30 Comments

Sorry, have to disagree.

1A protects corruption.

2A kills.

2A is militarization, not civilization.

Intruder may have a handgun. So you have to own an AR-15?

Intruder may bring AR-15. So you have to buy a grenade launcher?

Where does this arms race end? Arms protected by 2A include, nuclear, biological weapons? Open carry anthrax powder, ok?

Doctors kill with their vaccines. But on guns they are surprisingly on the right side. They seem to recognize carnage only when it is non-iatrogenic ...

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That wouldn't make it the purview of the CDC

The primary issue with the CDC getting involved in gun control is that the critical institutions of society must be non-partisan.

That the CDC would get involved proves that they care more about political activism than they do public health.

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I am obviously no supporter of the CDC. Death caused by guns is apolitical. It is a public health issue because of the risk of being shot and it affects all our insurance rates.

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Gun policy is obviously political - it is a hotly debated controversy that implicates a wide variety of issues, among them fundamental rights, self defense, crime, mental illness, and the means to resist govt tyranny - that occupies a central role in contemporary political discourse.

By your standard, there is no such thing as a "political" issue - all political issues ultimately have real-world consequences. 😉

If half the country believes something, then it is by definition a partisan issue as a factual matter, and surely in the sense that non-partisan institutions cannot afford to destroy their credibility & neutrality by taking sides.

I would add that the fact that we disagree over gun policy is itself indicative that this is not a self-evident reality but rather something that requires serious thought and analysis.

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"resist govt tyranny"

We have govt tyranny now. So 2A was a spectacular failure. Ruby ridge, Waco showed who prevails when 2A is used against the govt. Is it not silly to consider "resisting govt tyranny" of a nuclear armed govt using AR-15s?

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It's hard to know a counterfactual, but despite the ppl largely rolling over & going docile, it may well have been much worse were the populace disarmed like in the European countries where the lockdowns & tyranny were worse than they were here for the most part

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By definition, 2A has no place in civil society.

It is absurd to consider a private citizen owning a gun to be part of a "well regulated militia". These are all NRA corruption driven destruction of the constitution, for gun sales.

2A itself is a contradiction. In "well regulated militia", who is the regulator? The govt?

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Tyranny will be much more easily made totalitarian in the absence of 2A.

Compare AUS / NZ v USA.

It’s utility needs not involve a single round being fired.

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1. Correlation not equal to causation! If US Supreme Court did not toss employer mandates, AUS=USA.

2. Aussie govt. is defeated now.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/vanishing-vaccine-mandates/

3. Silly to think a nuclear armed govt. is scared of AR-15 toting citizens. Waco, Ruby ridge showed us the insanity of that thought process.

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CDC/NIH are the main funders of medical science research. Are you saying no one should study gun violence because any CDC/NIH funding for the studies makes them "partisan"? I can see why the NRA/gun industry does not want any such studies just like tobacco companies and vaccine companies.

Vaccines are political. May be Congress should pass a law saying NIH/CDC should stop all vaccine research funding?

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Gun control is not a medical science.

There is no shortage of academic centers & think tanks eminently qualified to do such research - and who actually do such research - that we need the CDC to step in.

My point is that shared institutions critical to a functioning society cannot become politically partisan. This is not a controversial premise. (Or if it is, then we're doomed to either full blown tyranny or violent civil war.)

Re vaccine funding, the government has set itself up in such a way that it is not a legitimate actor who can do uncorrupt research work. But that is a separate issue than the one that I am driving at, which is ultimately that the medical community is a political activist organization first, healthcare second if at all.

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I am saying restricting gun violence research is a partisan quest. Doctors, CDC should be free to perform research and can RECOMMEND (not set) policy.

What's wrong with doctors/CDC/NIH studying association of child gun deaths with gun ownership, for example? Or mental health, drug roles in gun violence?

The NRA, like tobacco companies, want to obscure the evidence by outlawing scientific inquiry into those areas. That is unacceptable.

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By this logic, Vinu Arumugham, anything on Earth is also a 'women's issue.' Or any other brand of issue one wants to politicize. It's part of the regressive Progressive position that normal mortals operating under the rule of law are insufficient for self-governance; we must all be ruled by 'experts' who, amazingly (not!), are self-appointed.

