the sound of a shotgun slide racking a shell in the chamber can be a startling sound.

I remember the one time I got to fire a 12 gauge SPAS auto.

all I can say is WOW!

So perhaps a Mossberg 12-gauge would be a good choice then?

This is SOOOO not what he said.

1. The second amendment DOES preserve your right to keep and bear arms.
2. The entire Bill of Rights does not grant rights--it PRESERVES the rights inherent in being a citizen (and most times, not even a citizen) of this country.

High velocity is not exactly what you want. My mini-14 will shoot through an engine block, but it's not great for home defense, because it can easily go through several walls and injure someone in an entirely different house. I would submit that you want stopping power. In my mind, that would translate to either a shotgun or some combination of large caliber and hollow points.

Up until these riots, the only gun I owned was a single-shot .22 I'd had since I was a kid. I asked my roommate, a Vietnam SEAL, what he'd recommend.

He told me that although they weren't supposed to, many of those on the teams sawed off shotguns, and if they needed to clear a hut, they just stuck the barrel in the doorway and pulled the trigger. That took care of everything inside.

Considering the amount of adrenaline that would be flowing if there were an intruder in my house, a shotgun might be just what I'd want. Admittedly, it would be more appropriate if there were no family members around to become "collateral damage."

I understand all of what you're saying in regards to home defense. I should have clarified I was thinking in mind what dk would argue the 2nd amendment is intended, for fighting the State if it ever comes down to it.

OK I let it go when dksuddeth said it, but when two people chime in, it's time to call bullshit.

If dksuddeth didn't mean these people should have been allowed to buy the guns in the middle of the panic, then he needs to learn to state himself a lot more clearly.

That whole post followed the pattern that he's established on these myriad pro-gun posts. Spray a crapload of ideas in the first post, and the minute someone points out the fallacies, he starts protesting that gee, he never said that, when in fact he did.


No, I'm sorry, it doesn't. It preserves the right of a WELL REGULATED militia to keep and bear arms. WELL REGULATED. People running around with a brand new gun in the middle of a riot is NOT a WELL REGULATED militia. None of the other 10 in the BOR have a qualification. That doesn't mean you can ignore the one in the 2nd because it happens to be inconvenient for you.

But I really don't get why everyone gets all uptight about this argument. Even if we abolished the 2nd today, no one's going to take your guns away. It's be physically impossible at this point. We can't get rid of stuff that's already illegal - drugs, etc - what makes you think we can get rid of all the guns?

Colt A3 20" MT6700C
http://www.impactguns.com/store/media/colt_6700c.jpg
The Colt AR15 is a good choice for militia use. You can get pre-ban high capacity clips 30/40 rounds at most gun shows. I even got a 90 round drum for mine. With about 5 dollars worth of parts it can be converted to full auto but that is against the law unless you have a special license.

I would like to get a 50 caliber rifle like those manufactured by Barrett before they are banned. I think California has already banned them.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...82-dvic539.jpg

Are you calling your own bullshit then? because you know what I posted in that paragraph was not a denigration of a waiting period, it was pointing out how a 'feel good' regulation can backfire on those that thought it was a good idea in the first place.


Do you have a problem with basic comprehension? It does not say that a well regulated militia has the right, it says a militia is necessary to the security of a free state THEN it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State,//////// the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."


The BOR is a short but incomplete list of individual rights. It's insane and illogical to think that the constitution defines and lists what 'powers' the government is authorized by the people and then to believe that smack dab in the BOR it gave the government a right.

And I would dearly love a couple of these. :thumbsup:

How did it backfire? Because a bunch of untrained new gun owners didn't go running around shooting the wrong people? Surely you don't mean that.

Read what you wrote. Again. Very carefully. I even quoted it, twice, in this thread. Maybe you didn't MEAN what you wrote, but you did write it.


[quote]it says a militia is necessary to the security of a free state THEN it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. [quote]

The first qualifies the second. It points to the intent of the framers, which was not to have a thousand jackasses with brand new guns running around LA shooting anyone they see.


