Cite please. Are you including stuff like WWII in formulating that conclusion?
While it is true that disarmament is the first thing on the to do list for despots and dictators, it is also high on teh to do list for a lot of free western democracies that don’t end up getting serislly raped and murdered.
Oh, I am going to need a cite for that, and once again are you including stuff like WWII?
And my 2 year old neice feels safer with ehr binky but it doesn’t actually make her safer.
Cites are fine; but irrelevant. This is a political battle and is won through political means. Facts have never swayed either side. So, I guess you anti-gun sorts should get to work on that new ammendment. We actually owe you something of a debt. It was your dumbass bans during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations that galvanized us. Now we’re organized, militant, vigilant, and an important political force. You guys? Well, you’re kind of reduced to whining on discussion boards.
Maybe if you went about your goals honestly instead of with the disingenuous creeping incrementalism of the 70’s through the 90’s. Yeah, a new ammendment flatly repealing the 2nd is your only hope of retaining any vestige of legitimacy.
We have always recognized the governments right to place parameters around the second amendment just as we can place parameters around the first amendment right to free speech, we can place parameters around the second amendment right (abridged v. infringed). The right to bear arms is no more an aboslute right than the right to free speech (or any other right for that matter). If we wanted to, I think federal background checks and federal gun registry would be constitutional, what wouldn’t be constitutional would be if we made the requriements for registration so onerous taht it amounted to prohibition.
So you agree that there is an individual right to bear arms but you think that states and localities should be free to regulate more than SCOTUS allows based on the facts and circumstances of that particular locality?
So, you agree that everyone has the right to own a rifle or shotgun but that a prohibition on handguns should be within the discretion of localities to prohibit if the locality deems it necessary? Well, I guess my response to that is that unless we can get a national ban on handguns, a local ban on handguns will result in exactly the sort of effect that gun rights advocates posit: “only the criminals will have handgun” If we can successfully ban handguns altogether in the country (the way we elmininated sawed off shotguns) then I think we can effectively eliminate the danger posed by handguns but if you simply prohibit it in a locality then you only eliminate the dangers of accidental discharge in the home while reducing the average citizen’s ability to preotect themself from criminals.
Even the NRA doesn’t think that this is the first step down a slippery slope because most other gun control laws are not as absolute as the DC or chicago laws were. If we started to register guns the way we register cars so that we could ballistically identify bullets to the gun’s owner, I think we would see a marked decrease in gun traffic to the criminal element. Of course gun rights advocates have all watched red Dawn a few too many times and think that gun registration is simply a roadmap for when the comunists (or Obama) comes and wants to disarm you so they can put you in POW camps.
Yeah I was kidding. I was taking things to ridiculous extremes. The right to bear arms is not as sacred as some people make them out to be.
I’m not anti-gun but it looks like some people might be kneejerk pro-gun.
BTW, this is Great Debates, the whole cite thing when making an unsupported claim is how we determine which side is right regardless of which side wins the political battle. We have achieved concensus on what is the correct answer on all sorts of stuff that has eluded political reality. If you want to claim that we have a right to bear arms under teh second amendment then that’s fine, the gun control advocates have to make their case taht the controls they propose are constitutional. But if your case is based on “well gun-toting Americans are safest people in the world” or “America has the lowest murder rate in teh world because of gun ownership” then you should be ready to provide some evidence because those claims aren’t going to be accepted without some support.
Flatly repealing the second amendment would do more than protect some vestigfe of legitimacy, it would flatly repeal teh second amendment and the right to bear arms. Gun control can take the form of gun registries, it doesn’t have to take the form of absolute bans on handguns.
Nor, it would appear, is it as trivial and easily brushed aside as some would wish. At risk of being repetitious, this really comes down to which side is politically more effective, not which side is “right.” You may believe with all your heart that you are right about the 2nd ammendment and guns generally, but until you persuade enough other people to agree with you, your opinions are without weight or meaning.
There is just one minor (err, major) problem with this statement. Rifles and shotguns can shoot through your wall, then through your neighbor’s wall, then through your neighbor. Home defense is best accomplished with a handgun, assuming you know, and have practiced, how to use it. Personal defense out on the street is best accomplished by a concealed handgun (same knowledge and practice limitations). You can’t reasonably conceal a (legal) rifle or shotgun. Handguns are the best available home or personal defense weapons, if collateral damage to your neighbors matters to you (as it does under US law). If “home defense” or “personal defense” is at all acceptable, prohibiting handguns effectively prohibits effective “personal” or “home” defense. When it comes to “effective”, also, the most effective defense is the least effective offense. If you are attacking me with a firearm, I would much rather you have a handgun instead of a shotgun. Handguns are much harder to use offensively than shotguns. I’m much more likely to survive, regardless of what “defensive” weapon (if any) I happen to have on me at the time. Handguns may be the most often used criminal offensive firearm, but they are also the least effective, when used in a criminally offensive manner. The vast majority of “gun control” laws are aimed at the least effective criminal weapons / most effective self-defense weapons. What’s the real goal in outlawing them? I would not be at all surprised to find out that the real goal is outlawing self-defense, itself.
According to some people upthread, armed self-defense is “escalating” :rolleyes:.
Regarding home defense however I have to question the assertion that a handgun is the best home weapon. I have always heard that the best for that situation is either a (legally) short-barreled shotgun, loaded with double-ought or smaller shot to prevent overpenetration, or else a carbine shooting handgun ammo. Handguns are optimized for ease of carry at the expense of accuracy.
I don’t follow you? I understand that shotguns are more lethal than handguns but, are you saying that a criminal would be better off carrying around a heavy shotgun than a light compact handgun? I don’t think lethality is the primary characteristic that criminals look for in weapons.
I think you are going to have to define criminally offensive manner, because if i am a criminal I am going to want a handgun over a shotgun.
The desire to outlaw handguns is a matter of population density. What makes sense in rural areas or the suburbs doesn’t necessarily make sense in Chicago or DC. These gun bans are not some liberal pinko idea, the fraternal order of police are usually right there alongside all the other gun control advocates trying to get rid of handguns in cities. Now I still think that getting rid of handguns only mitigates the problem and the mitigation may not be enough to justify the harm it causes to average law abiding citizens but its kind of paranoid to think that the reason cities want to outlaw guns isbecause they want to outlaw self-defense.
Get an Uzi or a Mach 10, that’ll keep you safe.
Legal semiautomatic-only versions of the Uzi or MAC-10 are in fact excellent close quarters weapons.