Reactionary laws to one-time or rare events are a terrible idea. My thoughts are that if the 2nd amendment is repealed then there will be a civil war. Because criminals do bad things is not a reason to take away things from law abiding citizens. Law abiding citizens should be required to give up their guns only when governments and criminals have given up all of theirs or when government can guarantee everyone's safety (which will be never).
Pushing for repeal of the second amendment will just make the left look crazy and will cause them to lose support. A Constitutional repeal of the second amendment is a practical impossibility and not much of a threat in any event and certainly not something likely to trigger a compromise.
The purpose of the second amendment is to prevent a tyrannical government (whether internal or external) from taking your rights away. It was a reaction to the British government's (their own government at the time) attempts to seize the American colonists weapons (which was one of the things that led to the Revolutionary War). It's easy to look at our lives now and say that another Hitler could never rise to power, or that the government would never try to quarter troops in your homes, or never try to forcibly suppress speech, (or seize your weapons one might have thought not too long ago), or whatever. But the fact is these sorts of things happen around the world all the time. Even if you believe these things aren't likely to happen in this country today, who knows what 10 years or 100 years will bring. If you allow the government to have all the guns now, there is no protection for the future. A criminal doing a bad things isn't a reason to take away MY rights.
The second amendment isn't for collecting or sports shooting. That kind of language in a law would be contradictory to the second amendment. A legitimate reason for owning a gun according to the second amendment is because you want one. It is a right. The primary reason the amendment exists is for the protection of oneself and their property. Someone shooting up a school is no more a reason to take away guns than someone driving a car into a crowd of people is a reason to take away cars. Or drunk drivers are a reason to take away alcohol (probably a better example). The hysteria against guns is all out of proportion with the statistics. You are far more likely to die in a car accident (or any number of other things) than to be shot and statistically you'll win the lottery a couple of times before you die in a mass shooting. What some consider "sensible" others consider "absurd" and therein lies the problem.
Nothing increases gun sales like the threat to take guns away. I don't even want an AR-15. The only gun I own is a shotgun inherited from my grandfather which I've fired exactly once (well, twice...it's double barrel). However, if there starts to be serious talk about repealing the second amendment I'm going out and buying two (well, probably only one...but definitely one).
The civil war is a whole other conversation. Even if you take it as an example where guns didn't work against a tyrannical government (and in the case of the civil war, both sides were being pretty tyrannical in any event, just in different ways), it isn't a reason to take guns away or to suggest it isn't a deterrent or a valid means of defense against tyranny.
Most of these arguments are moot anyway. Guns can already be 3D printed and while an AR-15 type weapon isn't possible yet, it's only a matter of time.
If you really want to fix the biggest problems with the medical industry then do things that will increase competition, not limit it. Remove AMA restrictions on the number of doctors that Universities can train, allow more competition in the insurance industry, have reasonably sane patent laws, tort reform, etc, and re-examine all existing regulations. Unless those problems are fixed, costs will continue to rise and the fact that you are paying it with tax dollars instead of medical bills won't matter much to the middle class (i.e. most of the country). We have to treat insurance as insurance, not as a managed plan to pay for all healthcare. Insurance is supposed to be for catastrophic expenses. A hospital stay, an emergency room visit, treatment for chronic disease. Not a doctor's visit or birth control or a flu shot. If government is to pay for such things than it needs to be done through a welfare type program, not "insurance".
I would also point out that just because Republicans have an idea, doesn't mean it is "right wing" (and certainly not necessarily "conservative"). There is nothing conservative about Obamacare. Nothing. I don't know if it was intended to help the insurance industry but I don't know that you can say that it has. At least, most insurance companies have pulled out of the exchanges and in many places there are few plans to choose from. In any event, Obamacare was pushed through as law with exactly 0 Republican support so the Democrats could have really done whatever they wanted with that law. It's not like they could have lost any more Republican support because they had none. Obamacare is why we have Trump today (whom I am not a fan of either). The government taking over an entire industry is a terrible idea. Obamacare has demonstrated that. Obamacare has made healthcare more expensive for myself and most of the middle class. Obamacare doesn't seem to have even done a particularly good job of doing what it was advertised to do which was to insure the uninsured. This country can't even manage the current entitlement expenses it has and currently has no plan to account for the increase in spending that will be necessary for social security in coming years.
