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> Gun rights are on obvious one and everyone throws up their hands in the air saying there is no solution for the problems no one else in the world has. My po

> Gun rights are on obvious one and everyone throws up their hands in the air saying there is no solution for the problems no one else in the world has. My position on 2A is probably that I wish it didn't exist, but _given_ that it exists, I'd want to tread very cautiously around violating constitutional rights. People take for granted how much better society is than it was for most of human history, and part of the credit for the incredible advance of human rights (from a historical perspective) of the last couple hundred years goes to advancement in governance that I think people are often too quick to take for granted. Reductively dismissing this baseline as ill-considered, hollow support for "freedom" just means you don't understand the conversation that's taking place. Again, you and I probably substantially agree on every gun control policy you could imagine. The difference is that I don't need to reduce my opponents to shallow caricatures in order to feel secure in my beliefs. You're also being extremely dishonest in pretending that your gas and electric example is even remotely relevant to the article or the discussion. Neither the study, the article, nor this thread is making the claim that regulations need to be entirely done away with. They're making the claim that the current state is one of excessive regulation: that florists and barbers[1] are unnecessarily regulated, not that we should allow anyone to do any job, regardless of safety concerns. Again, if you can't make a counterargument without having to grossly misrepresent the opposite side, you should probably seriously examine your views on an issue. [1] There are dangers in barbering that mostly avoid proper use of chemicals, but those can easily have their sale controlled instead of just requiring all barbers to be licensed.

orf 9y ago
> There are dangers in barbering that mostly avoid proper use of chemicals, Ignoring of course the use of sharp, bladed instruments around peoples head and neck areas.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  To be honest, this doesn't seem like that realistic a concern to me. It's a lot harder to prepare lots of food without making people sick than it is to shave and cut hair without stabbing someone, and yet chefs aren't under occupational licensing. I'm not against literally any regulation, but occupational licensing is a pretty heavy-duty instrument of regulation and I'm really skeptical that it needs to be applied to every barber.
jabretti 9y ago
> My position on 2A is probably that I wish it didn't exist, but _given_ that it exists, I'd want to tread very cautiously around violating constitutional rights From my perspective (as a foreigner who has spent a lot of time in the US) I think the second amendment has a lot of downsides, but I find myself siding with the gun rights crowd on principle, because the anti-gun-rights people seem to be so dishonest in their methods. The US Constitution provides a mechanism for amending the US Constitution, so if you don't like what the US Constitution says then you should be moving to amend the US Constitution, not moving to ignore it. If gun rights opponents would just come out and say "Let's amend the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment" then maybe I'd agree with them, because they'd be making an honest proposition to do things in the legally correct way, and they'd have to clear the appropriate bar to make it happen (incidentally I think the US Constitution should be like the Australian constitution and not changeable without a referendum, but that's another story). But it seems that gun rights opponents almost never take this tack -- they're always trying to just straight-up ignore the US constitution.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Many in the anti-gun-rights crowd actually honestly don't really care the Constitution...for them they aren't actually being dishonest. ;) Also, most of the anti-gun-rights crowd is well aware that they don't have near the amount of support to be able to successfully amend The Constitution (which is much more difficult than a >%50 vote in Congress), which might explain why they don't bother suggesting amending The Constitution, but rather try to contort its meaning.

orf 9y ago

> There are dangers in barbering that mostly avoid proper use of chemicals, Ignoring of course the use of sharp, bladed instruments around peoples head and neck areas.

wutbrodo 9y ago
To be honest, this doesn't seem like that realistic a concern to me. It's a lot harder to prepare lots of food without making people sick than it is to shave and cut hair without stabbing someone, and yet chefs aren't under occupational licensing. I'm not against literally any regulation, but occupational licensing is a pretty heavy-duty instrument of regulation and I'm really skeptical that it needs to be applied to every barber.

jabretti 9y ago

> My position on 2A is probably that I wish it didn't exist, but _given_ that it exists, I'd want to tread very cautiously around violating constitutional rights From my perspective (as a foreigner who has spent a lot of time in the US) I think the second amendment has a lot of downsides, but I find myself siding with the gun rights crowd on principle, because the anti-gun-rights people seem to be so dishonest in their methods. The US Constitution provides a mechanism for amending the US Constitution, so if you don't like what the US Constitution says then you should be moving to amend the US Constitution, not moving to ignore it. If gun rights opponents would just come out and say "Let's amend the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment" then maybe I'd agree with them, because they'd be making an honest proposition to do things in the legally correct way, and they'd have to clear the appropriate bar to make it happen (incidentally I think the US Constitution should be like the Australian constitution and not changeable without a referendum, but that's another story). But it seems that gun rights opponents almost never take this tack -- they're always trying to just straight-up ignore the US constitution.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Many in the anti-gun-rights crowd actually honestly don't really care the Constitution...for them they aren't actually being dishonest. ;) Also, most of the anti-gun-rights crowd is well aware that they don't have near the amount of support to be able to successfully amend The Constitution (which is much more difficult than a >%50 vote in Congress), which might explain why they don't bother suggesting amending The Constitution, but rather try to contort its meaning.