Guns, Guns Guns

Here's a brief overview about the 2nd amendment from wiki

The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the right of individuals[1][2] to keep and bear arms.[3][4][5][6] The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the right vests in individuals, not merely collective militias, while also ruling that the right is not unlimited and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices.[7] State and local governments are limited to the same extent as the federal government from infringing this right per the incorporation of the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, as part of the first ten amendments comprising the Bill of Rights.

The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in English common-law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense, resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state.[8]

In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence" and limited the applicability of the Second Amendment to the federal government.[9] In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government and the states could limit any weapon types not having a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.[10][11]

In the twenty-first century, the amendment has been subjected to renewed academic inquiry and judicial interest.[11] In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision, expressly holding the amendment to protect an individual right to possess and carry firearms.[12][13] In McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Court clarified its earlier decisions that limited the amendment's impact to a restriction on the federal government, expressly holding that the Fourteenth Amendment applies the Second Amendment to state and local governments to the same extent that the Second Amendment applies to the federal government.[14] Despite these decisions, the debate between the gun control and gun rights movements and related organizations continues.[15]

Now I chose Wiki because it's much easier to read and understand than constitutional case law website.

Tenshinai wrote:

pokermind wrote:In 1775 the British sent the Army from Boston to confiscate the Massachusetts Militias powder and arms, and our revolution began. It's a historical cultural thing, just saying.

Poker

And THAT is where you get the 2nd amendment from.

Why citizens need guns to protect their lives and property:

http://toprightnews.com/?p=5136

Poker

Or maybe it was the fact that there were big burly men outside. It could be that the stores wouldnt have been damaged if the defenders were armed with baseball bats or two by fours.....

pokermind wrote:Why citizens need guns to protect their lives and property:

http://toprightnews.com/?p=5136

Poker

[quote="Spacekiwi"] Or maybe it was the fact that there were big burly men outside. It could be that the stores wouldnt have been damaged if the defenders were armed with baseball bats or two by fours.....
[\quote]

Yeah, maybe. But maybe not - who knows if the rioters had guns, too? If I'm gonna defend my store, I'd like to have everything that is LEGALLY available at my disposal. The defenders didn't do any mischief, or act in any unlawful way - but the rioters did.

And the problem is that you have now had gun freedom for so lonbg, that you actually have to worry about the probability of rioters having guns, as they are so common. the problem is not the presence of the guns, the problem is their ubiquity throughout your society, and the automatic first thought of reaching for a gun first, as opposed to other weapons, or talking. A family member of mine carries a gun regularly in his car, and the instant he is required to wear it, as opposed to bringing it, he will be retiring. He has been using a gun as part of his job for 20 years, but he would still prefer not to use it, because the presence of a gun by either side only escalates a situation. He has several bravery awards, for managing armed situations, where the other guy was armed, or was believed to be armed, or in one case, had to ferret out a nutjob threatening to explode a bomb. He didnt have his gun on him for these, or for most of the close combat fights he has been in with drugged up addicts, gang members, those attempting police assisted suicide and many other cases.
He says in many of these cases, the pistol or rifle being drawn would have been the only apporiate action, had he been armed with it, to prevent it being taken off him, and thus several of these actions would have ended with at least one person shot. But due to the lack of guns over here, he doesnt carry one regularly, and all those people survived the ecounter.


You want people to protect stores? Maybe allow tasers or other non lethal defense methods to be used by the general public, and try and reduce your guns per person level. Guns as defense only really work when both the assailant and the victim are rational. if the attacker or victim is acting irrationally around the gun, the situation will only end worse off for the gun, not the better.

pushmar wrote:

Spacekiwi wrote: Or maybe it was the fact that there were big burly men outside. It could be that the stores wouldnt have been damaged if the defenders were armed with baseball bats or two by fours.....
[\quote]

Yeah, maybe. But maybe not - who knows if the rioters had guns, too? If I'm gonna defend my store, I'd like to have everything that is LEGALLY available at my disposal. The defenders didn't do any mischief, or act in any unlawful way - but the rioters did.

pokermind wrote:Why citizens need guns to protect their lives and property:

http://toprightnews.com/?p=5136

Poker

So, the second store was protected by people who had concealed weapons. Question is, was it the fact that they had weapons that protected them, or the fact that they looked like they would defend the place? In other words, are weapons necessary, or is making yourself look like a hard target sufficient?

The articles' conclusion, that "being armed — and armed to the teeth — is the ONLY defense against a rioting mob" is founded upon the belief that only guns, or the threat of guns, will stop people. Surprisingly enough, the reason why the situation in Ferguson escalated the way it did was precisely because of this, because the police felt it necessary to tool up with enough gear to be prepared for the time when someone would ask them to do a patrol through Afghanistan, despite there not being an armed insurgency at any time.

