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/38/all-actions?r=3&overview=closed#tabs
If the Senate had the votes to pass this bill it would have already done so by now. In this current political climate toward gun legislation I would venture to guess it doesn't stand a chance of passing the Senate, which is why it is languishing in committee.
The modern gun rights movement has aggressively pursued the goal of expanding the right to carry firearms in public.
The American colonies inherited a variety of restrictions that evolved under English Common Law. In 18th-century England, armed travel was limited to a few well-defined occasions such as assisting justices of the peace and constables. Members of the upper classes also had a limited exception to travel with arms. Concealable weapons such as handguns were subject to even more stringent restrictions. The city of London banned public carry of these weapons entirely.
The American Revolution did not sweep away English common law. In fact, most colonies adopted common law as it had been interpreted in the colonies prior to independence, including the ban on traveling armed in populated areas. Thus, there was no general right of armed travel when the Second Amendment was adopted, and certainly no right to travel with concealed weapons. Such a right first emerged in the United States in the slave South decades after the Second Amendment was adopted. The market revolution of the early 19th century made cheap and reliable hand guns readily available. Southern murder rates soared as a result.
In other parts of the nation, the traditional English restrictions on traveling armed persisted with one important change. American law recognized an exception to this prohibition for individuals who had a good cause to fear an imminent threat. Nonetheless, by the end of the century, prohibiting public carry was the legal norm, not the exception.
#3: Stand-your-ground laws
Under traditional English common law, one had a duty to retreat, not stand your ground. Deadly force was justified only if no other alternative was possible. One had to retreat, until retreat was no longer possible, before killing an aggressor.
The use of deadly force was justified only in the home, where retreat was not required under the so-called castle doctrine, or the idea that “a man’s home is his castle.” The emergence of a more aggressive view of the right of self-defense in public, standing your ground, emerged slowly in the decades after the Civil War.
#4: Safe storage laws
Although some gun rights advocates attempt to demonize government power, it is important to recognize that one of the most important rights citizens enjoy is the freedom to elect representatives who can enact laws to promote health and public safety. This is the foundation for the idea of ordered liberty. The regulation of gun powder and firearms arises from an exercise of this basic liberty.
In 1786, Boston acted on this legal principle, prohibiting the storage of a loaded firearm in any domestic dwelling in the city. Guns had to be kept unloaded, a practice that made sense since the black powder used in firearms in this period was corrosive. Loaded guns also posed a particular hazard in cases of fire because they might discharge and injure innocent bystanders and those fighting fires.
#5: Loyalty Oaths
One of the most common claims one hears in the modern Second Amendment debate is the assertion that the Founders included this provision in the Constitution to make possible a right of revolution. But this claim, too, rests on a serious misunderstanding of the role the right to bear arms played in American constitutional theory.
In fact, the Founders engaged in large-scale disarmament of the civilian population during the American Revolution. The right to bear arms was conditional on swearing a loyalty oath to the government. Individuals who refused to swear such an oath were disarmed.
The notion that the Second Amendment was understood to protect a right to take up arms against the government is absurd. Indeed, the Constitution itself defines such an act as treason.
Thank you. I question the right to question and debate and further clarify the proclivity concerning the stonewalling to revisit gun laws in this country that affect us all, and not just a chosen few.
When you were a kid and you asked your parents a question about something and they told you they didn't want to talk about it, what did you do?
Respectfully ONEBGG, you've been doing this to me for years now. Whenever I post something you don't like or agree with, you want to attack the author and / or the site, instead of the subject matter.
Whenever I post something that you do like, and on this particular board is pretty much all the time, then you're cool with it.
Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved
https://theconversation.com/five-types-of-gun-laws-the-founding-fathers-loved-85364
The Ultimate Blowback Universe
A Planet Boiling With Unintended Consequences
By Tom Engelhardt
Humanity Nailed to a Cross of Coal
There was, in fact, another kind of blowback underway and the American empire was clearly a player in it, too, even a major one, but hardly the only one. Every place using fossil fuels was involved. This form of blowback threatens not just the decline of a single great imperial power but of humanity itself, of the very environment that nurtured generation after generation of us over these thousands of years. By definition, that makes it the worst form of blowback imaginable.
