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It still refers to "the people's right the keep and bear arms"

It means that both Militias and personal weaponry are legal and a fundamental right of the respected parties(the states have the right to have a Militia, and people have the right to own weaponry)

The biggest reason for this is so that the people have the ability to oppose the government by force if it becomes necessary to protect their freedoms. It allows for another revolution to take place. The government can't gun down mobs without fear of armed reprisal.

Rebellions in the past have always been hampered by the ability to arm the participants. This basically makes it a little easier. And is thus incentive for the Government to stay loyal to the people.

Sure, I agree that's what it says and what the intent was. What I disagreed with was what was posted previously by someone else, who explicitly pretended there was no mention of militias at all, when in fact the 4th word in the sentence is "militia". If we're going to have this discussion I'd like to at least try to have it as honestly as possible.

I think the stance that what the amendment actually meant was that "citizens only had the right to own a weapon under the auspices of a citizen militia" was a completely legitimate interpretation (not one I agree with) up until 2010, when SCOTUS knocked down the Chicago gun ban. At that point I thought it was made clear that wasn't how they read it, and the current usage of it (anyone can own one within some regulation) is the correct one.

And I think the founders would have agreed with them.

They probably never in their life thought that someone would ever try to outlaw civilian guns, which at the time were often more advanced then the military. Kentucky Long Rifles for example. Primarly a civilian weapon, but far superior to other rifles of the time period.

I say we all just get issued jackets with a claymore front back and sides, and if your heart stops they detonate - and you have to wear them every time you leave the house. It'd cut down on murders, robbery, fights, traffic, lines at any sort of business - no one would just stand around yakking, people would get their gak done and go home.

Up to the individual on what what he wants with his weapon. If he wants a 100 rds magazine then he's going to want a 100 rds magazine. Me personnaly being more fimiliar with my weapon I perfer the 30 round mag. Less chance of a weapon jam from a double feed plus if one of my 30 rds mag keeps having a failure of feed I can fix it simply by stretching the spring or compressing it. More simpler compare to fooling around (guessing) a $100 or more one hundred rds magazine trying to do the same thing to a 30 round mag.

Thanks Ouze for clarifying for me the high capacity magazine portion. I disfavor a high capacity mag like the one we're talking about since I never consider to purchase them let alone look at them.

Also I never select "auto" while in a combat theater but always on "semi" in a shooting match. I have more muzzle control firing one round then dealing with a automatic burst. Reason why is I'm terrified of rounds fired after the first on where their going to go after muzzzle climb. My assigned weapon is a M4A1 on deployment

Better disbunk this to since some going to go with converting a existing semi weapon to automatic weapon by filing the hammer. Can't do it becuase you have to know how to change out the lower reciever with pins and springs for both a AK and M4

Jihadin wrote:Up to the individual on what what he wants with his weapon. If he wants a 100 rds magazine then he's going to want a 100 rds magazine. Me personnaly being more fimiliar with my weapon I perfer the 30 round mag. Less chance of a weapon jam from a double feed plus if one of my 30 rds mag keeps having a failure of feed I can fix it simply by stretching the spring or compressing it. More simpler compare to fooling around (guessing) a $100 or more one hundred rds magazine trying to do the same thing to a 30 round mag.

Thanks Ouze for clarifying for me the high capacity magazine portion. I disfavor a high capacity mag like the one we're talking about since I never consider to purchase them let alone look at them.

Also I never select "auto" while in a combat theater but always on "semi" in a shooting match. I have more muzzle control firing one round then dealing with a automatic burst. Reason why is I'm terrified of rounds fired after the first on where their going to go after muzzzle climb. My assigned weapon is a M4A1 on deployment

Better disbunk this to since some going to go with converting a existing semi weapon to automatic weapon by filing the hammer. Can't do it becuase you have to know how to change out the lower reciever with pins and springs for both a AK and M4

Though what is the point to a 100 round magazine, it doesn't help with defense or hunting.

youbedead wrote:

Palindrome wrote:I have always been confused as to why Americans are so enamoured with guns and why so many seem to think that gun ownership is a basic right. I have been around firearms my whole life, they are even part of my job, but to me they are simply tools. I fail to see how anyone needs, or even wants, to own automatic weapons. I don't even own any firearms mysefl anymore as I simply have no use for them at the moment.

