BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Bill Moyers on environment, politics and Christian fundamentalists

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 2/20/05 5:10 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 2/19/05 10:10 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself Wilko wrote:

Wilko

P.S. I'm still laughing because of the image of a bunch of fat, out of
shape middle aged men with shotguns, pistols and hunting rifles trying
to take on well trained troops with fully automatic weapons, grenade
lauchers, tanks, helicopter gunships and all kinds of sophisticated
weaponry bought with the tax that those old men paid.

Not only would the U.S. version of the secret police probably pick up
most of them before they could fire a shot,

Well, that's impossible because we do not have a "secret police" force and
we take great pains to ensure that even the local police do not have access
to what records might exist on who owns what arms. That's the point of the
2nd Amendment. There are more than 300 million guns in private ownership in
the US, and the government has pretty much no idea whatsoever where the bulk
of those guns are or who has them. That's not a flaw in our system, it's a
feature specifically intended by the Framers.

LOL. Yeah, that's what the "Framers" had in mind. Hoods and angry
ex-husbands walking around with assault weapons that you can buy on street
corners.

The concept is clearly and exactly what the Framers had in mind, if they
didn't have specific information on future weapons technology. They did
*understand* scientific advancement and new technology, and they wisely
decided that to link the RKBA to technology was a recipe for disaster and
tyranny.

The presumptions of the Framers regarding "hoods and angry ex-husbands" were
just as well thought out. They had "hoods and angry ex-husbands" back then
too, and they (again) wisely realized that such people (and their ilk)
comprise a very, very small contingent of the population. They knew that if
they infringed on the rights of the general public in order to try to limit
access to arms by the minority of crooks in society, they would be throwing
out the baby with the bath water.

Benjamin Franklin said it perfectly: "Those who would give up essential
Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor
Safety."

Liberty is defended with arms, and the Framers trusted that a well-armed
citizenry was better prepared to deal with the occasional armed thug than an
unarmed citizenry would be.

Wow. You aren't faking are you? You're a full on nut! Pleased to meet you.

They PRESUMED that the vast majority of citizens would be armed, and would
in fact be carrying arms most of the time, and would therefore be able to
use those arms to keep the peace and defend against criminal assault.

Never
did the Framers intend that the citizenry be disarmed and that only the
police and military be armed. They explicitly and specifically constructed
our system to prevent precisely that.

And the efficacy of their judgment that the citizenry can be trusted with
arms is borne out by the experience of more than 40 states which now permit
lawful concealed carry. In *every place* where concealed carry is lawful,
violent crime rates drop, and there is no concomitant rise in illegal
firearms use. That is proof positive of the Framers judgment.

Holy sweet fancy moses.

The framers were talking about keeping a musket in the barn. There was no
armed forces. There were no assault weapons. And there weren't more than
30,000 Americans killed by guns each year at the hands of their neighbours.
If the framers could have foreseen that nuts like you would have interpreted
that "right to bear arms" phrase to mean "the right to carry a multiple clip
semi-automatic easily converted to fully automatic military assault weapon
and fire it into a McDonalds when I lose my temper" I'm pretty sure they
would rethink the whole thing. Total up all the Americans killed in every
war since 1775 and it is less than the total killed in gun deaths between
1979 and 1979. That's NOT what the framers had in mind.