The second amendment is completely about what someone does with their bodies......how they defend their bodies from others who would take away a person's liberty to do what they wish with themselves. How about another example.....dog ownership? They aren't inanimate...they can do harm without the owners control. You must stand for dangerous dog breed bans if you stand for gun bans, right?
How are we supposed to make laws and rules if we cannot be consistent on the principles that they are based on are not consistent? That's the aspect I like to focus on. It must be my scientific background that has me looking for unifying rules. I don't like hypocrisy.....if you have rules for one situation but spin them around for another situation you end up with anarchy....nobody would trust the system if the system is full of exceptions.
So that's why I tend to want to apply the same principles to various types of situations. I don't think that recreations drug use is any different than alcohol use, and yet we treat them differently. What's the underlying principle?....I think that it has to do with an individual's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What business is it of anyone else's what a person does with their body as long as that activity doesn't infringe upon the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of others. Go ahead and do drugs....any of them.....just don't go out and drive a vehicle, operate heavy machinery, etc. where you could do harm to others. Go ahead and partake of prostitution....as long as both individuals are of a legal age (that might be debatable as to what the age is) and both are participating freely of their own will, then nobody needs to stick their noses into it. As long as nobody is forced into the situation, it's all good. Want to own guns.....just don't use them on somebody else unless it is to protect yourself from harm. Want to own "vicious" dog breeds.....go ahead, just make sure they are always under your control so they don't hurt someone. No special treatment for gender, religion, sexual preferences, etc. Want to be a firefighter, pass the physical test without aids.
Can you see the consistency there? To me, that's a sign that the principle is working under all of those situations and to me, that is a good thing.
Things get screwed up when people want to start making exceptions. Suddenly you need huge government departments to oversee that those exceptions are adhered to. Common sense goes out the window as people start righting thousands and thousands of laws to oversee all of those exceptions and convoluted rules. It get's downright wasteful and ridiculous. The at the convoluted rules and thinking around abortion. What are the father's rights vs the mother's rights. When is it a child and not just a bunch of cells. Emotions get into it and people end up at each others throats.
So through these debates, discussions, arguments I'm just trying to figure out all of the principles (for myself and my beliefs). I want to figure them out so that they can work for everyone and perhaps point out where they might fail or the person fails to see them. There's no malice, there's no dislike, I have nothing against anyone who disagrees. I might be obnoxious in my responses sometimes....that's a personality flaw of mine.....but all I really wan to do is get to the bottom of issues. It makes me happy when I can see that a principle works on many different situations and tells me that I'm probably on the right track to figuring out some universal truth or something. That's all.
So again, I like all of you and hope we can keep hammering away at these ideas.
Unless the government wants to become my pimp:wink2: that is
