Odd Sheeple Reaction

im not saying people will not find a way to do damage but i mean seriously whats easier to use to hurt some one a gun or a club?

gun is gona be a lot faster and easier to harm someone from a distance.

i do see your view of it and i agree to some of the parts of it but i personaly feel that by restricting who can have the items alos with harsher enforcement many crimes will be reduced or at least less deadly
-matt
 
Most crimes with firearms occur at very close ranges, close enough to use a club or rock. Less/more deadly is a very subjective term when it comes to hand held weaponry. The severity of the injury is more subject to the individuals using the weapons than the choice of weapons themselves.
 
SR_matt said:
the problem with the just focus on the criminal not the tools, you end up waiting until someone gets hurt/killed to do something when by taking away the tools it would have not happened or probably not have been as bad.
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Like I said before, innocent until proven guilty. Once you take that away, you may as well start taking everything else away.

SR_matt said:
if you did not need a gun for protection what else would you use it for besides hunting. i can not think of anything other than "o its fun to shoot".
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Well, guns are used in various forms of competition such as the Olympics, 3 gun, ISPC, IDPA, and many others.
 
Well said Edonis,

Yes, there are many others. Far more than most are aware of. The competition and sports shooting industry is probably close to if not more than a billion dollar/year industry.
 
One point that was briefly touched on, but hasn't been elaborated on is why we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Sorry I don't remember who said it, but they were correct, the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting. One of the points that I believe bSquirrel brought up a few times was that if we regulate for instance automatic weapons more strictly then eventually only the police will have them(mostly). The obvious idea is that this is a good thing, I disagree.

The main point, and the gun control folks want to kill this idea as much as they can, but the point, and in all honesty, the spirit of that amendment is that we have the right to keep and bear arms to protect our liberty against the government, against the police. And don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that that is needed now. But that is at heart the point of the 2nd amendment, regardless of what the control proponents have tried to say about it.

By removing our ability to keep and use those arms, the high powered and automatic arms, you take that constitutional right from us as a people. There are certainly issues with guns in the wild, and with crime, geez we all know that crime is out of hand. But taking away our right to protect ourselves from those criminals, and at the same time our ability to defend ourselves from a government that has gone too far is taking away the ability to protect our own rights. By passing these laws for registration, which I'm not 100% against, but am not a fan of, all the government does is get together a list of people to go after at their leisure. If caught in the commission of a crime and convicted, fine, you lose your rights to own a gun along with the right to vote, etc. But there is no reason that a government agency has the right to know what firearms I may or may not own, and certainly no justification for them to come into my law abiding house to collect/seize/etc them. This has nothing to do with whether I am trustworthy, but whether the government is, or is just to begin with. A loss of one liberty lubricates the slope to more liberty lost.

It goes against the concepts the country was founded on. That we as a people have the right to stand up and be heard when the government isn't listening , by force if absolutely needed. Lord know I hope it never is.

I commend the fact that the discussion has generally been respectful, even though a lot of folks diagree. Hopefully we can continue that trend

Syn
 
Edonis, by having guns for sport (correct me if i am wrong) you do not need autos, and most of the guns for sport are smaller caliber (dont they use 22's for the olympics) and many are bolt action (again please correct me if i am wrong). with those things the guns are nto as dangerous and the people owning them have much less of a chance using them as a weapon (also i would assume, maybe im just being ignorant, that most sportsmen would lock up their fierarms.

synghyn, the way you have explained the spirit of the 2nd ammendment also lets me know that there are people that actualy can think about this and not just take it to one extream or the other. the way i have interperted the 2nd ammendment is that "the right to bare arms shall not be infringed" is in regards to the well REGULATED millitia (i say this becasue of the way it is writen using commas as apposed to peroids). also we must remember that at the time of writing the bill of rights, the firearms were muskets (IIRC there were a few rifles beign developed but they were not used and not very widely excepted yet); being that they only had muskets, and the rate of fire was only 3 rpm if you were skilled, (also that it was not thought that you could just go shoot some one to solve a problems). i really do think the time it was writen, the techenology they had, and just the ideas of society were to different to apply it in any literal manner today.

-matt
 
SR_matt said:
the way i have interperted the 2nd ammendment is that "the right to bare arms shall not be infringed" is in regards to the well REGULATED millitia (i say this becasue of the way it is writen using commas as apposed to peroids).
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You can't interpret the original rhetorical style in modern terms any more than the people of that day had modern arms. Same language, but be careful understanding it as they meant it. We do have other documents to help with that.

