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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
NRA stands for National RIFLE Association. If you wish to be able to wear katanas or claymores while walking down the street, lets look for a National Sword Association or something similar. Again, the 'well regulated militia HAS to be defined in terms of the period in which the constitution was written. I've posted that a little earlier. If you read it, you will see that it does indeed refer to individuals having a right to firearms.
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the National RIFLE Association, if it's TRULY interested in protecting your interpretation of the 2nd amendment, should be advocating for WEAPONS, and not only GUNS.
And if you want to define the 2nd in terms of the period in which the constitution was written, that's fine with me. You still can't own an AK-47, you can't own a shotgun, you can't own an automatic or semiautomatic hand gun. About all you can own is a musket, a muzzle loading rifle, a few pistols, and an antique canon. Oh, and a blunderbuss. You wanna go that route, that's OK by me.
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Yes, they are effective, but nowhere near as effective as 100 rifles and pistols in close quarters combat.
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Why would there be much CQC? Bomb the civilians. Wipe up what's left. You keep assuming that the government isn't gonna want to do that but if it's a truly tyrannical government, it won't care about moral issues like that.
BTW the Iraqis had a crapload of personal arms, and they never overthrew Saddam even when he killed thousands of civilians unjustly. That goes to show that people don't tend to revolt unless things get REALLY bad, and we have NEVER had a successful modern revolution with citizens against a well armed and modernized military. . . At least not without help from somewhere.
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I advocated no such thing, I was merely hypothesizing a situation in which the people would have to rebel against a tyrannical government. As it stands, if I don't like what MY representative does, I can campaign/vote against them. It's when they remove that opportunity for me to vote them out, thats when we need to look at the possibility of having to shoot them. Please do not try to paint my statements as an advocation of violence against unarmed persons when thats not what they are.
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It's highly unlikely that Senator Hatch is gonna be running around with a machine gun. If you shoot him you are shooting an unarmed citizen. If you've already managed to defeat the military, the politicians aren't going to kick up much of a fight.
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In Texas, the requirements to obtain a concealed weapons license are pretty exacting.
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That's nice. What are the requirements to obtain a NON concealed weapons license?
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While I don't know what the shooting requirements and limits are, you must attend a training class that is at least 10 hours. I will continue to look up that information but I do not believe that the range qualifications are going to be any different for police or citizens.
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Well let's see. Cheney (I'm using him because it's the most recent example - I'm not trying to launch an attack against the VP) is from Wyoming. He was allowed to use a gun in Texas. I'm guessing he didn't go to any training class. So we already have an issue here where we dont' know who has guns or how competent they are with them.
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ask yourself this question.....If criminals are killing people with guns, does it make sense to leave law abiding people defenseless against it?
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Terrorists tried to kill us with anthrax. Should we encourage the citizenry to start making their own biological weapons?
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Would you prefer that those 2.5 million crimes are added on to an already high crime rate? How many of those 2.5 million crimes that were prevented may have been murders? would you feel all warm and fuzzy that an extra 500,000 people died but you kept as many guns off the streets as possible?
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All speculation, and therefore not relevant.
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its meaningless when you switched from homicides to accidental shootings. When I say homicides, I'm referring to justifiable homicides in which a potential victim shot back killing the perpetrator.
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No, you talked about homicides involving innocent bystanders. If the innocent bystander gets killed because someone accidentally shoots him, that's manslaughter, not homicide, and it wouldn't count toward your statistic.
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For example, compared to accidental death from firearms, you are:
• Four times more likely to burn to death or drown
• 17 times more likely to be poisoned
• 19 times more likely to fall
• And 53 times more likely to die in an automobile accident
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Ah. So because there are fewer accidental deaths from firearms than from cars, those deaths are automatically OK. I could echo your lines about feeling warm and fuzzy here, but I won't
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Explain to me why there is a difference between the law abiding citizen at 7-11 you don't know is carrying a gun and the criminal walking the street that you don't know is carrying a gun?
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Explain to me why you have a problem with requiring people to be well trained before they (legally) get hold of a gun. Again, the argument that if we restrict guns only criminals will have guns has a point, however, it should not be used as an excuse not to pass the law.
After all if we ban software piracy then only criminals will get free software. If we ban embezzlement then only the criminals will get unfairly rich. This argument can be used to oppose ALL laws, but I'm fairly sure you're not interested in descending into anarchy.
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And to a large extent I would agree with you. I do not like the idea that MS-13 gang members have access to automatic weapons but I sure would like to have one myself, as well as my friends and neighbors to have one, to protect ourselves from MS-13 or the like.
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You're advocating an arms race amongst a bunch of untrained, panicky civillians. That does NOT sound like a great idea to me.
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A tank is not like a childproof medicine bottle. It also has NO shot at stopping a huge mob of people coming from all different directions. There are openings that allow the occupants to breathe and air or tear gas to enter. Having been around tanks, I know that there are plenty of weaknesses to exploit.
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Given, but it's not like there's only going to be ONE tank in the area. And if the civilians manage to defeat the tanks, then again, the government has bombers at its disposal. Pretty hard for a ground-based civilian with a shotgun to take out a B52 at 40,000 feet.