78 Comments
User's avatar
L D's avatar

I’d trust a stoner before a drunk any day!🇺🇸

Robert Kezelis's avatar

contrast and compare:

Willie Nelson /Jerry Garcia

-vs-

Whiskey Kegsbreath /Herr Stefen Miller

Kind of makes it easy, no?

Kim McAuliffe's avatar

I would prefer people who have a domestic violence record not have guns over stoners.

Jeremy Barber's avatar

Stoners are definitely a lot more mellow than drunkards, so I'd rather have alcoholics denied access to guns.

Anastasia Pantsios's avatar

I never smoked (it gives me a headache) but I knew so many who did. I never knew any one who died from it. (A lot of them were accomplished Type A personalities who used it to chill.) I knew plenty of drinkers who wrapped themselves around utility poles. I recall spending a lot of time in the 80s with a couple of friends watching all-night cable TV. They barely had the motivation to get off the sofa to go to the kitchen for more Cheetos, let alone shoot anyone. I do recall a friend, high on amphetamines and liquor, inviting people to do target shooting in the hall of his apartment. He drank himself to death at the age of 24.

roger craine's avatar

Originalism applies here. The 2nd amendment guarantees the right to an18th century firearm--not a Glock.

Anastasia Pantsios's avatar

Exactly — to an "originalist" that would mean muskets only! But these so-called "originalists" aren't particularly consistent on anything.

Betsy B.'s avatar

How can that argument possibly be relevant? Can anything that regulates an internal combustion engine, a jet plane, or even telephone conversations be tested by what the Framers thought about them? Can the use of a Glock be considered in the same context as a muzzle loaded rifle?

Automobiles, air travel, telephone conversations, and glocks were not in even a fever dream of ANY Framer or anyone else in the 1700s. It’s not apples and oranges. It’s apples and shoes! Let’s get real here. There is NO, zero, context, to ANYTHING the Framers had conceived 250 years ago to that which had not been conceived in tools or intellectual thought until the late 1900s or the 20th or 21st to tools or intellectual thought of the late 1700s. To conflate the use of any commonly accepted tool or idea from the late 1700s with a 20th century, or even early 21st century invention of today’s technology or thought isn’t even a thought experiment! It is the height of silliness!

BellaB63's avatar

Rather irrelevant to this conversation.

David A Pitock's avatar

Doesn't really state what type modern or antique, I have both.

Mickie's avatar

Personally I have noted in the past 50 years that most of the people I hunted with or went to the gun range with preferred to be sober because guns are dangerous tools and just like working an industrial job those of us who like to keep all of our fingers and toes intact we just wait until after we put the guns up for the day before we partake. Common sense rules intelligent people I cannot speak for MAGATS AS THEY HAVE ALREADY PROVEN A LACK OF COMMON SENSE.

D. Scott Bessinger's avatar

I’ve never known of or even heard of someone smoking marijuana and it making them violent. It seems to me that by trying to prohibit marijuana users from possessing a firearm the court would be passing judgement on someone who hadn’t committed a violent crime. A person would be adjudicated as violent when no evidence exists for that person being violent with a firearm. They’d be attempting to prohibit possession of a firearm based on what someone MIGHT do IF they used marijuana or any other controlled substance. To automatically tie gun violence to the use of a particular substance puts the cart before the horse.

David A Pitock's avatar

Me either, in 67 yrs I've never heard of anyone who smoked weed and shot up a school 🏫 or anything for that matter.

Anastasia Pantsios's avatar

I've known people smoking weed who were too laid back to get up and get themselves another Dr. Pepper.

John H's avatar
1dEdited

Did no one challenge Neil Gorsuch’s assertion? Drinking a pint of whiskey eyday is the equivalent of eight cocktails. Call me a skeptic, but that seems unlikely from anyone who isn’t an alcoholic and drinks habitually all day long. And frankly, I am getting tired of this looking at creating laws only through the lens of a culture 250 years old, whose rifles took 60 seconds to reload. That and many couldn’t hit the side of a barn when fired. Is it too much to ask for a court with judges that can look forward, not backward?

