@dystopianfutetoday
excellent question and is exactly where the discussion should be.

understand i am not against regulations i.e:background checks,licenses etc etc
i also think a gun safety course should be mandatory.responsible gun safety is just being a good citizen and neighbor.

have a mental illness with a record of violence? sorry.no guns for you.
convicted of a violent crime? no guns for you either.
but these regulations are already in place and responsible gun owners are..well...responsible.

so where is the argument REALLY centered?
unregulated .or more accurately put: weakly regulated gun shows and who benefits from these gun shows? gun manufacturers.
and where do they get their political clout? NRA.where those who are already blocked from gun purchase can skirt the system and the NRA can hide behind the second amendment.

that sound like a fairly accurate assesment?

now..onto your direct question on the downside of only the police and military being armed.
simply put: i do not trust authority or to be more precise,i do not trust power because power begets more power and seeks only to retain its own power which will always lead to you losing your power of self determination in the end.

america was never designed to have a standing army and their are articles that espouse the ending of the republic if we tried.here we are going on 60 years with a standing army.how is that working out for us?

bush had his illegal wars and surveillence and obama has his assasinations.

the police,which was born from the old town sheriffs were put in place to enforce this new and noble idea america had "all equal under law".a local citizenry trained to enforce the law and protect this "property ownership" another new and novel approach to society.

what do we have now?
defense money being spent on SWAT teams who now have high powered assault weapons and tanks...TANKS!..FFS.

do i really have to make a list?
waco
ruby ridge
the list is not short.

do you see where i am going with this?
i am not speaking about right and wrong.
i am pointing to the hypocrisy.
this is about elementary morality.
i totally agree with you that violence begets violence but if we are going to take away peoples right to own guns then we need to take them away from the police as well.

because just as some seriously damaged people have wrought death and suffering,so to has our very own government officials.
having the power of the government behind their actions does NOT make it more morally acceptable.

on a personal note i find the politicizing of the sandy hook school shooting so fucking despicable and grotesque that i literally shake with rage.this goes out to both sides of this political whoring.
the NRA can go fuck itself with a dirty razor-bladed dildo and the tree-hugging,pussified everybody-wants-to-bugger-my-lil-jonny scaredy cats can go fuck off as well.

i do not carry a gun nor am i interesting in owning one but i will fight for your right to own one.they are a weapon and as such should be monitored and regulated,but they should not be banned due to a giant fear storm and an over-abundance of "what if" pontificating.

who wants to live in a minority report world?not me.
most gun owners are responsible.
most police are good at what they do.
do not let the statistics arguments allow you to give up more of your rights.

but if we are going to protest i will be there with not a single weapon on me.

Is it not true that the Ruby is the best, most luscious, vibrant Star Power of them all? And you have achieved it - a red ruby for red sky!

Congrats.

Congratulations on reaching new heights on VideoSift. You have earned yourself 250 stars, earning you status of Ruby Star member. You have been awarded 1 Power Point for achieving this level. Thanks for all your contributions.

Tags for this video have been changed from '42nd St, musical, Busby Berkeley, dancing, tap, 1933' to '42nd St, musical, Busby Berkeley, dancing, tap, 1933, Ruby Keeler' - edited by Fletch

I'm turning ruby soon, and that's one of the ideas I had for a new channel. It would be a pretty thinly populated channel though, and I've got a couple other good ideas I'd rather go with.

Congratulations PP!!! It seems like just yesterday you got your ruby!! You go girlfriend!

>> ^critical_d:

How about Wink Martindale and Gene Rayburn?


Game show host names actually do play in -- they will replace the classic bronze, silver, gold, ruby, diamond, crown progression in videosift 5.0. Details are still slim but I understand as a Diamond I will become a "Richard Dawson"

Aw, Phil Jupitus is great. It's Ruby Wax I can't stand. Luckily she was only ever on once.

I wonder from time to time whether a member ought to have been here for a certain amount of time before they get a channel, so that we have some assurance they mean to stay around for a while.

Time and again we see "grinders" who show up, ride a wave of nutshots and kittens to ruby in a month, and then burn out and never come back. We should avoid giving channels to these members.

I also think the moderator job should be "use it or lose it" and that channels that cannot function cleanly without an active moderator (viral, sexuality, terrible, cult, vintage, basically any channel that requires you to read the description) should be locked so they cannot be invoked or selected until a new moderator is selected. They could still be viewed and browsed, just no new content.

Or I guess we could keep doing what we've been doing, and treat channels as meaningless decorations that we display to the left of our video submissions.

In my Ruby-tinted fantasies, I create *Americuh or somesuch for all of the videos that highlight what's absurd, broken, or downright terrible about my great nation, but I'd have little interest in moderating it, since I can scarcely watch most of those types of videos. So, of course I deem it cool to "fire and forget".
I can see the argument that's essentially just creating a tag rather than a channel to be curated for the benefit of the Sift.
I do think that the "no gray area, yes or no" poll is pushing it, especially the way the question is worded. "Do you think it is a good idea to willfully..." is a very different question from, say, "Are there circumstances under which it would be acceptable to..."

I do like the idea of being able to appoint moderators for your channel, but anyone who is Silver Star or above can modify channel assignments anyway.

Ruby! Ruby! Ruby!

Thank you to everyone who voted up those last few videos to help me go Ruby, and thanks for the congratulations and all. I finally made it!

Thank you. I didn't think I was quite that close... but... there we go.

In reply to this comment by lurgee:
congrats on the ruby status!

Thank you!

In reply to this comment by Lann:
Happy Ruby!

A ruby! Congrats!

congrats on the ruby status!