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What about today’s gun-rights debates? Surprisingly, there is not a single word about an individual right to a gun for self-defense in the notes from the Constitutional Convention; nor with scattered exceptions in the transcripts of the ratification debates in the states; nor on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives as it marked up the Second Amendment, where every single speaker talked about the militia. James Madison’s original proposal even included a conscientious objector clause: “No person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
and more
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James Madison's original proposal even included a conscientious objector clause: “No person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
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@ADreamOfLiberty
the link shows a study, that almost every time the phrase "bear arms" was used in the founding days, it meant to use a gun in a militia.
it doesn't say we can wear clothes in the founding fathers days, but also, no one is trying to make the argument there's an amendment that says people have a right to wear clothes. if there was such an amendment, you can be sure there would be outside evidence for the purpose outside the amendment, of being able to wear clothes.
if the second amendment is talking about a right to a gun, there would be evidence that the founding fathers supported that right. there is no such evidence. the amendment wouldn't just magically get written with that intent, without there being outside evidence for it.
they specified a purpose for a militia, but they didn't specify a purpose for everyone having a right to a gun even, especially if they aren't in a militia.
at the very least, you seem to be admitting that your argument about the right to a gun, can only be implied historically, given there's no evidence outside of one possible interpretation of the amendment. the way gun nuts express it, there's nothing clearer than the right to a gun, when all evidence is the opposite of that.
your argument is ridiculous.
you guys simply lack critical thinking.
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i accept your sub point, that maybe we can't read a lot into why states did or didn't protect gun points in the state constitutions.
but i do think u were trying to say states did protect gun rights? when there's little evidence for that. maybe i misunderstood your point.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
it looks like u r just ignoring everything i said.
-the phrase "bear arms" historically meant to use a gun in a militia. the preface of the amendment says the purpose regards militias.
also, it is very weak to argue that right to a gun was so well established that no one talked about it. what, they slipped, fell, and accidentally wrote the second amendment with the intent to give everyone a right to a gun, but never talked about it? every right in the constitution they talked about the purpose. they wouldn't have not did the same with the right to a gun. it's too far fetched. you can't just ignore this point and reiterate your point, if you want your argument to be coherent.
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@PREZ-HILTON
u must not have read my replies
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@ADreamOfLiberty
if you actually had evidence that states protected gun rights in their constitution that's persuasive evidence. but i doubt you can provide that evidence.
i dont know how you can read this entire thread and think you guys actually still have a coherent point.
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"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
also, the bill of rights was ratified long before this. i think this must be referring to a state specific event. there are plenty of states the considered gun rights in their state constitutions and rejected the idea. doesn't really make as much sense if they thought gun rights were already protected.
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well, maybe i'm confusing the quotes.. the 'arms on land' quote i was thinking about was from Jefferson
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"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
"your first quote is usually taken out of context. the full quote ends with "keeping their own arms on their own land". "
also, no one argues the constitution should prevent people from owning guns. that's not to say that it says they should be able to own guns.
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@bmdrocks21
i dont think heller even considered the fact that "bear arms" almost always meant to use a gun in a militia. especially when you consider that and the rest of the amendment like the "well regulated militia" part, there's at the very least more than one way to interpret the amendment. thus, they should have looked at the history, but they obviously didn't do it without an agenda. probably a bunch of leaps that implied it, as everyone else does with it. i maintain the originalist conservative chief justice burger got it right.
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@bmdrocks21
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."- Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."- Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."- St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803
your first quote is usually taken out of context. the full quote ends with "keeping their own arms on their own land".
the third quote basically is just saying keeping and bearing arms is essential. it doesn't define what that means. i never saw that "self defense" point, so that's interesting point in your favor i guess.
i never saw the second quote. that's somewhat persuasive to your point. except, he's talking about the right to a gun in the context of their duty, which means militia membership.
also even if i grant the somewhat persuasiveness of these points, there by far is still a deafening silence on people having a right to a gun, in the founding era.
