Nedd help.. Please..

glockguy45

New member
Today I hit a nerve with a bleeding heart liberal and I was wondering if there is anyway to change the mind of these people. It all started Tuesday when I said something about how John Rocker was being punished for speaking his mind. Low and behold liberal ears but their way in. I take it up with him yada yada and we where done.

Today he comes out of the blue, ask me how I feel about "MY BOY ROCKER" I stuck to my guns and said that it was unfair what MLB did. And in return I asked him about Strawberry. Now I am a racist and I can only see Black and White.

Then it got worse, he knows I am from the South, so he thought that he would try to get a rise out of me by saying that all southern's are lazy ignorant and have nothing to show for our heritage but a flag and grits. Now I wasn't p/o but I thought I would have a lil fun.

I told him that it was all the bleeding heart liberals from Massachusetts (no offense to Ma people but that is where he is from and he thinks that he is a right wing conservative) that infringe on our rights. (I work with him and brought up the gun issue a while ago just to test the waters for a rainy day.)
He said what rights?

I said well what about the 2nd.

2nd what?

2nd Amendment I say.

Whats that?

The right to bear arms.
Bing bong boom here we go. He was calling me a idiot now cause New England is nothing but right wing.

I was told that the reason that these gun laws are taking place is because "white people are tired of other whites killing each other. Blacks have been killing each other for years and no one cared until now because of the whites." He asked me why do you need all these guns, because you are scared and you hang in your little social groups cause your scared of change.

I asked him, what about the LA riots, what protected some stores and ones right next to them were looted.

I dont know why?

Because some of the shop owners were shooting at the looters.

He walks off and says something to the effect of thats the way southerner's rationalize things. Bring up one case when there are hundreds against guns. So i go to lunch. I come back, and yes round two. Short round but interesting. The 2nd was there to keep the British from coming into our homes. I told him it was there to protect the people from unjust gov't.

So our Gov't is unjust.

I was like pretty much. Now i get the 2nd isnt there so your cousin billyBob can own a shotgun. "Anyone that believes that the second is there so you can own guns is stupid and a idiot" "The NRA, Their all idiots."

I let it go, and gave him the blank stare, I was losing no matter what I did.

I ask is there anything that can be said to someone like this or does it take for his wife to get raped, son kidnapped and his head bashed in for him to change his mind.. Please help cause this is going to be a ongoing battle now.

Thanks

Nate

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Rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
 
Well at least you didn't smack him upside the head, he sure deserved it. I don't think you can argue with people so indoctrinated with propaganda as this person seems to be. It is like talking to a member of an cult or something. They are incapable of rational interchange because they themselves are not rational. Glad you tried anyway, you did an excellent job of keeping cool.
 
I think you put your finger on it. Nothing is going to change his mind until he finds himself in a situation where he wished he was armed. It sounds like he is ignorant enough that even then he will wish the other guy was disarmed, and he'll blame the existance of guns/knives/crowbars/rocks rather than think about protecting himself and his own.
 
glockguy45:
I'm probably in about the same place that you seem to be. :(
HOWEVER.....this is a subject that appears to me to be TAILORMADE for DC and Dennis. Good Luck my friend. :)

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"Lead, follow or get the HELL out of the way."
 
Sounds like your fighting a loosing battle. The only chance you have is to invite him out shooting. Teach him the basics of firearms safety and show him how much fun it can be. If he will not accept your invitation, give up. You will never change their mind. They know they are right, because they have seen it on TV.

I've now gotten to the point that I ask them about the constitution, if they can not even answer a couple of basic questions, I tell them that they do not have enough knowledge to hold an intelligent discussion. Be prepared to counter their questions with backup... ie.. a copy of the constitution.

I know this is not much help.



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Richard

The debate is not about guns,
but rather who has the ultimate power to rule,
the People or Government.
RKBA!
 
DZ Thanks for the stats!!! Favorite places for me. I will keep them handy for another round. :cool:

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Rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
 
Someone on here had a really good come back to these type of folks a while back. It went something like...

Anti: "Rant, rant, rant, rant..."