Everywhere else in the Bill of Rights, "the people' refers to an individual right. There is no reason to think the term is used differently in the Second Amendment.

That "well-regulated militia" was a local formation, not something arranged by a distant government. In other words, a community could not protect itself from tyranny or marauders unless the people already were accustomed and equipped to bear arms.

The weaponry of the time was less effective than ours, but the people were being guaranteed the right to carry whatever the soldiers carried. In today's terms, that would include RPGs and flamethrowers.
 
SR_matt said:
Edonis, by having guns for sport (correct me if i am wrong) you do not need autos, and most of the guns for sport are smaller caliber (dont they use 22's for the olympics) and many are bolt action (again please correct me if i am wrong). with those things the guns are nto as dangerous and the people owning them have much less of a chance using them as a weapon (also i would assume, maybe im just being ignorant, that most sportsmen would lock up their fierarms.
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I think that all responsible gun owners lock up their firearms. I know that I have a large safe for my long arms, and a small safe to hold a handgun under my bed. In response to the need for autos for sport, there are several competitions in which SMGs are used (think MAC-10 or MP5). Also, if you think that bolt action guns are less dangerous, look at my post describing the creation of the first SWAT teams. They were created in response to shots being fired on police officers and bureaucrats by farmers with bolt action rifles. So once again, following this logic, all firearms should be eliminated because they all have the ability to cause harm or death.

SR_matt said:
the way i have interperted the 2nd ammendment is that "the right to bare arms shall not be infringed" is in regards to the well REGULATED millitia (i say this becasue of the way it is writen using commas as apposed to peroids). also we must remember that at the time of writing the bill of rights, the firearms were muskets (IIRC there were a few rifles beign developed but they were not used and not very widely excepted yet); being that they only had muskets, and the rate of fire was only 3 rpm if you were skilled, (also that it was not thought that you could just go shoot some one to solve a problems). i really do think the time it was writen, the techenology they had, and just the ideas of society were to different to apply it in any literal manner today.
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While this may be a valid interpretation, the court system has consistently ruled that it is quite the opposite. Here is a quote from an interpretation by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit:

there are numerous instances of the phrase "bear arms" being used to describe a civilian's carrying of arms. Early constitutional provisions or declarations of rights in at least some ten different states speak of the right of the "people" [or "citizen" or "citizens"] "to bear arms in defense of themselves [or "himself"] and the state," or equivalent words, thus indisputably reflecting that under common usage "bear arms" was in no sense restricted to bearing arms in military service.
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Also in regards to the lethality of muskets, consider the marksmen who could kill a British officer on his horse from 300 meters with a musket. This type of lethality is not far removed from current firearms such as the M16/M4 which has an effective range out to about 400 meters.

In your defense, however, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has ruled twice that automatic weapons should be reserved for use by the military only. Personally, I don't really care as automatic fire isn't really that effective when in a gun fight. That, and I can pull the trigger on my FAL fast enough that it can cycle at 8-10 rounds per second. Of course, all of this is irrelevant as I prefer long range shooting, not CQB shooting. I do, however, strongly oppose these laws as they make me guilty until proven innocent. This doesn't mean that I want an automatic weapon, I just don't like the slippery slope that it puts me on.
 
All laws regulating arms by technological level are an insult to intelligence. The only regulation that matters is regulation of the bearer of the arms. As Heinlein wrote: "There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men."

Instead of categorizing weaponry or its use for self-defense, hunting, or sport, we need to decide which citizens cannot be trusted with arms under any circumstances. I would suggest restrictions based on age, physical or psychological fitness, and criminal record.

So instead of registering firearms, a citizen would only have to pass an investigation qualifying himself by those standards, and the permit he received would allow him to obtain and use any personal arms he chose, with no further government meddling. The qualification would probably include some kind of written and practical test.

If this were combined with rigorous enforcement of laws against misuse, I persoanlly am convinced we would see an improvement even over that seen in states with "shall issue" laws today.
 
Good thoughts Esav, I could probably get behind something like that. Better than the hodge podge of laws we have now.

