Hey, I could have written your entire post for you. 
I don’t really know what’s so hard to understand here.
- There is a right to self defense
- This has nothing to do with the 2nd amendment.
The 2nd clearly says that its purpose is to gurantee the states access to an armed militia. The fact that this may in effect help to protect an individual’s ability to own a gun for self defense is a side effect.
So no The 2nd does not provide a right to self defense. It doesn’t speak to the issue of self defense at all.
Tejota, I’m largely in agreement. As I said earlier in the thread, I think they would find the idea of questioning one’s basic right to self defense so laughable that it wasn’t worth enumerating.
Self-defense --> guns. Great, thanks for clearing that up!
For me, self defense means defeating my attacker with the greatest chance of me or those whom I am defending escaping without injury. So if you want to call 911 and wait, fine, take your chances.
And thus do we get down to the core of the debate. You like guns, think they’re necessarry, should be unrestricted, etc. I don’t particularly give a rat’s ass about guns except that they’re fun to shoot, I don’t think they’re necessary for much of anything, and I think they should be subject to reasonable regulations designed to minimize their negative effects on society.
I just don’t see how we’re getting together on this, you and I. Such a shame.
Guns should be unrestricted? How’d you get that out of his simple statement, minty?
And I note you’ve still not supported your claim that “18th century firearms were worse than useless for defense against criminals, . . .” Can I expect to see your retraction soon? I rather doubt it as your argument completely falls apart without it.
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think about them all that much either except when I am either actually shooting one or am participating in one of these debates. I get woken up by weird noises all the time, and I have yet to pull out the pistol or shotgun when checking it out. Now if the sound I hear is one of the front door being torn off its hinges, I imagine my reaction would be quite different.
Now that time that fucker pulled a gun on me and mugged me in a hotel parking lot, I sure wish I would have had a pistol in my pocket so I could have shot the bastard in the back as he ran off with my wallet.
As for regulation, what is wrong with the thousands of regulations we already have on the books? do we need thousands more? I don’t think so. I think we have intruded on the right to keep and bear arms plenty much already.
And Minty, let me say that I hope you are never faced with the need to make a decision on how best to be alive 20 seconds from now. It sucks. It actually hurts, the feeling of having a gun held to your head. This person was already willing to break the law. Are your “reasonable” regulations going to prevent him from being able to obtain a gun, or reduce his willingness to use it? Until you can answer those questions “no, and no”, then rescpecting the rights of law abiding citizens to protect themselves is the best way to minimize the ill effects of guns on society.
I never retract obvious hyperbole. Sure, you could shoot a burglar with a flintlock pistol. Just make sure you keep the thing loaded at all times, powder dry, etc., and don’t miss that first shot. Moreover, even if flintlocks were the most practical tool of self-defense against criminals ever invented in the history of mankind, my claim is that the FF’s didn’t have that in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. Given the essentially complete lack of evidence that they were thinking of anything other than the militia stuff they put in the opening clause, I’m pretty confident in that claim. Feel free to prove me wrong.
And on that count, your quotes from Paine and Washington seem at least as consistent with the usual militia rationale as they do with self-defense. I know all those pro-gun quote lists avoid context like the plague, but is there any chance you know where to find the quotes in the full documents?
Scare-mongering? By a pro-gun poster in a gun control debate? Wow, now I’ve seen everything. :rolleyes:
No, using a real world example. You can call it what you want. The “reasonable restrictions” already in place made me an easy victim. I was travelling in a different state, by air, and would have had much difficulty providing myself with the means of self defense. Your gun regulations are what creates the negative effects on society, not prevents them.
We have a word for that here in Texas. It’s called murder, and it doesn’t fall within the statutory definition of self-defense. And then you’d be a felon, disqualified from owning firearms at all even after you serve your sentence. What a shame.
Yeah, but in the Texas that I grew up in it would have never been questioned. It would be called doing a public service.
Do you live in the Dallas area, or Austin? Just curious.
Was this the same Texas where a man with a .44 felt threatened by a Japanese exchange student with a costume and figured the only path to safety was shooting the student?
That’s the Texas we’d be safer without.
No, I believe that would be Louisiana. But I wasn’t talking about that scenario. I was talking about the one where someone with a ski mask over his face hopped out of the bushes and held a gun to my head and took my wallet.
I don’t disagree that such incidences as the one you mention are horrible. But I don’t think you can argue that the number of those killed by accident even comes close to the number of lives saved by those who are capable and able to defend themselves with guns.
Actually, that was in Louisiana, Robb.
<----------- Note the current location, Texican
Don’t know why I didn’t notice that, other than I wasn’t next to one of your posts when I posted my question. How about my assertion that your regulations are what creates the negative effects on society, not prevents them?
I think that is at the heart of the OP. You have a sky high violent crime rate, and a population that is prevented from possessing the means to defend themselves.
I disagree. You may find those disagreement in any number of previous gun control threads, which I am not interested in repeating here for the 20th time. Try using “John Lott” in your search. And use Boardreader so you don’t kill the hamster.
Right, Lousiana. Texas, that would be the teenager in Austin. Decided to break into a car to steal some cassettes. Homeowner heard the noise and carried a shotgun to his front door. This scared the kid away. Homeowner decided to point the shotgun up to fire a warning shot. Unfortunately for stupid teenager, the driveway sloped up. He caught the warning shot in his back.
Texican, these aren’t accidents. People made a decision to pull the trigger. If you pulled a gun after your mugger got the drop on you, you’d be dead. If you pulled a gun after he was running away, you’d be a murderer. Whether you might escape indictment won’t mean that you didn’t decide to take the life of someone who was no longer a threat to you. Having a gun wouldn’t have kept you from being mugged. I’ve met quite a number of people who’ve been the victim of violent crimes involvong guns. I’ve only met one person who might have avoided a crime by having a gun, but I’m quite certain that that “victim” was looking for an excuse to shoot a “criminal”.