Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Indeed and if ploughing on with the status quo is what you want then I guess you have a point. But isn't the debate about the best way forward because the status quo is becoming increasingly untenable.



Plain fact, if I am advocating that a fire arm or fire arms are made available as part of a militia then I'm not talking about banning fire arms. I'm not being anti-gun or anti-second amendment. In fact I've presented the simplest plain interpretation of the second amendment possible. That is without "reading between the lines" or bending the meanings of words to find some alternative meaning.

There is nothing hypocritical or illogical about my position. As a martial artist I don't for example advocate that just anybody be allowed to carry a sword around with them wherever they please. I do however advocate that people be allowed these weapons for training purposes if they are involved in such an art.

Previously in this thread I've also stated I have no issue with people owning guns for hunting or for sport. In fact I consider them to be far more valid reasons than self defence.

Responsible gun owners keep their weapons out of easy reach. Locked away. Which greatly diminishes the possibility a gun in the home at least could be used for self defence or home defence. The whole self defence argument doesn't stack up.

Providing a state level counter measure to a federal government of the scale of the US federal government does make a degree of sense. And that can only be done effectively with some organisation. So if you have gun clubs that make up the core of a state militia, who's members make up the man power and have access to the range of weaponry they need then the second amendment has been satisfied.

Having said all of that however, President Obama has prosecuted more whistle blowers than any other president in US history and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. You can't go through an American airport these days without effectively being strip searched as a matter of routine procedure. I don't see any Americans doing anything about it.

Why bother with the second amendment if you're not going to use it for anything more than the selfish pursuit of pleasure?



That coofftopic you so kindly point out is in the version I posted. Throughout this thread I've been advocating that those who own guns should be part of a club where they can be properly trained to handle and store those guns. I don't see where we are in disagreement.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Guns were intended to maintain a free state including free from criminals and locals can be called into militias to do this.

The supreme court and the majority of people do not believe you need to be a member of a club to be a gun owner and that right can only be taken away by due process. All males are a member of the militia and are subject to being called up as they are registered for armed service.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I don't really see that happening either. While violent crime has been in decline for quite some time now in the developed world. I doubt it's anything to do with American men firing off guns at bad people.

Crime is best dealt with by the police. Not mob justice.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

The police in America have no duty to protect people.

Not that they are not needed but the first responsibly lays with the person.



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia



http://overlawyered.com/2011/12/the-police-have-no-obligation-to-protect-you-yes-really/
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

And why exactly can't this be changed? I mean there was a time when there were no police at all. No marshals or sheriffs or judges or anything much resembling the laws you have today.

When Americans can get past the idea that their society was cast in stone and shall never change then maybe a better way will be found.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

There is no way to accurately predict a madman going mad and slaughtering. There is no set of criteria that would allow background checks to pick up people who had never done something illegal before, like the Aurora shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Norway shooter, and the University of Texas shooter. And because madmen or other malicious people are just as likely to use homemade bombs as guns (Bath School massacre, Unabomber, 2005 London train bombings, etc) or other implements (Osaka school massacre, 2011 Chinese school massacres), maybe we're looking at this wrong. You don't solve the 1% massacres through gun laws. The best anyone can do with these sorts of massacres is have better police presence in public areas and shorter response times, and well-trained armed civilians where police cannot adequately cover the area (due to low population density). And as the 2005 London train bombings showed (50 dead and 700 injured from homemade bombs in backpacks), no amount of laws can prevent all of these "one percent" crimes.

But right now, 99% of the public debate is about 1% of gun crime...the hardest 1% to solve. The pressure cookers who have no prior history of illegal conduct but then snap and just massacre random people with guns, with bombs, with poison gas, etc. If we want to make a real difference in America's homicide numbers, we should be targeting the 99% of American gun crime. The 99% that doesn't get talked about on national TV because it doesn't involve upper-middle-class privileged people. Most gun homicides in the USA are impoverished urban youth killing other impoverished urban youth. This is the gang epidemic that Europe doesn't have anything comparable to. This is where the shocking numbers of gun homicides in the USA comes from. And this CAN be addressed if we just have the will to do it. Most of Obama's executive orders were actually aimed at targeting this sort of gun crime, not the random-madman-massacre sort of gun crime. And that's a GOOD thing. And we also need to look at urban youth violence in a more holistic sense. Poverty, lack of job opportunities, lack of social services...all of these issues tie into gang membership. We also need better policing, better background checks, harsher penalties for straw-man sales, etc.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

You're using the wrong version of the Second Amendment AND you're inserting words that don't appear there.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

"My kid being out of his favorite cereal, I made a trip to the grocery store."

Does this mean you ONLY bought cereal AND NOTHING ELSE at the grocery store? No. It means the cereal is what prompted the trip to the grocery store but it's not necessarily the only thing you buy there. The coofftopic in the Second Amendment means the same thing. The existence of militias is first and foremost what prompted the Founders to draft the operative clause ("the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed") but it doesn't limit the operative clause to just that purpose. Civilian self-defense, hunting, and sport are also valid purposes under that operative clause.

Kind of like how the First Amendment makes reference to religion and politics, but the free-speech clause of the First Amendment is not limited to religion and politics.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Any thing can be changed like this but it would open up a world of laws suites that would require a complete police state to cure.

Almost no one here wants to live like that. What we have is not perfect and we have problems to work on and most likely always will. With freedom comes some danger and discomfort.

How you want to live and under what rules is your concern our freedoms are of great concern to most people and yes the patriot act concerns we greatly as well as other things my government is involved in.
 