Speaking of reading comprehension, do we REALLY need to define "well regulated" for you? You seem to have trouble with the concept of "regulated." The number of hunting accidents and other accidental shootings each year tells us that gun ownership in this country is anything BUT well-regulated.


Once again you fail to read and understand what I wrote. I specifically said that the BOR does not TAKE AWAY the right to a gun. So for you to suggest that I did signifies either that you're not bothering to read my entire post, or that you're making stuff up in order to appear to be the winner of this little debate. Which is it?

You're falling into the same category as many vehemently pro-gun advocates. When someone points out that the 2nd does not GIVE the right, they automatically assume that person is trying to take that right away. That's a logical fallacy. I would hope debaters here on TFP could rise above that reactionary crap and actually read, and understand, what others are writing.

and surely you have some backup proof for this ridiculous claim? show me through any type of historical document that this is what the intent of the framers was.




I can assure you that 'well-regulated' does not mean the national guard or a standing army. I've shown this many times and even defined 'well-regulated' according to the 18th century english dictionary.


alright, i'll give you this point that I may be completely misunderstanding what it is you're trying to say regarding this. So far, what i've been reading from you is that the second amendment is not a definition of the peoples individual right to keep and bear arms, that it only belongs to a well regulated militia. The paragraph above now seems to indicate that you might actually believe that the individual right pre-exists? correct me if i'm reading you wrong on this.

Yeah, that would be the first part of the 2nd amendment. Well, that and the fact that the framers weren't sociopaths.





Look, you have the right to own a fishing pole too, even though the constitution does not specifically give that right. The constitution and the BOR are simply stating some rights that the founding fathers wanted to make absolutely sure would not be taken away by the states or by a later federal government.

So even if I say that some amendment doesn't give you the right to a fishing pole, that doesn't mean I think you should be forced to turn all your fishing poles in. Just because the 2nd does not specifically give the unfettered right for everyone to have a gun, does not mean that you do not have that right, or that I think you should lose that right.


and BTW I believe that yes, the militia does refer to the national guard, but that we've corrupted and changed what the national guard is and should be for. They shouldn't be in Iraq -the national guard is to defend us from invasion and to defend states from invasion/a tyrannical federal government. In modern times we have forgotten what militias are meant for. But you cannot get around the basic definition of "well regulated" no matter what you claim they meant by it. Regulated is not a word who's definition has changed in 200 years. People with no regulation whatsoever cannot be said to be regulated. It's just that simple.

Can we concentrate less on "scoring points" on each other and more on being articulate and understanding others? The whole "gotcha" mentality tends to send things south pretty quickly.

those very framers and founders said that we all were the militia and they all said that every freeman has the right to arms. thats pretty clear to me that it's an individual right, not only for militia causes.


OK, now this I agree with you on.


then please explain to us how militia means 'national guard' when the national guard wasn't created until the very early 1900s.

well regulated means well organized, well disciplined, but it doesn't mean national guard or standing army of any type. you also are still misinterpreting the second. there are two parts to the amendment and they differentiate the need for a well regulated militia does not take away the right of the people to bear arms. at least thats my interpretation of it anyway.

In a time when everyone WAS part of the militia, and when people knew how to use the guns that were out there. Very different story from today.

The national guard is what the militia(s) became. Kind of like the Department of Defense still does the same thing even though it's no longer called the War Department.


Then explain to me why you seem to think that people with no training and who never used a gun before are part of a well organized group?

It's ONE sentence. The framers were not all grammar morons. One sentence, one subject. It's one part. Not two. And the one part says that you can have all the guns you want, but they're meant for a *well regulated militia*. NOT a bunch of yahoos that don't know the first thing about firearm safety.

In US v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court held the Enforcement Acts unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment did give Congress the power to prevent interference with rights granted by the Constitution, said the Court. But the right to assemble and the right to arms were not rights granted or created by the Constitution, because they were fundamental human rights that PRE-EXISTED the Constitution:
"The right. . . of bearing arms for a lawful purpose. . . is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent on that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this. . . means no more than it shall not be infringed by Congress. . . leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes"

Besides the fact that the Cruikshank ruling was made in 1875, and you really ought to determine whether and what portions of it continue to be relevant today (they aren't), I think you would benefit signifcantly from taking a legal reasoning or law & society course. Taking such a course would help you organize your thoughts about federalism and how the Bill of Rights fits into national law v. state law v. personal rights.

