When I grew up in England guns were rare, especially in crime: see ford transits and sawn-off shotguns, but I'm sorry a lot of teenagers have been killed by firearms in the U.K. recently, also by ever present stabbings.

I'm with BeeVee on this. The only real guns I have ever seen have been on police at the airport. I may have seen armed police elsewhere and just haven't noticed, but I have never seen a civilian with a gun or heard a gunshot.
It's a bit cheeky. Welsh posters on another site tend to have their sigs in Welsh and I think it's a little insular. Mine is "I thank God I'm not Welsh" (as opposed to the Catatonia song which translates as "Every day, when I wake up, I thank the Lord I'm Welsh"). I love Wales and have nothing against the Welsh personally, just playing.
I suppose it depends where you live. I have never been mugged but HM has been mugged twice - once very seriously, involving stitches and broken bones. Then again he was very drunk and was trying to befriend a heroin addict - a situation I don't plan to get into.

But where are the Americans out there - the 2nd amendt. was for their present army to bear arms to fight. Translated it means the Armed Forces. The present day Army not householders, civilian Joes like you and me but the Army. Sorry for getting hectic but that's my question. Who wants?

It's doesn't say "present army" anywhere, it says "the people".

The people. who were not an army. But crushingly defeated the Brits. That people became an Army. The militia which became the state army. The people do not have to bear arms because the 2nd Amendment is the Armed Forces, but if you need to want to have a mini arsernal of arms in your possession - so be it.

the people had weapons and were thus able to rise up and overthrow a tyrannical power. these same people in forming a new government were just as afraid of a homegrown tyrant. do you really think with that mindset that they would have any desire for all weapons to be held by a force that is an arm of the government?

And doesn't the Constitution forbid a standing army?

The amendment specifies The People, not The Government or The Army.

Militia refers to ordinary, untrained citizens.

At the time of the founders, we had an army AND militias. The army was not enough to defeat the British, and it was the militias that allowed America to win.

I'm not trying to "impress" you. I picked the first 2 or three articles that showed up on google.

By all means go to fuckinggoogleit.com so you can learn how to look things up for yourself.

No, you don't have to be in Iraq to know what's going on. We're inundated with information daily about what's going on. Also, when America invaded Iraq without legitimate cause or provocation and started kicking down doors and taking not only guns (hand guns, AK-47s, rocket propelled grendades, etc.) it was still early in this unconstitutional war. America also shut down the Iraqi free press.


And yes, I'd defend the right of any person to refuse to follow unlawful orders to take part in any military action in another country that didn't follow a formal declaration of war. The U.S. military has one and only one purpose...to defend the land and ships of the United States from attack. It's not here to overthrow dictators, prevent other nations from developing nukes, train the military of other nations, to take part in peacekeeping or humanitarian aid missions, to enforce UN sanctions or resolutions, etc.

A militia is not the Army. Although the Army Reserve is a militia, it is a part of the Army. There are militias in the States that are not part of the Army.

June 14th, 1774 the Continental Army of the United States was formed. There were also militias separate from the Army at that time.

The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1789. There was a well founded Army, Navy, and Marine Corp. The writers of the Bill of Rights new the difference between the Army and a militia.

The right to bear arms has always been and will always be an INDIVIDUAL right that has nothing to do with the military.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/cri...cle2710596.ece

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=21902

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/ti61.pdf

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...pes-per-capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...mes-per-capita

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/world...n_impulse.html

http://www.saga.org.za/wfsa_reports.htm

Yes all that is true but where did the Army eventually come from. The peoples militia became the army despite the Constistution, the Bill of rights the ammendments etc. I firmly believe that the 2nd Ammendment written in it's day was to lay the foundations for the army today. Politics.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165229,00.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middl...raq_06-17.html

I'm begging to think that you are not aware of what you are saying, or that you are mis representing on purpose.

Resolved, that a General be appointed to command all the continental forces, raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty.

The above resolution of the 2nd Continental Congress, on 14 June 1775 established the beginnings of the United States Army.

