Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "" video.

Nick Cramer "Little do you know is that most of this violence revolves around the dealing of drugs and the person with the small amount of drugs in their pocket is supporting these people that commit gun violence." If the drugs weren't illegal, the criminals wouldn't be dealing them in the first place. Remember Prohibition? Legalizing alcohol did the opposite of supporting bootleggers and gangsters.
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The Green Man Actually, turning a blind eye solves the issue. If you stop caring about drug dealers, their profession becomes less demanding and less risky. They will need to either increase the quality of the drugs or reduce prices, both options will make drug dealing so unprofitable there's no point in shooting anyone over the drugs. Remember how crime peaked after the Prohibition? If we focus on drugs as a health issue instead of a criminal issue we'll have less addicts, less people out there with a felony record who can't get a job and resort to crime, etc.
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Mark Massingill All the evidence from countries which decriminalized drugs points to positive outcomes. I don't want to get high. I don't even drink alcohol. The pure, cold hard fact is that once your gang can't sell drugs it stops being profitable. Stealing isn't that profitable, and there's pretty much no territory to maintain because you don't have to sit around distributing product. You steal, get out.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Research It wasn't that effective.
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Mark Massingill >"There is no reason the average person cannot do without marijuana" But there's also no reason why it should be illegal and that's the core of the argument. Not that people "need" weed. There's also no reason the average person cannot do without a gun. By the same logic we could ban guns by determining how much someone "needs" it. "You haven't been murdered? Then you don't really need a gun yet, do you? Come back after you can prove you were in danger." >"I'm not for simply ignoring laws we don't agree with when there are perfectly legal avenues to work for change. I don't pity anyone who chose to break the law and is now paying the consequences of that act. Showing such disregard for the law is a bad trend to set." Lex iniusta non est lex “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” ― Howard Zinn “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law” ― Martin Luther King Jr. “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law” ― Henry David Thoreau “An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.” ― Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War 1942-49 “When EVIL men make bad laws, righteous men disobey them." Pastor Butch Paugh” ― Tarrin P. Lupo
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Mark Massingill "Actually, when it comes to guns it is illegal in every state that I know of to carry while intoxicated and even when just drinking any amount of alcohol in some" Pretty sure it's also a crime to drive impaired by drugs or to stab people, sober, drunk or on PCP. You have defeated your own argument. >"I guess you ignored that part of my statement." When you criticize the legalization of victim-less behaviour by mentioning other acts that involve criminal actions (which also exist with recourse to other legal drugs), you're ignoring your own belief that people have rights to their body. A right to one's body doesn't grant him the rights to drive impaired or stab people. >"Simply ignoring laws you don't like is wrong" The Nazis criminalized people who helped Jews escape. Is ignoring that law wrong? We must have Immanuel Kant all up in here.
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Mark Massingill 1. All those harms exist with prohibition. 2. All the harms you mentioned would be illegal anyway. 3. Actual real world evidence points to the fact that many countries used legalization to curb drug abuse, leading to less crime/driving under the influence of drugs. So yes, it's a positive outcome to legalize. >"As for mind altering substances that we don't understand and which are not necessary for life illegal is not immoral." Yes, it is immoral, no, drugs are not misunderstood. We test them all on animals and humans all the time. I know self-taught people who learned chemistry just to experiement new drugs on themselves. >"Any law that could lead to direct harm I'd agree was immoral and needed to be fought. Since it is completely possible to live without these substances, obeying the law while working to change opinion and change said laws is the best course of action, especially when ignoring them opens up and supports illegal markets, gang culture, very harmful cartel activity and so forth" I don't see how it's a person's fault the government forces him/her to buy from shady dealers. Plus, you're conveniently ignoring personal growing/"cooking" of drugs. Making a "victimless crime" illegal, even if not needed, is immoral because it initiates aggression against non-violent people. >"old laws keeping African Americans in the back of the bus were. There is a difference." There isn't. THEY INITIATED AGGRESSION AGAINST PEOPLE WHO DID NOT HARM ANYONE. THERE IS NO NEED TO SIT IN A SPECIFIC PART OF THE BUS - IT WAS STILL IMMORAL TO CRIMINALIZE A VICTIMLESS ACTION.
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Mark Massingill >"both times yes, I needed the gun" Could you prove you did before the first time? Can you prove that you'd have died if not for the gun? >"Ignoring the law to get high is not." You're mixing points. You said that there's no need for marijuana. We don't ban something because we don't need it, we ban it because it's been systematically proven to be dangerous/violate the rights of people. >"Seems to me that if you don't want to go to prison, you obey the law" Yeah, go tell that to Rosa Parks. Or the European Jews in WWII.
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Mark Massingill Drinking and driving or drunk fights ending up in serious, potential fatal injury happens every single day. Alcohol is still legal. Just because someone uses drugs doesn't mean they endanger other people, the same way that drinking doesn't necessarily mean you become a danger. You took prescription medication. Even the softest pain medication will include warnings to not operate heavy machinery because of the dangers it poses to others. Prescription drugs are involved in more death than illegal drugs. By your logic, you shouldn't have the right to take legal drugs because you could have injured other people or used them to commit suicide? Guns? People might drink and carry guns, by your logic we should ban guns because of what people might do.
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