You want a return to the true intent of the 2nd Amendment?

L

leadcounsel

Moderator
I would venture that NO ONE other activity has given the government more control over people that making drugs illegal. It is because of illegalization of drugs that erroded personal freedoms under the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 14th Amendments.

Drug activiy that has been "illegalized" has opened a large and lucrative market for organized crime, much like the prohibition (which was completely useless). It gives criminals the funds and the intent to buy and use weapons. Because of prohibition, certain guns were illegalized in the 30s because they were affordable by organized crime and necessary for their trade. Because of illegalization of the sale and use of narcotics, gang shootings with scary looking guns were frequent in the 80's and 90's. This led to the 10 year AWB - Brady Bill. And we can expect more in the future. Just look at Kalifornia as the wedge against our rights. Our rights against unlawful searches and seizures have eroded due to drug laws, including your expectation of privacy on the street, riding in a vehicle, and in your own home. Police can literally use infrared equipment to "see through" walls to spot home growers, can hover at hundreds of feet above your home at night and use infrared equipment to watch your activities, and have MANY expections for warrentless searches under the guise of emergencies and effervescent evidence, consent and plain sight, detaining you and impounding your possessions for an "inventory." And our rights against cruel and unusual punishment have eroded due to drug laws (you can go to FEDERAL PRISON for the better part of your life for the possession of a few grams of an arbitrary drug with the government has decided isn't good for you).

We just have to ask ourselves "Are the current laws working effectively and efficiently? Are the current laws and their ramifications at destroying peoples lives (through imprisonment, shootings, beatings, etc.)? I don't think they are.

I think that the first step toward getting back to the true nature of the Constitution and reinstating gun rights is to take the profits away from organized crime and drug pushers. Without the funds, means, or reason the number of violent gun crimes in the nation would fall. Then, and only then, could gun rights be restored. It's not your neighbor that you fear owning a select fire rifle A) because he probably isn't interested and B) because he's a safe law abiding citizen. It's the violent organized criminals because they will use them and it will reflect badly on legitimate gun owners, resulting in more gun restrictions.
 
I've often thought legalizing drugs would take the wind out of the sails of almost all of the violent gangs on the streets around the country.
 
The only trouble is that decriminalizing drugs would take a lot of discretionary money out of a lot of DA offices and PDs around the country. I'd hate to see the huge army of Assistant DAs in every big city in the US driving Kias instead of Lexus and Beamers. It could collapse the entire economy! :D
 
I've said this for years. Soon you'll get the same responses I get, which all boil down to the same thing: Government must do this for our own safety because we can't be trusted to make such a choice... Sound familar?

The Wo(some)D is a gimmick, a smoke screen behind which creeping centralization of power hides. It manifests itself in fear, intimidation, massive cash payoffs and asset thefts and excuses itself by all the "good" and "protection" it offers. No way will government at any level give that up now and no way will you convince enough people, even otherwise thoughtful opponents of fedgov's expansion, that it should.

Just console yourself that it's "for the children" and go back to sleep. :) :rolleyes:
 
Okay: In America, tobacco kills easily 10+ times as many people each year as "illegal drugs." So why is tobacco blessed by "The Government" and even funded by our tax dollars? Why isn't there a "war on tobacco?"

Smokers will say "it's our freedom of choice." Okay - then why is it not "our freedom of choice" to smoke ganja, hashish, opium or crack cocaine?? Why does "The Government" place its seal of approval on the most deadly, destructive and costly drug of all - nicotine?

I'll tell you why: Tobacco is taxed - "The Government" gets a kickback. Not so regarding ganja, hashish, opium, crack, heroin, cocaine, LSD, et. al.

It's not about "for the children." It's about money for "The Government."

Everything is about more money and/or more power for "The Government."

I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist.
 