The Army had been well established for 14 years, it didn't eventually come from anywhere. It was there. The writers new the difference between the militias of several states and the then Continental Army.

The U.S. military has one and only one purpose...to defend the land and ships of the United States from attack. It's not here to overthrow dictators, prevent other nations from developing nukes, train the military of other nations, to take part in peacekeeping or humanitarian aid missions, to enforce UN sanctions or resolutions, etc.[/quote]


Taken from Field Manual 1 "The Army". Published by Headquarters Department of the Army in June of 2005

1-2. The Army, a long-trusted institution, exists to serve the Nation. As part of the joint force, the Army supports and defends America’s Constitution and way of life against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The Army protects national security interests, including, forces, possessions, citizens, allies, and friends. It prepares for and delivers
decisive action in all operations. Above all, the Army provides combatant commanders with versatile land forces ready to fight and win the Nation’s wars.

1-8. Army forces are versatile. In addition to conducting combat operations, Army forces help provide security. They supply many services associated with establishing order, rebuilding infrastructure, and delivering humanitarian support. When necessary, they can direct assistance in reestablishing governmental institutions. Army forces
help set the conditions that allow a return to normalcy or a self-sustaining peace.

Are you pissed off because your claim was false Radar (and any idiot knows it is without even bothering to look up fuckinggoogle.com), or are you pissed off because you can't find anything substantial to back up your false statement?

You and UG are both on the same slippery slide here. That's patently obvious.

It's a very simple question: when all the constitencuy thingeys and the Amendments were written THEN at that time wasn't the militia and the right to bear arms written to birth the Armed Forces as it is it known today. My point is that the civilian element,no matter how much firepower it has, is unregulated and in no way attached to the overall plan of homeland defense as it stands today. I like that Alan Aarkin film "The Russians are coming"

To say that our Military today doesn't have militias in it's history would be out right lying. I would have to answer no, the 2nd amendment was not written to birth the Armed Forces as it is known today.

:thumb:

The Army traces its heritage to the colonial militias. These were precursors of today’s Army National Guard. Citizens answering the call to protect their homes and families began a heritage of selfless service and sacrifice that continues today. Opposition to British colonial policies in the eighteenth century led to war in 1775.
After the battles at Lexington and Concord, militia forces from across New England surrounded British forces in Boston. The Continental Congress assumed command of these units as “Troops of the United Provinces of North America” on 14 June 1775.

from the start, the Army comprised a small national force and the state militias’ citizen-Soldiers. In times of emergency, the standing army was enlarged with recruits and augmented by mobilizing the militia and creating volunteer units, initially by state and nationally by the time of the Civil War. This tradition of an Army that combines “full-time” regular Soldiers and citizen-Soldiers serving for short active service periods is still the cornerstone of Army organization.

-FM 1 United States Army

yes the 2nd amendment was tied to the idea of having armed citizens in the United States, in militias, and not. Militias in those days could not be formed unless the citizens were privately armed. You are right to see a connection between the militia and the Military. The second amendment was not written to create this connection. This connection was started 14+ years earlier in our history.

These were turbulant times. France at war with England (again) the Boston tea party', Science... Majour leaps in society, moving to cities etc. All I'm saying is that the 2nd amendment is the army today. We as citizens should not have the right to bear arms as so many people argue we can. What do i need with an assault rifle that fires armoured piercing rounds if I am a civilian? If I am a Soldier ok. But where is the malitia if your country has an army?

"Well regulated militia" refers to trained, organized citizens.

"The militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, ... all men capable of bearing arms;..."
— "Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic", 1788 (either Richard Henry Lee or Melancton Smith).

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People."
— Tench Coxe, 1788.

These are quotes from people of the day. It should shed some light on why the second amendment came to be. We in the United States have a long tradition behind us. These quotes were made in 1788 a year before the 2nd amendment was ratified with the first ten.

Happy Monkey, I see where your'e going, are you law schooled by any chance?

Let's do another analogy: the Army in Iraq was disbanded before the Allies got there, Are we therefore now fighting their militia?

