Who are you to make that decision for me?

I didn't say I was making that decision for you. I'm asking why you need it. Don't project shit onto me, dude. It's a legitimate question.

Right. It's not where you live.

I live in a much more dangerous area--just last month one of my classmates got robbed at gun point.

So as the argument someone made before, people live in different locales. Some locales demand more 'Independence.' Other locales are much safer.

And in reference to the all dangers 'assault rifles'--some are better for home defense than pistols, FYI. (AR-15 loaded with 50gr JHPs--controllability, decreased lethality after overpenetration, capacity etc.).

Ok, I live in a military town, and as is typically the case during hard times crime rates are increasing rapidly. There is considerable gang activity and street signs in my neighborhood are being tagged (and then painted over and re-tagged) by Gangsters Disciples and Latin Kings. Violent crimes against soldiers are on the rise as they have stable incomes and thus things to take. Crimes against soldiers wives are also on the rise while their husbands are deployed for the same reason as well as the obvious...they are home alone for a long period of time.

Being in a military town it is not unusual to see body armor in the pawn shops (usually illegally) and even petty criminals have easy access to armor and weapons (and friends).

If I have time during a home invasion I am going to grab a long gun, in part because I am more confident on it's ability to punch through whatever vest/nonsense the assailant has brought to the fight (since he is knowingly breaking into an occupied home). Additionally I have better control over round placement, increased stopping ability, faster re-engagement, and a higher magazine capacity. This becomes especially important if multiple assailants are involved.

I fully expect anyone who knowingly invades an occupied home in a military town to come fully prepared for a fight.

I am making a personal decision with regards to my level of preparedness based on my life experience, ability and perceived risk. For someone else to tell me I have no reason to keep a firearm for self defense is arrogant in the extreme.

As for keeping an 'assault weapon:' such weapons are simply firearms which are designed to be particularly useful in combat/defense situations and thus ideally suited to the homeowner looking for a way to protect himself/family/property, potentially from multiple armed attackers.

I'll put my two cents in, as this is a legitimate debate.

I grew up in a rural area, where firearms in the home were more common than not. Growing up, firearms were not treated as something "bad" or "evil." They were respected, as anything dangerous should be. My father ingrained in me early the lethal nature of firearms, and they should never be taken lightly--no showboating, no horsing around when firearms where present.

That respect for firearms was reinforced when I joined the Army. Firearms are a tool, and their purpose is lethal response.

I don't own a firearm of any kind today. I don't believe that I need one. I don't hunt, and thankfully I live in an area where violent crime is rare, in comparison to more urban, more dangerous environments. If my circumstances were to change, however, I would consider purchasing a firearm for defense.

Both sides of the firearm debate have good arguments, so I won't try to sway anyone's opinion if they don't agree with me. My political leanings are by and large liberal, and some people are surprised that I am a Second Amendment supporter; my belief is that there is nothing more liberal than the ability to protect oneself and one's property, all the way up to and including lethal response.

As far as Obama challenging the Second Amendment--I wouldn't be too concerned about it any time soon. Obama has his hands full with conservatives and the Republican party dealing with economic issues; the last thing he needs is another bone of contention at the time, especially such a galvanizing topic as of gun control.

And in all seriousness, I'm not somebody who CAN make that decision for you. I'm not a U.S. Congressman. AWB's in individual cities or voting districts might happen via a public referendum, but something on a national level will only happen in Congress.

That said, I don't want to make that decision for you. I know I appear "anti-gun" most of the time, but when I ask questions like "why do you need an assault weapon to protect your home?", all I want is an answer. They aren't loaded questions.

Fair enough.

Great question. :thumbsup: Plain and simple; gun control does not work. The only people who are affected by gun control laws, are the people who buy them legally. The criminals don't care about gun laws. In fact, criminals are probably in favor of more restrictive gun laws. If you were a criminal, intent on breaking into a house and robbing(or worse) somebody, which house would you rather break into? The house in Kentucky, with little restrictive gun laws, or the house in Washington, D.C., with very restrictive gun laws? Odds are, the criminal would rather break into the house with less of a chance of his sorry ass getting shot. Just a thought.