Okay - then why is it not "our freedom of choice" to smoke ganja, hashish, opium or crack cocaine??
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Because when some street junkie takes a hit off bad cocaine, or OD's. Someone calls an ambulance, which is then obligated to take the sorry @$$ to the hospital. Then doctors have to spend thousands of tax payer's dollars, to save the life of a person who contributes nothing to society. Just so they can get better after a week of free health care, and go out and score again. If civil services such as police, paramedics, and doctors weren't obligated to save the lives of people who 'freely choose' to do this to themselves, then I would say yeah, legalize it all and let them snort, smoke, huff, and inject their butts straight to hell. But since tobacco smokers also 'freely choose' to smoke, I would also then say, stop all federally funded cure and treatment research into smoking related illnesses, and use the money for something more worthwhile. If you smoke two packs a day for fourty years, then get emphazema. Don't go crying to the government for federally funded treatments or cures, when you have 'freely chosen' to shorten your life by more than half. If you want these drugs legalized, then don't cry for help when they kill you.

If this is how it was legally allowed to happen, then I would agree with you all.

Friend, "Hurry officers, this way. We were dancing and he just collapsed."
Officer, "What do you think is wrong with him?"
Friend, "I don't know, but he's got foam on his lips."
Officer examines the body.
Officer, "What's he on?"
Friend, "Umm, nothing."
Officer, "It's ok, drugs are legal now."
Friend, "Well, we took hits of special k and lsd."
Officer responds with, "Stop wasting our time." as they walk away.
 
I don't recall the Constitution granting the Federal Government the right to regulate drugs or guns. Write (right?) your representatives.
 
Glock31.

I think your viewpoint is rather naive and myopic. As a society we absorb the medical costs of EVERYBODYS' poor choices and bad behavior through insurance and public health programs. This INCLUDES obesity problems through poor dietary and exercise choices (BTW heart attacks are the number one killer of men in America), ramifications of smoking, "legal" drug use, cerosis of the liver from alcohol, HIV and Hep B through unprotected sex, and the list goes on and on.

The other points are as follows:
If drugs were legal, they would be regulated and less dangerous dosages;
Legal drugs would cost less meaning there is less need for violent or property crimes to steal for money for a drug fix;
Increases in drug usage are theorized to be negligible;
Less people would be "pushed" onto drugs because pushers would be non-existent;
It would be a financial windfall for our government:
The FEDs could tax the drugs
We would stop housing drug 'criminals'
We would stop spending billions worldwide fighting drugs;
Our world would be much safer because terrorists would lose their #1 funding source of income, DRUGS, which bring in billions annually for terrorism and corrupt governments.
And the FEDS could spend more on prevention, education, and rehabilitation without fear of imprisionment.

Small time criminals using guns, funding with drug money, in their violent trade because so much easy money is at stake. Big time criminals use bigger guns. This gives anti-gun people fuel to fight the 2nd Amendment.

Here are some other angles:
Who benefits from hooking kids on drugs? Answer: Pushers that stand to make alot of easy money.
What happens to pushers when drugs are legalized? They disappear.
What incentive do inner city kids have in staying in school to earn $10 an hour VS. selling drugs for $10,000 per week? Take the profit away and drug use will decline because the pushers disappear and kids stay in school.
Take away lucrative profits from drug sales and there will be no money or need for the hardware that floats around, placing in jeapordy the legitimacy of the 2nd Amendment.


If we keep going at the rate we're going, the drug war will be as big of a failure as prohibition, and more costly in terms of rights and dollars.
We incarcerate too many people for victimless drug use crimes at too high of a cost to society. A large part of able bodied men and women are locked away for nothing more than drug use or possession.

Further, it's a futile battle. A basic understanding of economics states that there is a demand and a supply side to every equation. If you only address the SUPPLY side the battle will fail. If people want drugs, they will get them. Same is true with guns in nations where guns are illegal. They will trickle in. The MORE we confiscate drugs the MORE valuable the drugs become on the street and the MORE profit stands to be made by dealing. Sooner or later, no matter what we do to prevent it, drugs WILL arrive and be distributed. Further, the FUTILE attempts to stop drugs costs us MILLIONS of dollars and OUR RIGHTS under the Constitution (2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 14th for starters).

ARE YOU qualified to tell ME what I should or shouldn't do with MY body????? Sounds AWEFULLY CONTRARY to what our forefathers would have to say on the matter....
 
leadcounsel,
No offence intended here, but,,nothing you posted would or ever could come true.
A black market or a local market would always exist for drugs even if they were sold off the shelf at Wally World.

