No, I’m not trying to do that. I’m only trying to understand your point. You’re saying that in order for the Second Ammendment to apply to a person, that person has to belong to some organization called the militia. Is that right?
I’m sure someone else linked to this earlier. The militia.
All of us.
Right. I know you did not say exactly that. I’m trying to understand what you said.
Well, no, but those are not the only legitimate functions of a militia.
No, but you still might be a basketball player. Even if you do not belong to a professional, semi proffesional, or even participate in pickup games on Sundays. It is possible that you might simply go to the court and throw free throws every now and then. You could legitimately say that you “play basketball”. And if your analogy to the Second Ammendment were to be codified, you might then have the right to own a basketball. One could argue, certainly, that such an ammendment only applied to proffesional teams. Or one could argue that it only applied to teams who were officially members of the state sanctioned league. I’m not sure, however, that such an argument can be made for the Second Ammendment since when it was written it was thouroughly understood that the militia meant every able bodied male.
If, you have made a detailed argument why such a militia is no longer relevant, can you point me to it? Thanks in advance.
Since I think I understand your point now, I will, finally, let you have the last word.
If they did, I missed it - but this has been a very long thread, so that’s quite possible.
I think you make a great argument here; I hadn’t seen that before. IMO, Section A does not support your point; as you can see by the part I bolded, it’s clearly not referring to all people, but only those in the National Guard.
But Section B is interesting. I wish it were more clear, though. The definition is rather circular. The “unorganized militia” consists of “members of the militia”. That kind of begs the question, doesn’t it? If the militia is the same as “the people”, why doesn’t it say “people”, or “citizens”? Does “not members of the National Guard of Naval Militia” refer to all other people, or does it refer to people in other militias? It’s not clear at all.
One other point: The Second Amendment clearly says “well-organized militia”, so I wouldn’t think something that is defined in law as “unorganized militia”, would fit that definition.
No, I don’t think “all of us” is an organization that is equivalent to Colonial militias. Among many other arguments, I think we can agree that women and slaves were not meant to be part of Colonial militias, so right there we can definitively state that “militia” is not equivalent to “all of us”.
I didn’t say they were the “only legitimate functions”. I said that an informed historical understanding of the origin of the Second Amendment was that it was a reaction to fears of oppression. Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought you pretty much agreed with that view. You know, the whole thing about the Anti-Federalists and all. That suggests to me that we are talking about defense against tyranny. I never provided a laundry list of every conceivable function of a militia. But I do believe that having a gun under your pillow to protect you family because you have an exaggerated fear of burglars is not a legitimate function of a militia. In fact, having a gun under your pillow* is not a function of a militia at all.
Um, the basketball analogy is not literal in every way.
I disagree. That was in no way “thoroughly understood”.
Sorry, your question is based on your premise that “Colonial militia” = “all people”, with which I disagree.
*This is meant figuratively, of course. The gun doesn’t literally have to be under a pillow in order for my point to hold. I shouldn’t have to say that, but I have learned that figurative speech tends to blow by many in this forum.
Well, I guess that Blow’ has won the debate. Somebody should alert Sarah Brady to the existance of a new spokesperson to the cause. I mean, how can anyone argue against such wisdom?
What’s really funny here is that the gun zealots, while admitting that the 2nd Amendment was crafted for the purpose of defending state’s rights against federal power, and whining about out-of-control federal government at every opportunity, apparently want to hang their hat on the wording of a FEDERAL statute with regard to the definition of a militia.
Enlistment was viewed by the colonial soldier as a contract, or covenant, between himself the officer he enlisted under (Anderson-400). The colonials had a deep devotion to covenants which could be seen in the marriage between a man and woman, church covenants between congregation members, and most importantly the salvation covenant between man and God (Anderson-401). The British officers did not understand this contract mentality, and found they could do nothing to discourage it (Anderson-414).
The colonial soldier saw the contract of enlistment as a binding agreement between himself and the officer he served. This contract involved a specific term of service for which the soldier received specific compensation (Anderson-414). If either party made an attempt to alter the terms of the contract, then the agreement became void. If this occurred, the colonials saw themselves as no longer bound by their contract, and therefore free to leave (Anderson-414).
