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Is this a "strong argument" for banning 'assault weapons'?

Is this a "strong argument" for banning 'assault weapons'?

  • Total voters
    40
Ikari said:
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.
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yeah, yeah, yeah...

and the first amendment is violated when I yell fire in a crowded building...
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Hmmmm....the reasons may not be impeded by eliminating "assualt" weapons, but successfully completing some of those missions certainly will be.

Wanna try overthrowing the government with peashooters? If a hundred million man horde of Chinese invaders hits the beach, do you want a single-shot .22 to hold them off, or a fully automatic squirt-gun of a bullet thrower in your hands?
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if you want to overthrow your government or wage a guerilla war, all you need is a gun that can shoot far. not that i know... but you don't need a fully automatic gun.

Im just trying to get the best of both worlds as best i can, no gun policy can be perfect
 
nerv14 said:
if you want to overthrow your government or wage a guerilla war, all you need is a gun that can shoot far. not that i know... but you don't need a fully automatic gun.
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Sure you don't, if the government you're trying to overthrow has only one soldier. Frankly, single-shot long distance shooting wouldn't be effective against the United States government. Something about lines of command or authority or whatever it's called in the Constitution makes that option impractical.

nerv14 said:
Im just trying to get the best of both worlds as best i can, no gun policy can be perfect
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The best of which worlds? The best option is to allow the citizen his freedom to arm himself with those firearms he personally sees fit to use.

It's really not a choice anyone is morally able to make for him or constitutionally allowed to interfere with.
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
The best of which worlds? The best option is to allow the citizen his freedom to arm himself with those firearms he personally sees fit to use.

It's really not a choice anyone is morally able to make for him or constitutionally allowed to interfere with.
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So say a citizen wants to arm himself with a rocket launcher, should he or she be able to just go down to the local gun show and buy it?
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Sure you don't, if the government you're trying to overthrow has only one soldier. Frankly, single-shot long distance shooting wouldn't be effective against the United States government. Something about lines of command or authority or whatever it's called in the Constitution makes that option impractical.



The best of which worlds? The best option is to allow the citizen his freedom to arm himself with those firearms he personally sees fit to use.

It's really not a choice anyone is morally able to make for him or constitutionally allowed to interfere with.
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If someone has a gun and they want to kill someone they should be able to do that. However, that doesn't mean that they should be able to kill many people at once with an assult rifle.


huh? how wouldn't a single shot gun be effective eagainst overthrowing a goverenment?

my main thought is that you can pick off many soldiers in a huge city very easily. Also, if youve got a big group of semi-automatics, you could take down any government building.

as I said, the Constitution in its current form was meant to have some leeway in some issues.

Can people use bullets that have uranium in them?
Can we tax guns at all? (a normal sales tax is still infringing on the right to own a gun)

and of course, there are many excepts in the first amendment.
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Nope.

Re-read Federalist 28. The Second Amendment was to ensure that if the local or federal government subverted the militia's the people still had recourse to their own weapons to defend their liberties.
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Yes, in Hamilton's opinion.

However, the constitution was a consensus document thus Jefferson would have had a much different opinion. The classical liberals at the time believed that the strongest check against a totalitarian state was for the federal government not to have a large standing army and thus be dependent on the people to defend the nation. This goes back to the Glorious Revolution in 1688:

"“When a Tyrant’s Army is beaten, his Country is conquered: He has no Resource; his Subjects having neither Arms...nor Reason to fight for him.”

“and therefore it is fit that Mankind should know...that his Majesty can be defended against them...without Standing Armies; which would make him formidable only to his People....”

“When the People are easy and satisfied, the whole Kingdom is Kings Army.”"

The point is that armed citizenry and regulated militias were not intended to defend the people against a totalitarian state and its armies, but rather to replace the state's army altogether and thus make it impossible for the state ever to become a tyrant.
 
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SouthernDemocrat said:
So say a citizen wants to arm himself with a rocket launcher, should he or she be able to just go down to the local gun show and buy it?
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Damn, you people have serious difficulty with the English language, or what?

No, we've already covered the going nuclear non-sequitur, which includes as a subset the Black Hawk Down non-sequitur for the purposes of this discussion, which happens to be, if you people would be bothered to read the thread title, the OP, or any of the posts, including the ones you've already responded to, "assault weapons".

Got it?
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Damn, you people have serious difficulty with the English language, or what?

No, we've already covered the going nuclear non-sequitur, which includes as a subset the Black Hawk Down non-sequitur for the purposes of this discussion, which happens to be, if you people would be bothered to read the thread title, the OP, or any of the posts, including the ones you've already responded to, "assault weapons".

Got it?
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The right to bear arms shall not be infringed. That's arms not just assault weapons, but arms. At the the time of the nation's founding, a citizen could go out and buy a cannon or a warship if they saw fit to do so.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Yes, in Hamilton's opinion.

However, the constitution was a consensus document thus Jefferson would have had a much different opinion. The classical liberals at the time believed that the strongest check against a totalitarian state was for the federal government not to have a large standing army and thus be dependent on the people to defend the nation. This goes back to the Glorious Revolution in 1688:

"“When a Tyrant’s Army is beaten, his Country is conquered: He has no Resource; his Subjects having neither Arms...nor Reason to fight for him.”

“and therefore it is fit that Mankind should know...that his Majesty can be defended against them...without Standing Armies; which would make him formidable only to his People....”

“When the People are easy and satisfied, the whole Kingdom is Kings Army.”"

The point is, that armed citizenry and regulated militias were not intended to defend the people against a totalitarian state and its armies, but rather to replace the state's army altogether and thus make it impossible for the state ever to become a tyrant.
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Good thing Hamilton got his way on that.

It's what the Second Amendment is for.

