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Reader Pete G. writes:

Dear TTAG, saw this today and it reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend of mine who is board certified pediatrician, constitutionalist, and a gun owner. He also has the lowest vaccination rate in our state for his patients. Like Mr. Perloff’s tweet, my friend, and most gun owning, constitution respecting individuals that I know also believe in the sovereignty over a person’s body, and that an individual has a God-given or innate right to protect themselves from what they deem as a threat. My pediatrician friend was unable to believe the gun community in general would support mandatory vaccinations for the obvious contradiction this presents . . .

I realize that you have no control over the comments people post on your site, but as people who allegedly respect and understand the constitution enough to exercise their Second Amendment rights, there seems to be a glaring contradiction with the comments when it comes to other Constitutional issues other then the Second Amendment.

I have seen numerous posters use the exact rhetoric/propaganda/language when attacking other rights (especially concerning mandatory vaccines) that are often used against the Second Amendment and gun ownership. If the state can dictate what medical procedures you or your family are to take, the Second Amendment becomes a meaningless artifact.

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290 COMMENTS

  1. Well honestly I just don’t care about this kind of stupidity. These anti retards have lost this war in every way but officially. So far this kind of crap the only think any of them can manage to do anymore is to post Facebook posts about how awful gun owners are. It’s childish and stupid to even comment on them.

    • The wars are won in the courts and in the ballot box.
      Have you seen what ballot measure is being proposed in CA?
      It’s not over ’till it’s over. And even then. it’s not over.

      • Well of course. Hell the legislative fight is the only fight that matters. I was referring to this general lame duck ‘turn the culture against guns’ crap.

      • Have you seen the extremely low numbers of people who complied up in Connecticut and New York after they past those last round of laws? Did you see how many Sheriffs refused to enforce those laws, and publicly said as much? And that’s in the “liberal” northeast. I do understand that the antis haven’t given up by any means, but I think a LOT of people are sick of it, way more than the mass media will ever admit.

  2. Less dependence on public schools might help with this issue. Folks should send their kids to schools that meet their criteria rather than the state’s.

    • As I tell parents today, “Increasingly, it is clear and unequivocal that sending your kids to public schools is parental malpractice.”

  3. Awesome post!

    Pete G’s friend is quite right. It seems the majority of the armed intelligentsia is only interested in protecting rights when it line sup with their agendas and they’ll contort themselves into whatever position it requires to justify it.

  4. Anti-vacciners are found across the political spectrum but the most vocal are typically on the Left.

    It is my observation that most “constitutionalists” have no idea what the Constitution says beyond the 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendment.

    • Equating vaccinations with firearms is nonsense. A properly carried concealed weapon is no danger to anyone. An unvaccinated child from some third world hellhole can be a danger to everyone.

      • I agree 100% this is a fact. But if you do not want your child to get vaccinated that should be left to the parent. Of course they have to be quarantined until the proven time they are not able to pass on the disease. So if they want to pass on vaccines, you have to be quarantined, simple. If they get sick and need medical care they are required to pay the full amount without help from the hospital or government. It should work both ways in terms of having total independence and having a compromise with the government for the good of the whole. As gun owners we did compromise with the government, the 4473 form and background checks, we’re even as far as I’m concerned. I took my vaccinations as a child, we’re even there too, I did what I had to do as a citizen. With those 4473 forms they have their background check and a paper trail, what more do they need? All these laws have done nothing to stop crime. Criminals are not the type of people to be concerned with laws, they will do what they think they need to do to be a successful criminal. If that means SBRs, suppressors & full auto they will find a way to make or get them. If parent wants to go against basic science and not take care of their children it’s up to them to pay the consequences of their actions.

        • unequivocally NOT 100% fact. IF, and I repeat IF, vaccines work, then you should have nothing to fear from an un-vaccinated individual whatsoever.

        • @BurleyOleBear – The problem is that vaccines don’t last forever. They are given to the group(s) that are at risk of being exposed to the disease, with the goal of eradicating it at the source.

          Children are snotty-sleaved germ factories and have little (if any) sense of good hygiene practices. So it makes sense to vaccinate them for common diseases and prevent them from bringing viruses back to their parents/grand-parents/aunts/uncles etc. …all of which whose own childhood vaccines will have long since worn off (or the virus has mutated enough that the vaccinated immune-system no longer recognizes it).

        • Steve, you’re missing the point. If one vaccinates according to the schedule and one professes faith in their efficacy, why would one have fear of those who don’t?

          I understand how vaccines are intended to work. I also understand Liberty. The issue really isn’t vaccines.

      • Does a parent have the right to decide that his or child should die from a preventable childhood disease? Even if the child survives, the sequella of polio can be a lifetime disability due to paralysis or an inability to breath? (I know a polio survivor.) Heart disease, infertility, blindness, this list goes on. Yet the same anti-vaccers on the left who will claim that a parent has the right to decide whether his child lives or dies claim the “moral high ground” that a woman doe not have the right to choose an abortion. And then they claim the right to inflict these childhood diseases, like chicken pox, on other children or adults who may suffer death as a result. Yes, they are hypocrites.

        • I believe the question at hand is NOT does the parent (do the parents) have the right to decide, but does the government have the right to decide for them, and then enforce that decision at the end of a gun?

          I believe that in the larger scheme vaccinations are a great thing and a huge benefit to society. More effort should be spent to educate parents as to the risks/rewards of having their children vaccinated. No one wants their children to be harmed by vaccines, which is a possibility, though relatively rare, but huge numbers of children and adults were damaged or killed by those same diseases before the vaccines were developed. THAT is the thing too many people are ignorant of. Many of those disease are not just childhood annoyances that pass, they can be and were frequently deadly.

          Education is the key, not ceding more power and authority to the nanny state.

        • If they want their kid to win a Darwin award, that is their business. But if you allow your kid to be infectious and a danger to others, sorry, your kid should be cured on their dime and then the parents should be sterilized because it’s obvious they are not fit to be parents or reproducing as it weakens the genetic pool.

        • Funny how the same “anti vaxxers” will demand pediatric ICU treatment for their children with a full accouterment of labs x-rays, CT scans, etc while espousing their ability to “choose”. Well, we all pay for their ignorance and hypocrisy, both in medical expenses for their young, and the untold amount of people they infect due to the inability to immunize due to either an allergy to the immunization or ignorance to the importance. As a nurse, I really would not like to see a child die in my hospital for any reason, but if you are going to flaunt your “freedom”, you might as well support “gun free zones”. You are in public with the masses, and you are infecting people that would love immunizations, but cannot due to being health compromised, allergic, or ignorant.

          I would like to see the people that fight for vaccine freedom also give up their right to Obamacare and also pay higher taxes to pay for the treatment of victims over their “choice” because the rest of us sure as hell do.

          BTW, go ask people in 3rd world countries about passing over immunizations, freedom of speech, or gun rights, and see what type of response you receive.

      • A properly carried concealed weapon is no danger to anyone.

        Actually, it is a very large danger to any violent criminal who would attack you. More to the point, there is always the possibility (albeit an extremely remote possibility) that an otherwise mentally healthy person could suddenly and unpredictably suffer a psychotic break. Such a person’s concealed weapon would be quite dangerous to the people around them.

        The real problem, however, is establishing go, no-go thresholds. Who establishes them? What criteria do they use to establish them? The only answer that is compatible with liberty is that the individual rather than the state determines go, no-go thresholds. Individual parents determine what benefits of a vaccine offset the risks — or not. Likewise, individuals of responsible age determine what benefits of being armed offset the risks — or not.

        The state has no legitimate authority to determine whether free people carry firearms. Similarly, the state has no legitimate authority to determine whether free people vaccinate themselves (or their children).

        • While reading your post it also just occurred to me that people in civilized countries who decide not to vaccinate their children are benefiting from the actions of those who have vaccinated their children (and themselves), just as a large number of people who do not carry a weapon benefit from the actions of those of us who do.

          In the case of the vaccines, in our current society the chances of your child being exposed to any of the formerly common diseases of childhood, or smallpox, or polio, are exceedingly rare unless they are in the company of children from third world countries where vaccinations are not common. They are therefore in large degree protected by those very vaccinations they decline to take themselves. Hypocrites.

        • So do you then agree to holding the anti-vexers legally liable for their stupidity? You don’t vaccinate your kid and mine gets sick, we charge your ass with reckless endangerment? Deal?

        • “You don’t vaccinate your kid and mine gets sick”
          Do the vaccinations work or not? How is an non-vaccinated child a danger to a child all caught up on vaccinations?

        • I explained that not all kids can be vaccinated. Worse, even those that are can still transmit the disease.

      • My first born son would love to discuss how safe the vaccines are, but alas he lost speech, and became locked at about a one year old cognitive level the day after his shots.

        So come on by and babysit my 12 year old. You folks shoving this stuff wouldn’t last a day seeing the results.

        • Redfoot, who said anything about banning? Geez.

          Also I’m glad you have my son figured out and the underlying causes, you are amazing.

          What I’m saying is that as belittling as you are to the “statistically insignificant” and with all the folks above who decry my choice not to vax my other two kids, you can FU before I will risk doing the same to them as I did to my first.

          I’m sorry if you don’t see the logic in that. Had you seen first hand what I did, you would either do the same, or you are willfully blind.

        • Sorry Bob, but that’s as stupid as not wearing seatbelt because you saw someone choked by one. In any case, given the burden of proof for vaccine cases is to prove that the vaccine DIDN’T cause the injury rather than the other way around (how’s that for due process?), your claim that the vaccine “caused” the disability should be treated skeptically.

        • Perfectly normal, babbling and speaking words. Developmentally ahead of the curve.

          Shots

          God awful night, fever, sweats, vomiting

          Next day, laughing hysterically while gaze locked out the window. chasing and biting people. Screaming uncontrollably at full volume. Balance gone.

          Hell of a coincidence, huh?

          Stop thinking you know what is best for everyone and that your “feelings” should be imposed.

          You know far, far less than you think you do. You sound like a Obama voting grabber with your “for your own good, and the good of everyone else” mentality.

          Arrogant ignorance.

        • Interesting to see a username I’ve not seen around here before just so happens to have a case of one of the statistically insignificant bad reactions to a vaccine. What vaccine was it? What is the name of the syndrome? How about you provide some actual data rather than emotional personal anecdote? That’s an anti-gunner tactic.

