For the thousands that have died for it, the resounding answer is yes.
Did the thousands really die for the second amendment? Or did they die for the constitution in general? Amending the constitution has been done before and will be done again. Your soldiers aren't fighting to prevent that, or at the very least they shouldn't be. Protecting the constitution and protecting America doesn't mean fighting to stop any amendment ever happening to the constitution ever surely.
This isn't some 'defending the constitution' issue. It's first a question on whether the interpretation of it is correct and then deciding whether it needs to be amended.
I didn't make the crazy assertion that the constitution wasn't worth 26 lives.
I don't think you have to ignore the "well-regulated militia" part in order to see that it says the people have the right to own guns.The clearest proof against the 'individual right' interpretation of the 2nd amendment is the fact that it didn't EXIST 50 years ago.
Well, that's three years before Malcolm X died, so I guess it doesn't require time travel like in the other gun thread.
Anyway, I'm no lawyer, and, to be honest, I'm not really certain what the Second Amendment has to do with the case, but the first Supreme Court case I read about on the wikipedia page is the United States vs. Cruikshank which basically said that black people were at the mercy of racist state governments. Yay Supreme Court!
The point is the arbitrary loss of things you can now do, not based on any behavior on your part, but because of the behavior of a very few people.
That describes every. single. law. EVER. Passed. Why do you need x number of exits from a building? Because some schmuck didn't have enough and people died in a fire. Why can't I own a pet fox without a license? Because some people didn't know how to take care of them. Why can't I take a bird feather i found outside accross state lines? Because some people over hunted bird species into extinction. Why can't I serve meat from a cow that has a broken leg? Because some idiots kept turning sick cows into food and people died for it.
I don't like being held accountable for the actions of others. Even more so in cases where there will most likely be little to no actual benefit for the loss of the ability.
I can understand not liking more laws on general principle, but really, what is this one going to hurt?
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A friend of mine, who has reformed his life from quite a shady past, put it best when he recently commented,"Name anything that's currently illegal that you want to. Then give me thirty minutes, and I will return with it in hand."
Ok. One dirty bomb please.
Sorry, guns are not drugs. Especially large guns like the AR-15. They are large and bulky and easy to detect. Not to mention comparatively expensive to produce. They could indeed be controlled if that were the law of the land. Not with 100% effectiveness, but certainly well enough that the above 'thirty minute' test would fail.
Or to anyone that i ask "what the hell do you need THAT thing for?"Anecdotal is anecdotal...
We tend to run in circles of like minded people. I can ask anyone I know that same question and they'd give me a list of things they'd use it for...
I delibrately ask people i don't agree with on the matter. In fact, this is one of the more common reasons i give for "why the hell do you talk politics on a GAMING board?" Specifically to avoid this.
I have yet to hear a good answer, and i've reached the point that i've concluded there isn't one. If you can't give me a good answer, don't give me some patronizing ad hom about the kind of people you think i hang out with.
I'm a big believer in absence of evicende becomming evidence of absence after a certain point. Go ahead, ask if you don't know, lets hear their answer.
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A friend of mine, who has reformed his life from quite a shady past, put it best when he recently commented,"Name anything that's currently illegal that you want to. Then give me thirty minutes, and I will return with it in hand."Ok. One dirty bomb please.
Woop! Woop! Woop!
Somewhere in an NSA internet surveillance installation the size of 50 football fields, an alarm is sounding.
I'm not suggesting a gun ban would not reduce gun related crime. But get real, they exist and they are going to be used for bad purposes by very bad people. Make them as illegal as you like. They wont go away. Ever.
Consider the past ages of "civilized" man when smuggling carried a death sentence in many cases. People still risked life and limb when a profit was involved.
Now , again, I am not saying we stand idly by and do nothing. I am just fishing for more ideas. By inferred tone of many of the posts here, less people seem inclined to discuss real solutions and seem more inclined to somehow prove that their viewpooint is the "right" one somehow. We all agree there is a problem, we just have different solutions.
By the by, why do we tend to trivialize some lawful violations (drug use, for instance) and demand enforcement for others? Breaking the law is breaking the law. Yet we all know how widespread drug use and how available "illegal" substances are. Its almost laughable. Sadly, how much violent crime do you think is linked to drug use?
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Especially large guns like the AR-15. They are large and bulky and easy to detect.
All AR-15's are made to be broken down into two roughly equal halves to make cleaning them easier (there are only two small pins that hold the two halves together). And the size of the halves is dependent upon the overall length of the AR-15 in question (there is no "average length" AR-15 anymore)...