Also consider that Colonial towns, like Williamsburg and Charleston, kept their firearms in a citadel. No one galavanted around with their guns.

Stefan Kwiatkowski's avatar

And none of this touches on the maintenance of a "well regulated Militia".

Anastasia Pantsios's avatar

They pretend that clause isn't there because then they'd have to dive into the background of the Second Amendment which isn't pretty and doesn't justify widespread ownership of assault-style weapons.

David A Pitock's avatar

Militias in az, some are scary tRump heads never a good idea.

Christopher Moebs's avatar

Should loners with boners have guns? Should extreme fascists have guns? Should drinkers have guns? Give me a break stoners are less dangerous than any of those.

Wade Baynham's avatar

Thank you. If you're impaired, you should not be ABLE, or have access to handle a gun. We need common sense gun reform in the WORST WAY.

D. Scott Bessinger's avatar

The issue should be the gun violence not whether a person is intoxicated or not because being intoxicated does not automatically equal gun violence. I know plenty of people who get intoxicated regularly but are responsible gun owners who would never even consider mishandling a gun because they were intoxicated.

BellaB63's avatar

Please do tell us where being impaired was mentioned? Having a habit and using when firing are very different things. Also, there are no violent crimes by smokers unless they're on illegal farms. Your comment is is extremely put of touch.

David A Pitock's avatar

More like mental health care, seems every mass shooting so far the perpetrator had mental health issues. And a gun will not solve your problems just creat new ones. We need common sense laws.

John Gross's avatar

This should be argued one further step. Alcohol should be considered as a drug also. The number of people killed and injured by individuals every year is in the thousands. Alcohol users should be included in the federal database and should be restricted in ownership and their use of firearms.

Anastasia Pantsios's avatar

I have known many people who drank themselves to death or killed themselves driving drunk. I have known no one who died of smoking pot, and since I was in the music business, I knew PLENTY of people who smoked pot.

joannegucci's avatar

Sad but true! I’m a drinker, and I also know more people are killed by drunk people as opposed to stoned people!

Teri's avatar

But it's fine for a lunatic and a drunk to direct our country's current military actions?

Hoosier hostage's avatar

Please stop equating age with ignorance, you stupid kid! When you are putting someone down, don't compare them to us seniors. We vote. We pay attention to the news. We get real pissed when we are used as sad, out-of-it gomers. Thank you for your attention to this matter, young man.

Ed Weber's avatar

This all becomes much easier when one (honestly) recognizes that the government may grant the privilege of gun ownership, but possession of a gun is actually not a right granted to any “individual” by 2A. Really! Read 2A. It does not use the word “individual.” It was written by educated men who each had a pretty large vocabulary, and the word “individual” was surely known to them. They didn’t use it. They used the phrase “the people,” which may be a collection of individuals, but that doesn’t mean that the authors of 2A wanted each and every individual to have the right to “bear” armaments. Hmmm - they didn’t use the word “ownership” either, did they? Maybe they really only wanted citizens to have the right to bear arms when issued them within a “well-regulated” militia. Might actually be several ways in which 2A simply doesn’t grant a “right” to hundreds of millions of individual people, stoned or sober, to be able to easily kill other people.

BellaB63's avatar

The people absolutely refers to the people in general, not in groups.

Hope E.'s avatar

As a gun owner. Pot smoker. Non drinker of alcoholic drinks....yes. I live in rural America. We don't flash our guns nor wear them...

David A Pitock's avatar

Me either. Though I see fools who do.

Margaret J Park, M.Div. writer's avatar

This whole originalism drives me a bit batty (as do several things these days). Originalism is to law what biblical inerrancy is to theology. Moral judgment and development necessitate historical criticism in order to bring the relevant issues up to the present age. Originalism, it seems to me, drags us back to an artificial digression to lower levels of moral development as individuals and as a society.

"Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, functioning as both a science (using rules) and an art (requiring discernment) to understand texts, particularly in theology, law, and philosophy. It seeks to bridge the gap between ancient or foreign contexts and modern readers, focusing on understanding the original author's intended meaning."

Thanks, Harry.