      • What danger does an un-vaccinated person present to those who have been vaccinated?
        Not much different than seatbelt or helmet laws, it’s nanny-stateism.
        Except in this case the government has decided that sacrificing a few kids is worth it for the safety of the many and taken the decision away from the parents entirely. That isn’t what the founders intended.
        .

        • No vaccine is 100% effective and that effectiveness varies over time. All vaccines have some chance of detrimental side-effect. Of course most scheduled vaccines have effectiveness rates well above 80% effective within a few years after they are administered, and the chances of long-term adverse side-effects are usually less than 1%.
          From a rational, statistical, point of view it seems obvious that the best option, when available, is to get the vaccines.
          Not everyone is rational, especially when it comes to their own kids. There are a statistically insignificant number of people who actually understand statistics.
          I don’t think the government has the right to force people to get their kids vaccinated, even though I get my son vaccinated on schedule. I do, however, think that parents have a right to know if their child is associating with unvaccinated children, and to limit that association. I think that is where one’s right to throw a punch reaches the other’s nose, so to speak.
          I would go so far as to even offer to have “vaccinated-only” classrooms as schools, just like they have peanut-free classrooms. Only, instead of just dumping it on parents (sorry, your kid is in a peanut-free classroom, or worse every classroom is peanut-free), the parents should get to request that their child be in a vaccinated-only classroom. Likely there would have to be exceptions made for children who medically cannot take the vaccinations, as those kids usually are at higher risk than even average unvaccinated children for contracting the diseases; for their safety they should get to join the vaccinated classrooms.

      • under no circumstances can that be even remotely true, if vaccines work. Check your logic or admit you aren’t using any.

        • Like all Statists everywhere, Redfoot and pswerge or whatever are all about forcing their feelings on the rest of us.

  5. It’s natural to in any culture to use “shaming” to attempt to persuade groups of people to get in line with the rest of the herd so to speak. I shame anti-vaxxers at just about every opportunity I get to do so because I don’t think their fears are rationale and it could potentially have an effect on me or somebody else I know. But as somebody who routinely and typically always says no when a doctor asks me if I want a flu-shot (irony much?) I also never support MANDATED vaccinations. I’ll support public policy that promotes vaccines but not mandates for it.

    But speaking on constitutional hypocrisy and the second amendment… one thing that drives me nuts is the ACLU supports the 4th and 5th Amendment in any and every way they can, but stays mute on or opposes 2nd Amendment rights issues. The interesting thing there being that we’d actually save lives if Government had the right to do just peak in on gangbangers phones, homes, cars, apartments, etc whenever they wanted to and force them to rat out their friends. We’d get rid of pretty much all crime and most violence in about a years time. They support all the Amendments that protect criminals, but they oppose the one amendment that can actually save us from those same criminals protected by the other amendments. I support the 4th and 5th amendments fully, I’m just pointing out a hypocrisy that was on my mind. That’s all.

    • Roy it’s human nature to be hypocritical, I think you know that. Everybody has beliefs and one might contradict the other. The ALCU does piss me off because as far as I have thought all these years they are supposed to be for all rights and not pick and choose them. So obviously there are few groups and individuals who practice what they preach.

    • +1 my kids are vaccinated. I think anyone who doesn’t is an idiot, but like helmet laws and seat belt laws, I detest mandatory personal safety. their unvaccinated kid is no threat to me or mine. think of it as evolution in action.

    • “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free sate, the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” (Emphasis mine).

      I fail to see any part or portion of those 27 words giving the government the authority to establish age restrictions on the RKBA. If we concede that authority ( which we apparently have), how do we prevent the government from simply creating an arbitrarily high (e.g. 65 or older?) limit? We’ve already told them the decision is theirs to make and enforce.

      The Second Amendment is, and was intended to be, in my opinion, exceptionally arbitrary. The government has absolutely NO AUTHORITY to infringe on the RKBA.

  6. Indeed… insisting on the “second amendment” being sacred, and then allowing oneself to become a slave of the state in everything else… true hypocrisy.

    The “constitution” clearly sets out to give some people control of other people and their property. This has been accomplished at all level of the non-voluntary government, not just the feds. There is no “opt out” for those who insist on owning and controlling their own lives.

    From HOLOGRAM OF LIBERTY http://javelinpress.com/hologram_of_liberty.html
    Civic Belief #1: The Congress was given few specific powers. All else was left to the States and to the people under the 10th Amendment. Ample checks and balances protect the Republic from federal tyranny.

    Civic Belief #2: The Federal Government has become so powerful only because despotic officials have overstepped their strict, constitutional bounds.

    If #1 is true, then how did #2 happen?

    “The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it”. Lysander Spooner, No Treason (1870)

    • “the cost of Liberty shall be eternal vigilance” – Jefferson
      Let us not forget that the Founders did not secure our independence by trusting in Law and Juris Prudence.
      The Crown had violated its own laws in attempting to extract money and influence from the colonists and was unresponsive to their knowledgeable and well-stated arguments.
      Our very own GOV has entered into the same arrangement and shows no inclination to self-correct.
      The founders, instead, killed(with GUNS!) a sufficient number of those who would subdue them so as to send a clear message that it was simply too costly to continue in their attempts to govern them.
      “the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots, it is its natural manure” also Jefferson.
      If we have not the will to execute, we have not the will to retain Liberty.

  7. I’m not sure how the two issues are related…
    Common sense should mandate that you get a vaccine to defend you from disease. Common sense says you own a gun to defend yourself from tyranny. Common sense says you own a fire extinguisher…

    …and while the state dictates that you must have a fire extinguisher and must get a vaccine, it does not dictate that you must own a gun.

    I find that more interesting than the argument that not-protecting yourself from disease is analogous to not-protecting yourself from violence. Neither of those is really a right.

      • I wouldn’t be opposed…

        Some people see guns as a problem rather than a benefit, so in their attempt to play HOA to the national culture they put disarmament up there with forcing people to get vaccines when that is inconsistent thinking. Allowing a vulnerable node, even if its by their personal choice, weakens the nation as a whole. It creates a breeding ground for crime and violence.
        Children should be taught self defense. People should be armed. We shouldn’t have to force anyone to buy a gun or a fire extinguisher or to vaccinate their children because common sense would have already driven them to do these things.

  8. Most constitutionalists, including myself, oppose the “mandatory” part of mandatory vaccinations. I keep up my vaccinations as a way to be responsible for my own health. I mock anti-vaxxers mercilessly, along with the anti-GMO crowd, but I’ll never force my opinion on them. I will, however, tell them how dumb they are.

      • This sounds good as a quick comment, but look at the deeper implications: Should we also hold people who have decided to go unarmed accountable for the damage inflicted by others that they could have prevented if they carried a weapon? Seems a stretch.

      • “I feel…..”

        Great, I’m glad. Now are you going to take responsibility for the results when things don’t go so well? What time can you be over to babysit?

    • I agree about the “mandatory” part… I even used to believe it was foolish to buy the anti-vaccine position – until I heard some troubling stories by Sharyl Attkisson about possible collusion between Big Pharmacy and the CDC to hide vaccine injuries. I used to trust Science, because science… but alas, scientists are human, and prone to human failings. “Money’s the key”, and there’s always an agenda. I’m finding it harder and harder to believe anyone anymore, at least when the info comes from the MSM or blogosphere.

      Oh well. YMMV.

    • I understand where you’re coming from, but there is real societal benefit from compulsory vaccination that cannot be achieved without sufficient herd immunity, especially where the diseases are in principle eradicable because humans are the only viable hosts. The GMO case is not really related. There would be no reason to compel people to consume GMO crops. As long as there is a market for non-GMO crops, they’ll be produced. There’s no similar social moral hazard of people refusing to consume GMOs.
      Herd immunity is NOT a myth, it is NOT only applicable to natural immunity, and it HAS BEEN USED TO ERADICATE DISEASE. Please at least consider the history of smallpox eradication if you doubt any of that.
      http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/training/overview/pdf/eradicationhistory.pdf

  9. I’m all for people refusing to get them selves or their kids vaccinated. But having said that, they should not be allowed to have their unvaccinated kids in public schools, or use/work in some public services where them being unvaccinated puts them or others at risk. Vaccination is VERY important for society.

    • Vaccination is VERY important for society…..

      Some would say~ “gun control is VERY important for society “.

      Slippery slope, no?

      • No, it’s not. These two things are qualitatively and quantitatively different. Infectious disease is a living organism, and that you believe that folks have an inherent right to parade around whatever infectious disease they’d like, in any fashion or place that they’d want, is stupid. Guns are lifeless/inanimate and do nothing of their own accord. Your liberty ends where mine begins and I have a right to self defense whether it’s against tigers, bears or polio. If you have ebola or the plague, you don’t get to come into a communal area and infect everyone else. Sorry, we can take collective action to stop this kind of stupid and we can take collective action to prevent this kind of stupid and still do so in a libertarian fashion.

      • So I take it you oppose mandatory quarantines as well then? Should we just allow Ebola patients to go gallivanting around major population centers?

        • In case you weren’t paying attention, that is PRECISELY what happened in the early 80s with HIV, not only were the carriers not quarantined, it was illegal to let anyone know who they were! So they were free to transmit the absolutely 100% fatal (at the time) disease as often as they wished, and they did exactly that. Claiming that is unthinkable now is sort of burying your head in the sand.

        • Sorry Larry, again qualitatively different. First, HIV cannot be transmitted by casual contact, while small pox, measles, rubella, chicken pox, typhus, tuberculosis and any number of influenza viruses can. Millions died in Europe and here because of these diseases, tens of millions of Native Americans were wiped out, not by guns, but by the diseases imported by the Europeans to the “New World.” Quarantines have been imposed for infectious breakouts for hundreds of years, with the recognition that one infectious person can kill dozens. Carrying a gun around carries no risk that casual contact will start a killing spree. there is no logical connection between one and the other. And it should also be noted that the man accused of bringing HIV to the US and Canada was eventually arrested, convicted, and incarcerated, because he refused to modify his behavior to prevent the spread of the disease. Typhoid Mary was locked up for life because, being an incurable carrier, she was a risk wherever she went.