As a note generally the discussion of different types or effectiveness of weapons historically speaking,or for law enforcement/Military is interesting, but seems off the point. Just my opinion of course, but it would seem that having similar arms to the military/police is part of the idea. Again, to protect ourselves, not just from criminals, not just from foreign invasion, but from the government itself. And for the record I'll say it again, God forbid that ever become necessary. Also, I agree, not a fan of full autos at all, fun the first couple times you blast away, but accuracy and ammo waste are just two big drawbacks. Again, not the point.

I've heard a number of different interpretations of the 2nd amendment as well, which is really why I used the term "spirit" of the law. Think in terms of the framers of the constitution. They are fighting/have fought to free themselves from a repressive/non-representative government. I believe, and I'm certainly not the first to think it, that the point of the amendment was precisely to safeguard the ability of We The People, to combat our own government should it become repressive/unrepresentative. Historically, a good way for governments to keep the people repressed was to take away their arms, look at Feudal Japan for just one example. We had some smart guys, who were aware of the dangers implicit in a easily controlled populace, I think that is why they put that amendment there to begin with. The fact that it also preserves our right to be hunters and sportsman is a nice benefit, but completely beside the point.

Again my opinion, YMMV

Syn
 
Edonis, the reason i say muskets were less lethal is due to the rate of fire and the fact that a ball shot out of a smooth bored tube with no porting on it has a much harder time of reaching a target accurately (i say this mostly due to all the arguments, answers, and tests conducted in the paintball industry on the reasons paintballs are not as acurate as guns). i know there were many marksmen who were able to learn their firearms well enough to hit targets very far out, but from all that i have seen in documents and some other tests people have done i think it is much easier to get on target with a modern rifle than a 18th century musket. i agree that bolt actions are less dangerous as well due to the reduced rate of fire and less of a chance of not realizing there was a round in there (not really an excuse but there are a lot of stupid people).

i am not nesecarly saying that we need to get rid of guns, personaly i would like to see less types of fire arms avaliable but i know that is not going to happen. i would like to see better regestration on the firearms (including a balistics record of the gun matched to its regestration and the same for replacement barrels for a firearm). i do not want these regestrations to be inplace to invade privace or to restrict people but to help keep track of weapons to keep them from being used for crimes (i also wish people would have enough sence to report guns stolen asap and then have a system to tag the regestrations imediatly).

Esav, i do agree that it is more so the people than the firearm. one of the problems i think we have is that one state (VA for example) has pretty lax gun laws where as others (Massachusetts where a friend of mine is stationed) has the basic requirements harder to get any firearm than it is to get a Conseal carry here in VA. I would like to see where people have to go through gun saftey and responsible use classes.

i guess to some i am in a weird posistion, seeing as i would like more regulations to make sure guns will be used correctly and to make it so more people must be checked out more, but i am still planing on getting a glock and a conseal carry.

we can atleast agree on the idea that we shoudl be teaching people safe and responsible weather it be in school or some other form correct?
-matt
 
"we can at least agree on the idea that we should be teaching people safe and responsible weather it be in school or some other form correct?"
-matt


Absolutely, I just believe that should be in school or at home, and keep the government out of it. As a child, my father and several other family members taught me gun safety and use, that would be the ideal to me I guess, but perhaps unrealistic.

Syn
 
People are poking holes at specific examples. I dont have any single thing I am opposed to, it is merely the trends that i would try to bring attention to. I don't specifically object to hollow points or extended clips, but on the aggregate, all these little extras that make guns slightly more lethal add up to a culture where the standard for protection becomes something that, if used, is almost impossible to use with less than lethal results. If something is actually used for hunting, then fine. Personally, I think you can hunt with less powerful munitions than are commonly used, but if you prefer high power rifles with hollow points and whatever, that's fine. The problem is that you can hunt with lesser weapons, but for tactical (re: illegal) purposes, these cutting edge weapons are necessary.
 
bSquirrel the problem you brought up is that people are thinking they can use firearms to protect them selves on more situations than they should. people need to (i feel) have the idea that if you draw your gun you are ready to kill someone and you know theres no other way to get situation calmed down.

that idea is something that my friend who has a CC told me and it makes perfect sence.
-matt
 
After much deliberation, I suggest the following response (drum roll please)....

But, if they weren't sharp, how could I kill people with them?

:D

Jason
 
If you had chopped her hand off with one deft move it would have answered all of her questions. In short, a dull knife would have took several painful chops just to break bone...thus this one chop with a sharp knife shows your dumb ass liberal ass the importance of having a sharp knife..:D
 
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