Do you support a new ban on 'assault weapons'?

Kernel Sanders said:

The weapons that were grandfathered in are now a decade and a half old.

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Many are older. And, of course, many were sold during the ban. And many have been sold since. But then, with proper care, firearms will last forever...

If I had to guess I'd say that either the exemptions would not be included,

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So, you think that all -existing- 'assault weapons' will be banned, and then confiscated?

The report is careful to avoid crediting the nationwide drop in gun violence to the AWB, but the effects on crime involving assault weapons are clear.

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Actually, they are not. The only benefit alluded to in the rep[ort has to do with the availability of the hi-cap mags, not the guns.

So, what effect did the GUN ban have on crime?

Maximus Zeebra said:

Crime in the large US cities have gone down since the ban.

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Show that the ban had anything to do with this.

Maximus Zeebra said:

You think anyone without a felony conviction should be able to own fully automatic weapons?

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We aren't talking about fully automatic weapons.

Bodhisattva said:

As long as anybody who buys one realizes that they are in the militia and could and should be called upon in time of need, go for it.

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There's no support for this position at all. Your membership in the militia is not dependent on you owning any sort of firearm, and vice-versa.

WI Crippler said:

Somebody tell me, a person with nothing other than a minor traffic violation on his record, why I shouldn't be allowed to own an assault rifle.

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I'm still waiting for an answer to this.....

crip,


They will say you have no need, then when you ask what "need" has to do with it, they will trail off into hoplophobic nonsense about guns being scary and death machines.

Goobieman said:

There's no support for this position at all. Your membership in the militia is not dependent on you owning any sort of firearm, and vice-versa.

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No no, Bodhi's argument has merit. After all we are all the "militia" according to US law.


He gets it backwards though. In order to have a militia in good working order, we cant restrict all of the people from owning arms.

Not the other way around.

Reverend_Hellh0und said:

crip,


They will say you have no need, then when you ask what "need" has to do with it, they will trail off into hoplophobic nonsense about guns being scary and death machines.

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There are alot of things we don't need. So I hope they wouldn't be foolish enough to tell me over the INTERNET, that I don't NEED a gun.

Aside from that, I've never argued that I need one, just that if I should want one, why can't I have one? I've never gotten an answer to that.

WI Crippler said:

There are alot of things we don't need. So I hope they wouldn't be foolish enough to tell me over the INTERNET, that I don't NEED a gun.

Aside from that, I've never argued that I need one, just that if I should want one, why can't I have one? I've never gotten an answer to that.

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maybe its because guns have magical properties to turn even the most law abiding citizen in to kill crazy madmen? :mrgreen:

BmanMcfly said:

I voted No, but only because there wasnt my preferred option :

You get a free assault rifle if you're 18, with no criminal record, when you get your license renewed... as well as pistols and/ or shotguns, depending on the persons preference.

If the person takes a gun they must sign up to a basic proficiency course on the chosen weapon.

Done.

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Shall not be infringed, pretty sure that's in there. If you're this concerned with proficiency, then move to make shooting a class during at some point in the school system, Jr. High or something.

Reverend_Hellh0und said:

They will say you have no need, then when you ask what "need" has to do with it,

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Zombies.

I need an AA 12 in case of zombie attack. I need fully automatics in case the undead rise against us. There's all sorts of weapons I need in case of zombie attack.

Lerxst said:

Jerry, how about you take your meds...

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I confront your hypocrisy and you begin with the personal attacks.

Typical liberal bull****.

Lerxst said:

I've never found a candidate that is all things to all people. I went with Obama for a number of reasons, but gun control is not one of them. It just wasn't enough of a "threat to my rights" to scare me off.

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Nice try at a cop-out, but it doesn't fly.

When you vote for a candidate you are supporting ALL of his policies because you are putting ALL of those policies in office.

You voted for Obama, that means you support gun control.

winston53660 said:

Forced abortion

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Obama is funding so-called "family planning" programs where forced abortion and forced sterilization is commonplace.

Obama supports negligent homicide against born-infants.

We've had whole threads on it.

Now he is getting his socialized healthcare, increasing taxes which will reduce tax revenue and reduce jobs, all while in a recession.

Gun control is only the most recent, and predicted, act of creating the police state.

The American public was unable to overcome their public education, and now we're going to suffer for it.

Maximus Zeebra said:

You think anyone without a felony conviction should be able to own fully automatic weapons?

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Yes.

Maximus Zeebra said:

In any states?

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Yes.

Maximus Zeebra said:

In urban areas?

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Yes.

Maximus Zeebra said:

With no restrictions, such as "only former military or police personnel"..

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Yes.

USING the damn thing, however, the owner better be damn sure of what he's shooting the thing at, because his ass is responsible for every single bullet that leaves the muzzle of that weapon, and if it harms an innocent, he should go to jail.

Just like cops should, but don't, go to jail when they go off on one of their trigger happy sprees in Compton.

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If a person owns a single-shot .22 rifle (if there is such a thing) and he shoots at a burglar in his home, misses, and the bullet goes out the window and into the head of the driver of a passing car which then hits a school bus forcing it down a railway embankment causing an Amtrak passenger train to derail resulting in the deaths of 452 people....the man the pulled the trigger is responsible and should face the appropriate penalties.

