Thanks for your detailed comments. I’m not going to spend time countering any of them, except one: you failed to counter my final and most important conclusion, that this type of demonstration is aggression.
You’re quite welcome.
You’re correct that i didn’t address that conclusion because it wasn’t really a conclusion. Conclusions are arrived at by presenting an argument and evidence in support, then concluding it. You didn’t really do that, you asserted and emoted it. Your argument consisted of they were there, some people asked them to leave and they refused, ergo “blatantly aggressive intimidation,” “thin excuse to assert dominance through violence” (which is odd because there was no violence) and “this is blatant white male aggression.” Your conclusion was the assertion of a subjective interpretation of the motives of a third party so yeah, i left that alone and dealt with the more objective and substantive parts of your post.
Countering with a deluge of information which “irrefutably” proves I’m wrong … and failing to address the heart of the matter is exactly what a bully would do. Because that’s who this culture — this aggressive, white supremecist twist on gun culture — attracts: bullies.
Just so i’m clear on our terms, providing information is bullying? Have we finally reached that point in diluting language? You posted a long, profanity-laden rant filled with ad-hominem arguments, deriding those who might disagree with you as idiots and assholes. I rebutted using as objective an analysis as i could, citing facts and my sources and keeping away from the subjective areas of your post (because subjective claims are countered with opinion, not rebutted with fact,) and your response is to claim that i’m bullying. For the life of me i can’t follow that thought process.
If anyone has a claim to being bullied in this little exchange, wouldn’t it be me? You responded to my substantive post by ignoring the entirety of it and attacking me personally. That sounds more like bullying than countering your argument with information.
yes, I AM allowed to disagree with SCOTUS, especially when it’s being led by the nose by Scalia’s originalism
Of course you are. But just because everyone is entitled to their opinion doesn’t mean everyone’s opinion carries equal weight. In your post you state,
How do I know this, you ask? What are my sources? A basic understanding of our constitution, US history, and common sense. If you think my dad taught me to handle a semi-automatic rifle but didn’t make me read the Federalist Papers and watch endless military documentaries, you’d be wrong.
You’re putting your bona fides out there in an effort to lend your arguments credence, but i’m sorry to say that they don’t carry much weight against those of five supreme court justices with decades on the bench weighing in on the most complex legal matters in the country. Of course these are both arguments from authority, but if we’re going to engage on that level it doesn’t play out in your favor.
Again, as with your response to me, you resort to ad-hominem rather than a substantive approach. You can disagree with Scalia’s approach to constitutional review on the whole to your heart’s content, but the Heller decision was quite clear in its reasoning and cited numerous founding era sources in laying out a case for its decision. In order to rebut the decision, you must rebut its reasoning. A vague derision aimed at Scalia generally doesn’t pass muster.
