USSC's ABORTION RULING, it's possible effect on INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, Gun RIGHTS too.

A

alan

New member
Before those of "conservative" or "religious" bent dismiss my thoughts, based perhaps on this thread's title, you might want to read the comment. The delete key will still be there.

He that chooses the words that set the stage, or describe the issue, has a very big leg up regarding whatever might follow in the way of argument, debate, or attempts to swing the public's mind and or attention in a manner favorable to their point of view, whatever that might be. Here, the anti abortionists, or anti choice people gained control of the argument through the imposition of wording of their choice, that being all this business about Partial Birth Abortions. A couple of years ago, The Congress legislated against what was a not all that uncommon, well understood medical procedure, the screaming meemies wining out. Individual rights, especially women's rights, women are individuals, more and more of whom have chosen to become gun owners, took a big hit via this legislation, and USSC's ruling.

In case you are wondering as to where I'm going with this, keep reading for a bit longer if you will. The delete key remains exactly where it was at the beginning. It is absolutely necessary for our side to do whatever it can to gain control of phrasing the issue. All this rubbish over and about Assault Weapons, and Saturday Night Specials, that sort of thing, is one example of our enemies controlling the discussion, a situation that will see our side loosing, unless it is changed. Think about it dear readers, if you will. You might find the time spent so doing worth while. You can always delete my comments, if you wish, but I submit hat you aught to think it through first. It's up to you, which might turn out to be another example of our diminishing individual rights
 
Actually, the decision brought things more in line with the Roe v. Wade decision, which covered the first tri-mester.

Not giving an opinion on abortion, just trying to stick with the facts.
 
miboso: I don't see how considering this decision didn't ban anything based on length of time, merely specific procedures. It's still legal to kill the fetus in the third trimester, the options are simply more limited.

alan's right, all this did was take away more rights and will save not one fetus
 
Out of respect for Alan, a longtime member and prolific contributor, I'm going to leave this thread open for now. How long that is depends upon the responses of the membership. Thus far, it doesn't bode well as both comments prior to this one are off topic.

The discussion must remain focused on the topic Alan has presented which is (if I understand it correctly): Diminishing individual gun rights and controlling the debate by controlling the language used.

Future posts related primarily to abortion will be deleted without comment.

Sorry if this seems harsh, but it's really the only way we can possibly leave this thread open and still adhere to the rules of the site.

-Dave
 
Framing the argument

As noted, it isn't about accuracy of description, in the end it comes down to sound bytes, and the emotional impact of certain phrases.

We took a big hit with "Assault Weapon", which wasn't entirely all our fault. Those of you who have lived through it, or studied the evolution of the term know what I am talking about.

Assault Rifle is a legitimate firearm and military term, and has been in use since WWII when Germany created the Sturmgewehr, which can be translated as "Assault Rifle". It could also be translated as "Storm Rifle", but that term is a bit more clumsy sounding in English.

When the anti's started up, after the Stockton schoolyard shooting (and others that followed), we tried to reasonably explain how the weapons used were not real assault rifles, because they were semi auto, not selective fire. For a brief time both the anti's and their able enablers in the media used the phrase "semiautomatic assault rifle". Technically accurate, but very cumbersome for a talking head to repeat endlessly on the air. Then they came up with the perfect (for them) term, "Assault Weapon". Under this term they included anything and everything that physically looked like a military weapon, or had a large magazine capacity. Plus, it had the added benefit of sounding bad. Assault weapons were for assaulting people, that was the emotional connotation they fixated on. Today, the term is included in online dictionaries, and other supposedly accurate reference works, in just the sort of language that the anti's and the media popularized.

We lost that one. Mostly because we tried (as is our nature) to be accurate in our definitions.

Saturday Night Specials is another one that has become entrenched in popular vocabulary, despite the racist origins of the term. That one got into the language back in the 60s, and has been kept alive ever since.

Framing the debate is without a doubt the most effective way to gather advantage for your argument. What we have to do is not to allow the other side to get away with it any longer.

I urge you all, in the strongest terms, not to make this mistake again. With the current incident, we have another opportunity. Don't let it go to waste!

