crisisweasel
Newbie
Do you own yourself?
Do you believe that as an extension of that, you have a right to defend yourself? That your person is inviolate? That you may not be enslaved, imprisoned without conviction, or otherwise forced to do things?
If you believe those things, and I think you should, and if you believe you should have a right to own guns for self-defense, I would hope if you're here you think that...
I would like to see you or anyone make an argument against the right to pick the flowers of a plant and then smoke those flowers - your own mouth to smoke with, your own lungs to inhale with, and your own bloodstream to fill with intoxicants.
The only argument I've heard in response to this is something along the lines of, "but you can't think rationally on weed," which is by itself ridiculous and indicative that someone has no experience with it, but even if true, then you must also support the prohibition of alcohol.
Alcohol which was once prohibited but, because everyone made it or drank it anyway, and because prohibition led to violent organized crime...they made legal again.
Violence, ineffectual law...
Just like the drug war.
Besides, the question of intoxication isn't the intoxication, but *what you might do* in that state, right?
Kind of like for gun control advocates, the question is *what you might do* with a gun.
If you believe that the government ought to have sovereignty over your body - over your right to take a drug, then it is not particularly difficult to make a case for why you have no right to own guns. Because after all, that's for the government to decide, right? The way they decide now that no one's allowed to smoke pot.
Dominion over the individual -- that is all the drug war is.
If you support the Drug War, you believe the government has sovereignty over the body and minds of individuals. That is the definition of what prohibition is. And remember, we're not talking about people going on robbery sprees to get money for drugs (itself obviated by legal and therefore cheaper drugs - the same way alcohol-related crime went into decline as Prohibition ended), or people doing dangerous or otherwise rights-infringing things under the influence of drugs: those are and will always be illegal and prosecutable.
We are talking about some guy sitting on his back patio smoking a joint, and how that's somehow the government's business.
It isn't. And if you believe it is, you obviously don't have the same sense of what freedom means that I do.
Maybe you have never smoked pot and never will. Maybe you consider it a frivolous, pointless activity.
Gun control advocates have exactly the same perspective on gun ownership, and rationalize their statism by the question we've all heard so many times: "Why do you NEED a gun?" -- you must prove to them your "need" to exercise a right.
Which is what many drug prohibitionists demand of pot smokers.
As marshaul discussed, these are all manifestations of the same issue.
Who owns you, and what is the extent of the government's sovereignty? That many pro-gun people don't see them as a same issue (and many do not - the same way a hell of a lot of pot smokers don't see what guns have to do with pot legalization), is their failing.
When we get to the point as a society where we insist that government has no dominion over our private lives, but only our actions that impact others, rather than "yes, government, you're mommy and daddy and I bow to your authority...just please let me do this one little thing that is important to me please." -- well, maybe then we'll have a truly free society.
Until that point, we have a government that considers itself omnipotent, and from which we beg for favors and privileges.
Do you believe that as an extension of that, you have a right to defend yourself? That your person is inviolate? That you may not be enslaved, imprisoned without conviction, or otherwise forced to do things?
If you believe those things, and I think you should, and if you believe you should have a right to own guns for self-defense, I would hope if you're here you think that...
I would like to see you or anyone make an argument against the right to pick the flowers of a plant and then smoke those flowers - your own mouth to smoke with, your own lungs to inhale with, and your own bloodstream to fill with intoxicants.
The only argument I've heard in response to this is something along the lines of, "but you can't think rationally on weed," which is by itself ridiculous and indicative that someone has no experience with it, but even if true, then you must also support the prohibition of alcohol.
Alcohol which was once prohibited but, because everyone made it or drank it anyway, and because prohibition led to violent organized crime...they made legal again.
Violence, ineffectual law...
Just like the drug war.
Besides, the question of intoxication isn't the intoxication, but *what you might do* in that state, right?
Kind of like for gun control advocates, the question is *what you might do* with a gun.
If you believe that the government ought to have sovereignty over your body - over your right to take a drug, then it is not particularly difficult to make a case for why you have no right to own guns. Because after all, that's for the government to decide, right? The way they decide now that no one's allowed to smoke pot.
Dominion over the individual -- that is all the drug war is.
If you support the Drug War, you believe the government has sovereignty over the body and minds of individuals. That is the definition of what prohibition is. And remember, we're not talking about people going on robbery sprees to get money for drugs (itself obviated by legal and therefore cheaper drugs - the same way alcohol-related crime went into decline as Prohibition ended), or people doing dangerous or otherwise rights-infringing things under the influence of drugs: those are and will always be illegal and prosecutable.
We are talking about some guy sitting on his back patio smoking a joint, and how that's somehow the government's business.
It isn't. And if you believe it is, you obviously don't have the same sense of what freedom means that I do.
Maybe you have never smoked pot and never will. Maybe you consider it a frivolous, pointless activity.
Gun control advocates have exactly the same perspective on gun ownership, and rationalize their statism by the question we've all heard so many times: "Why do you NEED a gun?" -- you must prove to them your "need" to exercise a right.
Which is what many drug prohibitionists demand of pot smokers.
As marshaul discussed, these are all manifestations of the same issue.
Who owns you, and what is the extent of the government's sovereignty? That many pro-gun people don't see them as a same issue (and many do not - the same way a hell of a lot of pot smokers don't see what guns have to do with pot legalization), is their failing.
When we get to the point as a society where we insist that government has no dominion over our private lives, but only our actions that impact others, rather than "yes, government, you're mommy and daddy and I bow to your authority...just please let me do this one little thing that is important to me please." -- well, maybe then we'll have a truly free society.
Until that point, we have a government that considers itself omnipotent, and from which we beg for favors and privileges.
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