For example, none of what you're arguing for here has any bearing on what you started the thread with. The firearms legislation in California is enacted by our state Congress while local ordinances are enacted by various local government and regulatory bodies. The 2nd amendment doesn't apply here for a host of reasons. Bringing up the Enforcement Act of 1870, which was passed by the US Congress to deal with Jim Crowe laws, doesn't have anything to do with a local issue in California and it doesn't even mean what you want it to.

If states were held to the standard set forth by Cruikshank, and they held to strict legal formalism (as you also want them to adhere to), states could pass any gun legislation they wanted to and the courts would do nothing.

The Cruikshank case, by the way, is a testament to the Court's self-paralysis that resulted in much harm to the citizens of this nation and the ideals for which it stands. Ironically, it's probably one of the best examples to argue against much of what you've posted in these various threads on gun control and "judicial activism." Please take the time to read the opinions of any cases, the history leading up to them, and the rulings' ramifications before using one for a point in your argument.

You quote this in the same thread that you're telling me the 2nd amendment gives you the right to a gun?

Again, this bears my reasoning out. The 2nd does NOT give you the right to have a gun, but neither does it take that right away.

It's too late to bother looking up later case law but I'm pretty confident that some judge somewhere has reversed this section. The 2nd goes farther than that, as distinguished from the 1st, which says "CONGRESS shall make no law. . . " The 2nd does not say anything about congress, merely that the right shall not be infringed. Since this is distinct from the 1st's mention of congress, it should be interpreted to mean the right shall not be infringed by anyone, not just congress.

Your entire post pretty much proved what I've been saying, and failed to address the fact that the 2nd amendment is one sentence, with a conditional clause preceeding the right that it defines. You still haven't gotten away from that pesky militia bit. . .

Shakran, it really appears that you're reading dksuddeth's posts in twisted ways solely to be argumentative. His statements that you've quoted, "The right. . . of bearing arms for a lawful purpose. . . is not a right granted by the Constitution", and "Neither is it in any manner dependent on that instrument for its existence" aren't so unclear to me. He's saying that the rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights (existing as amendments to the Consitution) aren't granted by those amendments that mention them. They ENSURED by those amendments, as they were rights that people naturally had - and a state of being ruled by a government shouldn't be able to change them. This view makes total sense in light of the idea that rights and poweres are assumed to be retained by the people unless the government is given the power to curtail them.

Also, your comment about the brevity and clarity of the 2nd Amendment doesn't help much - it merely shows that the thing can be read in more than one way. The amendment says "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." [According to wikipedia, a copy made by the scribe who prepared the BOR carries different punctuation: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."] I read that to mean "The right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, because a well regulated militia is necessary to have a free state." I don't see the beginning as a conditional clause at all - it's a justification. And reading it that way plays all kind of havoc with the argument that the militia is the National Guard. Incidentally, the wikipedia article reads it in a third way (see the very first sentence at the top): "Amendment II (the Second Amendment) of the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, declares the necessity for "a well regulated militia", and prohibits infringement of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms"." Please excuse my quotation mark madness.

All of that stuff I typed above is incidental to my main point, which is the same that I made in post 27. I now quote my self, for repetitive goodness:

They're not unclear to me either. But what is also clear is that he has previously tried to convince us that the 2nd amendment gives us all the right to have guns. The 2nd amendment is part of the constitution which means his previous (wrong) statements are inconsistant with his latest (correct) statements.

Yes but where the disagreement still lies is whether it is the right of EVERYONE to have a gun, or whether it is only the right of those in a well regulated militia to have a gun.

That's kinda my whole point. I'm glad you got that. I'm trying to get him to see that.

Grammatically you're wrong. Your second version simply switches "being necessary to the security of a free state" to a parenthetical phrase. It's also grammatically incorrect since removing the parenthetical phrase would leave us with "A well regulated militia the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Ignoring the obvious comma error, we have a sentence fragment at the beginning of the runon sentence. It doesn't make any sense. So this scribe wasn't any better at grammar than he was at copying the original.

