2nd Amendment Ruling

[cjacoryp]

Yeh, cos keeping guns there is going so well. Oh wait, you have the highest gun death rate of any developed country, EVER, and by a by margin.

Your country was also built on slavery, but i don't see many people arguing to keep that.



Nam?
Iraq?
Any guerrilla war waged ANYWHERE? Unless you want to claim the US "won" in those...

and you need a way to defend yourselves? against WHAT exactly? you talk about "inevitable truth" yet you ignore that the US hasn't had an internal conflict since the war of independence.

 

[LindseyB]

Because of CRIMINALS.
If you outlaw guns criminals will still get them.

I really wish the UK and socialist Europe would butt out on our gun laws
and finally

 

[texicangirl]

Well you can not buy a knife in the UK. Knife/Gun crime here is bad enough. In Dewsbury over the Muslim celebrations of Eid a 17 year old boy was stabbed once by a knife. Died a few minutes later. The reason? He helped an old lady off of the train.



Nope. The USA was not built on guns. It was built on exploration of new resources. Why do you think Columbus said the ocean? To find a safe passage to the Indies. What he found was the North American continent. So the founding of the USA was done through exploration and colonization, not guns. As I have said, Congress passed a law in 1805 to give out arms to defend the country against British invasion. It never came so in 1806 it said to hand back all weapons. The "rednecks" kept them.

The same people who had them were the people who became employed in the slave trade. Off went the gold and cotton when the African slaves were in the country. And ever since it has always been America that has fought for itself. No mention of the black community fighting for the Civil War, or the Scottish fighting in Virginia. It is always the True blooded American. And this always surprises me as for some reason, they speak English and not Navaho or Sioux. Time and again there has been the use of the gun to enforce in the USA. Reservations I think they decide to call them. Was it done by the will of God or by the order of the gun?

Lets all look at the history books and find out.

 

[flippidyg]

Very mature.

 

[FoxyFoxy]

Never said I was

 

[ilovemrkite]

Yes, you are right. And you have not constructed anything decent to this thread as far as I can see apart from Jingoism and self denial.

 

[prepboy194]

Tartovski has a point or three.

-Even taking away the criminals, there is an awful lot of gun death in the US.

-We really don't need them for self-defense; most gun owners have NEVER used them for that purpose, and well, we haven't had an internal conflict since 1865.

-I'm not sure I agree we are a "gun culture". We are a culture which has accepted the right to bear arms, but the connotation that we're a gun culture frightens me. This idea that we "need" guns is quite silly. And paranoid. And please don't hand me the crap about "well the criminals have them", most of them never get shot by the law-abiding citizens. I'd have a hell of a lighter caseload if that were true!

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

There's the link to the opinion (d'uh, did any of you really think I would miss that one!). The fact of the matter is that the majority did exactly what they bitched about when they were the minority in Lawrence v Texas. They took the plain language of the Amendment and said "gee, since it's kinda been expanded over the last several decades we might as well interpret it that way".

I'm not opposed to the ruling, to be honest. Let's face it, we regulate legal firearms, and all the regulations in the world don't stop criminals. But let's not get all high and mighty about "oh, now we can use guns for self-defense". This ruling struck down a far-reaching statute in DC which required gun owners to keep their weapons unloaded and disassembled or trigger-locked, and that is NOT the common standard throughout the US.

 

[Deecat]

One word...serfdom. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.





Holland and France waged guerrilla war against Germany and didn't gain freedom till the U.S. and Britain showed up. With Tanks Bombers and Artillery in tow.

We didn't lose 'Nam on the fighting side we lost it on the political side. That's documented history that can be researched.

As for Iraq I don't agree that we should be there at all. But to use our military might to it's fullest we would have to bomb and shell innocent victims as well as the enemy since the enemy is hiding within the populace. So unless someone wants another Hiroshima it's going to just drag on as a war of attrition. Mind you U.S. troops aren't the only ones in Iraq right now.

 

[jordanv]

Compare the homicide rates in the United States, where civilian gun ownership is legal; to the homicide rates of the United Kingdom and Japan, where civilian gun ownership is illegal, and where even the authorities are not allowed to carry them except in special circumstances. In the UK, there were 1.6 murders for every 100,000 people in 2004. Compare that to 5.7 murders for every 100,000 people in the US. When people say "guns don't kill people, people kill people," I have to reply, "well guns certainly help get the job done." Something is severely wrong when a person who has been declared mentally defective by a court is able to legally purchase two handguns and shoot up a building full of students, as happened on my own campus (Virginia Tech) only slightly more than a year ago. There is no justification for this.

 

[Mastero]

So what every anti-gun person here is saying, is that if we take guns away people won't kill each other as much?

Please, if people didn't have guns they'd do it with knives, if you take those away they have sticks, and if it boiled down to it rocks and bare hands work just as well.

This is a MARTIAL ARTS forum. The whole concept of martial arts came from people killing people not from playing patty cake.

Switzerland, they make their citizens own guns. The only difference is education and a country that is solidified on the issue that it's a good idea for everyone to own a gun.

It has been said that an armed society is a polite society. I agree. See how many convient stores or home invasions there are when you know everyone is packing, is knowledgeable on how to use the weapon, and will shoot your dumbass if you try to disrupt their happy meal.

What we need is to educate people, not take things away from them.

If a Palestinian will throw a rock at a tank because that's all he has then you can't convince me that removing guns from lawful people will make the death rate go down.