The Obama is the enemy of gun owners, BTW. Make no mistake about it, he(and Clinton, Schumer, etc...) does want to find a way to take away guns. Like them or not, the NRA is the best organization we have to fight the gun grabbers.

I'm sorry, but it's really hard for me to take you seriously when you call the President the "Anti-Christ". I'm pretty even-keeled when it comes to religion, but the thing that always strikes me as an outright joke is all the Christians that continually claim that we're in the End Times. Which they've been doing for the past 1900 years.

As for the actual topic at hand, I quite like the way that FuglyStick phrased it. Nicely done, sir.

The NRA are a bunch of spineless, gutless, useless, bought-and-paid-for shills. They've signed onto very major gun-control bill since the NFA, and if they're our bst tool we're just plain fucked. Wayne LaPierre would happily sell us all, every one, to keep his speaking fees. The NRA didn't even have the balls to oppose Eric Holder for Atty. General, and tried to prevent Heller vs D.C. from coming before the SCOTUS.

Rotten quislings, the most effective Victim Disarmamnt organisation of the last 50 years. Fuck the NRA. IF they'd get back to teaching marksmanship and gun safety and such, I'd have no quarrel. But they sell our rights every day, and for nothing but one ration of shit after another. My money goes to the GOA, JPFO, and more ammo.

Not to mention that they've aligned themselves with the far, far right, which has set up gun ownership as an extreme partisan issue (when it shouldn't be).

I'm a life member of the NRA, so I get all of their political stuff in the mail during the silly season. I've seen them endorse pro-gun Democrats on more than one occasion, so I think it's more accurate to say that they've aligned themselves with candidates who support the "far, far right" position on gun owners' rights.

you may be right (I'm not a member). But in the bigger picture, the NRA has aligned itself with those politicians who like to claim what being a "true American" is, which puts them at odds (on an ideological level) with those who don't align themselves that way.

The larger point is that gun ownership/rights shouldn't be such a partisan issue.

Keep in mind that (in theory) the NRA aligns themselves with politicians who support gun owners' rights. How these politicians feel about other issues is (again, in theory) irrelevant.

But is it partisan *because* of the NRA, or is the NRA simply playing the game that has already been established?

In response to this, the overwhelming majority of citezens who own "assault weapons"(which is a ludicrous term, they do nothing that any other type of firearm can't do, which is launch a projectile from the end of a barrel) use them for recreational target practice or in competitions. I have no problem with safety based tests or competency tests such as being able to hit what your shooting at. But banning any type of firearm from law abiding citizens is just insane. It does nothing to prohibit criminals from obtaining them, or using them to commit crimes. It only takes that firearm out of my hands, which I was using lawfully to begin with

Derwood:

There is no answer here that you will find acceptable, so why should we answer. If I told you I wanted an "assault rifle" to shot nickels off a tree branch, you would say "why can't you do that with a Red Ryder?" It's a trick question and you know it. The Second Amendment is one of the most straight forward Amendments of them all "....the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That's the beauty of the verbage, I am not required to justify to you or my government "which" arms I have a right to bear.

I will go ahead and answer your followup question: Yes, I believe the 2nd Amendment explicitly means that I can own a M1 Abrams Tank if I can afford to purchase it.

---------- Post added at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:08 PM ----------

I'm not looking for an acceptable answer. I'm looking to learn more about why gun owners want/do things differently than myself. I'd hate to be accused of being closed-minded (again)...

depends on the gun owner, i guess. Myself, I don't hunt, but we also know how I view the constitution, it's limits on government, and it's statement of rights belonging to the people. For me, it's more a matter of my simple right and duty as an American.

