just out of curiosity, any of you "2nd amendment" types ever been in combat?

Yes.

yes.

I support the stand your ground law. Duty to retreat only gives criminals a free shot at your back. In my opinion, if you initiate a forcible felony, or any other crime against another person, you assume the risk that they will be armed and willing to shoot you.

I taught my wife to shoot. My oldest children, ages 16 and 17, can also safely handle a firearm. So I would say we are prepared.

Fortunately I have yet to be placed in a situation where I would actually have to defend myself or my family. The question is could I. Shooting targets is one thing - shooting another person would probably take more than I have in me.

Twice. I still have nightmares about the horrible MRE shits.

we just passed the castle doctrine in MO - I am all for it- If someone breaks into my house, I do not intend to risk my loved ones by trying to ask their intentions- they made the choice to break in, and I will use what force I is needed with the law now firmly on my side.......

Just thought I'd add this to the discussion.....

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crim...took_sl-1.html

Moral of the story? You'd better be proficient with your firearm before you attack someone holding ANY weapon....

Extensive mandatory training for weapon carry certification is a good idea.

kinda defeats the purpose of it being a right, ya think? or do you prefer to turn it in to a privilege?

What a capital idea! Top drawer, ol' sport! :thumbsup:

I wish NYC would let its honest, law-abiding citizens arm themselves for self defense, but that is just badass.
You should be able to defend yourself with lethal force if a Best Buy employee tries to sell you an extended warranty.

:lol: I concur- it's implicit in the second amendment.

EEERRRRR! Wrong. The 2nd Amendment "right" has been gone since early 1900s.

Wake up, dude. Our modern gun "rights" are already heavily restricted. Do you think you have gun rights? Wrong again. State and federal laws. You have gun privileges that they can take away. How do you know? Whenever you fill out those damn state / local forms to buy a firearm. Whenever you head into CA / NYC / Chicago and just about everything you have in your vehicle is now illegal. Whenever you head into DC... where no firearms are allowed and yet the gun crime rate is one of the highest in the nation.

The only way to "restore" our "rights" is to negotiate with the system.

Joe Citizen: "We should let everybody in the country carry weapons."
Gummint: "Oh no! CHAOS! ANARCHY! Only cops, soldiers, and the guys raping our wives need guns!"
Joe Citizen: "What if we have a national training certification standard?"
Gummint: "Okay, and you'll pay $500 for the plastic card."

Republicans are pro-gun because their pro-gun lobbies support them well.

Democrats are anti-gun because their anti-gun lobbies support them well.

...

When guns are outlawed... only outlaws and paranoid white people will have guns.

I'm also for this kind of legislation as well. The general deterrence it provides is amazing.

Strangers have no business in the homes of others. They know this. The idea that invading someone's home is a ticket to getting shot without appeal is good.

Hell, I could just hang a "Protected by H&K" sign in my windows.

now all you have to do is actually rewrite the constitution. let me know how you fare.

Now, ask willravel why he supports this unconstitutional legislation?

not the only way.

in other words, we'll accept it being a privilege now. what else would you like to convert from a right to a privilege, big brother gov?

Not the only way, huh? Oh, I gotcha. Here:

*gets you a copy of Red Dawn, a Ryder truck, some ANFO*

Go ahead, tough guy. Been done already. Just make sure your compound has enough razorwire.

...

Ugh, this argument is really tough. Don't get me wrong, man... I'm ALL for my 2nd Amendment rights being preserved in their original form, but they're so damn trampled right now that I'm taking what I can get. I feel that anything that increases the number of lawful citizens buying firearms and using them in safe, lawful manner is a damn fine start.

Freedom requires more responsibility than most citizens are willing to stand.

Why do you think we have big government, the Patriot act, hometown SWAT?

...

My dilemma and one that I think I share with you and others here:

How can I defend my 2nd Amendment rights without seeming like a nutjob?

A most difficult task.

Justice dk....imposing your own interpretation of the Constitution again?

When has it is ever been determined that an individual's right to bear arms is ABSOLUTE (without restriction)...aummm.....NEVER?