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here is some more legislative history that the founders didn't create a right to a gun in the second amendment...
-the phrase "bear arms" historically meant to use a gun in a militia. the preface of the amendment says the purpose regards militias.-“The people”: The founders used this phrase to mean not individual persons, but rather the body politic, the people as a whole. During the ratification debate in Virginia, speakers used the phrase “the people” 50 times when discussing the militia. Every single mention referred to Virginians as a group, not as individuals.-when the constitutional convention occurred, they didn't talk about the need for people to have guns or self defense, all the emphasis was on the need for a militia and the militia langauge in the constitution. the following links are for both this factoid and the next one too.-From 1888, when law review articles first were indexed, through 1959, every single one on the Second Amendment did not conclude that it guaranteed an individual right to a gun-when the amendment was passed they had all kinds of laws regarding who could have guns for all kinds of reasons, along with gun control-here are some highlights about gun laws during the founding era:
-stand your ground laws were not the law. colonists had the duty to retreat if possible.
-public and concealed carry in populated areas was banned
-anyone who didn't swear loyalty to the state couldn't have a gun. it's far fetched to say as today's conservatives do that guns were protected to protect against the state when back then the state was disarming people they thought were disloyal
-the state disarmed people for the purposes of furthering the government. one of washington's first acts was to disarm the people of queens new york.
-all guns had to be registered and inspected
-some states regulated the use of gun powder
-some cities prohibited firing guns in the city limit
-some cities prohibited loaded firearms in houses
-only one state protected gun rights outside of the militia
-several states rejected the idea of gun rights for self defense or hunting, even though conservatives today claim it was already protected by the second amendmnet
-indians and blacks were barred from having guns-the supreme court historically didn't touch the amendment much, but when they did treated it as pertaining to militias. as recently as the reagan administration, the conservatives said the same thing. it was called a quote unquote "fraud" on the public, to say otherwise, by the conservative chief justice Burger.-drafts of the amendment included a conscioustious objector clause, if you objected to militia duty for religious reasons you can be exempt from a militia. this reinforces that the amendment pertained to militia stuff.-half the population from postal workers to priests were exempt from the militia. this reinforces that it wasn't generally understood that the people informally make up an informal militia. a militia is what a state defines it as.-all the amendments have limits on them. including the first amendment. you can always read into the amendment what exactly it means to infringe on someone's rights, and find other reasonable exceptions
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@bmdrocks21
i disagree that whether there was gun control matters that much. if they didn't regulate it, that doesn't suddenly mean they passed a constitutiuonal amendment protecting their use. that's a big leap. but regardless, they did regulate it....
-when the amendment was passed they had all kinds of laws regarding who could have guns for all kinds of reasons, along with gun control
-here are some highlights about gun laws during the founding era:
-stand your ground laws were not the law. colonists had the duty to retreat if possible.
-public and concealed carry in populated areas was banned
-anyone who didn't swear loyalty to the state couldn't have a gun. it's far fetched to say as today's conservatives do that guns were protected to protect against the state when back then the state was disarming people they thought were disloyal
-the state disarmed people for the purposes of furthering the government. one of washington's first acts was to disarm the people of queens new york.
-all guns had to be registered and inspected
-some states regulated the use of gun powder
-some cities prohibited firing guns in the city limit
-some cities prohibited loaded firearms in houses
-only one state protected gun rights outside of the militia
-several states rejected the idea of gun rights for self defense or hunting, even though conservatives today claim it was already protected by the second amendmnet
-indians and blacks were barred from having guns
-stand your ground laws were not the law. colonists had the duty to retreat if possible.
-public and concealed carry in populated areas was banned
-anyone who didn't swear loyalty to the state couldn't have a gun. it's far fetched to say as today's conservatives do that guns were protected to protect against the state when back then the state was disarming people they thought were disloyal
-the state disarmed people for the purposes of furthering the government. one of washington's first acts was to disarm the people of queens new york.
