Soccer parents wince at prospect of guns at games

[headcase]

Originally Posted by ChamberedRound

(sigh)

<snip>

You're right that some "pine for the good 'ol days"; there are many members who've stopped posting actively as a result (anyone remember Aubie?). But the fact is that Dan, Doug, myself, EM, rotz, and the gorilla are still here, and for the most part we all actively participate as much as we can given our respective lives and responsibilities. So contrary to your belief, we do support "the cause" regardless of personal opinion.

<snip>.

I think you misunderstand my belief and are applying what you consider to be my belief, to a list of people that, if I had such a belief, would not all be on it.

In an attempt to clarify my belief on this subject, I will try to be more concise.

Again, it was not meant to be personal attack in any way shape or form. It was the specific statement that read as if OC had ruined this forum and the higher ups were considering shutting it down. Whether or not that was how it was intended, or meant, that was how it came across. Sadly, in my view( so I guess you can say that this is one of my beliefs ), this opinion is shared by more than a few long time members, among whom, as you mentioned, are a few have abandoned the site. There are some who obviously condemn any political slant to this forum and post as much, stating that it should go back to being all about which sights are better, or how to field strip a glock. They are well within their rights to post such, but it is confusing to me, because there are still active sections that are dedicated to just these things. It is disheartening, and at the same time encouraging( because it shows their personal opinions don't necessarily completely control content), that the owner and his second, seem to be upset at the very thing that has made this forum become the best resource for firearm related information and fellowship in possibly the entire world. If political clout is the desired end objective, there is only one way to achieve it, numbers. OC has brought numbers, the so called drama has attracted massive numbers, the quality of info seems to be retaining those numbers. Every time someone is unlawfully harassed and stands up, it is good for firearm owners. It is OC'ers who are the ones being harassed 1000 to 1, and the people who stand up with them are members of the PAFOA. That is what gets the PAFOA noticed, puts it's name out there, and attracts new members. It also gets it noticed by people to whom numbers are important. Walking into a State Senator's office as the owner of the PAFOA whose membership is 1,200 and requesting action on an issue, is going to get a much different response than walking in as the owner of the PAFOA whose membership is 15,000 and is recognised all across this Commonwealth as THE firearms rights organization of Pa. What response do you get when membership hits 50,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Being a good place to learn how to do a trigger job is not going to do that. Being the place to go to find help for potentially life altering police encounters, will. OC has done that. The largest OC supporters and activist, have done that. Having open dialogue between OC supporters and detractors, has done that. It all ties together, all of it, the gun info, the legal info, the fellowship and the support of other members when they get in a hot spot, and the media attention.

I am putting in killer long days and don't want to ramble anymore so I'll stop here.

OASN~ I have publicly stated before, and I will do so again now, that I respect your opinions greatly. I don't necessarily always agree with you, but you, Greg, LRT, Rich, NineseveN, normanvin, pennsyplinker, soberbyker, Lil'dobe, Gunlawyer, to name just a few, are all intelligent, usually well thought out posters, whose opinions I value.

[Asmodeus6]

As a noob, I stay out of the heated debates. But I like that they are here. Controversy aside... PAFOA basically sits on the pulse of gun owners in PA. What's going on, and what people are going through is a click away here.

I joined to learn more about the legal aspect of certain things, and have stayed because this site is the total package. I have to agree with headcase because this is how I percieve this site.

This place has an admirable finality to it. Its ALL here, you can stop searching. You have some extremely good people, who are knowledgeable, and who honestly care about each other. Your close knit group makes this place fun, serious, and informative. Many of the people he mentioned are exactly who I mean. I don't want involved in this debate, but this is more of the outsiders perspective, as I have just met most of you on here recently. And since, I have been recommending everyone I know to join if they want to know what's going on.

I've learned more here in 3 months than I have in the previous 26 years. I think the best thing you can do is to continue to grow.

