"Anyone who can't be trusted with a gun can't be trusted without a custodian."
Gun rights author and activist David Codrea frequently uses this as the litmus test for determining whether or not someone should be deprived of their right to self-defense. Because, if a person shouldn't have a gun, he arguably shouldn't be in any position to get hold of a 2-ton vehicle, or a can of gasoline, or a baseball bat either. Application of this rule could save hours of debate on silly and unconstitutional laws attempting to deprive people of their inalienable rights.
Gun rights author and activist David Codrea frequently uses this as the litmus test for determining whether or not someone should be deprived of their right to self-defense. Because, if a person shouldn't have a gun, he arguably shouldn't be in any position to get hold of a 2-ton vehicle, or a can of gasoline, or a baseball bat either. Application of this rule could save hours of debate on silly and unconstitutional laws attempting to deprive people of their inalienable rights.
Codrea's Law says your bill prohibiting people accused of domestic violence from owning guns is wrong-headed and discriminatory.
by jcomeau_ictx April 11, 2015
whispering against authority: portmanteau of sussuration and insurrection. well illustrated by a quote from Solzhenitsyn's _Gulag Archipelago_:
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
by jcomeau_ictx April 09, 2015
Desire, urge; from the Spanish verb ganar, to win or gain. The term was popularized among English speakers by the LA mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante as played by Edward James Olmos in the movie Stand and Deliver.
"You're going to work harder here than you've ever worked anywhere else. And the only thing I ask from you is ganas. Desire... If you don't have the ganas, I will give it to you, because I'm an expert." (from Stand and Deliver)
by jcomeau_ictx May 14, 2013