CNN YouTube Debate and guns
Giuliani did his homework and his answer conveyed that. Got booed for saying ‘reasonable restrictions’ were allowable. I was impressed that Giuliani really did his homework on Parker/Heller. He still seems to think there’s some urban exception to the Second Amendment. He didn’t convince me but he knew his stuff. Credit where it’s due and all that.
Fred blasted him hard though and obviously knew much more than Rudy. Seems Fred, unlike Rudy, knew Rudy’s record.
Hunter got all gun safety and told the questioner not to throw the firearms. Good.
When asked if they own weapons and if any of them required tax stamps, no one jumped up except the hunting story guy. McCain, Giuliani and Romney don’t own guns? Who knew? Line of the debate from Fred Thompson: I own a couple but I’m not gonna tell you what they are or where they are. That’s an indication Fred knows gun people.
Update: Seriously, no Ron Paul on guns?
Update: More at bitter’s. And here I thought I was first.
Update: Thompson is sticking with the old school conservative stuff. I’m digging it. You know, if he leaves out all the God said so and hating gay cooties stuff.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Seeing the questions is cool, but why can’t I view the answers on line????
November 29th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Guliani is spinning his way out of his past. The reality is he is anti-gun but pretending not to be in order to run through the GOP primary where gun voters are strong and active voters. There is something fundamentally wrong with a candidate that re-invents his- or herself in order to run for president. Rudy is pretending to be the polar opposite of what he really is.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:23 am
I own a couple but I’m not gonna tell you what they are or where they are
Fred is like a train, slow to start, but can move along when it gains speed.
Old school may be the right school at the right time.
November 29th, 2007 at 2:13 am
The whole gay cooties thing looks like a terrible mistake on the part of Christians. It is remarkably easy (and correct, I think) to read homosexuality out of the Bible. Most of the Old Testament stuff is chucked, pretty much everything except for the ten commandments. It’s OK to eat pork, it’s ok to work on Sundays, etc. The only thing that ever almost conclusively says anything about homosexuality doesn’t really (Romans 1:26-28 or something).
Sexual depravity, promiscuity, and all that is clearly bad, just like being an alcoholic is bad. It’s a sin for a normally heterosexual person to engage in homosexual acts. But if a person really is naturally homosexual (I have no idea about that one, not being gay, so I’ll defer to those who are), then I don’t see Biblical problem with the sexual orientation. And heterosexual persons commit far worse sins daily.
Basically, Christians need to drop teh gay beef pronto. Not helping.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Here’s video of everything you’re talking about Uncle.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I too am digging Thompson’s stance on the issue. I also REALLY like his laid-back down-home style that is devoid of soundbytes and double-speak. Its a great contrast to Romney’s “I’ll say anything for your vote.”
Still his slow easy drawl, and what appears to be his desire to actully TALK about this issue, rather than just drop a quick loaded answer makes him look slow on his feet in a debate.
Hopefully the people are wise enugh to see that too. I can’t imagine why ANY Republican would want Rudy or Mit. They’re really strong DEMOCRAT candidates, but that’s another race….
November 29th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Re: Romney’s answer:
If my dad went on national TV and told the world what my name was, and that there are guns in my house, I wouldn’t be all that pleased about it.
Fred nailed that one.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Dr. Paul did not get the coverage that he has in the past debates as they are scared to give him any positive air time. Each time he answered he was very clear and un wavered in his answers, and in my opinion did a great job.
The NRA does not list him on their site as a candidate for obvious reasons, but they look ridiculous when he is polling 8-10% nationwide. It really shows that they crave the power in Washington on items other than the second amendment, and I for one feel this is despicable.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:11 am
“people will be allowed to own guns.”
What a crock of shit! Maybe the people will allow him to live when he comes for the guns.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Maybe not.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Not to hijack, but in response to Ben-
I’m not advocating the anti-homosexuality in the Bible, but Leviticus or Deuteronomy expressedly forbids homosexual acts; its in the same area that forbids incest and beasteality. Check Chapters 20-22 of each book; my memory is fuzzy. Again, not trying to advocate, just pointing towards the most clear-cut reference in the scriptures.
I’ve been a Thompson man from the start, even with some of the mistakes he made (McCain-Feingold, for instance). I’ve felt that he has an in-depth understanding of what the right to bear arms is all about.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Ben, not that I’m disagreeing with you on the gays and politics thing, but from a purely theological perspective, the prohibition on homosexuality in Christianity cannot be read out (not correctly anyway).
One of the arguments used is that Christ never specifically preached against it. There is no quote where Jesus said “You shall not have gay sex.” And that is true. However, there are several instances where fornication (sex outside of marriage) is condemed. Since marriage could only be between a man and a women, gay sex is by definition outside of marriage. This makes it sinful (and no, changing the secular legal definition of marriage won’t change the theology), but no more (or less) sinful than pre- or extra-marital sex.
And this is where Christians have blown it: Yeah, pre-marital sex is bad, extra-marital sex is a really big no-no, BUT TEH GHEY SEX IS TEH SCURGE OF HUMANITY!11!!!1.
Oh please. Come off it already. Two gay dudes gettin’ it on is no different than Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell gettin’ it on. Both are having sex outside of marriage, they are the exact same sin.