You: (reaching in your pocket for a pad of paper filled with names, and a pencil) "Can I get the correct spelling of your name, and address please?"

Anti: "Why would you want that?"

You: "Well you see, I've started keeping track of people that don't believe we have these freedoms, and who go out of their way to see that all people lose these freedoms. And I just want to make certain, that should such a day ever come, I'll know which residences to avoid while I'm helping those that think their freedom is a precious commodity."

Anti: "PPuuffffff!"

You: (turning on your heel to walk away) "Good luck!"
 
Yep, I'm right there with ya. Here's my angle--remember my quadmates, the ones that think I'm such a nut? Well, this morning my best friend among them tried to tell me that Jesus would hate my entire way of life because Jesus would think buying guns was stupid. Why is this so silly? Because I'm an Agnostic, not a Christian, and this silly twit is Jewish. So neither of us are Christians anyway, and here we are arguing about the New Testament! :rolleyes:
I told him about the line where Jesus says for everyone to sell their cloaks and buy a sword.
He says the sword symbolizes the truth.
I reply, HUH?
He says that, for instance, when the Bible talks about being slain by the sword, they mean "slain by the truth."
He declines to explain what "slain by the truth" means.

He also says that Jesus would say that you should never make war, because you can only make a "just war." (try to follow this.)
I say, if there is such a thing as a "just war," how can God or Jesus be against that? After all, it's just, right? God is big on justice.
He says no, the doctrine of just war says you can never make war so buying a gun for defense is against God.
For instance, he says, there are three prerequisites that must exist before you can wage a "just war." The first is a just cause, the rest he can't remember.
I say if there are three prerequisites to a just war, then there must be situations in which those prerequisites will be met and war is justified.
He says no, war is never justified.
Blah blah blah--basically we go around in circles with me trying to understand how the hell you can say that war can be just but it is never right. He can't explain it but is sure that it's true.

YOU CANNOT ARGUE WITH SOMEONE CAPABLE OF HOLDING TWO CONTRADICTORY POSITIONS WITHOUT BEING BOTHERED BY THE CONTRADICTIONS. SUCH PEOPLE ARE EITHER INCAPABLE OF RATIONAL THOUGHT OR ARE REFUSING TO USE IT.
 
This is an email which I sent to someone who has an anti-gun site and was lying to the people. Feel free to use any of the info. Good job staying calm, it REALLY pisses off the person that is getting irate.

Although I agree with the intent of your site, I am a gun owner. No, I do not hunt or kill, but do enjoy shooting targets with my family members. I became interested in firearms because my father is a retired FBI agent and was a firearms instructor.

I wanted to let you know that a statement you make regarding the Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment is in error and you may wish to correct the misinformation.

You state on your site:
They declared the right to bear arms was a collective right not an individual right. This judgement has been tested in court and the original decision still stands-the constitution and the second ammendment do NOT endow each individual citizen the right to own a weapon.
There is no bibliography to verify your statement so I went to look for myself. I think that you may have been using UNITED STATES v. MILLER (1938), if that is the case the interpretation you are using was done by a VERY unknowledgable person. Check a more recent decision, in 1990, Supreme Court ruling in UNITED STATES v. VERDUGO-URQUIDEZ, 494 U.S. 259 (1990) found at this link: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=494&invol=259
This is an excerpt from that ruling:
.... it suggests that "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.
Further, Clarance Thomas wrote the same in his majority opinion.
Many people erroneously think the militia referred to in the Second Amendment is the National Guard, which didn't even exist in 1789, but this is where the idea of it came from. You can see that according to U.S. Code Title 10 there are two parts to the milita, the 'organized militia' and the 'unorganized militia'. Who is a member of either category of militia is defined in part (a).
Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 <../32/313.html> of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
Here is the link for the U.S. Code: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=uscode10&STEMMER=en&WORDS=militia+member+& COLOUR=Red&STYLE=s&URL=/uscode/10/311.html#muscat_highlighter_first_match

(remove the space before COLOUR, it was inserted to keep this forum from goin oversized)

