TRoaches

I did not realize that a score was being kept, but if this is the case I hardly feel like I am losing. I don't think anyone should ever be held accountable for the actions of another person. That was your premise, not mine. I just wondered who you thought should be blamed now that it is obvious that gun control policy had nothing to do with it. It seems that your accountability theory is only being applied when it can be conveniently used to demonize someone you disagree with. As the NPR article points out, the other ricin mailer was also found to be a fraud who was trying to frame another person for the crime due to a personal dispute. The content of those letters from gave no mention to guns or gun control and did not resemble anything that LaPierre has ever said. They were very vague rants that made no mention of any policy. It sounds like the idea that the world is in danger from "gun nuts" may be one of those false narratives that you keep mentioning. Maybe the people who spread that false narrative should be held accountable!

But wait! Where did she get the idea to do this? Surely she could not have come up with this idea all on her own. Someone must have planted the idea in her head. We must hold others accountable for her actions! So, colourwheel.....Who else is to blame for this? You have maintained thus far that a person would not do such a thing without being influenced by someone prominent. Who influenced this person? Who should be held accountable, and expected to condemn her actions?

Nobody mentioned or suggested arrest before you did. It was in this post in response to the same question that I asked in my last post: What does it mean to be "held accountable"? OH HEY LOOK AT THIS! It turns out that the person who mailed the letters did it because she wanted to frame her husband for the crime due to their impending divorce. I guess it had nothing to do with gun control after all! So, considering this new information, who do you think should be held accountable now?

When pressed to define what it means to be "held accountable" you said that people should be arrested for their rhetoric. So now I guess we are back to that question. What does it mean to "hold accountable", as you are now using it?

Excellent! The idea of arresting someone for their political expression is part of your premise that I found most objectionable, and have been arguing most strongly against. Of course you can retract that, and I would be most pleased if you did.

Arrest is clearly a form of imprisonment. However, if it will help you to focus on the topic of the thread I hereby retract any prior mention of imprisonment. You have done nothing more than advocate the arrest of LaPierre. Under suspicion of what crime should Lapierre be arrested, and for what duration of time do you think he should be held under arrest?

You are mistaken. Imprisonment is any form of detention against someone's will. Incarceration is long term imprisonment due to a conviction. You are confusing imprisonment with incarceration. Imprisonment Incarceration You stated that LaPierre should be arrested for his expression. You could retract that statement, but you instead are attempting to divert the discussion away from your advocacy of censorship under penalty of arrest using semantical arguments. Even your semantical arguments are incorrect. Again with the incorrect semantical argument. A Senator is a member of congress, commonly referred to as a congressman or congresswoman. Your description is of a Representative, who is a member of a specific house of congress. You are demonstrating a lack of even the most basic knowledge about how the US government is structured. Member of Congress He was elected by the citizens of Kentucky to represent them in the Senate. He represents the majority of voters in his state. He also disproves your point that LaPierre is the sole source of worry about the current direction of gun control policy.

The difference is semantically non-existent. They two terms do exactly equate with each other. Being arrested is a form of temporary imprisonment. Imprisonment does not mean "sentenced to prison". It simply means that your freedom has been suspended or limited. If a civilian unlawfully detains another civilian the crime is called "false imprisonment". If a person is arrested and released they were temporarily imprisoned during the arrest. Even if he is arrested and released 1 hour later it is still a form of imprisonment. Read this article for more information. What crime do you think LaPierre should be charged with when he is arrested? For what length of time should he be detained? Considering that you have plagiarized at least two wikipedia articles in this thread I would say that perhaps you are not a very good researcher. I had honestly never heard of LaPierre before you mentioned him, and I have those same ideas in my head as the judges, scholars, artists, etc. It comes from a different understanding and perspective on historical precedent and context, not some geek at the NRA. Senator Rand Paul

It is not a theory. It is precisely what you suggested in this post: If you ask me people who are political pundents that constantly keep repeating the false narrative generating this fear and hate that their guns are going to be taken away should make offical public statements in light of recent events leading to these dangerous letters. Would be nice if they could atleast bring to light that no one is going to come take their precious fire arms away. They should take their "personal responsibility" to address their public audience that what they have been preaching is not the truth. And if they persist they should be arrested for continuation of promoting false dangerous political rhetoric that has lead to domestic terror and harm to average american people. Freedom of speech should only be valid until it starts to hurt other people and infringe on other peoples freedoms... So what did you mean by that? Because it sure looks like you are advocating the arrest of people who say what LaPierre says. Would you like to clarify that?

