“Marijuana users who are also strong gun-rights supporters were simultaneously up in arms and puzzled. ‘I don’t know of any time anyone’s been using marijuana and committing acts of violence with a gun,’ one Pennsylvanian said. ‘Most of the time they just sit on their couch and eat pizza.'” – Marijuana and guns [via registerguard.com]
The big issue I could see with guns and pot is NDs by people with out enough common sense to be handling guns while intoxicated. Much like alcohol really.
Does NDs = Nintendo DS? I have heard that pot makes you better at video games. Or at least the perception that you’re better.
But much like alcohol? No, I disagree. I would wager that an every day pot smoker would have more precise shot placement than someone who just had a cup of coffee.
There is only one way to validate that statement. We expect video.
“There is only one way to validate that statement.”
Of course, a TTAG test!
(Spark one up! Spark one up! 😉 )
Haha. If my career and firearms weren’t at risk, I would happily conduct that experiment on video. But Big Brother doesn’t want you to know I’m right.
The truth is that being high on mind altering substances (like pot) will alter your mental capacity. Even in legalized states it is illegal to be under the influence of pot and drive a car. If there are concerns about your mental capacity to drive a car it is very likely you should not be handling a firearm at that time.
Lets be honest here, pot is not the evil drug that leads people to becoming a whore in a back alley for heroin like some would have you believe but there are definitely down sides to using it. Don’t give me that “it’s natural” garbage. So is alcohol. So is nightshade, hemlock and foxglove and creosote. I don’t see anyone smoking those.
“Mental capacity” is a pretty broad term.
How about perception of speed and distance, muscle coordination, balance, reflexes, reaction time and decision making ability?
Those things can be measured. I know how alcohol affects those things. I know how age affects those things. I don’t have enough experience with wacky weed to know it might affect those things.
Sure it’ll alter your mental capacity. I’m not suggesting we all smoke before we go to the range. My hypothetical suggestion for experimentation is in regards to personal liberties, especially at home. If someone is at home, smoking a legal doobie, shouldn’t they be able to protect themselves against a home invader?
And I would never pretend that “natural” means it’s good for you. Gasoline is “organic”, and you don’t see me mixing that with the kid’s milk.
The consensus among government convened experts is that it only affects your ability to drive for about four hours.
” I don’t have enough experience with wacky weed to know it might affect those things.”
Curtiss, a lot depends on the particular strain. Get the right one, and you may shoot better because it just makes you calm; get the wrong one (much easier to do) and you may not even care it you’re aiming well (though for those who shoot a lot, muscle memory will carry you through). Get the really wrong one, and you’ll freak out if anyone else is shooting nearby (some strains can kick in paranoia rather badly).
possibly, I figure smokey joe might just be rock steady in this scenario. The problem comes from the terrible split times on shots.
Yet another reason for me not to be a pot head, I would eat far too much pizza!
Yeah… that is the major drawback.
There are legal medications that bestow the “munchies” more powerfully.
Interestingly, while I was on one and also nibbled some MJ brownie, the result was that I found I didn’t care much at all about eating; doing things was far more fscinating.
Marijuana users were puzzled? Were they wiggling their fingers close to their faces?
We had a pretty common saying working in the ER:
Drunk drivers kill kids. High drivers miss their exit.
And head on into the barrier.
Pot – why the kommiefornian “tech” moguls actually want self driving cars.
At 5mph.
“Pot – why the kommiefornian “tech” moguls actually want self driving cars.”
The alcoholics are the ones who want the self-driving cars.
As the late Sam Kinison once said :
“Nobody goes out to drink and drive. But it’s the only way to get your CAR home from the BAR!”
JWTaylor has a point, of the armed inteligencia that are medical workers, how often do you see injuries stemming from pot use and how severe are they?
In decades of emergency medical service, I’ve never seen a severe injury as the result from being impaired by weed. I have seen some frostbite, and some minor injuries, but nothing ever major.
In Denver, a number of years ago, a guy shot his wife in he head as she spoke to 911. I believe he was he was doing edibles but it was marijuana and your results may vary.
