2nd Amendment Supporters

ROTFLMAO!

 

I used it to point out the fact that gun control is both real and constitutional. How much gun control is a matter for the people (and their representatives to decide).

 

Which is why I'm in favor of strict restrictions regarding the manufacturing of guns: they often end up in the hands of the wrong people, illegally. As gun-rights advocates so often like to point out, more laws aren't the answer--guns (manufactured and sold legally, initially) get to criminals anyway. So let's get rid of the guns themselves.

You can't have it both ways. Loose laws and processes allow criminals to arm themselves. Tight laws and processes restrict legitimate, law-abiding gun owners.

 

In my opinion, all U.S. citizens should have the right to buy and bare arms.
However, should that person use a gun to commit a crime, "then" that person should loose the right to bare and buy arms!!

The 2nd admendment was put in so that states could form and call up a miltia.

Therefore, the question that I will ask is this; If a state needed to call up the militia in a rapid peried of time, such as the "minutemen", then how could they do it if the people did not already own these guns to bring to bare against an enemy?

Also, if the 2nd amendment and all the other amendments were good enough for the founding fathers and the times in which they lived in, then why are they not good enough for the times in which we live in?

Basically, we are allowing criminals to take away our rights, and that is not right.

Rich Hartel

 

--guns (manufactured and sold legally, initially) get to criminals anyway. So let's get rid of the guns themselves.

You can't have it both ways. Loose laws and processes allow criminals to arm themselves. Tight laws and processes restrict legitimate, law-abiding gun owners. [/B][/QUOTE]

===


Hmmm!


premise: For the state to stop gun crimes criminals must not have guns.

premise: But criminals take guns away from those who legally own guns.

conclusion: For the state to stop gun crimes let the state instead take guns away from those who legally own guns.

Make sense to me.

 

Decimon:

Interesting. So there's a "natural" right to bear arms? Hmmm. Yes, I suppose that there is. In a free society, we can do as we will unless the law somehow proscribes it.

This fits in well with my LL.M. work at the moment. What is a criminal? Someone who does crimes. What are crimes? Actions that the sovereign has declared to be criminal.

QED: We create criminals by definition. There ARE NO natural crimes!

Well, I don't buy this theory (but must learn it for exam time) because I am not a legal positivist.

 

I could kick myself for somehow losing a link to a partial transcipt of a New York trial. A guy was trying to argue that he wasn't obligated to pay New York State taxes. The judge declined to go over precedent cases but he did explain how New York State became Sovereign in place of King George. Much of what he said had to do with determinations of land grants and other monarchal artifacts.

I expect that what he said would mostly apply to the rest of the Eastern States and that in your venue there would be an equivalent of Spanish land grants to be determined.

I thought that quite interesting in my layman fashion and imagine it to be a fascinating subject for legal scholars.

 

Decimon:

I ended my post a little too soon. The reason I am not a legal positivist, at least not a pure positivist, is that I think that there are social restrictions on the behaviour of all humans regardless of whether there is a sovereign sufficiently powerful to enforce his will. Somethings are just "wrong".

Murder and theft seem to be frowned upon almost everywhere and at almost all times, if you see what I mean. Still, it is a most interesting question!

 

I believe that guns DO NOT kill people. Abortion clinics kill people


Guns AND Abortion clinics kill people!


Tom

 

Apparently, you've never met my brother-in-law. I love the guy and he's a most honorable stand-up fellow.

We sometimes debate gun-control because it's his favorite topic (not mine). He argues for making everything legal - fully automatic weapons, 50 caliber machine guns, land mines, rocket launchers, cannons, etc.. I thought I had come up with a great argument once. I thought that I'd argue that we should make legal the individual ownership of nuclear weapons packed in suitcases. This would then give us equality against terrorists who might obtain ownership of such devices. My thought was that when he argued against me I could then turn around and use his same argument against him for making some of those heavy duty military weapons illegal. You guessed it, he out smarted me by agreeing that nuclear weapons should be legal for individual ownership.

 

I could live with that, but as I mentioned before, the Sarah Brady crowd will settle for nothing less than a total ban on private ownership of firearms.

That's the reason that the NRA rabidly fights almost every gun-control measure.....there is no dealing with those people in a fair way.

 

Well, that's just crazy.

I'd love to own a M-16A1, because full-auto fire is up there with sex as a thrill, but I can understand why the government bans full-auto weapons. It's reasonable.

My AR-15 gives me the nostalgia of having the same type of weapon I carried in the Army, without violating the law.

Speaking of military weapons, I'll use this opportunity to take a shot at the liberal media, which loves to suggest that private gun ownership should be limited to flintlock muskets, since that's all that was available when the 2nd Amendment was written.

Fine. The same thing applies to you also, so start using hand-cranked printing presses, since that was all that was available when the 1st Amendment was written.

 

One of the cases I cited, United States v. Cruikshank 92 U.S. 542 (1875) , addresses that very point.

 

That's much to wade through.

The gist of my contention is that we are, thankfully, a nation of negative rights, i.e., we citizens have a right to do anything not specifically proscribed. The burden is on government to defend proscription and not on the citizen to prove a right. Or that's how it's supposed to be.

The Bill of Rights proscribes what may be proscribed.

My problem with with "natural rights" is the suggestion that rights must be delineated, i.e., that we are a nation of positive rights.

 

His whole arguement and what seems to be a very common theme amongst many of the gun advocates is that the second amendment is meant to arm the people in order to prevent the government from becoming overpowerful and being able to take away our constitutional rights.

It would be very handy to have a few suitcase size atomic weapons if we were in an all out war against the government. Or being able to feel some measure of security behind your own personal field of land minds. From his point of view the "gun control nuts" have already won most of the war against the second amendment.

