Gun Rights, the be all and end all thread
 

Where the fuck some assholes came up with the idea that the second amendment meant to have arms only as a militia is indicative of the cowards and oppressors in our midsts. Here's exactly what I was debating all along. the founding fathers meant what they said. No gray area.

http://www.rense.com/general2/right.htm

The Lessons Of History -
The Founding Fathers On
Right To Bear Arms
By Phyllis Schlafly - The Schlafly Report
June, 2000


* James Madison: Americans have "the advantage of being armed" -- unlike the citizens of other countries where "the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

* Patrick Henry: "The great objective is that every man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun."

* George Mason: "To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

* Samuel Adams: "The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."

* Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

* Richard Henry Lee: "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."


The chief reason America has remained a free country is the widespread private ownership of firearms. Individual ownership of guns made the American Revolution possible. The principal purpose of the Second Amendment was to maintain our freedom from government. It is an insult to our heritage to imply that the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment just to protect deer hunters.

My good friend, the late Reverend Stephen Dunker, C.M., was a missionary in China who was imprisoned by the Communists during the early 1950s. I heard him tell of his experiences many times. When the Communists first took over the area where he lived, they appeared to be good rulers. They established law and order and cleaned up the traffic in drugs and prostitutes. Then one day the Communist bosses announced, "You can see that we have established a good society and you have no need for your guns. Everyone must come in the night and dump all guns in the town square." The people believed and obeyed. The next day, the reign of terror began, with public executions and cruel imprisonments. Everyone accused of being a "landlord" was dragged through the streets and executed; a "landlord" was anyone who farmed his little plot of ground with two water buffalo instead of one.

Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and the government moving to the left. This has already happened in England and Australia. After Great Britain banned most guns in 1997, making armed self-defense punishable as murder, violence skyrocketed because criminals know that law abiding citizens have been disarmed. Armed crime rose 10% in 1998. The Sunday Times of London reported on the new black market in guns: "Up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style execution." There has been such a heavy increase in the use of knives for violent attacks that new laws have been passed giving police the power to search anyone for knives in designated areas.

In 1996 Australia banned 60% of all firearms and required registration of all guns and the licensing of gun owners. Police confiscated 640,381 firearms, going door to door without search warrants. Two years later, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that all crime had risen and armed robberies were up 44%.

Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D., described his first-hand experience in Cuba. Before 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had all citizens register their firearms. After the revolution, Raul and Fidel Castro had their Communist thugs go door to door and, using the registration lists, confiscate all firearms. As soon as the Cubans were disarmed, that was the end of their freedom.

Tyrannical governments kill far more people than private criminals. The Nazis conducted a massive search-and-seizure operation in 1933 to disarm their political opponents, in 1938 to disarm the Jews, and when they occupied Europe in 1939-41 they proclaimed the death penalty for anyone who failed to surrender all guns within 24 hours.

The first line of safety has to be an ability to defend yourself. In some areas, a woman who is being stalked by her ex-husband must wait 10 days to buy a gun, even if her life has been threatened. Some cities criminalize carrying guns for self-defense but make exceptions for people carrying money or jewels. Are money and jewels more important to protect than people's lives?

History teaches us that registration leads to the confiscation of guns and that is the goal of many gun control advocates. Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc., told The New Yorker: "The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal."

Atlanta public-safety commissioner George Napper told U.S News, "If I had my druthers, the only people who would have guns would be those who enforce the law." Like those who "enforced the law" at Waco? or at Ruby Ridge? or invading a Miami home to grab Elián Gonzalez?

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "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." Polls show that up to 80% of the public believe citizens have a constitutional right to own guns.

If the First Amendment read "A free press being necessary to the security of a free state, Congress shall make no law respecting . . . the freedom of speech, or of the press," nobody would argue that free speech belongs only to newspapers. Likewise, they should not argue that the right to keep and bear arms belongs only to government agents.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990), stated that the term "the people" has the same meaning in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. All those five amendments in the Bill of Rights use the term "the people" to guarantee a right for individual citizens, not just some collective right of the state as a whole. There is no reason to believe that the Second Amendment uses the term "the people" differently from the other four amendments.