Rick
So that guy was either a crazy asshole to begin with who already had mental problems or he was on some much stronger stuff laced within the weed.
Weed by itself isn’t going to all of a sudden turn you into a homicidal maniac.
Except for the stoner who almost killed my daughter-in-law because he got fixated on the lights.
“We had a pretty common saying working in the ER:
Drunk drivers kill kids. High drivers miss their exit.”
I remember when “high” didn’t apply to pot, being reserved for drugs that “amped up” perception and feelings. So it would have to be drunk drivers kill kids, stoned drivers miss their exit, high drivers make their own exit.
I thought that was an everyday carry pocket dump at first.
Thank you, Hank! I was waiting for someone to notice there was a gun in the photo anywhere.
As a side note on the Bond Bullpup: I was perusing that article the other day on my desktop. I swiveled aside and pointed at the Bullpup photo on the screen. “Hey, Honey,” I said to the wife, “what does that look like to you?”
She pivoted her head to see what I was pointing at, smiled and with wide eyes said “mine”.
No. She does not have a Bullpup. Those of you fluent in Wifeese will interpret that single word reply to mean, “buy me one!”
🤠
She will now. And if she deigns to let you shoot it, you’ll have one not long after, I suspect…
Does the name Aaron Hernandez mean anything to you?
There are lots of gangbangers who would disagree with you.
Perhaps you should rephrase this as: “I don’t know any middle class college students who committed acts od violence while high.”
That fact is purely incidental to the overall circumstances. AH wasn’t some choir boy who smoked 1 doobie and went into a violent frenzy. He was gang banging scum that would have committed acts of violence regardless of his impairment level. Go find another boogieman bud.
Let me translate your retort in to plain English: “I don’t know any choirboys who went out and shot someone. Just stoned gangbangers.”
The contention is that weed makes you mellow and nonviolent. That is nonsense. It seems that the pro weed propaganda is as stupid as anti weed. Weed, is there nothing good it can’t do
The only time I thought about drawing on a live human was at a friend’s house when her stoner son became violent and abuse. Get back to me when you have the same experience. FYI. She is a Principal and member of the village board not some welfare queen.
The problem here is that you’re equating correlation with causation. That is to say: You’re assuming the pot made the people violent.
There is no evidence that this happens in the general population but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible that a very small subsection of users do in fact become more prone to violence upon consumption.
However, it’s also true that many people who are predisposed to violence also happen to use drugs. Therefore it’s entirely possible that the people you are referring to were people who had problems with impulse control/violence and just happened to use marijuana before “losing it”. Really, there’s no way to know with an individual person unless you have a full series of workups done on them or spend a ton of time observing them.
I had a member of my extended family who was a violent asshole when he was sober. He beat his wife, picked fights, destroyed stuff and shit like that. When he drank he was, similarly, a violent asshole who beat his wife, picked fights and liked to break things. Did the Scotch make him violent? Maybe it lowered the bar for what “set him off” but the truth is that he was just a violent fucktard who liked to get into fights and beat his wife. That’s a true story. However, it’s also completely anecdotal.
Lot’s of people drink without becoming violent fucktards and lots of people are violent fucktards without a drop of booze. It doesn’t mean that one causes the other.
Back to the OP, AH was a violent gangbanger before he became an NFL player. It’s also been reported that his time playing football caused a fair amount of brain damage in areas of the brain thought to be associated with impulse control and violent behavior. Therefore his marijuana smoking really can’t be said to have “caused” or even “exacerbated” anything. There are way too many variables with AH.
That is a long winded nonsequitor.
Why don’t you pay attention to what I said instead. The pro sides has made the claim that marijuana reduces violent impulses. That is demonstrably false. Middle class college students get high and have pizza. Gangbangers get high and do a driveby. Therefore Marijuana neither increases or decreases violent behavior.
So why do legalizers continue to claim that it reduces violent impulses? The faux Libertarian pro legalization argument requires it. “You have to control your own body as long as it does harm others” doesn’t cut it if harm to others is caused. When you rest your argument about rights on personal automomy then you can’t claim a right that clearly can cause harm to others. If an action or activity clearly has negative impacts on others then you have granted society a right to say no. Personal autonomy ends when you walk out the door and only if you live alone. Go find a better argument instead making stuff up.