-all guns had to be registered and inspected
-some states regulated the use of gun powder
-some cities prohibited firing guns in the city limit
-some cities prohibited loaded firearms in houses
-only one state protected gun rights outside of the militia
-several states rejected the idea of gun rights for self defense or hunting, even though conservatives today claim it was already protected by the second amendmnet
-indians and blacks were barred from having guns
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@bmdrocks21
so you are saying that the purpose for a constitutional amendment was so obvious that nobody talked about it? riiiiight. they talked about the purpose for all the other amendments, but for some reason everyone is so quick to just imply it for the second amendment.
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@bmdrocks21
i also dont know why you brought up the gun control point. that's only tangent related.
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@bmdrocks21
there's no express evidence that the founding fathers thought that everyone had a right to a gun. there's only evidence that they thought militias were necessary. every argument i've seen that the second amendment protects an individual right to a gun, is always based on implication, implying it through history. though i dont think hardly any of the people making that argument realize they are actually implying it, and how weak that sort of argument is.
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@bmdrocks21
yes there are some recent judicial decisions that thought people have a right to a gun, through the second amendment. but this thread is about legislative history during the founding days, so i dont know what point you are trying to make. scalia is an originalist, but for some reason he decided to make a big leap of logic by implying the right based on what evidence is available. originalists should be like conservative chief justice Burger from the Reagan era, who called what scalia thought a "fraud" on the american people... it has no real historical basis to it.
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i have no express legislative evidence of my constitutional right, but it's implied = super weak
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i have a cockamamie idea that the right to a gun is implied in the ninth amendment, an implied right. but since there's no explicit right to a gun as how it's supposedly laid out in the second amendment, the legislature should have more power to regulate it as they see fit. that's how how the legislative history of our country has always been regarding guns, lots of regulation.
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@thett3
see above
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"To discard the right of an individual to own a gun is obviously discarding what the founders wanted/assumed "
one of the founders said that a militia consists of most people, but even he acknowledged that future militias might not include everyone. if everyone isn't in a militia, i dont see how we can say they have a right to a gun, based on what evidence we know from founding days. i think the silence is deafening that there isn't any talk that people have a right to a gun... if that's what they thought, it would have been talked about. i think u r admitting that the right to a gun can only be inferred, and that's a big leap of a conclusion to make a constitutional right out of it.
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you guys must not be aware, that in the founding days the phrase "bear arms" almost always meant to use a gun in a militia. so "keep and bear arms" could mean those two things are taken together, not separate ideas. i have a right to have a gun for a milita, basically.
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The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
that could be read as a collective right, or an individual right. depends on how it's read. so look to history...
all the talk during the early days was about the need for a militia, there's no talk about how everyone has a right to a gun. i challenge anyone to find such evidence. the only thing one can find in those days, is that some people thought it was smart for people to have guns, but this talk is never tied to the second amendment, and it's a different point to make than everyone has a right to a gun. the only way you can find a right to a gun in the early history, is to say it's implied that given most people were in the militia, then they all had a right to a gun including those who werent in the milita too, i guess?
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look at human's wisdom teeth and appendix. outgrowth of evolution. look at the hind leg bones of whales who dont even have legs. i could go on and on with examples of evolution.
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@Public-Choice
i dont claim to know the laws and sources inside and yet, but it looks like with what's established, there is a serious legal question if Trump were able to use the classified material as he did....
Codified at 18 U.S.C. § 798, it prohibits knowingly disclosing “to an unauthorized person,” publishing, or “us[ing] in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States” a variety of classified information.
