I have no problem with guns that are used for target shooting or hunting.
Neither do I--obviously.
You think it fair to hunt a deer with a full auto?
No. Nor Do I think it fair that you limit the
ONLY VALID REASONS to own a firearm is for target shooting and hunting purposes.
I would never (and don't) object to hunting regulations that prohibit the use of fully automatic weapons for hunting. I don't object to hunting licenses either.
So I'm still hoping you'll discover your rational criteria for limiting what arms can be owned.
I heard the second amendment was something written on paper that only reinforced what was a God-given enumerated right...
Truth. It is the appropriate license. Yes. I'm still behind that.
Is that arms? Are RPG's? Are tanks? You know where I'm going with this.
I'll again say, Yes--what of it? And no, I don't know where you're going with this, mostly because I'm hoping you're going somewhere other than the "regular folks don't need RPGs" trail, which is so weak on its face that I'm surprised it gets brought up, every time it's brought up.
Semantics and principles do have a tendency to cross over on occasion. Depends on how "tight" the argument becomes..
Fine. You still have no semantic argument.
LOL. Tis funny how a single letter typo can change the whole meaning of a post! I said others but meant other. Other being baseball bats, knives, chains...I think you took me to mean others, which would mean people. If you look at the original post I said "others means", which makes no sense, I meant other means...my bad...
No problem, but I'll still stick to what I posted. My retort to what you meant to post really will only amount to the notion that guns being a more effective murder weapon than a baseball bat does not confer upon the baseball bat some kind of moral superiority that makes the baseball bat less a murder weapon than a gun; that licensing, and registering a basebal bat would have the same effect on a murderer, and his victim, that registering and licensing guns has--that being nothing.
Regardless of the plethora of other rationalizations presented by the gun-grabbing crowd, the actual point of gun registering and owner licensing is the creation of gun confiscation lists--nothing else.
And thus is the quandry of a society awash with guns...(IMO)
What quandry? There are guns, there are decent civilized folks who own guns, there decent civilized folks who don't own guns, and there are those who fear that decent, civilized folks should (if they wish to) own alot of guns, and that those decent civilized who don't currently own guns, might do so in the future.
There is no quandry--but there is a question: Why do some people fear decent, civilized folks with guns? What plans do these "fearful" have for the decent civilized folks, such that armed, decent, civilized folks present such a problem that disarmament must occur first?
Far from fair. How about you be a bit more intellectually honest. Let's compare the number of accidental car deaths with accidental firearms deaths. Then let's compare homicides via car and homicides via firearm (hell, we can even not include suicides if you like)...
I see your point Grump, but if you want to bring it back to just homicides, I'll just point out that murderers are murderers regardless of the weapon they use--murder is what make a person a murderer, and NOT the posssesion of a gun--so to be fair, and intellectually honest about it, I'll generously (despite the undeniable fact that killed means dead, but not neccessarily murdered) NOT deduct murders and suicides from the gun related death toll, while fully allowing you to deduct murders and suicides from the automobile and iatrogenicly caused hospital death toll. I ask only that you calculate the risks, and with intellectual honesty focus your concern where the risks are greatest--if risk to society is the actual rationale for forcibly restricting a person's free action.
Thing was, in all those cases, even the American revolution, if the oppressors had got down right dirty, the outcomes would have been vastly different. Hanoi would be a parking lot, ditto Afghanistan, and if George had been a total toe rag a whole generation of men, women and children would have been wiped out.
History argues differently. Fighting people in their own backyards has an extra cost--particularly if you intend to rule them afterward.
Where am I planning on taking this? So when the FF wrote it they were not talking about the militia and the people in tandem? If not, why mention the term militia at all?
Not to take away from snowman's reply, but more out of having the window open and being on a roll...
The militia was mentioned to introduce the US Government's interest in the people's right. Where the federal government had no jurisdiction in hunting, target shooting, etc., used for arms, they had a constitutionally granted power to call uppn the militia, and a constitutional mandate to the security of a free state.
What is an automobile? A motorbike? Train? Space shuttle? Thing is, they weren't that specific...no matter how hard you try/wish it were so...:0)
To a purpose, Grump, and that purpose was NOT to limit what the right to keep and bear arms meant, to those arms which their ancestors were technologically limited to, to those arms which they were technologically limited to, or to limit our progeny to those arms that we are technologically limited to.
Are they? Where does a firearm stop and a tank begin?
What's the point? Let's say there's no line of demarcation. Let's say arms includes all weapons. Let's adopt (for discussion's sake) that peculiar insistence, from the anti-gun crowd, that the right to keep and bear arms is neccessarily a militia issue, thus asserting that the point of the 2nd was to assure that military weaponry was possessed, in as substantial a way possible, by the people and not just the government.
Unless you have spoken to a FF, you have no idea what they intended. That sentence has been open to so much scrutiny since its inception, to try and claim that you know their intention is not only arrogant, but bordering on laughable.
No it's not. Besides, there are plenty of writings, by the Founding Fathers, appurtenant to the Bill of Rights, regarding their intentions. Your demand that only speaking face to face with a dead-guy, is the only way to ascertain his intent, runs right past the border of laughable into the hysterical.
Actually I have very little consideration for the constitution at all, it hardly affects me....
Then let us not discuss further the point of the 2nd Amendment? Does it remain that irrelevent? If so, I'm game because I'd rather not refute each and every disingenuous anti-2nd Amendment argument ever presented.
The question starting this thread was essentially: Have the more stringent gun control laws, recently passed in England, served to protect the English people from violent crime in England?
The answer to that question is clearly "no"--that answer includes murder.
It is clear that gun control laws should have an effect on the use of guns in murder, but it is also clear, at least in England, that gun control laws have no redeeming effect on the murder rate. It is also clear that gun control laws should have an effect on the use of guns in total violent crime--but it is also clear, at least in England, that gun control laws have a detrimental effect on violent crime rate in England, and the civilized folks who are victim to this same rising violent crime rate.
Grump, your assertion seems to have been that gun control laws have a civilizing effect on a society--as civilized as the English were before these gun control laws, in the case of murder you cannot say the English have become more civilized, and in the case of violent crime in general--it appears that since adopting more stringent gun control laws, the English have become LESS civilized, if the rate of violent crime is to be considered an indicator for degree of civilization.
Since you're apparently not under the juristiction of the US Constitution, I'm hoping this turn away from the 2nd Amendment suits you.
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