I don't know where you lived where there was so much violence. I was lucky...never had a gun pulled on me or known anyone who did. But the fact of the matter is, if it had been a gang armed with knives you would have been in much the same situation.
Also, what your statistics don't show it the number of crimes prevented because law abiding citizens had guns. In most cases when a gun is used in a defensive manner, it is not fired. The threat of it is usually enough to scare away criminals. Most criminals are looking for easy targets and most gun owners aren't actually looking to try to kill people. Whether any of these arguments resonate with you isn't the point. Yours don't resonate with me either. So? The point is you don't have the RIGHT to tell me I can't own a gun and if you (or anybody else...I'm using "you" generically here) is going to use force to take one from me or to prevent me from buying one then you are the one in the wrong because you are initiating force, not me.
Tell me what is "conservative" about Obamacare? Do you know what the word means? Just because someone calls themselves conservative doesn't make it so. I don't claim to be a conservative myself. More a libertarian or perhaps a classical liberal. But I know what conservatism is and Obamacare does not represent those values. The fact that it was largely created by the heritage foundation doesn't change that. Also, if it is so conservative, why on earth did liberals almost unanimously support it when they didn't have to? Forcing people to buy a product is not a conservative idea, period and the fact that an organization that claims to be conservative comes up with it doesn't change that fact.
It's conservative because the ACA didn't change anything; you still had to buy into a for profit healthcare plan. Also, modern day liberals aka establishment Democrats are not too different than conservatives economically and on issues of healthcare. Hence the reason why the leaders of the Democrat party fight so hard against progressives' push for single player. One of the biggest lies our corporate media has formed is the idea that the democratic and republican parties are different. They really aren't. Obviously there are those like Bernie Sanders who are trying to move the party back to the left, but the establishment in charge are fighting it tooth and nail.
I absolutely agree with you that there is not much difference between Democrats and Republicans and that both serve corporate interests. It's just that there is no conservatism there. Philosophically, conservatives are supposed to be for smaller government and less government spending and intrusion into your life. Conservatism isn't supposed to be about serving corporate interests (beyond simply leaving businesses alone anyway). If you really think that Obamacare, which increases government spending massively and causes government to intrude in our lives more and absurdly forces you to buy a product is conservative then you really have no idea what the conservative philosophy is about. The vast majority of Republican are by no means conservative.
And before the ACA, no you didn't have to buy a for profit healthcare plan and when you did you had more choices. You could buy no healthcare, buy for profit healthcare, or buy non-profit healthcare (you still can but again, less choice due to the ACA). In addition, the ACA has caused a massive increase in insurance costs, especially for those with employer based plans. Then there are the subsidies of course. None of those changes are "conservative" philosophically no matter who came up with the idea.
As someone with a somewhat libertarian philosophy, I certainly don't want government serving corporate interests. But I also don't want massive government programs. The problem is, any time you have massive government programs and massive government spending, you are going to be serving corporate interests unless you find a way to remove all corruption from government. Good luck with that. Smaller, more local government is the way to go, not massively centralized government. Whereas you seem to be a Bernie Sanders guy I'm more of a Ron Paul or Gary Johnson guy.
Ultimately with a massive central government with massive spending, whatever politicians are in power ultimately have control of it. How often do you have truly good politicians in power? Part of the problem is the corrupt lobbying system but part of it is also they type of people that want to be in control of a massive central government. The choices aren't always great to begin with. It's much better just to limit government power and government spending then you limit the damage they can do. The Constitution tried to do that but has failed.
I think the whole reason Trump was elected was because people were sick and tired of the establishment Republican and Democrat candidates. They were willing to overlook his obvious flaws because they felt the alternatives were worse. I didn't think he was different enough to matter. I've voted for a third party candidate in the last three election cycles and will probably continue to do so. When others stop with the "a third party can't win" mantra and join me there may be real change. Until then, expect more of the same...or worse.
