Today’s bigotry-exposing word-replacement exercise subject is UBU52, a regular commenter troll at Robb’s and Joe’s places. Have you ever had a person loudly, obnoxiously, and rudely try to correct you on something, only to find out, in very short order, that the person in question is not only wrong, but dead wrong? UBU52 is that person. However, in the interests of clarity and honesty, as with all previous iterations of this exercise, the subject never actually wrote the below comment… however, she did write a comment nearly identical to the one I blockquote below. I only changed five words, and I think it is safe to say that the core message of her thought remains untouched:
I don’t see what the problem is with background checks before purchasing a computer — unless you can’t pass the background check. Background checks really are “common sense” computer control and most people, including a lot of published journalists, support them! That is, unless they think it’s perfectly okay to supply criminals with computers.
Again, the above quote is slightly edited, and UBU52 did not write it exactly as shown above, but only five words were changed (well, technically, only three words were changed, but one of those three words occurred three times). The original, if you want to read it, is available here, and, as always, if you disagree with my edits, feel free to take a stab at my simple little question.
As for why the message remains unchanged even if the vocabulary changes slightly, if background checks are such a gob-smackingly good idea for the rights protected by the Second Amendment, then why not apply the same requirements to the rest of the rights protected by the Bill of Rights? After all, a person’s life can be destroyed by a careless word (“Did you hear that John was sleeping around on his wife?”), a company can be destroyed by an inopportune release of information (“Their prototype failed?”), and military campaigns can be completely undermined by the proverbial loose lips (to the point that the military has very harsh punishments for unauthorized dissemination of sensitive data). Some people would rather you simply shoot them outright rather than assassinate their character, so why not execute background checks on those who are capable of doing the latter?
A fundamental right is just that, and as ludicrous as it sounds to have to prove your law-abiding nature (and pay for that proof) in order to exercise your right to express yourself, so is it ludicrous to have to prove the same in order to equip yourself adequately to defend yourself. None of the other rights protected by the Bill of Rights has any background checks, fees, or delays (and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., himself, had some things to say about rights delayed) tacked onto them by our federal government, and doing so would undoubtedly cause an uproar the likes of which we might not have seen before. And yet bigots like UBU52 feel that such infringements on the rights of those who seek to protect themselves and their families are not only a good idea, but should also be expanded, simply because icky guns are involved.
There used to be such a time when similar infringements were encouraged and propagated simply because people with icky skintones were involved… I wonder how much longer it will take for the modern bigots of our country to end up on the same waste pile of history as their predecessors.
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comes out all the same | mad libs | all in how you phrase it |




As far as that goes, back in the day the gum’nt granted me a secret clearance. and since then I have had to get Confidential and Secret clearences for a couple of jobs in the last decade or so. Should that not satisfy any background check needed.
Once again proving that those who despise the 2nd Amendment, Hate all human rights.
Duane: I have lost track of the number of background checks that have been executed over the years (all for perfectly above-board reasons, including military clearances, as you mentioned), and yet every time I purchase a firearm, I still have to pay to prove I am a law-abiding citizen. So much for the assumption of innocence.
Weer’d Beard: Too true.