Everytime anyone brings up the VT shooting (or anything similar) go on the offensive! Don't let them make an argument about how easily guns can be obtained, don't even let them get started about the mental state of the shooter, or what should be required for a gun purchase. Make this issue ALL about how even ONE legally armed citizen could have prevented the massacre! Don't back down. Don't let them shift the subject. Hammer it! Bring up all the mass shootings, and even Sept 11! Keep hammering at them how a law abiding citizen with a gun could have stopped/prevented/mitigated all those tragedies! Learn what you can about the incidents where armed citizens HAVE stopped this kind of thing, and throw it in their faces. Even unarmed citizens who have FOUGHT BACK have stopped these things. Even at the cost of their lives.

When they cry about the "blood of innocents", tell them yes, the blood of innocents does cry out to us, and we are going to do something about it! We have done it their way for decades, waiting periods, background checks, gun free zones, we have done it all, and it doesn't work! It is past time to try something different. Not new, but old. The old value of armed self defense. Time to stop teaching our children to calmly wait to be slaughtered!

Time to accept the reality of the world as it is, and not the world as they wish it was. Individual responsibility is an obligation that we should no longer abjure. Wake up, grow up, and accept the fact that the only people who can protect us from the crazies in the world looks at us in the mirror each morning.

Don't want to take that kind of responsibility for your self? Fine, don't. But don't allow laws and administrative fiats to take that decision away from those who do.

Personally, I am tired of all this crap. I have lived my whole life under more and more restrictive laws and regulations, mostly made up by people ignorant of what they are making laws about! All they have achieved is to place onerous restrictions on the law abiding, and ensure that the law breaking have a safe work environment. We have got to change this. For the children!

Sorry for the rant, I think I pushed one of my own buttons.:o Still, it needs to be said. The more often the better.
 
is absolutely necessary for our side to do whatever it can to gain control of phrasing the issue. All this rubbish over and about Assault Weapons, and Saturday Night Specials, that sort of thing, is one example of our enemies controlling the discussion, a situation that will see our side loosing, unless it is changed. Think about it dear readers, if you will. You might find the time spent so doing worth while. You can always delete my comments, if you wish, but I submit hat you aught to think it through first. It's up to you, which might turn out to be another example of our diminishing individual rights
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You sir, are ABSOLUTELY correct. We MUST win the war of words. We must never use the bogus phrases of the anti-gunners, such as "AWB", or the war is lost before it is begun. Bravo for excellent post & point!
 
I agree. Alot of it is all in how you say it. After all, isnt that were politically correct came from? Making something seem better than it is through creative, and often silly phrasing?

We can use the anti's tactic agasint them. We need to come up with phrases that play on their negative points. We could call them "Anti-self defense" instead of anti-gun, for example.
 
TheBluesMan:

Thanks for your kind characterization and comments. As to your understanding of what I wrote, you have gotten it quite well. I hope that others do also.

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44 AMP:

For whatever it might be worth, my compliments on your exposition. I guess that one could say that I perhaps pushed one of my own buttons re my original comment. The points you make, several of them, were I submit, very well taken.

As to other aspects of ts business, in other posts, I have referenced the fact that university policy left VT students, faculty and employees defenseless, just as disarming previously armed airline pilots had done, respecting airline hijackings, particularly those of 11 Sept. 2001. I speculated, which is about all one can do, on what might have happened, what results would or might have been obtained at days end, absent the university gun free zone policy, as well as what might have happened had the 9/11 pilots been armed, as airline pilots used to be. Believe I also mentioned the screw-up created by TSA regarding the arming, actually rearming of airline pilots, nowadays FFDO's, isn't alphabet soup a wonderful device with which to becloud questions and issues.

If I may add one point, this past Friday evening, Washington Week, was broadcast on Public Television. Some of you might have seen the show. In any event, there was a segment dealing with the VT shooting and gun control, which included the following from Pierre Thomas, as I recall a Chicago based newsman. He offered, with a straight face, the following, which gives one an idea of what it is that we have to fight. "There are 200,000,000 guns on the street". If he had said that there were 200,000,000 guns in private or civilian hands in the U.S., I'd say that while he might be a little bit off, he was essentially correct. As to the business of "200,000,000 guns on the street" that is a bare faced lie, which is pretty much what I e-mailed to Gwen Ifill. I also noted that everyone appearing on the broadcast knew that statement to be false. My guns are under my control, they aren't "on the street", except when carried by me. I would suspect that that is the situation with whatever number and kind of guns are owned by LAW ABIDING CITIZENS through out the nation.

Like I said, you mentioned it too, this is the kind of crap that we have to fight against, and if that were not bad enough, in addition, there is the sad fact that no few gun owners themselves are damned near as bad, based on the fact that they seem unwilling to act in defense of what one would assume were their own interests, sad to note.

