[familyop]

"Personally, I would draw the line at WMDs, but the Constitution does not say any such thing."

Would the framers have put impulsive village clowns in charge of cannon and a magazine? Did random individuals each take a cannon, powder and cannonballs to their homes? In my opinion, we should consider the founders' intents when commenting (text, history and tradition) along with compelling government interests (interests of the people in general).

That's what our forefathers did while deciding what to put in the Constitution. They assumed that we would know, for example, about the right to our lives. They would only have allowed control of a WMD to be distributed between a group of most trusted individuals with thorough background checks.

Individuals presumed to be reasonable and in possession of rifles, not so regulated. Only an extremely small fraction of murders are committed with rifles, even with over 20 million superphlasmatic rifles (modern sporting rifles) in common use today. Modern sporting rifles are, on balance, more beneficial to "the people" (government) than deleterious (self-defense, sport, health, national defense, etc.).

We need control of drugs, criminals and psychotics--not more gun control, and that's one argument that needs to be presented to legislators and judges. We don't need the online insults, false accusations of disloyalty and threats against our own politicians and best justices that we've been seeing. Those kinds of comments are nothing other than coercion in favor of gun control.

If we want something from politicians and justices, we must be the good guys in their minds--not the crazy bad guys.

[zeugma]

Would the framers have put impulsive village clowns in charge of cannon and a magazine? Did random individuals each take a cannon, powder and cannonballs to their homes? In my opinion, we should consider the founders' intents when commenting (text, history and tradition) along with compelling government interests (interests of the people in general).

I'll stick with the warship thing because it is obvious. Canon fire from a ship of war can absolutely reduce an entire town into rubble. At the tie of the founding, any rube with the money could commission and/or purchase as many as he had money for. Granted, manning a warship generally required that you be able to get along with fellow human beings. On the other hand, we also know from history that some very bad men had access to and made use of such armament for evil purposes. Others used the same kind of resources to protect the livelihood of other men, and ended up with Letters of Marque.

Despite the fact that there were evil men, the fine liberty-minded gentlemen who set this nation up did not put restrictions on or dissemination of what were the most powerful implements of destruction they knew of. It is this that we should consider when discussing such evil concepts as 'gun control'.

If I had ownership of a JDAM, MOAB, or even a nuclear weapon, it would be of no more danger to my neighbors than my pistol(s) or rifle(s) are.

My argument is that the Constitution does not speak to the issue at all. It says, quite simply 'shall not be infringed'. It also speaks of the breadth of the right when it speaks to Letters of Marque. If you would like to change or limit that, there is a procedure spelled out for that. I don't have any particular problem with it within certain parameters, such as WMDs as I mentioned.

Some folk might draw the line at crew-served weapons. I would not go quite that far. Texas history speaks to a town/militia in Goliad using a canon to protect itself. Personally, I'd like to see the militia actually being put to use in emergency and other situations. The concept really needs to be revived. A militia should also have access to all the hardware and equipment that it needs to be able to perform its role.

Prior to the 20th century, if you wanted to buy some dynomite, you'd just buy it at a local retailer - no questions asked. There was little mass and random destruction despite that. Many a farmer saved himself quite a bit of time, money, and effort when he needed to blow some stumps on his property. Occasionally he might have even injured himself or others if he was not experienced with using it. That was not, however, any reason to ban such material. In fact those who done blowed themselves up, kinda resolved the entire issue as far as they were concerned.

So, if you have concerns, follow the procedure spelled out in the Constitution, and don't support end-runs around it just as a matter of convenience. the fact that some men are evil is no reason to restrict my rights.