You're welcome, and Happy New Year to you too.chuckybrown wrote:.....we have free speech, but "we shouldn't yell FIRE in a movie theater" either.The Annoyed Man wrote:I believe that the 2nd Amendment right is ought to be unlimited. Balanced against that, I believe that some portion of the time, its full expression isn't wise. That is why I am glad that OC passed, but also why I won't be doing it myself most of the time.
I feel the same way about free speech too.
TAM, you nailed the answer for me. Thank you.
Happy new year!!
Re: "shout fire in theater"........ Ordinances against shouting fire in theaters aren't really a restriction on free speech. I've given this example many times: It is totally legal to shout fire in a theater, if there actually IS a fire in the theater. It's analog would be municipal ordinances against firing a gun inside the city limits. You can't do it just to celebrate the amount of beer you've had to drink, but you CAN lawfully fire your gun in self-defense inside city limits. Laws against doing either - shouting fire unnecessarily inside a theater, or shooting your gun unnecessarily inside city limits - are not a restrictions on either the 1st or 2nd Amendment, because you still CAN do either if the situation actually calls for it.jed wrote:But to some, this may seem like political correctness. It is not PC, it's common sense and good judgment.
If you mean people in general, I take offense. If you mean politicians, I think some are partial supporters.OP wrote:So, if one agrees with CC, but not OC....is it possible to be a partial 2A supporter?
In other words....can someone support 2A rights....but only to a certain extent...i.e. not exercising 2A rights that might make others "uncomfortable"?
I'm curious, because I think you're either all in, or you're not.
No flames wanted, just honest discourse.
Happy 2016!
Chuckybrown
Just because I most likely will never OC does not mean I am not a full 2A supporter. How can I CC 24/7 and not be a full supporter? Just because I see totally no need for me to OC at wally world, HEB, whataburger or anywhere else, does not mean I do not support OC or 2A. OC is great with a large dose of common sense and good judgment (which OCT has none). OC has caused us to lose more CC locations. The right to OC has infringed on the right to CC. This is not because of OCT, they just expedited the OC info to businesses. If not for OCT, starting today businesses would be freaking out every time they see someone OCing. Then they would have gradually been informed if 30.06/07. OCT just sped the process along.
On a personal note, I am so sick of reading about OC. Charles may need to rename this forum to TexasOCforum.
I'm done ranting.
I hope everyone has a very Happy New Year!!
Being in favor of laws to restrict the shouting of fire in theaters, or the shooting of guns inside city limits does NOT make you "anti" anything except irresponsibly dangerous behavior. What you do out in the middle of the country where your actions can hurt nobody else is entirely your own business. You want to paint your head blue and shoot out your home's windows? Go right ahead..........as long as your bullets aren't going to come down into someone else's property or person. One can can be BOTH completely committed to protecting both the 1st and 2nd Amendments AND completely committed to preventing dangerous behavior by foolish people from putting the health and lives of other people in danger. A general rule of thumb with ANY right is that the free exercise of your rights end where they impede the free exercise of someone else's rights which may conflict with your own...... and visa versa. In public settings, where the rights of one bump into the rights of another, compromise is required. This is particularly true when the unrestricted exercise of your rights may be harmful without just cause to the OTHER person's health. Carrying your gun around - concealed or openly - doesn't threaten my life or health, so by all means go ahead and do it. But randomly shooting your gun into the air most certainly does place the health/life of anyone within range of those bullets at significant risk, and you have no right place to my life at risk just so you can shoot your gun into the air. These are just extreme examples, but there are others......for instance the age-old debate between gun-rights and property-rights. People who do not recognize the need for compromise in such public policy situations simply haven't reached adulthood yet. If that fits someone on this forum reading these words, don't be offended. Instead, grow up.
Why? Because as sure as God made little green apples, your karmic debt will come back to haunt you when you crap on other people in the pursuit of your rights. When you crap on the rights of others in pursuit of your own, please shut up and don't complain when someone craps all over your rights and nobody comes to your defense. And that goes for pro-gun people as much as it does anti-gun people. It is easy to say that a right not exercised is a right soon lost.......and that IS true.......but it is a lot harder (and more adult) to ALSO defend the rights of others while defending your own. NONE of this works if we are not willing to go that extra mile to defend the rights of others, EVEN when it conflicts with the free exercise of our own. A libertarian society (AKA "Classical Liberalism") is not possible when people are not willing to restrain their own behaviors for any reason whatsoever. Nature abhors a vacuum, and in a vacuum of virtuous self-restraint, the substitute for that self-restraint becomes lots of laws.....and we all know how that works out in the end. If you don't know how that works out, take a look at the world around us today. The Shelob's web of laws we labor under today are all the result of people failing to live virtuous lives. If you want to see the removal of laws which restrain your rights, START by practicing SELF-restraint. While virtue may mean different things to different people, some virtues are consistent regardless of world view. Theft, whether it is by armed robbers or government officials (but I repeat myself) is wrong - whether you are religious or atheist. That we labor under a government today which seeks to justify theft is a direct result of people abdicating their own obligations to behave virtuously - both in their personal individual behaviors, and in their public participatory political behaviors. Adults behave virtuously in the defense of liberty........ALL liberty. There have been fewer examples of a lack of virtuous self-restraint in recent public life than the inane behaviors of OCT and OCTC.
Another mark of adulthood is being able to admit either when your cause was wrong, or if not wrong, then when you've screwed up in its defense and/or promotion. (Honesty is a virtue; Intellectual honesty is one of the highest virtues.) The cause of Open Carry was not a wrong cause; but the leadership of OCT and OCTC definitely screwed up in how they promoted it. Their fecklessness very nearly LOST open carry for Texans. Instead of being adult enough to admit they screwed up with their tactical errors in pursuit of a worthy strategic goal, they very nearly killed it. Instead of having the intellectual integrity to admit their screw up, they STEAL credit for its passage from those people who actually did the HARD work of convincing legislators—who may not have been initially so inclined at the time—that it was time to pass OC. Nobody likes a thief, and nobody likes a lying thief. OCT's leadership are thieves for stealing credit for the work done by others; and they are liars for promoting their thievery as political wisdom. They are guilty of the political equivalent of stolen valor. It's disgusting, no matter who does it, and no matter the cause or reason.
OCT leaders maintain that their demonstrations served to "educate" Texans about open carry. Well, in a way, they are correct. They DID educate Texans. They taught a HUGE percentage of the 97% of Texans who do NOT have a license to carry, many of who are already uneasy with the 2nd Amendment, that gun-owners are crazy people who don't know how to act virtuously in public. By linking pro-gun activism to a lack of virtue through their irresponsible behavior, they did nothing but give gun-grabbers ammunition to use against us for the next couple of decades.
I wish each and every one of you a happy, safe, calm, and virtuous new year.