      • Vaccinations are demonstrably beneficial. Gun control is not demonstrably beneficial. Slope has high coefficient of friction. Risk of slippage nil. Slippery slope arguments are garbage. Argue points on their merits.

  10. I got vaccines. My kids got vaccines too. I’m not into the random flu vaccine and never get it. That said, I think people should have the right to refuse vacines if they want to. And not all vaccines are the same. I, personally, am not into Mercury injections of any quantity. I prefer the much more expensive vaccine without it. Also, parents are entrusted to care for their children and should be able to refuse vaccines for their kids if they want.

    • I agree. However, right along with that assertion, I also believe that treatment for any disease or condition which could have been prevented by a vaccine which was refused, should not be covered by any insurance, if you can’t afford the treatment, then you can die, go blind, have your dick fall off, whatever, it’s nothing to me.

      • So, if your diet causes you to suffer from Diabetes, Heart disease, colon cancer, we can just harvest whatever organs are still useful for the greater good, rather than treat those issues? Same thing.

        • Yep. If we’re going to do it that way, if you smoke, drink, eat a poor diet or don’t exercise enough your insurer should be allowed to drop you.

  11. Which part of the constitution talks about the body’s integrity or vaccines? I missed that in civics back in the day?

    • No, no you didn’t. The idea of mandatory medical procedures has a legal history going back to the Roman Empire. There is no right to refuse treatment when said refusal puts another person at risk.

        • You talk as if selective breeding is not something humans have been doing since we were a species.

          Again. When your “freedom” comes at the expense of another person, you have no right to it.

        • A straw man followed by circular logic… I’ll bite though!

          Since you’re clearly new to the concept, breeding is voluntary. Selective breeding happens through cooperation, not force.

          Secondly, your “right” to feel safe from imagined woes and ills doesn’t trump any given person’s right to be secure in their own bodies and do with it what they’d like. Therefore your freedoms end where mine begin. Yours is the same logic that antis use to justify the abolishing of our second amendment rights.

          Thanks for playing though.

        • Not really. If you’re talking about actual Eugenics rather than pulling a Godwin so early in the discussion the argument is quite apt.

          As for you “circular argument” nonsense… A gun is inherently harmless. A plague carrier is not.

        • Thank you so much for proving the point I made early on in the comments right, I knew I could count on some of the regulars to do it.

      • There is no right to refuse treatment when said refusal puts another person at risk.

        Please elaborate how a risk exists if a person who doesn’t want the vaccine doesn’t get it and a person who does want the vaccine gets it. ??

        The person who wants and gets the vaccine is not a risk by the person who didn’t get the vaccine. If a person doesn’t want the vaccine they should acknowledge the risk of not having the vaccine. The person that wants the vaccine and gets it should also acknowledge the risk of having the vaccine.

        Also, with your statement made above… where is the line drawn? How can you draw a line? IMO, the statement above is not indicative of a free society.

        It could be applied to: A person owning a gun is putting others at risk of being shot by that gun simply because they own one, Right? “Risk” and “Freedom” go hand in hand.

        • Their safety is their parents responsibility – not mine, not my neighbors, and not society as a whole. “Everyone” shouldn’t have to get a vaccine because that person “might” get sick.

        • The risk is to children who may have compromised immune systems. There is a school near me where two children of elementary age have been through chemo. They can’t have an immunization right now. An unimmunized child contracts something contagious and risks the lives of those kids or the very young.

          The issue is will that unimmunized child teen adult quarantine themselves when there is an outbreak? Or will they say I have a right to go to the mall or school. We saw that nurse take a plane from Texas to Ohio after being with a patient who had Ebola.

        • The difference is that a gun will sit there and do nothing barring a criminal act. With diseases, there is no such guarantee. A better analogy would be someone firing randomly from his front porch.

        • Getting a vaccination is not proof against that disease or it’s transmission. Efficacy of a vaccination is 40%-60%. Statistics offers no comfort if you were vaccinated early and still get the disease. Also, you can still spread the disease even if you were successfully inoculated. If you know this information, why would you risk your chemo patient child to exposure to any other person who has likely been in contact with the population, inoculation or not?

  12. The difference is that mandatory vaccination is required to keep a society functioning. Allowing any significant portion of the society to be vulnerable to easily preventable disease is just plain stupid. Add to that the fact that there is zero evidence of any statistically significant harm coming from vaccines and you’ve got the recipe for weapons grade stupidity.

    The two issues are not in any way equal.

    Gun ownership threatens no one without intermediate criminal acts.
    Anti-vaxing threatens the entire human race simply by existing.

        • Perfect visual example. The risk of vaccinations is far lower than the risk of the diseases it protects you from. By not vaccinating yourself you are consciously putting yourself at greater risk and on top of that putting others at risk due to your own stupidity. The key difference is that, unlike gun ownership, it’s down to blind luck. Death from these diseases requires no intermediate criminal act.

    • By the way, try telling the parents of vaccine damaged children that their cases are “statistically insignificant”. You’d better damned be sure to have a gun on you when you do. 🙂

      • I challenge them to prove that said damage came from the vaccine. It’s damn near impossible which is why the feds had to set up a special “vaccine court” where the burden of proof is “possible” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt”…

        • The reason there is a court, vetted SOLELY by the FEDERALES, is to stifle any opposition to the agenda.
          Don’t think for a second that your beloved government won’t FUCK YOU UP just for giggles. IF you do, then you have NO idea how history has walked itself out. THIS is the reason it can’t be proven legally(there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate a serious problem). THE powers that be, (big pharma and the patrons of the ACA) will remain in power until we remove them. Any other position is bad philosophy. Big Pharma IS government, in case you haven’t noticed, we are a Mercantilist system, which is probably only one or two more elections from straight up fascism. Go ahead, crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you in your fear of something you should be (but obviously don’t believe you are) protected from. You do not deserve what little Liberty you have left. Franklin knew what he was talking about when he stated that you will also lose it.

        • Well, you are free to not vaccinate as you feel necessary. Just be sure to move to a deserted island where none of the rest of us are exposed to your stupidity.

          The vaccine courts are intended to prevent a tiny handful of cases from causing a national catastrophe. Or do you want to go back to the days when your kid had an excellent chance of dying from polio?

          At the end of the day, the anti-vexers are just selfish hypocrites who rely on herd immunity provided to them by the people who DO get vaccinated. IF any significant portion of the population believed in their stupidity, we’d be having major outbreaks every week.

      • That would be my son. No I won’t hurt you, I’d have you watch my son screaming as loud as he can for a few hours straight while I explain the timeline of what the vaccines did to him. Starting the day after he got them.

        So yeah, that.

        • Sad piont, but it needs to be said. The difference between parents with Autistic children and those with Down Syndrome Children is that there is a test created to determine if your kid has down syndromes-related to chromosome issues-and the one for Autism has yet to be finalized.

          While I do not diminish the challenges for parents of Autistic children, I hypothesize that the future will hold a test determining that it is a chromosomal disorder, much like Down Syndrome or Tay Sachs.

          Bottom line: do not endanger the larger populous due to bad research and an emotional component.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
          http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/chromosome/15

        • Actually you dismiss these children very quickly.

          You say you understand, but you are ignorant.

        • I dismiss these children rather quickly for a few very good reasons.

          1. There is very little evidence that vaccines cause these particular cases as no increase in the rate of these cases was observed over the past century.

          2. Even if vaccines DID cause this, it beats the thousands dead every year that the vaccines prevent.

          3. One case does not a solid basis for public policy make.

        • What id the vaccine do? What vaccine? What syndrome? Unless you provide details, this is as much BS as those “I cut up my gun” articles. Oh, you wouldn’t know about those, since you’re not a regular here.

      • I’d tell them the same way I’d tell parents of school shooting victims. In fact, you’re more likely to be shot in a school than to have an adverse reaction to a vaccine.

    • The human race existed for millions of years before vaccines were introduced in the last, what, 100? “The sky is falling” is rather over the top, don’t you think?

      I’m happy to get vaccines, saw to it my kids did, but that isn’t the question, here. The question, like 2A, is “Where did the government get that authority?”, and the answer is they just took it, it doesn’t really exist.

      • Sky isn’t falling, but given modern population densities a plague like the Spanish Flu could wipe out a gigantic chunk of the human race. The minor inconvenience of a shot or two is a small price to pay to prevent that. Don’t forget that as recently as the 19th century “plague” was a thing.

        • My “minor inconvenience” is named Tommy. He had a very bright future. Now he is 12, screams at the top of his lungs, can not form words, and needs someone to wipe his butt every time he goes.

          Don’t dismiss the dark side of your miracle cures.

        • Would you prefer he had polio? Because, statistically, without vaccines the chances of that are orders of magnitude higher.

      • You’re right – we lacked vaccinations before the late 19th century. And yet, the human race survived.

        But… child mortality was much, much higher than it is today.

        My wife and I like to walk through graveyards in small towns all over the west as a way of learning who settled the area, in what time frame, and seeing immigrants crossing the US in “waves.”

        When you walk through old west graveyards (say, the ones that go back to the 1870’s), the one thing that leaps out at you is the number of children who died before the age of 10. It isn’t a small number. You often see the heartbreak of parents written there in stone in front of you – you’ll see the date of death of the first of several children from the same family, usually an infant to one-year-old, then you see the progression into the older children.

        Sometimes, you see these children buried under the same grave marker, they died so closely together.

        In the most heartbreaking cases, you then see the mother’s grave market next to the children’s, dated about a year later. Often, you won’t see the father’s grave marker anywhere in that graveyard – they would pick up and move away, trying to re-start their lives somewhere else.

        Now, do-gooders want to make vaccinations mandatory to prevent these sorts of outbreaks of (insert name of high-mortality disease here). I’m of a mind that it should be left to the parents, but if death come calling upon a family that doesn’t vaccinate, well, there’s a) not much that can be done to prevent the spread within the family, b) don’t expect the health care professionals to be able to pull rabbits out of hats, and c) certainly do not do this at public expense. The last issue is where the issue of mandatory vaccination gains so much traction.

        If we made everyone responsible for their own medical expenses, no exceptions, then these problems would solve themselves. Socialized medical spending is the root of much that is offensive to liberty in this country.

