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Not that it'd matter for me anyway, living in California. Here, you'd be criminally prosecuted for defending yourself with a butter knife.
In Seattle you can be arrested for violating a 'no weapons law' carrying something the court rules is not "arms" and protected by the 2nd amendment. Thats right, in Seattle something can be a weapon, but not arms.
By that logic I guess they couldn't imagine firearms (which by the way the 2nd doesn't mention) beyond Revolutionary War weapons so I guess all others should be banned?
Semi automatic guns were already available at the time of signing the bill of rights. Lewis, Jefferson's personal secretary, actually took one on his trip with Clark and show it off to the Indians as a show of power. The congress also authorized to purchase some.
To say they didn't know or couldn't foresee this is completely ignorant.
Now, I'm not exactly sure *why* a normal everyday civilian needs a semi-automatic... o_O But it should indeed be protected.
The sheer number of people who don't know the difference between an automatic and a semi automatic is astounding.
Automatic = machine gun
Semi-automatic = 1 bullet fired per trigger pull.
Semi-autuomatics have been around for a very long time and were not out of the imagination of the founders when the Constitution was written. There were even prototype semi-autos in existence, so the argument is based on misinformation to begin with.
The core of the argument is to ban ALL firearms. The reasoning is simple. If all guns are banned and confiscated then all murders will stop. This is based on the idea that without guns people will stop killing each other.
The actual political reason for grabbing guns is to disarm the poor. That is based on the idea the poor people are criminals (if they weren't criminals they would not be poor) and they use guns to rob proper people. Properly affluent people do not rob others so they do not need guns. Therefore guns are not needed so all of them can be destroyed.
The idea of banning semiautomatic firearms is just a step beyond banning full automatic machine guns. After banning semi autos they will try to ban multi shot guns and then all guns together. They believe the result will be a peaceful nonviolent utopia.
Several thousands of years of human existence before guns were invented does not support their contention.
Addendum: The 2nd Amendment was written to provide the civilian population with the right to keep weapons for use in a war. The armed civilians were expected to provide their own weapons so the right to keep them was set into the Constitution. Following this logic all of our civilians should be required to obtain current weapons as well as mandatory military training as part of the Militia. This would allow the country to minimize the size and use of our standing army.
So, instead of effectively banning full automatic guns in the hands of civilians they should be mandated. Civilians, all civilians, should be required to attend military training in the use of these weapons.
Among other things this would greatly increase the risk of armed robbery as everybody would be armed and trained in military uses. Part of this training is self defense. Robbing a convenience store is one thing when the proprietor is unarmed. Robbing an armed clerk is quite another. Beating an unarmed woman is one thing. Beating a woman holding a gun is also quite another.
I believe that everyone has the right to own and carry a gun. Nobody has the right to commit a crime with one.
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