A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:
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.
History is sometimes inconvenient for gun banners. I'm paraphrasing (and
quoting) those who concocted our system of government.
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.
Indeed.
The framers were talking about keeping a musket in the barn.
No, they were most emphatically not. In fact, in many of the Colonies, male
citizens were *required* by ordinance.to bring their firearms and militia
kit to church on Sundays for inspection and militia drill after services.
There was no
armed forces.
Are you really this stupid? Of course there were armed forces. Ever hear of
the "Minutemen?" Every hear of the Continental Army? How about George
Washington?
There were no assault weapons.
The Brown Bess was the "assault weapon" of the time. Tempus fugit and
technology advances. That doesn't change the nature of the right.
And there weren't more than
30,000 Americans killed by guns each year at the hands of their neighbours.
There still aren't. Most of the gun-related deaths in the US are a) suicides
and b) criminal attacks. The incidence of accidental shootings is very small
and getting smaller every year.
Still, even if it weren't, banning guns only results in MORE gun related
deaths, not fewer. Just ask Britain, Australia and, yes, Canada.
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.
Fortunately you don't get to second guess them. And they were perfectly
aware of the potentials of firearms.
Another bit of misinformation you spout that needs debunking: No legal
semi-automatic firearm in the US can be "easily converted" to fully
automatic fire. In fact, one of the requirements of the BATFE regarding
semi-automatic firearms is that to be legal, it must NOT be "easily
convertible" to fully automatic fire.
Factually, any semi-automatic firearm, including shotguns, CAN be made to
fire more than one round per trigger pull, but doing so is a serious federal
crime, and it's done quite infrequently. Moreover, in every mass killing
event in the US, no weapon used by an assailant was "fully automatic." They
were all, at best, semi-automatic.
Nor do people randomly shoot up McDonalds because the "lost their temper."
Mass killings are very rare, that's why they make the news. But the single
common factor in EVERY mass shooting, worldwide, is that the shooter was the
ONLY PERSON with a gun. In almost all cases, had there been one or more good
citizens who were lawfully armed, the mass killing likely would not have
occurred.
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.
Now total up the number of human beings killed by tyrants and murderous
thugs BECAUSE they were disarmed by their government, starting with the Jews
of Germany circa 1939 and continuing right on down to Rawanda and beyond and
you'll have hundreds of millions of times the number of US citizens killed
by firearms since 1776.
That's NOT what the framers had in mind.
Of course not. The Framers did not intend that people be killed with
firearms, but they DID recognize that taking the firearms out of the hands
of good, law-abiding citizens WOULD result in tyranny and wholesale
death...because that's exactly what happened to them...and the Irish, and
the Scots, and every other population of disarmed citizens on the planet.
They absolutely understood that bad people would use guns to kill good
people, and they knew that the only way for the good people to protect
themselves was to be armed.
You really have no clue about American history, do you?
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser
"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM
© 2005 Scott Weiser