Girlfriend smile you did just fine. Sugar you got “Sucker Punched” but held your own. It’s happened to me before
Had you some warning, I am sure that you would have prepared, and slaughtered him.

Melody L

I updated the post with your response.

As to MichaelG’s comments on “Constitutional Rights”, you should all read Rep. Leach’s comentary in today’s Inquirer.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/11881542.html

Melody Zullinger, Executive Director
PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs
http://www.pfsc.org

Constitutional rights are the vernacular, and are understood by the majority of the population. Whether we win or lose aren’t going to hinge on whether we call them natural or constitutional rights. 99% of the people out there, even people who care deeply for individual freedom, aren’t going to fret too much over the semantics.

I’ve said it before here and I’ll say it again, Sebastion, please stop using the phrase constitutional right. There are rights, that predate the constitution. There are constitutional prohibitions and controls on the government’s delegated powers to infringe upon those rights. There are not, have not, never been, constitutional rights. The lazy use of words is like the lazy use of protections, they leave you open to being f#$%ked.

You’re right to point out that Miller will keep on going, but if he was successfully debated, people on the fence, or who aren’t sure where they stand on the issue, might go one way or another. It’s important to get our message out there, even to hostile audiences. Even talking to gun control advocates, it’s worthwhile to have good arguments, so you can at least not motivate that side to work too hard against you, or to rank that issue high up on their political calculus.

You’ll never convince zealots like Brady or Miller, but you can’t concede media space to them no matter how obstinate their support of their own agenda will be. Otherwise their voice is the only one out there.

Back in ’95 both NRA and HCI made a big deal out of Sarah Brady and Tanya Metaska scheduling a series of online debates with audience participation on Compuserve and AOL. I was at the first one on CI$. After both were introduced, the moderators opened the floor for questions. Brady was immediately pelted with a flood of questions which she refused to answer. This went on for maybe 10 minutes before Sarah signed off without comment. The same thing happened on AOL. The 3rd debate on CI$ was then cancelled. By any measure Sarah got spanked. What did it accomplish? Aside from a good laugh not much. Sarah is still around peddling the same lies while NRA continues to do their thing. What would have happened if Melody did better? It’s pretty safe to say that Miller would continue on as before. The goal is to defeat people like Miller and there’s no way to do that in a debate forum.

I guess I communicated my point poorly…

I was actually trying to say something fairly close to what you replied.

I agree most people don’t care about constitutionally guaranteed rights, and won’t invest any time into protecting them. That is why I think we need to move away from that argument in the realm of public discussion (save it for the courts).

I think we need to shift the debate away from ‘the right to bear arms’ (which sounds arcane and outdated) to the ‘right of self defense’.
In the minds of the populace, we need to equate gun control activism with an attack on the personal right of self defense.

In a debate suddenly framed around self defense, statistics regarding gun ownership take on a whole new meaning.

In every discussion about ‘gun control’, we need to respond as though it’s only about the right of self defense. In every case, directly replace the words “right to bear arms” and “right to own guns” with the words “right to self defense” and “right to protect our families”.

Eventually the debate must change course, or the anti-rights activists will respond by saying gun ownership is not about self defense, which opens a discussion that far more people will understand better than a constitutionally protected rights debate, as you perhaps point out.

Once the debate is shifted to the inerrant right of personal self defense then many of the anti-rights proposals will begin to appear as infringement to people who *don’t* see it as such when it’s only about gun ownership.

I agree that ‘one gun a month’ restrictions and such will be also be divorced from constitutionally protected rights such as the 2nd amendment. But….. to a non-gun owner the anti-rights arguments are just about people who own guns for fun and hunting, which doesn’t concern them. They don’t equate the restrictions as applying to them. It’s up to us to change the debate and bring it to the doorstep of the target audience in a way they will care about. Make it personal, and make it clear it does infringe on their rights they do care about.
Everyone believes they have a right to self defense, and a nearly unlimited one once you start discussing it. Any restrictions on that make people nervous….

On the same note…. I also think……

We need to stop calling them ‘gun control advocates’, which makes them sound like legal aid officers, and never refer to them as anything other than ‘Anti-Rights activists’, which sounds like another beast entirely. Let them be on the defensive and explain why they are not anti-rights, if they can. Sheer repetition will eventually brand them with that name.