Its a shame the Supreme Court did not take up the DC gun law today. It may have finally resolved the issue of the "individual" right to bear arms vs. the right of the "state" to form and arm a milita of individuals.
The Court may still decide later this month (it only takes 4 votes among the Justices to decide to take the case)

I've always wondered, and i guess it kind of clinches it for me in terms of how many grains of salt i take with the second amendment, but how far can you go with the definition of "arms"? It seems like contemporary references only refer to guns, but why?

If i were writing a constitution, and wanted to ensure that the citizens of the government for which it was intended would be able to protect themselves from government tyranny (assuming that that was the case) i would probably want to go a little further than just protecting the right to bear arms. I imagine that i'd want to protect the right ammunition, too, since without ammunition you're probably better off with a crowbar than with a gun. And shit, if i were serious, i'd make it so the government couldn't limit the type of gun owned, since it would be all to easy for a tyrannical government to simply issue everybody an air pistol, outlaw everything else and say, "There you go, there's your arm, we're within the letter of the law, shut the fuck up."

Now, i'm not a fucking genius, but if i were there writing the constitution i might have been a little less vauge if i thought it was important.

I'm even less of a genius than you, Filtherton. Science has proven it.

However, I feel that vagueness is what often maintains rights instead of restricting them.

Do you think we'd have any guns today if the second amendment wasn't there?

That strikes me as a bit melodramatic. Most of the world does not share your right to keep and bear arms, yet somehow we survive with our liberties intact (and indeed, some of us seemingly have more liberties than you do; I could legally marry another man, if that were my inclination).

I should state now that I have nothing against firearms themselves or firearm owners. Hell, I like guns; I can appreciate them both from the engineering standpoint as well as the testosterone-informed enjoyment of anything that makes big noises and blows shit up. I have no personal desire to own a gun, but if that's your bag than I say more power to you

What I specifically fail to comprehend is the mindset that some people seem to have regarding this issue. Part of this is due to what I see as an ungrounded fear; I simply do not understand the thought process of an individual who is so afraid for their personal safety that they feel the need to be armed at all times. I can't help but wonder if that ties into the whole second amendment deal itself. Maybe the reason that I don't feel the need to carry a weapon outside of my home (or indeed, inside it) is because I know that guns are restricted here sufficiently that the odds of me encountering one in my day-to-day life that isn't strapped to the hip of one of our fine officers of the law is exceedingly small? I don't know, just a bit of random conjecture.

But yeah. The point is that I have no problem whatsoever with responsible gun ownership. You want to keep them in your home to defend yourself and your loved ones? Well, sure, go for it. I can get behind that. And if you really, really feel that it's such an untamed wilderness out there that you need personal protection while going about your daily routine, I guess I can kind of dig it. I mean, I don't share that particular fear, but then Jello creeps me out. I don't see that we need to have the right to carry a concealed weapon in my part of the world, but that's a choice that you as a nation have made and I'm not about to tell you otherwise.

At the same time, I think it's foolish for anyone not to recognize that a firearm is a weapon, designed with the specific intent of injuring and/or killing other living beings. This doesn't mean that it doesn't have a legitimate place in the world. What it does mean is that owning a firearm carries with it a large burden of responsibility; it is my opinion and one I don't expect to have contested that when you make the decision to acquire a firearm you are taking on the responsibility that said firearm does not contribute to the harm of others except when it's completely unavoidable. If someone is going to be injured or killed, it's better that it be the aggressor. Otherwise, it's up to you to show the necessary wisdom to keep your weapon in a manner that will not lead to injury of yourself or others. Do you think every individual is capable of this?

If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. If, however, you give guns to everyone, outlaws will still have guns, but so will every individual who lacks the necessary judgment to handle them responsibly. Clearly, there needs to be a middle ground.

EDIT - Holy hotbed, Batman! Look at all the replies!

Very insightful. I would take the argument further, however, and suggest that many citizens are not capable of bearing the level of responsibility required. This, of course, is going from the frying pan to the fire, as one is required to ask how much can we abridge individual freedoms for an individual's own good? It's a very fine line to walk.