 

Oh. My. God.

Why has this august group whose opinions and thoughtfulness, generally, I have so come to respect and even admire as I've lurked in these forums the past few months allowed itself to be baited by this right-winged, fascist thread starter?

Are those of us who have worked so hard over the decades to sanitize from our speech patterns all (or at least as many as possible) unconscious references or sentence constructs which reveal our inherent sexism not tipped-off to this man's fundamental misogyny by his address, "Gentlemen?"

Is there anyone here who actually believes the thread-starter's opening paragraph and does not recognize it in his attempt here to simply "shit disturb" and then to step back and watch the fireworks? This is the same sort of mentality that has caused fire departments to assign one person at every fire to photograph or videotape the faces of all spectators, knowing that its statistically likely that the fire starter is among them.

His thead subject, "2nd Amendment Supporters," and the way he has worded his question (actually it's a statement but for some reason he put a question mark behind it) as, "Now, I'm just wondering how many of you support the second amendment?" [sic] betray not only his belief that the second amendment guarantees the individual right to bear arms (which it does not), but also illustrates his inability to ask a poll question in a neutral way (which is the only way to poll any group about anything). How about, "Now, I'm just wondering how many of you believe that the second amendment guarantees the individual right to bear arms." The use of the word "support" betrays the thread-starter's belief that the second amendments guarantee of the right is a foregone conclusion and he is simply wondering whom among you agrees. What possible purpuse can that serve here?

And I'm hesitant to even tackle here such an unconscionable declaration as, "Personally, I believe that guns DO NOT kill people. Abortion clinics kill people." Again... Oh. My. God.

What's wrong with you people? Where is the socio-political sophistication? Don't give this guy and his not-so-thinly-veiled agenda this kind of attention! That's exactly what he's looking for. Where are the psych majors among you? Do you not recognize the pathology in his post that started this thread in the first place? Look how you've all just played-in. He couldn't have spread his poisonous message and way of seeing the world more effectively if he'd taken-out and ad!

Geez! Gimmee a break.

 

My view is that even if his post was troll, so what? It didn't hurt anything and I was able to amuse myself somewhat.

 

Oh, I dunno. Maybe it IS a troll. But the vituperation level is low...people are being polite...gun rights are a SERIOUS political issue these days, may indeed have a measureable outcome on the presidential election...besides, the 2nd amendment is THERE, in the constitution and the fact is, even the Courts don't seem to be exactly sure what it means.

I just thought it was interesting, I guess.

 

Re: Re: 2nd Amendment Supporters

Relax.. Drink some of that fine wine from the vineyard and take a deep breath.

By stating that the thread is "right-winged and fascist" you are assuming I am some kind of a racist, backward hick with "KKK" tattooed on my forehead.

A bit about myself. My nationality is Filipino (as in brown-skinned Asian.) But I am also very proud to say that I am an American. My parents, baby sister, and I immigrated to California in 1984. I was 12 at the time. I spent my teenage years in Los Angeles where everybody around me was liberal. Not that there is anything wrong with that, for I embrace some liberal beliefs.

My parents were poor. They had nothing but the American dream that someday their kids will become college-educated and productive American citizens. Fast forward years later and their kids became successful engineers.

I proudly served my beloved adopted country for 11 years both as an enlisted soldier and officer. I served with elite units such as the 1st Armored, 101st Airborne (Air Assault) and the 82nd Airborne Divisions. I attained the rank of Captain in the Reserves.
Do you know why I enlisted? Because I needed the money for college. The only thing my parents could afford was, well, nothing.. Do you know why I decided to become an officer? It was because I loved America. I raised my right hand not once, not twice, but several times, and swore to "Defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

When I took the oath of office as a newly commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, it hit me. We are fighting for the Constitution, BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS THE CONSTITUTION? Unfortunately, many Americans do not know what it is.. That's when I began to study the Constitution on my own time and by taking classes at the local college. And that is why I started this thread. Everybody made some very good points about this issue, and I thank everyone for taking the time to respond to my "troll."

I will guess that you have never seen combat, much less served this great country. Not that there is anything wrong with being a civilian. But have you ever been to a war-torn country such as Bosnia and Kosovo? Do you have any idea what the outcome would have been if innocent civilians were given the opportunity to defend themselves by means of owning firearms?

As I mentioned, I spent my teenage years in LA. (I live in Northeast Pennsylvania now). Do you actually believe that California's tight gun control DECREASED crime rate? How do you explain the fact that countries such as Finland and Switzerland are full of gun-owners and yet they are some of the safest countries in the world? I know you will not believe this statement, but the 2nd Amendment is America's original homeland defense..

Video games and television/cable TV are more dangerous than guns. Do you know why? Because violent games and TV shows dysensitize people. That is why we are a violent society. I'm not going to get into it, but In the 1960s the Army perfected ways to turn recruits into merciless warriors and efficient klllers. Unfortunately, the media replicated these techniques.

And finally, not to get off the tangent. Please explain to me how abortion is NOT murder?


PS.

I spent most of my army years in all-male combat units. I got used to saying "Gentlemen." I sincerely apologize. I did not think a girl would respond to this post.

Also, feel free to make any grammatical correction. I apologize ahead of time. English is only my fourth language.

DeOppresso Liber, E Pluribus Unum and HOOAAHH!

Yabba Dabba Doo!
(Sorry. My knowledge of famous Latin quotes is rather limited.)

 

BTW. You completely missed the point. This thread is not just about gun ownership. It is about preserving "inalienable rights" guaranteed by our founding fathers.