So, as I tried to note, we need to control the framing of the issues. Let it be the members of The Gun Culture who choose the words, who describe the issues, rather than allowing The Anti Gun Lobby to frame the issues. Remember gentlemen, push coming to shove, it's a question of individual rights, and individual rights go quite far beyond Gun Rights. If I may offer the following, think about INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY too, ad the sad state to which it has fallen. Think also on what role your action or perhaps inaction might have played in the decline of INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY. It's all "for our own good", we are told. I'm likely older than many here, however if anyone asked me as to whether I personally felt "safer" these days, with diminished personal rights, than I did say 40 or 50 years ago, I'd reply in the negative. Put simply, I'd reply HELL NO.
 
Sorry, I simply fail to see how this flows logically. The 2A was/is a fundamental Right established with the founding of this nation. Abortion was a politically motivated "right" created via what is largely accepted as one of the worst, most poorly supported, SCOTUS decisions of the 20th century(regardless of your view of abortion, Roe simply sucks and will be the reason legal abortion eventually ends regardless of moral or physical issues).

In short, the argument was framed by those who spun the language and the issue to get Roe in the first place. The recent decision was won by returning at least a small part of the debate back to reality and away from the agenda-mongers...doing exactly what you are telling us to do, in other words.
 
2nd Amendment:

I think the point is this. The term "Partial Birth Abortion" is not the medical term for a procedure that is sometimes medically necessary to save a pregnant woman's life. But because "pro-lifers" managed to get this very negative term associated with that procedure it is now illegal. There is not even a provision under the law to allow a "partial birth abortion" when it is necessary to save the mother's life. The is an example of a group setting the words to describe an issue and thus controlling the debate from early on. Another example of this, one that is more relevant to your user name, is anti-gun groups labeling all black rifles as "assault rifles" weather or not the term fits.

I think the point is that we should not allow political groups (right or left wing) to use inflammatory terms that mis-represent things to twist an argument in their favor ever, not even when you agree with that group because if that sort of thing is allowed sooner or later it will be used against you.
 
You sir, are ABSOLUTELY correct. We MUST win the war of words.
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You are certainly not wrong but I would argue that we should try to make it a war of facts and logic, NOT words. Words can be twisted to suit an agenda, FACTS and logic can not.
 
I think the point is this. The term "Partial Birth Abortion" is not the medical term
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It is however an accurate descriptive term originally used in the medical profession.

...for a procedure that is sometimes medically necessary to save a pregnant woman's life.
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Essentially false. The last I read on it nobody could come up with an actual example of such. While I am certain it HAS happened, the fact is it's not a meaningful percentage.

But because "pro-lifers" managed to get this very negative term associated with that procedure it is now illegal. There is not even a provision under the law to allow a "partial birth abortion" when it is necessary to save the mother's life.
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So they used an accurate and descriptive term to further their goal... And there is no provision because there's no evidence the procedure has any such practical application...

Kinda my point.

The is an example of a group setting the words to describe an issue and thus controlling the debate from early on. Another example of this, one that is more relevant to your user name, is anti-gun groups labeling all black rifles as "assault rifles" weather or not the term fits.
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Except, and again I call attention to, they used accurate terminology to stop a misrepresented action. This is exactly OPPOSITE of what the anti-gunners do in their effort to end a reasonable action. Again, basically my point.

I think the point is that we should not allow political groups (right or left wing) to use inflammatory terms that mis-represent things to twist an argument in their favor ever, not even when you agree with that group because if that sort of thing is allowed sooner or later it will be used against you.
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Except, and here's the big point, it depends on whether they are actually inflammatory OR whether they are simply viewed that way because the viewer has accepted the original specious position. In the case here we have a demonstrably non-medically necessay procedure and an accurate descriptive term thereof characterized as the same/equal to the demonstrably false statements of our "enemies".

The opponents of PBA's are much closer to us in their use of facts than they are to the emotion-driven drivel of the anti-gunners. THAT is why they won.
 
2nd Amendment:

I started this thread so if I may, I will again point out, without additional characterization, that the arguments involving BOTH guns and abortion involve arguments over and about INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS.

Additionally, the term Partial Birth Abortion, is a product of anti abortion apparachnicks combined with media hysterics. It is, just like the misused term Assault Weapons, and or Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon, talk of the proverbial oxy-moron, something contrived to arouse and or fieghten the uninformed, the artifical creation of anti gun apparachnicks and the above mentioned media hysterics.