That being said, the older style with the 20 inch barrel can be broken down into two roughly 20 inch halves, the more popular style with the 16 barrel can be broken down into two roughly 16 inch halves. And if you have an AR "pistol" then it is much smaller to begin with and would not need to be broken down, as it can be concealed as easily as any handgun (but if one was still inclined to do so, an AR pistol with a 7 inch barrel could be broken down into two roughly 7 inch halves).
Not to mention comparatively expensive to produce.
One can buy a decent AR-15, fully assembled, for around $800. One can buy the parts and build a decent AR-15 for around $500. So, the cost of manufacturing them is no more than nearly any other firearm (rifle or handgun).
Ok, I should just stay out of this, but oh well. First off, as I have posted in other similiar threads, I dont like guns myself and have never owned one. I grew up in a household with fire arms and was taught to respect them. I am for banning anything but regular rifles and shotguns, let people have those for hunting and self protection.
But, its simply naive to think any sort of gun ban will put and end to gun violence. A friend of mine, who has reformed his life from quite a shady past, put it best when he recently commented,"Name anything that's currently illegal that you want to. Then give me thirty minutes, and I will return with it in hand."
Simply put, we cant get rid of them. No way. Its pandora's box. It's open and we have to learn to deal with it.
I dont know what the answer is. My usual suggestion is to make laws so severe that if you use a gun in the commission of a crime we put you away for life and you never get out. Problem is, these murder spree nutcases make their last victim themselves in alot of cases, so long jail terms are not a deterrent.
While I am up here on my soapbox, let me share another rant. Why is killing a cop a capital offense and killing me is not? Why is one life somehow worth more than another? Murder is murder. Simple. We should treat all killings the same and go for the jugular as recompense.
The point of a gun ban would be to reduce the number of guns, there by making it harder to acquire guns period. Also, most major shooting incidents are done with legally purchased guns.
The thoughts on cops is that they are putting themselves in harms way. And criminals who are already going to jail might shoot at cops not caring about additional jail time, but a death penalty might deter them. Unfortunately people who commit crimes tend to have poorly developed areas of the brain dealing with impulse control.
Woop! Woop! Woop!
Somewhere in an NSA internet surveillance installation the size of 50 football fields, an alarm is sounding.
Maybe I should have asked for something else instead?
Weapons grade Anthrax?
Plutonium 239?
I'd say that if you get a private message from an unknown poster, ignore it.
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One can buy a decent AR-15, fully assembled, for around $800. One can build a decent AR-15 for around $500. So, the cost of manufacturing them is no more than nearly any other firearm (rifle or handgun).
I was comparing guns to drugs. Guns are bigger, easier to detect, and more expensive to manufacture... ergo, it is much easier to prevent their illegal distribution.
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I delibrately ask people i don't agree with on the matter.
I did said that we tend to not that we in fact do...
At any rate, people have given reasons as to why they feel they need this or that style of firearm, and you disagree with those reasons. But they are still valid reasons...
Hunters use semi-auto firearms because they are more convenient to use. Professional competition shooters use semi-auto firearms because they shoot and react faster than single-action firearms (and with speed being one of only two main components in competition shooting, and thousands of dollars on the line, well...). You may not like that these are valid reasons, you may even disagree that they are valid at all, but that does not change the fact that they are perfectly valid. And though you may try, you cannot just tell these people to "just go use this older technology over here and be happy with it!" and expect them to agree with you and your reasoning...
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Really? There are significant difference between the AR-15 and my friend's M1.
Primarily that his rifle only has an eight round magazine.
Most semi-automatic firearms are capable of accepting a detachable magazine.
Obviously, the M1 Garand is one of VERY few exceptions. And that limitation was one of the reasons why the M-14 was developed...
But this does not invalidate what I said about semi-auto firearms. Because while they may look different, and use different parts; mechanically, the M1 Garand functions exactly the same as the AR-15 does...
Kryzbyn -> You're quibbling there though. It's pretty clear in context that it's always been meaning that any specific clause that would need to be amended to allow stronger gun control isn't worth 26 lives. Nobody is saying that the constitution itself should be scrapped, at most that it should perhaps be further amended or clarified.
Oh sure! Everyone else is quibbling over technicalities, but when I do it...
You got me. I miss read the post and reacted accordingly. My apologies.|
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Every single hunter I know uses a bolt action rifle and looks down on people using semi-auto rifles or those with more then a five round magazine.
Grab ANY popular hunting magazine, and thumb through it!
Yeah, you'll see a lot of bolt guns, but you'll also see a lot of semi-autos as well...
