Published Voting Lists (by gun ownership)...Follow

Only if they've published that information on the net though. Back in the days before cell phones, your phone was hooked up by the phone company in your home. The phone company published a list of all those who owned phones and their associated home addresses in their phone book. Meaning a phone number was directly tied to a home address. They could not be moved. A cell phone has no innate connection to any physical location (or even to a name). You can easily keep your cell phone number off any sort of publicly accessible list if you want. And if you're really concerned, you can always buy a cheap phone for cash over the counter about anywhere and use prepaid cards to use it. No way to connect that phone to the user at all, much less to an address.

The only equivalent back in the day was to use a pay phone. But you can't carry a pay phone around with you. It's much harder to find someone's address and phone number today than it was back then. And yes, I'm aware that such books were local. But presumably you're most likely looking people up in your own city, not some random person somewhere else in the country.

What kinda dog you got?

That's pretty naive. I'd go so far as to say that the thought process went something like this: "OMG! That shooting was a tragedy. People who own guns are bad! I know! Let's publish a list of all the people who own guns so everyone will know who the bad people are who, via their stubborn insistence on this silly 'right to keep and bear arms' are responsible for all those kids dying". We've had what? Three different threads about gun control since the Newtown shooting, with the subject of volume of ownership being a relatively central point of contention, and you're honestly going to claim that the publishing of the map was just bad journalism intended to boost sales? It's just a coincidence that such a thing directly ties into the "more guns equals more gun deaths" argument I guess.



So "OMG! Look at all these people who own guns. We need to do something about that pronto!" isn't the stupid person reaction they were going for. Strange.



Which is really funny given that the scary thing is on the other side of the issue. The primary point of the map was to scare people who are easily scared by guns into being more scared about guns, so they'll join in supporting more restrictive gun control measures. The secondary point of the map was to tell people who own guns the modern of equivalent of "we know where you live" so you'd better keep your head down and stay silent while all those folks we've riled up push for more gun control. But you thought it was about sales? Lol!

Of course. Why would you assume otherwise? As long as what someone is doing is legal, there's no reason to single out what they're doing, except as a means of making people think that what they're doing is somehow wrong because what they're doing is being singled out. Circular? Yes. But that's how people think.

Fear is what drives the gun control agenda. Fear of the guns. Fear of the people who own them. Fear that they or their children will be shot in school, or in a mall, or wherever else. Fear. Fear. Fear. The anti-gun argument is completely derived from and builds itself upon, irrational fear. That's why they need a shooting like Newtown to push the agenda forward. If it was rational, they'd be passing gun control all the time.

You fail to grasp this?

No. My argument is based on the 2nd amendment and the rational application of the right enumerated therein. Among a list of rational points I've made, my argument *also* includes pointing out how irrational fear of guns and gun owners is being used by those pushing for gun control, with the publishing of said map being one example.

Which is why it's ironic that when I point this out, your response is to basically project the fear of the anti-gun position onto me. I'm not afraid, I'm pointing out how knee-jerk reactions can result in an infringement of rights and saying "don't do this cause it's dumb".

See, if it were based on the second amendment you'd know that you really don't have the right to privacy in your gun ownership. Go ahead, in the thirty words of that amendment show me where it says anything about privacy. Can't do it, can you? It's not there. In fact, the whole right to total privacy thing is kind of an urban myth. My knowing my neighbor has a gun doesn't infringe on his life, liberty, property, speech, religion, and it isn't illegal search and seizure. But you go back to whatever channel you're watching and let it tell you what you should believe. That's your right. You're using a knee-jerk hypothetical on a possible (and I use that term as loosely as possible) scenario to induce fear in hopes to sway people to your political stance. "Oh my gawd they gonna be scurry to gun ownahs, mercy mercy!"

I called it disappointing in my first post because it's so transparent that it's ... well, it's just sad. I'm sad for you. Keep telling us how "Gubment gonna take yer guns!" is a rational assessment and not one based entirely on emotional manipulation.

Fear is also what drives the pro-gun agenda. Own a gun or you will be robbed. Own a gun or the government is going to get you. The terrorists will win if you don't own at least one gun to put in every room of your house. Both sides use fear mongering to push an agenda and it feels like a majority of america falls for it.

That does not mean at all what I thought it would.

Which goes along with my "Beware of Dog" scenario. Knowing who has a firearm can just as equally protect citizens from thefts, assaults, etc. as it would "demonize" them. Don't get me wrong, I think the "happy medium" that I presented earlier is a much better solution than publishing gun owners, but the reasoning used against the publication is flawed.

You have exactly as much privacy with regard to gun ownership as you do with regard to any other form of ownership. I've made this point several times now, but you've chosen to ignore it.



Go ahead and do the same with the 1st amendment. Can't do it, can you? Broad principles of privacy as they apply to our lives exist primarily in the fourth, ninth, and fourteenth amendments, but apply to other rights. The reason for those other amendments is because of a recognition that the inability to engage in otherwise lawful behavior in private will tend to infringe on the right of the individual to engage in such behavior.



If the government habitually tracks certain types of behavior and publishes it, the very selection of what behaviors are tracked will act as a deterrent to the behavior and thus an infringement of the right to engage in it. This is a fairly well established aspect of our rights, backed up by numerous court cases. Making an exception for gun ownership would be extremely odd, to say the least, given that it's an enumerated right, while other firmly protected rights in landmark cases (like sexual activity, contraceptive use, medical procedures, etc) are not. You have no more "right" to have your government tell you whether your neighbor owns guns than you do for you government to tell you whether they are gay, have a subscription to Playboy, have had breast implants, or own a copy of the Catcher in the Rye.


If you think otherwise, then why?

Edited, Feb 25th 2013 2:33pm by gbaji

So you're arguing there isn't a right to privacy when it comes to speech (or any other action)? So the government can wiretap your phone without a warrant and then publish that information? It can publish your medical records? It can publish subscription lists? If you're ok with this then your argument is at least consistent (and you're arguing that there's no right to privacy), but I think that most people will disagree with you.



Well over a century of supreme court rulings say my argument isn't weak at all.

Edited, Feb 25th 2013 2:53pm by gbaji