If you think back a few years, you might remember the follderoll over and about KTW (Cop Killer) Bullets as they were described by media hysterics, a type of ammunition that has not been manufactured in some years, that was NEVER available via ordinary commercial channels, which is to say that you could not go down to your local gun shop and buy any following. Then there was and might still be the baloney over and about the ubiquitous Saturday Night special, which is about half of the thing's actual name, I will leave the rest of it to your imagination, or you can e-mail me or try a PM. By the way, there is no recorded case of a cop being killed, as a result of being shot with one of these bullets, which btw were designed as a AID to police officers back when many still carried revolvers chambered for the 38 Special cartridge, not the punchiest of rounds. While we are at it, try this one for size. At one point, I came upon a printed listing that some clown had defined as Saturday Night Specials. One pistol prominently listed was the famous, infamous to some, 1911 Pistol, the one designed by John Browning. when I saw that, I couldn't quite make up my mind as to whether laughter or tears would be more appropriate. As I recall, I threw the list away. It also included the Colt Single Action Army type revolver. Personally speaking, I always thought that the 1911 pistol, in proper condition, was safe for all but fools, and re these, nothing in safe in their hands.

Last time I looked at a 1911 pistol the thing has 3 safeties. Push on the muzzle and the piece will not fire. The Grip Safety, and finally the thing some refer to as the Thumb Safety. This, by the way, is the "less safe" 70 Series type.

Finally, at the risk of upsetting or annoying a moderator, I hope I don't, re abortions, partial birth, D & C's or any other "pregnancy ending procedure", there is a very simple solution. If you are opposed to the process, don't have one. Allow to others, the same option of choice that you would retain to or for yourself though.
 
Alan is correct. We need to control the language of the debate.

Have any of you ever noticed that I never use the term "gun" except when talking about "gun control"? We all need to use the term "firearm" as opposed to "gun". Why? because the term "gun" has been attached to disparaging terms such as "gunman", "gunned down", etc.

"The gunman gunned down the victims as fast as his gun would fire."

The term "gun" is simply a stereotypical word used by the anti-firearms industry to demonize firearms.
 
JimPeel:

TOUCHE

Let It Bleed:

I probably should make more use of "spell checks" than I sometimes do.
 
Nah, the ideas are what's important. :)

I just thought it was ironic that there are three correct ways to spell the same word. My original point, although admittedly obscure, is that no matter how you spell it, most arguments against the private ownership of firearms is pure falderal! :p

I also posted several times on the topic of capital punishment and spelled it capitol punishment. :o
 
I started this thread so if I may, I will again point out, without additional characterization, that the arguments involving BOTH guns and abortion involve arguments over and about INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS.
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IF one accepts the recent, court-mandated and admittedly politically motivated event of abortion as being not only an "individual right", but one of the same magnitude and legitimacy as the 2nd Amendment. For me(and much of the rest of the nation) the two are hardly comparable. As such, your position (though not your point) lacks credibility.

Personally I find it disconcerting that anyone could equate the two issues.
 
Supporting gun rights but opposing abortion rights is hypocritical, all things being equal in analyzing the issue from the constituional perspective

WildstealthposterAlaska
 
2nd Amendment writes:
Quote:
I started this thread so if I may, I will again point out, without additional characterization, that the arguments involving BOTH guns and abortion involve arguments over and about INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS.

IF one accepts the recent, court-mandated and admittedly politically motivated event of abortion as being not only an "individual right", but one of the same magnitude and legitimacy as the 2nd Amendment. For me(and much of the rest of the nation) the two are hardly comparable. As such, your position (though not your point) lacks credibility.

Personally I find it disconcerting that anyone could equate the two issues.

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In what you quoted of my observations, I clearly said that BOTH abortion and guns involve arguments over individual rights. Obviously, you and I disagree on the INDIVIDUAL RIGHT of abortion. That's fair enough, each thinks the other is wrong on this point. So be it.

I did not raise or even mention anything of "equality" between abortion and second amendment rights. I do not think other than each involving individual rights, that there is anything to compare between the two. Individual rights are the key factor.

By the way, re the battle over abortion and gun rights, I submit that the antis, on each side, are much more concerned with the gathering of power to themselves, than they are respecting the "issues" involved.

While some strongly held positions have been discussed in this series of threads, for the most part, the discussion has been, and remains civil. That is nice to see. As for what you personally might find "disconcerting" that sir is entirely your choice.
 
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