Obama: AK-47s belong on battlefield, not streets

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Let me say that I DO have a God-given right to protect my family and myself. And if gun ownership is a part of that, which it most certainly IS, then I have a God-given right to own a gun. Which may not be infringed, as stated in the section of the U.S. Constitution which legally PROTECTS my God-given rights.
 
With regard to BigMikey76, Bartholomew Roberts already beat me to the general concept, but anyway...

BigMikey said:
The alternative is a society without laws. What are laws, after all, but the government foreseeing ways that people might misbehave and making rules in advance to disallow those actions. You might as well say that because there is a law against stealing, the government is treating you like a thief by imposing that law on you regardless of whether you are a thief or not.
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Bart replied with an analogy involving crowbars, which I liked.

My own would have been automobiles.

The argument BigMikey put forward was akin to saying that since driving drunk is a crime, then requiring breathalyzer controlled ignitions on all cars would be reasonable since it would prevent crime.

Or, branching a different way, saying that since drunk drivers kill a lot of people while driving fast, we should ban Ferraris - they are very fast. Never mind that a drunk in a Yugo will kill you equally dead, and that there are very few Ferraris in the first place.

M
 
With regard to BlueTrain post #55:

Yes, I know the NG was referred to as the militia at one point.

However, at the time the Constitution was written, the militias were not state-funded, nor state-equipped. In some cases, they were barely even trained. Citizens were expected to equip themselves with their own firearms, powder, and shot.

So the current analogy of the 18th century militia being the equivalent of the modern National Guard is off-base.
 
Our Bill of Rights are not statutes! They are GOD GIVEN RIGHTS.
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Well, I still don't think I've gone wrong on that. I would submit that this is a personal belief not a fact.

The fact is the Bill of Rights is a document agreed upon and used to structure a set of social values within particular society. It was written by men for Man, within the USA.

Guns are of course not the end of all crime, but absence of guns is the guarantee that the weak, old and otherwise not as fit make great targets since you have a virtual guarantee that in these places the law abiding citizens do not have guns...
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True enough (assuming the fit, healthy criminal isn't equally armed) but that was not the point your post was making.

You spoke of societies and their lack of guns and what happens there. You then citied how the UK has high crime in its cities. That makes a clear association which I feel is flawed, hence my response.

Mentioning crime rates is pointless unless the places being compared are identical or nearly so in every other way leaving gun ownership as the only sizeable variable.

Guns are clearly not a deterrent to criminals prior to their being faced with one. Some societies have no guns yet very low crime. Others have them, yet crime is rife.

The only connection between those two social metrics is on the possible outcomes of a percentage of those crimes. The gun may keep you alive, or may let you hold on to your wallet.

Emotional pleas sell gun control, few if any facts back gun control...
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Emotions sell guns (and pro-gun policies) just as effectively. Sometimes it is for pleasure, sometimes reassurance, sometimes fear.
Colorado sales are up 43%, despite the likely repeat of that atrocity being very, very small.

Now, I know that we've debated points before, BGutzman, and that it got me in trouble (I spent 3 hours posting and hadn't hoovered as I'd promised!!), but I'd like to reiterate that I don't think we have hugely different views, on the whole. I don't like the extent of the UK's gun policies, I enjoy shooting and I'd rather have my guns than not.

Here, I only dispute some of the perceived assertions in that post...
 
If the original definition of the militia as used in the second amendment is obsolete, what does that mean? That you have to run around and find a new meaning? Which seems to have happened.

The bill of rights is god given? Are they engraved copper plates somewhere or chiseled in stone, as handed down on the cloud covered mountain. Really, you have to come up with something better than that. That is, unless the god was Zeus.
 
Glenn E. Meyer

Bush didn't allow it. He was against the AWB expiring. He said he would sign a new AWB if it got to him.
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Because he knew full well that there was a snowball's chance in Hades of that bill making it to his desk...