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I am arguing that NO ONE, CDC or otherwise must be stopped from STUDYING an issue. The corrupt NRA criminals don't want ANYONE to study gun violence to keep gun sales up. I am NOT arguing that CDC should be allowed to set gun policy. CDC have proved to be scum and I'd like to see them shut down.

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The reason I, a public health physician (retired), am fully in favor of political control over the activities of the CDC in prohibiting them from even studying the issue, is that approximately 99% of those in the field of public health are so far left that they have no awareness that there could be legitimate positions that they themselves do not hold. The 'research' would be one-sided, with preconceived conclusions, and would be guaranteed to support policy positions that would trade liberty for what they would hope would be less crime and more peace, but imho would be unlikely to lead to such an outcome. Further, when it did not lead to such an outcome, the 'solution' would be to double and triple down on the same or worse policies. But the Founders wrote into the Declaration of Independence that the only reason to have governments at all is "to secure these rights," and one of those is very plainly "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." We agree completely on what the future of the CDC should be, however, so I'm happy to be able to close on a point of agreement.

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Bingo

Wait until you see the big article that this was supposed to be a part of.....

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2A prevents tyranny. That is all. It’s not a medical matter.

Unless you’ve been asleep for years, you must know that (1) LEGAL gun violence is incredibly uncommon, with a recent survey showing that crime rates from legal gun owners being lower than those of serving police officers. (2) ILLEGAL gun ownership & use is unaffected by changes in the law.

(3) Constant efforts to water down 2A comes solely from the would-be tyrants in Washington. (4) given the wisdom of the original authors of the constitution thoughtfully anticipated attempts at tyranny & penned 2A for that reason, I don’t expect it’ll ever be significantly amended let alone deleted.

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Vinu Arumugham, your ignorance about guns, early American philosophy as it relates to guns (still present today among many), who were the Militia and what was their purpose, the experience of Switzerland for most of its history, the origin of the Anglo-American right to keep and bear arms, mass murder by means other than guns, history as it relates to governments murdering their own citizens, and human nature itself, is sadly deep and wide.

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You cannot read whatever you want into 2A which itself is contradictory.

"well regulated militia": Who is the regulator? Your tyrannical govt.?

Everybody shooting at each other on the street is called Afghanistan, not civilization.

Only police and military are a "well regulated militia" in civil society. Any NRA corrupted, creative reinterpretation of 2A is null and void.

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1. "Well-regulated" didn't mean then what it means now. When the words were written, which is what matters in interpreting the words, they meant "operating well," "performing correctly," etc., as in a 'well-regulated clock.'

2. The Militia is not what you think it is, it's what it was back when the words were written, which are the only meaning that can be assigned to them. The Militia were "the whole body of the people," organized for collective self-defense. At the time of the American Revolution, it was (by law) every able-bodied male ages 16-65, who were required to own and train with their own 'weapon of war' and ammunition. They trained on average about four times per year (to be "well-regulated;" see?), so every few months. The Minute Men were like super-militia; they trained 2-3 times per week and had to be ready to muster almost immediately in case of emergency, and so were paid because of all that, whereas the regular Militia were unpaid.

3. The whole point of writing a well-regulated militia into the Constitution right after winning a war (of secession) against their own government (and *not* providing for a standing army or any police forces in the Constitution) should be, as they say, 'self-evident:' you don't leave all the firepower in the hands of the government, because the citizens, the people, i.e., those with the right "to keep and bear arms," might need to once again fight to retain their God-given liberty ("they are endowed by their Creator with certain [meaning 'sure,' not 'select'] inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" ['happiness' in the Aristotelian sense, i.e., an exercise of the soul in accordance with virtue]).

Your problem is that you don't know what you don't know; you don't realize how much you don't know or the domains in which your ignorance lies. Here's one free online book you can read that might help you get a start on the subject:

https://archive.org/details/tokeepbeararmsor00malc

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Nearly $2 Billion more for Ukraine.

While babies, seniors, and low income can't get food.

The United States Contributes $1.3 Billion to Support the Government of Ukraine | Press Release | U.S. Agency for International Development

https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/jun-30-2022-united-states-contributes-13-billion-support-government-ukraine

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My Medicare/Tricare Life gets gutted every year, more under FJB than even obumber, and the premiums keep going up, service goes down, copays went up again. Husband spent 20 yrs in the USN for that lousy Tricare. Now our small 401 K's are under threat.

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