What I have in mind, of course, is climate change or global warming. In a way, you could think of it as the story of another kind of superpower and how it launched the decline of us all. On a planetary scale, the giant corporations (and national fuel companies) that make up global Big Energy have long been on the hunt for every imaginable reserve of fossil fuels and for ways to control and exploit them. The oil, natural gas, and coal such outfits extracted fueled industrial society, still-spreading car cultures, and consumerism as we know it.
Over most of the years such companies were powering human development, the men who ran them and their employees had no idea that the greenhouse gasses released by the burning of fossil fuels were heating the atmosphere and the planet’s waters in potentially disastrous ways. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, like scientists elsewhere, those employed by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, had become aware of the phenomenon (as would those of other energy companies). That meant the men who ran Exxon and other major firms recognized in advance of most of the rest of us just what kind of blowback the long-term burning of oil, natural gas, and coal was going to deliver: a planet ever less fit for human habitation.
They just didn’t think those of us in the non-scientific community should know about it and so, by the 1990s, they were already doing their damnedest to hide it from us. However, when scientists not in their employ started to publicize the new reality in a significant way, as the heads of some of the most influential and wealthiest corporations on Earth they began to invest striking sums in the fostering of a universe of think tanks, lobbyists, and politicians devoted to what became known as climate-change denial. Between 1998 and 2014, for instance, Exxon would pump $30 million into just such think tanks and similar groups, while donating $1.87 million directly to congressional climate-change deniers.
It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that, from its inception, this was the functional definition of the worst crime in history. In the name of record profits and the comfortable life (as well as corporate sustainability in an unendingly fossil-fuelized world), their CEOs had no hesitation about potentially dooming the human future to a hell on Earth of rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and ever more extreme weather; they gave, that is, a new, all-encompassing meaning to the term genocide. They were prepared, if necessary, to take out the human species.
But I suspect even they couldn’t have imagined quite how successful they would be when it came to bringing the sole superpower of the post-9/11 world on board. In a sense, the two leading forms of blowback of the twenty-first century -- the imperial and fossil-fuelized ones -- came to be focused in a single figure. After all, it’s hard to imagine the rise to power of Donald Trump in a world in which the Bush administration had decided not to invade either Afghanistan or Iraq but to treat its “Global War on Terror” as a localized set of police actions against one international criminal and his scattered group of followers.
As it happened, one form of blowback from the disastrous wars that were meant to create the basis for a Pax Americana planet helped to produce the conditions and fears at home that put Donald Trump in the White House.
Good point 12yearplan, article points out what changing weather patterns can do to our fragile wildlife all over the entire planet.
Even the scientists studying all these changes are baffled at times to the repercussions of climate change, because it all is happening so quickly. Never before in recorded geologic time: #msg-136236814 has the increase in Co2 happened so quickly [since the industrial revolution] affecting changes to the planet, and it's the cause and effect to man made global warming.
The evidence is clear and irrefutable, unless you're getting paid off by the dirty energy cartel and their supporters, to bury Incontrovertible evidence and deny it's existence.
The North Pole just had an extreme heat wave for the 3rd winter in a row
As snow falls in Rome, the Arctic is getting alarmingly hot in the middle of winter.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/2/27/17053284/arctic-heat-wave-north-pole-climate
Yup totffe, it totally stands to reason that that's the case here. I'm thinking by the beginning of March everything will be all buttoned up and case closed.
After that happens we're all expecting to see the back filings start to bring ASFX all up to date with FINRA.
It'll happen and when it does, they will remove this puppy and then it's "GO TIME".
When Does Caveat Emptor Get Removed?
Facts and circumstances may differ, however generally, "OTC Markets Group will remove the Caveat Emptor designation once the company meets the qualifications for Pink Current Information", has verified the information on its company profile on www.otcmarkets.com, and demonstrates that there is no longer a public interest concern. The Caveat Emptor designation is typically not removed within the first 30 days. During the time it is labeled Caveat Emptor, the security will also have its quotes blocked on www.otcmarkets.com.
https://www.otcmarkets.com/learn/caveat-emptor
Market Makers want peeps to sell them shares. They will be pulling all the tricks out of the playbook to get them.
Remember, there hasn't been any shares released from the treasury for five long years, and in that time it's been trading and the MM's have been making a market for this security.
Market makers do this stuff for a living, it's their job to make the market fluid and equitable, and oh'yes...make money doing it.