[soberbyker]

Originally Posted by Asmodeus6

As a noob, I stay out of the heated debates. But I like that they are here. Controversy aside... PAFOA basically sits on the pulse of gun owners in PA. What's going on, and what people are going through is a click away here.

I joined to learn more about the legal aspect of certain things, and have stayed because this site is the total package. I have to agree with headcase because this is how I percieve this site.

This place has an admirable finality to it. Its ALL here, you can stop searching. You have some extremely good people, who are knowledgeable, and who honestly care about each other. Your close knit group makes this place fun, serious, and informative. Many of the people he mentioned are exactly who I mean. I don't want involved in this debate, but this is more of the outsiders perspective, as I have just met most of you on here recently. And since, I have been recommending everyone I know to join if they want to know what's going on.

I've learned more here in 3 months than I have in the previous 26 years. I think the best thing you can do is to continue to grow.

That one sentence speaks volumes as to what PAFOA is to a great many folks here, myself included.

.

[Brown-Bear]

Originally Posted by soberbyker

That one sentence speaks volumes as to what PAFOA is to a great many folks here, myself included.

.

Absolutely. If a guy can come here and learn more in 3 months thatn he has anywhere else, then how can we as a forum, strike that, family be doing anything wrong. I read several posts about the need for seperate forums, we already have them. Not speaking directly to Byker here just to clarify. But if you don't like OC and don't want to read aboput it and don't believe in it. Then don't go inot the OC forum. If your not a hunter,and don't want to talk about hunting, don't go into the hunters forum.

Dave

[Eugene V. Debs]

Originally Posted by danp

My only thing is that I think the movement in PA needs a little more structure, guidance and long-term strategy than it currently has.

Agreed. But for gun rights in PA to be secure we have to make a dent in Philly and start splitting the Dems over the issue. That's gonna require a truly non-partisan movement to frame the debate in terms of human rights. It's also gonna require having an organized voice within the Democratic Party. That won't happen if we expect the NRA to take exclusive leadership over the movement-- they are too partisan and have too many organizational ties to the GOP. We need organizations that can effectively work within the Democratic Party to influence primaries, and that can challenge the influence of the VPC and Brady Campaign.

Whether you're a conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, socialist, whatever...if you believe in gun rights and 2a, it's clear we need to make inroads into the Democratic Party as well. If not, our rights are endangered each election cycle. We need gun control OFF THE TABLE as an election issue, and we'll only get that by getting past this conservative vs. Liberal bullshit and frame the right to bear arms as a human right that should be as unquestionable as the right to vote.

[Philbert]

Originally Posted by Eugene V. Debs

Agreed. But for gun rights in PA to be secure we have to make a dent in Philly and start splitting the Dems over the issue. That's gonna require a truly non-partisan movement to frame the debate in terms of human rights. It's also gonna require having an organized voice within the Democratic Party. That won't happen if we expect the NRA to take exclusive leadership over the movement-- they are too partisan and have too many organizational ties to the GOP. We need organizations that can effectively work within the Democratic Party to influence primaries, and that can challenge the influence of the VPC and Brady Campaign.

Whether you're a conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, socialist, whatever...if you believe in gun rights and 2a, it's clear we need to make inroads into the Democratic Party as well. If not, our rights are endangered each election cycle. We need gun control OFF THE TABLE as an election issue, and we'll only get that by getting past this conservative vs. Liberal bullshit and frame the right to bear arms as a human right that should be as unquestionable as the right to vote.

Indeed. Somehow the right to bear arms has been cleaved away from other rights. I guess elements of both left and right have been happy to go along with this for their own reasons. I had hoped that things were changing in the nineties when the ACLU and NRA got together to fight the Clinton version of the PATRIOT Act. But the momentum there appears to have stalled.