    • “The difference is that mandatory vaccination is required to keep a society functioning.”

      That’s just silly. Human society managed to stay functioning for thousands of years before vaccines were discovered.

      • You’re right, it certainly did. Except up until the 20th century, disease routinely wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in slow agonizing deaths every few decades.

      • Or possibly millions of years. The lack of vaccines made the remainder and the next generation of the populace strong (Depending on what you believe in). I’m certain there are plenty of bacteria and viruses that we are completely immune from which perhaps we once were not.

    • pwrserge, reading your posts makes me suspect you have a financial interest in pushing these pharmaceutical products. Even the most the pro-vaccine professionals I know do not use the language that you use here. Your language is identical to the trolls/astroturfers seen on NPR, Yahoo!, ect,….emotionally based rhetoric and thin on the facts, the exact same propaganda/rhetoric being waged on the 2nd Amendment gun owners to attack that freedom as well. Thanks for making my point with this article.

      • The anti-vexers are the ones who are fact deficient. They like to conveniently ignore the fact that even if their claims were true, (something for which no evidence exists) the results are still far preferable to the yearly death tolls of even one of the diseases routine childhood vaccination prevents.

        As for your ad-hominem attack… I’m an engineer. I can do math. I know that 20-30 per year is preferable to 20,000 – 30,000.

        • Except it isn’t 20-30 per year.

          Get out of your world of numbers and realize that these are baby brains and tiny bodies getting massive doses of mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum, and dozens of other components. The dosing schedule is so high now, with kids getting 4-5 injections with multiple immune triggering agents in each.

          The individual agents are “tested” but the combinations are not.

          Bad things happen, and parents are left with the shattered pieces. Nobody is going to force these on my other kids. Nobody.

          You may know numbers, but you don’t know babies.

        • So show me the data. Again… Prove that the alternative is statistically better. You’re like a typical grabber.

          “Well I’ve seen this one incident so we should ban vaccines, science and statistics be damned.”

        • We are not trying to ban vaccines. We’re trying to ban statism. You seem to think it’s OK because of a benefit.
          I would no more pass a law to FORCE people to own guns even though it’s demonstrable that firearms ownership is good for society. I wouldn’t ban seat belts, but I would support removing laws that mandate them.
          You’ve offered no facts to support your position. The science is not even relevant. This is a Liberty issue. I will ALWAYS insist on the most Liberty per individual. However, just to keep things interesting and to show I know how to copy/paste as well, here’s an inconvenient truth:
          http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/zero-u-s-measles-deaths-in-10-years-but-over-100-measles-vaccine-deaths-reported/
          Note the downward trend of the incidence of Measles BEFORE the vaccine was introduced…

        • No serge, you are like the grabber. Allow me to demonstrate.

          You are the one repeating the idea of banning vaccines. I never even suggested it. Lie, like a grabber.

          You are the one trying to force everyone to confirm to your feelings on the matter, so you feel safe. Like a grabber.

          You claim I quoted one incident, when you know damn well that tens of thousands of kids have suffered, as proven by the courts. Like a grabber.

          You are promoting statism. Like a grabber.

          I’m saying that I will not, nor do you have the right to demand or shame me for not, vaccinating my two younger kids after what happened before my eyes the day after injecting my first.

          If you can’t get this through your head without twisting my words, well, you are acting like a grabber, and an a$$hole.

        • Tens of thousands? I call bullshit. CITE A SOURCE

          As for your “not wanting to ban vaccines”, that’s also bullshit and you know it. If a vaccine is not good enough for your kids, why would it be good enough for other people’s kids? At best, you anti-vaxer retards are just selfish idiots more than willing to let others run the risk for you. At worst, your deliberately ignorant luddites trying to bring the rest of us down to the time of leeches and trepanning.

        • “Fucktard, do you understand….”

          “deliberately ignorant luddites ”

          “you anti-vaxer retards are just selfish idiots”

          You can always tell the content of someone’s character by how they treat those they disagree with. You have demonstrated that character very clearly to us all.

          Back is against the wall Sergey….. Powerful arguments have been made against your point of view.

          Obviously you feel strongly, just like the grabbers. But feelings don’t trump freedom. If you want safety, you can stay inside. It might be better that way, for all of us.

        • No argument have been made Bob. You keep repeating the same bullshit assertions without citing a single source. As for my tone… You will find that I have little patience for idiots. Even less for luddites.

        • “No argument have been made Bob. You keep repeating the same bullshit assertions without citing a single source. As for my tone… You will find that I have little patience for idiots. Even less for luddites.”

          Your tone? Funny, most people would call it something else.

          There are dozens of arguments above this, perhaps you should start reading posts other than your own.

          My assertions are simple,

          You are behaving as a statist nanny, and when confronted, a petulant child.
          You are brushing off the lives that are ruined in favor of the ones saved.
          You are acting like a dick. Insults like “retard” show what kind of man you are, and that’s not a compliment.

          Others here have valid concerns, you are so damn sure you are the smartest guy on the blog that you resort to insults when cornered on the real question.

          Your feelings of “wanting to feel safe” do not trump the rights of others who have reasons for not wanting to live under your demands.

        • Still waiting for you to cite a source.

          Vaccines don’t make me “feel” safe. They make me and my children ACTUALLY safe.

          I’ve cited DATA to that effect. You have cited nothing other than a fictional sob story.

        • My son is fictional? What a lovely human you didn’t grow into.

          I hope your kid is, because they have a horrible role model in you.

        • Get out of your world of numbers and realize that these are baby brains and tiny bodies getting massive doses of mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum, and dozens of other components.

          And now you’ve just proven you’re a troll. All of your claims have been thoroughly debunked. The data you’re posting comes purely from false anti-vax sites ALA Jenny McCarthy. “Massive doses” is patently false and has been proven over and over.

  13. It is a matter of liberty vs control. Mandating we inject a substance into the body is unacceptable. The last post doesn’t understand vaccines. If you are vaccinated you should not fear being exposed to the particular disease. Do I promote people not get a TB or Polio shot? No, these appear to clearly outweigh the risk. That said, mandatory is a command, a control over your body. How exactly this relates to the 2A I’m still unclear. Labeling hypocrisy is unfounded. Plenty of hypocrites in church, right? Maybe relating mandatory vaccines would be more interesting if compared to the human abortion issue?

    • The problem is that unvaccinated people are a threat to family members too young to be vaccinated or in poor physical health. All the vaccinations in the world won’t help you if you’re old and have a compromised immune system. The only way people like that can stay safe is for everyone around them to be vaccinated.

      • A colleague of mine when I was at the university never once in his life had a vaccine of any kind. He told me it was against his religion. So this was valid argument no? Do we have the freedom of religion or not?

        One could argue that we don’t have the freedom of religion to kill people. No one has the right of involuntary human sacrifice. Right?

        I suppose one could link the two arguments together suggesting that if one doesn’t get a vaccine, one “might” harm or kill another yea? But then again we play with risk not certainties. And as described above, only those who don’t want the vaccine are at risk. Those and small babies and chemo patients. In my opinion, when living in a free society, we must make our own safety, our own responsibility. Only in doing so do we allow others their pursuits of happiness rather than forcing things on them they do no want. Seems to me, if I was a chemo patient or have a child or baby with an immune deficiency, we should take responsibility to shield them from the remainder of the populace, rather than forcing the entirety of the populace to take actions that many of them don’t want.

        • So by your logic everyone should be allowed to get behind the wheel of a car plastered? At what point does your “freedom” stop outweighing the menace to society caused by your irresponsible actions?

          As for your alleged “friend”… I say strap him down and shoot him up. His freedom of religion ends when it starts causing an inevitable risk to others.

        • So you’re cool if I just start shooting randomly in a mall or a theater? I mean, if you don’t want to get shot, just stay home, right? Shooting is a lot of fun. It’s my “pursuit of happiness” after all. Forcing me to shoot at a range is infringement!

        • At what point does your “freedom” stop outweighing the menace to society caused by your irresponsible actions?

          Straight out of the anti-gunners handbook.

          If you know your are sick – stay home. If your immune system can’t take the presence of un-vaccinated individuals – stay home. That is taking personal responsibility for your actions and your safety. If you are going to get wasted – get wasted at home. That is taking personal responsibility for your actions and your safety. Making 300 million people get a vaccine because you might get sick? I don’t think so.

          If you are contagious, and don’t know it, because your religion by chance forbids you to get injections…. welcome to freedom. Where freedom entails risk and some prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

          As for your alleged “friend”… I say strap him down and shoot him up. His freedom of religion ends when it starts causing an inevitable risk to others.

          Sure, you could always play the tyrant Majoritarianism card and vote for that 51% so you can force all those other people to shoot up whatever juice the doctors demand. They might fight about it 1775 style with 2015 style guns.

        • “Strap him down and shoot him up”

          I see where you are coming from now. You make statists look harmless.

      • The herd immunity argument is a load of BS and you know it. Even you argue vaccines aren’t 100% effective, and it is established that any immunity from vaccination is not permanent and wanes. We have had generations of adults who have had any alleged immunity wear off and we have suffered no catastrophic outbreaks, as astroturfers like yourself like to claim. Also, China has some of the highest vaccination rates in the world, yet they suffer outbreaks of ‘vaccine-preventable’ diseases in fully vaccinated communities. And lastly,the whole point here is in a free society, mandatory medical procedures have no place. It is not a child’s responsibility to play Russian roulette with a vaccine needle to allegedly protect another person.

        • “It is not a child’s responsibility to play Russian roulette with a vaccine needle to allegedly protect another person.”

          Thank you.

  14. Hypocrites, yeah many are, more or less. Or soft-headed. One way or the other lacking the philosophical equipment to reject apparent positive utility in favor of principle.

    • “I do what I want” is not a “principle”. When your actions are likely to adversely affect others, it becomes a different conversation.

      • By your logic, is the converse true, the vaccine that took my child’s future is on you because you demand I give it to him?

        After seeing what happened to child number one, you would have to shoot me to get number two and three vaccinated.

        And yes, it started the next day, dramatically. Either the direct cause or the most amazing coincidence in our lifetime.