It’s not a non sequitur. You made the following statement:
“The pro sides has made the claim that marijuana reduces violent impulses. That is demonstrably false.”
However you have provided exactly zero evidence that the violence of gangbangers is actually related to the marijuana in any way. In other words: You’ve failed to prove that the claim that “marijuana reduces violent impulses” is “demonstrably false”. That’s what I pointed out, and apparently in doing so, ruffled your feathers.
One could make the claim that the marijuana does reduce violent impulses in those people but that those people are so violent that they still shoot other people because the pot isn’t strong enough. That claim may, on it’s face, seem preposterous but it has exactly the same amount of evidence to back it up that your claim does and therefore is on equal footing.
“When you rest your argument about rights on personal automomy then you can’t claim a right that clearly can cause harm to others.”
This sentence and those that follow it are pure grabber logic. Anything that is enshrined as a right in the BOR “can cause harm to others”. “Hate speech is violence.” Gun ownership causes murder. The right to be free of unwarranted search and seizure means no “stop and frisk” which means more guns on the streets which means more murders. Legal booze means drunk driving. On and on and on.
The fact that there’s a grain of truth to something, that is to say that “something could happen and the consequences might be negative for someone” doesn’t validate the argument for control of anything because acceptance of that argument means an acceptance of absolute control over everything.
We’ve already seen these claims and we, the POTG, have generally rejected most of them as the bullshit they are. Your claim here is identical. The difference is only that you’re applying the same lack of logic to another topic and, like a grabber, using anecdotes to do it.
Actual freedom is actually dangerous. Get over it.
Well put, strych9. Well put.
I have to agree with tdiinva that an argument from personal autonomy cannot be sustained where “another’s nose begins.” But I also agree with 9 that tdiinva has demonstrated that the marijuana hits some other guy in the nose.
An argument of “the Constitution says you can’t, and the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land” is an entirely different argument than the non-aggression principle. I generally agree with both arguments.
There was a study done of behavior in various federal prisons, with all sorts of things tracked. One thing that emerged from the data is that prisons where pot was easily available were calmer and less violent (though in the case of the most violent portions of the populations it didn’t change things much). It was sufficiently powerful that a federal judge actually recommended supplying pot via commissary.
It’s kind of like the space hearer in my office: mostly, it makes the room warmer, but there’s one cold spot that just stays cold: just because some input changes a situation in general doesn’t mean it changes all elements of the situation.
It’s not about using marijuana and the right to bear arms. It’s about the government overstepping its bounds, restricting and regulating and telling the people what to do. If you want to smoke pot it’s your choice. The government shouldn’t be mandating decisions we can make for ourselves. The gun-grabbing government is using yet another category to take away our constitutionally-protected and God given right to bear arms and to protect ourselves.
Equating violent instability with the use of weed only plays to those who bought the propaganda. If you are responsible enough to drink alcohol and not fly off the rails and start a gunfight at the OK Corral, its a safe bet you wont do it after smoking a joint either.
And to all the chest thumping “You ain’t a responsible gun owner if you drink or smoke anything” crowd, save your ideological purity tests, this is supposed to be America, Home of the Free, not home of those ruled by “Morality Police”.
“this is supposed to be America, Home of the Free” – That comes pretty close to my ideological purity test.
Alex is right.
A lot of folks here need to read Jacob Sullum’s “Saying Yes”, which does a superb job of using the government’s own data to show that just about everything the government has had to say about drugs is wrong.
All of the people opposed to pot have never done it. I know this to be absolute fact, because if they had, they’d realize how stupid they sound, or they’re just like the anti’s and don’t care. Can’t have it both ways people. Freedom for all, or freedom for no one.
Then again, it is amazing how many people sound stupid when they’re stoned, especially when they think they’re being so “deep.”
There is also tons of assholes who sound and ACT stupid when drunk.
What’s your point?
Were you high when you wrote that comment?
