How do you guarantee freedom?

[CatInHat]

Originally posted by Felice:
**It was made clear in the letter that she had NEVER fired it, had NEVER had a firearms safety course, knew NOTHING about guns OR self-defence. I have absolutely no doubt that had she not been advised by the teen, that eventually she would have allowed her children to play with the ‘unloaded’ gun, or even herself someday pointed it at someone in jest, thinking it unloaded, and pulled the trigger.

**

Oh my god, Felice, people like this scare the hell out of me. An in-law recently got a 20-gauge shotgun for his wife (they live in a remote area and he wanted her to be able to protect herself when she was there alone). When I asked him where he kept it, he told me that he kept in in a closet, “behind some other stuff.” They have a 2-year old. When I suggested a locked gun cabinet, and maybe a firearms safety course for both of them, he started on a tirade about how the gun manufacturers are unfairly blamed for all the gun violence in the US.

A few things come to mind.

1. AFAIK, his wife never asked for a gun for self-defense. In fact, she was there when we were talking about it, and she didn’t say a word about it. IMO, a big dog would have been a better choice for self-defense (although I realize that guns are easier to clean).
2. Keeping a gun in the closet with kids around is a recipe for disaster. WTF, I’m careful to keep kitchen knives in a place where they can’t accidentally hurt someone.
3. If you are going to get a gun, learn how to use it! You wouldn’t buy a car without learning how to drive it, would you?

FTR, I personally don’t like guns and won’t have them in the house. My husband respects this, even though he does like guns and occasionally goes shooting with a mutual friend (he uses the friend’s gun). And yes, he did take a gun safety course.

---

Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
– Unknown

[techchick68]

Felice,

“Does she have the right to be an idiot with a deadly weapon?”

Idiots own cars and kill people every day with them. How do we guage idiocy? IQ tests or common sense tests? Should idiots have children? No, but they can.

We can’t base our society on being stupid. The average human does stupid things all the time. The government seems to think that all humans are stupid and therefore must protect everyone from everyone else.

If you want people to be responsible for their ownership of a weapon and feel that strongly about it, then get to know your neighbors, get involved and quit bitching. Ask your nieghbor if he/she has taken a gun course. Ask he/she if they have had their children go through a safety course (they do have them.) But laws against idiocy just can’t be passed or enforced, just look at the laws now.

======

Freedom loss at it’s finest:

Just a couple of days ago, a senior in high school, honor student who works at a steak house, was suspended from school because she had a blunt edged steak knife in her car. Because of this NO-TOLERANCE policy, her academic record could suffer because she needed the knife to open the hood of her car at work.

She’s not the idiot, the school district is. She appealed the suspension and the district shot her down (no pun intended.) I do believe she had evidence to back up her story. In my eyes, the district (govt. run) is the idiot.

Two or three months prior, another honor student was suspended from the same school for having, of all things, a Swiss Army knife in her car.

In the eyes of one of our local school districts, these two kids intended to harm another by simply having the steak knife and the Swiss Army knife in their car.

I also remember a student in the Denver metro area, of elementary school age, that was suspended when she accidentally took her mother’s lunch to school that had a steak knife in it. This girl reported to her teacher or principle immediately that there was a knife in her lunch. Under the no-tolarence policy, she was still suspended.

A couple of years ago, another child of elementary age was suspended for giving out some “natural” candy. Because the teacher could not identify the substance, the child was forced out of school by this no-tolerance.

These are “policies” that are out of control. There is no easy answer to guarantee freedom except for people to get involved in all aspects they can with govt. run programs. Vote, go to school board meetings, get involved in politics as much as possible.

Owning a gun doesn’t guarantee freedom, but our Constitution does. If the govt. weren’t so damn big, dipping their fingers in our wallets, giving out corporate welfare, spending time on laws that only apply to a few bad apples, supressing the press, filling our prisons with non-violent criminals, spending money on programs that don’t work, all the while they break the laws they write, we might have something called freedom.

[techchick68]

BTW, my post was not edited for grammar or spelling.

[Freedomx]

I can’t believe that this got posted, and then SECONDED!!!

