for the record (re: guns thread)

YesGrenades and plastic even more massive potential.Our forefathers fought (and many of them died) for freedom from government oppression, and because of that they put the 2nd amendment in the constitution.Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791. NoteA 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.It does not say the Militia has the right. It says the People have the right.The problem is how do you limit what arms a person is able to own without infringing on the rights of the people. The only legal way is to amend the constitution, which has to be ratified by 2/3 rds of the states.

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

What government is that?

The monarchy of the King of England. Unless he means religious dogma

It does protect the possesion of arms. The only way to change it is a constitutional amendment. Requiring radification by 2/3 rd's of the states.My weapon of choice is a bolt action springfield. You can get it in the mud, water, whatever. I can clean it in less than 2 minutes blindfolded. It is accurate at 500 yds to the point I can put 10 holes in a target at rapid fire that you can cover with your hand.I would dare say there are hundreds of thousands of trained x military that can do the same. So don't sell the American People Short.

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

I thought the church and state was the same then.

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

1- Are they restricted enough? If people cannot get a hold of them then what is this thread about? 2- A large quantity of weapons. Aka - more than anyone could claim is needed to defend their homes from criminals.3- Since they have a name for them, I assume that normal ammunition cannot pierce armor. I have never seen them so I am not sure what the difference could be. (These guys had them - Bank Robbers)***Its interesting that they also mentioned the Symbionese Liberation Army gunfight in 1974. Part of the reason for L.A. creating the S.W.A.T. team was because more and more often the criminals had better weapons than the police. (modern marvels tv episode about swat teams)

Sure. It is neither easy or inexpensive to get a fully automatic rifle. The thread is mostly an emotional opportunity for folk to vent their personal misconceptions. Fully automatic rifles are simply not much of an issue. Again, while protection might be one reason to carry a firearm, there are also many other reasons. I personally know collectors that have hundreds of guns. Again, that is mostly media hype. There is such a thing as "Armor piercing ammo", but it is only seen in things like tanks and anti-tank weapons. What I think you are talking about is ammo that would pierce some body armor. That includes almost all rifle ammo.Body armor comes in many levels of protection. The lowest level is intended to stop most handgun rounds. As you add weight and exotic materials like ceramics you can step the level up to where it will stop most military rifle rounds such as from an AK-47 and M-16. But even that level of armor will not stand up to the average hunting round.Also, the report on the LA Bank robbery is, as is so often the case, simply wrong. They did not have armor piercing rounds. And yes, they kinda had the police out gunned from a technological perspective, but that was mostly because there had been a political decision to limit the arms available to the police. Had the police had a 100 year old deer rifle, the stand off would have been short lived.The problem was that the police were several decades behind in technology. It is still an issue in that most police get way too little firearms training. It's not the police' fault, but rather the fault of society and politics.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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First, let me just thank you for your cool, calm, and non-hostile reply to my arguments. It's very much appreciated when one can debate his/her points without worry of being insulted and/or viciously verbally attacked

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I hope you weren't referring to my posts, Jon.I've been direct. I've been blunt.I have not, however, engaged in any ad hominem.I repeatedly tried to stop Nuggin from attacking you, if you recall.

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Landmines are not a right guaranteed to us by the 2nd Amendment.

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Why not?They are "arms", aren't they?

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Unless you can show me that landmines and guns are both equally "necessary to the security of a free state," then your argument is sunk.

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Actually, landmines would be a great deal more useful to repelling a military force than handguns.

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Because landmines would be destructive to the U.S. if detonated on an invading force, I believe the same logic applies here as to nukes, that is, they are more detrimental to the security of a free state than they are necessary.

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But that's the argument about civilian ownership of handguns.Are they "more detrimental to the decurity of a free state than they are neccessary"?All of the statistics I have found indicate that they kill far more people than they keep secure through homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings.

That was what I was taking about. I blame the media, thanks for some clarity on that. That is very true, but another way to look at it is that the criminals generally are better armed than the police. With the introduction of Swat teams however police now can get the upper hand with better training and technology.

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The thread is mostly an emotional opportunity for folk to vent their personal misconceptions.

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So, is the yearly deaths of 30,000 people from guns (which includes homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings merely a misconception?What sort of misconception? What facts are incorrect?Is the fact that the lethal violence rate in the US is so much higher than that of comparative nations a misconception, too?What sort of misconception? What facts are incorrect?