- With just about every state having some form of legalized gambling, illegal gambling is still a growing business.
- Illegal stills - moonshine- bathtub gin - the crock of wine in the basement - didn't disappear with the end of Prohibition. Illegal mfg of alcohol remains as a large business even to this day.

If drugs were legal, they would be regulated and less dangerous dosages;
Nope. In fact just the opposite would happen. For any number of reasons - dodging the tax on said legal drugs being the main one - black market drugs (free of the tax) would vary all across the board as far as strength and purity goes. It happens constantly with wild game canned and sold illegally, bars that try to maximize profits by using shine, after hours bars that operate in every city,,,etc. There's plenty of parallels to draw a conclusion from that the idea of controlling it via making it legal doesn't work because the illegal market is beyond control.

Legal drugs would cost less meaning there is less need for violent or property crimes to steal for money for a drug fix;
LOL! Not on your life!!! Maybe at first but wait until the tax 'n banners/do-gooders & sin taxers get their hands in it. It's easy to see you don't smoke, otherwise you'd know that it costs about half to buy a carton of cigarettes via quasi-legal channels than it does via 100% legal channels. I can make a run to NY state and buy a carton of smokes for about $18.00 on the "reservation". A carton of black market Newports (bought from some guy's trunk) runs about $12.00. The same carton of Newports bought legally off the shelf runs close to $40.00.

Increases in drug usage are theorized to be negligible;
Again - the alcohol paralel. Alcohol usage, both legal and illegal has increased yearly since the end of Prohibition.

Less people would be "pushed" onto drugs because pushers would be non-existent;
Making prostitution legal in Nevada didn't eliminate the pimps in Las Vegas.
Striking down Prohibition didn't make alcohol universally available in the entire US.
There will always be islands of "drug free" areas, where drugs aren't legal (similar to prostitution being legal in some counties of Nevada, but not in Vegas) where pushers still exist.

It would be a financial windfall for our government:
The FEDs could tax the drugs
Think about this one real hard. Do you really want to put more wealth (power) into the Fed's hands?
I sure don't.


I agree however that the "War on Drugs" has been an enormous debacle.
I don't have an answer to it. I don't think your ideas would work though, since there are enough parallels to show that it goes the other way.
 
You're going to always have a blackmarket, true, to avoid taxes, same as the moonshiners did and do (if it wasn't for them, NASCAR wouldn't exist LOL). But, people don't just grow tobacco in their house and make cigarettes to sell because of the refinement process. People that smoke are lazy and don't roll their own much either, it's a PITA. Nor do they set up a still in their garage and make rot gut raw whiskey when they can buy a much better product from the local grocery store (remember, I'm from PRK here, they love alcohol and hate guns LOL).

Legalizing drugs would do a world of good here, I've seen what it did in Amsterdam back in the 80's, and I can tell you firsthand, it seems to work. Dealers are only authorized so much and they get checked frequently to ensure they don't overdue it. And oddly enough, I didn't see one bum on the streets panhandling.

Have a great Kenpo day

Clyde
 
Because when some street junkie takes a hit off bad cocaine, or OD's. Someone calls an ambulance, which is then obligated to take the sorry @$$ to the hospital. Then doctors have to spend thousands of tax payer's dollars, to save the life of a person who contributes nothing to society. Just so they can get better after a week of free health care, and go out and score again. If civil services such as police, paramedics, and doctors weren't obligated to save the lives of people who 'freely choose' to do this to themselves, then I would say yeah, legalize it all and let them snort, smoke, huff, and inject their butts straight to hell. But since tobacco smokers also 'freely choose' to smoke, I would also then say, stop all federally funded cure and treatment research into smoking related illnesses, and use the money for something more worthwhile. If you smoke two packs a day for fourty years, then get emphazema. Don't go crying to the government for federally funded treatments or cures, when you have 'freely chosen' to shorten your life by more than half. If you want these drugs legalized, then don't cry for help when they kill you.

If this is how it was legally allowed to happen, then I would agree with you all.