The claim that "militia" just refers to the National Guard is ridiculous. The same Congress that passed the Second Amendment also passed the Militia Act of 1792 which defined militia as "each and every able-bodied male citizen" from age 18 to 45 (with some exceptions) and stated that each one shall "provide himself" with a gun, ammunition, and a bayonet.

The currently effective Militia Act substantially keeps the same language ("all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and . . . under 45"), and further defines militia as: "(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia." (10 U.S.C. 311)

In recent years, a scholarly consensus has emerged across the political spectrum that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. Between 1980 and 1995, of 39 law review articles, 35 noted the Supreme Court's prior acknowledgement of the individual right of the Second Amendment and only four claimed the right is a collective right of the states (and 3 of those 4 were authored or co-authored by persons connected with the gun-control lobby).

The Founding Fathers on the Right to Own Guns:

* James Madison: Americans have "the advantage of being armed" -- unlike the citizens of other countries where "the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

* Patrick Henry: "The great objective is that every man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun."



* George Mason: "To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them."



* Samuel Adams: "The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."



* Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."



* Richard Henry Lee: "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

_____


For more information: John Lott Jr., More Guns, Less Crime (2nd edition, 2000). Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D., articles on England and Australia in the Medical Sentinel, May/June 2000, and letter on Cuba to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, December 28, 1999. Professor Sanford Levinson, "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," Yale Law Journal, 1989. Professor James D. Wright, "Second Thoughts about Gun Control," The Public Interest, Spring 1988. Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed, Independent Institute, 1994, and the Wall Street Journal, June 4, 1999. Daniel D. Polsby, Firearms and Crime, Independent Institute, 1997. Joyce Lee Malcolm, lecture at the Independent Institute, September 21, 1999, http://www.independent.org/ For law review articles, gun court cases, and the 1982 Senate report, see http://www.2ndlawlib.org/. >>

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siggy spot. Really.

Vote Quimby for Mayor!

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=55288

Guns work.

good stuff for sure

then why didn't they say "you should have the right to bear arms" and left it at that ... instead of adding "as part of a well organized militia"? its totally redundant to quote the militia act of 1792 which you claim defines militia as being basically "anyone" ... it "militia" means anyone, why use the word at all? how can "everyone" be a "well organized militia"?

"The currently effective Militia Act substantially keeps the same language ("all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and . . . under 45"), and further defines militia as: "(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia." (10 U.S.C. 311)"

from your own post.

can one effectively argue that "well organized militia" falls into the "unorganized militia" definition? seems like a direct contradiction to me.

nice thread.:) :) :)

Jesus said...

Was Jesus not right saying one must be armed to protect themselves?

Can I get an Amen?!

This will never be solved.
That said, enjoy saying there's no gun problem as you all keep getting shot.

Someone said that "Australia's Gun Control Didn't Work" the other day, but gun related crime is so low. Enjoy the bed that's made ;)

Read this idiot:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

Say what you want about splum.. at least he speaks his mind.

I wouldnt start putting fake words in quotes and attributing them to me, I dont think the mods will allow such stuff, but if you want to play that game we can?

Doctor 30...
This was an excellent point and post! You have my props. Good research, and definitly made a good point. All men and women should be able to bear arms.

Brett

“A federal appeals court overturned the District of Columbia’s long- standing handgun ban Friday, rejecting the city’s argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.”

An excerpt from the decision below should answer your question:

“In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the holders of the right — ‘the people.’ That term is found in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has never been doubted that these provisions were designed to protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion, interference, or usurpation. We also note that the Tenth Amendment — ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people’ — indicates that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of distinguishing between ‘the people,’ on the one hand, and ‘the states,’ on the other. The natural reading of ‘the right of the people’ in the Second Amendment would accord with usage elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.
The District’s argument, on the other hand, asks us to read ‘the people’ to mean some subset of individuals such as ‘the organized militia’ or ‘the people who are engaged in militia service,’ or perhaps not any individuals at all — e.g., ‘the states.’ These strained interpretations of ‘the people’ simply cannot be squared with the uniform construction of our other Bill of Rights provisions….
The District points to the singular nature of the Second Amendment’s preamble as an indication that the operative clause must be restricted or conditioned in some way by the prefatory language. However, the structure of the Second Amendment turns out to be not so unusual when we examine state constitutional provisions guaranteeing rights or restricting governmental power. It was quite common for prefatory language to state a principle of good government that was narrower than the operative language used to achieve it.
We think the Second Amendment was similarly structured. The prefatory language announcing the desirability of a well-regulated militia — even bearing in mind the breadth of the concept of a militia [which the court had earlier concluded ‘was a large segment of the population’ rather than just a government-selected National Guard-like subgroup -EV] — is narrower than the guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms. The Amendment does not protect ‘the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms,’ but rather ‘the right of the people.’ The operative clause, properly read, protects the ownership and use of weaponry beyond that needed to preserve the state militias….
[I]f the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to imagine that they would have chosen the language they did. We therefore take it as an expression of the drafters’ view that the people possessed a natural right to keep and bear arms, and that the preservation of the militia was the right’s most salient political benefit — and thus the most appropriate to express in a political document.”

"From my cold, dead hands"


~ Charlton Heston.




Btw, I think the thread title is a tad overstated, but points scored for information gathering and presentation.


:D

I would rather leave the US forever than give up my guns & my right to own them.

damn good stuff!!!

Yeehaw.. I'm going to move to Kennesaw :winkwink:

Then again when they wrote that stuff, they were fighting off native americans, had to hunt for their food, and didn't have broke ass pookie and his 15 year old buddies being men by toting a semi automatic.

Trying to compare then to now is just plain stupid.

I always thought that the right to bear arms doesn't mean you get a handgun or semi automatic. Why not ban everything but bolt action rifles? If you need anything other than that to hunt, then you shouldn't be hunting. Any other type of gun is just for causing trouble.

I have a friend who thinks the right to bear arms means he can have a flame thrower and a bazooka. where does it end?

I take my right to bear arms serious. I am a collector.

http://i16.tinypic.com/2wqg7di.jpg

http://i19.tinypic.com/2v9xilf.jpg

http://i14.tinypic.com/2vto0uc.jpg

Your mom lets you keep all that in her basement?

The Doctor is right on. :)

You're confusing me with someone else.. I don't have a mother.. Haven't lived with that cunt since 1983

You my son are a complete loser. My bet is the only pussy you have ever seen is on GFY.

I can here you chatting up a toothless chick at the local greasy spoon "wanna see my cool gun collection". You're a real babe getter.:thumbsup

Very far from it pal.. I've been married for 20 years, so I only fuck one pussy & don't drink at "greasy spoons", matter of fact, don't drink at all & oh.. soooooo very very far from redneck, lol... & I wouldn't even give a toothless bitch the time of day.


I don't collect to be cool.. I collect for historical value, for technical ingenuity, for artistic as well as intrinsic value as well as an investment.

ALL investments have roller coaster cycles, however, gun values NEVER decrease & are constant in growth rate

Now I know why there are problems - sure is a mentality deficiency :(

Great post!!! From my cold dead hands, for sure..

...and fuck the haters, cool collection SpaceDog :)

Brad

The nazi stuff is a good sign of your mental health. I also like the part that none of them are locked up. At least my friend who has a collection takes it very seriously and has every one of them locked up. I bet the local authorities would like to know about your collection.

Spacedog!!! You so rock!!!

Reminds me of home! Except the Nazi flag because my grandpa and great uncles shot em' all.

Our collection is right in the dining room! We eat our Thanksgiving dinner with the flintlocks all polished up! Yep we STILL have our flintlocks from the 1700s and they STILL work! Powder horns and all! Even make our own lead balls!

Ah, the good ol' days!

I gotta hook you up with a toon! A 'spacedog' all geared up!

Just to reiterate that Australian stat is probably bogus in the first place, but definitely misleading.


"According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of armed robberies involving firearms has actually declined over the last several years:

1995 - 27.8%
1996 - 25.3%
1997 - 24.1%
1998 - 17.6%
1999 - 15.2%
2000 - 14.0%"

Funny how tons of first world countries manage to do very fucking well, even very much better than the US without guns. Yet every gun freak in America acts as if a country can only survive if everyone has a gun. This coming the first world country with the biggest gun crime problem.