Sorry, the hamsters got ahold of that one before I was done. Trying again:
What’s really funny here is that the gun zealots, while admitting that the 2nd Amendment was crafted for the purpose of defending state’s rights against federal power, and whining about out-of-control federal government at every opportunity, apparently want to hang their hat on the wording of a FEDERAL statute with regard to the definition of a militia.
Doesn’t sound to me like the equivalent of “the people”. Or perhaps everyone who lived in Virginia had a rank, unit, commanding officer, and a pension?
The likelihood of a firearm being involved in a shooting is already 100%. It can’t be increased. Thats why it’s called “a shooting”.
The police are not always able to respond as quickly as an alert citizen (not even often) could. And if you are responding to a situation where you NEED a gun, the probability is that the person you are responding to either has one, or some other deadly weapon. I have a concealed carry permit (have had one since 1992) and have had to draw my weapon once. It was not even in self defense, but a cas of assault in a parking lot in the evening. I held the attacker at bay while my girlfriend (at the time) called 911. In fact I almost found myself in deep poop as the victim had run off, but the attacker was known to the officer and my description of the victim matched his girlfriend whom he had been arrested for beating before and had a restraining order from. I ended up losing a couple days at my store in order to appear and testify in court, and was investigated regarding my display of my weapon. It was a big pain in the butt, and I don’t even think the woman victim would have thanked me had she stuck around, but that is beside the point. It could have been a rape or kidnapping, robbery, or murder taking place and it would have been over by the time the police had arrived in any case.
Even with my permit I seldom carry and seldom did so back then. The only reason I even had my weapon was that I was taking a night cash deposit to the bank inside the grocery at the time. I think most folks who wish to carry concealed are the same. They see a specific need to sometimes be armed but wish to do so in a manner that is unobtrusive to others (seeing folks walking around with guns is very off-putting to say the least), and is also legal. These are not people who want to carry a gun all the time to live out some James Bond fantasy.
To be fair. A good number of folks will and do choose to wrong time to pull a piece. But Darwin takes care of his own.
I think you missed Brutus’ meaning. Clearly, he was saying that the more guns there are on the streets, the higher the likelihood that a shooting will occur. The logic seems pretty inescapable to me.
The idea of armed citizens augmenting the power of the police is dangerous as well as unneccessary. The only difference between a criminal with a gun and a law-abiding citizen with a gun is that the former has committed a crime, while the latter hasn’t - yet. We have already shown earlier in this thread that licensed gun owners do commit crimes. For better or for worse, the police enforce the laws in this country, not the citizenry. Personally, I believe it is better that way. I don’t completely trust the police, but I trust them more than some random person who happens to have a gun.
In addition, statistics show that very few crimes are thwarted by individuals with guns. The vast, vast majority of those that are stopped, are stopped by official law enforcement. You might think you need a gun because the police are too “slow”, but the facts don’t bear that out.
This is funny, because Berkut got really bent out of shape when I implied earlier that a gun might be used in the way you describe. He said this:
According to Berkut, holding an attacker “at bay” would never be done. This is all part of the fiction that there exists this supposed group of “law abiding gun owners” who are of like mind, and all follow the same rules.
I don’t understand. Was it part of your job? If so, and your job is that dangerous, why does the company not hire an armed security guard? Or if you are talking about your own personal bank deposit, why can’t you make your bank deposits during the day? Why would you deliberately force an unneccessary situation on yourself that would require you to carry a gun? I’d also point out that you weren’t actually protecting your life, but rather protecting your money. With all the talk in this thread about the need to protect oneself against harm, it often seems to really come down to protecting your “stuff”.
See, that’s what I’m talking about; the fiction that all gun owners are of like mind. I’m not hearing people arguing “specific need” at all; most of what I’m getting in this thread are arguments such as “I have a right”, and “I need to protect my family”. That’s not specific at all.
I’m not really worried about some jackass gun-owner getting himself killed out of stupidity; I’m worried about him killing an innocent person.