        • Coincidences happen Bob. Again, even if your claim is true, the numbers still don’t justify your position. If vaccines are measurably unsafe, then no one should have them. That means we need to look at what a good old fashioned polio epidemic would do to 21st century America. Right now, you’re a selfish and ignorant prick who is content to leech off the herd immunity of the rest of society provided by the very vaccines you decry.

        • Fucktard, do you understand that modern measles deaths are so low only BECAUSE of the vaccine?

          http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm
          Check out table 2.

          Annual average measles morbidity for the 20th century is HALF A MILLION. The US share of that (based on modern relative populations) would be about 25,000 PER YEAR. That sure as hell beats a hundred.

          DO YOU EVEN MATH BRO?

  15. Yep. The freedom to carry a weapon without need of government aporoval that with one pull of the trigger can kill another human being? Thumbs up.

    The freedom to put a substance in ones body that hurts no one else but themselves? Forbidden!

    Got hypocricy?

    • Depends. Does use of that substance have a significant chance of inducing psychosis in the user? If so, then no, you are definitely harming others by using it. (Or at least putting them at significant risk.)

      • Depends. Does use of that substance have a significant chance of inducing psychosis in the user? If so, then no, you are definitely harming others by using it. (Or at least putting them at significant risk.)

        How much of a risk is acceptable and who draws the line? In 2013, there were 84,258 nonfatal injuries with firearms and 11,208 deaths by homicide with firearms, and 21,175 suicides performed with a firearm. 505 accidental deaths due to accidental discharges. 281 deaths with undetermined intent. 33,169 deaths total. Maybe we should ban guns and enforce communist style death sentences for their possession because the risk associated with ownership is too high? Some are definitely harming others by possessing them. See the hypocrisy now? Do we push freedom through the risk or don’t we?

        So some gun owners will undoubtedly become mentality unstable when they were previously stable. Some incidents will push them over the edge and a small percentage will kill others with a firearm. So there will always be a “chance” that someone could get shot with a firearm regardless.

        So the real question is… where do you draw the line? Some gun controllers ask – “When is enough enough? How many more deaths will it take? I think to myself but never tell them… All of them, every single F one of them could die and I would still not want to give up my rights (which wouldn’t happen – not all of them would die). That is called a “principle.” It may seem stubborn but that is a foundation for one of my beliefs – maximizing freedoms for everyone – and making safety your own responsibility.

        • Smart one. False analogy is false. The risk is not gun ownership. The risk is intermediate criminal or irresponsible acts. A gun on a table can never harm another human being without an intermediate act. A person without a vaccine can. If you don’t understand the difference, maybe you’re on the wrong side of the conversation?

        • That’s a good rebuttal. I can agree with that. It is “possible” for a contagious person to kill another without knowing it by means of transmitting an infectious airborne disease. I will concede this point.

          However, where do we draw the line? Does everyone have to take the FLU shot because out of the 100 or so flu strains the 5 or 6 that are in the vaccine “may” be the one that protects them? Also, the potential for abuse. It is simple to make a law for people not to kill each other – as like you say – an intermediary is required. But what about the vaccines? What if later a vaccine is dangerous. Perhaps later it is proven that a particular vaccine or vaccines have proven side effects or are harming to the body? Would you still support the enforcement of such on the entirety of the populace? Vaccines are money making machines. They are licensed for use. What if you don’t like something that in it? Maybe not at present – but something that is in it in the future? What if they used say… a product from swine to develop a vaccine? Maybe those people don’t want it. Should people be forced to make an alternative or should those people be forced to take the vaccine?

          Also, I’m not into forcing people to do what they don’t want to do. I am into defending oneself, and understand that one may want to defend themselves (from criminals, zombies, or blood faced ebola victims). For those embracing the “risk” of not having particular vaccines for deadly diseases, I still believe they should not be forced to do what they don’t want to do. That said, the condition cannot coexist between those with opposing philosophies in this case. If only there was some place these people could go (like their own sovereign country) where they can be free to live in the manner they choose.

    • But simply carrying of a firearms doesn’t harm anyone WITHOUT pulling the trigger.

      Carrying a lethal disease requires nothing but exposure, and you kill someone without knowing it.

      You are comparing apples to oranges.

      • Carrying a lethal disease requires nothing but exposure, and you kill someone without knowing it.

        You “might” kill someone without knowing it. But you “might” have an aneurysm at any time and so “might” the other person.

        Welcome to freedom – where freedom entails risk and some prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. 😀

        • Dangerous freedom does not require me to tolerate people running around spreading plagues due to their own ignorance. It’s called a balance of freedom. Your “freedom” to not get vaccinated is an unacceptable risk to my six month old daughter’s freedom to live.

        • You “might” kill someone without knowing it. But you “might” have an aneurysm at any time and so “might” the other person.

          Welcome to freedom – where freedom entails risk and some prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

          Please tell me you live in a prepper bunker somewhere away from people. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

        • Your preexisting condition (aneurysm, hypertension, coronary disease, etc) has nothing to do with the fact that your [preventable] disease can kill another person.

          Go ahead and not vaccinate. That is true freedom. But just don’t get close to other children, pregnant women, immunocompromised persons, etc. Because your selfishness can be the last thing they encounter.

        • I have “access” to a prepper bunker – but it’s not my prepper bunker. Does that count? LOL.

  16. You certainly have the right not to vaccine your child. But, schools have the right to refuse kids who are not vaccinated. As long as you dont send your child to school with other kids, we are good.

    And, the first government mandate said everyone must own a gun (actually, pistol and a rifle). “Rights” are not absolute.

    • Except in a society where kids play with each other, keeping your personal germ colony out of school is only a partial solution. I think a mandatory quarantine would be more appropriate.

  17. A local conservative radio talk show host (who is a very intelligent guy that I agree with most of the time) was doing a piece on the recent legalization of marijuana in Oregon.

    It seems that some enterprising pot retailers had set up a table in front of a small town city hall and were giving out free samples. Now our talk show host is very anti-marijuana, so rather than compliment them on their entrepreneurship, he complained that they were selling pot within a few hundred yards of a school.

    Since he is also very pro-gun, I was disappointed that he would use that old argument, which has been used a lot against gun stores.

    It does seem to me that nearly everyone likes to pick and choose which liberties they want to support or suppress and they often use exactly the same arguments that were used against them by their opponents.

  18. False equivalence is false. A gun, holstered safely, is no threat to anyone. Your communicable and entirely preventable disease, however, IS a threat to those who cannot get a vaccination, including the very young. YOU are putting them at severe risk just by going out in public.

    Not being vaccinated when you are entirely able to be is like randomly shooting your gun around in public. Your chances of significantly hurting somebody is vastly increased.

    Ignorance and paranoia is not limited to just the left.

    • It REALLY surprises and sorely disappoints me that you, of all people, fail to recognize the flaws in your position here versus other liberty-oriented stances you’ve taken previously.

      Freedom isn’t a la carte, it’s all or nothing.

      • I didn’t say one whit about freedom or requirements. I’m talking about vaccines period. I’m calling out the anti-science, anti-vx Luddites for what they are; a major threat to humanity.

        The subject of government requirement is a totally different kettle of fish that I’m just not going to touch right now. If you re-read my posts, you’ll see that.

    • Who knows how long the movement will last anyway, and how far it will go. For instance I don’t see full autos for non-rich people coming back. We can’t control the outcome but we can control how we behave in the present. Hang together or hang separate.

    • That’s the whole point here….we either have a free society or we don’t, you cant pick and choose which freedoms are valid. Whether gun owners want to admit it or not, they are already lumped in the same category as people questioning the safety of vaccines by the media, and the sooner you realize this, the sooner you may have a chance in preserving some freedom.

      • they are already lumped in the same category as people questioning the safety of vaccines by the media

        That’s right. That is the way the freedom-hating majoritarians see it. They don’t see the individual – they see the whole. If a deadly virus is akin to a person randomly shooting in public, a gun owner is akin to a stable individual who could go unstable at any moment and randomly shoot in public. Looking at it from a bigger picture they seek control for these items because they don’t care about rights. They care about the health of the ant colony. Regardless of an “intermediary” or not, there is a risk to everyone if a person or group of people don’t get vaccinated right? There is also a risk to allow guns in the population when non-crazies can go crazy at any moment. After all, gun owners have no control over going crazy nor do people have control (or limited control) over picking up viruses. Leave guns in the hands of stable law abiding people and eventually some of them will lose it and go on a mass shooting. The shooter was not responsible because they went crazy and since a non-crazy can go crazy at any time we should ban guns. Ban all guns and enforce communist style death penalties for those in possession will be the answer to which they incrementally and progressively reach through small steps in legislation all while spouting – nobody wants to take your guns.

        To live in a free society, you have to accept the risk of dying otherwise someone is going to want to force you to do something you may not want to do (e.g. disarm you, vaccinate you).

    • Seriously! If people want to understand why mandatory vaccination exists, then they need to understand herd immunity. With a sufficiently high level of immunization in the population, infected, contagious individuals will be naturally isolated from vulnerable people. Therefore, no outbreaks will occur. Additionally, vulnerable individuals such as infants and the elderly, and those who immune systems are comprised, are protected by the fact that they are much less likely to encounter the infection. If immunization falls below the necessary threshold, then herd immunity can be lost, and the group as a whole is more vulnerable.

      • Sorry but I disagree. The concept of herd immunity was borne out of natural immunity, not vaccine induced immunity. Furthermore, vaccines do not provide lifelong immunity…which means any vaccines you received as a child have worn off. This basically means that all adults are un-vaccinated. Disagree? Then please explain why they are starting to mandate mandatory adult vaccinations (not just flu). Faulty logic on all fronts. The problem is that most people just accept vaccination as the norm without question. When people start to ask reasonable questions they are called “pseudo scientists” and “paranoid conspiracy theorists”. There will be no open debate on the subject….ever. People are starting to wake to this > 200 year lie. I personally welcome the intensified propaganda on the MSM. It forces conversations and wakes more people up.

        Some more perspective:
        http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=b04c757ae6b31410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD

    • That’s refreshing.
      Herd immunity applies to the spread of bacterial and viral diseases. It’s an accepted phenomenon in the world of epidemiology.

      But the concept has been used to argue a myriad of other topics, including gun rights. It’s always a false analogy.