Science has shown itself to be inaccurate 28.3% of the time.

I think we might have guns today without the second amendment. Correct me if i'm wrong, but canadians don't have a canadian version of the second amendment, yet still have guns(though from my understanding not too many handguns). I don't think the second amendment is really that strong in terms of protecting the right to own guns, especially in light of my poorly informed arguments above. None of the rights enumerated in the constitution are absolute, and if there's anything reliable about americans, it is their willingness to give up their rights in exchange for the perception of safety.

I concur. We suck.

I'd move to Canada but my they don't like my ARs / AKs / TEC 9 / Plainfield PP30 / flamethrowers / plasma rifles / etc.

Yeah, Crompsie, but we don't need them because we have Socialists in power and Mounties to uphold said power. How else is it that we're still independent of the USA?

You're ten times more likely to die from a hockey head injury than you are from a violent criminal. It's all good.

the problem that we face currently isn't trying to interpret the constitution and determine what rights it gives us, because it doesn't. The constitution grants no rights. What it DOES do is it limits the power of the government.
By letting the anti-freedom folks turn the argument in to what rights are afforded by the constitution, we've lost over half the battle. The 2nd Amendment doesn't grant me the right to bear arms, it limits the government from infringing on that right that pre-exists. In other words, the framers of the constitution determined that we already had the right to bear arms and the 2nd amendment was written to prevent the government from doing anything to take that away or discourage it. That is why I keep saying 'shall not be infringed' means exactly that. It means that government shall not infringe. Unfortunately, in todays little PC world of touchy feely 'gotta look out for peoples sensitivities' world, we get our rights legislated away.

quoted for absoluteness and truth.

You are correct, sir. While there is no analogue to the second amendment in either the charter or the constitution, we do still have the ability to purchase and own firearms. However, we have comparatively more hoops to jump through and are more restricted as to exactly what weapons we can or can't have (semi-automatic rifles, for example, are only legal with a magazine capacity of 5 cartridges or less; handguns are restricted to 10). As well, all of our firearms are currently required to be registered in a national database, which is our own Big Scary Gun Issue of the day.

I see what you're saying, but even if you had an absolute right to bear arms, that doesn't mean that you necessarily have the right to bear any type arms, or that you have the right to ammunition. I mean, i think we would all be a little better off if the founders had spent a little bit more time on the 2nd.

But then again, these were folks who had a very good idea of what it was like to fight for the existence of their country. I would imagine that creating a new country through armed rebellion might be a pretty dominating force when forming an opinion on whether the populace should be armed or not. They probably thought that the meaning of the 2nd was pretty obvious.

But then again, again, they lived in a time of muskets (i think), and i imagine few, if any, of them had any accurate notions as to the scope and effectiveness of the weaponry that would eventually be available to fit in the palm of one's hand. They were men of their times, and the constitution reflects that. We are a reflection of our times, where it's been at least a half a century since any american had to fight in a war whose outcome might be directly and obviously linked with our continued existence as a country. It's been even longer since we've had to fight for our existence on our own soil (9/11 doesn't count). Nowadays, tyranny is expected from the government. I think the founding fathers failed to take into account that things earned are often more respected than things given. I imagine that if they were more astute observers of human behavior, or were aware of the inevitable invention of the television, they might not have even bothered.


Well, it seems that the average american's ability to own guns differs from the average canadians only by degrees. Given the right circumstances we might be headed in your direction, in terms of gun laws.

I could certainly agree with that.

Curiously, you don't often find exceptions for muzzle loading pistols in gun control bills.Are you under the impression than every single able bodied male in the colonies picked up his trusty musket and kilt him some redcoats? It is expected that a revolution will start with a small number of people and, given sufficient popular support, will be able to fight and take the day. But the population must be able to give support that is relevant to the cause... and for that reason we have limited the power we grant to our government to restrict what support the population can offer to would-be revolutionaries.

And you don't often hear second amendment advocates lamenting the loss of their right to own nuclear weapons.