You copy-pasted every word of that from the wikipedia article on the second amendment. Now you should do the same for the article on the first amendment, and try to fit your theory that LaPierre should be imprisoned for his political expression in with what it says about the protection of freedom of expression, particularly with regards to criticism of political leaders and policy.

There is no mention of any specific threat. It simply says that the right to bear arms is intended to keep the nation secure. You are incorrectly stating why it was written by narrowing the scope of intent to protection against the government. It is about protection from any possible threat. Switzerland managed to avoid invasion through two world wars, and it was not because the larger, more powerful militaries were afraid of the Swiss military. It was, in large part, because their entire population is known to be armed. When Katrina happened there was near anarchy in the streets, and people who were armed stood a better chance of defending themselves against opportunistic criminals. When the confiscations happened it was done according to the gun ownership registries, meaning that the lawfully owned guns were confiscated while the illegal guns stayed in the street. This made everyone LESS secure. If anything the constitution is intended to eliminate the need for armed rebellion by allowing us to remove any official at any time through civil methods. Your rebellion/nuclear/drone scenario only serves to illustrate why the 2nd amendment is not about fighting against the government. The constitution does not recognize a right to bear arms against governmental authorities. It provides civil methods to remove those in power, and limits the power that any individual or group can hold and abuse, thus negating the need for rebellion. It is intended to avoid future revolutions, not encourage or enable them.

Absurd!?! :teehee: Did I ever say new legislation won't effect existing constitutional rights? no! :rolleyes: Yes, you did. Seriously, its right there. I quoted it again to save you the trouble of scrolling back. You say that it will "not even affect" that existing constitutional right. There is no mention of overthrowing tyrannical government in the amendment. The purpose of the amendment is to allow the citizens to protect themselves from anything: government intrusion, criminals, foreign invaders, wild animals, aliens, whatever. More importantly, my point was correct in that you are mistaken about the nature of the bill of rights. It does not grant rights to people. It protects the people from infringement upon their rights. It does not say that you have rights because the government gave them to you. Rather, it says that the government shall lack the power to infringe upon your rights. Governments do not give people rights. Governments take rights away. You are looking at it backwards. But, for the sake of argument, let us pretend that you are correct and that is the intent of the law. Wouldn't that require that the citizens are able to obtain weapons that are on par with those that the military uses? In other words, if the purpose of the amendment is to protect the citizens from the government, and the government has automatic rifles, wouldn't a law prohibiting the possession of automatic rifles be in violation of the spirit, if not the wording, of the law? The accusation is that they will change or circumvent the law, not violate it. In other words, it is an accusation of bad policy, not an accusation of a crime. Your comparison to pedophilia is illogical. If you change the law, or legally circumvent it as was done in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, then it is not a violation. As you pointed out, there was a state of emergency declared in New Orleans that allowed that circumvention to take place. Given the fact that we have officially been in a perpetual national state of emergency for decades then there is no reason to doubt the possibility of LEGAL gun confiscations occurring. Also, as I pointed out before, even if an executive order to confiscate is illegal the people who are duty bound to carry out that order do not have the luxury of debating its legality. They must comply with the order. Some of the soldiers who were confiscating guns in New Orleans made it clear that they did not want to do it but they had no choice but to carry out their duties.