Do you think for one minute that the MM's would be wanting to purchase shares on the verge of a downturn, or an outright elimination?
Yeah right, you don't think that the MM's have a pretty good guess what exactly is going down here with this stock?
They know exactly that it is on the cusp of a major increase in PPS on the charts, that has been five years in the making.
They didn't get their rich cushy jobs being stupid.
https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/ASFX/security
Security Notes
Capital Change=shs increased by 15 for 1 split. Ex-date=03-10-00. Rec. date=02-10-00. Pay. date=03-08-00.
They did a 15 to 1 forward split back in 2000 working on eight years ago. Share structure hasn't changed since.
Not if, but when they do a name and ticker change with FINRA after getting all their filings up to date for an "Expected" reverse merger, all the ducks have to be in a row. All shares sold to the individual shareholders [All Shareholders] have to be accounted for prior to FINRA doing any kind of changes to any security under their purview.
The market makers know this, they know what's coming down the pike and if there are any unresolved issues concerning share allocation {and I'm not saying that there is,} but there is a very good chance that there exists some disparity in allocation. If that is indeed the case here, then the MM's are going to be jumping through hoops to rectify the situation "Before" they are backed up to a wall. Imo, this + buying pressure, spells for some very freaked out Market Makers.
It could be why you're seeing large numbers on the bid to attract sellers, which isn't happening, because a large number of shareholders have been here for a very long time. What's a couple more months of waiting to see how things pan out.
Keeping all this in mind, I think the chart is in store for some major boomerang effect. That's a technical term for OMG!
Once the Trustee disburses, and all the checks have cleared [I'm pretty sure all that has taken place. Internal mail can take up to seven to ten days to process. [Usually three to four.] I'd wager the checks were sent certified mail or Fedex express delivery. Banks take three days to clear a check.
You do the math, all the checks have already cleared 100%
Then the Trustee will file a report asking the court to close the case file.
That Trustee report asking the court to close the case file, has already been filed with the court.
[I would be willing to wager, but of course in fact I don't know, but it stands to reason that the Trustee has already filed a request to the court.]
That request from the Trustee to the court, to close case file
#12-14640-JKO American Scientific Resources ASFX
is currently sitting is a pile of yet to be processed requests to the court, I would surmise.
Hurry up and wait, won't be too long now...imo
Thawing Arctic Permafrost Hides a Toxic Risk: Mercury, in Massive Amounts
Mercury, a powerful neurotoxin, accumulates in the food chain. At these levels, it could put the Arctic's subsistence hunters and fisheries at risk.
By Sabrina Shankman
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06022018/thawing-arctic-permafrost-mercury-neurotoxin-health-risk-hunters-fisheries-climate-change
Sea Level Rise Threatens to Wipe Out West Coast Wetlands
Unless people intervene, U.S. Pacific Coast marshes could vanish as the ocean rises, eliminating wildlife habitat, storm surge protection and carbon storage.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022018/sea-level-rise-coastal-wetlands-global-warming-mitigation-wildlife-habitat-storm-surge-usgs
Citing 'Urgent Threat' of Climate Crisis, 236 US Mayors Denounce Trump's Attack on Clean Power Plan
"No one is insulated from the impacts of climate change—people in cities of all sizes, along with suburban and rural communities are all at risk."
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/02/21/citing-urgent-threat-climate-crisis-236-us-mayors-denounce-trumps-attack-clean-power
They are getting push back from many different areas, but Money, Power and control still rules.
Screw the people and most assuredly anything connected to Obama, in lieu of the wishes of corporate America.
I haven't seen the new budget proposal but I've heard that it cuts massive amounts from Medicaid as a social entitlement and a bunch of other stuff that are going to hurt the middle class.
I appreciate the board members stock picks, and their associated research connected to them.
It's a great board and thank you guys / gals!
It should be noted though that all information should be relegated and filtered through your own mind, by doing your own investigation of stock picks. Especially after owning the stock you should really start doing that progressively using all resources available, and not relying too heavily upon another members opinion or findings.
Individual members need to verify for themselves whether or not it's in their best interest to buy or sell or hold a stock.
Bottom line is you should never fall in love with a stock, any stock. They are there to be traded especially in the OTC.
Plan the trade, Trade the plan.
But ultimately it's your decision to make, and nobody is responsible other than yourself, for any profit or loss in your account other than yourself.