Not really.SWAT teams can be of use in some limited situations, but they too are mostly "the low cost politically correct" substitute for actually addressing the problems.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Modulous and I went through this, and I explained that even though the quote said violence, it was MEANT IN THE CONTEXT OF MURDER. Modulous accepted this 'correction' so why the hell can't everyone else?

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Modulous may believe you but I sure as hell don't.Please do not play games, Jon.I caught you in the error of repeatedly "strawmanning" my position.The OP of this thread documents this.You repeated and repeated and repeated your strawman, which is why I had to correct it at least seven times in the original Guns thread.You never once, in several hundred posts and despite seven seperate, nearly identical corrections, clarified your definition of violence to mean murder only.Now, several hunderd more posts later in another thread, you are trying to pass off some malarkey that you meant "murder" when you were saying "violence". If you had meant "murder", you would have said "murder", wouldn't you? Particularly since I kept correcting you?I may be a lot of things, but gullible ain't one of 'em.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

The proof is in the pudding. Jon said moments later in that post

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I've brought up racial oppression as an explanation for increased violence in the United States. Using statistics of crime and gun ownership broken into race”this post focuses on AfroAmerican and EuroAmerican”, I will show that increased violence does not relate to increased gun ownership.

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So he is going to use stats to show that violence and gun ownership are not related (sounds like contrary to the position that gun ownership reduces violent crime but hey).

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Next, let us look at the murder offenders by race:

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After which he concludes:

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No way! You mean the population with a higher murder rate owns FEWER guns? Yes. These statistics show that there is no correlation between murder rates and gun ownership.

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There you go - he was talking about violence in the context of murder. Sure - the writing is sloppy as all hell - but the intent is quite clear.Why would he mention the violence/guns scenario and then go on to discuss murder rates. Message 174 was not addressed to Jon, so that is not documenting you correcting Jon strawmanning your position. Message 156 is in reply to Jon talking about how murder has always happened - he is not saying that you are saying violence will stop with gun restrictions. Message 154 is you replying to Jon, where he says that oppression causes violence not guns - specifically referring to murder rates of an oppressed group. Message 220 is not a reply to Jon, so is hardly documentation of you correcting a strawman. The same goes for Message 233.The OP does not document Jon repeatedly strawmanning your position. It seems that at least twice he demonstrated his violence assertion using murder rates with regard to oppressed racial groups to show that oppression is a bigger contributing factor than gun ownership. He has now taken the time in this thread, upon being specifically asked to clarify this position to do so. As we can see - he did say murder. It was sloppy to use the terms so loosely given his opponents position, but now that is cleared up why can't we just drop it? Hopefully the ability to understand your opponents point of view without the need to strawman it yourself is important? Whether you agree with his stats, or what he says they imply - why not just accept his position as he states it? That is to say - gun ownership does not lead to higher murder rates. Low gun ownership and high oppression can lead to much higher murder rates, so let's deal with the oppression.It's actually not a difficult position to understand, even if you choose to disbelieve it. That Jon has not been completely clear at all times, is problematic, but why focus on the ambiguities. His position has now been clarfified. Now that this is the case, you may attempt to refute his actual position rather than a strawman that he admittdely is partially responsible for building. Now he his trying to dismantle the strawman you seem to be desperately trying to keep in built so that you can continue attacking it.The strawman is dead. Jon meant murder rates. Attack that position if you must attack any at all - it is after all - your opponent's position.

Do you take away a person's steak knife before they stab someone with it? We cannot predict what people will do with every possible thing they have, and it's certainly not fair to punish someone before they do something wrong. Now, I know what you're thinking; "but what could someone possibly want with a gun like one of those ak-47s except to shoot people with." Well, you'd be partially right and partially wrong in saying this. To understand why, we must go back to the 2nd Amendment, and review why it was written. Fortunately, the clue we need for this endeavour is not hidden in some mystical meaning; in fact, it's spelled right out for us: "necessary to the security of a free state." Now, let's examine this other bit you said here. The purpose of the amendment is to make sure that the citizens of the U.S. are armed enough in the event of an invasion. So, will rifles and handguns have any effect against the Canadian automatic weapons and armour-piercing rounds? Not really. To assure that they do, the people must be armed with comparable weaponry.I think we need to bring these weapons back.

I never argued this.Edited by Jon, : Jon