 

[JustAnotherPerson]

Well just look at the statistics. Sure people will still try to kill each other, but few weapons are capable of causing as much harm as a gun when wielded by a single person. If Cho Seung-Hui had come charging into Norris Hall with a knife, he might have succeeded in killing one or two people, but he would have been over-powered before too long. A single gun-man is capable of killing MANY people. That is the harm of guns, and the statistics prove that countries with high gun-ownership tend to have higher homicide rates. Also, gun availability increases the likelihood of murders, because it does not take as much effort to pull a trigger as to... say... stab someone. People don't stop to think.



Certainly true... but learning how to kill people is important when there are human threats to your life around every corner. What the legalization of guns DOES is create a threat that would have been non-existent before. For example, in Krav Maga and many other modern martial arts you train in gun disarm techniques. This in itself shows that guns create an unnecessary threat.

 

[Sol]

The problem with this is that it has been proven that a gun in less effective at a range of 30 feet or closer than a knife. If rushed by several people Cho would have been taken down easier if he had a gun than a knife statistically. A knife requires no reload and has multiple angles of attack. A gun has one angle, out the barrel.

Military tests have proven that a untrained knife wielding opponent at 30 feet or less can take down an armed gunman before he can fire. If the people in the school had rushed Cho he may have killed one or two as well but it would not have been so bad.

Am I putting anyone down for the way the situation was handled? No I am not I wasn't there I can't possibly know but you need to check up on the stats of which can do more damage, guns or knives.

 

[mikee]

What you fail to mention here is that the guy with the knife has it in hand whilst the guy with the gun has his gun in it's holster with a safety on AND is reacting to the movement of the knifer. Oh and at 30 foot the two people actually killed each other more than one conclusively winning.

If rushed by several people Cho would have been taken down easier if he had a gun than a knife statistically. A knife

IF he had been rushed, fact is he wasn't. If he had a knife, people would definetly have been able to flee more easily.



See my above comments about why the tests performed blatantly don't support this point of view.



No offense, I'm not saying a knife is a safe weapon, but I think you need to as well.

 

[lovecarlyxo]

..............which is why the sword is the preferred weapon of choice for the modern military. Those guns are just so twentieth century.

 

[George&Milldred]

just my 2 cents, but.... for those arguing that "we need guns coz the criminals have them"...... you become a criminal the moment you commit a crime. you're a perfectly law abiding citizen. you get a gun, shoot someone. voilل! you're a criminal. by using the "protection from criminals" excuse, you become a potential criminal yourself, as far as i'm concerned.

 

[kaley21]

Well, Fishy, you're entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is not supported by American law, which happens to govern this topic. In America, lethal force can be used against lethal force, rape, and a few other seriously violent crimes. You may not like it, but allowing someone to use a firearm for self-defense then telling them that said firearm has to be disassembled and unloaded even in their own home kinda defeats the whole concept of "self defense against lethal force".

 

[YahootID1]

What you're not saying here is that the number of murders committed in the US WITHOUT firearms exceeds the total numbers in Western Europe and Japan when they include them. In other words we kill more people each year without guns than they kill total. That pretty much destroys the gun/no gun country argument for reduction in murder rate.




Let's examine the Virgina Tech shooting by comparing it to another in Colorado. At Virgina Tech, having guns on campus was forbidden and the students inclined to follow the rules were unarmed victims. Many were so shocked, they never even got out from behind their desks. With no armed adversary, Choi Seung-Hui was able to fire, reload, and continue his rampage unopposed. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html But what would've happened had he encounter armed resistence? Could the tragedy have been minimized if others on campus were armed? No one will ever be able to say for sure, but the presence of armed members of New Life Church certainly saved countless lives last December. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316378,00.html Both situations had the potential for mass casualties, yet only one ended that way. The difference: legally armed citizens. Va Tech was a situation where the efforts to control the subject popultion thru the banning of weapons for the sake of safety turned the students into sheep brought to the slaughter. Colorado Springs represents the power and security that comes from the right to bear arms.

 

[Jeet]

The other thing you have to understand is that in the US, very few gun crimes are commited with legally purchased firearms. The guns used by criminals are most often acquired illegally in the first place which by your own admission, makes them law breakers before they ever start shooting. What we're talking about is legal gun ownership.

 

[marsha]

@davey: i never said that . my reply was referring to those that go "but they have one too!", and get a gun when they don't even have a clear idea of what a gun is capable of doing, or a stable, clear head on their shoulders with which to responsibly manage their firearms. i support ownership just fine, but i don't support handing out guns like candy, what's this? a McFiring Range? guns are serious things, not toys, and someone that's not screened to check if they have the adequate mindset not to abuse the guns they want to have has no business being near one, IMO.
if America truly is a "gun culture" as some say, then why do it's people know so little about their proper use? IMO one should learn about guns from trained professionals, not from cartoons, gangsta rap and popular culture, before getting one.

@dcombatives: fair enough, that's another matter altogether. here, though, we get a fair few nutters who play with their legally owned firearms and royally fornicate in an upwards direction. last year a guy went shooting at someone(i think it was his neighbor, but i'm not sure), cause he annoyed him when he went past his home, or something like that which i can't quite remember. what i do remember is that the shots reached a school bus and wounded an 8-year old. and why do people like that get guns? cause the criminals have them, and use them, so they wanna feel safe. that's the kind of person i refer to in my posts here.

 

[verbalkint]

Actually, the court didn't rewrite anything. The militia argument has become only a relatively recent straw man of the gun control lobby. The reality is, "militia" as defined by the framers referred to every able bodied man. So even using your argument that only the militia should have arms, every able bodied man in America is therefore entitled to keep and bear arms. Fortunately, the Court wasn't so sexist in it's ruling today and instead correctly affirmed the 2nd amendment as an individual right so woman and physically disabled person are entitled to its protections too.