Comments

1
Fucking Sawant. Who the hell cares what she has to say in response to THE PRESIDENT?! Does she even realize how funny it is that a City Council member responds the President? I would feel bad for her is she wasn't so damn arrogant.
2
The U.S. Navy sailors were not captured, they were rescued when the engines on their boats died.

they were DIW and drifted into Iranian waters, when the Iranian Coast Guard rescued them
3
that's probably more arms than 1 household can bear at once, even if it's well-regulated.

i really don't get the gunner's problem with registration. I actually want the cops to know who has a fucking ARSENAL.
4
Some of the Oregon Occupiers are ISIS supporters? I've decided the best way to fight them (for me anyway) is to make a donation to the Sierra Club, which I will do today.
6
@1 She is probably the highest elected member of socialist alternative so the duty of a response falls to her.
7
@5,
I'm confused by your comment... The police caught a suspect who stole 17 guns from a home, but I didn't see anything saying the original owner of the 17 guns had stolen any of them. As far as I could tell (from the article), ALL the guns in the suspect's house (68 of them?) were stolen.
8
@3 A client of mine collects rare and expensive, and very dangerous, depending on their manner of use, sports cars. My buddy's wife collects "Precious Moments" figurines. Her daughter, antique dolls of some value. They have cases of the stuff all over. They rarely handle any of it. Her father-in-law collects paintings and sculpture. My brother-in-law, collects more skis than he could possibly use in a season. He has a whole room full of ski equipment, some of it classic. Some people collect knives, others swords. Some body armor, both from the middle-ages and contemporary. Why is it anyone's business what legal objects someone chooses to collect, store, or display, even if those objects, if stolen could be misappropriated for a dangerous use? To each his own! What a consenting adult lawfully chooses to do on their property, with legally acquired property, whatever kind of personal property that might be is their own business, is it not?
9
@8:

When was the last time you heard of anyone walking into a school, or movie theatre, or shopping mall with a dozen "Precious Moments" figurines, or classic sports cars, or Civil War era sabers, and attacking large groups of people?
10
@8 Your client's cars are all registered, right?

There is not nor should there be a law against bad taste or creepy obsessions but the public has an obvious stake in the use of dangerous objects.

11
@8: gotta take all the fun out of it, don't you? "it's not funny when it comes to the constitution!"

the 2nd says "keep and bear". I'm just speculating on the "bear" part. it seems you'd have to be able to carry them, so I'm suggesting that should be the limit - what you can "bear" while marching about in a militia. 68 is probably more than that. I doubt any Bundy militiamen are carry that many. shit, Antonio Banderas didn't have 68 in his guitar case in Desperado.

yes, I know what Heller vs. DC said. blah blah blah.
13
still cannot figure out if @8 is a troll or just really really dumb.
14
@1: Oh, it is all just for fun. The whole thing (including the SOTU speech) is just silly pageantry. Let her have her fun.

@11: I like this idea. You can only own as many guns as you can physically carry with your bare hands. Perhaps through the duration of a 100 yard walk or something.
16
@10, Only the few that he drives on the road. The rest are not required to be registered and aren't.

@9, When was the last time you heard of someone renting a moving truck, packing it full of nitrogen fertilizer and wiping out a daycare, a federal building, and several surrounding blocks. Did we put that on the truck rental company? The fertilizer seller? Did we make all truck renter and fertilizer buyers, 99% of whom are lawful register what they bought, rented, or go through checks?

@14, Where does it say you have to bear more than one of what you keep at any given moment?

I thought this audience was dedicated to the idea that what a consenting adult does with their own stuff in their own space was nobody else's business.
18
@12: America is Powerful because we have the most Nukes, the biggest military and the biggest economy. Period. That's it. Everything you list is peripheral to what Obama meant by Power.

Just because Iran picked up drifting sailors and released them THE NEXT DAY doesn't mean we're not Powerful.