The same as the UN Treaty...The current admin knows they have no chance of getting it ratified by the Senate, but they get the luxury of saying, "We did the hard work, and it's not our fault..."
 
BlueTrain said:
If the original definition of the militia as used in the second amendment is obsolete, what does that mean?
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It isn't obsolete though. By current statute, all males from age 17-45 are members of the unorganized militia (i.e. subject to conscription).

The bill of rights is god given?
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Are you familiar with the concept of Natural Law? Our Founders were fond of that philosophy. Saying that rights are God-given is just another way of expressing that same idea.
 
The idea that rights exist because men (and who would these men be, besides "government"?) put them on paper is an oxymoron.

If they came from men, they're not "rights", they're privileges. They could have not given them, they weren't "there" before, and they can be gone again.

If the rights are not God given, they are a figment of imagination. A convenient construct whose only purpose is to dictate an orderly society at the whim of the men who gave the rights and who can just as well take them back.

There is, after all, no real right there at all, if they are constructs of men written on paper. It is not wrong to take them away. It can't be wrong, because there is no wrong, because wrong would be defined by whomever has the power to define it.

If the right to live free, to defend oneself, to pursue happiness, are simply constructs of the powerful, who is to deny the powerful the ability to remove them at will? They are, after all, the powerful and we are weak. For what cause would we rail against them? We fight for figments of imagination? What would be the rallying cry? We are weak and you who are powerful took what we want?

No. We fight for our rights because they ARE. They exist whether they be denied or removed by force. Our only reasonable argument is that those rights are universal, built into the fabric of our existence.

Do the people in Iran not have the freedom of religion? Or is it merely denied them by force? Do they not have the right to pursue happiness, or is it merely forcefully denied them?

No, rights are universal. They must be, or they are not, at all.
 
Pond said:
Our Bill of Rights are not statutes!
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They are GOD GIVEN RIGHTS.
Well, I still don't think I've gone wrong on that. I would submit that this is a personal belief not a fact.
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I haven't gone back and looked at who posted the part you quoted, PJP, but that poster was correct in the assertion that the Bill of Rights is not a statute. I won't opine as to the source, but the first part is correct. As a constitutional provision, the 2A is superior to statute.

BigMikey76 said:
. . . . To qualify as infringement, an action must, according to the definition you posted, "violate law or the rights of another." As I stated previously, since waiting periods and background checks do not stop us from owning firearms, they are not an infringement.
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Each one of the measures that seem to be the hot topic in this thread (waiting period for guns, waiting period for ammo, mandatory permitting, etc), taken individually, represents a small infringement on the RKBA, in the sense that they encroach upon that area protected by the 2A. Start stacking them together, and you wind up with a significant infringement. For example, in a jurisdiction where you have to have:
A Firearms Owner's ID or license;
A Permit to Purchase;
A requirement for some classes to obtain the first two & attendant fees;
A 5-day waiting period;
A background check and an attendant fee.

All of this put together sure begins to look like fairly serious infringement to me.

Can anyone say "with absolute certainty" that the restrictions have never stopped a killing? No, but that's not the applicable legal standard. A prosecutor doesn't even have to meet the "absolute certainty" standard in a murder trial. Why would that ever be the standard for the constitutionality of a statute?

And I have to say that Bart's analogy about crowbars is spot on. These kinds of 2A restrictions operate on the assumption that every purchaser is a potential villain, and required to prove otherwise before ownership of a firearm is allowed.
 
Exactly, Bartholomew! Our founders used the idea of "Natural Law" as their basis for our Constitution. maybe "God Given" was the wrong term, but our Bill of Rights are definatly not "statutes". If I am not mistaken, "statutes" are laws whereas those freedoms expressed in the Constitution and it's first 10 ammendments are not laws, they are guarantees that anyone who is a citizen of the USA is afforded.

Laws and Statutes can be changed by our elected officials in D.C by simple majority, the Consitution can not be changed without the consent of the people (ratification by 3/4ths of the State legislatures).