The point is, the people who formed this government were the people who used their very own private weapons stock to divorce themselves from the tyranny of their former government, so they knew damn well what they were doing when they said the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

They weren't discussing the national guard. EVERY place the phrase "the people" is used in the Constitution, it's recognized as a reference to the individual citizen, not some vague collective. The only place argument to the contrary is made is when leftists are trying to eliminate private gun ownership.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
The right to bear arms shall not be infringed. That's arms not just assault weapons, but arms. At the the time of the nation's founding, a citizen could go out and buy a cannon or a warship if they saw fit to do so.
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Already covered that boy.

Get a new record. Us old farts can tell what it means when you keep skipping back to an irrelevant point that's arleady been dismissed.

It means you're wrong, no matter how many times you slip into the worn out groove.
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Good thing Hamilton got his way on that.

It's what the Second Amendment is for.

The point is, the people who formed this government were the people who used their very own private weapons stock to divorce themselves from the tyranny of their former government, so they knew damn well what they were doing when they said the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

They weren't discussing the national guard. EVERY place the phrase "the people" is used in the Constitution, it's recognized as a reference to the individual citizen, not some vague collective. The only place argument to the contrary is made is when leftists are trying to eliminate private gun ownership.
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I am not disagreeing with any of that. I have consistently been in favor of a near absolute right to bear arms. I was just pointing out that the reason they wanted an armed citizenry was not so the citizenry could defend itself against the government, but rather so that the citizenry would be the army and the means of defense for the nation, and thus the government would always be beholden to the citizenry as it would not even have the means to impose tyranny on them.

You see when people don't get that, then they will be ok with an empire made possible by a huge and expensive army so long as they get to buy the guns they want. That was not what the founders intended. They intended you and me to be that means of defense for the nation. Even at the time of the Revolution, they knew that if the federal government had a large standing army, it could impose its will on the people even if they were armed because the standing army could always be better armed and better trained. Thus they wanted the government to be dependent on the citizens for the defense of the nation instead.
 
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Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Already covered that boy.

Get a new record. Us old farts can tell what it means when you keep skipping back to an irrelevant point that's arleady been dismissed.

It means you're wrong, no matter how many times you slip into the worn out groove.
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when was this?

im new, could you bring up this point again...
 
Dav said:
Someone who doesn't want his whole family blown away before I can even pick up a weapon of my own?
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What does that have to do with my need for an assault rifle? You said I don't need one to defend myself, I say I do. Who are you to say I can't? If I need the weapon, I need it. It has nothing to do with your family, besides assault rifles doesn't mean that your family is at any greater risk than before.
 
nerv14 said:
yeah, yeah, yeah...

and the first amendment is violated when I yell fire in a crowded building...
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No, yelling fire in a crowded building puts those people at direct risk and thus infringes upon their rights. Our rights end at the rights of others. Me owning a gun does not innately infringe upon the rights of anyone else.
 
nerv14 said:
If someone has a gun and they want to kill someone they should be able to do that. However, that doesn't mean that they should be able to kill many people at once with an assult rifle.
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What if the many people are government officials looking to arrest people and take their land?
 
Ikari said:
What if the many people are government officials looking to arrest people and take their land?
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They are going to take it, because they are better armed than you are. Thats why the founders did not want the government heavily armed.
 
Ikari said:
No, yelling fire in a crowded building puts those people at direct risk and thus infringes upon their rights. Our rights end at the rights of others. Me owning a gun does not innately infringe upon the rights of anyone else.
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But if someone has an assult rifle that also can put me at risk.

Hell, someone else driving next to me on the road puts me at risk. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights doesn't have to do with protecting us in that way.

And where are you not allowed to put someone at risk? and how is that infringing on their rights?


My whole point is that you can't take the Bill of Rights completely literally. In effect, if you take everything COMPLETELY literally then most things have no value in real life. we are the ones that have to judge that.


The Bill of Rights says that no laws can be used to subvert the amendments on the Bill of Rights anyway.

"Article the eleventh [Amendment IX]

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
 
Ikari said:
What if the many people are government officials looking to arrest people and take their land?
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A rebellion isn't won by confronting the government in every turn, you just need enough weapons to take certain locations and slow the gov down everywhere else.

its ok though, you have an asuka avatar! evangelion is awesome, even though ive outgrown it, it is my favorite fictional story.
 
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SouthernDemocrat said:
They are going to take it, because they are better armed than you are. Thats why the founders did not want the government heavily armed.
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I agree that the government is heavily armed, more so than the founders wanted. Fighting against them would be very very tough indeed, but we need to be afforded the tools to do so.
 
Ikari said:
I agree that the government is heavily armed, more so than the founders wanted. Fighting against them would be very very tough indeed, but we need to be afforded the tools to do so.
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In the event of a rebellion I'd bet the government would take over all weapons and ammo manufactures. I bet the government has a lot more bullets than the rebels.
 
winston53660 said:
In the event of a rebellion I'd bet the government would take over all weapons and ammo manufactures. I bet the government has a lot more bullets than the rebels.
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Then we'll hold off till we see the whites of their eyes. What does it matter? It's hopeless and we shouldn't try? We should just accept our eventual subjugation to the government and behave like good little serfs and just work and work so the aristocracy can get richer through the corruption and perversion of government and oligopoly capitalism? Real nice.
 
Ikari said:
Then we'll hold off till we see the whites of their eyes. What does it matter? It's hopeless and we shouldn't try? We should just accept our eventual subjugation to the government and behave like good little serfs and just work and work so the aristocracy can get richer through the corruption and perversion of government and oligopoly capitalism? Real nice.
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I'm just entertaining the idea of an actual Revolution and how it could potentially play out via an armed public.
 
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