I feel for you guys because all of the gun owners I know are very responsible with their weapons. I've shot guns too and have done it responsibly. The problem though is the small minority who are not responsible, deranged or just plain evil that ruin it for everyone. Unfortunately that is the nature of our laws. The majority of people handle their alcohol well and probably wouldn't become coke heads if coke was legal that said our laws are based not on those who would follow that practice even if it wasn't a law but on those who would abuse it. The argument that bad people will get guns anyway even if guns were illegal is a failure in logic that undermines all are laws. People still drive drunk even though drunk driving is outlawed yet under the reasoning above we should then do away with drunk driving laws since it still happens. We have laws like that so that 1. there is a legal deterrent. 2. That it makes it more difficult to engage in that practice than if it were unregulated 3. That there is a punishment that can be met out. Now drunk driving still happens but that is no reason to do away with the law or have stricter penalties in regard to that behavior. Red Dawn was about a foreign invasion and I highly doubt the a citizenry armed with small arms would be a major deterrent to a major military power invading. As I noted earlier Saddam armed practically every Iraqi family with Kalishnikovs in the year before the US invasion. That didn't stop the US from invading and occupying all of Iraq.
You're asking a very direct question to a very indirect circumstance. Of course a handful of citizens are not going to last a second against a well trained army. But "semantics aside", the 2nd amendment isn't there with the intentions of overthrowing a well trained army. The 2nd amendment is about protection/defending, not going to war and toppling a government.
Banning guns (or a specific type of gun, or whatever gun control law) is not the equivalent of a law against drunk driving, it is the equivalent of prohibition. Banning shooting people (aka laws against murder, assault with a deadly weapon, negligent discharge, etc.) is the equivalent of laws against drunk driving. I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of those laws.
If driving drunk was protection from getting hit by a drunk driver or in any way close to as safe as carrying a gun you might not have made a massive failure in logic yourself.
It is not clear and no where does the 2nd amendment show there is not an unlimited right, long read but the congress has dealt with this on several occasions... http://www.constitution.org/mil/rkba1982.htm
Doesn't Chicago have some of the strictest or the strictest gun laws in America with also one of the worst crime rates? /thread?
Not going to read thru 24 pages but can someone answer the following questions. 1) was the constitution written by god? 2) does right to bear arms mean I can arm myself with Nukes? Saw micheal Moore on CNN the other night and thought these were valid questions.
Nope, James Madison. No again. It means that you are allowed to arm yourself. The court has interpreted that to mean at the least you are allowed to have a handgun for the purpose of self defense.
1. No and it is a living document, if you want to change it, go ahead. 2. Same old tired straw man crap from fat b*stard. Nuclear fuel and waste is strictly prohibited for very good reasons already.
Consider the wording of the Amendment. [rquoter]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.[/rquoter] The wording is different than the other Bill of Rights amendments The Second starts out listing a reason for the amendment while the other amendments in the Bill of Rights do not. From that it makes sense that the right was meant to be limited to that specific purpose, otherwise it makes no sense to put it in. This is further supported in the Federalist Papers which outlines the purpose of militia as being for the common defense of the States and not necessarily individuals. Further Congress has passed gun control laws and the USSC has upheld them. You cite a Congressional study from 1982 yet 11 years later Congress passed one of the largest gun control acts, The Brady Handgun Violence Act, which the court found mostly Constitutional in 1997. The only portion of the act, requiring states to perform background checks, was overturned not on 2nd Amendment issues but 10th.
Except we aren't talking about it as matter of the degrees but as the possibility of threat. Using your logic above then nuclear waste has caused far less death and injury than drunk driving so therefore we shouldn't regulate nuclear waste.
That would be the case if we were talking about banning all guns but most of the people here are talking about banning some classes, banning some classes of magazines and regulation.
You own swords? No that isn't my logic at all. I said it was safer (which isn't just number of deaths) and is used as defense. if they were guaranteeing the right to form militias or the right for them to bear arms they shouldn't have included the word "people"
Alright, then that would be the equivalent of banning 151 but letting people drink normal spirits. It is still not even close to the same as laws against drunk driving.