At the end of the day they are designed to kill and as such they need to be heavily regulated. If they aren't then you will see a lot of gun crime and shootings, its as simple as that.

It is something that is really hard to grasp as a non-american, my dad had similar issues when he emigrated here form Britain. It goes back to long before the revolution, and is ingrained in the american psyche, as pioneers and settlers it was an essential tool far more important to them then the average British subject. This continued until the French-indian war (7 years war) when colonial militia fought of the french, giving them the confidence and experience that would allow them to challenge the British. The revolution tought us that any government could be challenged by a well armed and confident populace. Guns were seen not as form of personal defense but rather as a defense against the government itself. So armaments are such an ingrained part of american society, government, and culture. We were created not by a professional army but rather by a group of armed civilians.

There are many to whom "you can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead fingers" is a literal thing. you want a war the likes of which this country hasn't seen, try it.

youbedead wrote:

Though what is the point to a 100 round magazine, it doesn't help with defense or hunting.

The point is people get boners for doing stupid crap. Why don't all cars have governors that keep them from going above 65? It's silly, and endangers lives, but it's also fun.

MrMerlin wrote:I don't think banning guns in the US would help anyone, because as pointed out many times before, there are just too many guns around.
However, if there is a country with very stict gun control laws, it should definetly stay that way. Take germany for example. Its very hard to get a gun here, and hence there are less nutjobs gunning down dozens of people. Of course we have nutjobs too, but they usually have to contend with axes and air pistols, and do waaaay less damage.

Chicago has intensive gun laws. it also is fast becoming the murder capital of the US.


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Jihadin wrote:30 rds mag and above. A twenty round mag is not considered high capacity

Yet thhat is illegal in California as a 'high capacity magazine.'

Though what is the point to a 100 round magazine, it doesn't help with defense or hunting.

The joy of putting a hundred rounds into a target (firing range) without swapping mags. Not something I recommend doing for fun because it has a possibilty of tearing a weapon up (fire pin more likely) but the carbon buildup in the gas tubes if not cleared would required a weaponsmith to look into if not properly cleaned.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Jihadin wrote:or dealing with law enforcement

But he just surrendered to the police. The body armour was to ensure his survival of shooting people in a theatre, not a gunfight with the police.

His chances of surviving a gunfight in a dark, gas filled theatre with a blinded civilian with a handgun is pretty good with a Kevlar vest.
His chances of surviving a gunfight in an open street with a SWAT team packing fully automatic weaponry is slim to nil.

There's no point in being an infamous psychopath if you aren't alive to enjoy the infamy.

It would be difficult. Stopping the VMI killer would not have been difficult. Stopping would be rapist X would also not be difficult.

IN my instance we had (have) a stalker. he would not have been stopped by the police. Indeed the police recommended the wife be armed at all times. I am not sacrificing her safety for whatever nonsense laws become reality.

Grey Templar wrote:

Evilledz wrote:I don't understand this need for guns either, for hunting seems reasonable but the idea that it's okay to have multiple weapons with which you can go on a killing spree with doesn't seem particularly logical.

The other thing that I don't understand is the insistence that a law from the 1800s entitles people to possess weapons. Considering we were also trading slaves and hanging people in the 1800s it doesn't quite seem right that the second amendment shouldn't also be adjusted slightly.

I also agree with matty on the fact that there are too many guns now to remove them all. I think stricter gun laws are definitely a necessity though, like one firearm per household. I don't really understand why you'd need more than one weapon.

Why would someone need more then one car?

Why would someone need more then a couple pairs of shoes?

Why would someone need to make more then what their basic cost of living is?


The issue isn't the guns. Its the person behind the gun. This guy could just as easily have committed this act with a hatchet and a pipewrench. The difference in casualities would have been minimal, especially since it wouldn't have been as immediatly obvious what was going on whereas when a gun goes off you know exactly whats going on. Or let just say he did it with a couple of 9mms.

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people" and its never going to be anything different.