Remington makes a highly popular AR-15 variant that is designed as a hunting rifle; it even has that "hunter leaf" camo on it...
And that's just one example...
As for your friends only using 5 round magazines... Well, most states do not have any laws that limit round capacity (except for hunting fowl, with a lot of states requiring a 3 round limit), so, unless they are prohibited by law from using more, that's their preference...
So, just because your friends look down their noses at hunters that don't hunt like them, does not mean their way of hunting is the only proper way to hunt...
Just sayin'.
I guess I can sum up my thoughts as this:
When more is done to make sure known crazy people can't get firearms, I'll be more willing to discuss not allowing otherwise responsible gun owners to continue to be able to buy AR-15s.
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They're both gas operated rifles with rotating bolts. They're very different otherwise. The Stoner action is direct gas impingement and the M1 is a long stroke piston. The M1 action has more in common with Mikhil Kalashnikov's designs then Stoner's.
As I said, they use different parts, but those different parts come together and work the same way no matter if its system is blowback or gas operated (piston or DI)...
But my point was very simply that the civilian AR-15 does not shoot any faster than the civilian mini 14, civilian Glock, the 1911, or the M1 Garand; because they all shoot just as fast as you can pull the trigger...
People want to somehow villainize and single out the AR-15 when it shoots just the same as your friend's M1 Garand (I had one of those too, so I know how fast it can shoot, even though it is limited by its use of 8 round steel clips)...
And my friends look down their noses at any hunter who needs more then one round.
Okay, so they are elitist hunters who have no tolerance for anybody that might not be up to their holier-than-thou standard (sounds like many of the gaming threads here with talk of "you aren't really roleplaying unless you roleplay like I do")...
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I did said that we tend to not that we in fact do...
A passive aggressive ad hom is still an ad hom. It was obvious what you were implying. The insult to my intellectual honesty was bad enough without this disingenuous veneer being applied to it.
I don't know if you keep speaking like this because you like being being coy or you're trying to be polite, but either way its not working.
At any rate, people have given reasons as to why they feel they need this or that style of firearm, and you disagree with those reasons. But they are still valid reasons...
No.
Just because someone thinks they have a valid reason does NOT mean that they have a valid reason.
Hunters use semi-auto firearms because they are more convenient to use.
If you need to fire 5 bullet a second to hunt you do NOT belong out in the woods.
Professional competition shooters use semi-auto firearms because they shoot and react faster than single-action firearms (and with speed being one of only two main components in competition shooting, and thousands of dollars on the line, well...)
Use the other guns. The targets aren't going anywhere.
You may not like that these are valid reasons, you may even disagree that they are valid at all, but that does not change the fact that they are perfectly valid.
So I'm wrong because... I'm wrong? That isn't an argument.
Seriously, we need to have people DIE so that people can... target shoot? That doesn't seem like the priorities are just a LITTLE mixed up to you?
And though you may try, you cannot just tell these people to "just go use this older technology over here and be happy with it!" and expect them to agree with you and your reasoning...
I really have given up on reason entering into it at this point.
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Well, 8 rounds is big limitation when you're trying to kill lots of people. Jared Loughner was stopped when he had to reload.
Yes, 8 rounds do limit the number of times you can shoot before reloading. But regardless of its 8 round limit, my point was, it still shoots just as fast as you can pull the trigger, just like an AR-15...
More generally, people villainize the AR-15 not because it looks scary or whatever, but because it's the one that's been used in many of these recent shootings. It's familiar. It's associated with mass killings. If they'd all been done with AK-47 knockoffs instead, that would be villainized.
Yes, and that's really the sad part, because semi-atuos in general will probably not be banned, just the ones that people mistakenly call "military grade" because they think that these somehow shoot faster than other semi-auto firearms...
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I am:Are you even reading what I've posted?Then explain to me why the 2nd amendment is more valuable then even one life?
It's like Bill Hicks said about the American flag: NSFW language
Is the constitution of the US worth more than 26 lives? Yes.For the thousands that have died for it, the resounding answer is yes.
No amount of corpses piled up around an idea can improve its content or its worth in the slightest. People die for stupid, false, and evil doctrines every day of the year. You could stack them up in the hundreds of billions and they'd make no difference at all to any person with an ounce of sense.
Think about it for a second: Do you give a crap about all the Germans who died for Hitler's ideas? Stalin's? Jefferson Davis's?
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The point does stand, it is perfectly possible to hunt with a rifle with limited ammunition capacity. Considering most hunting is done for sport, not subsistence (just because you take it home and eat it does not make you a subsistence hunter), I fail to see why we should make it easier for criminals or the criminally violent to obtain these weapons.