[NineseveN]

Originally Posted by Eugene V. Debs

Agreed. But for gun rights in PA to be secure we have to make a dent in Philly and start splitting the Dems over the issue. That's gonna require a truly non-partisan movement to frame the debate in terms of human rights. It's also gonna require having an organized voice within the Democratic Party. That won't happen if we expect the NRA to take exclusive leadership over the movement-- they are too partisan and have too many organizational ties to the GOP. We need organizations that can effectively work within the Democratic Party to influence primaries, and that can challenge the influence of the VPC and Brady Campaign.

Whether you're a conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, socialist, whatever...if you believe in gun rights and 2a, it's clear we need to make inroads into the Democratic Party as well. If not, our rights are endangered each election cycle. We need gun control OFF THE TABLE as an election issue, and we'll only get that by getting past this conservative vs. Liberal bullshit and frame the right to bear arms as a human right that should be as unquestionable as the right to vote.

I think you nailed this one. IMHO, this is what most gun owners lose sight of, and why I think that even though the political/rights/philosophical discussion has taken precedence, even over the OC talk, it's even more important than some of the other things we discuss. In order to change the Democratic party, we have to engender change in our own ranks. Too many gun owners here think of gun rights as a right-wing conservative Republican issue when it's not. We have more than enough examples of that here in this state, we have a bunch of pro-gun or mostly pro-gun Democrats to use as examples.

The 4 posts prior to yours by headcase, Asmodeus, soberbyker and Brown-Bear I think all tie-in, and together I think they almost make the point I’m at on this one.

PAFOA.org is indeed the total package. For a long time, The High Road seemed to held as the pinnacle of online firearms discussion, but I think that PAFOA has taken that crown for itself over the last year or so. THR got to be bigger than the owner was prepared for, and they really didn’t seem to have a plan, so when they had tens of thousands of active members, instead of adding more moderators, they simply started to outlaw certain types of discussion (politics, religion, anything not about firearms) and IMHO, it suffered for it.

When I first joined here, I was part of a very small minority of people that held the outspoken libertarian-esque views on politics, religion and legal issues that I do, and not many people were really interested in discussing those things much past a couple of one-liners in each post. The same issues that come up now in those areas came up back then, but it took a group of members coming together in those threads to really hash the subjects out. Sure there was some bickering and stupidity at first, (I even received a warning or two from Chambered Round for my own conduct there), but as the forum grew and people started to gain an appreciation for each other, even if they disagreed, the discussion became more healthy and much more intellectual. Someone who was, at that time, seemingly my arch nemesis has grown to become one of my absolute favorite and most respected people on this forum, Billamj. We still debate with a lot of fire and fury, but we respect each other. And dare I say it, I think the discussions on those kinds of issues are better for it, and I don’t know of many other places where you could get the caliber of discourse and the diversity of opinions that you do here on non-gun topics. For a firearms forum, that’s amazing. And I’d like to think that those early pioneers of that type of discussion, people like Chambered Round, LittleRedToyota, Billamj, philyd2, Rule105b, D-FENS, Frenchy and Lordiego01 really helped paved the way for folks like headcase, DC Dalton, Carnes, adymond, Lysander, Gunlawyer001, Michelle, soberbyker, P-11 Shooter, Joe Smith and all the others that really contribute to indirectly related or non-firearm topics because they saw that our discussions were intelligent and full of passion but not abusive (unless a troll got loose behind the city gates). I’d wager, without actually going to look, that these kinds of threads easily outweigh the volume of OC threads.

But the OC discussion, and now activism started the same way, with a precious few willing to talk about and practice it. And because of guys like Pa Patriot, Gnbrotz, Skuggi and a handful of others, the way was paved for shefearsnothing, Penssyplinker, Mountain Jack and all of the other OC advocates to really contribute in both discussion and example for the rest of us.