That sounds like a great idea! Why stop there! I would love it if my neighbors had huge bombs sitting in their basement! While there at it they should be able to have biological weapons too. I want my kids playing around large bombs and anthrax! Imagine the fun we could all have.....

here's an interesting possibility. by coincidence in the broader sense (which means this thread is old enough now that it can encompass a range of possibilities) i've been working on a criminology project and in the course of that have been looking at alot of studies concerning guns, crime rates and what if any relations there are between them...turns out that none of the claims which are repeated as certainties by the 2nd amendment fundies here seem to be supported by actual studies. for example, until quite recently, there was no single, agreed upon statistical dataset, no agreed upon conventions for defining various types of crime simply because police information is highly decentralized. studies that have tried to investigate correlations then would run into problems of data first of all. there are problems of method that follow from this, and then there are the usual but annoying problems of analysis-for-hire that have proliferated over the past decade or so as various interest groups have tried to paralyze coherent discussion by buying analytic outcomes through the mechanism of earmarking funding in such a way that the outcomes are built into acceptance of the funding--and even this is not systematic, so you can't really tell whether instance a funded by institution 1 is necessarily worthless.

what this all means is i am coming to the conclusion that most appeals to "studies" or "facts" made in this and in most similar threads are bullshit, nothing more and nothing less---but that the way around this is to do the actual work and get access to real data, read the real data and put yourself through the trouble of trying to sort out what is and is not good information.

i don't think most of the folk who have posted here have done a bit of that.
instead i think that positions are based on third or fourth hand summaries of data that people haven't looked at, often cherry-picked, that is accepted because it conforms to positions held in advance.

i'm not sure if this is the thread to do this or if it should be another--i suppose i'll find out--but that's the problem.

i don't believe that anyone has done the basic research they pretend to have done---what i've been seeing indicates that the positions staked out here have no relation at all to the positions you see outlined in actual studies of guns, violence, crime and the effects of regulation on them.

and i don't think there is a single position within the literature that i've happened to look at--so it's not a matter of simply standing received wisdom (this is an ironic term) on it's head--rather i don't think anyone's done the work.

rather than start barraging you with citations---what information--specific information--do you rely on to formulate your views about guns, gun control, violence/crime?
anything?
if you do, show the information--put up citations or bite articles.
there debates never get anywhere in part because they're not based on anything more advanced than the competing statements "i like guns" and "i don't like guns"....

Feel free to make light of my statement. My point is valid: the second amendment does not define "which" arms a person can keep. Since it does not specifically limit the right, it implies "all of them." I didn't write it.

The second amendment protects the right to bear arms. Bombs and biological weapons are ordinance.

Well, interpreted as that tells me it's the right to bear "small arms."

This includes the M2 Browning
http://www.urban-armory.com/m2.JPG

It takes the one on the far left
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...comparison.jpg

Is this a reasonable upper limit?

EDIT:
Oh, and thanks for #701, roachboy. I think it puts a bullet through the heart of the matter.

?

If we are discussing whether something is a right or not and/or whether the Obama administration will successfully pass another AWB the stats' Roachboy is requesting are not particularly relevant.

I don't quote statistics often as they are easily misinterpreted and as Roachboy said most data are collected in imperfect ways by organizations with agendas. Those who don't have an Agenda (like FBI studies) do a fairly good job of showing things as they are...but make no (good) attempt to show causality. This is absolutely true for both sides of the argument, though anti-gun groups tend to rely more on statistics (IMHO) because they are trying to justify banning guns, while most Pro-Gun groups simply point at the 2'nd Amendment.

Ultimately my argument is not about numbers, but rather these two things: The right to defend myself is not something any government should be able to strip from me. And self defense is an individual responsibility in that the police can only deter crime and punish criminals after the fact.


I have read a lot of junk stats on both sides during my life. I have a Math degree and I notice when the numbers are messed up. I have also seen some legitimate studies which I will have to dig up in a day or two when I have some more time.

You are perfectly correct that people should take reasonable care to validate information before continuing to spread it, though it is unreasonable to expect people to sift through the data sets for each study...that would take WAY too much time. It is much easier to read peer-reviewed studies from reliable sources.