They were illegal to manufacture and sell in this country, they would be harder to obtain.
Dynamite makes fishing easier, but we don't allow that either.
I guess I can sum up my thoughts as this:
When more is done to make sure known crazy people can't get firearms, I'll be more willing to discuss not allowing otherwise responsible gun owners to continue to be able to buy AR-15s.Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by "known crazy people"?
Few of the recent shooters were "known crazy people" in the "had been involuntarily committed" sense which is the closest thing to current law. Most that I know of were either undiagnosed at the time of the shooting or never diagnosed at all if they didn't survive.
Nor are most homicides (or gun homicides) committed by "known crazy people".Using a broader definition of "mental illness", I'm not sure how many would fit, but you would also sweep up many non-violent people. The mentally ill are in general more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators.
And of course with cases like Adam Lanza's, even if he had been diagnosed with something more than autism-spectrum, will you take weapons away from anyone sharing a household with someone who is mentally ill?
And as I think I posted before on one of these threads, one of the main reasons our current background checks don't catch these things across state lines is that the NRA backed lawsuits that kept states from having to submit data to the federal government.
The guy who shot up the theatre in CO had seen someone and had been diagnosed with Schizophrenia in the days before the shooting. Also I had read that the Lanza kid's mother knew he was out of control. So the psychiatrist that saw the Aurora shooter should have had a method of identifying him to the police as a danger to himself and others and the CT shooter's mother should have secured her weapons if her son was unstable. That the NRA has lobbied to stop these things doesn't invalidate them, and you can't make a person that has legally obtained a firearm practice gun safety at home. But for all those other millions of gun owners that manage to do so without their weapons being used in a massacre, restricting their ability to purchase currently legal firearms when they've proven capable of exercising their 2nd amendment rights responsibly isn't right. I think we need a national registry for folks with mental illness and have legislation that if your legally obtained weapon is used in the commission of a felony you are treated as an accessory to the crime. If this doesn't curtail mass shootings, then we can talk about banning currently legal weapons.
My favorite NRA member.
So, just because your friends look down their noses at hunters that don't hunt like them, does not mean their way of hunting is the only proper way to hunt...Just sayin'.
Yeah.
I mean, personally, I like to hunt (deer, fowl, small game) with shoulder mounted atomic warheads.WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME I AM WRONG?!
I guess I can sum up my thoughts as this:
When more is done to make sure known crazy people can't get firearms, I'll be more willing to discuss not allowing otherwise responsible gun owners to continue to be able to buy AR-15s.
And what I believe the point of this thread is, or at least the theme has been so far: the NRA are so b%#$#** crazy and politically powerful that NO conversation about new legislation EVEN on those very reasonable grounds, because it MIGHT cut into gun sales.
Perhaps I'm showing my bias, but I suspect "certifiably insane" is a pretty strong market for them.
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Kryzbyn,
And when you and the other gun supporters, who tend to be small govenment types, support and fund mental health treatment, then I'll take this viewpoint seriously. Until then, it's just a deflection technique to keep the nasty little liberalssss taking youur preciousssses. Just like the idea of armed guards at schools is. Tell us where the funding for this s coming from and we'll listen. Until then, this isn't a serious counterpoint.
Also, why can't you guys do both? Why can you only treat mental illness if you don't ban large magazinesor rapid fire weapons? *looks at current situation in Congress* Never mind, I think I've just seen the reason.
Someone once said that progress is the opposite of congress...
Someone once said that if you masturbate too much you'll go blind, and I still have 20/20 vision.
Good thing you're not masturbating then. Good vision is important!
Good thing you're not masturbating then. Good vision is important!
Riiiiiiight.
Perhaps I'm showing my bias, but I suspect "certifiably insane" is a pretty strong market for them.
Anybody who thinks their personal arsenal is going to protect them against the US military is at the very least exceptionally delusional. If they consider such a confrontation actually likely, add paranoid.
Anybody who thinks their personal arsenal is going to protect them against the US military is at the very least exceptionally delusional. If they consider such a confrontation actually likely, add paranoid.
Perhaps I'm showing my bias, but I suspect "certifiably insane" is a pretty strong market for them.
There are less rational things that one can believe without being crazy: as long as the culture around you thinks its sane, then it is.
Now THATS crazy.. but true.
I have no doubt the US military can kill any citizen of the US and A if they wanted to. Of course, if that happened, several other things would happen, things that might not beso easy to deal with. Start disarming people en masse and kill those who don't agree and you have a social, political, legal and likely military reaction that will be very severe.