None of that is to the exclusion of talking about other things like trigger jobs and tactics, there’s room for all discussion, but it has to be nurtured by the people that really want to and are driven to discussing it. I know a lot about guns, I have a lot of experience in running most any handgun currently made, but I can’t beat guys like Lycanthrope and Synergy on the buzzer because they really hit those threads hard and fast with more information than I can generally provide. I’d take Lycan’s advice on anything 1911 or 2011 over the people on other 1911-specific forums any day of the week, because he really does know his shit. And it’s not just 1911’s with him (or Synergy) or the other handful of exceptionally experienced and educated firearms guys here, we have a veritable treasure trove of knowledge of all things gun-related, from handguns to revolvers to bolt guns to shotguns to semi-auto military-copies to NFA guns and suppressors. Hell, we even have Watchmaker, who is the resident illumination fanatic whose running post on lights for CCW and Law Enforcement should have given him pools of reputation points and thanks. And that’s not even to mention TonyF and others who freely give out very sound advice about tactics and Gunlawyer001 with the implications of a self-defense scenario and the potential aftermath of it, you just don’t find this kind of a mix anywhere else and the discussion here in all of those areas is invaluable.

But I think the problem is, we simply have more people geared up to talk about political and other loosely-related issues than we do about trigger jobs and tactics. We have more people foaming at the mouth to talk about OC (both the pros and cons of it) than concealed carry (which so many people do now it’s merely a footnote in most discussion unless the topic is started by someone carrying or applying for their license for the first time). And the thing is, no amount of steering is going to change that, the folks that rule the philosophical debates aren’t always going to be qualified to diagnose someone's handgun problem or talk about how to clear a room or defend against multiple attackers with one arm damaged (we read instead of lead on those threads). Steering the discussion won’t bring you more of the discussion you want, it will only bring less of the stuff that has made this forum grow into a strong haven of information for gun owners of all walks of life. Criticizing or pushing the discussion away from a focus on OC and OC activism won’t get you more discussion about concealed carry or other forms of activism on other issues, you’ll just lose those folks that have truly helped this forum grow into what it has been.

If you believe strongly in a certain line of discussion, it’s up to you to sow the seeds and feed it when it gets hungry. I do know a lot about firearms and some things about tactics, but I’ll never be able to handle those issues with the authority and breadth of knowledge that Lycanthrope, Synergy, TonyF and others do. My strong suit is in the other stuff, and I think it is so important that gun owners, Pennsylvania Firearms Owners especially, know as much as possible about those things that drive political and personal decisions that I feed that beast at every opportunity. So many gun owners don’t know what the Constitution actually is or what the Bill of Rights says. They don’t or won’t understand Eugene V. Debs’ point about the politics of gun control and how true it really is. They don’t understand that pigeonholing the issue into a Republican versus Democrat thing is dangerous and counterproductive. They don’t know what the basis for our freedoms and thus, the Right to Bear Arms is, and they don’t know enough about the political process and the issues that drive it to make a really informed decision when they pull those levers. I’m not talking about voting right or voting for the guy I like, I’m just talking about knowing who and what one is voting for. I’m not pushing an agenda or a platform aside from making sure that these discussions take place so that people actually make these decisions based on knowledge, not some campaign punch line.

This forum is what you make of it, if the OC discussion is drowning other things out, then step up and start discussing other things. I know one thing, the OC-related talk hardly even blips my radar aside from the occasional explosive thread, because the political and philosophical stuff drowns it out (in both senses of the term, volume), yet no one seems to be complaining about that.

If you want more technical discussion, then start discussing it. If you want more tactical discussion, then start discussing it. If you don’t know anything about those subjects you want discussed, you’re going to have to find a way to drive it anyway instead of expecting others to stop talking about what interests them and start talking about what interests you. If you build it, they will come, it just seems like too many people want to bitch about the shape our house is taking but won’t stop to pick up a hammer and get their hands dirty.

[archon]

Originally Posted by Eugene V. Debs

Whether you're a conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, socialist, whatever...if you believe in gun rights and 2a, it's clear we need to make inroads into the Democratic Party as well. If not, our rights are endangered each election cycle. We need gun control OFF THE TABLE as an election issue, and we'll only get that by getting past this conservative vs. Liberal bullshit and frame the right to bear arms as a human right that should be as unquestionable as the right to vote.