Yes

Why would I be angry? Each and every single thing I've said is factual and true. I already know what I've said is a fact. If you are too lazy to look it up on google, don't get upset with me. The UK, Australia, and Canada have more violent crimes (rapes, assaults, etc.) than America on a per-capita basis. Many of those crimes aren't reported in those countries because the Ministry doesn't allow more than a certain number of reports to be made.

The only difference between America and those countries, is over there people use bats, knives, etc. rather than guns.

An armed citizenry = militia. The founders listed a well-organized militia as one of the MANY reasons that INDIVIDUALS retain the right to keep and bear arms without any governmental oversight or permission. The militia in question is here more to defend Americans from the American government than from other governments.

Also, anyone who thinks a well-armed general citizenry of millions and millions of Americans can't beat a military with a few hundred thousand people (even the best armed military on earth) is smoking crack.

The anti-gun nutjobs would have us believe that the words "the people" refer to individual rights in every single part of the Constitution other than the 2nd amendment.

No. But, legally speaking, if they intended the only enforceable part of the second amendment to be the second half, they should have left the first half off and put their justifications into a separate document. None of the other amendments have introductions.

At the very least, the unique structure of the second amendment complicates an absolutist interpretation. Why have an explicit justification? Why, in that justification, further specify "well regulated" militias? The word "regulated" may have changed meanings slightly over he centuries, but I'd posit that whatever the meaning, it is there to differentiate between "a well regulated militia" and "a mob".

The reports that don't make it into the statistics go straight to you, I suppose?

Training has a lot to do with that Radar. The man who sent his armed militia up against U.S. Troops in....say...Fallujah in November of 2004 should be strung up by his yoohoo's. Even George Washington brought in a Prussian Military Officer to write one the Army's first regulations and help train his troops. It's a lot like the movie 300, without training they were just a bunch of farmers and city folk with rifles. The training, along with tactics learned from the Indians gave them what they needed to win.

The Bill of Rights was a compromise between federalists and antifederalists... those who wanted no constitution, no strong central government. The federalists believed that in the constitution, the people "surrender nothing, and retain everything" (Hamilton), rendering a bill of rights unnecessary. The antifeds didn't believe that shit for one second, and because of them, many states refused the ratify the constitution as is, instead stipulating that certain natural individual rights be enumerated - the important 9th amendment covering those natural rights not enumerated.

The feds and antifeds also disagreed about whether there should be a well regulated militia, "under the regulation and at the disposal of" the federal government. Patrick Henry et al didn't like the idea... at all (fearing the president would use his powers like a king and turn his army against the citizens)- the compromise on this issue is the second amendment.

If you're (in general) arguing that the 2nd amendment somehow limits the right of an individual to bear arms, I'd love to see some citations. Specifically, which of our founders were making that argument?

It says well-regulated militias are necessary for a free state to exist, and this is why THE PEOPLE (individuals) retain the right to keep and bear arms. This right isn't granted by government, it's a right we're born with that the Constitution protects. There is nothing "enforceable" about a militia. There is no requirement that those who keep and bear arms be members of a militia. The only enforceable part of that amendment is the part that says THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE (note: It doesn't say "the people who are members of militias" or "the militias") SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED

Even with the unreported crimes being taken into consideration, the countries with the most restrictive gun laws have more violent crimes than those with the least restrictive.

OK, for one thing, it's quite clear that what you've presented isn't a fact, but let's just say it was for the sake of you feeling good about yourself.

In that case, it means that being an Australian I'm more likely to get punched or raped than I am of getting shot. Having been a victim of both these crimes, I'd say I'm pretty happy with the outcome...still being alive and all.

Sorry but that is fucking sick. I would have rather killed the bastard.

yeah...or those people could have killed me.

It's a two way street. That's what people such as yourself seem to keep forgetting.

I'd rather have a two way street than a one way street where only the bad guys have guns. They would, like they do in every nation.

Well, there's bad guys and then there's the idiots that commit crimes on impulse. Crimes of passion. Call them whatever you like. Any crime that's premeditated can be committed with a gun regardless of where you live, but when idiots aren't allowed to walk around with them, it means they can't do as much damage (death) when they decide to act on their impulses.