      • Curtis, herd immunity is a theory, literally a guess, which has has never been scientifically validated. And epidemiological studies…glad you brought them up, a very inadequate method to determine vaccine safety, which is why they are the only method used. The results of epidemiological studies are easily manipulated to produce what the authors of said studies are trying to reach. Vaccines are the ONLY pharmaceutical product that do not pass the gold standard, double blind, placebo controlled studies for drug safety.

  19. I’m against compulsory vaccination and I don’t care if some other people’s kids die or become disabled because their parents were anti-vaxers. That’s their parents’ right. Nor do I care if people kill their own children in utero. If some people don’t give a sh!t about their own children then why should I?

    But people who won’t vaccinate their kids have no right to have their children admitted to public schools where they can make other children sick. Because rights should apply to sane people and their children too.

      • Exactly! That’s the point of a vaccine right? Either you put your faith in the vaccine and the government agency promoting it to protect you and yours or you choose to believe your own research. Either way how does each group have an impact on the other.

        • Because vaccinated individuals can still transmit the disease smart one. Let me give you an example.

          I have a smallpox vaccine. I get exposed to the infection, but don’t develop symptoms as my infection is rather low because my immune system is fighting it off. I still have the disease in my body, but it’s not a real threat to me. Now I go home and hang out with my infant daughter. She has no such protection and is now exposed to a disease that was supposed to be wiped out because some fucktard decided that his right to be retarded outweighed the right of the “gubermint” to enforce common sense health policies.

        • Not really. The more people are vaccinated, the more degrees of separation exist between an unvaccinated person and the source of contagion. A disease can jump one such barrier. The chances of it jumping two or three is mathematically absurd. (Compound probabilities are rather fun if you know how to do the math.)

      • First, “vaccinated” isn’t 100% disease-proof. Just as “bullet-proof” and “silencer” aren’t absolutely 100% correct descriptive terms. Being vaccinated just drastically reduces one’s chance of catching the specified disease.

        Second, unvaccinated kids are the biggest threat too… other unvaccinated kids. I don’t just mean the voluntarily unvaccinated, I mean those who CAN’T get vaccinated due to other medical issues. This includes infants who across the board cannot receive many vaccinations until they reach a certain age. There’s also the elderly, the immune-deficient (IE: AIDS victims, who aren’t all just gays), and more.

        It’s like randomly firing a gun around. Sure, those wearing body armor don’t have to worry as much about being struck as those who aren’t, but everyone is still endangered by your irresponsible actions.

        • grind, I figured you’d pipe in too, your herd immunity argument is farcical, I noticed you’re smart enough not use the term herd immunity because it is a myth.

        • Herd immunity is only a myth to people who don’t know how disease vectors work or how to do basic math…

          Let me simple it up for you…

          Let’s say that an immunized person has a 0.5% transmission rate. (aka They have a 0.5% chance of passing a disease they are exposed to to an non-immunized person.)

          Now let’s play the degree of separation game…
          I = infected
          T = immunized, but transmittable
          V = non-immunized.

          In a low vaccination population, even with strict quarantine, the transmission vector looks like this.
          I -> T -> V with a total transmission chance of 0.5%
          Now let’s look at a moderate vaccination population.
          I -> T -> T -> V total transmission rate drops to 0.0025%
          Now let’s look at a heavily vaccinated population.
          I -> T -> T -> T -> V the transmission rate drops to 0.0000125% ( aka ~1 in 10 million)

          Now the math I used is a bit arbitrary, but you can see that putting in even a single extra person in the transmission chain drops the infection probability geometrically.

          So… Tell me more about how herd immunity is not a thing.

        • @pwrserge, thanks for the laugh. I’ve seen that exact nonsense posted on yahoo forums, maybe by you? Herd immunity is a guess, never established scientifically. That is a fact.

        • pserge, even better, thanks for the Wikipedia link to “prove” herd immunity. Yes, there are many MD’s, DO’s, PhD’s, DC’s, ect that disagree with your standard troll/astroturf script. You’re getting more and more entertaining.

        • Given that in more than 24 hours of posts none of your anti-vaxer retards have yet to cite a single credible source… I, again, call bullshit. Any doctor who tells you not to vaccinate your kids will have his license to practice yanked, and for good reason.

        • Your trolling is so transparent, its laughable. Whatever you’re being paid is too much. That amateur pretend science video is as funny as your amateur pretend science posts. How many other accounts other than TTAG do you have to troll?

        • pg2 (or is that Pete G.?) you’re so predictable. Always late to the party. Always spouting the same debunked bullshit you picked up off a tin-foil hat anti-vax website. Never any data, never any evidence.

    • Ralph, your logic fails with the public schools…if the vaccines work, then wouldn’t the un-vaccinated kids be the ones at risk, and not the other way around?

  20. If we are going to start silly arguments correlating things that have nothing to do with each other here are some other ideas:
    Gun buy backs and ethanol subsidies. Are they both subsidizing over production?
    Gun rights and red light cameras. Which cause more accidental deaths?
    Magazine capacity limits and the death penalty. If you are for one are you sorta against the other?

  21. I’m all against arguing over gun rights. I’m way way way against a-holes trying to introduce other arguments to attempt fo have me justify my position on gun rights. You give up your gun, and I’ll get you to give up everything else. Gov’t is not the answer to individual safety or protection.

  22. Flu shots– hmmm… Let’s look at the real measure of effectiveness– Number Needed To Treat. In the best years (which are rare; they often guess the dominant flu strain wrong, and then the shots are basically worthless) is 100 shots per one case of flu avoided. Again, that’s the BEST case.

    So… you are relatively healthy. Think about it like this. $20 a pop for the shots. Would you rather have 100 injections and pay $2000, or catch the flu??? Again, that’s the BEST case. How about like most years– would you take 1000 injections and pay $20K to avoid the flu?

    That’s the correct way to look at it.

  23. Allowing the government to assume powers not granted to it by the Constitution is a slippery slope, all by itself. And the writer is correct in some of his assertions. Here’s another-if the government has the authority to outlaw abortion, then it has the authority to mandate abortion. In fact, as the SCOTUS ruled decades ago, those decisions are none of the government’s business.

  24. YES!!!

    Some on here are hypocrites. They want their “rights” but they poo poo others who don’t fit their tight paradigm.

    Some are also 2A all the way but the concept of liberty is far, far from their minds, they just like guns.

  25. We in Indiana have sort of been through all of this with devout Pentecostal types around Warsaw Indiana and their Glory Barn. There actually were quite a few of these like minded folk all about Northern and Central Indiana.
    A lot of these sects did not believe in modern medical practices, but believed in faith healing both for them and their children.
    I actually could see both sides of this argument, but having the state dictate medical procedures to groups of people becomes a springboard for government incrementalism.
    I usually favor vaccines, but I see most people have now forgotten the swine flu vaccine which was worse than the disease.

  26. I heartily agree.
    Each wedge issue is basically no one else’s business.
    If I drive drunk take away my license.
    Don’t legislate to ban alcohol or driving.
    A lot of folks have figured out they can’t handle alcohol.

    This is where the abortion debate sides don’t see eye to eye.
    The pro choice people aren’t baby killers no more than gun owners are homicidal maniacs.
    The pro choice people just don’t want the govt telling them what to do.
    Gun owner, do you?
    As was said above if the govt gets that power then they can tell you to abort if there are too many girls or only have one child. Not science fiction!
    If you feel it’s wrong or your church teaches it’s wrong don’t do it.
    I wish the leaders would help their flock be better people instead of trying to tell everyone else how to live.
    If these people had their way we should have been deprived of rock n roll and alcohol.
    The vegans could get a powerful lobby to get meat eating outlawed.
    Don’t laugh.

    Big however here.
    I always wore seat belts.
    Laws were passed.
    People were very resistive to the idea.
    Finally the govt had to ticket people.
    Why did this happen?
    Perhaps did school education about physics fail to teach the “why?”
    Did people not stop suddenly in a wagon as a kid?
    Here is case where I agree with govt intervention.
    The pros: safety for passengers. Health costs went down. The cons: uncomfortable for those who didn’t grow up wearing them. Win!

    • I wore seat belts before the laws, but I still think the government has no business legislating laws to force people to wear them.
      The wearing of seatbelts could easily have been done through insurance premium ratings in the private sector.

  27. Never got a flu shot-and after last years debacle(20% effectiveness ) I’m OK with that. All my kids were vaccinated as well as me and my wife. But my brother(who has 10 kids) has missed quite a few(as well as home schooled AND had NINE home births). And one kid could have used a doctor a tbirth as he has cerebral palsy and is deaf…so I cringe a bit at all the “right to kill my kids and put others at risk comments”. As well as the survival of the fit comments. I also had 2 uncles who didn’t make it to the trenches in WW1 because they got influenza which killed maybe 40-50 million(more than the Great War). Do whatever the heck you want-but please don’t tie this in with gun rights in any way…

      • Which doesn’t effect my gun rights a whit. And in comment to your Pentacostal post I also believe in divine healing,miracles,signs and wonders-but in this modern world where people routinely don’t die of infectious diseases in childhood I think immunizing your kids is a good trade-off to death/disability. I’m older and vividly remember getting polio shots and later the sippy cup-and met many old folks who did have polio as kids.

      • It’s mostly California liberals who bought into the anti-vax crap in the first place. Then the anti-government paranoid religious nuts caught on after that.

        • Exactly as I suspected from you grind. Your posts fail at every level, predictably taking the authoritarian point while pretending to be a 2A supporter.,

        • You wouldn’t know an authoritarian if he kicked you in the face with a hob-nailed boot. I’ve said nothing at all about government, yet because I’m not an anti-science loon like you, you get your tin-hat all in a bunch. Funny how you’re never around until someone says the “v” word and you come out of the woodwork parroting good ol’ Jenny McCarthy.

    • I’m sorry, but the two issues are inextricably linked. They’re both facets of primacy of the individual, to put it one possible way. Don’t worry, though, it’ll be fine; gun rights, medical rights, we’ll be in this together 😀

      • Exactly. Seems like some gun owners don’t want to accept that they have been placed in the same undesirable category as people questioning vaccine safety. The hypocrisy is that people either stand for freedom or they don’t. And those who don’t are destined to watch whats left of their rights, including gun rights, swirl down the collective, public health, greater good, authoritarian, public relations drain.

