Posted on 01/18/2005 11:25:23 AM PST by newsgatherer
Handgun Control Inc. says it wants to keep handguns out of the hands of the wrong people. Guess what. If you are a law abiding citizen who owns a handgun you have the "wrong hands."
Banning guns works. That is why New York and Chicago have such high murder rates.
Washington D.C. which has strict gun controls has a murder rate of 69 per 100,000. Indianapolis, without them has an awesome murder rate of 9 per 100,000. Gun control works.
You can incapacitate an intruder with tear gas or oven spray. If you shoot him with a .357 he will get angry and kill you.
A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman standing with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.
The "New England Journal of Medicine" has some excellent articles on gun control just as "The American Rifleman" carries equally great articles on open-heart surgery.
The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, refers to the National Guard which was created in 1903, 112 years later.
The "right of the people peaceably to assemble" and "the right of the people to be secure in their homes" refers to individuals while "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to the state.
One should consult an automobile technician for vehicle repairs, a computer programmer for problems with your hard drive and Sara Brady for firearms expertise.
Most citizens cannot be trusted so we need firearms laws because we can trust citizens to abide by them.
If you are not familiar with most of the above you have not been following the firearms debate. In fact you haven't tuned in to the liberals who still have their hands in your pockets and on your firearms even though the pounding defeats ...
(Excerpt) Read more at Christian-news-in-maine.com ...
Sigh, you are right about this. California has already banned sniper rifles. Gun enthusiasts are not happy about it I'm sure. But this is just the beginning of an assault on our 2nd Amendment rights. --Fee
The leftists don't get it -- criminals don't follow laws (they should know), only law-abiding citizens do. So how does denying the Second Amendment Rights of law-abiding citizens ensure that criminals won't have guns??? (assinine question, I know).
I can buy a hot gun on any one of a hundred street corners in 30 minutes of request. Criminals can get all the guns they want. Just about anywhere.
Your comparing Indians to terrorist?
Why?
I had a teacher who absolutly hated the gun control commercials where you see little timmy climbing into his parents closet and then you hear bang and the screen goes black and writing comes up that says x number of kids were killed last year due to handguns.
What he wanted to see (and me too) was a commercial that showed someone breaking into a house he climbs the stairs and you see a women laying in bed as her door knob turns then the theif walks in and the lady pulls a gun as you hear bang and the screen goes blank. Now the writing says x number of violent crimes were prevented last year due to handguns.
I know people are really passionate about this issue, so I just want to preface my comment by saying that I'm not trying to start an argument, just asking a real question that I don't know the answer to. Okay, here goes:
The 2nd Amendment says the people have the right to keep and bear arms. At the time the 2nd was ratified, that meant, I guess, rifles, muskets, etc., (I don't know too much about firearm history) as those were the weapons used by militias as well as for hunting and personal protection. As firearms technology expanded, the 2nd amendment seems to have expanded as well (aargh...a living Constitution?) Now there seems to be a right to own weapons that are much more advanced (handguns, high-powered rifles, "assault" weapons) than those used in the late 1700s. But there's also some limit on what arms the people are allowed to keep and bear. For example, I can't keep a cannon or a shoulder rocket or a nuclear missile in my backyard for protection (or hunting), even though those are arguably "arms" as well.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is: how and why do we decide which arms are and aren't allowed under the 2nd Amendment?
Thanks.
You might want to take that up with the author, not the guy who posted his article ;'}
By your argument the 1st Amendment would only apply to quill pens and parchment, and town criers. That's all there was in the late 1700s so obviously the Freedom of Speech does not apply to E-mail, blogs, television, radio, satellite, internet, whatever.
Private citizens actually owned frigates and other warships and could be pressed into service with the US Navy in that era. Private citizens owned cannons as well.
> how and why do we decide which arms are and aren't allowed under the 2nd Amendment?
That always starts a fight, and it almost always ends up with someone mentioning nuclear weapons. However, here's the logic I woudl use:
1) The internal police (local, State, FBI) should have access to whatever class of weapons they want.
2) The citizens should have ready and uninfringed access to the exact same class of weapons... *at* *the* *least*.
So... if the cops got machine guns, the people should as well. If the cops got A-10 tank busters, the people should be able to as well (if they can afford 'em...).
If the cops don't like the idea of me having a bazooka or an MP-5... then *they* shouldn't have 'em either.
Another discriminator I'd find reasonable to discuss: the citizens should ahve any weapon they want... until you get to weapons of mass devastation. Things like bombs and grenades and flamethrowers... *perhaps* those should have a license requirement.
The onyl way anyone will take my guns is over my dead body.
"I guess what I'm trying to ask is: how and why do we decide which arms are and aren't allowed under the 2nd Amendment?"
If it is considered a "one person" weapon, such as an individual soldier would carry. It should be allowed. "Arms" inplies military weaponry. I will backtrack a bit and say that keeping "fully automatic" weapons (machine guns) or shoulder fired antitank weapons, etc. is proper. However, the semi-automatic versions (what really counts) of all single user military weapons should be available to the public. I think you should be able to possess an M16, and its variants with all features, except it should be limited to semi-auto fire. There should be no limits on magazine capacity, etc. Except when those arms are used for hunting - which most modern military arms are useless for. That is my opinion.
I agree. Such a commerical would espcially make an impact if it also included the x number of rapes prevented due to armed women.
Well you can thank the left for that. The 2nd Amendment has been infringed upon since the 1930s.
Our government is supposed to govern with the consent of the governed - us. Thus, our government gets its authority from us - the government has the rights we chose to give to it. Our government only has the right to possess nukes because we gave it that right. We can't give rights that we don't already have ourselves; thus we have the right, if not the means, as individuals to possess nukes.
Hard to argue with that logic, if you buy into that quaint old notion of "consent of the governed".
“I guess what I'm trying to ask is: how and why do we decide which arms are and aren't allowed under the 2nd Amendment?”
The founding fathers did not discuss the issue in these terms. They spoke of managing the militia when they discussed the Constitution (see Madison’s notes) . It was not until the federalists and the anti-federalists got into squabbling over a bill of rights (as a requirement before the states would ratify the Constitution) that the Second Amendment was discussed. In those discussions, it was made very, very clear that the militia was the body of the people capable of bearing arms. There is not a single founder on the winning side of the argument in favor of a bill of rights that spoke of a collective (state) right. The people mentioned in the amendment were the same people found in the rest of the bill of rights. The Militia Act of 1792 specifically spoke of the militia as being the body of the male population capable of bearing arms and also specifically required these people to arrive for service with their own military style arms.
The first mention of a collective right did not occur until a Tennessee case in 1840 involving concealed weapons and based solely on the Tennessee state Constitution. The first federal case to invent a collective right was US v Adams, a district court case in the 1930’s that traces its historic rationale all the way back to this case in 1840.
Every Supreme court case specifically protects the rights of the people to own arms of a military sort as usefull to a militia. The only rights that have been proscribed are the rights to own arms not suitable to a militia. In fact, the overwhelming number of court cases out there only speak to a states ability to regulate concealed carry.
So, the right is an individual right and the specific weapons protected under this right are those suitable for militia use. For this reason, I would have loved to have seen a challenge to the assault weapons ban based on court precedent.
A flamethrower would be awesome.
"Arms" are weapons which a man could carry. Firearms are those which use gunpowder and can be carried. Those claiming that the amendment allows possession of any and all weapons are guilty of reading into the document those things they wish. This is exactly what they condemn the liberals for.
They're all allowed. The issue is what one does with them.
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