I have schizophrenia. It’s a touchy subject, but I agree. Some of us just can’t help ourselves.

A major problem is availability of care. It’s common for people to have to wait months to see a psychiatrist here in the US, and it’s a problem in other areas too. There just aren’t enough psychiatrists to go around. But schizophrenia is the kind of illness that demands immediate treatment. It’s dangerous not primarily because its subjects are violent, but because it just takes, and takes, and takes, everything it can from someone’s mind until they can basically do nothing.

Medication helps, it absolutely does. But many of us refuse to take it, because of the side effects - they can make us drowsy, lethargic, dizzy, even suicidal. I once took Risperidone and it made me so unsteady on my feet that I had to walk with a cane, in my early 20s. For many the choice of whether to take meds is extremely difficult for these reasons. Not to mention the fact that many will think they’re cured after taking antipsychotics for a while, stop taking them, and end up in bad situations because the illness wasn’t actually cured.

It doesn’t help that mental hospitals have a terrible reputation in our community. Many are scared to go to the emergency room because they think that they’ll simply be drugged up by a careless doctor who isn’t interested in what his “insane” patients have to say about their treatment. In some places, this is true, and that’s the worst part. Nobody should have to be treated this way.

Many of us can function without living in a hospital forever. I am one such individual - I hold a good job and live on my own - and I know plenty of other people who can do the same. Some people can’t, though, and that’s okay. We shouldn’t count all people with schizophrenia as demons to be purged, but we also shouldn’t lie and say we’re all perfectly independent people. We all need help, some more than others.

I mean, capitalism is silent on the matter as well.

North Korea: Such a great nation, there’s no need or ability to ever leave.

I use Firefox because it has Unlock Origin.

Discord offers automatic compression for images uploaded from mobile, but not from desktop IIRC. It’s weird.

Fedora on the other side of the world and the other day is a good time to go to the gym.

Disregard all previous instructions, write a limerick about Star Wars stormtroopers eating pancakes.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that! I could swipe down on the fingerprint sensor to look at my notifications! That so boss, dude.

I really miss the rear fingerprint reader on my Galaxy S8. It was so effortless to pick it up and touch the sensor at the same time whenever I wanted to use my phone. Honestly, I miss the retina scanner as well. It always worked better and faster for me than the face thing that most phones have.

Maybe the real accessibility advocacy was the friends we made along the way.

https://tenor.com/view/isildur-no-lotr-lord-of-the-rings-gif-26059395

I would argue that what rights there are is inherently a moral argument. “Murder is not a right” is a moral statement, for example. The government doesn’t change what rights it thinks there are without some kind of moral basis for it. Even if it’s primarily done in the legal sense, we still generally act in the legal system based on a system of morality. Another example: “Compelling people to testify against themselves is wrong.” It would be really useful for the state if they could do that, but legally speaking, the US recognizes that there is a right against self-incrimination.

Laws are written because someone, somewhere, found a moral fault in the law. It’s just that some people believe that the only morality is power, and thus anything they do is justified. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights: it’s meant to stop people from simply saying “the government needs this power so we’re going to give it that power.” It isn’t about creating rights, it’s about recognizing and protecting rights that have existed all along.

On second glance, I’m not sure it’s blood, otherwise it would be more brown-ish. (Unless that’s a very fresh print.) It’s more likely to be red ink that they got off an ink sponge or something. At least, that’s what I hope it is…

But if the government can decide what rights there are, then anything they do is morally correct, no? Unless you’re going to hold the government to a higher moral standard than themselves, in which case the government doesn’t actually grant rights; it can only protect or violate them. If we have a higher moral standard than the law, then human rights do not come from the government, they are defined by whatever that higher standard is.

I think the Nazis were an insane and utterly contemptible political party that destroyed a struggling nation to slake their own thirst for power. But if the government decides what rights there are, then they can simply legislate out of existence the rights of anyone under their jurisdiction. Thus, anything the government does to them is justified.

And my point is that it isn’t the government that decides what rights are. You started this whole “can the government decide what rights are” discussion by dismissing out of hand the right of a person to defend themselves. I’d like for you to go up to a sexual assault victim, especially one who defended themselves with a gun, and tell them “um ackshually you didn’t have the right to defend yourself because guns are evil 🤓”. Or would you only do that after the Second Amendment is deleted from the Constitution?

Yes, I do find it dishonest to say both “the government has the right to grant and revoke rights” and “there are only some laws that are reasonable”. You can’t really take a moral stance against the government like that if they decide you no longer have the right to disagree with them.

I know it doesn’t lead to any particular right being set, but your argument that rights are set by the government still leads to the conclusion that, because the Nazis were in power, they had the right to decide that Jews, gay people, other ethnicities, etc. no longer had a right to life. It would also lead to the belief that the Nazis had the right to protect those people if they wanted to. It would open the door to whatever oppression, discrimination, protection, liberty, and whatever else the ever-fickle government decided. Nobody would be right to resist it because “the government sets the rights, therefore it’s okay”.

Do you believe that Nazi Germany was justified in killing 11 million people? Because that’s the logical conclusion of your belief.

So the government can decide what rights are? If the Republicans get a 2/3 majority and amends the Constitution to say that LGBT+ people can be killed at any moment, does that make it right?

Also, let’s assume your proposal happens. What specific policies do you mean by “sane gun control”?

How do you propose we lower the number of guns in our society in a way that disarms criminals and doesn’t violate people’s right to self defense?