There are hundreds of thousands of CCW carriers in this country, and you equate them with criminals? Every time there is a shooting, it’s frontpage news, why haven’t we heard about CCW citizens committing crimes with a firearm? Yes, you showed that CCW guys do commit crimes, but you didn’t show or prove that their crimes were committed while carrying or if they used a firearm to commit a crime. Your 2nd Amendment arguements were thought provoking, however you are now in AGS or VPC propaganda territory. We have gone from 15 to 36 right to carry states in the last 15 years, yet homicides and violent crimes across the country have decreased to some of their lowest levels in years. And I’m not even going to say that CCW had anything to do with that, but it has not been shown that the converse is true.
I’ve been following this thread since the OP, I’m sorry, but did I miss these stats and “facts” somewhere? Even the BJS says that anywhere from 200K to 2.5 million(2.5 sounds kinda high to me too) crimes are stopped a year by a lawful citizen with a firearm.
I don’t know how much more specific one needs to be. I hunt and I target shoot. I don’t carry because I don’t feel I need to. I have friends that do. I have a home defense firearm for the same reason I have life insurance and fire extinquishers, in case I need it.
And how many of these instances have been documented? This seems to be a recurring theme, the fear that half-cocked gun owners will be strafing all the innocents and not the bad guys. I read about a gun owner who negligently(IMHO) killed a young Japanese exchange student in Texas a few years ago. That was pretty big news. Where are all the stats?
I was a business owner. Small business, actually. Very small. Thus I worked my shop myself every day and did my own banking after closing shop. This is why they have night deposits. There is no way I could afford to hire someone to run the store while i did my banking, or armed security. That is just silly.
what strikes me funny and seems endemic of people who don’t understand why somepone might feel the NEED to carry is the inability to conceive of a day to day situation made safer by a firearm. Probaby life experience figures in to it. In my cas, and the cases of many other small business owners we have been threatened, robbed and gun/knife point, you name it because the place for many businesses is in urban areas where sadly a passive shopkeep is prey to lunatics and the drug addled or anyone who thinks pulling a weapon on the fellow behind the counter beats getting a job.
In most cases I know it isn’t a matter of “well my till is insured so I’ll hand over the loot and it will all be okay.”. For many, if not most small business owners the margin of profit is so slight that you cannot afford to lose one days receipts. For me and my family, the money earned by the shop was our life. Not a matter of convenience, but a matter of defaulting on a lease or pulling your child out of daycare. And unemployment benefits just don’t exist until you incorporate, which isn’t much of an option for many folks. I don’t know why anyone insists why all of us gun owners think alike any more than I know why you cant grasp that sometimes a gun isn’t just a penis extension, it’s a tool or instrument that can be as important as insurance when the demand arises.
While I personally don’t feel any need to go armed to my home, and never have. I can at least imagine that there are some people who for some reason do live in situations that may be life threatening and can do nothing about it because of the limited resources available to them. Perhaps you need to consider that not all people are you and therefore while you may not be able to relate to their circumstance, that does not negate the reality of said circumstance.
Also your mention of accidental deaths due to use of firarms isn’t supported by CDC figures. Compare them to automotive deaths or injury, or same related to bathroom accidents or stair falls. To apply universal logic stairs, tubs/showers, and certaily cars and motorcycles should be illegal. Hell, cars have the most rigidly controlled access of anything mentioned and are the biggest statistical cause of injury and death out there.
I did no such thing. That’s a complete mischaracterization of what I said.
We have; I posted a link earlier.
Yes, many of the examples did involve people who were carrying their guns at the time. I’m thinking you didn’t actually look at the link.
I don’t even know what that means, but it smacks of an ad hominem argument.
Of course you’re not going to say CCW had anything to do with it, because you would be lying if you did. Citing an overall decrease in crime is extremely disingenuous. We already showed in this thread that while crime decreased everywhere, it actually decreased more in places that DON’T allow CCW.
Playing fast and loose with the facts seems to be a typical strategy for gun zealots.