This is an absurd statement. It is not possible to pass a law that legislates something without affecting it. The second amendment does not grant the right to bear arms. It prohibits the government from infringing upon that right through legislation. It is a subtle but significant difference. It is obvious that you have not read it, or did not pay attention what it said. He can claim whatever he wants. It does not make it true. Racial separatists claim to speak for all people of their race, despite the fact that most would want nothing to do with their message. It does not mean that all members of that race should be punished for the statements made by someone falsely claiming to speak on their behalf. I do recognize this. In fact, I agree that he is probably wrong at least as far as focusing blame on the President with regard to the gun control situation. I do, however, support his right to expression and refute his culpability with regard to the actions people who are beyond his control. It is unfair to hold someone accountable for the actions of another. The difference is that accusing a government official of pursuing an objectionable policy agenda is not an accusation of a crime. If you accuse someone of pedophilia you are making a criminal accusation. If the accusation is shown to be false, but your accusation demonstrably caused harm to that person's reputation, then you have slandered them. If you accuse an official of pursuing an objectionable policy you are not accusing them of anything illegal. The constitution is structured so that the 2nd amendment could be repealed if there was enough support for such a repeal, and the legal code is complex enough that the 2nd amendment can be circumvented in a number of ways. To accuse a person of pursuing the repeal or circumvention of the 2nd amendment is not to accuse them of a crime. It is an accusation of bad policy, and there is nothing wrong, immoral, or slanderous about that. Why do you consistently refer to guns as "precious"?

Please explain what the difference is. LaPierre is not the spokesperson for gun owners across the nation. He is a spokesperson for a gun rights group. Not all gun owners belong to this group, and not all gun owners agree with his politics. It is not fair to lump all gun owners together as a single hive-mind entity. He does not represent all of them, and has never claimed to. This means that you must recognize that LaPierre could possibly be correct in his assessment. If you recognize that it is not possible to disprove his statements then you must recognize that they could possibly be true. Why do you believe that he has the power to brainwash people? Why are you so sure that the person who mailed the ricin did so because of LaPierre, despite the fact that we don't even know who the person is? It is ironic that YOU are the one who is making accusations without proof, the very thing that you repeatedly accused LaPierre of doing and said he should be imprisoned for. Nothing that LaPierre says is unique to him alone, so it is not possible to link his statements with the ricin letters. There are plenty of other people who say the same sorts of things. Some of them are in congress, or work as judges, or are local politicians, or scholars, or artists. Why do you insist that LaPierre MUST be the source of the problem? If LaPierre made a public statement that he was sorry, was wrong about everything, and was retiring do you think it would suddenly make the world a safer place?

Absolutely not. I think everyone should be free to express their beliefs, no matter how strange or controversial they are, without fear. At no point in this discussion have I advocated that anyone retract or suppress their beliefs. I would never even suggest it, regardless of who the people or the beliefs in question are. You, however, made this thread to argue in favor of such suppression. How hard do you think it is to find "a few webpages" that would back the claim that Obama is in favor of increased gun control legislation? LaPierre is making a speculative prediction. I am dumbfounded that you continue to demand that he prove that something will happen in the future. It is almost like you do not understand the nature of time itself. I'm going to say this as simply as I can.... It is not possible to prove or disprove a prediction about the future. You have to wait and see what happens to find out if the person was correct. It is no different than if I said "France will win the gold medal in men's basketball at the next olympics", and you replied "PROVE IT!". Or if I said "Hillary Clinton will run for President in the next election" and you replied "PROVE IT!". Or if I said "August will be very hot, with little rainfall" and you replied "PROVE IT!" Or if I said "The next TES game will take place in Black Marsh" and you replied "PROVE IT!" Or if I said "Star Wars VII is going to suck" and you replied "PROVE IT!" Or if I said "When I die I will be a ghost and haunt your house" and you replied "PROVE IT!" It is not possible to prove, or disprove, LaPierre's speculation as true or false. You can not prove that he is wrong, because Obama has not finished his term. LaPierre cannot prove the he is correct for the same reason.

The SPLC condemned Corkin's attack, but they did not retract their position on the FRC. Does this mean that if LaPierre issued a statement condemning the ricin letters, but did not retract his position regarding the executive gun control agenda, that you would also consider him absolved of guilt with regards to the ricin? If not, why?