Reactionary laws to one-time or rare events are a terrible idea. My thoughts are that if the 2nd amendment is repealed then there will be a civil war. Because criminals do bad things is not a reason to take away things from law abiding citizens. Law abiding citizens should be required to give up their guns only when governments and criminals have given up all of theirs or when government can guarantee everyone's safety (which will be never).
Pushing for repeal of the second amendment will just make the left look crazy and will cause them to lose support. A Constitutional repeal of the second amendment is a practical impossibility and not much of a threat in any event and certainly not something likely to trigger a compromise.
The purpose of the second amendment is to prevent a tyrannical government (whether internal or external) from taking your rights away. It was a reaction to the British government's (their own government at the time) attempts to seize the American colonists weapons (which was one of the things that led to the Revolutionary War). It's easy to look at our lives now and say that another Hitler could never rise to power, or that the government would never try to quarter troops in your homes, or never try to forcibly suppress speech, (or seize your weapons one might have thought not too long ago), or whatever. But the fact is these sorts of things happen around the world all the time. Even if you believe these things aren't likely to happen in this country today, who knows what 10 years or 100 years will bring. If you allow the government to have all the guns now, there is no protection for the future. A criminal doing a bad things isn't a reason to take away MY rights.
The second amendment isn't for collecting or sports shooting. That kind of language in a law would be contradictory to the second amendment. A legitimate reason for owning a gun according to the second amendment is because you want one. It is a right. The primary reason the amendment exists is for the protection of oneself and their property. Someone shooting up a school is no more a reason to take away guns than someone driving a car into a crowd of people is a reason to take away cars. Or drunk drivers are a reason to take away alcohol (probably a better example). The hysteria against guns is all out of proportion with the statistics. You are far more likely to die in a car accident (or any number of other things) than to be shot and statistically you'll win the lottery a couple of times before you die in a mass shooting. What some consider "sensible" others consider "absurd" and therein lies the problem.
Nothing increases gun sales like the threat to take guns away. I don't even want an AR-15. The only gun I own is a shotgun inherited from my grandfather which I've fired exactly once (well, twice...it's double barrel). However, if there starts to be serious talk about repealing the second amendment I'm going out and buying two (well, probably only one...but definitely one).
The civil war is a whole other conversation. Even if you take it as an example where guns didn't work against a tyrannical government (and in the case of the civil war, both sides were being pretty tyrannical in any event, just in different ways), it isn't a reason to take guns away or to suggest it isn't a deterrent or a valid means of defense against tyranny.
Most of these arguments are moot anyway. Guns can already be 3D printed and while an AR-15 type weapon isn't possible yet, it's only a matter of time.
If you really want to fix the biggest problems with the medical industry then do things that will increase competition, not limit it. Remove AMA restrictions on the number of doctors that Universities can train, allow more competition in the insurance industry, have reasonably sane patent laws, tort reform, etc, and re-examine all existing regulations. Unless those problems are fixed, costs will continue to rise and the fact that you are paying it with tax dollars instead of medical bills won't matter much to the middle class (i.e. most of the country). We have to treat insurance as insurance, not as a managed plan to pay for all healthcare. Insurance is supposed to be for catastrophic expenses. A hospital stay, an emergency room visit, treatment for chronic disease. Not a doctor's visit or birth control or a flu shot. If government is to pay for such things than it needs to be done through a welfare type program, not "insurance".
I would also point out that just because Republicans have an idea, doesn't mean it is "right wing" (and certainly not necessarily "conservative"). There is nothing conservative about Obamacare. Nothing. I don't know if it was intended to help the insurance industry but I don't know that you can say that it has. At least, most insurance companies have pulled out of the exchanges and in many places there are few plans to choose from. In any event, Obamacare was pushed through as law with exactly 0 Republican support so the Democrats could have really done whatever they wanted with that law. It's not like they could have lost any more Republican support because they had none. Obamacare is why we have Trump today (whom I am not a fan of either). The government taking over an entire industry is a terrible idea. Obamacare has demonstrated that. Obamacare has made healthcare more expensive for myself and most of the middle class. Obamacare doesn't seem to have even done a particularly good job of doing what it was advertised to do which was to insure the uninsured. This country can't even manage the current entitlement expenses it has and currently has no plan to account for the increase in spending that will be necessary for social security in coming years.