I think the 2nd Amendment has been misinterpreted by those who claim it means anyone and everyone can have a gun – I place a lot of value on the part that refers to “for the purposes of forming a militia.”

What copy of the Constitution do you have? I just can’t seem to find that line in my copy.

If we can assume that you are just mistaken, and that that line does not exist, will you drop your position? I see an intent in your post to follow the Constitution, but I also see a misreading.

Are you trying to force the Constitution to fit to your personal beliefs, or do you just need to reread the 2nd Amendment?

The word PEOPLE in the Second Amendment means the exact same thing it means in every other place in the Bill of Rights. Let me rewrite your sentence for you as I hear it:

I think the 4th Amendment has been misinterpreted by those who claim it means anyone and everyone should be safe from government searches of their home without a warrant.

[/quote]

However, this amendment was written when the ability of the private citizen to provide for the defense of himself, his family, his community and his nation was important.
[/quote]

Is the ability to defend yourself and your family any less important today? Did this notion “expire?” When you are home with your wife and children and someone breaks into your home, I bet you would find this ability important. Dialing 911 and then WAITING to die does not seem like a good substitute to me.

Today, we have a professional standing military and a large police force formed from private citizens. The defense of the nation is not in doubt.

Didn’t France feel this way back in the late 1930’s? I would also suggest that the Second Amendment is as much about outside aggressors as it is about domestic ones.

(ever hear the phrase: …foriegn or domestic…?)

The groups who try to pass themselves off as militias are extremists who have (rightly) been marginalized.

As I love to read around here: “You are assuming a fact that has not been established.” I am far from a militia member, but I am under the impression that the militia groups have been working with the FBI to remove the extremists from their organizations.

The 2nd Amendment is outdated and should be stricken or altered.

Without even considering the civil war that would follow if you tried to repeal ANY part of the Bill of Rights, let us look at what you are proposing.

You want the US government to ignore a right. Make no mistake that it would be ignoring a right, not taking it away. The US Constitution does not give rights. It only recognizes them. If the 2nd Amendment can be repealed, then so can the 1st, and any other part of the Bill of Rights. I promise you that that is not a precedent you want to set.

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence? Let me quote a section that talks about what happens to governments that decide to ignore a population’s rights:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Declaration of Independence

[danielnsmith]

Sake Samurai

The Constitutional guarantee of militia-based firearm ownership was not enacted to help the citizens hunt elk or shoot house burglars, but was intended to arm the populace against a possible tyrannical, abusive government.

I also meant to include danielnsmith’s name, as he completely misunderstands the original intent of the 2nd Amendment.

Sake, please lay off the rice wine. If you had bothered to read the OP, you’d have noticed that I basically cited your argument.

Some people even agree that the reason the people were given the right to bear arms was to keep a tyrannical and oppressive central government from forming.

And Cooper, does the lack of guns make you safer? If guns were eliminated, criminals would use knives or some other weapon.

A lock only keeps an honest man honest. This saying means that if a person is going to comit a crime, they will do it and nothing you do will prevent it!!!

The question is not is gun control good or bad, but How do you gauruntee freedom without guns?

[danielnsmith]

Sake Samurai

The Constitutional guarantee of militia-based firearm ownership was not enacted to help the citizens hunt elk or shoot house burglars, but was intended to arm the populace against a possible tyrannical, abusive government.

I also meant to include danielnsmith’s name, as he completely misunderstands the original intent of the 2nd Amendment.

Sake, please lay off the rice wine. If you had bothered to read the OP, you’d have noticed that I basically cited your argument.

Some people even agree that the reason the people were given the right to bear arms was to keep a tyrannical and oppressive central government from forming.

And Cooper, does the lack of guns make you safer? If guns were eliminated, criminals would use knives or some other weapon.

A lock only keeps an honest man honest. This saying means that if a person is going to comit a crime, they will do it and nothing you do will prevent it!!!

The question is not is gun control good or bad, but How do you gauruntee freedom without guns? For those of you who have answered this question, thanks. For those of you who have tried to hijack this thread, get a grip and stick with the topic!