In August 2012 Floyd Corkins entered the Washington D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council and began shooting. Thankfully he only managed to wound a security guard, who then subdued him until he was arrested. During the investigation that followed he stated, very specifically, that he chose his target based on information that he got from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC had listed the organization that he targeted as an anti-gay hate group. His plan was to kill as many people as possible and smother Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in their faces as a political statement about that companies positions related to gay rights. Colourwheel: Given that Corkins very specifically stated to investigators that the information found on the SPLC website was the reason for the attack on the FRC do you believe that the SPLC should be held accountable for his actions? If so, how severe should the SPLC's punishment be, in your opinion? If not, why?

He is speculating about the political agenda of a publicly elected official. Evidence is not required to support speculation or opinion. There is nothing slanderous about what he said. You seem confused about what slander really means. Can you prove that anything that he said was a lie? He speculated about the political views and possible future actions of an elected official, and expressed his opinion about that official. Neither of these statements can be categorically defined as true or false: one is a speculative prediction yet to be proven true or false, and the other is an opinion. Would it be possible to prove that something that he said actually lead to a crime? No, it cannot. You are correct. The concept is ridiculous, both when it is applied to you and when it is applied to LaPierre. I did not claim that you slandered him, only that your negative opinion of him could influence someone to act violently against him according to your own theory presented in this thread. You said earlier that we should not only judge him by what he literally says but also by what he may be implying through his statements. Specifically, you said that he is afraid of gun confiscations when he never said that. You interpreted his words to mean confiscation, and are claiming that the ricin mailer did the same. If the same premise is applied to your statements about LaPierre then one could deduce that you are implying that he is expressing dangerous rhetoric, and that stopping the rhetoric via violence against him is a good idea. You did defame him by calling him a loony and making childish x-files references, but more so by associating his expression of opinion with the actions of the author of the ricin letter. Through this association, you have portrayed him as a danger to society. You are correct in saying that it does not justify violence against him and that such violence should not be blamed on you, but this also means that the ricin letters should not be blamed on LaPierre or anyone else who has been critical of government policy. How can you be sure that your rhetoric is not a source of danger? I don't think it is, and I don't think you should withhold your opinion out of fear of influencing someone negatively. You, however, have been arguing that everyone should withhold controversial opinions about public figures to prevent the incitement of violence against them. If this is truly how you feel then you should not criticize LaPierre or anyone else for fear of inciting violence. If LaPierre's words are dangerous then so are yours. If you are arguing that LaPierre's words are dangerous enough to warrant punishment and censorship but your words are not then you are applying a different standard to him than you do to yourself.

So now the person whose rhetoric you want to target can be punished for the implied meaning of what they are saying? To recap, you support legal punishment, including imprisonment, as a possible punishment for someone who says something that could be interpreted to imply something that has the potential to distress another person enough that it causes them to do something dangerous. Does that sound about right? Following that line of thinking, let us pretend for a moment that you have convinced me that LaPierre is a dangerous loony and, as a result of your publicly expressed rhetoric, I decide to assassinate him to prevent him from spreading his dangerous rhetoric. If am arrested for this crime and claim to the authorities that you planted the idea in my brain that he is a danger to society then you should be held accountable, according to your own standard, and potentially imprisoned for implying that he is a dangerous loony who must be stopped at any cost. Would this be acceptable to you?

@colourwheel: At no point in that video does LaPierre use the words confiscate, grab, take, or any synonym of those words in reference to guns.

