Right to Keep & Bear Arms

The Bill of Rights pertains to individuals.

 

Yes laws change. The Second Amendment is the current law on this.

 

That is not what I said at all. I actually said I support the Right to Bear Arms. I said we need to stop the embarrassing interpretation that we have of the Second Amendment. Every man does not have an unregulated right to own a gun.

I also made a point to say that if Government take over is truly the motive for the 2nd Amendment, than the 2nd Amendment is obselete. Civilians cannot wage a revolutionary war against a tyrannical government that controls the military of our scope. If it ever went there, the pressure is on the military generals to do the right thing. An army of men in handguns doesn't provide the slightest resistance for even one battalion, tank, or fighter. Let's be real.

That is why I said this:

 

I agree.

However, in the case of NYC and extremely large urban areas, I understand why gun control exists. Owning an assault weapon in your rural home is different from walking down a crowded NYC street with an assault weapon in your hands. Accidental discharge is pure carnage.

 

Woah! This is exactly opposite to what the Constitution says, specifically the 9th and 10th Amendments. The first Ten Amendments were originally meant to be a restriction on the Federal Government, not the States. That's why many of them start out, "Congress shall make no law..."

 

That's irrelevant. With the expansion of American citizenship comes the expansion of individuals who have the right to bare arms.

The original Ten Amendments restrict the Federal Government from making gun laws, period. But that doesn't prohibit the state from making gun laws.

That's liberals and conservatives for ya.

All Federal laws, yes.

 

I can't comprehend this line of reasoning that leads to the 2nd being a right guaranteed to a select few people belonging to select organizations. It doesn't make any sense, and like Scalia said, it reduces the 2nd A to the right to be a soldier. Can I be a 1 man militia? Or does the 2nd A only give me the right to be a soldier in a militia that my govt approves is in fact a militia?

The Bill of Rights gives rights to the people. And when you people go around trying to revise history and say it means something else, you are going to have people like me disagreeing with you. The 2A also gives rights to the people, not to the govt. Your argument in effect, says the 2nd A is a right given to the govt, in order to screen who should be in a militia and who should not, and what a militia even is. That has nothing to do with the purpose of the Bill of Rights in America. In fact, it moves away from the purpose, and diminishes the rights of the people.

 

I'm not forgetting anything, you seem to be. My country just witnessed 650,000 of its brothers and sisters murdered by its own brothers and sisters. And immediately following this, my govt created the 14th Am. I'm supposed to ignore this? No, it clearly applies to the states...Any other interpretation, imo, disrespects the conflict our ancestors had, and what they agreed upon, after that conflict.

 

Oh boy. Again, we need to stress the definition of "Assault Weapon".
Civilian possession of Assault Weapons is prohibited. These are things like rocket launchers, grenades, and weapons other than firearms that are used to wage an assault.
Still, It would make zero difference if I were to carry an M-204 or an ice cream cone anywhere on earth.
I do carry firearms all over the place in Las Vegas. (Population just short of 3 Million) These are normally semi-automatic pistols, but I carry my AR 15 and my AK to wherever I want them to be. These are semi-automatic rifles. No-one has ever died because of it because I'm a real live responsible American Citizen, just like almost every single one of the other 120 Million (+/-) other responsible American Citizens who own firearms.
What is the point of this discussion?

 

THAT YOU ARE AWARE OF………………. no one has died that you are aware of - yet

It is like flipping a coin and declaring that it must be the same both sides because you have flipped it 10 times and each time it has shown tails.

So you claim to carry all the weaponry around a city (why?) is that secured or unsecured?

 

The 14th Amendment applies to the States but the framers of that Amendment never intended it to reverse the original meaning of the Amendments before it. The first Ten Amendments obviously do not apply to the State governments and the 14th Amendment was never intended to change that.

 

Regardless of any other opinions whether today or in 1791 the 2A says what it says. I know you wished it said something else. But it doesn't. From 1939 to 2008 it was interpreted as a states right issue that did NOT pertain to any individual. It gives STATES the right to form militias. And as clearly proven elsewhere those militias were to operate under specific instructions. And they could be called out to put down unlawful groups whether foreign invasion or tax protestors. In fact the first use was to put down the Whisky Tax Rebellion. They reported to President Washington.

Anyone who believes that the same laws that provided for state run militias to put down tax rebellions and other insurrections were also intended to authorize tax rebellions and other insurrections just isn't thinking straight.

 

Than why doesn't the First Amendment mean what it says? You guys want it both ways don't you? Would you believe the two men that actually wrote it how they felt about the right to bear arms? They also wanted the people to have arms to put down a government that went against the wishes of the people. The government was new and they had no idea of how it would develop.

 

Charge him. Don't let him have a gun anymore. Done. Don't see why this is a reason to ban guns.