A. Please don’t use acronyms that aren’t widely known.
B. Include links to your sources for statistics.
C. Absolute numbers mean nothing statistically; they need to be expressed as a percentage.
Well take that up with Zen101, then. He’s the one who made the argument that most CCW gun owners have a specific need. If you say you don’t, then it flies in the face of what he said.
Total 2002 murders: 14,054
2002 murders by firearms: 9,369
About 66% of the murders were committed with firearms.
This just seems weird to me: half the gun zealots are saying we don’t have to worry about being murdered, while the other half say they need a gun because they are worried about being murdered. WTF?
Ah, I guess the smilies weren’t functioning when you wrote it.
Actually, I can see your dilemna now. Thanks for explaining it in more detail. I can understand that one might not be able to afford a security guard, although I don’t see why you think that’s “silly”.
On the contrary, now that you have explained it, I can see your point very well. You simply didn’t explain it well the first time around. But out of all the posters in this thread, you seem to be the first to actually articulate such a compelling and specific need for a gun. I certainly believe that there are situations that require guns. Most obviously, policemen and soldiers need them. Also security guards might need them. I have never maintained that nobody should have a gun; I just disagree with the notion that everybody has an absolute right to a gun.
Yeah, I don’t get that either, yet people in this thread seem to think it’s true.
Hrmph - I’m reasonably sure I never said a gun was a “penis extension”, but thanks for playing.:rolleyes: Or was that another “nitpick in jest”?
blowero: I agree that I’ve enjoyed your arguements with regards to the 2nd ammendment; however, your arguments when dealing with the subject of self defense are flawed.
In this particular case, you are mistaken about the police officer ability to prevent crime. Of course, it is true that by arresting criminals, police officers reduce future crime by having the criminals in jail, where at best they can only victimize each other and the guards (who presumably, if unfortunately, accept this as a job risk). For the most part, police officers are not effective at stopping crime that is occuring. On a day to day basis, police officers look for criminals to arrest (a police officers day typically starts with a “watch for list” presented by the squads sargeant or lieutenant) or respond to a reports of a crime, which is typically reported after it has already occured or started to occur. I.e. in the case of a violent crime, the victim is likely already in a situation where they will be actively defending themselves or will have already defended themselves before the police even know anything is going on. It is simply luck that allows a police officer to be on the scene of a crime in time to prevent it from occuring, other than that it falls on the victim to be able to defend themselves, either by escape or violently as the situation dictates.
In 2002 only 20% of all crimes commited (this isn’t quite accurate in that it isn’t all crime but rather that which makes up the Crime Index but you can see the link below for more details) were ultimately cleared let alone prevented in the first place by police prescence. There just isn’t enough police officers to be able to be in the right place at the right time to prevent crime as it occurs. There isn’t even enough police officers to be able to clear all the cases of crime that are occuring.
From a self defense perspective, one of the first things to do is to get help on the way, but not so that the police can protect you but rather so that you can receive medical attention should you be severely injured in the process of defending yourself (see “Truth About Self Protection” by Massad Ayoob, for example). The chance of surviving a gun shot wound (gsw) is roughly 90% if medical attention is received within 15-20 minutes. The police and other emergency personnel are very valuable from this perspective, but again that is more of the post-crime cleanup then actively preventing a crime, except perhaps you could say by saving the victims life they prevent an assault with a deadly weapon or attempted murder from becoming a manslaughter or murder.
Also, consider that, barring some unusual circumstances like the victim being in a coma or being paralyzed from the neck down, in 100% of all violent crimes there was somebody who was in need of self defense. I’m not in favour of universal firearm access, in fact rather to the contrary IMO there are far too many idiots with guns; however, from a self defense perspective there is a concept called the force spectrum (see “The Role of the Firearm for Self Defense” for a very brief discussion, but sufficient for our purposes, of the force spectrum). When being assaulted by lethal force which cannot be escaped, the best response from a survival perspective is lethal force in turn. The best and most efficient projector that anybody would consider using for self defense, i.e. no nuclear weapons ;P, of lethal force is the firearm, meaning that at that end of the force spectrum the firearm provides the best means of self defense.