Your mention of a national state of emergency as some far-fetched and rare circumstance is much more laughable, because the entire United States has been in a formal state of emergency for many years now. The federal government entered a state of emergency on 9-11-2001 by order from the President. This order has been extended one two three four times by president Obama. If a state of emergency is justification for suspension of rights then gun advocates, free-speech advocates, and any other advocate of the civil rights that are affected by such orders are acting rationally if they are concerned about the protection of our civil rights due to the current and seemingly perpetual state of national emergency. I don't understand your logic here. If the executive branch is publicly discussing doing something via executive order why would you not interpret that action as a real possibility? Why would they mention it if they have no intention of doing it? If an executive branch member said "We are considering revoking abortion rights via executive order" don't you think that would worry abortion rights advocates? I doubt any of them would say anything like "Just because they are discussing it publicly does not mean they will really do it". Quite the opposite, there would be an uproar of opposition and rightly so. It would be more accurate to say that the President is not supposed to have much power via executive order, but the last few presidents have ignored that premise and abused executive orders to advance policy agendas. If the President gives an order to the FBI, ATF, ICE, DHS, or any other alphabet agency or military branch they do not sit around debating the legal merits of his order. They are compelled, as organs of the executive branch, to follow those orders. If someone wants to challenge the order through legislation or judicial action they can do that, but in the meantime the order will be carried out by the people it is given to, immediately and without question. I don't see how one could argue that this amounts to anything less than an immense level of power, with huge potential for abuse and a very real record of being abused. And you persist in labeling opposing political positions and criticisms as "false narratives", thus ignoring the fact that nearly anything that you believe to be true is considered false by someone else, and that both you and that other person are entitled to your disparate opinions and your expressions of them. Just because a President says that something is true does not make it true. Each individual citizen is permitted to make that determination for themselves, and to disagree if they choose to. This freedom of dissent is a fundamentally important aspect of a free society. The legal standard by which a person can be convicted of a crime is that they be considered guilty beyond doubt. There is no way to prove beyond doubt that any public statement made by any person directly correlates with the actions of another unrelated person, with the possible exception of specific incitations to commit crime. No widely recognized pundit that I know of has advocated poisoning government officials, or doing anything else illegal. Can you name one? I have asked several times that you specifically name who it is that you think should be blamed for this besides the actual culprits but you have yet to do so, instead repeating vague references to pundits and their "rhetoric".

The idea that gun confiscation is a "false narrative" is itself debatable. Weapon confiscation is a well documented historical fact, and it has happened throughout history. The historical precedent of oppressive governments confiscating weapons from citizens is the is the reason why the 2nd amendment was included in the constitution, much like the historical precedent of oppressive governments suppressing controversial speech is the reason why the 1st amendment was included. It has even happened recently here in the US. Many people in powerful positions have stated publicly that they would like to make guns illegal, and even the Vice President stated publicly that the President may enact gun controls through executive order. Such proposals are usually qualified by the use of the phrase "assault weapons", as in "we support gun rights, but assault weapons should be banned." However, there is no real clear definition that exists of what an assault weapon is and any weapon is an assault weapon if it is being used to assault someone, so declaring assault weapons to be illegal is to open the door to declaring any other weapon illegal as well. In other words, what you think is a "false narrative" may be considered a very real possibility by another person. To declare the discussion of gun confiscation enacted by the president through executive order a false narrative is flawed, because there is plenty of written and spoken evidence that such a desire does exist by the president and others in power. And there it is! You are proposing that we should arrest people for expressing their beliefs, because you consider their beliefs to be false! Once that precedent is set, what happens when someone from the right becomes the censor? Should advocates of abortion rights or gay marriage be arrested for promoting a "false narrative" that can potentially lead to extremism? This is the danger in censoring the beliefs of those that you disagree with. If you allow others to be censored you are creating a situation where you or someone you support will later be subjected to censorship after a new censor is appointed or elected who happens to disagree with your point of view. As the old saying goes, you can tell that a politician is lying because their lips are moving. That statement was made while campaigning, and anything said while campaigning should be taken with some doubt. Personally, when forming my opinions about our political leaders I ignore all speeches, promises, and statements and look instead at who they surround themselves with as advisors and financial supporters, in the case of the President who they appoint to executive and judicial positions, and above all else, their actions. In that video he says "I will not take your rifle away", but he would have been more truthful if he had said "I will not take your rifle away unless it can accept a high-capacity magazine, is made from light-weight composite materials, utilizes a gas-ejection mechanism, can accept rail attachments, and generally looks scary" because that is the position that he now advocates, and what Biden himself said that they were considering enacting through executive order.