"Human rights" have absolutely no basis in metaphysics or philosophy. It was some weird invention after World War II that has become nothing more than a political buzzword and justification for the UN to shove whatever mandate they pass next down our throats.

The only way to secure a way of living is not to smack the latest buzzword on it - whether that be "human right", "civil right", "civil liberty", etc. It is to educate the culture in the philosophical and historical origins of the institution. If you fail to do so, it doesn't matter what you call it, because you will quickly lose it.

You can see it now with the oncoming failure of our republic. We stopped educating our youth about the core concepts of the ancient Greeks - freedom and liberty. And, now, surprise suprise no one truely understands these concepts.

If you are concerned about guns, self-defense, or just freedom in general, do yourself a favor and start educating yourself about the roots of Western Civilization and continue from there. Pick up Hobbs, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and read. Take a class at your local community college. Just do something. Because buzz words are just that buzz words. The buzz will eventually die and so will whatever was behind it. Anyway remember "Save the Whales" or "Save the Rainforest" for example?

[Eugene V. Debs]

Originally Posted by Philbert

Indeed. Somehow the right to bear arms has been cleaved away from other rights. I guess elements of both left and right have been happy to go along with this for their own reasons. I had hoped that things were changing in the nineties when the ACLU and NRA got together to fight the Clinton version of the PATRIOT Act. But the momentum there appears to have stalled.

Exactly-- the GOP and Democrats like having the right to bear arms standing alone, because then it becomes a "wedge" issue like abortion and gay rights that will distract voters from just how similar the parties are on other issues. We have to build a broad, ideologically-diverse movement and a robust organization to put pressure on the Democrats to drop gun control, and thus remove the wedge. They'll want to hold on to that wedge as long as they can, being the cynical politicians they are, but it's up to us to hand them the pole and stand over them until they pry it out. As long as one major party is seen as being on the "right" or "wrong" side of this issue and is long as the value of this right is seen along traditional ideological lines, we will always run the risk of losing it.

[Eugene V. Debs]

Originally Posted by archon

"Human rights" have absolutely no basis in metaphysics or philosophy. It was some weird invention after World War II that has become nothing more than a political buzzword and justification for the UN to shove whatever mandate they pass next down our throats.

The only way to secure a way of living is not to smack the latest buzzword on it - whether that be "human right", "civil right", "civil liberty", etc. It is to educate the culture in the philosophical and historical origins of the institution. If you fail to do so, it doesn't matter what you call it, because you will quickly lose it.

You can see it now with the oncoming failure of our republic. We stopped educating our youth about the core concepts of the ancient Greeks - freedom and liberty. And, now, surprise suprise no one truely understands these concepts.

If you are concerned about guns, self-defense, or just freedom in general, do yourself a favor and start educating yourself about the roots of Western Civilization and continue from there. Pick up Hobbs, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and read. Take a class at your local community college. Just do something. Because buzz words are just that buzz words. The buzz will eventually die and so will whatever was behind it. Anyway remember "Save the Whales" or "Save the Rainforest" for example?

I've read works by all of those thinkers save Plutarch, and the views on democracy and republicanism by the Greek philosophers must be taken with a grain of salt, as Athenian democracy was based on the institution of slavery and Plato's Republic had some quite scary notions of centralized authority. To say nothing of Hobbes's views on centralized authority and state power, which many people here would find abhorrent.

Call them "natural rights" or "deontological rights" if you care to, but "human rights" is a term more easily grasped by people and if we're building an ideologically-diverse mass movement for gun rights I'd think changing the nomenclature people use for basic rights would be pretty low on the list of priorities. Although if you are really thinking of rights along ancient Greek lines, "natural rights" or "deontological rights" might not do it for ya-- really don't care what we call them as long as we can get a majority of people and the political leaders they elect to recognize they exist and value their protection.