A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

What part of "shall not be infringed" is unclear?

yeah, the USN uses a carrier group for intelligence gathering.

good grief

Why not? The Russians still fly aircraft near other country's airspaces, forcing them to launch intercept aircraft to protect their airspace, partly to assess their response. While I don't think the mission of the carrier was specifically intelligence gathering, it's not as if we weren't watching what they were doing and vice versa.

This was obviously provocative and meant to rattle the U.S. a bit, but the article did say that the Iranians announced their intentions over maritime radio. I'm sure the captain of the carrier thought there was no immediate danger to his ship or those escorting him or he would've acted to protect everyone. The last thing we need is for an incident to occur in the Straight of Hormuz and then the Iranians shut it down, causing a potential war. The Iranians want to be provocative and let everyone know they're a power within the region, they don't want to start WWIII.

This is a very interesting article. You can see through the article that he is struggling with this decision. But with every point he raises, he's seeing the light. The closing paragraph is key. He's realized all the key points (protecting himself, his family and those around him, never wanting to actually have to use the weapon and acknowledging that police don't often use it and that an armed society is a polite society). He is arguing against himself in some places (when police do use their weapons, they often miss and hit their friends, etc.). At least he's thinking  through the issue and coming to his own conclusion, instead of just being a sheep and following the others because it sounds good.

I think the debate should be about the best way to fight radical liberalism.

That's a separate debate. Being liberal isn't good enough anymore as evidenced by the disappearance of the "blue dog Democrats". I think the current administration has a lot to do with that. If you're a Democrat and you weren't 100% loyal to the President there were political consequences.

Quote from: LevelWing on December 03, 2015, 10:45:03 PM

I agree that the French response has been more visible and stronger. I also agree that we should have a better response. However, let's also not forget that when France passed their state of emergency they eroded a lot of citizen's rights. Part of the state of emergency powers allows the government to forbid mass gatherings, limit movements of people and increase the monitoring of people. We don't want to go down that road here. That's allowing the terrorists to win in my book.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/france-nationwide-state-of-emergency

I don't disagree, and that's a good point. We've seen that anarchy as recently as Hurricane Katrina, with gun confiscations in New Orleans.

But I think our unwillingness to fight radical Islam right here may be our existential downfall.

The President wants to be friends with everyone around the world, which clearly isn't working. I think the other part of it is that he wants to be able to end his term and say that he didn't have any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during his time. That's why he would rather classify it as work place violence or under some other cause.

As a whole, I don't think it's the American people's unwillingness to fight radical Islam, I think it's that of a select few, those who are in or close to the current administration.