I don't know where you lived where there was so much violence. I was lucky...never had a gun pulled on me or known anyone who did. But the fact of the matter is, if it had been a gang armed with knives you would have been in much the same situation.
Also, what your statistics don't show it the number of crimes prevented because law abiding citizens had guns. In most cases when a gun is used in a defensive manner, it is not fired. The threat of it is usually enough to scare away criminals. Most criminals are looking for easy targets and most gun owners aren't actually looking to try to kill people. Whether any of these arguments resonate with you isn't the point. Yours don't resonate with me either. So? The point is you don't have the RIGHT to tell me I can't own a gun and if you (or anybody else...I'm using "you" generically here) is going to use force to take one from me or to prevent me from buying one then you are the one in the wrong because you are initiating force, not me.
There is so many things literally wrong in what you wrote, but this was just too much: "There is nothing conservative about Obamacare.". It was literally thought up by conservatives aka the Heritage Foundation http://americablog.com/2013/10/original-1989-document-heritage-foundation-created-obamacares-individual-mandate.html
Tell me what is "conservative" about Obamacare? Do you know what the word means? Just because someone calls themselves conservative doesn't make it so. I don't claim to be a conservative myself. More a libertarian or perhaps a classical liberal. But I know what conservatism is and Obamacare does not represent those values. The fact that it was largely created by the heritage foundation doesn't change that. Also, if it is so conservative, why on earth did liberals almost unanimously support it when they didn't have to? Forcing people to buy a product is not a conservative idea, period and the fact that an organization that claims to be conservative comes up with it doesn't change that fact.
It's conservative because the ACA didn't change anything; you still had to buy into a for profit healthcare plan. Also, modern day liberals aka establishment Democrats are not too different than conservatives economically and on issues of healthcare. Hence the reason why the leaders of the Democrat party fight so hard against progressives' push for single player. One of the biggest lies our corporate media has formed is the idea that the democratic and republican parties are different. They really aren't. Obviously there are those like Bernie Sanders who are trying to move the party back to the left, but the establishment in charge are fighting it tooth and nail.
I absolutely agree with you that there is not much difference between Democrats and Republicans and that both serve corporate interests. It's just that there is no conservatism there. Philosophically, conservatives are supposed to be for smaller government and less government spending and intrusion into your life. Conservatism isn't supposed to be about serving corporate interests (beyond simply leaving businesses alone anyway). If you really think that Obamacare, which increases government spending massively and causes government to intrude in our lives more and absurdly forces you to buy a product is conservative then you really have no idea what the conservative philosophy is about. The vast majority of Republican are by no means conservative.
And before the ACA, no you didn't have to buy a for profit healthcare plan and when you did you had more choices. You could buy no healthcare, buy for profit healthcare, or buy non-profit healthcare (you still can but again, less choice due to the ACA). In addition, the ACA has caused a massive increase in insurance costs, especially for those with employer based plans. Then there are the subsidies of course. None of those changes are "conservative" philosophically no matter who came up with the idea.
As someone with a somewhat libertarian philosophy, I certainly don't want government serving corporate interests. But I also don't want massive government programs. The problem is, any time you have massive government programs and massive government spending, you are going to be serving corporate interests unless you find a way to remove all corruption from government. Good luck with that. Smaller, more local government is the way to go, not massively centralized government. Whereas you seem to be a Bernie Sanders guy I'm more of a Ron Paul or Gary Johnson guy.
Ultimately with a massive central government with massive spending, whatever politicians are in power ultimately have control of it. How often do you have truly good politicians in power? Part of the problem is the corrupt lobbying system but part of it is also they type of people that want to be in control of a massive central government. The choices aren't always great to begin with. It's much better just to limit government power and government spending then you limit the damage they can do. The Constitution tried to do that but has failed.
I think the whole reason Trump was elected was because people were sick and tired of the establishment Republican and Democrat candidates. They were willing to overlook his obvious flaws because they felt the alternatives were worse. I didn't think he was different enough to matter. I've voted for a third party candidate in the last three election cycles and will probably continue to do so. When others stop with the "a third party can't win" mantra and join me there may be real change. Until then, expect more of the same...or worse.