I also submit these quotes. These are THE reason why the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the Second Amendment. To do so would require going back to learn the intent of the founding fathers and that intent is well known.
"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms....."
-- Samuel Adams, United States Congress, Bill of Rights Ratification, 1779
"It is because the people are citizens that they are with safety armed. The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the government, not to the society."
-- Joel Barlow: Equality in America, 1792
The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the 'High Powers' delegated directly to the citizen by the United States Constitution, Amendment II, and "is excepted out of the general powers of government". A law cannot be passed to infringe upon it or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power.
-- Texas Supreme Court Decision, Cockrum vs State of Texas, 1859
"The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistable. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."
-- Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 February 1788
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest argument for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, in the last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1776
"The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
-- James Madison, The Federalist #46
Such are a well regulated Militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen, and husbandman; who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen."
-- James Madison, United States Congress, Bill of Rights Ratification, 1779
"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property...Horrid mischief would ensue were the law abiding deprived the use of them."
-- Thomas Paine, 1775.
"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature. In most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Whenever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited; liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
-- Justice George Tucker, Virginia Supreme Court, 1803
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence."
- George Washington
"... whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..."
- Richard H. Lee, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer 53, 1788

I too am against violence, but we must ask ourselves what causes the mindset to allow an individual to carry out violent action. Does putting the gun in the hand of a person make them violent? I don't think so. Prisons are full of violent people, who have no firearms, yet still exhibit violent behavior. If guns cause violence, removing those people from firearms would make them non-violent. If guns were the cause of violence, with over 200,000,000 guns and around 280,000,000 people many more would be dying than the 35,000 per year and that includes the 20,000 annual suicides. Japan's per capita suicide rate is substantially higher than ours yet their culture is nearly completely void of firearms. This tells me that guns have no causal effect on suicides either, I submit that it is a mental state.
Thanks for your time, hope you made it through all this and maybe learned something from it. Good luck with your quest to make the country safer.
Jeff York
 
Gwinnydapooh,

Mrs. sbryce here. You're right, it does seem odd that an agnostic and Jew would argue over something in the New Testament. :) I am a Christian and can speak on the matter with perhaps just a tad more knowledge and/or authority. ;) The three rules of Biblical interpretation are #1) Context, #2) Context, and #3) Context. So look at the context of the passage where Jesus talks about buying a sword. Luke chapter 22, an interesting moment between the Last Supper and Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.

"35Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?" "Nothing," they answered. 36He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37It is written: `And he was numbered with the transgressors' [2]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment." 38The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That is enough," he replied."

If your quad-mate was right, we could substitute the word 'truth' for 'sword' in this passage and it would read ok. Buy a truth? Here are two truths? I don't think so.

I don't claim to be a Bible scholar, but I think your quad-mate is wrong to say that Jesus would hate your lifestyle--regarding guns, anyway (to stay on topic).

Your friend saying that God hates all war all the time won't wash either. In the Old Testament, there's plenty of places where God commanded His people to wage war. Physical war. His reasoning was similar to that of a surgeon removing a cancerous tumor: a neighboring culture which practiced child sacrifice and other atrocities might infect His people with similar practices. And times when the Israelites failed to obey their God in this, He was proven correct: they did begin to copy their neighbors. You know, the old-fashioned version of "but Mom, everybody's doing it!"

The rest of your friend's reasoning (or should we say so-called reasoning?) makes my brain feel like a pretzel trying to follow it. I'm a homeschooler learning more about Classical education right now--maybe he needs a course in formal logic??

BTW, if you want to check context on the next wild statement he makes regarding the Bible, http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible is a really neat site with a bunch of languages and a bunch of English translations and a good interface. Makes it really easy to look up anything by word or phrase or address (reference).

Oh, just had another thought. Maybe your friend was thinking of another passage. One in which truth is likened to a sword. Other armaments are used also. In Ephesians chapter 6 we're told:

"11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

I would be pleased to agree with your friend that the Word of God is truth. And yes, here it is likened to a sword. One we're commanded to have and use. But it's obvious that--context again--the whole passage involves symbolism. The various parts of armor used by a soldier circa 50 A.D. are specified here. (We also note that there's nothing covering his backside--turning and running would leave one quite unprotected. These are all offensive weaponry.) These armor pieces are likened to the things a Christian needs in standing against the devil's schemes. This passage doesn't have a pacifistic word in it! Here again, we're being told/ordered/commanded to wage war. A spiritual war this time, but war nonetheless.