Ran across this article last night, hits the nail on the head. -------------- http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/seven-vars-2.htm The right of decent private citizens to personally possess, transport, and responsibly use arms without government interference is the ultimate freedom and the main pillar supporting all other liberties. Few cultures have allowed their general population access to weapons, the tools of power, to the same degree as the United States. Instead, most societies have restricted the keeping and bearing of arms to a select few power brokers and their agents, often resulting in oppression on a grand scale. Despite a massive amount of historical evidence to the contrary, there is a substantial body of Americans, many occupying positions of influence, who contend that the abrogation of the Second Amendment is the quickest path to domestic tranquility. Since this is as absurd as advocating blood-letting as a cure for anemia, it would seem advisable to question the motives and mentalities of the gun control advocates themselves. In my observation, weapon prohibitionists can be broken down into seven major categories. Even though their motives may vary they all pose a mortal threat to liberty. ELITISTS George SorosMany of those in favor of oppressive firearms legislation are best classed as elitists. Elitists frequently identify with a peer group based on wealth, power, rank, social status, occupation, education, ethnic group, etc. and perceive themselves and their peers as inherently superior to and more responsible than the "common people", thus more deserving of certain rights. Since elitists practically consider those outside their class or caste as members of another species, that most anti-elitist list of laws, the Bill of Rights is viewed by them as anathema. Naturally, the Second Amendment is their first target as it serves as the supporting structure for the other nine amendments. AUTHORITARIANS Michael BloombergAnother type of individual who favors the restriction of private gun ownership is the authoritarian. Authoritarian personalities are characterized by their belief in unquestioning obedience to an authority figure or group and a disdain for individual freedom of action, expression, and judgement. Those with authoritarian personalities function well in symbiosis with elitists occupying positions of power. Because authoritarians repress their desires for autonomy they harbor a deep resentment toward free and independent thinkers. Of course authoritarians do not want firearms in the hands of the general population as this constitutes a major obstacle to fulfilling their pathological and obsessive desire to control people. CRIMINALS It goes without saying that career criminals would like to see the public disarmed for obvious reasons. A well-armed population makes crimes such as assault, robbery, and burglary hazardous for the perpetrator and this is bad for "business." Also, it would seem that even non-violent or "white collar" criminals live in constant fear of retribution from the public that they financially bleed and would therefore prefer that the public be disarmed. Evidence supporting this hypothesis can be gathered by studying the Second Amendment voting records of those legislators who have been convicted of willful misconduct. THE FEARFUL( They have a picture for Michael Moore on this one lmfao) Michael MooreCowards by definition are easily or excessively frightened by things and situations that are recognized as dangerous, difficult, or painful. It therefore stands to reason that the mere thought of guns and the circumstances in which they are employed causes them abnormal amounts of stress. Rather than admit their weakness to themselves or others, some fearful types jump on the anti-gun bandwagon and purport moral superiority to those "barbaric"enough to employ lethal force against armed assailants by claiming various humanitarian and pragmatic motives for allowing evil to remain unchecked. In reality, many of these individuals harbor an envy induced resentment toward anyone with the means, skill, and will to successfully stand up to criminal aggression. The desire to assert oneself exists in nearly everyone, wimps included, so cowards seek out tame enemies against whom they can ply their pitiful brand of machismo. Instead of the sociopaths who commit acts of wanton aggression with guns, guns themselves and responsible gun owners are the main targets of their attacks. After all, real criminals are dangerous, so cowards prefer doing battle with inanimate objects that do not have a will of their own and decent law-abiding people whose high level of integrity and self discipline prevent them from physically lashing out against mere verbal assailants, however obnoxious they may be. IDEOLOGICAL CHAMELEONS Ideological chameleons follow the simple social strategy of avoiding controversy and confrontation by espousing the beliefs of the people in their immediate vicinity or advocating the philosophy of those who scream the loudest in a debate. Quite a few supposedly pro Second Amendment public officials have shown themselves to be ideological chameleons when they supported restrictions on the private possession of military style semiautomatic rifles following recent atrocities in which such firearms were employed. Like their reptilian namesake, people who merely blend in with the ambient philosophical foliage seem to have little insight into the moral and social ramifications of their actions. Political and/or economic gain along with avoidance of confrontation are their only goals. SECURITY MONOPOLISTS Abe FoxmanSecurity monopolists are those members and representatives of public and private security providing concerns who want the means of self protection out of private hands so that they can command high fees for protecting the citizenry against the rising tide of crime. These profiteers stand to loose a great deal of capital if citizens can efficiently defend themselves. To the security monopolist, each criminal who enters and exits the revolving door of justice is a renewable source of revenue providing jobs for police, social workers, victim counsellors, judges, prison employees, security guards, burglar alarm installers, locksmiths, and others employed by the security monopolies or their satellite organizations. No wonder it is so common for an honest citizen to be more ruthlessly hounded by the authorities when he shoots a criminal in self defense than a criminal who shoots honest citizens. THE DYSFUNCTIONALLY UNWORLDLY Steven SpielbergJust as a limb will weaken and atrophy if not used, so will aspects of the mind fail to develop if nothing in one’s environment exists to challenge them. People who have led excessively sheltered lives tend to have a difficult time understanding certain cause and effect relationships and an even harder time appreciating just how cruel the world can be. These dysfunctionally unworldly types are truly perplexed at the very notion of firearms ownership with regard to defense. To them, tyranny and crime are things that happen in other places far removed from their "civilized" universe. Also, they do not understand the value of private property and why some people would fight for theirs since they never had to work hard to acquire what they possess. While those suffering from dysfunctional unworldliness are most often people who have been born into considerable wealth, this condition is also common in members of the clergy, academicians, practioners of the arts, and others who have spent much of their lives cloistered in a safe and pampering environment. While many of these people may be quite talented and intelligent in some ways, their extreme naivety makes them easy prey for the tyrants who use them for the financial support and favorable advertisement of their regimes. Needless to say, the anti-gun movement is well represented and financed by the dysfunctionally unworldly. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and it behooves all vigilant lovers of liberty to know and be able to recognize the various types of arms prohibitionists and understand their differing but equally dangerous motives. Acquiring knowledge of one’s foes is the first step toward defeating them. We must never forget that a threat to private firearms ownership is a threat to all freedoms. The inalienable and fundamental right to keep and bear arms which is enumerated by (but actually predates) the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not about hunting, gun collecting, or target shooting. Its purpose is to ensure that every responsible American personally possesses the means to defend the Republic from all forms of tyranny, within and without. It is what permits the other nine Amendments in the Bill of Rights to be more than mere hollow phrases on a piece of paper. Its free exercise is the antithesis of serfdom and the only meaningful form of holocaust insurance known to man. We must never insult and degrade the spirits of our Founding Fathers by permitting the Second Amendment, the pillar of freedom, to be destroyed by the cold flame of legislative ink.