How many people do you think commit murder on purpose? How many murders do you think might not have been murders if the purpetrator had not happened to be carrying a gun?

I don't know the answer, but I think it's a fair assumption to say there'd be less if people couldn't carry guns. I'd base that assumption on the difference in the number of murders per capita between the US and Australia as an example. However, if you believe Radar, then you couldn't possibly agree with that assumption. He thinks we have more murders per capita here in Australia than in the US. This clearly is not the case regardless of what his claims are.

Aliantha, you aren't being sensible.
 

Okay, now when would you know enough to take that action? The JPFO's literary contributors have some hints.

Oh. Fucking. Lovely. If I understand you rightly, your grandchildren may die helpless because your mind was so closed. Aliantha, that ain't exactly the nurturing way, and it isn't moral either. I'm not going to make your mistake -- I know too much.

The necessary preconditions for a genocide are three: 1) Hatred, on whatever pretext. Most of the time that's economic or religious. 2) Governmental power, which is why the State isn't much bulwark against genocides. Instead it's the sinews of the State that power or protect the actions of the haters. 3) Targets without weapons. The most efficient way ever found to do this is to forbid arms ownership and to make armed self-defense unlawful, as an occasional addition.

This is how they did it, in Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, in Red China, in the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. This is how they didn't get it done in Iraqi Kurdistan, still the habitation of Kurds. Where is European Jewry these days? Quite a bit of it is in ash piles.

Disgusting, is it not? Something to fight against, is it not?

So, if you don't have an anti-gun society, you don't have a society that can be wiped out by State-sponsored brutes, or brutes in charge of the State. Members of such societies would, I think, better approve of my approach than of yours.

Antigun attitudes are the handmaiden of antigun laws, which can lie in wait for decades to do their evil work, as was the case in Cambodia, where the relevant laws were enacted in the middle 1930s.*

Your battle is really not with me; it is with the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. They note that while so-called gun control laws are the most efficient means to disarm a population, laws are much more easily wiped away than either hatred or the State. Their argument has completely convinced me that they've found the better road.

*Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" Is The Key To Genocide, Simkin, Zelman and Rice; pp. 303 et seq., particularly pp. 318-9

Actually, you're forgetting it's a two-way street. Antigunners are famous for that. Consider how much raping a guy can do with a smoking, spurting hole where his testes used to be, or if he's got the immediate concern of keeping breathing with a nasty case of pneumothorax from a round or two in the approximate center of his mass. Trying to shoot him right through the zipper is also good gunfighting tactics; if you get excited and take too much front sight, you hit high, and your assailant goes down with a blue hole between his eyebrows and the back blown out of his head, as Kipling put it.

If you decide not to have armament in your hands, it all goes the other guy's way, doesn't it? Criminally assaulted and you can't stop it. That's not a life, that's a walking death. I'd rather have a life myself, and I think you should have something better than walking death yourself. I give a damn, Aliantha.

Frankly, your handling of arms would be responsible. You have the necessary and becoming reluctance to deal out death. Still, "He's dead, and I'm alive, and that's the way I wanted it." Kind of hard to object to so favorable an outcome.

Though there is no reason to actually expect that idea to carry water, in the Constitution or out of it. The Constitution is not entirely nor purely a legalistic document; it is in the nature of setting up the provisions of the social compact as well as the lineaments of the government.

I would not read the clause as defying or complicating an "absolutist" interpretation at all. It is the consensus of Constitutional scholarship that the first clause of the sentence does not modify nor restrict the second clause. The sense of "well regulated" has been proven to have changed, also -- nowadays they would be termed "well trained," that is, skillful enough to be effective against an enemy force. Further, the explicit intent of the Militia Acts passed pursuant to this Amendment was to mandate the militia being every bit as well armed as the best national infantry and cavalry of the day. From this point of view, it is disturbing how comparatively less equipped we citizens, we Unorganized Militia as defined in USC Title 10, are in recent times. The Swiss show us that civilizations do not decay from exposure to selective-fire assault rifles with 200 rounds of ready ammunition in about every basement. Are the Swiss really so very different from us?