I’m not saying that had everybody who was a victim of a violent crime had a firearm then those crimes could have been prevented. Hardly. In fact, it is more likely that the firearm would have been useless due to a lack of sufficient training (see “too many idiots with guns” above).
It is an interesting problem. The firearm is a valuable tool for self defense, but not many are willing to undergo the training to turn it into that valuable tool. Personally, I think if you want to carry a firearm you should need to demonstrate the ability to use it responsibly and successfully… the only problem is with the lack of qualified SBT instructors how can you implement it… again an interesting problem. Anyway I’ll leave you to your 2nd amendment talk…
You seem to have no problem denigrating the NRA (an organization of which you know nothing about), calling gun advocates “zealots” and what have you, yet you take offense when stats provided by the AGS or VPC are called into question? Am I understanding you right? That the AGS, the VPC and the Brady group are the be-all and end-all in this discussion? And the NRA is just a bunch of whacko’s who lie?
Right, and my question was, How many of the 9, 369 murders were committed by CCW holders? Arrested, convicted or anything like that.
How did I “denigrate” the NRA? I said they consistently oppose all legislation regulating guns. I even conceded that they might not oppose all such legislation, but merely most of it. Seriously, if you think the NRA is in favor of legislation to regulate guns, I suggest that you are the one who knows nothing about them.
A zealot is one who shows zeal, which is intense enthusiasm. Are you denying that some have indicated intense enthusiasm toward guns? I’ll be glad to use the word “advocate” from now on if “zealot” offends you. No offense was intended.
That’s not even remotely close to what happened. Did you even read my post? Like I said, I don’t even know what those acronyms mean; it would be pretty hard for me to take offense when I don’t even have the slightest idea what the fuck you’re talking about.
You are nowhere close to understanding me right. At the risk of generalizing, you gun advocates seem to be an overly emotional bunch. Let’s please stick to facts and not blithe generalities.
[/quote]
No, that wasn’t your question. I can’t answer that question, because the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics are not broken down by CCW permit holders and non-permit-holders. However, I did post a link quite awhile back showing that CCW permit holders in Texas do commit crimes. If you are arguing that CCW permit holders do not commit crimes, you are mistaken.
That’s great, but it’s rather obvious, isn’t it? I would assume one of the criteria for a CCW permit is not having committed any serious crimes, so those who are issued permits are already pre-selected from the segment of the population that hasn’t committed serious crimes. It’s rather like saying, “Out of all the blue cars, most of them are blue.”
He’s asking the wrong question. He suggests that CCW permit holders ought not to be expected to do any better than the general population. That’s patently absurd. CCW permit holders are supposed to be screened; I would certainly hope they’d fare better than the population at large. The question rightly to be asked is, “Do they commit crimes at all?”, and the answer is “yes”. Mr. Burnett thinks that is the wrong question. I disagree.
Before I go back to ignoring you, I’d just like to point out that I acknowledged the criticism of that source, and congratulated the person who pointed it out. I think one of the most un-gracious things a person can do is to harp on a point I made earlier, when I have already conceded that point.
I didn’t think it was possible, Razor, but you have reached a new low.
I don’t want to take you out of context, so please correct me if I’m mis-stating your point, but this sentence would lead me to believe that you are not opposed to certain restrictions on firearms. Would you agree?
I don’t recall making any statement one way or the other regarding general police effectiveness. I said that only a small fraction of crime that is thwarted, is done so by private citizens with guns. That was based on a link posted earlier in this thread. If you have evidence that a large percentage of crimes are stopped by private citizens with guns, by all means post it here. I’d be very interested to see that.
But neither are private citizens with guns.
But IMO, the solution to that problem is not to arm the citizenry. As I said before, you may not be comfortable entrusting the safety of the public to the police, but that is how our social system works. I question whether an armed populace would be any better at deterring crime than the police, but even if it were, I don’t believe that having the citizenry take the law into their own hands is a viable alternative to the police. That’s more akin to anarchy.
