I would acknowledge my mistake if I thought that I made one. However, as has been amply demonstrated here on numerous occasions, some questions are simply not asked, rhetorical device or not. I would also call to your attention that there is more to my quote than that, to wit:
which implies that I’m not sure whether it means what it quite clearly says (which is kinda ironic given the nature of this debate).
Regardless, it hardly seems to be a point worth arguing about, as this thread has been flung into the abyss. Not that that’s a big surprise. These threads usually devolve into name-calling and insults pretty quickly. That this thread lasted this long without such rancor is pretty amazing.
Let me first make clear that I respect you, your service and the honor you put into it, as well as your experiences during your duty and what that means to you.
Having said that: there is no way that Lizards comments could be construed as trying to insult the military or it’s members unless you really really want to.
I absolutely urge you to read it through once more, and then maybe you won’t have to feel insulted when there really is no need to…
How many people were killed in the North Hollywood shootout?
Oh, right, that doesn’t fit your agenda. There were only two deaths. The bank robbers were killed by police.
And someone may drive an 18 wheeler through a street fair. It hasn’t happened. Neither has the scenario that Lizard is afraid of. He fails to mention that even in the North Hollywood shootout he keeps citing there results were twelve injured cops and two dead bank robbers. What innocent bystander was mowed down?
There’s also no point in attempting to claim that lawfully owned automatic rifles had anything whatever to do with the North Hollywood shootout. The quote that Lizard posted says as much: ‘illegally-modified fully automatic assault rifles’ were used by the bank robbers. It never did have anything to do with legal fully automatic rifles.
It’s explanatory, and seen elsewhere in state Constitutions. Some will have something to the effect of “a free press being necesary to the liberty of a state, the right of the people to speak freely shall not be infringed”. That means the people’s right of free speech is recognized and protected, not the press’. You don’t have to be a member of the press to enjoy free speech.
Edit: And also, even if you willfully ignorantly wish to interpret it in this way, a lot of the members in this thread are indeed part of the very militia it speaks of, which is essentially all able bodied men 17-45.
You want to look on strictly the wording, say it’s ambiguous, and then interpret your own meaning. There’s no need to do this, as the men who devised and wrote the Constitution left a whole lot of paperwork that details their thoughts and their meaning.
To interpret the second amendment in a way that no other Constitutional guarantee of freedom has ever been interpreted requires you to completely ignore the things that the framers clearly intended.
You could make the case that when they wrote it, guns were much simpler, and less powerful, and therefore they didn’t forsee a situation like today. I would disagree of course, for many reasons - they didn’t see the internet coming either, and it has revolutioned and made powerful free speech even more than modern guns, but I’m sure they wouldn’t somehow feel that this would require infringements on the rights of free speech.
We’ve had many extensive debates on this issue on the board that cover them at length.
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This is just one of the disingenuous arguments gun-advocates make. The second clause is perfectly clear, so I’ll just ignore the first clause. Doesn’t work that way. People who argue that the 2nd Amendment guarantees a right to own any kind of gun you want, for personal self-defense, don’t have a leg to stand on. Yet they continue to shout that anyone who disagrees with them is “ignorant”. I see it as a difference of opinion, yet virtually every gun-enthusiast whose opinion I’ve heard sees it as “I’m right and you’re stupid”.
The main reason behind the second amendment is not hunting or recreation. It’s about personal defense, in a way, although not specifically against criminals.
It’s about the balance of power between people and government. A government that has a monopoly on force over the people has a much greater ability to oppress than a government would have against an armed populace.
It’s about every free many ultimately having power and control over himself, and the ability to defend his rights against tyranny, to live as a citizen rather than a subject.
When you understand the historical context, it’s ridiculous to think that they’d try to guarantee an armed populace as a check against government, but then allow the government to outlaw gun ownership. It would render the second amendment totally meaningless.
You might think this is macho NRA bullshit, but you have to understand what these men were trying to create.
Which doesn’t mean that there was no consideration in the other uses of guns - protection against criminals, hunting, recreation, etc. Those are all valid reasons. But they weren’t the primary reason the second amendment was written.
The funny thing is that one of the conflicting arguments you’ll frequently find with gun control advocates (and not all do, but it’s common) is that they’ll say that the second amendment was about protecting militias, so go join a militia! and then turn around and say that military weapons are too powerful, and the second amendment is about duck hunting, so they should be banned.
If anything, scary military weapons are the ones most protected by the second amendment.
See what you did here? You said a lot of things that I find to be incorrect. Yet you basically said “Here’s what I have to say, and nyah nyah, I can’t hear you!!!”
If I bring up valid counter-points to what you have to say, you’ve already accused me of just spouting NRA talking points, as if I’m some puppet blindly following them, rather than a person who simply believes something and tries to explain it.
So, you make an argument, and then immediately belittle every possible response I can make.
But elsewhere in this thread(and almost every other thread dealing with automatic vs. semi-automatic weapons) I was told that we don’t have to worry about semi-autos being converted because it was so damn hard to do, and the information to do so was so very hard to acquire.