  28. I want to point out that one does not need to respect and understand the Constitution enough to exercise their rights recognized in the Constitution. What does that even mean? I don’t know who alleged such a thing or who decided how much study of the Constitution is considered “enough” in order to exercise the 2A in particular.

    I err on the side of personal freedom and accountability but also realize the world is not always that simple. I don’t find hypocrisy in not addressing every issue exactly the same way. I am not sure why gun owners as a group (of people that mostly do not know each other) are to be held to a golden standard that an individual can’t even achieve.

  29. Keep the family home and I dont care if you are vaccinated

    Colonial folks did quarantine for deadly diseases.

    Seems inoculation is less intrusive to your freedom

  30. You have to be kidding me. If this site is getting into the anti-vax nonsense, this will be my last comment and my last visit. First of all, no one forces anyone to get vaccines. If you don’t want your children to be vaccinated – pull them from school and teach them at home. The science is settled on this issue, like it or not. The more people who don’t get vaccinated the more likely an outbreak is to occur. Herd immunity is an actual thing, and you can save the conspiratorial nonsense about the word ‘herd’. There is a reason that smallpox, diptheria, whooping cough, tuberculosis, polio have been eradicated or brought under control and that is because of vaccines and the widespread use of them. Think of the freedom of religion – your freedom of religion ends exaclty at the moment that it infringes upon my rights- thankfully or Sharia or the Dominionist movement would have free reign. Vaccines do not work unless a majority of people use them – if you don’t understand the science I suggest you stop being so anti-intellectual, like Jim Carrey and Bill Maher, and learn the science. Before you do so, you may want to take the time to learn the nature of evidence and perhaps a bit of epistemology. I am sick of the ignorant anti-intellectual side of the gun rights movement. You aren’t helping. The US has long understood the necessity of compulsory vaccination, complusory in order to attend public schools, the first one occured in 1850 in order to address smallpox. It isdisgustingly despicable that you even attempted to compare gun rights to vaccinations. You can refuse vaccinations all you want as an adult – you can refuse vaccinations for your children but then they cannot attend school with other children whose parents understand the necessity of vaccinations. My right to my gun collection hurts no one. Numerous people failing to vaccinate themselves or their children hurts us all. Its so laughable, vaccines are not harmful in any way – that is of course unless you are one of the termite conspiracy theorists on the left. In comes down to the simple fact that your autonomy has been taken from you in regards to vaccines – so what in the hell are you whining about? Oh, I know you will come back with absolute nonsense that isnt backed by any evidnece in the same way the civilian disarmament movement does. The last thing we need in the gun rights movement is a section with a persecution complex in the way the “moral majority” on the right or the whiners about “the one percent” on the left.

    • Dude… we are debating this here. It’s a discussion. Who said anything about anti-vax??

      Your last visit? Don’t eat and run. Stay awhile and talk with the other guests.

    • 2maik,

      You want to change my oldest son’s name to settled science?

      He may be statistically insignificant to you, but he’s my son, and damn significant to us.

      If you think I should vaccinate my two younger kids after seeing what happened the day after their brothers shots, there will be other shots going off, I promise you.

      Just because it’s better on average to vaccinate (which I believe) doesn’t mean it’s safe for each individual.

      Get off your high horse and come meet the result of your elitist platitudes.

      • You drew the short straw. Yes it sucks. Your chances of drawing the polio straw alone are orders of magnitude higher without vaccinations.

    • “The science is settled”….ok Hilary, sure thing, except that’s it not. That has to be the most ignorant statement of any concerning the subject. But keep quoting Hilary, you’ll gain lots of credibility here.

  31. My take, (If you’ve read this far cool)
    I believe that vaccines save lives. Absolutely 100% they are what I would consider on the top of my list for things that people NEED to ensure their children are safe.

    That said, much like I wouldn’t mandate every person have a firearm, I wouldn’t mandate every child be vaccinated. Choose what ever you want to do for your children.

  32. My post about 100 posts back still stand. The constitution doesn’t adress medical procedures or requirements. So mandatory vaccines do not violate it. Therefore, we are not hypocrites that promote mandatory vaccines while protecting the Second. True freedom, where you can do whatever the heck you want without consequence, is not a protected right in this country, by definition, that would be anarchy. Religion, yes, property, yes, speech, yes…. medical decisions? No…. The ones arguing for this freedom are the same as those arguing that the constitution gives us the “right” to “feel safe”.

  33. To Editor Dan’s lede question: Are Gun Rights Advocates Constitutional Hypocrits? I say: CLICKBAIT!

    and to the last sentence by OP:
    “If the state can dictate what medical procedures you or your family are to take, the Second Amendment becomes a meaningless artifact.” I say: STRAWMAN!

    Vaccinate or not- go ahead, take your chances- Darwin’s law at work.
    What it has to do with guns I have no idea…
    but hey, pass me another plate o’ them bbq ribs, will ya?

  34. It certainly is beneficial when the populace is vaccinated against dangerous agents of disease. And public opinion seems to indicate that doing so is considered the preferred and correct thing to do. Peer pressure, and the consequent treatment one should expect when avoiding vaccination, should be enough to encourage a critical level of compliance. It is often overlooked that the Constitution mentions not two, but three entities vested with power. Powers not granted to the federal government are left to the states or the “people”. It is not always necessary that morality be enforced by a government.

    • Joe, so when the media uses “public opinion” and “peer pressure” to attack and marginalize gun owners, that’s ok too? Why are you selective in the freedoms you want to support? It doesn’t work that way. Either we are a free country,or we are not.

  35. Ok easy to blab – measles, polio, DPT. How many vaccinations are you going to pump in a kid?

    Are you (and the state) going to force parents to vaccinate children against HIV and syphilis? Entirely self-inflicted “maladys” due to “lifestyle” CHOICES. Are you going to stop gov’t spending treating the queers and their HIV.

  36. As is usual people don’t truly grasp what a right is and in regards to the Second Amendment that right is to ‘keep and bear’. Exercising that right in NO WAY affects, threatens or harms another person. Pick up that gun and point or shoot it at someone and you have left the area of rights and entered that where your conduct is subject to legal constraints and punishment. In regards to vaccination…..If a person or parent refuses vaccination and the ONLY person so suffer harm is them or their children then forced vaccination would be an abhorrent violation of rights. But in reality people who refuse vaccinations DO pose a VERY REAL risk to the life and health of others. Their
    choices have thus crossed over from a right, the practice of which harms no body to an
    act that can and has harmed others and is thus subject to external control. Now if someone were to accept mandatory isolation as long as they are unwilling to vaccinate
    then an argument can be made to let them choose. However that’s not how anti vaxxers work. They wish to be free to contract and disseminate diseases. THAT is where the state must step in to protect others from their poor choices.

  37. Re: that tweet: Most anti vaccine folks are leftist/liberal, and are more in likely to be anti gun than pro gun.

  38. There is a world of difference between “anti vaccine” and “anti forced vaccine”. There are a lot of things that might be good for society as a whole, but off the table because they violate an individual’s rights. That is the price you pay for having choices.

  39. I think what it boils down to is that we all agree that POS liberals are attempting to f-up America, and they can all eat sh_t. Work as hard as you can against them in the next election or else you won’t get to argue over anything, and your family plinker/sporting purposes firearm will be inadequate to gain them back.

  40. The only decent comparison between guns and vaccines is that an entire class of something has become demonized by the actions of a few bad instances.
    Not all vaccines are defective, nor are all gun owners. And yes, you will feel MUCH more strongly about it if you were directly affected.

  41. pwrserge, reading your posts makes me suspect you have a financial interest in pushing these pharmaceutical products. Even the most the pro-vaccine professionals I know do not use the language that you use here. Your language is identical to the trolls/astroturfers seen on NPR, Yahoo!, ect,…emotionally based rhetoric and thin on the facts, the exact same propaganda/rhetoric being waged on the 2nd Amendment gun owners to attack that freedom as well. Thanks for making my point with this article.

      • The poster is really transparent, I liked his challenge to prove that vaccines are causing these injuries….who says that? The product inserts themselves list a slew of potentially catastrophic a adverse reactions, not to mention the vaccine court has paid out over 3 Billion to people hurt/killed by these products. Any rational, objective person will surmise this payout likely represents a very small fraction of the true injuries occurring.

        • I’ve discussed why the Vaccine Court is bullshit. It does not require any reasonable burden of proof.

        • pserge, you’ve been outed as a paid troll. Any comments you have will be seen through that understanding. and yes, I actually agree the vaccine court is bullshit, no judge, no jury, no discovery. Its an administrative court that has no accountability. The fact that $3 Billion has been paid should tell ant critical thinking, non-troll, that the $3 Billion likely represents a very small percentage of the people actually injured by these products that you are pushing.

        • Critical thinking?

          He still thinks I want to ban vaccinations. The point has been circling his head for a full day and he’s still on his first thought.

          That’s the problem with people who think they are smarter than everyone else. teachers and engineers are the worst IMO.

  42. Here’s where gun confiscation and forced inoculation are similar.
    Regardless of what regulations or laws exist or will be signed into existence, if you try and take my firearms I’ll fight back with lethal force.
    In a similar way, if you attempt to inject my child with something against my will, I’ll kill you and burn your house down.
    And in in both cases, I’ll do the time with a big smile on my face.
    See, similar.

      • That you can try? Yes, I fully agree. Welcome to America. Freedom has responsibilities, and consequences. And by the way, I do vaccinate my kids. Just on the schedule that their mother, the epidemiologist with the MD/PhD recommends.

        • Well, my newborn is too young to be vaccinated. I plan to follow the recommended schedule to the letter. Why? Because I am willing to trust the half dozen MDs in my family and the millions of other MDs who say that to do otherwise would be irresponsible.

        • Do what you think is best. I went the same direction with just one MD in the family. The odds are certainly in your favor.

          Consider spreading them out a little though, the schedule kids are given now is orders of magnitude higher than when we were growing up. There is nothing wrong with a few extra appointments so the fragile immune system doesn’t get hit, literally, with 10 things to fight at once.

          Congratulations!