Friend, "Hurry officers, this way. We were dancing and he just collapsed."
Officer, "What do you think is wrong with him?"
Friend, "I don't know, but he's got foam on his lips."
Officer examines the body.
Officer, "What's he on?"
Friend, "Umm, nothing."
Officer, "It's ok, drugs are legal now."
Friend, "Well, we took hits of special k and lsd."
Officer responds with, "Stop wasting our time." as they walk away.
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So if a gun owner makes a mistake, has an AD/ND and winds up shooting himself in the neck should he simply be allowed to die because he made a stupid mistake? If you were woodworking an managed to chop your finger off on a saw should you be turned away from the emergency room because you chose to use a potentially dangerous tool? If your child was at a party and drank so much that he or she began suffering from alcohol poisoning should the paramedics simply shrug and walk off?
 
Some days you gotta take a deep breath...

steelheart said:
Smokers will say "it's our freedom of choice." Okay - then why is it not "our freedom of choice" to smoke ganja, hashish, opium or crack cocaine?? Why does "The Government" place its seal of approval on the most deadly, destructive and costly drug of all - nicotine?
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Maybe -- just maybe, it's because tobacco doesn't impair your cognitive abilities like the other drugs do?

By the way, it's the byproducts of burning the cigarette that usually leads to respiratory diseases, not the nicotine. You could get nicotine from other sources and live longer than if you smoked it.

As to legalizing drugs....
So, like alcohol, you want to provide people other choices to impair their cognitive abilities besides Budwieser, Micholob, Jack Daniels, et al. Even presuming corporations are formed to produce "sanitary" drugs at known dosages, we will see an increase in traffic deaths from stoned drivers and pedestrians. We are also likely to see an increase in people getting themselves killed when they become violent on drugs.

I might go along with legalizing drugs if it were accompanied by changes in jurisprudence. Someone using drugs wanders into traffic and gets retreaded should be looked at as suicide. Have a car accident while using drugs means a permanent loss of your license. A citizen defending themselves against someone on drugs has no civil liability to the drug user or relatives.
 
I might go along with legalizing drugs if it were accompanied by changes in jurisprudence. Someone using drugs wanders into traffic and gets retreaded should be looked at as suicide. Have a car accident while using drugs means a permanent loss of your license. A citizen defending themselves against someone on drugs has no civil liability to the drug user or relatives.
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Is that not how alcohol is treated?
 
Maybe I'm also myopic, but I'm of the opinion that the guys who get so riled up about legalizing drugs are most likely drug users. I'd say these threads are probably diagnostic.
 
Maybe I'm also myopic, but I'm of the opinion that the guys who get so riled up about legalizing drugs are most likely drug users. I'd say these threads are probably diagnostic.
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Just remember that if you drink alcohol you're a drug user as well.
 
and let them snort, smoke, huff, and inject their butts straight to hell.
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The italicized part is the crux of the problem. You're going to hell if you use drugs. Why are people told that? Because drugs tend to change thinking and pull people away from religion. This is bad for preachers whose sole source of income is brainwashing. So they tell people that to protect their turf.

Mighty simple.
 
BillCA:
So, let me ask you a question. Do you like having a government, in a free society noless, telling you what you can and cannot consume, what you can and cannot own, etc?


I see the arguments against legalizing drugs as nearly identical to the anti-gun arguments. There would be a sudden increase in (insert shootings, drug use, crime etc.). Nonsense.

Let me ask you, if you WANTED to use drugs is there really anything stopping you. Further, if you had no education nor economic potential and were desperate and a scumbag, is there anything stopping you from dealing drugs and making a lucrative profit. Who are your customers? The defenseless youth. So you push near schools and colleges. Hook them when they're young.

If you remove the the lucrative profits then the majority would disappear. There would still be laws against "bootlegging" and it would be nearly non-existent. Is alchohol or tobacco "bootlegging" truly a signifcant problem in America? Again, almost non-existent.

How long are we going to foolishly try to fight this pointless, costly war on drugs which cannot be won? How many lives need to be ruined? How much more will we tolerate these laws in a free society?

The key is to legalize, educate, and eradicate. Cut off the profits of terrorists and criminals in doing so.

It just makes sense from a freedom standpoint, and from economic, crime and social standpoints as well.
 
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