None of this, however, is to say that these prohibitions belong in our legal structure, they don’t.
There are non-religious reasons for keeping gays out of the military. Most of them are analagous to the issues in intergrating women into the military. One example is that having communal showers of straights and gays is no different that having communal showers of men and women.
Personally, I hope to see the day that people are disciplined enough that the latter becomes an non-issue (and consequently the former too). But I don’t harbor the illusion that the first is better just because the plumbing is the same. If straight guys and gals can’t maintain the necessary discipline, then gay guys and gals can’t either.
November 29th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
These managed and controlled debates are ridiculous and pathetic. The clear attempt to stampede the voters to a few of the preferred empty suits is an insult to any informed voter or one who wants to be informed and have CHOICES!!
November 29th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Even the first questioner is ignorant of the Constitution.
The BoR acknowledges pre-existing rights. How can we get that to sink in?
Rudy, still thinking NYC is somehow different, just doesn’t get it. Sorry, no credit due AT ALL.
Hunter sounds like a ‘Zumbo’.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I’m not actually for this, but I thought I’d point it out.
Hunter-Thompson?
November 29th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
As for Ron Paul, the NRA has rated him a B. He is better than most liberals on guns, but he is not in the same league on actually supporting Right to Bear Arms as Thompson or Hunter.
Yes, Paul gets 8%. But the problem is, a lot of that 8% isn’t from the Republican Party, and this is a Party primary. Paul is doing as well as he is because he appeals to the no-party people, the people who are just angry at everything and everybody. His core of support is the same people who rallied around Nader in 2000 and Perot in 1992. If Paul dropped out of the race, most of his support would NOT be willing to support any other candidate in the GOP and would, by neglect, essentially support the democrats.
We don’t need to feed the Paulbots any more.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
“Hunter-Thompson?”
Meh.
Thompson-Hunter maybe.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Gullyborg: the NRA’s lowered rating for Ron Paul is pretty much because he opposed the bill prohibiting tort lawsuits in state courts against gun manufacturers. Paul’s reasoning was that the Constitution does not allow the Federal goverment to decide the tort laws of the several states. The NRA ratings are flawed in that they don’t measure how “pro-gun” a politician is, they rate how “pro-NRA-promoted-legislation” he is. These don’t always coincide. The NRA is known to compromise on legislation, unfortunately. E.g. Ron Paul voted against HR 2640 (passed in the wake of Virginia Tech, “improving” the NICS to catch people diagnosed with psychological problems) which was one of the NRA’s most recent and high-profile compromises. Voting against that bill gave Ron Paul a lower NRA rating, even though he was protecting gun rights by doing so.
“Better than most liberals on guns”? IMO on 2nd Amendment rights he is better than pretty much everyone. See below for a bill he has sponsored several times during his legislative career:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1096
In the 80’s he sponsored a bill to repeal the GCA’68:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d098:h.r.3892:
November 30th, 2007 at 3:09 am
There’s a big aspect of gays in the military that those who haven’t served just don’t really understand. When I was in, I did not want to have to work with anyone who was openly, or obviously, gay. Now that I’m not in the Navy, I don’t give a rat’s ass about my co-workers sexual preferences. Why do I feel differently now? It’s because I don’t have to share a bedroom or shower with my co-workers anymore.
I really find it reprehensible when lefties think it’s unreasonable for straight men to not want to have to undress and shower around gay men, yet they’d throw fits if women in the military had to share living space with men, because god forbid they should have to deal with a man seeing them undressed.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:15 am
So what’s your point, AA? That Paul should be able to do as he pleases, and pay no political price as long as he throws in some crackpot, pseudo-constitutional argument to back it up? Does this mean he doesn’t think the Second Amendment applies to the states, or that the federal government has no power under the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce that right? Or that Congress has no power to curtail lawsuits that not only have a side effect of substantially disrupting interstate commerce, but are actually intended to by their proponents?
Where I come from, if someone acts like an asshole all of the time, with no exceptions, that just makes him a bigger asshole. I guess for some, that makes him “principled.”
November 30th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Come on X,
Don’t you know it’s OK to bend over your constituents as long as you give them a reach-around?
November 30th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Xriq: Not at all. Obviously RP knows that by voting against NRA-supported legislation, he will lose the support of the NRA. That is just to be expected. My point was simply that the NRA’s ratings only look at things through an NRA lens, and they are not necessarily the best source on who’s (not) a protector of the Second Amendment.
As to your second question, I’ve never heard him address this specifically, but everything that I’ve seen has him pushing the RKBA as an individual right, “in the hands of the people”, etc. He has also stressed, in multiple interviews, that the need for firearms in the hands of the people is explicitly to keep a check on the power of government and potentially overthrow the government if necessary.
On the third part, Ron Paul’s stance is that Congress does not have the power to decide the tort law of the individual states. Furthermore, you’ll note that “piggybacked” on that same bill (S.397) were 1) a requirement for trigger locks on handguns and 2) criminalizes the use of armor-piercing bullets during the commission of another crime. I consider both of these provisions to infringe the 2nd Amendment, and either one of them is, IMO, reason enough not to vote for that legislation.
As to your last comment, if that someone’s principle is always to act so as to maximize *my* freedom, I don’t care if he’s an asshole or not.