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But there's no reason to blame the gun, or other gun owners, and deny those owners their Constitutional freedom to own guns, because the occasional jackass can't shoot.

Did the government outlaw dicks just because Clinton was a rapist?

Just like cops should, but don't, go to jail when they go off on one of their trigger happy sprees in Compton.

If a person owns a single-shot .22 rifle (if there is such a thing) and he shoots at a burglar in his home, misses, and the bullet goes out the window and into the head of the driver of a passing car which then hits a school bus forcing it down a railway embankment causing an Amtrak passenger train to derail resulting in the deaths of 452 people....the man the pulled the trigger is responsible and should face the appropriate penalties.

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Intent matters. A man should not be jailed simply because he made an honest mistake in the heat of the moment.

Jerry said:

Nice try at a cop-out, but it doesn't fly.

When you vote for a candidate you are supporting ALL of his policies because you are putting ALL of those policies in office.

You voted for Obama, that means you support gun control.

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That's just silly. The odds of any individual agreeing with 100% of a candidate's stances and actions has got to approach zero. We get two viable choices each election cycle and I can't even imagine a scenario where I found a candidate I was 100% in agreement with.

It is possible to support a candidate without supporting all their positions.

Politics are not zero-sum.

Ethereal said:

Intent matters. A man should not be jailed simply because he made an honest mistake in the heat of the moment.

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Sure.

He can go to jail for manslaughter, not murder.

Because intent counts, but there's still a body on the floor.

Stupidity should be punished, also.

Wyrmdog said:

That's just silly. The odds of any individual agreeing with 100% of a candidate's stances and actions has got to approach zero. We get two viable choices each election cycle and I can't even imagine a scenario where I found a candidate I was 100% in agreement with.

It is possible to support a candidate without supporting all their positions.

Politics are not zero-sum.

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I think that you are discounting those mindless zealots that you see during campaigns screaming and freaking while waving banners and wearing buttons... I think that those people support their candidate 100% on every single issue... period.

Scarecrow Akhbar said:

Sure.

He can go to jail for manslaughter, not murder.

Because intent counts, but there's still a body on the floor.

Stupidity should be punished, also.

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For the man murdered it matters little what the punishment of the killer is..

Reverend_Hellh0und said:

No no, Bodhi's argument has merit. After all we are all the "militia" according to US law.


He gets it backwards though. In order to have a militia in good working order, we cant restrict all of the people from owning arms.

Not the other way around.

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I don't think that we should restrict guns... I think that people who own guns should be held accountable according to the Constitution, and that is that they are part of the "militia". All citizens are not a part of the militia, but those that own guns are. It is a default position...

Maximus Zeebra said:

For the man murdered it matters little what the punishment of the killer is..

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But if there is no intent, there is no murder.
It can be something else... negligent homocide, manslaughter, etc.
It just is not a murder...

Goobieman said:

There's no support for this position at all. Your membership in the militia is not dependent on you owning any sort of firearm, and vice-versa.

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I thought that you ignored me because I showed in our previous debate that there was.

A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Saul Cornell ? Here is a description.

Description
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong.

Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right-- an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia.

He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders.

Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts.

Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century.

Oxford University Press: OUP USA Home



English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries: force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government , the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.

These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists. The check on all government, not simply the federal government, was the armed population, the militia. Government would not be accorded the power to create a select militia since such a body would become the government's instrument. The whole of the population would comprise the militia. As the constitutional debates prove, the framers recognized that the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual's right to arms, thus empowering the people to resist tyranny and preserve the republic. The intent was not to create a right for other (p.1039)governments, the individual states; it was to preserve the people's right to a free state, just as it says.

Valparaiso Univ. Law Review

THE HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Confederation & Constitution: Federalist Papers: Federalist No.46

"For a people who are free and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. It is, therefore, incumbent on us at every meeting [of Congress] to revise the condition of the militia and to ask ourselves if it is prepared to repel a powerful enemy at every point of our territories exposed to invasion... Congress alone have power to produce a uniform state of preparation in this great organ of defense. The interests which they so deeply feel in their own and their country's security will present this as among the most important objects of their deliberation."--Thomas Jefferson: 8th Annual Message, 1808. ME 3:482

"It is more a subject of joy [than of regret] that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies. But it proves more forcibly the necessity of obliging every citizen to be a soldier; this was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free State. Where there is no oppression there can be no pauper hirelings."

--Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1813



"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."

--Thomas Jefferson, 1803.



"[The] governor [is] constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms."

--Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811.


"We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe till this is done."

--Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1813.



"I think the truth must now be obvious that our people are too happy at home to enter into regular service, and that we cannot be defended but by making every citizen a soldier, as the Greeks and Romans who had no standing armies; and that in doing this all must be marshaled, classed by their ages, and every service ascribed to its competent class."

--Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1814.

Jerry said:

I confront your hypocrisy and you begin with the personal attacks.

Typical liberal bull****.



Nice try at a cop-out, but it doesn't fly.

When you vote for a candidate you are supporting ALL of his policies because you are putting ALL of those policies in office.

You voted for Obama, that means you support gun control.

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Typical Jerry bull****. :rofl

But hey, it's your reality, you can club baby liberals all you want. And you would have really kick ass friends there too!

Enjoy your delusion Jerry.