A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


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.

Because they didn't have a massive amry, navy, air force, marines!

We don't have a "massive" standing army in the US. We're not supposed to,
precisely so that military coups can be avoided. That's the purpose of the
Militia provisions of the Constitution.


Are you so stupid that you can't see the difference between a sparse
population of people defending a huge amount of territory and the modern day
juggernaut that is the US armed forces?

Only in degree, not as applied to the philosophical underpinnings of our
nation. In fact, a larger standing army actually militates for more and
better arms in the hands of the citizenry, since one of the points of the
2nd Amendment is to ensure that the armed citizenry always greatly outnumber
the standing army.


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?

LOL. Yes, with his rowboat, no doubt outfitted with nuclear weapons.

Evasion. You said "There was (sic) no armed forces." This is simply wrong.
Whether it's a lie or mere ignorance I cannot tell.


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.

Um. Indeed it does.

Um. No it doesn't.


Being concerned that without a musket in every barn the US could not be
defended has little to do with the ability of some angry husband to take out
his wife and her family with an AK-47 he's purchased on the corner after
hearing about his pending divorce.

Wrong.


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.

Wow, you must be so proud! The guns are mostly used for people shooting
themselves or deliberately shooting someone else! Great!

You misconstrue...deliberately I suspect. Guns of every stripe are mostly
used to punch holes in paper and tin cans, along with punching holes in game
animals. Less than 0.01% of all guns in the US are ever used unlawfully
against another human being. And that fraction is continuing to drop every
year.

FBI crime reports, combined with BATFE gun ownership records prove
conclusively that 99.99 percent of guns in the US are never used unlawfully
or unsafely.

That's an admirable safety record by any metric.

Swimming pools and five gallon buckets are more dangerous to children than
guns are, by far.


Still, even if it weren't, banning guns only results in MORE gun related
deaths, not fewer. Just ask Britain, Australia and, yes, Canada.

Um. You mean we have more gun-related deaths in Britain, Australia, and
Canada?!?!?

More than you did before you banned guns. Violent crime in Great Britain,
for example, is running rampant. In all three places, violent crime has
jumped markedly and continues to rise at record rates BECAUSE your masters
in government banned the ownership and possession of defensive firearms by
law-abiding citizens. You see, criminals LIKE gun bans, because it ensures
that they can pursue their criminal careers with impunity. Moreover,
criminals don't care a fig for gun bans, because it's already illegal for
them to possess a firearm with the intent to use it in a crime.

So, the inevitable result is that criminals are armed and nobody else but
the police is, and the police are never around when you really need one (nor
should they be) so more and more people in those countries are being
victimized by violent criminals...because they don't have the means to
defend themselves, and there is no deterrence to the criminal, who need not
fear getting shot and killed by Grandma as he tries to steal her dole check.

The opposite is true in the US, where violent crime rates continue the
dramatic reductions that began back in the 80s when the trend towards lawful
concealed carry started to spread across this country.

Where'd you get that loony idea?

Well, from the Home Office, actually.


You really are a full on nut!

Pot, kettle, black.


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.

Actually, the constitution has undergone quite a lot of amendments, for
example, a black person is now consider equal to a white person in value. At
least on paper. The framers obviously had no idea what the USA of 2005 would
be like. They didn't know about nuclear weapons. Crack houses. Assault
weapons.

The genius of the Framers is that they created a system that can both
respond to public need while protecting fundamental rights.

The problem on America's "crack house" streets is not too many "assault
weapons," it's too FEW. A few hundred good, law-abiding citizens resolved to
drive crack dealers from their community by force of arms would have things
cleaned up in a hurry.


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.

It's good to know (?) that it's not necessary to bother with the conversion
to fully automatic in order to commit a mass slaying.

True. What really facilitates mass slayings is the lack of legally carried
firearms in the hands of law-abiding, responsible (and proficient) citizens.
It's much harder to "spray bullets around" when someone is shooting back at
you. That's why, for example, no Israeli school has been attacked by
terrorists in more than 20 years. Today, Israeli citizens carry
fully-automatic military firearms, often issued to them BY the military,
which they use to defend themselves against terrorists...pretty effectively
too.


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.

Ah yes, if only we all had a gun.

Indeed.

Then every office argument, domestic
disagreement, incorrect tally on a grocery bill, bumper tap in a parking
lot, etc could easily turn into a bloodbath and we'd all be happy (?)

This is typical hoplophobe rhetoric. You falsely presume that the vast
majority of citizens will somehow be driven into insane, killing rages
merely because they possess a firearm. Problem is that your tripe is simply
not true, as the 40+ states that have authorized lawful concealed carry
prove. Anti-gunners like yourself routinely predict "bloodbaths" and "blood
running in the gutters" and "dead police officers at routine traffic stops"
as a result of lawful concealed carry.

Unfortunately for you folks, it simply doesn't happen.

People who are likely to use a gun to kill someone over a petty disagreement
in an office are unlikely to be dissuaded by gun control laws in the first
place, and factually speaking, the only way to stop such things once they've
begun is with firearms. Waiting for the police is not an option, as
Columbine proved. Thus, it is incumbent on all citizens to provide for their
own safety in such situations by carrying their own gun that they can use
for self-defense.


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.

So your theory is that we simply need to arm every single person in the
world and we'll all be safer? You are not just a nut. You are a SCARY nut.

Facts are often inconvenient to gun-banners like you, but that doesn't
change the facts.


That's NOT what the framers had in mind.

Of course not. The Framers did not intend that people be killed with
firearms

Haaaaaaaalleeeeeeeloooooya. Halelloya. Hallellooooooo-ooooo-ooooo-ys!

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.

Hm. Does the average Irish person wish they had more guns around?

Probably. Keep in mind that the Irish were disarmed by their generational
enemy, the British, who did so specifically so that they could oppress the
Irish.

I think
they are pretty happy to be getting past the days when parts of Ireland were
best known as places to get shot.

Once again, the problem in Northern Ireland is not too many guns, it's too
few guns in the hands of good, law-abiding citizens. I'd bet that if you
lived in Belfast, and the kneecappers came busting in YOUR door, that you'd
wish fervently that you had an AK-47, as a preference to being nailed to the
floor through the knees.


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?

Other than my university degree in History, not much.

Your university degree in Ultra-Left-Wing Socialist History? I'd have to
agree.

Apparently you learned
all your history from the NRA sponsored texts.

No, I learned it from reading the actual writings of the Framers, who wrote
extensively on their intent and purpose, and the Constitution, and the
majority of Supreme Court cases touching on the RKBA since the founding of
the nation.

Your claim to have a degree in history is highly suspect, and if you do have
one, you don't deserve it, because you clearly learned nothing about
American history during your matriculation.

--
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