Should we regulate knives too? I mean, more people get hurt by those things then they do by guns.

Think about the number of people killed by drunk drivers each year compared to the number of people killed by guns. It's roughly equal or greater, but no one says that we should limit a person to one bottle a month.
With all of the damage drugs do , we still have people saying they should be legalized because prohibition didn't work.
Prohibition on guns? Ain't gonna work.

Yeah, although drugs and liquor are much more likely to cause permanant damage* then guns. And of course all 3 problems are often interrelated.

*And by that I refer to the change of having guns about and drugs/liquor about compared to each other. Obviously if bullets are flying they will do more damage. But guns by themselves are less likely to cause damage then drugs/stuff. Addictions feth more people over then anything else.

Grey Templar wrote:Yeah, although drugs and liquor are much more likely to cause permanate damage then guns. And of course all 3 problems are often interrelated.

Death from gunshot is pretty permanent.

Grey Templar wrote:Yeah, although drugs and liquor are much more likely to cause permanate damage then guns. And of course all 3 problems are often interrelated.

Yup, and with the great success of Fast and Furious to show us how on the ball those in charge of regulating weapons are...

Bad wording. Explaination added.

Lots of places have loads of guns, but the USA is quite unique in the amout of gun violence it has. Nor does the gun violence in the US track particularly closely to gun regulation - it seems largely independant of efforts to restrict the use of guns.

The above is, to be perfectly honest, pretty god damn hard to deny, but the anti-gun crowd does their best to ignore it anyway. The result of denying a basic piece of reality produces the same result it always does - deeply useless policy ala the Brady Assault Weapons ban.

The pro-gun crowd doesn't do any better, as they see that gun restrictions have little effect on gun violence, figure that is enough to keep their guns safe and think no more on the issue. They don't bother to really think if there is some part still played by America's fixation on guns in gun violence, and that if gun culture, with it's deeply misanthropic central assumption that all a man can do is defend himself against the individual or social villains that will be attacking any minute now, is maybe a contributor to the sheer number of lunatics the USA produces.

The result of all of this is a culture that goes unquestioned, while legislation is sometimes debated and even more rarely passed, and always doomed to be ineffective.

Grey Templar wrote:They probably never in their life thought that someone would ever try to outlaw civilian guns, which at the time were often more advanced then the military. Kentucky Long Rifles for example. Primarly a civilian weapon, but far superior to other rifles of the time period.

This is a common myth. The Kentucky Long Rifle was far more accurate than the muskets in common use among regular infantry at the time of the war, but this is because muskets were built to have far greater rates of fire. It's comparing a Ferrari to a Bradley light tank, and deciding civilians have superior vehicles because ferraris go faster.

Instead, you should compare the Kentucky Long Rifle to the rifles in use by the British at the time, namely the Pattern 1776 and Ferguson rifles, as well as the various German designs in use among mercenaries. The 1776 had very smiilar performance to the Long Rifle, while the Ferguson was a breach loading rifle decades ahead of its time, with a rate of fire of 7 rounds a minute and an effective range equal to the long rifle (being well ahead of its time it was also too expensive and unreliable, and only a small number ever saw service.

The idea that the revolutionary forces had these rifles that were miles ahead of their time, a product of the unique US experience of frontiersmen is a great piece of mythmaking, but is ultimately a piece of fantasy. This is only compounded by the minimal effect those famous, much vaunted riflemen had in actually winning the war. In the end it was US muskets and artillery that decided the war, coupled with a little help from some French boats.

In the 1970's my 76-year old grandmother living in Detroit saved her life and her roommate when a drifter broke onto her apartment and kept on coming despite their screams. A legally owned handgun became a great equalizer for a frail elderly woman with arthritis facing a twenty year-old man with bad intentions.

Privately owned firearms used in self defense by private citizens have saved more lives that those used in violent crimes. Check out the stats here:

http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

What I find it ironic is those who worry more about gun control of private citizens, yet seem to have no problem with their government having nukes, bio-weapons, tanks, machine guns, cluster bombs, drones and similar WMD and regularly kill people in large numbers---with collateral damage of innocent civilians merely being brushed off as highly regrettable.