[Felice]

The government seems to think that all humans are stupid and therefore must protect everyone from everyone else.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who is “THE GOVERNMENT” anyway? People have this tendency to blame “THE GOVERNMENT” as if it were some external organization completely independent of the people. Well, this ain’t a monarchy or a dictatorship, where rules are made by some people without the input of the other people. We ARE the government. The government is US. Every law that gets passed in this country gets established because SOME CITIZENS of this country thought it was a good idea! Think back to your high school poli sci, folks. Bills come into existence because some subset of the populations recommends them to their ELECTED representatives. Those representatives have some sense about what their populace thinks about the bill. If they think the majority of their supporters would support that idea, then they vote to support it. If they are wrong, if they are not representing the majority of their supporters, then they don’t get re-elected. That’s the way it works. So if some law gets passed to keep people from being stupid, it’s because some of WE THE PEOPLE thought that we have a responsibility to protect our fellow PEOPLE from endangering themselves.

We got nobody to blame but ourselves, folks.

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

[Liberal]

Every law that gets passed in this country gets established because SOME CITIZENS of this country thought it was a good idea!

You mean like LEGISLATORS or something? And are you counting EXECUTIVE ORDERS?

[system]

Originally posted by CatInHat:
**FTR, I personally don’t like guns and won’t have them in the house. My husband respects this, even though he does like guns and occasionally goes shooting with a mutual friend (he uses the friend’s gun). And yes, he did take a gun safety course.
**

CIH, I hope you will take me as sincere when I say I very much hope you never come to regret your stance on guns in the house. The police are not (despite popular misconception) legally responsible for your personal protection. I am not sanguine about your fortunes in the event you have to rely upon police response times in an emergency.

[system]

Felice, I see where you’re coming from, but go back and read your own post. Did you just disembark from the freakin’ Good Ship Lollipop? :rolleyes:

[CatInHat]

Originally posted by George Papoon:
** CIH, I hope you will take me as sincere when I say I very much hope you never come to regret your stance on guns in the house. The police are not (despite popular misconception) legally responsible for your personal protection. I am not sanguine about your fortunes in the event you have to rely upon police response times in an emergency. **

I appreciate your concern, George. But please tell me, if the police are not legally responsible for the personal protection of a citizen, then exactly what are they responsible for? I always understood that that was exactly what the police were for.

Maybe I just disembarked from the “Good Ship Lollipop” too.

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Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
– Unknown

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

Lib, et al.

She’s right.

I don’t like it, but she’s right.

When you cast your ballot, you are putting your seal of approval on anything that person does, and anything that person is responsible for appointing to some position of power.

“The People” want “Big Government.”

And that’s not just at the Federal level. It goes all the way down.

[Liberal]

When you cast your ballot, you are putting your seal of approval on anything that person does, and anything that person is responsible for appointing to some position of power.

That presumes I voted for “that person”.

[Freedomx]

It doesn’t matter what the people “want” when it comes down to other people’s rights.

The Jews in Germany were the minority, but that doesn’t make the concentration camps right.

I would also disagree with how many of the laws in this country are passed.

LOBBYISTS start pestering our elected officials who so desperately want to stay in office. So they will vote on bills that benefit the lobbyist to get campaign donations.

Why do you think it is such a stereotype that politicians lie?

Politicians spend time SELLING their ideas to the public, not listening to the public.

[Sake_Samurai]

Now, now, danielnsmithsan, sake is more like a rice beer (i.e., brewed) than a wine! Which further illustrates my point that we need to get our definitions and questions locked down before we can proceed with analysis and answers.

You originally wrote:

It is generally understood and agreed upon by the open-minded that the original intent of right to bear arms was to provide defense to the people of the new nation against indigenous inhabitants and foreign aggressors.

I merely pointed out that this is incorrect. The intent of the second amendment is crystal clear. We have many letters, papers and documents from the FF discussing the crucial issue of an armed populous. If it has been interpreted the way you suggest, it’s not by the majority OR open-minded, but by ignorant minorities.

The actual wording is a tad confusing though:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This clearly says that the government won’t get involved in firearm ownership (which has been violated countless times) but with whom? The people? Or only those citizens in well regulated militias?

To answer your question, historically it has not been possible to gain and keep freedom without the use of deadly force.

We CAN guarantee freedom without guns only if we are armed with cool red laser-beam goggles or ATOMIC WEAPONRY FOR DUMMIES books.

