seretogis

The second amendment exists to allow citizens to protect themselves from the government. The national guard is a tool of government, and would obviously be useless in protecting us from the government in the event that it oversteps its bounds.

Our founders were bright enough to see the eventual regression of the United States government into something wrong and which should be fought against. They included the second amendment to help us fight against it. Yes, that freedom comes at a cost, but it is one that anyone who truly values freedom should be willing to accept. If you are not, please don't try to forfeit that freedom on behalf of the rest of us. :P

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seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Willravel

It always surprises me when people tell me my opinion is wrong. My opinion is my opinion. I'm interpreting the words of the Amendment to the best of my english speaking abilities (I always received top marks in English from kindergarden through my graduation from a top private college... except for spelling, though I never really thought spelling was all that important). Having read the Second Amendment hundreds of times, you'll have to show me where protection against the government is mentioned because I've apparently missed it hundreds of times.

So here you are:
Good luck.

I see 'security of a free state', but that's a hell of a ways away from fighting the government.

Baraka_Guru

Since the Second Amendment right "to keep and bear arms" applies only to the right of the State to maintain a militia and not to the individual's right to bear arms, there can be no serious claim to any express constitutional right of an individual to possess a firearm. . .
—United States v. Warin, 530 F.2d 103.

A fundamental right to keep and bear arms has not been the law for 100 years...Cases have analyzed the second amendment purely in terms of protecting state militias rather than individual rights.
—United States v. Nelsen, 859 F.2d 1318

In short, the Second Amendment does not imply any general constitutional right for individuals to bear arms and form private armies.
—Vietnamese Fishermen's Association v. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 543 F. Supp. 198

The National Guard is the modern Militia reserved to the States by Art I, Sec 8, cl 15, 16, of the Constitution.
—Maryland v. United States, 381 U.S. 41

The question has been faced by several states. State constitutions which provide to the 'people' the right to keep and bear arms for the common defence do not necessarily grant individuals that same right. The right is not directed to guaranteeing individual ownership or possession of weapons.
—Rabbit v. Leonard, 413 A. 2d 489

This court is unaware of a single case which has upheld a right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the Constitution, outside of the context of a militia.
—Thompson v. Dereta, 549 F. Supp. 297

Even as against the United States, furthermore, the Second Amendment protects not an individual right but a collective right, in the people as a group, to serve as a militia.
—In Re Application of Atkinson, 291 N.W.2d 396

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

dksuddeth

I can't get around the very circular thinking you have. Please explain your logic with this interpretation considering that the founders and framers, having a very healthy fear of a central government and standing army, would bother to declare the RIGHT for standing armies to keep and bear arms and put that right in the bill of rights, a very specific set of rights that was a concession to the anti-federalists to ensure that those rights could not be infringed upon by the government. Once you can clearly postulate that the Second Amendment only guarantees the right of the military, or national guard, to keep and bear arms I'd request that you show some historical proof that the militia that is referred to in the Second Amendment was clearly NOT supposed to be the citizenry at large, but instead was to ensure that the citizens would not disarm their military. Thanks in advance

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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

1) This is a run on sentence.
2) I'm not here to threadjack. I'm trying to give my personal interpretation of the topic, as was requested by Shani. This isn't about debate. This isn't a debate. This isn't a debate. God knows we have enough threads around here to drive this into the ground, again.

seretogis

There's this guy I know, who you may have heard of. He had some interesting things to say about a document that he helped write. This may help you to shift your perspective more in line with what he was thinking at the time:

All of these mentions clearly state that individuals are those who are to be armed, the last even that a "standing army" could be dispensed with as long as the nation itself -- its common citizens -- are armed. Jefferson did not intend for us to have a massive standing army, or for us to use it to invade countries pre-emptively.

Regarding standing army and "Militia":

The "militia" of the State is every man (citizen) within it that is able to bear arms. The second amendment, therefore, applies to every able-bodied person -- NOT just the "National Guard."

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seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

dksuddeth

Through a series of liberal judicial activist decisions, the courts have effectively rewritten the constitution, including Art. 1, sec 10, paragraph 3 to wit "No state shall, without the consent of congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or ships of war in time of peace...."
Clearly, the constitution specifically states that the states themselves shall not have state troops, yet are very clearly given the right to keep state troops because of the 2nd Amendment.....ok, i'm dizzy now.