The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority."The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States’" according to Article II of the Constitution, the court’s majority wrote. "His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security ... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant."Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to "classify and declassify at will."In fact, Robert F. Turner, associate director of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, said that "if Congress were to enact a statute seeking to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify national security information, or to prohibit him from sharing certain kinds of information with Russia, it would raise serious separation of powers constitutional issues."
what we see, is that trump has default authority to classify at will. but even your article says only that there would be serious constitutional issues if a statute were passed. a statute was passed, which is cited above. we might assume that trump shouldn't be using classified material in a way that is detrimental to the USA. this is of course a judgment call, so executive authority and privilege would be here, but it's at best a murky issue.
also, even if trump was cleared legally for what he did, you have to admit, that it at least sounds like he did the wrong thing by taking and hoarding those documents, right? just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
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@oromagi
@Public-Choice
i'm too lazy to do solid research, would be much funner watching you two debate. lolz
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@Public-Choice
yes i do acknowledge my points were very fact based. contingent on facts. oromagi was my source on the flynn point. i think this site considers him esteemed enough to be considered credible. he's not always right, though. on the georgia point, my understanding is that trump wanted basically exactly enough votes to turn that election into his favor... there could be no pretense that it's based on actual ballots if he's just trying to game the results like that. i dont pretend that my understanding of the facts are indisputable though. on the classified info stuff, oromagi again has said that there's a process that trump was suppose to go through to declassify the info, and he didn't do it. i changed my opinion, and consider trump to be bound by statutes. maybe he could say executive privilege protects him, as an outgrowth of him being president, but it doesn't look like he didn't commit a crime or obstruction. also, if we just look at the bigger picture, it looks like he was acting in bad faith and as a bad actor- as far as we can tell, anyway. again, i acknowledge all these points are very factually contingent, so.
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@Public-Choice
if it's illegal what trump did with the classified material, and if the material is critical to national security, then of course he should go to jail for it.
he also tried to get georgia election officials to invent votes that didn't exist to over turn the election- i dont think he should go to jail for that, but i would understand if someone thought he should.
i heard from a credible source, though i dont know for sure it's true, that he knowingly put a spy into our government, michael flynn. i dont know if that's prison material, but it might be depending on the specifics.
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@Greyparrot
are you willing to agree that it looks like trump did a bad thing here? u have a tendency of supporting all things trump, or at least not expressly stating when you think he's wrong.
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Codified at 18 U.S.C. § 798, it prohibits knowingly disclosing “to an unauthorized person,” publishing, or “us[ing] in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States” a variety of classified information.
that might answer my question
it looks like trump should go to jail, not just for obstruction, but for the underlying crime, mishandling classified material
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@oromagi
are there any constitutional or statutory provisions which say the president doesnt have ultimate authority to change classifications at will? i suppose if a statute says it, it would constrain the president. at first, i was thinking that the president's authority would over ride a statute, and i suppose that's one way to look at it, but i think the whole picture approach is that the president is constrained by statutes- cause that's the way it's designed.
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- Right before the 2020 Election, Trump declared that he declassified every classified document regarding Hillary Clinton's email. Folks immediately began submitting FOIA requests only to discover that it was not true, the President can't just say something is declassified and that makes it declassified. There's a process- NARA has to notified, the registration of the doc has to change, and a NARA official has to come in and modify all the marking on every page. Until NARA has done so, the document is not declassified. There's a whole bunch of agencies who have to have an opportunity to object if a President wants to declassify something. It is true that a President can ask most non top-secret stuff to be declassified and NARA will probably comply but not until a procedure is followed. Trump never even started that procedure for any of these documents.
but if the constitution says that the executive branch equals the president, how can any process that undermines him be constitutional? he's the executive branch, that means any other part of the branch is subordinate to him. so, if he simply says something is declassified, that seems to make it so, right?
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@Ramshutu
what do you think of the argument that trump had effectively declassified the documents, and that the FBI didn't have the right to ask for declassified material? i suppose trump still lied and obstructed, but what happens when you break the law in response to the government breaking the law against you?