So I should be a man and....let the criminal do whatever he's doing????

- - - Updated - - -

Who are you to judge that? So you're going to make an arbitrary restriction on people because they live in the wrong area? Sorry, I would not roll with that.

 

Popular uprisings are hard to put down even when you have the advantage. Ask Assad.

If I'm not mistaken the most common firearm in America is the semi-automatic version of the AR-15. Modified to fire automatic, now we have a decently armed populace.

The fallacy that "You can't beat them anyway so taking the guns away now doesn't matter" is bull(*)(*)(*)(*), because you can beat them. The US Military is not invincible. This is purely opinion but from what I can see, average Americans are more adept at handling firearms than most other civilian populations on Earth. The US Military looks invincible because these days they fight untrained push-overs with Cold-War weapons. I guarantee you a national guerilla force of American citizens could rip up the US Military faster than the Nazis did. Think Soviets in Afghanistan style.

 

This Black Pearl is why we don't want our kids thinking like Liberals as you stated in another thread. You want the Second Amendment to be just like it says even though many founding fathers have said other wise, even James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who helped Madison write the Bill of Rights says other wise. But then you want to make the First Amendment to say separation of church and state when there is NOTHING in there to even suggest that. You Liberals want it both ways and then wonder why we don't want our kids thinking like Liberals. Stop and give it a little thought and it might come to you.

 

There was several reason to give the people the right to own guns. One was to hunt with. Another was to protect his family. Another was to help defend the country from an attack. And another was to fight the government in case it decided to go against the will of the people.

Yes, every man had a right to own a gun, unless of course he was a criminal. That has plainly been stated by many of our founding fathers and signers of our Constitution.

 

Well they must have thought about it a bit further. Because less than 5 months later they authorized the states to organize militias to kill anyone who did what you suggest. And what part of the 1st Amendment confuses you? It seems perfectly straight forward to me. Of course none of these rights were meant to be a free for all. Shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater for example.

My suggestion is that if you don't like the fact that the 2A only authorizes states to organize militias and does not apply to any individual right whatsoever you should rewrite the damned thing and get it passed as a constitutional amendment. Of course conservatives have the activist Supreme Court who interpret it the way they like. But all it takes is another Supreme Court to overturn it. Just like the previous interpretation was overturned in 2008. So you should really get to work to fix that if you want it fixed. As written "the people" REMAINS a plurality and not an individual right.

Plus the fact that any group that tried to take on the US military would get slaughtered anyway. They aren't even going to give you living targets to shoot at. WTF are you going to do against DRONE AIRCRAFT? Welcome to the 21st Century.

 

The fact that we even have to have this discussion proves that the 2A is poorly written. Poorly written laws need to be rewritten so that they clearly state their purpose. You are dragging all manner of things into the 2A that are CLEARLY not there. If you want to put them there then you need to go through that process. Because, like I said, another Supreme Court decision can overturn the 2008 decision just like that one overturned the previous decision. That's called "thinking clearly". I understand that as a conservative your brain is limited on processing power. Reality has a liberal bias.

And despite your beliefs you can't be more clear about a separation of church and state than

Again, what part of that don't you understand?

 

Why do you libs have a problem with law-abiding citizens having a gun for self-defense, hunting, target shooting, etc.? Do you not like your rights, your freedoms?

 

There is a difference between a national, a citizen, a slave and a person. The 2A only refers to people, and many argue that it only refers to people in a well-regulated militia.

Originalists like Scalia believe that the intent of the Framers is relevant in his judgements, and I really don't think that they wanted their slaves to own guns. Do you?

The supremacy clause can be used to prohibit states from making gun laws.

 

Everyone is a law-abiding citizen... until they break the law.

Here is a great example of defensive gun use:

Why were no charges pressed in this apparent murder? It's probably because he used a gun.

 

Maybe we should ban cars because accidents happen all too often that kill people. Your thought process is flawed. Mistakes happen. If need be, people should be prosecuted if they broke the law. This does not mean that our rights need to be taken away.

 

He won't be charged. He used an almighty gun, so it must have been self-defense. If he stabbed him, it would surely be seen as a murder. See how these laws really only affect gun owners?

It's one more example of how guns can cause more harm than good. There are plenty of nations that have almost no guns and they're doing just fine. I see no reason why the great USA can't do the same.

It's an old argument: we're all in imminent danger and need to defend ourselves by carrying a gun everywhere. It's funny how all of these people in such imminent danger find the time to sit and post online.

 

YES! Car crashes are up there in causing pain, death, and suffering in this country. I'm not sure of the rankings, but I know far more people that have been involved in car crashes than I have known those that have been involved in a shooting. Yet the lobby pushing to show the uselessness of cars that can go 100mph+ is nowhere near as big as the lobby pushing to show the uselessness of clips with 10+ bullets. It's strange.