Why do people seem unable to apply the following saying to other things?

Because an abortion only affects one (or arguably two) people while guns and smoking can potentially harm us all.

Someone’s cigarette smoke can harm me from a block away.

For about six months last year, every morning there was a woman walking down the street smoking, and I could smell it more than a block away. And it got stronger and more annoying as she walked towards me. If I could smell it, it meant it was going in my lungs.

And you having a gun threatens me. I should get to kill you for carrying a gun, but California doesn’t have a stand your ground law. But I am within my rights to kill you if I am in Florida!

That saying seems pretty counterproductive if it implies actions that can harm others…

Because everyone believes that his/her own personal freedoms and rights are the priority, yet everyone has a different opinion. So it’s a constant battle of what freedom really is.

Is it my right to breathe fresh air or is it your right to smoke? Is it my right to carry a gun or your right to feel safe? If I’m smoking an eCig or carrying an empty gun is anyone really being hurt? Are others really impinging on you or are you just trying to have everything your way?

I hate cigs but remove myself from legal smoking areas when warranted.

@zenvelo

My cigarette smoke is reactive in my body too. Can we be brothers now?

My merely having a firearm threatens you? LOL.

Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.

Same goes for your disgusting tar-filled carcinogen cocktail.

^What on EARTH makes you think I would smoke anything disgusting?

Examine my profile, my questions and replies. List anything that suggests I would have anything to do with anything of poor quality.

You probably hate that 31 year old fifth of Grand Marnier I have too.

It’s simply that smokers and gunners aren’t isolated from the rest of us. The death statistics involving either product are pretty convincing.

.0034% is a convincing number? It isn’t statistically relevant, but OK.

The percentage of aborted pregnancies, coming in at 18%... Now THAT is significantly relevant.

Assume that 200 eggs are in an environment with sperm nearby.

168 Successfully fertilized, 84% left alive
138 Successfully implanted in womb (1–2 weeks from fertilization) , 68% left alive
84 Survive 4 weeks from fertilization, 42% left alive
70 Survive to become a fetus (8–11 weeks from fertilization), 35% left alive
62 Survive to term and are born alive (38–42 weeks from fertilization), 31% born

The odds of you being born are not in your favor, even without having safe abortion practices available.

And look how many people waste their lives. Tsk, tsk.

@SecondHandStoke Yes, your having a gun in my presence threatens me. I fear for my life, because you have something that is designed for, and meets its highest purpose, by killing things. And you are willing to kill things (and people) because why else would you buy it? Defense? You are planning on killing someone as a way of defending yourself.

So yes, I feel threatened. Can I stand my ground now?

@zenvelo So let me get this straight… Seeing someone with a gun makes you want to kill them? The hypocritical irony is baffling.

@GloPro No, but it is my right according to the NRA and 26 states that have passed stand your ground laws.

Your hypocritical irony is my sarcasm.

Repeal the Second Amendment.

@zenvelo Way to shred your credibility to ribbons.

You do not understand firearms so you fear them. If this argument is good enough for the “homophobia” situation it’s good enough here.

So you fear them, you have an irrational emotion based reaction.

Do you decide to rectify your problem by lessening your “ignorance” (another buzzword adored by the “progressive” set), No.

Instead you decide that the state should take from me one of my constitutional rights just to appease your hysterical sensibility.

Irrational emotion-based reactions are what ends with people having holes in their vital organs.

^ Exclusively right?

I would argue, “often”. Often is enough.

@SecondHandStoke Your right to bear arms ends when you point it at me. Guns are for killing, nothing else!

And your constitutional right can be repealed.

One person’s freedom extends to the point that it impinges on another’s.

^^So the targets I shoot at are dying?

@SecondHandStoke Target shooting is practice for shooting at people. The purpose of a weapon is to kill people and animals. Target shooting is using it for an auxiliary purpose.

@zenvelo If killing is the primary purpose for guns, and there are 310 million guns in the USA, why are there only fewer than 12,000 deaths per year, with more than half of those shot being known and convicted criminals?