Your last point is your best; they weren't any happier about mobs then than they are now, as the developments of Shays' and the Whiskey Rebellions serve to illustrate. Put down with a bare minimum of casualties, too; maybe an officer's horse threw a shoe and some infantryman got a blistered heel. It was about like that.

Why Britain needs more guns

By Joyce L Malcolm
Author and academic

As gun crime leaps by 35% in a year, plans are afoot for a further crack down on firearms. Yet what we need is more guns, not fewer, says a US academic.

"If guns are outlawed," an American bumper sticker warns, "only outlaws will have guns." With gun crime in Britain soaring in the face of the strictest gun control laws of any democracy, the UK seems about to prove that warning prophetic.
For 80 years the safety of the British people has been staked on the premise that fewer private guns means less crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger.

Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is.

The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for "very serious" offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed.

But would allowing law-abiding people to "have arms for their defence", as the 1689 English Bill of Rights promised, increase violence? Would Britain be following America's bad example?


The 'wild west' image is out of date
Old stereotypes die hard and the vision of Britain as a peaceable kingdom, America as "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic" is out of date. It is true that in contrast to Britain's tight gun restrictions, half of American households have firearms, and 33 states now permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons.

But despite, or because, of this, violent crime in America has been plummeting for 10 consecutive years, even as British violence has been rising. By 1995 English rates of violent crime were already far higher than America's for every major violent crime except murder and rape.

You are now six times more likely to be mugged in London than New York. Why? Because as common law appreciated, not only does an armed individual have the ability to protect himself or herself but criminals are less likely to attack them. They help keep the peace. A study found American burglars fear armed home-owners more than the police. As a result burglaries are much rarer and only 13% occur when people are at home, in contrast to 53% in England.


Concealed weapon can be carried in 33 states
Much is made of the higher American rate for murder. That is true and has been for some time. But as the Office of Health Economics in London found, not weapons availability, but "particular cultural factors" are to blame.

A study comparing New York and London over 200 years found the New York homicide rate consistently five times the London rate, although for most of that period residents of both cities had unrestricted access to firearms.

When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million. But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as "in startling free-fall" and British rates as of October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two are on a path to converge.


Gun crime rates between UK and US are narrowing
The price of British government insistence upon a monopoly of force comes at a high social cost.

First, it is unrealistic. No police force, however large, can protect everyone. Further, hundreds of thousands of police hours are spent monitoring firearms restrictions, rather than patrolling the streets. And changes in the law of self-defence have left ordinary people at the mercy of thugs.

According to Glanville Williams in his Textbook of Criminal Law, self-defence is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law".

Nearly a century before that American bumper sticker was slapped on the first bumper, the great English jurist, AV Dicey cautioned: "Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians." He knew public safety is not enhanced by depriving people of their right to personal safety.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, professor of history, is author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience, published in June 2002.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm

This is a good observation by J.L.Malcolm thanks TM. You should click the bbc news link you included and scroll down to the mini bio for J.L.Malcolm and just below click on "have your say..." and read the comments. It will give you an insight to the British way of life today, without guns. I agree with Ali on this, in the U.K. or Australia I wish to walk down a high street without worrying about who's carrying a firearm. In the U.K. we have gun shops and gun clubs which are seriously controlled. Apart from the odd homicidal maniac (very rare) it works fine.But in the U.K. armed robbery is still a shock to the public even if the guns were not used. The courts deal very severely with gun crimes - they throw the fucking book at you. The British are not comfortable with guns, as Ali said most crimes are passion or rage orientated. I'd hate to spill my drink on a gun carrying person. J.L.Malcolm is an American who has written good work for Havard but it simply will not do for the British Government to listen to her advices, when public opinion is so set. It may take a few generations yet TM to when people in the U.K. carry arms. I lament the recent violence of teenagers with firearms - this is not a happy time; firearms are not good.

i would suggest that most law-abiding gun carrying citizens would respond the same way to a spilled drink with or without a gun.

have you ever known a guy who was literally a bad ass? a guy who if he wanted to, could probably end your life with just his hands? a guy who could walk into any situation without fear because he was confident in his abilities? Generally these guys are soft spoken mellow characters who will avoid violence in any way possible. Why? because they are secure and confident and they have no point to prove.

the same can be said about a responsible gun carrier. the gun is for emergency use only after all other avenues have been explored.

it is the responsible law abiding citizen that will no longer be carrying a weapon if the weapon is outlawed. the criminal is a criminal - laws don't really mean that much to them anyway.

