"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
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.

Um. Do you feel that the current standing army is comparable to the
minutemen?!?!? It's, uh, kind of big!

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

Like, 1000 degrees?

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.

Really! Please post the exact quote that says "the armed citizens of the US
should always outnumber the military forces of the government"

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.

The armed forces of the day were insignificant in comparison to the US army
of 2005. It is as irrelevant as saying that a fleet of rowboats is the same
as a fleet of nuclear submarines.

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.

Perhaps you don't understand that the usual result of change is...change.


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.

Why 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.

And yet more than 30,000 (THIRTY THOUSAND!!!!) US citizens die every year
from them.

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.

Maybe the total number of guns should be reduced so that the .01 does not
account for so many deaths!

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.

Did you have over 30000 swimming deaths last year?

FYI, that's a silly argument, since pools are not built to be used to kill
people.

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.

Well geezus christ you idiot, we live next to the US!!!!!!

But our gun deaths in Canada are MINISCULE compared to the United States.
Even in cities that are just minutes away from major US centers.

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.

Ridiculous. The world is a more violent place, and (thanks in large measure
to the US) guns are more readily available. But you don't hear citizens in
the UK or Canada looking to have more assault weapons on the street so they
will feel safer, because, well, only a nut like you would argue that.

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.

It seems to me like you've had 30000 - 35000 gun deaths every year for about
the past 20 years. No?

You really are a full on nut!

Pot, kettle, black.

What's my nutty attitude? That more guns does not create safer communities?
Then call me Mr. Planters!

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.

Yup, and don't worry about the baby that gets shot in the head by accident.
Or the house that wasn't really a crack house. Or the anarchy and everyday
violence that comes from shooting your gun at whoever is bothering you.


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.

So if you want to feel safe, you would suggest moving to Israel?

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.

Scary that your ideal would not be that no one had a gun. Or wanted to have
one.

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.

It doesn't? What are those 30,000 DEATHS PER YEAR all about? Oh, right, they
are all suicides?

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.

Yup. If only all the kids at Columbine had been carrying guns.


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.

Um, there's no facts that indicate more guns = safer society, since you have
30,000+ deaths per year every year.


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.

Maybe you should run for head of state there on that platform.

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.

Which has little to do with what we are talking about.

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.

I'd wish fervently to live in a society where the ideal is not to shoot
someone else before they shoot you.

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.

It's pretty hard to get a left-wing history degree. Historians tend to be
rather dry old conservatives.

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

I'll be happy to prove it to you if that would be important to you.

and if you do have
one, you don't deserve it, because you clearly learned nothing about
American history during your matriculation.

What you mean is that I was not indoctrinated by whatever forces have messed
up your own ability to think.