Despite ridiculous gun violence rates, Washington still prohibits its citizens from protecting themselves. The Supreme Court is going to hear argument about this ban today, and hopefully will make a ruling for freeedom and protection. http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/532337.html George Mason: James Madison: Thomas Jefferson:
This case is not about banning firearms. It is about banning handguns, something that is long overdue. No one (except Vegans) has any quarrel with a sportsman who wants to hunt. There are lots of people, including a moderate conservative like me, who have a quarrel with a weapon that has only one purpose -- killing one's fellow man. When I was 17 I went hunting for the first time. My gun-experienced high school running bud packed up the shotguns for a dove hunt. When he added a .45-caliber automatic (Army classic), I asked its purpose -- "To kill snakes," Carl said. That sounded sensible -- I didn't know any better. Well, we got out to the brush country and were walking to a stock pond when that blood-stopping rattle started. Carl said not to worry. He pulled out his pistol and shot the snake -- well, the dirt next to it anyway. Another attempt was followed by another, and that snake was getting madder by the second. I lowered my shotgun and one blast ended the confrontation. It was my first kill and I learned early that a shotgun trumps a pistol. However, during my first professional career I saw the results of handgun abuse first hand -- hundreds and hundreds of times. My record was coverage of seven different murders in one hot, humid Houston night. I hope the Supreme Court starts us down the road on outlawing handguns while leaving shotguns and rifles (excluding assault rifles) sacrosanct. (I know, I know .... where do you draw the line? I say at the point of sanity, just like driving with a license is legal but driving drunk with a license is not.)
Like banning drugs, right? Let me know how that's working out. Or prohibition of alcohol. If you want to rid a country (or city, or state) of something, just ban it. I personally only use handguns to blow apart paper targets, but handguns can be really helpful for use in defense against, well, attackers with handguns. (And the attackers will have handguns.) I fully understand that a shotgun is better within one's own house, but not every attack happens within a house.
I once covered a homicide where a person in one apartment was defending himself from a burglar but missed with his handgun. The bullet went through the wall and killed his neighbor in her bed. Had he used a shotgun, he would has blasted a hole in the sheetrock and that would have been it. In another case the burglary victim shot his attacker twice with one handgun and the burglar still killed him with his own (actually stolen) handgun. Look at the end of your little finger -- that's the diameter of a large caliber bullet. Compare it with a pie plate and that's the difference in defending yourself with a shotgun. So...don't give me that BS about needing a pistol to defend yourself.
A shotgun has nearly the same risk (albeit easier to shoot well). Read this article about the ability of shot to penetrate drywall. Jacketed pistol rounds, rifle rounds, and unjacketed shotgun slugs penetrated 12 sheets of drywall. #1 and #4 Buckshot penetrated 6 sheets of drywall. 00 Buckshot penetrated 9 sheets of drywall. All shot that is heavy enough to be effective defense load will also be heavy enough to cause collateral damage. Besides, at in-house ranges, shot spreads are in the 2-3" range. It takes nearly as good a shot to stop anyone with a shotgun as with a handgun or rifle. (Yes, it's easier to shot a shotgun accurately than handgun, but it's easier still to shoot a rifle accurately. Practice is more important than any of that.)
This is a opinion piece, so it talks a lot about what the author's thoughts but ignores some of the important details. This is probably the most momentous Supreme Court decision in a century. I say that not as any comment on the importance of gun rights, but because there is basically no Supreme Court case law on the Second Amendment, apparently. The last challenge was in the 1930's, and the justices then essentially side-skirted the issue. Before that IIRC the last 2nd Amendment case was in the 19th Century. So the Supreme Court really has a blank slate to go to town here in interpreting the Second Amendment. The effects of this decision can potentially be much more far reaching than some of the cases dealing with established case law, where changes need to be very incremental. I'm not a legal scholar, or any thing, but that is how I've seen it described by several sources with varying opinions. So it appears to me that this is more than your average, run of the mill, Supreme Court case.
I think injecting DC with more guns is the only solution! You have to fight fire with fire. In fact, you should fight fire with guns.
Do you really like the idea of walking around town knowing that any r****d could be carrying something that could easily kill you, even accidentally?
It very well could be. But if the decision is written with very limited scope (as the court generally tries to do), it could have no effects outside of the District.
Carrying firearms worked for our country for 175 years, and it seems to be working in limited cases now. I'd like to think expanding that right would generally help in other places, too.
Really poor analogy. I wouldn't place our need for transportation on the same level as some people's needs to satisfy their insecurities and fear.
@thumbs: I'm confused by all this "carrying guns that are only meant to kill a fellow man" business. Isn't that the point of bearing arms? So you can defend yourself from fellow men? That's the whole point of the 2nd amendment, to give citizens the ability to take up arms against oppression from the government and to defend themselves from another person. It's not to allow them to shoot up turkeys or bag a deer. I mean, jeeze, some of you anti-gun people are wayyyy overboard on this one. We have rights for a reason. Or do you expect us to pull out our hunting rifles when someone breaks into your house?
Maybe you should: http://freedomkeys.com/r2kbafaqs.htm (If you don't like the source, Google "Genocide and Gun Control", you'll find plenty others.) I know. It won't happen here.
Let me put this to you anti-gun people in a way you can understand. In Africa, AIDS is a huge problem. Inadvertently you could effectively be killing someone or get killed by having sex with them especially with the infection rate being so high. How did they combat this? Did they outlaw premarital sex? No, they mounted an epic public information and education campaign, promoted safe sex practices, and now they're finally starting to get a handle on AIDS. I believe this is absolutely the correct way to go with guns, drugs, and other similar "dangerous things that we should prohibit". Making something illegal has NEVER gotten rid of a problem. It only exacerbates it. On the other hand, mandatory gun ownership training courses and gun safety education could absolutely minimize the amount of accidents w.r.t guns. The proper response to this is not to restrict freedom. It is to make people act more responsibly in exercising their freedoms.
If you see a person walking around town with a shotgun, you will know his or her intent. With a pistol, you don't know it's there so you have no clue as to the gun bearer's intent. Pistols have no use other than to kill one's fellow man. If you want to shoot targets, get a BB gun.
There's a ban on drinking while driving. That's working . All laws are broken at some point. A law banning handguns will be as well, especially by felons. However, as the number of handguns shrinks, so will the number of homicides. People will always commit murder, but murder is harder without handguns. It takes a really different sort to do it with a knife or garrot or even a bow and arrow -- in other words, up close and personal.