Simply, a gun is designed to kill. But also there are sporting aspects of having it. Somewhere, someone had mentioned the analogy of martial arts to gun ownership. That said, the cases/reports of gun defense are as rarely reported even as those of martial art defense. Bluntly, these cases/reports do not create the media and discussion frenzy.

Therefore;

It mainly comes down to mass murder, which has always been big news/discussion, especially among people living in a civilized society. If one is to look upon murder on a larger scale, the percentages of it being done with knives, for example, per overall, may seem to outnumber those done by guns.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1546085/The-vagaries-of-UK-knife-crime-statistics.html

The above link is not to belittle a country or place, but to demonstrate that no matter the “tool” to murder, people are going to seek the method to kill another. Police are not always around to stop knife murders. As a martial artist or gun owner, would you really rather give up any of these (martial arts or gun) and put total faith in police protection?

If one resides in area where there is a large scale of gun (or knife) violence, then people of that area should arm themselves with the “tool” necessary to compete

It is always easy to “blame the tool”, but not the “fool”, who misuses.

It is hard to “stop crazy”

If a martial artist practices methods to defend, then people who own guns, should practice, not only their shooting skills, but safety and responsibility. Thereby, owning a gun for defense is on par with practicing martial arts for defense. Both are never a matter "when" there maybe a need. More likely; the term "if" there maybe a need.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Try "profit".

The protection of parts of the constitution, while others are gleefully trampled leads me to one conclusion:

Gun rights are protected because business can pay for lobbyists.

Freedom itself is not protected, hence plans to fill US skies with aerial drones, punishment of whistleblowers, the recent 100% redacted FBI document detailing how GPS is used to track citizens and if warrants are needed to do it, the assassination of a US citizen, etc. etc..

Eisenhower's warnings were correct methinks. But it would seem that the authors of the US constitution predated him significantly in realising these dangers, hence the 2 year military funding limit, which they mistakenly believed would prevent the US from developing a standing army. Instead, local miitia could protect state interests, including preventing slave revolts in the South.

Don't take this as a specifically anti-American sentiment though, the UK is happy to ride on the US' coattails since losing it's global dominance, and France is now busy securing itself fuel sources to keep its nuclear power stations going for the foreseeable future.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I read something recently that said the clause about bearing arms and having a militia was actually a sop to the slave owning south so they could continue to organise armed gangs to round up escaped slaves and keep slaves subjugated.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

Sounds plausible to me. And pretty horrible.
Now...I'm not an American history expert but that's not something I'd be using to justify my own continued gun ownership in the 21st century.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Or perhaps "New America" was scared that the British would return or another country would invade, therefore this was a way to have Americans, of that time period, feel more secure via gun ownership
 
You just got suckered in by an internet meme. It "sounds plausible" but it's not actually true. This is the left-wing equivalent of "Obama is a closet Muslim." There's no truth to it, but it's spread like fire across the internet, because:

(1) it plays off people's biases (in this case, playing off the stereotype that rural Americans are a bunch of racists);
(2) it "sounds plausible,"
(3) it reinforces one side of the aisle's pre-existing beliefs (that there's no valid reason for the Second Amendment), and
(4) it's impossible to disprove (how do you disprove a secretly-held religion, or the hidden intent of a dead man?).

But think about this:

(1) If the Second Amendment was concerned with slave revolts instead of the British re-invading, the prefatory clause would have said so. The Founding Fathers weren't bashful about addressing such issues explicitly...this is the same document that, in its original form, broke down populations for electoral purposes by race and slave status:



If they meant it to be about slaves instead of Redcoats, the prefatory phrase would have said something like "A well regulated milita being necessary for prosperity, law and order" instead of "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state." But they were thinking about the British Army, just like they were with the Third Amendment (preventing forced boarding of soldiers in civilian homes).

(2) The Second Amendment is a restriction on Congress's power to make laws. Who is in Congress? The rich and powerful. Who were slaveowners at the time? The rich and powerful. The idea that Congress would enact a law in order to prevent slaveowners from subjugating their slaves was not on people's radar in 18th century America. The abolition movement in America didn't become serious until the 19th century. The argument that slavehunters were the "militia" contemplated in the Second Amendment, not the civilian militia that won the Battle of King's Mountain, fails a basic chronological test.

I know at this point I'm not going to convince you that there's anything good about firearms ownership. That's a matter of opinion and policy and one where reasonable minds can disagree. But history isn't a matter of opinion. What TruthOut published is a flat-out lie, meant to inflame partisan bickering and slander people who disagree with them through a tenacious internet meme. It's the left wing's equivalent of the "closet Muslim" lie. Please don't get caught up in it.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Changing the mission statement of the police from whatever it is now to "protect and serve the public and keep the peace" would require a police state? Utter nonsense.

Correct me if I'm wrong but when a fight breaks out or someone starts firing off a gun in public in the USA, don't people call 911 and ask for the police? I guess you should run for the hills screaming!
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

.

I think it's always been that way.

Even with the abolition of slavery in the US, it's not always so easy to pick apart the good intentions from the need for cheap labour in the factories of the North. Poor consumers make a lot more economic sense than slaves. There's more profit in them.

The First World War was about access to Iraqi oil, even the crusader knights sometimes ignored holy cities in favour of mineral-rich ones. Power has always been about resources, we act like any other animal, and we are only unique in that we can make excuses (and even believe them) and create philosophies to justify our actions
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Well they pretty much already have a police state, so I'm not sure of his point...

The US (and the UK is no better) get up to things today that would make J Edgar Hoover blush.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Well that's debatable and beyond the scope of this thread.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Mission statement and legal responsibly are two different things.

The mission statement of most all police departments is "To protect and serve" but that still has legal and functional differences in real life.
 
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