I agree wholeheartedly. In my view, as a matter of constitutional law (if not necessarily sound public policy), private citizens ought to have the right to own rocket launchers and the like. Limiting the scope of what “arms” meant should have taken a constitutional amendment.
The entire way the mainstream media works and prioritizes its stories is disgusting. They feed on suffering and provide some sick kind of emotional voyeurism to the audience. They’re not trying to report what happened in a given day, or even do legitimate investigative reports into anything, but instead they’re spending 12 hours a day talking about the latest sensationalist kidnapping or murder, discussing with it with experts to give you the perspective on the perpetrators or victims, constantly milking whatever they can out of every tragedy. They’re disgusting leeches who would rather create the news than report it, who would rather focus on some terrible but, in the grand scheme of things, insignificant tragedy than to report much more major events in the world, or cover things that are emotionally neutral or even positive.
There are plenty of things wrong with the majority of modern mainstream media even outside of the gun issue.
But they’re almost always portraying guns in a negative light. And they will neglect to report things which portray guns in a positive light.
For instance, any time anyone goes on any sort of shooting spree with a gun, it will get constant coverage for days or even weeks. However, if someone uses a gun to prevent such a thing, it’s not even reported.
Joel Myrick, an assistant principal, once stopped someone going on a shooting spree by grabbing a gun out of his truck and confronting him. I tried to find an unbiased news story from something like yahoo news or CNN.com about it. The funny thing is that I couldn’t, because they didn’t report it.
In fact, what media did cover the story didn’t mention the little part about a responsible citizen with a legal gun stopping it at all. They just said that the police showed up, and left it ambiguous. They deliberately left out the part where the principal got his gun and stopped the shooter.
Media stories absolutely jump over any criminal misuse of guns, and yet deliberately entirely ignore responsible use of guns to prevent crime.
I should add that Joel Myrick, despite being a hero, was breaking the law. One of those stupid, pointless, feel-good gun laws. The gun in his truck violated the federal “gun free school zones” - a ridiculous law which serves no purpose whatsoever. It did absolutely nothing to keep a student from bringing a gun to school, but if Joel, the responsible citizen, had been aware of it or obeyed it, he would’ve been unable to stop the incident.
Stories will often be have loaded language. They will often quote gun control advocates as if they were unbiased, neutral sources, while not quoting gun rights advocates. Or, if they do, it’s often phrased like “The violence policy center informs us in this report that…” while the counter-point might be something like “the NRA would have us believe that…”
There have been statistical studies of media reports on guns, but I’m having trouble finding an entire one. Here’s an example of what I mean, though:
I’m sensitive to the media’s portrayal of guns and so I notice more than the average person would. There is an undeniable, extreme bias in the general mainstream media against portraying guns in a positive life, and there’s an emphasis on portraying them in a negative light. I could come up with many more examples if you remain unconvinced.
Was I supposed to? I avoid sensationalist, tabloidesque mainstream media. When I read news, it’s usually right off the AP reports.
My point was that people seem to think that fully automatic fire makes an individual much more powerful and able to kill other people. That’s simply not the case. Effective use of rifles in most situations uses semi-automatic fire. Fully automatic fire is not disproportionately powerful - and in most cases, is less effective. The US Army, the people who would probably understand this best, demonstrate that understanding by their training, and even by removing the ability for fully automatic fire from the M16 in the 80s.
I’m having difficulty finding a source that details where the guns came from. When I originally read about this, I thought I remembered something about the guns being smuggled whole from Mexico.
This is true, and dangerous. But all shootings have the potential for that sort of harm. And while I definitely don’t want bullets flying around the streets, well-aimed shots meant to shoot people seem more dangerous than spraying into a general area.
Certainly, though, I’m not denying that indiscriminate fully automatic fire is dangerous.
This is an appeal to emotion, although not nearly to the degree that I mentioned earlier in the thread. Is it insufficient to ask me “aren’t you concerned that the stray rounds could harm people?” - adding “your kids” is an attempt to make me react emotionally to the statement.
If this is indeed the case, the new regulations forcing the receiver of the gun to be modified in order to prevent full auto conversion might be a result of such incidents. The situation is different today than it was then.
Totally meaningless today. It wasn’t totally meaningless then, because many people had to keep their guns at home. The militias didn’t own enough guns. Think of it like bringing your own bat to softball league. Then imagine that softball leagues no longer exist. Why would you still need a bat?
Yes the second amendment is ridiculous, at least in today’s society. It’s a relic of an era that no longer exists. If you want to argue that your state has a militia that requires you to bring your own gun, I guess you could make a case for your right to keep that gun. But to say that since that situation no longer exists, that you get to transfer the right to some other use entirely, is incorrect.
You seem to want to argue a strict interpretation of the wording of the second clause, but your own “common-sense” interpretation of the first clause.
Why is it that you feel free to bandy about pronouncements about what the “intent” was, based on historical information, yet when I do the same, I’m “relying on the wording and interpreting my own meaning”?
It’s widely agreed that the debate at the time centered on state’s rights vs. federal government - in other words, defense against tyranny, not your right to shoot rabbits or blow away someone because he broke into your house.
