Quote Originally Posted by shaun View Post
But by golly, you can still go buy an assault rifle. Bravo for you. And its nice that you believe it can keep our govt in check because we are armed. Sure, that was the original intention, but I seriously doubt that - regardelss how facistic our country becomes - that the people are ever going to mount an armed revolution. And, our govt has a history of fighting even our UNARMED revolution with extreme force. Kent State wasnt so very long ago.
The point of a freedoms is to be able to do something. You are born with them --- LIKE YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION. They aren't things the government can take away from you. The right to own guns is not because one day you might have to protect yourself from the government. You have that right because you live in a free country.

People in the United States have a constitutionally protected right to engage in sodomy in the bedrooms that no legislature can infringe upon, but that doesn't mean you, your parents and friends all have that right because it carries an actionable benefit.

Monty Python's Meaning of Life adroitly captures the liberal concept of rights and freedoms during the scene where a stately older Protestant couple sit in their living room and look across the street at all the children streaming out of the house of a Catholic household. After sneering about their litters of kids, Graham Chapman explains to his wife that because they are Protestants, they have the freedom to use French ticklers, condoms and all kinds of sexual devices ---- even though they don't nor ever have.

"That's what it means to be a Protestant!"

Banning things deemed as "dangerous" has become very commonplace nowadays --- cigarettes for example... and the Burger Supreme Court essentially felt that pornography was not protected free speech for the same reason... that it was "prurient with no social benefit" or even potentially dangerous. Therefore, it was ok to be regulated or restricted.

I would suggest that the freedom of speech which includes protections on pornography stems from the same intellectual political philosophy that includes the right for someone to own a gun.

Steve