In short, your friend is mixed up, to put it nicely. Maybe you'd rather not bring it up with him, so as to avoid his pretzel-thinking, but I wanted you to know I'm on your side--and why.

--Denise

[This message has been edited by sbryce (edited February 25, 2000).]
 
Gwinny -

Mrs. sbryce pointed out most of the things I was going to mention, so I'll just add this. Have your Jewish friend check out the good Rabbi Mermlestein at www.jpfo.org for the Old Testament perspective. Although my impression is that he's Jewish by heredity only...

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"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."
Luke 22:36
"An armed society is a polite society."
Robert Heinlein

[This message has been edited by mk86fcc (edited February 25, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by mk86fcc (edited February 25, 2000).]
 
GlockGuy45: I'm glad you've enough restraint to refrain from calling your MA opposite any names. You may be amused that New Englanders refer to folks from Mass as "M-ssholes" and a cop from VT told me that any cop worth his salt will always ticket a M-sshole if (s)he has a chance.

Why would anyone own a gun? Ask the octogenerian in San Francisco who killed the burglar just this week (Feb 22-23?). Self defense against those who would prey upon the elderly sounds like a valid reason to me.

Unless your associate is willing to pay enough in taxes to have a cop on every block 24 hours a day, don't expect society to get any safer until we, the people, take responsibility for our own defense. I don't mind more cops (especially if it comes out of his increased tax burden, but I certainly wouldn't want the rest ofus to pay for that kind of tax and I don't want this nation to degenerate into a police state.

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Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt
 
You know, when some twit starts spouting nonsense like your friend, and it is obvious that even though it is nonsense, the person is going to refuse to examine actual facts or to rethink their theories and arguments, I find it helpful to imagine them as some strange child who has walked up and said something silly. I imagine patting them on the head and saying "Thats nice. Now run along." I know it doesn't change anything but it saves on the high blood pressure that comes from dealing with the very people who are dragging our contry and our rights down the drain.

Sometimes you get so caught up that you are ready to march out and take the flag and wave it above your head and fight the good fight to save our country. Other time it seems like there are so few of us that are on our side, a whole lot more that are determined to drag it down and the vast majority that do not actually take notice of the battle at all. That is when it gets depressing.

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Blev
 
Jeff remind me to buy you a good cup of coffee or a beer if you prefer, if we ever meet. Also remind me to make sure of my facts before I argue with you. Super post!! :D
 
Sometimes I get a little flak from people but it's never nose to nose . Maybe I'm lucky but I've never gone up against a rabid Anti . Maybe they give me room because I wear my jump wings on a neck chain and that kinda says it all . I did have one cute experience you may also enjoy . I mentioned guns one day in conversation to a fella where I pick up freight . He said he did not see the need to have a gun . I just let it slide and some time passed . Then one day we were talking about prospecting and I told him that I go panning and metal detecting . He asked if I ever find any . I said yes and told him I would bring some next time I went there . Well , Tom brought some small bottles full of gold and he went wild . It was dust and very small nuggets but impressive nevertheless . He announced that he would LOVE to go with me as soon as possible . I told him that I could not take him with me because he did not have a gun . There are rattlers where I go and one must protect themself . Now he wants to buy a gun as soon as he can get the card . I guess it's just a matter of "finding the right spot " . Even if he is getting it so he can go prospecting it will be a treat to see what he does when the first rattler makes some noise . I'm sure that all of a sudden a gun will become " a good thing " . I will however , stay BEHIND him as he shoots . I feel pretty safe with him since he is getting a .22 Ruger like I got and we'll be using Ratshot .Keep ya posted .

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TOM SASS MEMBER AMERICAN LEGION MEMBER NRA MEMBER
 
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