I realize it is hard to grasp, but it simply not true that the Bill of Rights is a set of Statutes!
 
Since this thread blossomed huge... Lemme add the "want"/"need" into the equation...

No one "NEEDS" a 500+ hp corvette...

No one "NEEDS" a 600+hp Caddillac 2 seater...

No one "NEEDS" a 200+ hp motorcycle...

All 3 of these will spool the mill and create 165 mph...

It is not a matter of need!!! It is a matter of BECAUSE I AM A DERN AMERICAN AND I CAN!!!

No one needs a 13 inch blade on a kitchen butcher blade but I have one in chef's blade and one in a boning blade... I rarely ever use them and NEVER could I NOT get by with out them but when I wash them 2-3 times per year, I am glad I CAN!!!

Brent
 
1. Bush - knowing the AWB wouldn't get through Congress and thus saying he would sign it - that's the pure hypocrisy we see on the gun issue. If it is a basic right you support it. If you think it is a danger to society, then you are against it. Otherwise, you are not someone with a strong moral foundation. Being clever in politics is what's wrong with most politicians.

2. Why I don't like Mayor Bloomberg: http://www.policeone.com/patrol-iss...oomberg-urges-police-strike-over-gun-control/

Also, read the editor's reply. However, Bloomberg, who I have no use for, at least says what he thinks. When it comes to basic rights, no weasel words.

As far as natural law - that's a giant debate for the basis of human behavior. I'll just watch that one for a bit.

Again, as Bart points out - there are measures that have surface validity - like waiting periods. Empirically, they have done nothing.

A well run NICS might have caught Cho. Could he have gone a different route perhaps? We can't tell the negative cases with disturbed individuals like him.
 
No individual has rights that all individuals do not have.

I'm not trying to convince anyone, simply pointing out the self-contradictory nature of an argument about "rights" which are figments of imagination.
 
All I can ask of those willing to hand over rights to own certain weapons or magazine capacity is this...

Is there one single LEGITIMATE use for those you are willing to give up? Not legitimate for you but legit for ANYONE?

If there is ONE SINGLE LEGIT USE than your arguments are not only wrong (no one needs an AR with 100 round drum) but detrimental to those of us who wish to use said items for legitimate uses...

Don't give up MY rights to appease some sense of "DUTY"...

Brent
 
Brent, part of the problem comes down to how we define "legitimate." Some consider armed resistance to a tyrannical government "legitimate," and some only consider "sporting purposes" to be "legitimate."
 
I am not even implicating the "anti-tyrannical government" issue... Legit sporting use only...

And yes... I see the benefit of a single 100 round snail drum over a gob of mags or ammo boxes when I trudge out in my jeans and t-shirt...

"100 in the mag beats one in the pocket..."

Brent
 
We have worked very hard to put people in the House of Representatives who understand and support the Second Amendment. We have been so successful at it that we have a clear-cut majority and a reserve there.
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Yes, and lets just hope it stays that way. Votes on your side in either house is no more than a 2 to 6 year guarantee. Maybe I'm a minority here, but every time an event like this happens, it scares the heck out me. I count on nothing as being ensured no matter what the state of things are today.
 
You are correct to be concerned that a vivid event can stampede folks into bad decisions. We don't have to just look at the gun world for such.

It is currently the case that there is a strong buffer for gun rights that might stop a stampede for draconian new laws.

Even strongly antigun bastions like the NY Times have op-eds (by some, I note) that argue that the 2nd is fundamental and SD is fundamental. Of course, the official Times position is to ban all but ducky-wucky O/U shotguns. However, the position of the legitimacy of the 2nd Amend. has been expressed.

I think the country wouldn't be stampeded anymore as happened with the AWB.

Of course, things could change with a vivid incident again but I don't think the risk is that great.

In fact, the every reintroduction of AWB, mag bans by the usual suspects just makes them get ignored - except by their little groups.
 
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