Clinton's sneak attack on our right to arms

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You must have said this:
Bringing up the "threat" of the average gun owner possessing a nuclear weapon in the context of this discussion totally invalidates the viewpoint of those who do so. I've met alot of gun owners over my 27 years in the shooting soprts and ya know what? Not a single one of them has ever mentioned wanting to own a nuclear weapon. The "nuclear weapon in the hands of joe citizen" is an argument that is beyond lame.
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Because you didn't read this:
A nuclear weapon is an extreme example, as is the musket in my and your NRA President's example. But the extremes speak to the center. A few years from now something like a rail gun, capable of destroying tanks or aircraft at many miles, might be a common infantry weapon. Is that a proper weapon for the citizenry? Same with the Stinger, the mortor, the recoilless rifle, magazine fed grenade launcher and hand grenades.
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The point being that a problem with defending the 2A is the number of people on our side, like yourself, who don't even understand what the amendment is for.

It isn't about "shooting sports" and it doesn't mention firearms in particular. What you posted earlier about it being about non-crew served infantry weapons is beyond lame, because that is just fiction and wishful thinking, rather than a concept of concrete history.


The second amendment does a poor job of telling us what "arms" are for our purposes. A sword and a Harrier are both covered (and both illegal in most places), so we need to define our position better rather than sound like cavemen droning on about a right we selectively defend. Without a clearly articulated standard we open ourselves up to bans because WE don't even know what is protected or not.
 
The point being that a problem with defending the 2A is the number of people on our side, like yourself, who don't even understand what the amendment is for.
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You may rest assured that I understand the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment - I have spent thousands of hours over the years researching it and reading the writings of The Founders in regards to their intent.

You are grasping at straws, Handy - but that is to be expected, given that you have nothing relevant to say about the issue.

Again, hang it up.
 
actually...is it really illegal to own a Harrier? if you have the cash to purchase one from Boeing is there a law the prevents you from doing so and flying it? obviously munitions would be out of the question...


a sword, though, isn't really illegal to own :confused: carrying is another thing altogether, though :o


edit: and hey steelheart, try to remember that "the founders" were just men. they weren't perfect and they made many mistakes and did many wrong things. blind idolization never helps an argument
 
I once read of a fabulously wealthy Brit who owned and flew a Harrier. They're an interesting aircraft, but GOD do they eat JP4!!
and hey steelheart, try to remember that "the founders" were just men. they weren't perfect and they made many mistakes and did many wrong things. blind idolization never helps an argument
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I revere The Founders, but I don't worship them. Yes, they were less than perfect, but they were earnest in their efforts to found a nation where all had liberty.

They were deeply religious men who wanted freedom from the Crown and freedom to worship God as they chose to. I believe - as do many - that the Constitution and Bill of Rights they authored were inspired by the God they worshipped; they were merely the messengers.

So there you go - now Handy, Leif and GoSlash can call me a "religious fanatic!" As I said in another post, I've been called worse...:D
 
You can own any number of former military airframes, but you can't arm them, which is kind of the point.

Likewise, you can own but never carry a switchblade, even though it is quite definitely an arm. Even one that has found great favor in wartime use by irregular troops.


Grenade? An arm that is only useful for and designed for individual infantry.


But let's only defend handguns and semiauto rifles as arms.:rolleyes:


So there you go - now Handy, Leif and GoSlash can call me a "religious fanatic!"
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I never called you a religious fanatic or implied that you were. More of your baseless lambasting?
 
Grenade? An arm that is only useful for and designed for individual infantry.
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And as I said earlier, it is a weapon that is property of the U.S. Government - none were manufactured for sale to the civilian sector. In order to own one, you must buy it from a black market supplier and commit a federal felony in the process. The Second Amendment is not applicable to grenades.

Jeez, give up the grenade thing.:rolleyes:
I never called you a religious fanatic or implied that you were. More of your baseless lambasting?
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I never said you did - I said now you can. Trying to twist my words once again, aren't we?:barf:

That's to be expected, when you have nothing of any value or relevance to say...
 
You got me there, Redworm!:D Good point - take two tacos out of petty cash.

That's something about that era I have never been able to understand - how they justified slavery.
 
Slavery

How they justified Slavery is the same way that slavery has been justified for many centuries. The enslaved are simply considered as less than human. Much the same way that gun owners, hunters, shooters, and others with strong leanings toward the right are often demonized and considered as subhuman by the left (based entirely on their rhetoric and public comments, no attempts at mind reading here:p )

This does NOT make slavery right. I abhor the very concept. I agree that the founding fathers were but men. I think they were well intentioned men who laid everything on the line for the concept of freedom as they understood it.

Note, there were 12ga shotguns re-categorized as 'destructive devices' and made illegal. The Striker 12 and several others were so outlawed.
 
This does NOT make slavery right. I abhor the very concept. I agree that the founding fathers were but men. I think they were well intentioned men who laid everything on the line for the concept of freedom as they understood it.
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+1. There is no way to justify slavery - morally or otherwise. The founders were wrong about slavery, but that does not mean they were wrong about everything else - as alot of leftist/socialist types try to claim.
 
Bill and Hillary Clinton should be in federal prison.
They made a mockery out of a country and people that are far better than they could ever think themselves to be. Hillary is a pro back stabber and hates free people.

If that party regains control, it will the back breaker for America.
 
And as I said earlier, it is a weapon that is property of the U.S. Government - none were manufactured for sale to the civilian sector. In order to own one, you must buy it from a black market supplier and commit a federal felony in the process. The Second Amendment is not applicable to grenades.
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The Second Amendment doesn't apply to anything that isn't for sale to the civilian sector?

