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Originally Posted by Frosstbyte
While that's a good point Pan, the entire problem with the 2nd Amendment as I've tried to outline in this thread is that it does a very poor job saying exactly what right it intends to confer on anyone. I'm not SURE that the framers intended to allow every individual to own a handgun for personal protection. I'm not SURE that they didn't. I personally think that they meant to immortalize and protect the process that they used to usurp British control over the colonies and that that process is both beyond meaningless 200 some years later.
Which says nothing for the fact that the vast majority of guns owned in this country are not owned or used with even the slightest thought towards local communities protecting themselves from a tyrannical federal government. I think there's a lot of merit to that right, given our history, but I don't think it's in any way the same as allowing people to have guns limited only by "reasonable restrictions."
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I would agree with that last paragraph if we were a stable country, with far less crime. However, we aren't. We are a country very fractionalized and very different in many ways. I aired my fears somewhere above and I feel gun ownership is what allows us to keep the government in check to some degree.
I also believe a man/woman has every right to protect their property and self, by any means necessary. If a man comes in to my home to rape my wife or steal things that I have worked hard for, I should have the right to own a gun to protect my domain.
The problem we have is not the guns that are legally owned, the problem we have are the guns illegally gotten, the gangs, the militants and the overall nutjobs that get them illegally. We cannot in anyway stop those guns from being gotten.
We are in horrible financial times and history shows that in times like these crime increases greatly. With city police forces and county sheriffs working massive caseloads and their funding in a majority of places being cut, it is more and more a necessity for us to find ways to protect ourselves. Taking guns away allows us to be sitting ducks for those criminals, nutjobs and so on that have gotten their guns illegally.
So to make laws taking guns away from the lawful citizens would make no sense, it would in fact create more problems, the government would see an opportunity to jump in and take more rights away and in a very short time we would have a total dictatorship.
Did the founding fathers foresee us having the types of guns we have available now? I seriously doubt it.
But in he same vain, do I think they would frown on people owning guns to protect self, family, property and so on? I seriously doubt that.
My belief is that our founding fathers would accept gun ownership as a necessary evil. Necessary to protect the people.
I do not know 1 gun owner that does not treat their gun(s) with utmost respect. They know firsthand the danger and they take extreme caution and care to make sure their gun(s) are not going to hurt anyone accidentally.
Maybe when times are better financially, we are more stable and less fractionalized as a country and people are more willing to compromise with one another in this country and abroad, we can talk about gun control and perhaps work on something acceptable to the many.
Until those conditions are met, I think discussions of gun control are nice to have philosophically, but to truly try to put into place are unrealistic and meant solely as a self righteous, feel good about "how wonderful and civilized a person I am" and have no true care about the nation or others as a whole.
Truly ask yourself, if you are for gun control, what are you going to do about those illegally purchased? How are you going to get all the guns owned legally, let alone the illegal ones? How many trillions are you willing to spend to get those legal guns?
But most importantly ask yourself if you have an intruder at 2 AM and you hear your kids/wife/husband whomever screaming for help, wouldn't you want to have something to protect them with?
Do you truly trust your government enough to believe that if the citizens weren't freely armed they would maintain the representative democracy?
But most of all, as long as the neighbor to your left or right doesn't go shooting aimlessly and waving his gun around in his yard as a toy, why do you care if he has a gun, carefully stored and locked?
I have no idea who in my neighborhood owns a gun and it is none of my business to know, but I am sure a few do.... probably many more than I would ever think do. And for the most part, I don't think any are going to start some shooting spree in the neighborhood.