I'm not under the impression that every single able bodied male in the colonies picked up his trusty musket and kilt him some redcoats. I'm not sure who you're claiming is doing the expecting when you say "It is expected that a revolution will start with a small number of people and, given sufficient popular support, will be able to fight and take the day" or why that is a reasonable expectation. And i understand the common rationale behind the second amendment, i just think that that it was poorly written, and that the reason it was poorly written might have been that for all the foresight the founders did have, they apparently lacked the foresight to take into account the tendency for cultures and technology to change.

But it isn't good, bro... I rather enjoy my shooting hobby. I would miss my toys.

Black powder firearms... the secret coup.

Though it might be a bit of a trade-off, there are still a lot of cool things you can shoot with up here, I'm sure. :)

Canada Firearms Centre (www.cfc-cafc.gc.ca)
Prohibited Firearms
Firearm Owners Moving to Canada

As I was saying, according to Canadian law I would (no joke) have to sell 75% of my collection. Oh-hell-no. I have priceless pieces that aren't made anymore and "mean looking assault weapons" that I have customized to my every desire.

(blames Canada)

Eeeh, Vermont is already half Canadian. I like their laws.

strongly considering the move to vermont. most excellent gun laws there. :thumbsup:

Looks like this new law will be getting court tested pretty dang quickly....

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5306638.html

In public, anyway.Or they really thought that Joe Citizen should be trusted to keep any weapon he could make or get someone to sell him, regardless of technological advances or trends in popular sentiment... because it was that important to the security of freedom.

Yeah, they don't talk about it in public because it's ridiculous, and talking about it in public would be a pretty surefire way for them to discredit themselves and the people they speak for because most people recognize it as being completely fucking insane.

Okay, so we have, "the founders thought it would be a good idea for anyone at all to be able to procure any kind of weapon, even the ones, which, when used properly, could kill everyone in a medium sized town because somehow the ability for every individual to wipe medium sized towns off of the map is a necessary condition for protection from tyranny" versus, "the founders had no fucking clue what was going to be possible technologically, and as such the second amendment is an ill informed piece of law." Okay. Well, i know which side i choose, and it isn't the one based on seemingly naive notions about the innate ability of the average person to employ weapons of mass destruction in the name of freedom.

How about biological weapons? Are the founding fathers advocates of an anthrax vial for every patriot? I mean, if the average person should be trusted to keep any weapon he could make or get someone to sell him, regardless of technological advances or trends in popular sentiment because it was that important to the security of freedom, shouldn't the average person be free to stockpile whatever biological agents s/he feels are necessary for the protection of freedom?

I don't have a big problem with someone shooting a person breaking into their home and who poses a direct threat to you or your family - I have a big problem with this crazy old son of a bitch murdering a couple of guys who were running away, no matter if they just committed a burglary. You go to jail for committing a burglary, you don't die for it.

Logic would dictate that they were referring to small arms.

Not tanks, not rocket launchers, not CBRN systems.

Jesus, how silly is this?

That is your perspective. I think the threat of death is an excellent deterrent to keeping felons who know what they're doing is a felony outta my house.

It's pretty silly.

Having a right to keep and bear arms does not guarantee "for anyone at all to be able to procure" any kind of arm they may wish to keep or bear. Much like the right to pursue happiness is not a right to happiness.

You could legally own a fully automatic belt fed 40mm grenade launcher... cept you probably couldn't afford one even if you did find someone willing to sell you one. Do you think the situation would be much different with your doomsday devices?

I think that you're contradicting yourself. Above, seemingly in reference to the absolute right to bear arms intended by the founders, you said:
Either you are saying shit that you don't believe for the sake of argument- in which case you might want to be a bit more consistent for the sake of argument- or your opinion on the meaning of the second is essentially not fundamentally different from someone who supports gun control- i.e. that the right to bear arms isn't absolute and, like the freedom of speech, should be limited. Maybe you do support gun control, though that's not the impression i've gotten from you.