Mariner*
I don't see any connections here at all from Tara Lordi, if there were any we would see them listed here:
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResults/OfficerRegisteredAgentName/Lordi%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Tara/Page1
So, I guess that makes this the legal registration that is active and reinstated in DE.
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=AMERICANSCIENTIFICRESOURCES%20F120000009830&aggregateId=forp-f12000000983-2dd5fb59-ae0a-424b-bbda-ad5e441dae66&searchTerm=American%20Scientific%20Resources%20Inc.&listNameOrder=AMERICANSCIENTIFICRESOURCES%20F110000027670
Contact person: Officer/Director Detail Name & Address
Title President, Director
FABER, ROBERT
1200 N. Federal Highway
Suite 200
BOCA RATON, FL 33432
Brooklands Inc. has the same contact info:
http://www.buzzfile.com/business/Brooklands,-Inc.-561-994-2536 With 3.6 Million in annual sales with 18 employees?
I guess they could spare a few bucks to bring ASFX filings current in order to facilitate it as a vehicle to reverse merge Brooklands Inc. into a public shell, if they are still in business?
They are listed as active:
https://www.flbusinessgo.com/gg?utm_term=F12000000983
I think this is all ^^^outdated information.^^^
Current as of April 5, 2017
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/GetDocument?aggregateId=forp-f12000000983-2dd5fb59-ae0a-424b-bbda-ad5e441dae66&transactionId=f12000000983-15d9b370-02bb-4696-8c38-69c6db6b7fae&formatType=PDF
Maybe Vcorp could provide some more information?
Name and Address of Current Registered Agent:
VCORP SERVICES, LLC
5011 SOUTH STATE ROAD
SUITE 106
DAVIE,FL
33314
US
VCORP SERVICES, LLC
Address: 1013 CENTRE ROAD SUITE 403-B
City: WILMINGTON County: New Castle
State: DE Postal Code: 19805
Phone: 845-425-0077
Ph: 888-528-2677
or 302-497-7115
Fax: 845-818-3588
https://corp.delaware.gov/agents/a9652437.shtml
http://www.vcorpservices.com/
Active in Florida:
https://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Boca-Raton/vcorp-services-llc/25956807.aspx
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=VCORPSERVICES%20M080000031630&aggregateId=forl-m08000003163-d9e8209b-549b-416b-8047-2fe9472192d4&searchTerm=Vcorp%20Services%2C%20LLC&listNameOrder=VCORPSERVICES%20M080000031630
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/GetDocument?aggregateId=forl-m08000003163-d9e8209b-549b-416b-8047-2fe9472192d4&transactionId=m08000003163-5e997240-a37f-472f-8b53-6feb51040e8d&formatType=PDF
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=VCORPSERVICES%20M080000031630&aggregateId=forl-m08000003163-d9e8209b-549b-416b-8047-2fe9472192d4&searchTerm=Vcorp%20Services%2C%20LLC&listNameOrder=VCORPSERVICES%20M080000031630
Thxs jhnvtjll, I thought maybe I could just ask his daughter a question in reference to it, but I can't figure out what TLC is?
https://www.yellowpages.com/wellington-fl/tlc
Tara Lordi models her father’s success establishing her equally successful company TLC of Wellington, FL.
Thxs for looking that up, I guess that I'll just let that one go for now. I think maybe you're right on that one, could be just speculation on his part, anyway I just thought that it was interesting. He had his fingers in a lot of stuff.