The Aurora shooting is indeed tragic---but when ordinary folk in distant countries are killed day in and day out by CIA piloted drones, who weeps and demands justice for them? Why should the government get a free pass employing deadly weapons indiscriminately, while quibbling about the magazine capacity of privately owned firearms?

Whenever this conversation comes up, I am always amused by the comments by the Brits, and how they do not understand why we have the 2nd Amendment.

We have the 2nd Amendment, along with the rest, because we no longer wished to be under British rule. We continue to not want to be like you, and so defend our constition and rights fiercely.

Sadly with passage is bills such as the importation bans, as well as modern full auto production being limited to just for official government purposes. The 2nd Amendment has already lost strength of purpose.

Part of the reason as mentioned before, (thank you, I would normall mention the reason like in previous threads) specifically, defense of liberty against a tyranical government. We no longer have access to a level of technology equal to that of our military.

Yes I realize some of this is simply not practical, however in the circumstance where the government gets out o fhand, and the National Guard comes sweeping through neighborhoods with tanks, grenades, full auto firearms, body armour etc.

The populace will largely be armed with hunting rifles, shotguns, hand guns, and some semi auto versions of the military rifles, as well as a smattering of full auto firearms, rarely body armour, and even more rarely tanks, grenades and artillery.

I can only hope that if push ever comes to shove, that the military by in large will side with the populace rather than following orders from a tyrranical government.

I want my tank, and I have the right to own it, granted by the bill of rights, 2nd Ammendment, and it shall not be infringed.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:Whenever this conversation comes up, I am always amused by the comments by the Brits, and how they do not understand why we have the 2nd Amendment.

We have the 2nd Amendment, along with the rest, because we no longer wished to be under British rule. We continue to not want to be like you, and so defend our constition and rights fiercely.

Laws do not make a culture.
You could have the exact same laws we do and you still wouldn't be 'like us'.
People in the UK don't get why you still have laws concerning guns that you do. We understand the whole rebellion thing but that was a long time ago and bar your own government no one is gonna oppress you and i don't see that happening any time soon...
Incidentally you can own a tank in the UK...
The guns have to be deactivated though.

I can have that same tank here, I can also technically have a fully operation tank, but only one that was here before the bans went into place. So this of course is rare.

A tank with non operation cannon is easy to get.

It doesn't strike you as a bad idea to allow people to purchase fully armed and operational tanks?

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:I want my tank, and I have the right to own it, granted by the bill of rights, 2nd Ammendment, and it shall not be infringed.

I'm pretty sure that tou actually do not have a right to own a tank.

Your 2nd Amendment grants you the right to keep and bear arms. It makes no specifications as to what those arms encompass. If the government only allows you to own single-shot, black powder, smooth-bore muskets, then that is all you are constitutionally entitled to. Everything else is a privilege: the 2nd Amendment does not specifically grant you the right to own top-of-the-line firepower.


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purplefood wrote:It doesn't strike you as a bad idea to allow people to purchase fully armed and operational tanks?

It strikes me as a bad idea to let anyone with a Napolean complex overcompensate with weaponry; and the idea of anything full-auto in the hands of such worries me to no end: not because I'm concerned about their intent, but because I generally think that most people who own full-auto rifles are fools that think they're Rambo. These people will likely have no concept of where every round beyond the first will end up, and that is a horrifying possibility.

Imagine the joys of someone in your home being hit by a stray round, because some moron unloaded high-velocity rounds from a full-auto on an intruder, and did not have the presence of mind to consider how many wooden houses those bullets will pass through before stopping. Such is my argument against full-auto.

Well, that and the fact that it is completely useless outside of suppressing fire.

EDIT: I have never known anyone who has served in the armed forces to feel the need for full-auto at home.