Here are a few quick ones:

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Uniform Crime Reports (The FBI's crime stats)

There is also this: http://www.gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-fa...5-0-screen.pdf
I have not attempted to verify everything (or even most of it), but since they cite every source it is easy enough for any particular issue which catches your fancy.

Bureau of Justice Statistics Firearms and Crime Statistics (another good .Gov Site)

I think the stat that the NRA uses most frequently in this debate is "the first AWB did not lower gun related crime at all", which is probably what Roachboy is questioning.

And is a tank considered arms or ordinance? According to some here they should be able to own a tank. To me there isn't much difference between owning a bomb and owning a tank. Especially when you consider a tank basically fires explosives.

Now I am not arguing that all weapons should be confiscated. Instead i'm arguing that a line of what is reasonable exists. The true debate comes at where is that line. One can argue that such a line does not exist but they are likely a fool or just trying to argue for the sake of argument.

I'm not comfortable defining a reasonable upper limit on legal ownership. Except for weapons such as shotguns and big game guns that have a sporting purpose as recognized by the attorney general, a gun with a larger bore than the .50BMG must be registered under the NFA as a destructive device, and the buyer must pass a comprehensive background check, be fingerprinted, pay a tax in addition to the price of the gun, and notify the ATF if they plan to take it out of state. It appears that NFA restrictions on machine guns, destructive devices, short rifles, short shotguns, and AOWs have been effective in preventing individuals from using legally owned title II weapons in crimes. I oppose the 1984 closing of the machine gun registry, and I support maintaining the NFA as a reasonable and effective way to limit the availability of machine guns and the like to criminals. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop Norinco from shipping automatic rifles, rocket launchers, and tanks to the US with the intent of selling them to gang members, but that's a discussion for another thread.

The M2 is an automatic weapon and subject to NFA restrictions, anyway.
A tank is prohibitively expensive for criminal use and I believe US military regulations prevent the sale of such surplus vehicles unless the mounted weapons have been removed or rendered permanently inoperable. I argue that it is unlikely that anyone but a collector would be willing to purchase one, and if this unlikely scenario were to occur, the gun would have to be registered as a destructive device requiring the aforementioned background check process and $200 tax stamp, as would each round of ammunition containing more than 1/4oz of explosive or 4oz of propellant.

A criminal who wanted a tank, Marvin Heemeyer for example, would be more likely to improvise a tank out of a bulldozer, concrete, and steel plating with a few cameras and guns poking through holes.

The First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech," which is just as straightforward as the Second. And yet, the Supreme Court has routinely held that there are limits to what kind of speech is protected by the First. Why should the Second be any different?

What case law was that first amendment limit born?

I don't know the case names off the top of my head, and I can't find my old casebook right now, but cases like 'obscenity' and 'fighting words' are not protected, and commercial speech has only limited protection. I tend to go further than the Supreme Court myself, and think that seditious libel shouldn't be protected where it encourages lawless activity, but the Supreme Court generally uses the 'clear and present' danger test for those types of speech. IOW, I can't encourage an angry mob to overrun DC, but I can suggest it wouldn't be a bad idea on an internet messageboard.

No. The first attempts to limit the right of free speech was done just 9 years after the adoption of the constitution by Pres. John Adams when he signed the Alien and Sedition acts.

Just 9 years after the adoption of a constitution that based their nation on things such as the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, our newly formed government started infringing upon them.

I was just using it as an example of limiting the right of free speech. I wasn't trying to imply that it was the first attempt. ;)

understood. there are many examples, unfortunately, throughout our history that we let our government get away with.

I don't think the limits on the first are right, either. Nobody should be deprived of any right without individual due process, and if they harm someone while exercising a right (shooting someone other than in self defense or defense of others, or slandering someone,) they should be held accountable for that harm.

That's the way it was introduced and presented to the states/people when the constitution was adopted. The 5th Amendment was created to help assuage any fears that a government body could use any influential policies to infringe on inalienable rights by appealing to authoritative means. Then this 'no right is absolute' crap came along and was bought wholesale via the use of a 'good crisis'. it was fun while it lasted.