        • I know you are responding to pwrserge, but no, I would not hold that against him. Assuming he was doing what he thought was the best thing for his child, and assuming he had no intention of injury my child, I would not be angry with him for vaccinating his children and having them play with mine, if mine were unvaccinated. How is anyone supposed to keep up with who is vaccinated and who is not? Other people’s children infecting mine is a risk I, and everyone else with a child, takes every day.
          I do, however, think it is irresponsible for schools and health care providers to inoculate children, not explain to their parents that some of those inoculations can make the children more infectious, and then send them into the general public or back to school. They just made this kid immune depressed, at least for a short time, and made the kid more likely to spread a disease, at least for a short time, and so often don’t even explain that to the parents. How am I supposed to hold the parent responsible for that?

        • Not when their ignorance presents a clear and present danger to my chid. No.

          As I said. Do what you want, but if your ignorance harms my kids, your funeral will be closed casket.

        • Clear and present danger

          Closed casket

          Let me know when you grow up. Let me know when you are ready to face the statistically insignificant that you belittle so. So nice of you to use the word retard, which I’m sure you used on the playground for kids like my son and others who were not as fortunate as yourself.

          Do the world a favor and skip that one for your new baby. She deserves better than to learn that one from you.

  43. I haven’t heard the “inconsistent rights” argument. I have heard “eliminating guns for the public good is like requiring vaccines for the public good” from the “public health” POV.

    While Dr. Vaccine may be sincere, I am concerned with a false-flag question about rights as a Trojan horse to manufacture “supporting” quotes for the other argument. Ask one thing, then later you can quote the “other side” supporting some other argument. Like ask about the autonomy POV to generate responses you can then quote to support the other argument.

    There’s a counter-argument on rights front but first the public health argument.

    The game is to hijack the analogy: vaccination vs. gun control, which is flawed so that’s pretty easy. I believe there’s a more accurate analogy from the POV of “public health” but no matter. The game is to not take theirs. So…

    AG: “It’s public health. We ought to get rid of guns. We require people to be vaccinated, invading their individual rights, for a general public health concern.”

    Answer: “Oh, my. That’s bold. I think it’ll be difficult to force everyone to own and carry a gun, even if you issue them at no cost … so many people are just viscerally against that.”

    AG: “No, no, no, get rid of guns. Ban them.”

    Answer: “Oh, but the vaccination argument isn’t that. Vaccines are a protection against something in the world. A dangerous protection – the fact that we’ve gotten better at doing this without much harm doesn’t mean that injecting people with material from identified pathogens is inherently safe.”

    AG: “No, no, no, but guns bad. It’s public health. Guns people, so we should get rid of them, just like we require people to get vaccines.”

    Answer: “Dude. Your analogizing ‘gun control’ to *eliminating a disease*, not to vaccination against an existing disease. Vaccination is more akin to arming the good guys, to better repel the bad guys.

    “If you mean complete elimination of guns, say that, and how ya gonna do it?”

    The game is to take their flawed analogy, but not the part they are trying to use. This makes the argument from analogy fall down. It’s a basic rhetorical technique, that’s actually pretty easy with some practice at being literal-minded.

    So, “vaccine to gun control” is a bit of a stretch while “vaccines give people something, so with guns what would we *give people?*” is less of one. And the analogy falls down.

    In the end the “public health” argument for gun control amounts to: “There’s an aggregate number of harm form this that we can claim for the public at large, so it’s our business and we can require anything we want.”

    This amounts to the “ban swimming pools” argument, which gets soundly mocked as it should. The insight, however is, that *simply having an aggregate impact on “health” in a population is insufficient to declare something a “public health problem”, and double-plus insufficient to declare that “something, anything, must be done!”

    “Public health” is more subtle defined than this. Grabbing onto things like banning swimming pools is agency / agenda mission-creep, and should be called out as such.

    On the issue of personal autonomy applied to guns vs. vaccination…

    A vaccine protects me, while my having it protects you. Removing gun ownership makes me more vulnerable, in the name of protecting you. (Pro gun folks argue that my having a gun, like me having a vaccine, actually protects you, too.)

    Vaccination is arguably part of a program to eliminate, eventually, the root threat. What does taking guns away from good guys do to eliminate the threat of bad actors? Meanwhile, vaccinating you does nothing to reduce your autonomy or agency in the world, while taking away your gun does.

    So these two kinds of imposition are different in kind, succinctly, imposing a low, or no-cost burden on you for your protection and ours, vs. removing your chosen preference to reduce your agency and autonomy, for our protection at your expense.

    On top of that a gun in your hands is only dangerous to me if you use it dangerously. You being infectable is dangerous to me without further agency on your part.

    • I’ll dissect the fallacy of your lengthy post with looking at the last sentence…”On top of that a gun in your hands is only dangerous to me if you use it dangerously. You being infectable is dangerous to me without further agency on your part”

      A whole lot of supposition here, what if a criminal steals a legally owned gun, and uses the gun in a criminal action? Doesn’t that throw your entire premise out the window? How does someone who is “infectable”(nice made up word) dangerous to you if your vaccine works? Isn’t everyone “infectable” since vaccines are known not to be effective for everyone? Please spare the farcical herd immunity response and stick to proven science.

      • Do you understand the concept of intermediate acts? No? Well, I should be surprised you don’t understand basic medicine.

    • I was going to post a somewhat frustrated reply at the various users who don’t understand how vaccines actually work and/or can’t do the analysis of small numbers of babies developing problems that may just be bad luck and not actually due to the vaccine in the first place.

      But instead I’m just going to congratulate you on this, as it’s by far the more useful reply.

  44. Ok, this is getting ridiculous. Why are we giving anti-vexer nut jobs a soap box? Those clowns have no idea what they are talking about, ignore any attempts to educate them as to basic biology, and then claim rights that don’t exist.

    There is no constitutional right to refuse treatment. There is no constitutional right to deliberately endanger your kids and others through your ignorance.

    This has nothing to do with the constitutional to keep and bear arms. Leave these guys under the rock where you found them.

    • Which article or amendment is it, surge, that allows the government to mandate injections that can have life changing consequences into the bodies of our children?

      It is funny how when you are called out, you scream for us to be ignored.

      I can almost hear your voice rising from high to ultra whiney.

        • Unsurprisingly, you read it wrong.

          Try to focus on something other than yourself. Or find someone to read it for you.

    • Your scripted, paid to write, pharmaceutical sound bite troll posts are getting boring and tired. Unfortunately you will fool some people, the question is, will you fool enough? Time will tell, and paid astroturfers like yourself will one day look in the mirror and realize that you sold your souls for a few$$ to help the PTB attack and eliminate our reaming freedoms. Good luck trolling psurge.

      • Oh, that’s rich. Are you ready to start citing sources yet? Science? No?

        Fun fact, if your beliefs rely on ignoring every published piece of science on the topic, they just may be wrong.

        You’re just an uneducated luddite who thinks that a few posts on the internet are a substitute for years of medical training. What’s more, your ignorance is directly harming people and putting others at risk. (Or did you forget that just this year we had the fist measles outbreak in the US in almost half a century?)

      • pwrserge is a regular. You are only a “regular” once the “v” word is mentioned. Do you have a script that alerts you to vaccine posts or something? You literally never contribute to the site unless the topic comes to vaccines. The troll is obviously you.

  45. That’s making a big assumption about a guy who wants the government to make his medical decisions for him, and the rest of us plebes.

    • Bob, I’ve seen identical posts, word for word on the yahoo and npr forums. These guys post under multiple usnernames, have scripted taking points that become very transparent with some time. There’s “talk” of office buildings full of these people, posting misinformation, disrupting and redirecting on line conversations to favor certain Positions and give the false appearance of grassroots opinion. There’s a even a term to describe this activity, “AstroTurfing”. Grind, psurge, and a few others had all the marking of astroturfers from the start.

      • Whether this is the case or not, I’m not going to dig, they aren’t worth my time. Their hateful words and libelous speech speaks to their lack of character and honesty.

        They are willfully ignoring the real point here, which is not the efficacy of vaccines. It is the fact that they can and do have side effects which are disastrous, lifelong, and incredibly expensive for the impacted individuals. The number of cases is debatable, but certainly significant enough for tens of thousands of parents to share eerily similar stories to my own.

        The other point they are missing is that nowhere in the founding documents, in word or in spirit, are mandated “treatments,” forcibly applied mentioned. This is their vision of utopia, as pwrserge spoke of “strapping down and injecting” a non compliant individual.

        It is not mine, and, I suspect, not the vision of many others here.

  46. So here’s one for the anti-vacciners:

    We can treat mass shootings as statistically insignificant and not a reason to discount the many many more cases of guns being used defensively, but we can’t do that for babies who acquire developmental problems that may not even be due to the vaccine in the first place and are in fact very willing to discount the many many people who aren’t dead because they got vaccinated? And, in fact, we are saying “no vaccinations, think of the children”?

    Yeah, there’s one side that’s not consistent with being a gun rights advocate, and it’s you.

    • Quan, read my posts above regarding the likelihood of some other coincidence.

      I discount nothing you just mentioned, but I will not inject my other two kids after seeing the immediate impact on my first.

      In regards to your mass shooting analogy, I respect the right of anyone to carry, or not carry.

      The number of babies developing severe, mind melting disabilities is orders of magnitude higher than mass shooting victims.

  47. Here’s a distinction – You are an infection vector whether you decide to do anything else or not. To kill someone with a gun you have to decide to, and do, something. The agency is completely different.

    Of course there are degrees of agency. So the guy who knows himself to be HIV positive (and contagious) who goes around having unprotected sex with unaware partners has some agency.

    There is no constitutional (or more accurately, civil rights, or still more accurately natural rights) hypocrisy in requiring vaccines, but hands off people’s guns. It’s just different choices for things different levels of intrinsic risk, and individual agency.

    You can argue with the choices, like: “Any risk to others at all, and Something Must Be Done (collectively, and by the government.)” or “Any infringement on anyone doing anything at all is Bad, Wrong and Not to be Tolerated.”

    The pivots are on risk, to whom, and agency.

    • Hi Jim, just noticed you waited until near Halloween to get last word on this thread, which is appropriate, because your attempt at disguising misinformation as real or factual information is as laughably transparent as many Halloween costumes. Throughout this thread you failed to respond to the opinions(without citation or references) you stated here. Not sure what your angle is, but from your tactics here, not likely an honest one.

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