Brushfire wrote:Privately owned firearms used in self defense by private citizens have saved more lives that those used in violent crimes. Check out the stats here:
http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

gunowners.org

The obviously biased nature of that website aside, the claim actually does have some merit, though its prioritisation of sources is telling. It is questionable, however, what actually constitutes "self defense", especially given that this statistic also counts people merely showing they were armed. How many of the cases reported by the interviewed test group of ~4.000 people were "false positives", reported by people who felt threatened by a completely innocent person? And was everyone actually honest in this interview, considering that many of these 4k gun owners might have been gun lovers fervently believing in this form of self defense and willing to make up a story for it, or even believe an incident that actually played out a little differently? I remember dakka talking about this case a few weeks back. Regardless of how the case ends, this one would have been booked under "gun used for self defense" by the statistic you're using, simply because it's up to the gun owner to decide.

Also, the website does not claim that the number of guns used in self defense is higher than those used in crimes. The website compares to the number of guns used in injuring or killing someone. A more accurate comparison would thus be something like:
# of firearms used in saving someone who would have otherwise been injured or killed vs # of firearms used in injuring/killing an innocent person
-or-
# of firearms used in self defense by brandishing or firing warning shots vs # of firearms used in crimes where no-one was injured/killed due to the victim cooperating with the criminal


Anyhow, whilst UN statistics do seem to present an obvious connection between the amount of gun violence and the level of distribution of firearms in a populace (I have posted these numbers before, but for the sake of completion here they are again), and whilst the purpose of gun ownership as a means of defending oneself against an oppressive government is completely at odds with the reality of the 21st century, I do have to agree with a number of points made by previous posters. Introducing limitations on gun ownership similar to other Western nations would have no immediate effect on the level of violence. Worst case, it might very well actually have a negative impact. The guns are already in circulation, and disarming the honest people, whilst in some cases certainly preventing nutjobs from going on a rampage, might lead to well-armed criminals having an easier time.

I think there might still be potential in stricter gun control, just that it might take many years, perhaps even decades to show. Weapons are being confiscated from criminal elements by the police every day, so logically their existence should drop considerably should they no longer be easily available. I would predict a brief surge in crime, followed by a steady decline, though this is obviously coming from an idealist. Either way, the big question is: Would the populace be willing to endure this transition, or would they jump to conclusions when no progress has been made after 1-2 years already? The latter seems almost guaranteed, given the fast pace of modern politics and the rather short memory/patience of people in most industrialised nations.
Perhaps in another couple years public opinion will swing around, but I do not think a sizeable enough subset of the people actually want this yet, and the resistance is just too big and influential for any politician to try and risk his seat on this. Massacres by nutjobs have to occur on a more regular basis first.
... actually, do we have any statistics on that development? Whilst linked more to society than gun control, I'd be interested to see how this has evolved over the decades.

azazel the cat wrote:
Imagine the joys of someone in your home being hit by a stray round, because some moron unloaded high-velocity rounds from a full-auto on an intruder, and did not have the presence of mind to consider how many wooden houses those bullets will pass through before stopping. Such is my argument against full-auto.

Well, that and the fact that it is completely useless outside of suppressing fire.

EDIT: I have never known anyone who has served in the armed forces to feel the need for full-auto at home.

Do you know what kind of licenses you need to have an automatic weapon? They are already a pain in the backside to get (legally). Even though your point is 90% valid, if you live in a high crime area where the bad guys have AK- 47s, a 9mm is not going to help you. You would need a 12g with choke/ambush points or an assault rifle/close quarter battle weapon yourself.

Brushfire wrote:In the 1970's my 76-year old grandmother living in Detroit saved her life and her roommate when a drifter broke onto her apartment and kept on coming despite their screams. A legally owned handgun became a great equalizer for a frail elderly woman with arthritis facing a twenty year-old man with bad intentions.

Privately owned firearms used in self defense by private citizens have saved more lives that those used in violent crimes. Check out the stats here:

http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

According to that website, there are 2,500,000 uses of firearms in self defence each year, with 8% resulting in the killing or wounding of the attacker. So apparently there's 200,000 lawful shootings of attackers every year... which is an incredibly stupid claim, when there's only about 80,000 shootings of any kind a year in the USA.

You just... you have to apply some critical analysis to the stuff you see posted on the web, because most of it, especially in the gun debate, is full outright lies, and in most cases incredibly stupid lies. The pro-gun side is particularly bad for this, most of the stuff they claim is a million miles from reality, and steeped in some incredibly delusional power fantasies about standing up against an apparently declining society.

