Quote:
Originally posted by DelayedReaction
The insurgents in Iraq seem to be doing quite well.
Whether or not X citizens would be able to rebel against Y soldiers is moot; their hypothetical effectiveness plays no part in determining whether or not Americans should own firearms. The Bill of Rights specifically indicates that American citizens should be allowed to arm themselves, because that is one of the necessary freedoms our forefathers determined America requires. When you restrict the ability of your citizens to defend themselves from any threats, percieved or real, you take away a fundamental freedom and open the door to further abuses.
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The insurgents in Iraq have been in warfare for decades. The insurgents in Iraq are also made up in part of people who are coming into the country from elsewhere -people who HAVE had intensive combat training in training camps. There aren't groups like that in the US.
And you should be careful using the phrase "specifically indicates" and the 2nd amendment. If it were so specific, we wouldn't still be arguing about what it means 200 years after it was written. If it specifically said what you say it said, it would say "No American will be forbidden to own weapons." It wouldn't have ANY qualifiers (security of a free state line) in it whatsoever.
Why is that qualifier there? IMHO it's there because the framers did not mean "everyone can have a gun and do whatever he feels like with it. No one needs to learn how to use it or be taught to use it responsibly." The framers meant "you know, this is a radically new system of government and some assholes probably aren't going to like it very much. We'd better be ready to defeat them if we want this thing to succeed. Maybe everyone should be allowed to join a militia and be given guns so that we have a fighting chance."