journeyman,

good points, they are well-taken. i was approaching the issue from drawing direct parallels from the context in which the bill was enacted (post revolutionary years) and recreating the situation under modern circumstances. your assesment is undoubtedly more realistic in our day, times have changed. the importance of holding firearms has gone from the ability to organize a legitimate military force to a serious speedbumb in an attempt to enforce martial law.

right on.

Firearms are merely tools that enable free men to overthrow opressive governments. Hunting and self-defense are secondary to the first. Our Founding Fathers knew that all forms of government become opressive over time. They gave us in the USA a powerful deterent to that happening here. Banning firearms is not possible. Any gunsmith or machinist can build from scratch an operational single shot in two days, a semi-automatic in two weeks and a full-automatic in a month. One can never put the genie of knowledge back into the bottle. Mastering the use of a firearm to a high degree of accuracy is very satisfying and is a useful skill. It is also absolutely necessary to the responsible firearm owner.

"God made man, Sam Colt made them all equals".

Only an oppressive and unpopular government would fear an armed populous.

It's not really a funny topic but here's an attempt at humor on this topic that comes with a certain voice of reason on this topic. I can't tell you how many times I have avoided neighborhoods in my home town where firearms are routinely discharged by one so called human at other humans -- and low and behold I've never been shot or had a firearm discharged in my general direction. Well....except for this one time on my uncle's farm...but that' a story for another thread.

I own a few firearms and I do enjoy target shooting and the occasional dear hunt. Given the number of bad things that go on with weapons like this I'd be more than okay with giving them up in the name of making the world a safer place.

My weapon of choice in the mean time is a Colt 45 Gold Cup edition. It's a fabulously smooth pull of the trigger and a splendid release of power that is overwhelming. It's no video game pinkie. This thing would do the real thing in terms of damage. It's great to take several 2 liter pop bottles full of water out to the fields and just open up on them. The requisite beer/pop cans are also fun targets. Shooting clay pigeons with the remington over/under 12 is also a lot of fun. But....like I said I'd give them all up for the sake of a safer world if society determined that to be necessary.

I dont realy see what is so fun about guns. I support peoples rights to own them though because it is in the Bill of Rights, I support everypart of the Bill of Rights because when one part is destroyed by government that creats precident for another better part such as freedom of speech to be destroyed.

Ever blown clay pigeons out of the sky with a 12 gauge?

Ever blown apart milk jugs full of water with hollow point .45s?

Ever shredded a 55 gallon barrel with an Uzi or a Thompson submachine gun?


Try one of the above and then get back to me and tell me that you didn't have *just* a little fun doing it...