If guns don't kill people, why do we arm soldiers?

As to the 2nd ammendment, does it make any provision for people to be able to have ammunition?

Here in the UK I am reasonably happy with our gun and knife laws and given our population density I think our gun and knife crime figures are pretty good. I certainly don't think that anyone needs a gun for self defence any more than everyone needs a stab vest when walking into town and I'm quite happy that our laws make it so.

Even in the US, your average suburban worker can go most of their life without having to interact with guns in any meaningful way (if they don't want to) and don't have to fear being unable to have some wild west standoff while standing in line at the coffee shop, defending the innocent from some madman with a gun/invading communist army/liberals/etc...

The illusion of power that any kind of weapon or protective device (such as a bullet proof or stab vest) gives is just that in most cases - an illusion.

I know there are a lot of guns in the US, but how many regular gun users actually are there? Say regular use is using a gun more than once a month (a reasonable limit); how many people actually go out and shoot/train/etc with their guns that much, compared to those who keep a gun in the night stand to 'protect' their homes and never use it?

How many homes are actively protected by the use of guns each year?

Frazzled wrote:

MrMerlin wrote:I don't think banning guns in the US would help anyone, because as pointed out many times before, there are just too many guns around.
However, if there is a country with very stict gun control laws, it should definetly stay that way. Take germany for example. Its very hard to get a gun here, and hence there are less nutjobs gunning down dozens of people. Of course we have nutjobs too, but they usually have to contend with axes and air pistols, and do waaaay less damage.

Chicago has intensive gun laws. it also is fast becoming the murder capital of the US.

Yeah, but I think its a lot easier to buy illegal weapons in Chicago because there are so many guns around. The point I was trying to make was if there are no guns to begin with, you'll have less trouble with psycopaths shooting people, even if their guns were aquired illegally.
Here in Europe, it's rather hard to get hold of a gun, so many of these nutjobs have to use less dangerous weapons like axes, and they only kill one or two people, if any. Now there was this one guy whose father legally owned a gun, which is rather rare. He killed 15 people with it. Now if anyone can somehow get a gun (even illegally) there'll be more people shot.

MrMerlin wrote:Yeah, but I think its a lot easier to buy illegal weapons in Chicago because there are so many guns around. The point I was trying to make was if there are no guns to begin with, you'll have less trouble with psycopaths shooting people, even if their guns were aquired illegally.
Here in Europe, it's rather hard to get hold of a gun, so many of these nutjobs have to use less dangerous weapons like axes, and they only kill one or two people, if any. Now there was this one guy whose father legally owned a gun, which is rather rare. He killed 15 people with it. Now if anyone can somehow get a gun (even illegally) there'll be more people shot.

More to the point, why are there less rampages in Europe? Maybe because if someone is on the edge of sanity, then being in a country covered in guns, in which guns and violence are constantly put forward as a solution, even when there isn't actually a problem, are that much more likely to tip someone over the edge.

SilverMK2 wrote:If guns don't kill people, why do we arm soldiers?

Of course guns kill people, that is the point! Even a tiny 22 will kill you (eventually)

As to the 2nd ammendment, does it make any provision for people to be able to have ammunition?

Well, you know what you have without bullets...a really expensive stick.

Even in the US, your average suburban worker can go most of their life without having to interact with guns in any meaningful way (if they don't want to) and don't have to fear being unable to have some wild west standoff while standing in line at the coffee shop, defending the innocent from some madman with a gun/invading communist army/liberals/etc...

Well Sir it''s like having a condom...it offers protection, and it's better to have one and not need it then to need it and not have one.

I know there are a lot of guns in the US, but how many regular gun users actually are there? Say regular use is using a gun more than once a month (a reasonable limit); how many people actually go out and shoot/train/etc with their guns that much, compared to those who keep a gun in the night stand to 'protect' their homes and never use it?

As far as "regular" gun owners, I couldn't find any statistics on that.

How many homes are actively protected by the use of guns each year?

http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/kleck2.html

Gary Kleck ph.d. Florida State University College of Criminology