Ah, the enjoyment of gun ownership and use...

[tnom]

Ah the enjoyment?

I'm glad you have made the decision to not own a gun. With your attitude I wouldn't trust you with a gun either.

[Forrest]

Well said and very true. If gun ownership were banned and criminals knew for sure that every home was devoid of firearms .... every night would be time for "Trick or Treat" ! They sure as hell wouldn't be afraid of your baseball bat because they would have guns. Criminals don't care how many laws you pass against gun ownership. By definition, breaking laws is what they do.

[Tom Horne]

The law you are alluding to is the one that makes every Swiss male between the ages of twenty and thirty a member of the Swiss army. Every such soldier is fully equipped with a complete set of individual field kit including a fully automatic Sig 550 rifle. At the end of there military obligation they may, but are not required to, keep there field equipment. The rifle however is converted to Semi Automatic at that time.

-- Tom Horne

[Tom Horne]

Your rudeness and name calling are completely obscuring any point that you are trying to make. If your purpose is to alienate people who might actually agree with a rational argument that is thoughtfully presented then keep right on being abrasive.

I have to wonder why some proponents of gun ownership think that turning a right into a duty is a good idea. If gun ownership were a duty imposed on you by the state then that burden could be lifted from you by the state. Gun ownership and carrying a gun is a right intended to make it more difficult for the government to subjugate the citizenry. Giving the government control of gun ownership is legitimately seen as one step in a slide toward despotism. It was Thomas Jefferson who said ""When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." There does not need to be any grand conspiracy underway for the rights of the people to erode away to nothing. Like water falling on a stone the outcome is inevitable unless that erosion is deflected through the defense of all of the rights that the constitution reserves to the citizens and not just the rights that the government or even a majority of the population find it convenient for citizens to exercise. I do realize that guns can be and are abused but that does not make it a good idea to try to take away the basic right that every American has to keep and bare arms.

-- Tom Horne

[Home Guy]

I would argue that the vast majority of US gun owners do not know the underlying reason why the "right to bear arms" is in the constitution.

But regardless, the US is way past the point that an armed citizenry makes for an effective counter to gov't tyranny. The original framers could not contimplate that US citizens would one day have more to fear from something called the "IRS" or a "personal credit score" - forms of tyranny that can not be fought back with a gun (or musket).

Did the framers ever forsee or even imagine that civilian gun ownership would take a bigger toll in citizen-vs-citizen conflict (injury, death and misery) - and NOT citizen-vs-gov't conflict?

Where has the right to bear arms ever served US citizens in countering gov't tyranny during the entire existance of the country?

It was a stupid idea from the start - the gov't will always give itself more and bigger guns if it thinks it needs it. Just ask the people of Waco Tx.

No.

When the gov't fears the people, it buys more and bigger guns. And it x-rays them at airports. And it taps their phone lines. And it passes laws allowing the military to be the new police.

And a lot of good the exercise of that right has given you over the years.

But the genie can't be put back in the bottle.

All we can really do is argue the merits of what could have been.

If given the choice between absolutely no private firearm ownership (and hence no possibility for a domestic fire-arm trade, products, black-market, etc) and the situation we have now, who could argue that society wouldn't be better off if NOBODY had guns?

After all, we know from several hundred years of past experience that an armed US citizenry was and is totally ineffective against it's own gov't.

[Robert Green]

You could quibble and say they weren't US citizens but the case could be made that they had a greater right to the lands they lived in for centuries than Andy Jackson & Co.

You could also say that an armed citizenry was pretty effective at throwing off the Brits during the American Revolution.

-- Bobby G.

[Home Guy]

What exactly did they win? And was it because they had guns?

That was before there was a "United States", and before there was a US constitution.

Tell me how you think that would go down today.

(I must have gotten most of the other stuff right, since you only chose that part to quote me on)

[HeyBub]

I can.

By quoting the pithy saying: "God made man. Samuel Colt made men equal."

[Home Guy]

If everyone having guns makes them equal, then everyone not having guns also makes them equal.

[gpsman]

I'm familiar with "Indian" hunting rights, but I've never seen a reservation that did not have a grocery with a meat department, or empty of Indians.

That's limited anecdotal evidence, but I think we can safely assume Indians are more like you and me than unlike you and me.

Of course there are NA Eskimos that do harvest all or most of their warm-blooded meat, but I do not think they can be accurately described as relatively "significant".

Specifically, the subject was "meat", and not the flavor sensations of the perennially hungry.

I've been so hungry a cold C-Ration can of ham and eggs (that smelled exactly like canned dog food) or a half-cooked crunchy spaghetti LRP tasted better than anything I could remember. -----

- gpsman

[Attila.Iskander]

Try making that criminal vs citizen and you would be right. There is very little LAW-ABIDING citizen on citizen crime...

See battle of Athens, Tennessee for the counter

It also need to have those people see citizens as the enemy Most police and military, being on the right, have a far better grasp of Constitutional issues than most. They also have sworn an oath to protect the Constitution, NOT the government.