@GloPro You’re off by a factor of about 3. There are 32,000 gun deaths per year, 11,000 are homicides.

And, as pointed out in this report,

“The United States has more guns and gun deaths than any other developed country in the world, researchers found.
A study by two New York City cardiologists found that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people — more than any of the other 27 developed countries they studied.”

And, just because the guns are not used in any year for killing, you haven’t given me an alternative primary use for a gun.

Why does it matter that “more than half of those shot [are] known and convicted criminals”?

Are we now trusting the public to carry out death sentences that are not ruled on through trial by jury? Because that’s a constitutional right, as well.

@Seek Are we now trusting the public to carry out death sentences that are not ruled on through trial by jury?

With the “stand your ground” and “make my day” laws make it legal to use deadly force, if one “feels” threatened, or if one believes the person intends to commit a crime and use physical force, no matter how slight. Fists can be determined to be a deadly weapon to justify the use of deadly force.

I live in Florida. I know ALL about Stand Your Ground. I was commenting on @GloPro‘s flippant response about half of gun murders being committed against former convicts. Like that makes it “ok” or that those murders don’t count.

And I am stating that, yes, there are certain groups in this country that would like to see that. The way I see it, “stand-your-ground” gives me the right to play police, judge, and executioner to anyone I feel might be a threat.

@zenvelo So guns are for killing, nothing else.

The superpowers’ nuclear arsenals killed no one directly. They served their purpose as a threat of defense. Mutually assured destruction works.

Your indignation over a device designed “exclusively” for killing.

Killing bothers you profoundly does it not?

You believe that you are somehow above killing. Your passionate cries mean that you are in some way a more evolved individual.

Yet you comfortably pontificate from behind your keyboard in your warm home. Enjoying likely more than you realize the security afforded you by the thousands of firearms held by our police forces and military.

Pacifism is an arrogance.

Tell us. When that unarmed fiend has his hands around your throat, will you just lie there?

Or will you attempt to call out for help in what ever form it comes?

Do you dare fight back?

@Seek My point was not said in a flippant manner. My point was that most people shot are hanging out in situations that will get them shot by people that are equally criminal. There are no other points made. Any response putting words in my mouth are not endorsed by me.

@zenvelo This entire conversation was had the other day on another thread. In that conversation I gave several other reasons other than killing things (which I have yet to do) for owning and enjoying guns. If you refuse to acknowledge them as viable opinions of gun owners and choose instead to keep your close minded opinion of a non-gun owner that the sole purpose for guns are to kill things then I just can’t have a debate with a stonewaller.
Obviously the majority of jellies abhor the idea of guns, so I’ll just avoid going around in circles.

@SecondHandStoke Nuclear Weapons are a different discussion, one that would be reason for another thread. But I am opposed to nuclear weapons too. And they have been used and killed thousands, so we have a glimpse of what horror they would cause if used now.

Yes, killing bothers me profoundly. I think as a society we ought to do what we can to discourage it. One way to discourage it is to get rid of guns as was done in Australia.

And I don’t like that the police in the United States have become overly militarized to the point they are not trusted by law abiding citizens, and that they have killed more people in the US in the last fifteen years than terrorists.

Fighting back is not the same as pulling out a gun and killing someone.

Yes, I was overly direct and not inclusive in alternative purposes when I said “nothing else.” But killing things is the primary purpose of a gun, and any argument about other reasons for owning and enjoying guns is fine, but the primary purpose is still killing.

We disagree. I sit in my home behind a computer; you sit in yours with the false security that all will be well while you have a gun.

74 school shootings since Newtown. And that “good guy with a gun” last Sunday is dead in a Wal-Mart. To get back to the original question, nobody gets to live and let live when there are guns involved; rather, people die.

“you sit in yours with the false security that all will be well while you have a gun.”

Oh, I hardly sit in false security.

I understand and live with the fact that anything could go sideways at any moment.

In my home, on the NYC streets, behind the wheel of my car, in a court of law…