Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not thugs no, but average honest citizens yes. Thugs would have a much harder time if honest people could & would shoot back.
Imagine if Chicago had allowed the father of the recently murdered student to protect his son with a handgun.
If the father had been on the scene carrying a weapon, I would speculate his son would be alive and there would be at least one of the killers on the ground (maybe 2).
If I was being beat with a 2x4 by 3-4 people, I would want something to even out the odds.
However "a well-armed militia" is NOT the reason the vast majority of Americans own guns today.
How can you supose to speak for everyone? Besides the fact that the states neglect to maintain a militia in no way diminishes the rights guaranteed the people to facilitate the raising of such militia if & when a state decides to do so. Given the current trend of federal infringments on states rights & the way some states are reacting its not out of the realm of possibility that a state will raise a citizen militia in the near future.
There was never a requirement for a militia, just a requirement that it be possible to form one.
Quote:
The gang-banger thug has no noble intentions behind gun ownership. Only sinister.
Nobody is saying we should do away with laws forbidding criminals having guns.
Quote:
The sportsman/hunter does not own firearms for the purpose of possibly forming a militia. He/she has the rifles & shotguns for the purpose of hunting.
I have guns for whatever legal use I decide to use them for. If my , town, state or country should ask my assistance I would be there.
Quote:
Again, I'm all for 2nd Amendment Rights. But the Founding Fathers were not fighting for the rights of thugs to own guns.
Again, we are not talking of thugs, unless you equate all gun owners as such. But on the other hand perhaps you can point out where the founders said that men who have served their sentence & been freed should be stripped of their civil rights. My money says you cannot. At that time violent criminals were not tolerated among us. We hung murderers, rapists & horse thieves. Those guilty of crimes punishable by imprisonment, a very rare concept indeed at the time, were free in every way upon release, if they were a threat they did not get released.
I believe you would find that only the mentally ill were deprived of a right to keep & bear arms.
Imagine if Chicago had allowed the father of the recently murdered student to protect his son with a handgun.
If the father had been on the scene carrying a weapon, I would speculate his son would be alive and there would be at least one of the killers on the ground (maybe 2).
If I was being beat with a 2x4 by 3-4 people, I would want something to even out the odds.
The sad fact is that those who favor gun control that limits where one can carry a gun have much blood on their hands. Those that support gun free zones are directly responsible for most every recent mass killing, especially those in schools. Its easy to point at a tool & blame it, much harder to look in the mirror & admit you helped a few dozen children get murdered.
that has absolutely nothing to do with how effective their arms are vs ours.
again, military or police ops have no bearing on how effective an insurgent with an ak is. besides that fact, the us military is currently undergoing more police ops over there than they are military ops.
________________
so, to the op's question:
peace or violence has nothing to do with weaponry. mankind was violent far before the first one had the idea to pick up a rock in order to brain someone instead of using his fists and teeth.
people that try to equate weaponry with violence need to be able to account for the millions of gun owners, knife owners, baseball bat owners, and owners of other potentially dangerous tools that have *never* had an issue with violence.
they can't account for that if they try to equate weapons to violence.
every single one of us here knows people that own guns, knives, and other weapons, and are nonviolent. every single one of us here has lived within a block or two of hundreds of people throughout our lives that went from cradle to the grave without ever having an incident with the knives/guns/etc that they owned.
it doesn't equate.
Violence and instruments of violence... yes I get the point. But that's not what I am discussing.
Here's the point. Does peace occur through the government or the people? Don't dismiss this with some silliness by saying the government is the people and the people are the government. That's as simple as your earlier point that guns don't kill, people do.
Some of your other points are valid to a certain limit. If what you are saying is that 9-11 was perptrated merely by some bandits with box cutters then once again you are oversimplifying. But let's be clear about that incident... there was much much much more than just a few thugs with box cutters. How about the fact that they trained to fly aircraft? How about our lack of appropriate response?
Does peace occur through the government or the people? Does it matter if the people are better armed than the government? Does some universal rule apply to all peoples and governments?
Here's the relevancy. We are in the midst of nation building. We are trying to instill peace in a region of the world where it has rarely existed in history. Should arming the people or government be a relevant inquiry? HECK YES. Will the model applied in the USA be equally applicable to this region? I'm having doubts on this one.
Not thugs no, but average honest citizens yes. Thugs would have a much harder time if honest people could & would shoot back.
Although I agree whole heartedly with your comment, it someone evades the issue.
I suppose an average honest citizen killing a nasty SOB thug is somehow righteous but surely it's not peaceful. After killing the thug the citizen may not ever have a day of internal peace.
Surely the deterent effect of an armed citizenry applies. And sure enough there is a thug or group of them that feels they are capable of overcoming any deterent placed in their path.
Safe to say that felons are prohibited from lawful gun ownership for the reasons debated by many in this thread. And, yes, they are felons for a reason...because they were tried and convicted of breaking the law. So the likelihood of a felon following the law that precludes gun ownership is far from a preclusion to their having guns. Frankly the answer to this issue is to build more prisons so that these felons will never see a free day...or maybe capital punishment but none of this pertains to the OP.
Nobody is saying we should do away with laws forbidding criminals having guns.
The problem is, we cannot restrict gun ownership to a person who has the intent and motive to commit a crime. Only the person who has already committed one and been prosecuted and convicted. Anybody who has never been convicted has full second amendment rights, no matter how inclined or determined he is to commit the most heinous of crimes with his perfectly legal arsenal of firearms. Even if he comes on this board and says "I am a responsible gun owner".
Any de-facto criminal can own a gun legally under the second amendment, up until the moment that he is convicted of a crime and becomes a de-jure criminal. De-facto criminals are just as dangerous as de-jure ones. In fact, more so, because nobody is watching them.
The Taliban wasn't fighting us before we went over there now were they?
9/11 was a police problem, not a military problem. Look at the recent arrests by the FBI of terrorists in the states. That wasn't the military that fought them and took them down, or common citizens with guns, it was done by police work, good old fashioned police work.
I'm surely happy to have my weapons and ammunition stocked up because I totally disagree with this rationale.
As to the Taliban, didn't we once support them? Look up a few posts and see where I am attempting to re-focus the thread to the OP and onto the issue of nation building.
The problem is, we cannot restrict gun ownership to a person who has the intent and motive to commit a crime. Only the person who has already committed one and been prosecuted and convicted. Anybody who has never been convicted has full second amendment rights, no matter how inclined or determined he is to commit the most heinous of crimes with his perfectly legal arsenal of firearms. Even if he comes on this board and says "I am a responsible gun owner".
Any de-facto criminal can own a gun legally under the second amendment, up until the moment that he is convicted of a crime and becomes a de-jure criminal. De-facto criminals are just as dangerous as de-jure ones. In fact, more so, because nobody is watching them.
That's EXCELLENT. But, without being diminuative, I'm thinking the big words are loosing alot of people.
That's EXCELLENT. But, without being diminuative, I'm thinking the big words are loosing alot of people.
My 6- and 7-letter words are losing people?
For those lost, here is a glossary:
De-facto: True according to observable fact. It is noon de-facto when the sun passes overhead.
De-jure: True because declared so by law. It is noon de-jure when, by international agreement, within a designated time zone, official clocks say it is 12:00, considering whether Daylight time has been legislated to be in effect by the recognized authorities.
Now, what does diminuative mean? You want me to diminuate my words? Actually, I think it is a great word. I'll use it three times today, and add it to my vocabulary.
Last edited by jtur88; 10-03-2009 at 02:54 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