As an owner of guns I see a lot of good points on both sides of the issue. However, I was curious to elicit responses to this notion.
If the 2nd amendment does indeed refer to the ownership of guns, by the general public, for the purpose of a militia, then are we not currently, based on the laws of the U.S., completely undermining the 2nd amendment.
My point being, the weapons of war have far advanced past the effectiveness of the legal weapons, authorized for personal possession, in the United States. If there was a call to arms today, the “militia” (non federally/state funded) would have a bunch of people show up with shotguns, handguns and hunting rifles. They would have no body armor, communication devices, hand grenades, mortars, rocket launchers etc…, nor would they have the knowledge to operate 1/10th of the modern military equipment.
Thus, even if the argument about a “well regulated militia” endorsing private gun ownership is accepted as completely factual and correct, then is not the 2nd amendment outdated and the current laws preventing people from obtaining the modern weapons of war in violation of the Constitution?
If so, what is the reasonable conclusion? Should there be a new amendment made that allows for private gun ownership, or should the public be allowed to obtain modern weapons technology?
I read this a lot, and I respectfully disagree with you. Great time and effort (and money) is spent to make weapons as “idiot-proof” as possible. The military purports to seek out the “best and brightest”, and while they do a reasonably good job of attracting intelligent people some of them are genuinely stupid, and they have to be taught as well. The manuals are generally written at a 6th grade level for that very reason.
Further, there are thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of veterans of the last 20 years or so. While improvements have been made to the equipment, you would be hard-pressed to find a weapon that has not been in service for at least that long. Very little familiarity would be necessary to recall the relevant details.
I can teach you my (highly technical) job in 20 minutes to a barely adequate level. You would certainly not have any sort of expertise, but I can teach you. How long do you think it would take to learn how to drive a tank or fire a shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon, things that you would not ordinarily do? Not very long.
The difference between a trained military and a “militia” is simply the level of training, the established chain of command, and through those two things the minimization of casualties. If you have any doubt of what I’m saying it is only necessary to look at what is happening in Iraq to demonstrate it.
Naturally, something like flying could not be learned quickly. But shooting? Ground warfare? The Army churns a recruit out in 13 weeks, a good portion of which is spent learning discipline, history, and esprit de corps. Cut that out and the time is cut drastically.
This is not to say that the Army is loaded with idiots. I would never say that. The Army (and Marines) comprise the finest ground fighting force in the world. But as has been amply demonstrated over the last 30 years, a kid with a rifle can hurt even the most well-trained infantryman. A kid with an RPG can kill even the most experienced tanker. How much training do you think a 10-15-year-old can handle? Point and shoot. That’s about it.
The complexity of military equipment when you go in depth is phenomenal. But it’s because of that complexity that it is so simple to operate and use. Anybody can be taught to use it. Anybody.
We certainly aren’t plagued with them at the moment. They haven’t been used by criminals to a particular tactical advantage except maybe during the Prohibition period (and I kind of doubt that). Bombs are pretty easy to make and we aren’t particularly plagued by them either. You really ought to at to at least argue against handguns if you want to argue about a useful criminal firearm.
I wasn’t arguing about the number of automatic weapons out there, I was pointing out that anyone claiming that the modification was next to impossible to do and that the instructions on how to do so were extremely hard to find was wrong.
Have you ignored me as I posted this information twice?
AT ONE POINT IN TIME IN THE PAST, it was relatively uncomplicated to replace missing parts in a trigger group. This worried the ATF enough that they mandated that manufacturers and importers modify the weapons in a certain way as to prevent that from being practical.
So yes, you can find instructions, for rifles made like over a decade ago when this was practical to do, maybe longer. Even then, it’s not a simple matter with most guns, and with more recent guns, isn’t practical at all.
Edit: Unless you’re just clarifying a point you made earlier when you didn’t know. I suspect, though, that you’re still latching on to your misconception willfully.
Cecil also addressed that – the Founders did not propose to let any old bunch of guys set themselves up as a private militia a la the Madhi Army. The militia was thus described as “well-regulated” (i.e. subject to duly established civil authority).
I can’t find any justification for the current plethora of gun-control laws in that limitation. Maybe when my magic Penumbral Emanation Spectacles come back from the shop (they’re being reground as bifocals)…
Ain’t that the truth. Frankly, I find the reactions from some of the people in this thread to be bizarre, and beyond the pale. Hell, I even say farther up that not many crooks with guns have been through miitary training, making a comparison between how they use their weapons and how soldiers do meaningless. I’d rather take on a crook armed with a full-auto weapon instead of a trained soldier with any other kind of weapon any day. Training makes all the difference.
Anyone who could take such a question seriously instead of rhetorically is either not reading the rest of the thread, being willfully ignorant, or is trying to avoid serious debate by an appeal to emotion.
A minor side point: Every single male relative in my family–my father, grandfather, all my uncles, my stepfather and my brother-in-law–have served in the military in some capacity.
catsix, are you joking? you seriously believe it’s somehow less of a big deal when someone is only injured with an automatic weapon, but not killed? It’s guys like you who give the NRA a bad name.