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Hell is Other People.

[Felice]

Felice, I see where you’re coming from, but go back and read your own post. Did you just disembark from the freakin’ Good Ship Lollipop?

Not to the best of my knowledge, George. What do you mean?

---

Felice

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

[Riboflavin]

Cap’n Crude,

If you run into a gun store and say “Quick! I need a .357 Magnum NOW!” it means that either (a)you want to kill somebody and therefore shouldn’t be sold a weapon, or (b)you’re in danger and should be calling the police. Waiting periods, licensing, and safety courses are perfectly reasonable.

Or perhaps that you just heard about the verdict from the Rodney King case and expect riots and need a gun quickly to defend your family, home, and business? Oh well, wait 5 days, if you get beaten to death while watching your daughter get raped and your store burnt to the ground, at least you didn’t have an evil gun!

And as for the case of “you’re in danger and should be calling the police?” the courts have ruled repeatedly that the police have no obligation to protect you; they are required to investigate once a crime has been committed, but they have absolutely no duty to come and protect you from something that might happen.

I don’t care if it’s a .22 varmint rifle or a 10-gauge shotgun – both can kill ya, and only responsible people should have them.

And what about a tank of propane or fertilizer? Not a single one of the top ten murderers in US history have used guns. Natural gas wins the efficiency award, with good competition from gasoline and fertilizer. Should we institute licensing requirements to insure that only responsible people can possess gasoline?

The worst school massacre in US history used dynamite, contrary to the myths the media played up after the Columbine shootings.

Teach your kids to shoot, sure, but don’t let him/her have his own weapon, or easy access to yours.

Yes, I suppose that’s why my brothers and the numerous other kids I knew that had their own weapons ended up killing each other. Oh, wait, they didn’t.

Responsibility also means identifying your target before you pop a cap in it. This way, no more kids will die because they came home late and scared their parents into thinking they were being robbed.

More kids die in their homes from swimming pool accidents than firearm accidents/false identifications. If you’re really concerned about ‘the children’, you should be talking about banning swimming pools rather than guns.

Tough prison sentences for violators of gun laws are a good idea, but the laws shouldn’t be zero-tolerance, especially when relating to accidental or non-attack oriented violations.

How about just enforcing the laws that we have? There was a case that anti-gun groups were raving about about 3 years ago, which they used as an example of how we need new gun laws. Yet, if you actually looked at the history of the case, the guy had been arrested before with illegal guns and the DA didn’t even bother to file charges against the guy for illegal guns.

All that an angry morass of gun laws do is make it harder for law abiding citizens to defend themselves, prosecutors don’t even bother to use the laws to convict criminal types. Personally, I’m quite glad that I live in a state with ‘must-issue’ concealed carry permits even though I don’t own a gun.

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Kevin Allegood,

“At least one could get something through Trotsky’s skull.”

• Joseph Michael Bay

[Freedomx]

I think he is trying to tell you that you are being a little naive.

In a perfect world your post makes a lot of sense, but it is far from reality in the world we live in.

The Police

The Police are charged with enforcing the law. That means if you get robbed, they go and try and find the guy who did it.

They can only act during or after an attack. They are not responsible for making sure you don’t get robbed, only that they catch the robber.
Could you imagine if the police were liable for making sure no one got robbed anywhere in NYC? It would take a cop per person to do that.

[tracer]

Sake Samurai wrote:

We CAN guarantee freedom without guns only if we are armed with cool red laser-beam goggles or …

Just a friendly reminder: Cyclops’s optic blasts come out of his own eyes, not his goggles. His goggles are there to keep the beams from coming out continuously and blasting everything he looks at. <Marvel Comics Nitpick Mode off>

[Sake_Samurai]

Who said anything about cyclops, you comic book reading freak?

Besides, if the beams emitted continuously, wouldn’t he need contacts or something? I mean, goggles would just redirect the rays all around his face. When he took his goggles off he’d have nothing but goggle-shaped skull area surrounding two burnt out eye sockets.

In addition to laser goggles, it would help out freedom if we had large forks sticking out of our fingernails like that Wolverine guy.

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Hell is Other People.