Quite a statement about potheads never being violent…yeah I got high for years and years quitting completely over 35years ago. But pot
THEN ain’t pot NOW. It’s much stronger. I’ll give the memo of passivity to the black and spanglish gangs that infest Chiraq and south…as the billows of marijuana smoke roll out of their rides😩😖😡
Say it with me… “correlation does not equal causation.”
He said “potheads never being violent,” which is pretty close to the quote of the day. He only needs to find one counter example to disprove the proposition forwarded. There have been people high on the ganga that have been violent. It isn’t an argument of the mary jane causing the violence. It’s saying that absolutes are always wrong. Well maybe not that.
Also, I ain’t messing with no reefer addicts.
Bangers gonna bang.
Or maybe it’s all due to 40’s of Colt 45, King Cobra and Olde E…
From the little gang contact I’ve had, they don’t smoke it plain; it’s usually cut with something else. The ganger-wannabe’s around here lace it lightly with meth and/or crack, which according to the local counseling center’s chief drug professional has the interesting effect of the meth and/or crack making them crazy and the pot making them care even less than usual that they’re crazy.
So I’d say the thing is that pot tends to make people mellow because it reduces the level of concern with things, but when what it’s reducing is caring about being a violent idiot it serves to make the idiot more violent.
Quote DAVE: ” If someone is at home, smoking a legal doobie, “
Sorry, Dave, there ain’t no such thing as a “legal doobie” in the USA
I’m sorry that I caused you to miss the point. Your level of reading comprehension has led to a redundant response. Had I just said, “doobie”, you might not have gotten so confused. But “legal doobie” was part of a hypothetical situation where more personal liberties are ingrained in Federal law, not just the ones that help to validate your masculinity. Jon in CO said it right: “Freedom for all, or freedom for no one.”
“Freedom for all, or freedom for no one.”
Flip that around. We’re all on the same fire-hydrant system, but you want to let some ahole knock the cap off of theirs and use it as a kiddie sprinkler, and F the rest of us if we’re a little ‘down’ on water pressure.
NOTHING F’S WITH “LIBERTY” LIKE “I AIN’T HURTIN NOTHIN” AND “EVERYBODY’S DOIN’ IT”.
Hey, I SAW “REEFER MADNESS” and I KNOW what the EVILE WEED can do to people! It MUST be BANNED!
Signed,
Jeff Sessions
“Refer Madness” was made by communist Hollywood, and the communists are still getting their monies worth out of it.
We just got rid of a commie president, and the several of the WH rooms still reek of it from him.
If you had to listen to liberals as much as I did, you’d know Obama was no “commie”: many liberals hated him because that’s what they wanted, but what they got was a typical corporatist sellout more interested in pursuing “leakers” who made his administration look bad than in pursuing much of anything one the left’s agenda.
(BTW, Obama had more prosecutions for leaks from his White House than all the previous administrations combined.)
Love how talk of pot and guns brings the pot heads to the party.
It’s all crap.
People smoke pot because it causes a type of impairment that they like. BUT IT’S STILL IMPAIRMENT. People impaired on purpose ALWAYS SUCK a little, when they suck really bad, or suck a little at important things (think nearly every FING accident AMTRAK has had in the last 2 decades) people get hurt or dead. That deserves a FU.
Pot smokers are like cigarette smokers, they don’t know how god-awful they smell, they don’t know how much time it takes away from everything else in their day, and they think it makes them better at something.
Again,
it’s all crap.
Saying that “pot causes impairment” is like saying “booze causes unconsciousness”: both contain a grain of truth that serves to hide reality.
Joe, I get your sentiment. You might even be right, to a degree.
But the idea here is that we should be free to choose. If someone wants to smoke pot, great. If not, great. If someone wants to own a firearm or several to protect their family and/or hunt, great. If not, that’s their choice, as well.
But coming down on folks that smoke with such a broad, ham-handed perspective serves only to cause more damage to the pursuit of liberty. It’s like saying that all gun owners only wear camo or plaid, beat their wives, and are racist.
The same government that decides cannabinoids have no place in medicine may also decide that guns have no place in the home, faith has no place in society, or PlayStation is better than Xbox. It’s a slippery slope, my friends.