Do you think that a fully automatic belt fed 40mm grenade launcher could kill 80,000 people and obliterate an entire city in the blink of an eye? Do you think a fully automatic belt fed 40mm grenade launcher could cause an epidemic of fatal disease? Granted, i'm no expert when it comes to fully automatic belt fed 40mm grenade launchers, but i find the idea pretty unlikely.

Mk19 is a piece of shit anyway.

I'm in favor of this sort of law. I believe that people have a right to use deadly force to defend their lives and property and the lives and property of others.

Do you think you could say 'fully automatic belt fed 40mm grenade launcher' five times fast?

That someone could possibly argue in favour of Joe Schmoe being able to procure nuclear warheads is patently absurd.

It wasn't his house, there was no direct threat to him or his property.

Can I start hunting people down and shooting them in the back for cheating on their taxes?

You may have the right to keep and bear a given arm, but you've got to GET ONE first. If there are none for sale in your price range and you have no capability to make it yourself... oh well. It would be a right to have them, not get them.

This is basically the same rationale that the NFA uses to restrict machinegun and destructive device ownership. It's not illegal to own because it's a machinegun. It's illegal to own because it has no one paid the taxes on it so it can't be legally bought or sold.You run into a lot of megaton nuclear devices at garage sales? Mail order weaponized anthrax spores?

It would not be particularly difficult for a sufficiently motivated and financed individual or group of individuals to render entire cities uninhabitable and kill tens of thousands of people. Fortunately, people with sufficient motivation and finacing to do these things often have more structured goals than "WHOO! BLOW SOME SHIT UP!" so the question of private tactical nuclear device ownership would remain largely hypothetical whether there was a recognized private citizens Right to have one or not.

Those who argue that the framers 'could not possibly have imagined the current weaponry' are missing the entire point of the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

The founders experienced 'first hand' the heavy handedness of a standing army and KNEW that ONLY free citizens had freedom and liberty as an interest at heart. Standing armies could most certainly be held to orders that abridged that freedom and liberty and it was the framers OBVIOUS intent to ensure that free citizens, who were NOT part of standing armies, federal or state, were armed with equal weaponry to that of any standing army so that free people could fight to remain free.

All arguments about owning WMD's are really idiotic arguments because the government would be cutting their own throat if they were to use WMDs against the civilian population.

The notion that 'well-regulated militia' meant national guard bears zero fruit, considering no such thing existed at the time, and knowing the fears of standing armies from the founders, could the 2nd ever be construed to think that there actually had to be written a 'right' that standing armies controlled by a central government needed to be ensured a right to keep and bear arms, is absolutely unfounded and ludicrous. it borders insanity.

The whole idea of this law seems to me indicative of something quite frightening: the failure of American cities. Is Jane Jacobs right about urban renewal and usage zoning? Why are things so different in America than they are elsewhere? (e.g. Why is America's prison population per capita rivaled only by the likes of Russia?)

And now this? Leaving it to citizens to decide whether to use lethal force? This isn't a solution, it is an eye-opening experiment. There are a few others, I'm sure. Are there more coming down the pipe?

Revolution and and civil war follow on the heals of an animal with too big an appetite.

Because this would be America, and elsewhere would be elsewhere. For no difference than why is south africa different from norway. It's different, plain and simple. As far as the failure of american cities, the reason crime is rampant in the cities is because the people there refuse to be responsible for their own safety. They pawn it off to some sort of 'legitimate' agency, yet not a single one of these agencies is constitutionally obligated to provide for their safety.

Because our government relentlessly pursues an unconstitution drug war.

who better to decide that my life is in danger than me? nobody else is going to be there at the time. Should I wait until after i'm dead before it's decided that I should have been able to use lethal force?

Are you saying you want to change the constitution? Or are you selling some kind of libertarian quasi-anarchy?




...and South Africans and Norwegians aren't as different from Americans as you might think.

I'd say the US Constitution is fine. The 2nd Amendment was placed second for a reason... to help protect the 1st Amendment in an "Oh Shit" event AND to ensure the equality of the citizenry and the government through the following logic:

"A man without a firearm is a subject, a man with a firearm is a citizen."