So, Steelheart, you have no trouble with the government barring access to weapons by making their sale illegal? So you'd have no trouble if the public sale of ammunition was made illegal, for instance?:confused:
 
Steelheart

+1. There is no way to justify slavery - morally or otherwise. The founders were wrong about slavery, but that does not mean they were wrong about everything else - as alot of leftist/socialist types try to claim.

Exactly!
 
Handy:

At the beginning of your response your wrote, "Alan,

I would like to point out that your take on what is a reasonable weapon selection for the armed citizenry essentially puts you comfortably in line with the 1934 NFA. The weapons banned by the NFA were pretty much anything that wasn't fielded by individual soldiers in the previous war. The NFA banned machineguns, and all machineguns actually used in WWI were crew served. The NFA blocked the acquistion of the newfangled submachinegun and automatic rifle before those weapons had ever been used in warfare."

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If that is the conclusion you have drawn, O.K. I believe however that there are two problems with that. Either you misunderstood my comments/thinking, or my exposition was less clear that I thought it was, perhaps some of each.


Anyhow, might I refer to earlier comments. From what I've seen over the years, the ultimate and unchanging goals of our anti gun friends are the total prohibition of ALL firearms possession, ownership or use by the ordinary citizen. The movers and shakers of the anti gun crowd might well make exceptions for themselves and or special persons, those who guard them, but that would be about that.

As to the 1934 act, I believe that it was Justice Marshal, correct me if memory fails, who noted that "the power to tax is the power to destroy". With it's most INTERESTING levels of taxation, the 1934 Act did a pretty good job of destroying. You might have a look at comments on this subject offered by then Major George Chinn, later Colonel, USMC. Major Chinn wrote what might have been the difinitive work on machineguns and automatic weapons. He didn't think the act served any valid purpose, and more important than that, he offered that it's enactment damaged the national security, via the stiffling effect it had on development and innovation. Had the act been in force at the time, do you think that we would have had the benefits of John Browning's developments related to machineguns and automatic weapons? I wonder.

As to other aspects of the act, John Ross in Unintended Consequences described it as "welfare for treasury agents". While one understands that UC was a sort of historical novel, I have not seen any real reason to question Ross's characterization. It also strikes me that the premise underlying the act's passage, that being a revenue raising measure, was about as phony as a summer's day is long. Taxing a manufactured product at a level equaling or exceeding the price at which the thing sold for at the time, and trying to pass such an action off as "revenue raising" is specious to a fault, or so it seems to me.

Re your last, I had thought, perhaps wrongly, that the Browning Automatic Rifle had seen limited service in the WW 1. I didn't think that the BAR was crew served. If it hadn't seen WW 1 service, it likely had been used by the military prior to 1934, during actions in Central America and the Carribean.
 
So, Steelheart, you have no trouble with the government barring access to weapons by making their sale illegal?
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Yes, I'd have a problem with that - as would anyone with a scrap of common sense.

It is one thing to make government contract military weapons unlawful for citizens to possess from the outset; to retroactively outlaw the possession of wepons previously legal for citizens to own is quite another.
So you'd have no trouble if the public sale of ammunition was made illegal, for instance?
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The Second Amendment says "...Shall not be infringed." The word "infringed" means screwed with in any manner. Outlawing the sale of ammunition is nothing less than a manipulative form of back door gun control. And yes, I'd have a problem with that.

These last two pointless and asinine questions you posted make several things clear, namely -
1 - You have nothing of any value to say regarding the topic in question,
2 - You are merely arguing for the sake of arguing,
3 - You have a compulsive need to attack anything and everything I say, and
4 - For reasons unknown to me, you have an axe to grind with me on a personal level.

I'm sure you'd much prefer it if I would just go away. Bad news, Bub - I'm not going to.:D
 
I think the point is that Steelheart has already said that he finds infringement of our right to bear arms acceptable depending on which arms we're talking about.
Now it's just a matter of nailing down where the limit is. Rocket launchers? Field artillery? Fuel-Air explosives? Nukes?
I am, if anything, more pro-2nd than he is. I believe that the framers clearly intended the 2nd to refer to military-grade weaponry, hence the use of the word "militia".
And while some are quick to judge or defend the judgement and foresight of the founding fathers, that argument is a red herring.
What they wrote is The Law. The law is exactly whatever they meant by it. If we find that it is out of date or no longer applicable there is a process that must be followed in order to change it. The government cannot just ignore it regardless of how much the voting public may want them to.

So the 2nd clearly envisioned military weaponry in the hands of the citizens so that we may take up arms against enemies both foreign and domestic. Until such time as the Constitution is amended, the law stands AFAIC.
 
GoSlash, like myself, fail to see how blocking access to infantry weapons to US citizens is NOT an infringement of the Second Amendment.


Hand grenades (for example) are not difficult to construct, but it is illegal to make OR sell them to (or by) civilians. They fit nearly every definition of a militia arm anyone would like to make, yet supposed Second Amendment advocates feel this is acceptable.

The 1934 NFA could also be argued to be the same thing, albeit on the slow side. Hand held machineguns had really only been available for less than 15 years when the NFA blocked the continued easy sale of them to the public. Not much different than the grenade situation, but the NFA is somehow upsetting.

Today we have .50 rifle bans. These guns were designed for military use and have only been available to the public for about 15 years. Why should we expect these to not be banned with the same reasoning as the grenades?



Okay, Steelheart, insult away.
 
Handy,
NFA '34 was a flagrant violation of the militia clause of the 2nd Amdt. The government specifically banned certain types of arms *because* they were military in nature.

I mean, I know what you're getting at, but I wouldn't call either infringement more or less egregious than the other.

(edit) Didn't really "ban" them mind you. Just infringed on them with a tax many times the cost of the firearm itself ;) (/edit)
 
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