There are many, MANY people who disagree with you. And if it's a justification, why don't they justify any other amendment? I mean, a free press is certainly necessary to the security of a free state. Why didn't they preface the 1st with that justification? The logical conclusion is that they put that phrase in there for a very specific reason, which was to explain that the gun-rights amendment was not a national suicide pact, and that if you want to have a gun you have to be in some sort of well regulated militia.


I'm sure that you know as well as I do that using wikipedia as a source for ANYTHING is dubious at best.


I'm not sure why you think we're trying to score points on each other. We each have an opinion. We're advancing those opinions. If that's "scoring points," and you are saying that "scoring points" is wrong, then you might as well shut down the whole politics forum, because advancing opinions is the point of political debate.

I grew up around guns. My father would take me to the shooting range every couple of months and I felt like a big man when I shot his big pistols.

When I was in the eighth grade. I had a friend named Eric. He and some other friends were out late at night. I would have been out with him, but went out with a girl instead that night. He was walking through a neighborhood, when a guy ran out of his house waiving his shotgun. He thought that my friend was trying to break into his car. All of my friends ran away, but the guy ended up blowing the back of my friend’s head out.

The guy was a normal citizen, no police record, and no history that would indicate that he would do anything like that. From that moment I felt that it was need for private citizens to own firearms. People can argue till their blue in the face that its their right, and its to protect their family blah blah blah. If it were up to me. I would pull out a red magic marker and put a giant X through the Second Amendment.

I don't understand why they would want to insure our right to keep and bear arms to protect ourselves from our government and at the same time give that government the ability, without having to amend the constitution, to regulate that right away.

Do you think they intended us to all form well regulated militias outside of government control? If the definition of "well regulated" is determined by the very government that we are armed to protect ourselves from then what is the point of having the amendment in the first place?

I believe they intended to insure that we had the right to bear arms to overthrow a corrupt government like they just did as well as form well regulated militias.

I never said it had to be a GOVERNMENT RUN well regulated militia. I'm simply saying that well regulated does not encompass a bunch of people running around in the woods with rifles trying to kill deer, or a bunch of people haphazardly shooting at each other in LA during a riot. And, once again, since this seems to be a sticking point for many, I am not saying you cannot have a gun. I am saying the 2nd does not SAY you can have a gun no matter what.

As more information about things like the NSA program or total internet monitoring and further abuses of the constitution, am I the only one that foresees a lethal force conflict coming with the government?

Is anyone else saddened by this potential conflict?

Well see, that's kinda the argument I've been using to show the fallacy of the NRA/gun lobby's claim that the guns are for protection against a tyrranical government. If that's really the case. . .then why aren't they already shooting?

because the government obviously hasn't become tyrannical enough for most people yet.

How would it become tyrannical to the people with the guns since they are predominantly in the same party supporting all these NSA monitoring BS programs?

Unless they start rounding up people and killing them, they can try to monitor me all they want. And you are right that the NRA memebers are going to be the ones who overthrow the government, and I'm not sure what their leadership will be like.

I think the police departments are the ones that don't want automatic weapons on the streets. This is going to be racist, but I bet they wouldn't have a problem with whites owning fully auto AR15's and other powerful guns. Now the gang members have other ways to get guns, but those are the people that they want to take guns away from.

There is currently about a .00001% chance that we will need guns to overthrow the US government. But I still want the option. And I wouldn't want the government to not fear an uprising. But, I would say that the military would have to break apart or be on the opposition's side. Or a foreign government would have to support and fight along side of them to be a chance. But, things would have to get so bad that most people would leave the country first, and then attack from the outside.

Guns can be used for protection, but most of the time they are used incorrectly. I don't have a problem with the current system, but think that guns give people power that most of the time isn't good.

it would seem that the 'predominant' party is losing a lot of favor these days. Not only that, there are alot of 'democrats' that are also pro 2A that are dissatisfied with the democrat party. Do you foresee at all the possibility that enough people would recognize the inherent usurpation of both parties and then react?