So, how does one reconcile within themselves that it's ok for judicial tyrannists to supercede the written constitution with judicial decisions and bypass the clearly written and detailed steps of amending the constitution as well as ignoring the definition of the various militia types in the militia code of the US laws.

I also would like someone to explain to me how congress HAS to use the commerce clause to regulate firearms if the 2nd Amendment does not refer to the right of an individual. One should be able to conclude that if there is no right to keep and bear arms, then a regular old punitive law, that has nothing to do with commerce regulation, could be implemented to ban firearms yet that is not the case.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Deltona Couple

Will? you have an interest in 9/11? I had NO idea!

As to the OP, I always thought gun control was being able to hold the gun steady enough to hit your target???

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

dksuddeth

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/2069.html

A woman, who called police to be a 'good witness', about a crime was kidnapped and then branded in the face with the word 'snitch'.

I'm telling you, those who don't care about the law and do what they want to do are aware that most of the people don't carry weapons for protection and aren't too damn afraid to do something to you if you cross them.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

mixedmedia

You think this is the first horrible story I've ever heard? I've also heard plenty of stories about men and women who have shot their spouses and children with their own legally owned firearms. I've also read that most guns used in the commission of crimes come from friends and family members. In other words - legal gun owners. How does your theory of "more guns carried by more people" work towards solving those problems?

Believe it or not, dk, some of us don't own guns because we simply don't want to own guns. *gasp*

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Jinn

Source? Sounds like an outright lie to me.

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

roachboy

if you had your way, dk, and the american legal system could not adapt to changing conditions through the development of legal precedents in case law, the constitutional order that you fetishize so would have collapsed long ago. you cant have it both ways: you can't act as though "original intent" is a legitimate guide for interpreting the constitution and not accept that the result of this would be constitutional crises. each constitutional crisis would result in a new document, and each new document would reconsider the question of guns....

i am really not sure that you want to go down this road--it sounds like you have some totally different idea about what the consequences of "original intent" as a way of thinking about the constitution....how do you imagine that the result of that would work?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

mixedmedia

Actually where I read it was on a pro-gun website that was denying the urgency of the "gun show loophole" by saying that less than 2% of crimes involving firearms come from unlicensed gun show transactions and most come from friends/family members. It didn't clarify whether they were given by or stolen from friends/family members. But does that matter?

I'll see if I can find it.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm

Well, I suppose I should go to a reputable source for these sorts of comments...

Here's how it reads from the Dept. of Justice.

I'm not sure why they would have omitted "street buy, or an illegal source" from their data, but they did.

I would be interested to know exactly how that 80% breaks out, though. And does an "illegal source" account for weapons stolen from family or friends?

Anyway, I think the question of what to do about guns used in the commission of a crime that are given by (with or without foreknowledge of what they'll be used for) or stolen from legal owners for illegal purposes is a very valid one.

And thanks so much for calling me a liar. You're so sweet.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Willravel

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/2069.html

A woman, who called police to be a 'good witness', about a crime was kidnapped and then branded in the face with the word 'snitch'.

I'm telling you, those who don't care about the lives of innocent people and do what they want to do are aware that most people are afraid of their guns and can do anything to anyone with those guns, and some people want to protect the right of criminals to carry these guns. We live in a scary world.

Jinn

I agree completely.

I'm not sure why the DOJ even bothered with that study, as it really doesn't show ..much... at all...

EDIT:

Will? Who wants to protect the rights of CRIMINALS to carry guns? Even the most pro-gun person I know wouldn't advocate criminal possession. BTW it's interesting you linked that story.. DK did too, above. He seems to have a slightly different take on it.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

dksuddeth

rb, we're going to have to agree to disagree. You seem to think that a legal document should ebb and flow with the changing tides of current events and the development of industrialization of the country. This theory alone should give people nightmares about constitutional crises.

If, however, you view legal documents as unchanging, unmoving, and inviolate then how does one have a crisis?

This is because Wills view of the situation is entirely based on the gun and that if said criminals just didn't have access to guns, they would be less inclined to commit crimes and hurt people. Wills view stipulates that if only guns were banned, a utopia would be around the corner and there would be no more violent crimes.