Focus.
19
I don't know, based upon the YouTube photo, I like to imagine that the video is of Sawant stamping her feet and berating a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama. And being about as effective as that exercise would be.
20
@12: If we evolved from monkeys, how come there's still monkeys? CHECKMATE ATHEISTS

@16: The ownership and use of trucks is tightly regulated, and you better believe that Uncle Sam pays close attention to bulk purchases of ammonium nitrate. What's next? Are you going to complain that you need to show ID to buy cough syrup?
21
@16: the 2nd doesn't say that, fucking duh. do you think you're educating us?

you consider firearms to be no different than any other consumer item. I, and many other rational individuals, do not. so far, your fucked-up position is law, and the carnage proceeds apace. congratulations.
22
@16: Well, I thought it was obviously a joke, but I will be sure to give you plenty of advanced warning in the future.
24
@20 Wait you can see mr. doom? I thought he was a figment of my imagination. Should... should I engage him?
26
@1 FTW. Fuck Sawant.
29
@16 and @23. Doesn't having which books you check out at the library available to inspection by the government infringe on your freedom? How about a registry of who you call and for how long? How about a registry which groups you associate with? What other activities in the Bill of Rights do you think should be registered with the government at the time you exercise them or shortly thereafter? Would you not be concerned that the government might abuse or misuse that registry at some point in the future to deny civil rights? Given the existence of those registries, might you engage in prior-restraint on assembly, what you read, what you say, who you call, where and what you worship, how often you sought an attorney, etc. How much to you create a chain of accountability at the expense of the liberty of the law abiding to protect society from the few that aren't? How do you pick which civil rights to go after, without amending the Bill of Rights, and which to leave alone? Once you are on that slippery slope, how do you exit it?
30
@16 All of the cars your friend owns are titled and his ownership of them recorded by the State regardless of whether or not he currently has them licensed to be driven on the public roadways. All gun sales should be recorded as well. Regardless of whether or not they are ever carried on the streets.
32
@28: Go take a joyride without license and registration and get back to me, you imbecile.

@29: Compelling public interest, dummy. Police officers can interrogate a suspect without Mirandizing him if they need information to protect the public from an imminent threat. (Say, asking a captured gunman where his accomplice is.) The authorities can execute a search without a warrant in order to check for immediate danger. (For example, a police officer making a traffic stop can search the passenger compartment for weapons without needing a warrant or probable cause.) This is well established in our legal history, but for some reason gun advocates lose their shit whenever it's applied to 2nd Amendment protections.
34
@29: There are lots of legal restrictions on rights enshrined in the Constitution that we have lived with for years and which have not eroded all other rights. Just because you are unaware of them or unwilling to look into them does not mean they do not exist.

For the record, I am fine with people having guns and the 2nd Amendment, to be honest. But your arguments are garbage.
35
@13
Maybe writer simply disagrees with conventional Slog-thinking?
And because you are so narrow you think he might be a "troll"?
36
@12 is right. America totally sucks. This is a country for losers and fools, our military sucks, our economy sucks, and all of the people who think this is a decent country are totally mistaken. Tell it like it is Sgt. Doom!
37
@33, Are you going to be consistent with the 14th Amendment and make people equally responsible if their cars are stolen and then are used to run over someone else? How about their kitchen knives? How about the rat poison they keep in the shed?

@32, Your analogy to exceptions to civil rights from the Bill of Rights is flawed. You are correct that those other rights are not absolute (e.g. you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theatre) and I would expect that the 2nd Amendment will undergo similar court scrutiny and limitations and definition going forward. Now back to your flawed analogy. You correctly note that an officer can interrogate without mirandizing in certain limited NARROW circumstances where there is imminent threat to themselves or the public. The conditions you cite as justifications to the exception aren't present with mere legal ownership of a gun. First, the people in your examples are detained because there is at least "reasonable suspicion" of a criminal or civil infraction (e.g. traffic ticket). You don't have that with mere ownership of a gun. you are attempting to impose a limit or burden on a civil right on people where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Second, you don't have the imminent threat to the officer or the public with just lawful gun ownership. The overwhelming majority of owned guns are never stolen, and even when they are, the owner has committed no wrongdoing, the thief has. So you lack the circumstances and imminent threat present in your examples to intrude on the right of the person who lawfully owns a gun.

We rightly fear blanket registries and government monitoring of the exercise of other guarantees and activities of the Bill of Rights. You haven't made the case for different treatment of this one.

39
@37

You really need to stop with your thoughtful, well-reasoned pro-gun argements. That shit doesn't fly here on the SLOG.

Please take it elsewhere.

Guns are bad here and anyone who owns them are bad. The Stranger editorial position is that all guns should be banned, except for the cops, who are the only ones who should have guns... when they're not too busy violating the rights of minorities with their guns and power of the State... which The Stranger has been bitching about for the last year.