If you are stressing that people need to stop the false rhetoric then we must first define what the false rhetoric is, so that is certainly a part of question that we are discussing. If we are not willing to label some points of view as false then we cannot stop those views from propagating. If we ARE willing to label some points of view as false then we are diving right into censorship issues, and the next question that must be answered is who will hold the power to censor the views of others. If the standard of what should be censored is that the belief has the potential to generate a few nut jobs then plenty of other things, outside of politics, that become potential targets for censorship. The Manson family murders were carried out because Charles Manson thought that the Beatles were prophets, therefore the Beatles were producing indirectly dangerous rhetoric according to the logic that you propose. There is a solid and undisputable history of people doing horrible things because they believed that their religion compelled them to do so. In fact, there are far more religious crazies than there are political ones, so if we are going to censor rhetoric in the name of safety then religious rhetoric should be an obvious and much higher priority than political rhetoric. Which religions should be permitted? Who should determine which beliefs are valid, and which are false? A more balanced way to look at it would be that 99.99% of theists and Beatles fans are peaceful, there will always be a few crazies, and we should just focus on the crazies instead of unfairly demonizing those who influenced them but had no direct involvement in their actions. Once again, what does "held accountable" mean as you are using it here?

In the spirit of staying strictly within the rails of the thread topic, I will quote you from the OP: Who do you propose should have the power to determine what is true and what is false, and what speech should be directly linked to actions by someone unrelated to the speaker? In what way should a person be held accountable for their speech? Should they be punished, and if so what should the punishment be?

You seem to have missed the other 95% of my post, but that's fine. We'll roll with this thought for a bit... If two decades is a long amount of time then much of the liberal platform should be amended to reflect this. Affirmative action is no longer necessary, since segregation and slavery both ended a long time ago. Gender rights are no longer an issue because the women have had the right to vote for a long time. Diversity efforts in general should be abolished because anti-discrimination laws were passed a long time ago, thus putting an end to any diversity issues that once existed. We no longer need to worry about gay equality because we elected the first openly gay congressional representative a long time ago, thus proving that equality had been achieved. Or, maybe 20 years is a tiny little speck of time when viewed in historical terms, and these are all still valid issues that are worth considering. I am inclined more to believe this than the idea that "two decades is a long amount of time". In fact, the entire US government is very young when considered next to the much older European and Asian nations, and I think that we should consider events of 20, 50, 100, or 200 years ago to be fairly recent events in the context of world history, and the history of our country. For example, the US and UK both became heavily involved in Iranian affairs back in the 1950's, eventually helping to bring about a coup. The effects of this coup are still being felt to this day, and every time you hear someone calling for us to go to war with Iran you can trace the events that led to the current tension straight back to those covert actions back in the 1950's. If you limit the scope of your observation to two decades you will miss a lot of the relevant context and will lack any true understanding of the current situation. Going back to the idea of dangerous political rhetoric, the current right-wing extremism looks much less menacing when viewed in the context of history. The extremists come out of the woodwork cyclically, just like the politicians do. If you try to silence a viewpoint it will only harden the resolve of those who hold that view, and will swing the cycle even harder. The extremists will become even more extreme, just like in Iran. They had a democratic government that we covertly replaced with a monarch, which in turn radicalized the nationalist Islamists and led to a revolution and a unitary government as a reaction against the monarchy, and to this day that nationalist Islamic government is opposed to any diplomacy with the west. The same sort of thing happened in Afghanistan and Iraq during the 80's, and effects of those actions are also still felt today. Claiming that the president's mail screener is an "average american" or a "postal worker" is like saying that the president's chauffeur is an "average limo driver". That person may indeed work for the post office, but the inherent risk involved in that job leads me to believe they should be considered somewhat above average. It is their job to absorb this type of threat, and they are probably honored to do so in service to their country, just like a secret service agent who unflinchingly steps in front of a bullet. It may be a bit less dramatic, but that doesn't make it less important. They have a dangerous and important job, and they did it well. To invoke sympathy for them as a reason to begin censoring speech is an insult to their sacrifice. It is not a common hazard, it is a rare and extraordinary one that necessitates their profession.