Female cop never had a shot

Another thing that really pisses me off is this,
Had this been any average citizen as the victim, there would not be the response that this cop got.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Baraka_Guru

Yeah, they both should have had guns.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

dksuddeth

well gee, do you think she was thinking 'if i just lie still, he won't hurt me' or was she thinking 'i'm such a stupid asshead for leaving my gun at the PD'???

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Baraka_Guru

I'm sure it would also likely to be "Fuck, he caught me off guard; I didn't even get a chance to disable him using my NYPD combat training."

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

"I knew I should have taken those Krav Maga classes at the Y!"
"I should have developed superpowers!"

Ch'i

Nothing says "Don't rape me", like a 50 BMG.

Baraka_Guru

A majority of rapes are done by someone the victims know; many of them happen on dates. Unless guns are a part of some kinky foreplay, I can't see how women would be prepared to use their licensed, high-powered self-defense in many of these cases.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

dksuddeth

another person with the foolish notion that all cops are highly trained martial artist superheroes.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

Do the members of the NYPD get combat training? Yes? Then Baraka is not in err.

joshbaumgartner

All due respect to everyone who has been posting case examples as part of the discussion here, but unfortunately in the end, they are just that, empirical examples that don't indicate are represent what the real trends are.

What I don't see is what the actual rates are of successful defense against crime through use of a legal firearm in the hands of a would-be victim. I've seen these stats before and they seemed extremely low especially given the number of guns legally owned in America. But unfortunately, I saved them on a hard drive long since melted, and thus can't readily lay my hands on them. I am going to start looking, but if someone knows where to tack such specific data, I'd appreciate it.

The kind of data I'm looking for:

* Percentage of violent crimes in which the victim or intervening bystander produced a firearm.
* Number of these cases in which the crime was successfully stopped/deterred.
* Number of these cases where a victim's or bystander's gun ended up in the hands of the criminal.
* Number of these cases that resulted in a fatality

And stats about the cost of gun ownership:

* Number of cases in which a legally owned gun was used to commit a crime.
* Fatalities by legally-owned guns (minus self-defense)
* Victims of their own legally-owned firearms

Without knowing these numbers, and instead just relying on who can dig up more and better case examples from the news. AS interesting these are and as important as real-world cases are, they don't tell the whole picture, and relying on them can create a very distorted view of the big picture. I'll be looking for this data, but if anyone beats me to the punch, that'd be great, I'd love to see some good data being put up here to add to the discussion.

Nimetic

As best as I understand it - that first position is one taken by North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan and Iran, in relation to nuclear weapons.

Does this help anyone? : P

dksuddeth

do you have the NYPD training manual to link to? I doubt it very much.

The SWAT team might get some paramilitary training, but a regular NYPD street cop is not going to get combat training.

If you can prove that they do, then please do so.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

So you're suggesting that a future cop, at academy, doesn't get any kind of hand to hand training? If you can prove that, please do so.

dksuddeth

will, you're in to martial arts. you KNOW that basic hand to hand training is NOT combat training. Don't even TRY to intimate that they are one in the same.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Ch'i

. . . . . . . . . .

Willravel

Intimate?

I don't want to get too much into semantics, but combat is synonymous with fighting. Police have hand to hand, weapon, and pursuit training, and I would consider that combat training, though I'm not using the term in the military sense because police are not military. I believe the intention was to suggest that a police officer has more training than the average person when it comes to physical conflict.

Baraka_Guru

Nice. Is this supposed to be funny? Maybe you should call me out on my suggestion that cops should get jet packs and laser blasters while you're at it. Oh, and I also suggested using mind reading so we can catch rapists before they leave the home too. Be sure to point that out to our readers.

I also called you a lama, in case you missed that subtlety, but that won't be relevant to this thread.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

cybersharp

NYPD combat training.. ha.

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0PtIcAl

Deltona Couple

Here is MY example for pro-licensed gun ownership. As far as I am concerned, I fully back private gun ownership, but I agree that registration and special licensing should be regulated(i.e. like my concealed permit):

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"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

reconmike

Gun control is a nice tight group

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