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it sounds like the classified documents that he had, he shouldn't have had. i can't say that for sure, cause they won't say what exactly he had.
maybe, trump could be said to have by definition declassified the documents simply by taking them. after all, the constitution says that the president IS the executive branch, so he's the one calling the shots.
the problem, though, is that he probably still shouldn't have had the documents, even if he can get away on a technicality per crimes. so, if he's going to use a technicality to get away with a crime, i dont think anyone should be afraid to charge him with obstruction of justice.
after all, he lied and obstructed the FBI trying to get the documents back. he did that after he was president. i mean, maybe they didn't have a right to ask for documents that weren't ultimately classified? i dont know, maybe, but he shouldn't have had them, and the FBI should have been able to ask for them back.
what do ya'll think? if you support trump in all this, isn't it just based on technicalities? he ultimately did something he shouldn't have, regardless of what the laws are, and you should acknowledge that.
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@oromagi
Why is your title that trump gave compensation off the books when all u have established is that the organization did? I mean I'd think is probably guilty of something, but u haven't established that.
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Very well written article on talking about the limits or lack thereof of space
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@IwantRooseveltagain
You wouldn't mind if they dropped bus loads of immigrants where u live?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
How is it justified for liberal cities to complain? Doesn't that make them hypocrites?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
So what's your breaking point? How much money r u willing to spend to get them assimilated? How much crime will you tolerate? Why can't not we just help other countries handle them... and they don't have to be poor places but if they were we could still cut checks that they'd be happy with. How is it fair to let them steal jobs from poor people?
You basically ignored everything I said just to take an ideological stand. But if u r ignoring the practical points and the consequences of ur thoughts, that shows yow weak your position is
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Texas is bussing them to NYC and DC. Maybe this will get the dems to finally acknowledge there's a crisis, and to find a way to stop it.
I think dems don't think this through, half thoughts. Instead of catch and release, send them back. Asylum seekers should stay in their home country or Mexico. A wall would help, but there's less radical methods too.
Libs want to think illegals don't hurt anything but that's not true. They need jobs which would be stealing from poor Americans. They don't speak English or have our culture so it would be expensive to teach them English and get them trained. Our cultures would clash which I assume is bad. They say immigrants commit as much crime as Americans, but I would assume if they r desperate, they r more likely to turn criminal. I mean assimilation is possible it'd just be expensive. Also again the job stealing... a bunch of unskilled poor immigrants needing jobs would throw off the Equilibrium our economy has settled into. Job stealing and major struggle. Plus we should follow through on what we say.... if we say not to come here and gave borders what's the point if we just let them come as they please?
Makes more sense to chip in financially to get them in a country that speaks their language and shares culture.
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Ah contrare. The proof is in the pudding. The pudding is in the crust
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most of the time when there's a long list of contradictions, most of the supposed contradictions are really stretched to come to that conclusion. it's best when making the argument, to pick the strongest ones you think are contradictions, and then defend the idea that they are in fact contradictions. most of the time, the people doing that, are grasping at straws. now, i am a christian that believes there are contradictions in the bible... but i also think there are no smoking guns where there is no doubt about whether the example should in fact be considered a contradiction.
but anyways, yeah. you should find a few examples and argue the points.
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@zedvictor4
What do mean that u have taken on board the god principle ?
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It looks like no one changes their mind much. I the think it's rare, but I also suspect folks just don't vocalize much when they r swayed.
I change my mind more than I do a good job expressing
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i would guess his bid for presidency was to stroke his own vanity
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@3RU7AL
can a person be not mature the day before they're adult but suddenly mature the day after they're an adult?
do you really think there are no twenty year olds who are as immature as most minors?
i dont know why you're pushing for proof. it's self evident. you're just being obtuse and difficult, for no reason.
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this says brain development doesn't stop until mid twenties often.
but this is beyond brain development. even some fifty year olds are as immature as minors.
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@3RU7AL
why do you keep asking me about standards and tests?
why would you expect me to scientifically prove that many adults are no more mature than a minor?
can a person be not mature the day before they're adult but suddenly mature the day after they're an adult?
this is such a pointless conversation. proof to me there's no coherent argument to be made against me, a tacit admission by the internet that guns cause more murders than if those guns didnt exist.
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