Only idiots ignorant of history When the law-abiding are disarmed it does NOTHING to disarm the criminals who will then subjugate and terrorize the law-abiding.

And yet, the US, compared to just about any Western and non-Western country, is one of the few countries that has stayed the course more than 200 years in respecting individual rights and freedoms..

Your abyssal ignorance of history is sad to see.

[Attila.Iskander]

Except that in your words, that genie can NOT be put back in the bottle Why are you arguing something that will NEVER occur And if we look at the theory of if, past history shows that men have ALWAYS tried to dominate those less able to defend themselves Why are you ageing to return to past barbarism ?

[Home Guy]

All criminals are law abiding citizens - up until they commit a crime that is.

Technically there is no such thing as law-abiding citizen-on-citizen crime.

What's sad about that story is how the Cantrell clan ruled that county for (it appears) the better part of a decade as their own little kingdom, and all during that time the armed citizenry just stood by and watched:

You will note that in this case, it was not the federal or even state gov't that was imposing tyranny upon the citizens of McMinn County.

=================== The sheriff and his deputies operated a fee system under which they received a cut of the money for every person they booked, incarcerated, and released; the more arrests, the more money they made. Often, buses passing through the county were pulled over and the passengers were randomly ticketed for drunkenness, whether guilty or not. ===================

It was actually the LACK of action on the part of the state and federal gov't to deal with the Cantrell clan and restore effective gov't and libery to the citizens of McMinn County.

============= The 79th Congress had adjourned on August 2, 1946, when the Battle of Athens ended. However, Representative John Jennings Jr. from Tennessee decried McMinn County's sorry situation under Cantrell and Mansfield and the Justice Department's repeated failures to help the McMinn County residents. =============

The wiki article points out that even though the state guard was mobilized, they did not even go to Athens - likely because the GI's in the Guard did not want to confront the citizen-GI's leading the rebellion against the Cantrells. It could be argued that had the rebellion been led or composed of non-GI's, that the Guard would have deployed to Athens and put an end to the citizen uprising.

Ultimately, it's not clear to me that the tyranny imposed by the Cantrell clan couldn't or wouldn't have been exposed and put to an end by sufficient application of the federal and state court system - no guns needed.

What weapons would the criminals have that the law-abiding citizens would *not* have?

I said that the genie can't be put back in the bottle. That means you can't wave a magic wand and make all civillian guns (guns in the hands of all types of citizens - criminals and otherwise) disappear.

But if you could - if no guns were ever available to anyone, that also means criminals too.

With what?

Sticks and stones? Clubs and knives? Their fists?

The citizens can have those too.

This has got nothing to do with rights and freedoms.

How can you explain that you have the right to own a gun - but not a machine gun?

Or a rocket launcher or bazooka or high explosives or all sorts of other deadly / destructive products?

Why aren't you crying foul that you can't buy hand grenades or land mines?

Or that you can't grow and smoke your own marijuana?

[Forrest]

What you said is so absurd that it boggles the mind. So, I guess if a person is allowed to have a knife and a baseball bat in their home for self defense, then with your reasoning, it should somehow be escalated to something like, "then why not allow a nuclear bomb as well"? What gives with that? How does your mind come up with such a conclusion? Do you apply this escalation to everything? How you get from a reasonable point (A) a gun to defend yourself and family to (B) then anything goes? I'm sorry, I just don't get it.

[Forrest]

It is called irony. Americans don't understand it and never will.

Oh, I think we can understand "irony" when it's presented. We can also recognize a "non sequitur".

[Vic Smith]

Need an assault rifle to "defend your home?" Big stink about allowing them to be owned by civilians. Gun lobby won that one. Seems a 12 gauge auto-loader should do for home defense, o You can shorten it to 26" with 18" barrel.. If you take the tack that the 2nd Amendment is to protect you from the government, you should be able to own mines and grenades, SAMS, tanks, auto-cannons, etc. Why not? Otherwise you're basically a sitting duck to gov firepower. Nukes are another story. There you get into EPA regulations.

--Vic

[The Daring Dufas]

When the country was founded, the average citizen/hunter had a rifle that was superior to the rifle carried by soldiers. Technology has marched on. ^_^

TDD

[HeyBub]

Huh? I own two: An Uzi and a fully automatic AK-47. Both are fully legal.

Those, too, can be lawfully owned by American civilians.

Huh? Americans CAN buy hand grenades or land mines. Of course they, and the items above, may be subject to local or state restrictions, but there is no federal prohibition, per se, declaring them contraband.

Because marijuana IS contraband under federal law.

[krw]

Wrong, dumbass, people come in all different sizes. Guns make physical strength less important, equalizing granny and perp.

[krw]

Define "assault rifle".

So?

Good thing.

OK, if that's your choice. However, home defense isn't the only reason to own a gun.

Do study civics, some time.

You're loopy.