This requires the utmost in responsibility and reasonableness to apply to the modern world. I fear that we have lost most of that responsibility.

So, yeah... I feel that the Constitution is in good shape. Our interpretation and application, however, leave a lot to be desired.

What was that bumper sticker I once saw?

Gun control works! Ask Nazi Germany, Soviet Russian, and the People's Republic of China!

"People's Republic" indeed.

...

It would be a little nutso to ban firearm ownership from lawful citizens on the grounds that we can't be trusted to own firearms. Such things often erode into other Mama Bear gummint issues. I don't need anybody holding my hand.

Real freedom means dealing with an unsafe world.

As many here often quote: Very rarely can you trade freedom for safety.

How to pass on the torch of reasonableness?

How can we keep a person without a firearm between a subject..citizen to an eventual target.

Yeah.. what was that sticker??

Piece.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
-Mao Tse-tung


Personally, I don't mind being one of the Queen's subjects.

If that logic follows... I'm subject to a primate from Texas. :D

Do you think living in another country would be advisable to trying to work the system?

...

My previous career involved carrying a firearm. My future career will involve carrying a firearm. They will be a constant companion for my working life.

Everybody else? Do your friggin' time and then whine.

So in your mind it would be completely acceptable, from a legal standpoint, to simply outlaw, say, the sale and transport of guns since you wouldn't be technically prohibiting the right to "bear" arms?

Nope, and it whether i do or not has absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. I said that that you don't hear a lot of pro 2nd folks lamenting the fact that they don't have a right to own nuclear weapons. You said that some do. I said that they're dumb. You said a belt fed grenade launcher was as effective a weapon as a nuclear bomb. I said it wasn't. I'm new to the idea that the second amendment has nothing to do with limiting the ability of folks to access weapons- it seems like such an obvious way to nullify the 2nd.

Since no one has tried to blow up a city yet, so there would be no problems if nuclear weapons were widely available. That doesn't make sense to me.

Okay, i could see that. So it's not about wmds, it's about apache helicopters and tanks. Doesn't sound good to me. First of all, it's hard enough to find a parking spot downtown as is, i can't imagine how much more difficult it would be if everybody had a tank. The other side of that, of course, is that if you had a tank you could park anywhere that someone else hadn't already parked their tank.

Wouldn't mutually assured destruction be the ultimate deterrence against tyranny?

Apparently 1010011010 knows people who think that the 2nd also applies to wmds. What's their problem?

transport? no. the sale? possibly. It's been done before and a totally liberal court has sided with the gov on an extremely radical interpretation of the commerce clause. Would that stop people from making their own? doubt it.


At one time, 'shall not be infringed' meant exactly that. In todays PC world, however, we have a bunch of gun haters who have managed to redefine the bill of rights in to the bill of rights we think you should have.

15 years ago, i'd have agreed with you. After WACO, I certainly think it should be in the realm of the ability to own helos and tanks.

I know some who think that also. Their reasoning can be sound, but they certainly aren't applying practical reasoning. I don't mean practical as in money and maintenance costs associated with it, but practical as in the fact that detonating a nuke is not self preservation/defense, which is really what the 2nd is about, preserving freedom, not practicing MAD.

I'm not sure how we'd go about granting the government the legal authority to do such a thing. It might not be possible. It would certainly be against the spirit of protecting our rights under which our government draws authority, legal or not.

But, assuming we'd gotten to that point somehow, sure.How "widely available" are fully automatic belt fed 40mm grenade launchers? Not very. I don't see why something orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire and maintain would become as commonplace as you seem to expect.Why doesn't everyone have mobile armor? You can buy some, demilitarized of course. Could be that many folks don't want 'em (just as many people don't own guns) or don't want to spend that much money on them (just as many people don't own exotic guns).I also know people who think that the 1st also applies to unpopular speech.

I don't have a problem with there being a legal process (with various requirements on safeguarding, inspections, maintenance, storage, OQE, et al.) that allows folks who qualify to keep a nuclear device safely. I consider that preferable to them being acquired secretly and illegally.