Now go away.
41
Why is the freedom to bear arms the one that is soaked with the blood of children? BTW, comparing gun ownership with a fucking car that hits someone? Are you fucking joking? Talk about trying to square a round peg to fit in a square hole.
42
@40, The problem is the precedent. If the government can force you to register as a condition for the exercise of that section of the Bill of Rights, then they can for any other. Want to speak, register your words first. Once registration is requirement for engaging in activity under one section of the Bill of Rights, its open season on the rest of the Bill of Rights. Then you have no Bill of Rights.
43
@42. So is the freedom of association. To associate, you go somewhere to meet with other people. How many children are killed by cars? Some in this thread would argue that unkind or offensive words have caused others to kill themselves. Words have consequences. Again, once you step on that slippery slope, how do you step off before the Bill of Rights is shattered at the bottom.
44
Hi Heidi Groover, you’re mistaken.

Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative do not support Bernie Sanders, and never will — not while Sanders is making the fundamental opportunist mistake of running as an aspiring candidate of the capitalists’ Democrat Party.

But what do we do about the millions upon millions of workers, of the 99%, of our sisters and brothers, currently enthused by Sanders’s campaign?
Heck, over a million people have already contributed to Sanders’s campaign — not even our immortal (despite his several serious mistakes) Eugene Debs quite managed to achieve that!
We must seize this splendid opportunity to get to meet with them, talk with them, win their trust, hopefully win them over.
Otherwise if Sanders capitulates to Clinton and the Democrat-leadership gangsters, those millions upon millions of current Sanders supporters will be lost to Left politics for a generation!

Which is precisely why Socialist Alternative and our friends launched the “Movement4Bernie”
— independent from the capitalists’ Democrat and Republican Parties, independent from Bernie Sanders, and independent from us as well:
http://movement4bernie.org/

“Movement4Bernie” is a Long-House, a living meeting-place for those millions upon millions of workers — much like the Iroquois Long-House confederation which held the settler-genocidists at bay for part of the 1600s and 1700s.

”Movement4Bernie” contains Socialist Alternative members, who criticize Bernie Sanders’s opportunist mistakes — while trying to win over those enthused by him, and while trying to force Sanders to run as an independent rather than as a capitalist Democrat Party nominee.

It contains very many working people and youth who might currently consider Bernie Sanders the best thing since sliced bread — the “Sanders, Bernie = Sliced Bread” faction.

It might even contain individuals who currently consider Bernie Sanders the devil incarnate — the “Sanders, Bernie = Satan Beelzebub” faction.
:)

That will help us build Socialist Alternative for the long term — to become the workers’ mass weapon for completely defeating the capitalists and achieving socialism.

Which is the main point of our sister Kshama Sawant’s moving, inspiring, electrifying anti-SOTU speech of yesterday.

So, please donate to Socialist Alternative:
https://www.socialistalternative.org/don…

Consider it your trade-union dues.
Money is the sinews of war.
Especially of Class War, the most asymmetric war of all
— the multimillions versus the multimillionaires.

Please consider joining Socialist Alternative:
https://www.socialistalternative.org/

Let’s make history together!
45
@37: A traffic stop does not necessarily involve any probable cause; there are random stops at checkpoints, and those have been upheld by the courts. But hey, you want an example that doesn't even tangentially relate to criminality? Registration of protests. In some jurisdictions, you have to let the local authorities know that you're planning a protest march before you do it. Why? Because there's a compelling public interest in making sure that order is maintained. And yet somehow nobody's freedom of speech or of association has been taken away as a result.
If you're so certain that requiring registration for the exercise of a right, why aren't you out there fighting against voter registration? Shouldn't anyone be allowed to walk up and vote, so long as they've got their passport with them? After all, a right is infringed on if you have to jump through that hoop of registration.

Also, how the hell does regulating gun ownership differently from car ownership violate the 14th Amendment? You're pulling that out of your ass. And if someone is criminally negligent (say, stores rat poison in an unlabeled container on their front porch), they are guilty of a crime. Nobody's inventing new crimes just for gun owners; we're looking for a little consistency.

@44: Commie pls go
46
Hey "venomlash", in answer to your "Commie pls go" mewlings against Socialist Alternative:

Don't you wish we would?

http://www.socialistalternative.org/

Dump the Elephant, Dump the Ass! Build a Party of the Working-Class!

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