Guns do not help in the endeavour to keep a society together. You cannot build a part of your culture on the belief that owning tools made to kill others is a fundamental and inalienable right, and expect everyone to be sane about it.

I agree with your comment Spacekiwi, but personally I can't see a way out for the US now. With the quantity of guns in circulation there now there is no chance of reducing the levels down to where people just don't expect to be threatened by them. Here we have a couple of hot spots where a couple of times a week there will be news headlines if a gun is used in an assault or robbery. For the rest of the country it would be about once a month.
I own legal guns, and have at times used a great variety of them for hunting, making a living, or fun; so I'm not anti gun as such, just am glad that I don't have to even consider using them for personal self defence.

I really am not trolling or seeking an argument when I say that the only real uses for a concealable hand gun are target shooting or killing humans in confined situations.

To quote a scientific truth:

Correlation does not equal causation!
(Just because the two occur together, doesnt mean one causes the other)

But the ferguson thing shows again how easy it is to transform the ideal from to serve and protect, to protect yourself first.

The E wrote:

pokermind wrote:Why citizens need guns to protect their lives and property:

http://toprightnews.com/?p=5136

Poker

So, the second store was protected by people who had concealed weapons. Question is, was it the fact that they had weapons that protected them, or the fact that they looked like they would defend the place? In other words, are weapons necessary, or is making yourself look like a hard target sufficient?

The articles' conclusion, that "being armed — and armed to the teeth — is the ONLY defense against a rioting mob" is founded upon the belief that only guns, or the threat of guns, will stop people. Surprisingly enough, the reason why the situation in Ferguson escalated the way it did was precisely because of this, because the police felt it necessary to tool up with enough gear to be prepared for the time when someone would ask them to do a patrol through Afghanistan, despite there not being an armed insurgency at any time.

Guns do not help in the endeavour to keep a society together. You cannot build a part of your culture on the belief that owning tools made to kill others is a fundamental and inalienable right, and expect everyone to be sane about it.

Unfortunately, the only path I can see is a three decade plus project, that would require comittment from county, state, and federal levels, and an agreement that some current definitions of the second probably allow too much freedom, and that all the laws are slowly standardised to be similar to the UK/AU/NZ style, with limits on gun production and import, limits on private gun ownership, and a hell of a lot of cultural shift towards the idea that city dwellers should never need guns. Essentially they need left of Obama leaders, who no longer care about the pork barrel, and just want to get it done with.

Its that, or just watch as the senseless and stupid deaths continue year after year.

Daryl wrote:I agree with your comment Spacekiwi, but personally I can't see a way out for the US now. With the quantity of guns in circulation there now there is no chance of reducing the levels down to where people just don't expect to be threatened by them. Here we have a couple of hot spots where a couple of times a week there will be news headlines if a gun is used in an assault or robbery. For the rest of the country it would be about once a month.
I own legal guns, and have at times used a great variety of them for hunting, making a living, or fun; so I'm not anti gun as such, just am glad that I don't have to even consider using them for personal self defence.

I really am not trolling or seeking an argument when I say that the only real uses for a concealable hand gun are target shooting or killing humans in confined situations.

Spacekiwi wrote:You want people to protect stores? Maybe allow tasers

In many ways, those are actually WORSE, because they leave no evidence and can therefore be misused freely. And there´s also the psychological part about how "they don´t cause visible injuries" means that most people become drastically more likely to use them on someone.

Spacekiwi wrote:He has been using a gun as part of his job for 20 years, but he would still prefer not to use it, because the presence of a gun by either side only escalates a situation.

Definitely! If someone pulls a gun at me, that means i no longer consider myself bound by little niceties like wether the person in question survives the event or becomes crippled in the process.



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The E wrote:The articles' conclusion, that "being armed — and armed to the teeth — is the ONLY defense against a rioting mob" is founded upon the belief that only guns, or the threat of guns, will stop people.

>...<

So, the second store was protected by people who had concealed weapons. Question is, was it the fact that they had weapons that protected them, or the fact that they looked like they would defend the place? In other words, are weapons necessary, or is making yourself look like a hard target sufficient?

Indeed. The average person would probably not approach even if the "defenders" only had kendo-swords(which are relatively "soft"), and people with baseball bats would likely deter all but the idiots.

The E wrote:Guns do not help in the endeavour to keep a society together. You cannot build a part of your culture on the belief that owning tools made to kill others is a fundamental and inalienable right, and expect everyone to be sane about it.

And a big +1 to that.