Ok as an addendum, I think this is her:
https://www.bizapedia.com/fl/tlc-development-and-real-estate-services-llc.html
These are all the companies she is affiliated with, we are not one of them:
https://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Wellington/tara-a-lordi/25987089.aspx
I'll see if maybe I can contact her:
https://www.mylife.com/tara-lordi/taralordi
https://visulate.com/rental/visulate_search.php?CORP_ID=L13000142803
Thank you jhnvtjll, so do you have any idea what this is all about with this guy:
https://www.ishcc.org/FL/Orange-Park/american-scientific-resources-inc
You can't have dueling company registrations, either one or both of them are not right. #msg-138437373
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=AMERICANSCIENTIFICRESOURCES%20P140000625360&aggregateId=domp-p14000062536-b3e58e9e-b793-4346-bae1-59bb36fe4508&searchTerm=American%20Scientific%20Resources%20Inc.&listNameOrder=AMERICANSCIENTIFICRESOURCES%20F110000027670
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ConvertTiffToPDF?storagePath=COR%5C2014%5C0725%5C10601651.tif&documentNumber=P14000062536
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/GetDocument?aggregateId=domp-p14000062536-b3e58e9e-b793-4346-bae1-59bb36fe4508&transactionId=p14000062536-1604e666-ff2e-4b85-b80c-00ccfd64427b&formatType=PDF
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/GetDocument?aggregateId=domp-p14000062536-b3e58e9e-b793-4346-bae1-59bb36fe4508&transactionId=p14000062536-1604e666-ff2e-4b85-b80c-00ccfd64427b&formatType=PDF
[SO] This guy is a registered agent? To just keep the company alive and kicking? Or is this another company altogether?
LORDI, PETER F JR. 1949 WOODWORTH DRIVE ORANGE PARK, FL 32065 US
The above named entity submits this statement for the purpose of changing its registered office or registered agent, or both, in the State of Florida.
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResults/OfficerRegisteredAgentName/LORDI%20PETER%20F%20JR/Page1
I'm confused,
Mariner*
I called my sister in Michigan from the Pacific North West [which I absolute love] and told her that I left home with my winter coat and hat and gloves on a blistery winter day, and then was reduced to taking it all off once the sun came out, and was walking down the sidewalk in a short sleeve shirt sweating my butt off.
She was thoroughly disgusted, and told me to shut up.
Lolol, If that wasn't so true, I would be crying right now I'd be laughing so hard.
Bottom line is we stand for the almighty dollar, truth and justice for all [according to our definition of it as it relates to our ever changing stance on a daily basis]
We stand for religious freedom, as long as Jesus wants to persecute anyone who stands in our way along with us to unite and foster the chosen ones that for the most part are white. After all if it's white, it's right. Right?
We will defend to the bitter end our continued support for those that will endure to fight for the rights of our corporate brethren, that disenfranchise everyone beneath them into a lull and dismal existence fraught with lies and misconceptions, propagated by falsehoods and chicanery.
We will carry to our very deaths the drama and theater that support the house of cards we call democracy by attrition propagated by greed.
There is no mountain too high to climb or voracious enough to exhibit our inner fortitude in display of the incongruent inconsistencies, that are forever consistent with a aberrant abnormal pig in flight.
Children Speak Out About Donald Trump
Duty, Honor, Country.
It's your Duty to defend the Country from all enemies, Foreign or Domestic.
It is to honor the fallen in defense of the indefensible, to protect the unprotected and defend that which is so near and dear to our hearts.
Our Country, which is under assault from within and without.
"The master is truth, the defender is honesty.
Honor is the breastplate of courage.
Warriors of clear thinking are the spearhead of angelic light".
Then they run away into an enclosed area, gated, refusing to acknowledge that there is an entire world outside of their limited view of reality.
That about covers it, I can't even post on those boards anymore, my head just explodes.
And then they erect an entire circle around themselves identifying all of the people that have problems, except themselves of course.
They are consumed with pontification exacerbating one central tenet, their psychological sphere is eroding, due to the admittance of sunlight.
I told you guys, the emperor has no clothes.
Wait until there are multiple peeps wanting shares, instead of just one trader.
The word "Bombastic" comes to mind.
And then they become indigent and insulted and refuse to do any internal reflection upon their thinking processes continuing the exact same communication links in their brain that got them into hot water in the first place.
The first part to correcting or alleviating a behavior problem, is actually realizing or in your case admonishing that there is a problem in existence at all.
Denial isn't a river in Egypt, it's the refusal to even entertain that there is any kind of a river there at all.
It's not that you're misinformed, it's that you prefer to claim an attitude of superiority, based in stupidity.
I'm not calling you stupid, I'm just saying that you fall into a group of people that share the exact same tendencies.
They refute criticisms to their uninformed comments with distain and retribution.
Usually followed with comments like you just made.
Which are just like the following frame of mindset:
Well you're either with us or against us.
If you don't like it, then why don't you just move to Canada.
You are either unwilling or unable to see that the qualities you are exhibiting are those of a closed off personality mindset that doesn't wish to entertain view points that [they think] are not consistent with their belief structure.