UG, I explained my reasons for disagreeing with people carrying guns around the street. If you don't understand my point, then that's fine. You will not convince me to think otherwise no matter how dramatic you want to get about it.

I know how to handle a gun. I could have my hands on any number of weapons within a couple of hours if I wanted to. My children are in the process of learning how to handle weapons.

I don't disagree that people should own guns. I simply disagree that they should be carrying them around the street. I also happen to think there should be very strict laws about who should be allowed to own them. For instance, nut jobs should not be allowed to own guns. Clearly, many do. Clearly many of them own guns illegally also, but my concern here is for the people who commit impulse crimes and because they happen to be carrying a weapon because that's acceptable, the crime becomes exponentially worse.

Fortunately I don't live in your country though. So I don't have to worry about all the nut jobs out there who carry guns around.

I would walk down just about any street in Australia without carrying a gun and feel safe. Certainly I'd walk down any street in Brisbane and feel safe. There are some areas of Sydney and Melbourne I would avoid after dark because I know it's not prudent to be there after dark alone. Those areas are very small though, and I don't believe having a gun in my handbag would save me from opportunistic crimes anyway. It's been proven time and again that just because you carry a gun, it doesn't mean you're safe. See shopping centre shooter last week as an example.

I'm just saying that guns and firearms shock the British. In Europe as a whole they have more access to firearms with different rules - I still am bemused at the Itailian carrobernerie having a thick cord attached to their pistols and ut belts. In Britain the people don't want guns.

By what authority do you speak for the British people?

Ali you are absolutely right. I shouldn't carry a gun unless I'm prepared to use it to full affect. Good point too.

Is there any pressing reason in morality or physics not to have 1000 rounds?

Now I'll get snarky: how many rounds in a brick of .22LR? Secondarily, how big is that brick, and how heavy?

How big a plastic bottle to stow 2500 beebees for a Red Ryder Daisy BB gun?

Though Radar and I fight like wombats ("Ow! Quit it!" "Take that!" "Oh shut up and bite!" "But then I can't add insult to injury!"), we are freedom people. We are not necessarily convinced the non-gun or the anti-gun are. There is the matter of the mindset Lookout123 mentioned. Meanwhile, arms and their skill are measurable. Votes, to be sure, are far more pleasant -- but tyranny is far more unpleasant.

Well -- more to follow soon.

Radar is a purist, and he hates yer guts.

I am a strict Constitutional constructionist and a pure libertarian, but I don't hate people who disagree with me unless they try to legislate their opinions or religious doctrine onto me or infringe upon my unalienable rights.

Radar, it almost impossible to disagree with you without you thinking we are trying to legislate our opinions or religious doctrine onto you or infringe upon your "unalienable rights".

I've said this many times, gun culture is much different from place to place in America. All the pro-gunners I've seen here talk from a responsible respectable gun culture. I am assuming where you guys are from, a gun is moral responsibility where when you are carrying, your moral level should be even greater than when you are not carrying. If the whole country was like this, then it would be very rational to not have any gun restrictions.

But unfortunately the entire country does not share this gun culture. If you go to the inner city or a neighborhood that has a lot of drug dealings, guns are not a moral responsibility, but a tool to enforce one's power on others. Once we get a change in gun mindset and culture, it is only rational to look over the current laws and see if maybe change is in order. I am not advocating any change, just that it would be irrational and foolish to refuse to take a look at our situation.

I do not have a strong stance in this debate but I know for a fact that a universal gun law in the United States will never work because of the two completely opposite gun cultures in our country. Guns laws should be made by either the state or local community, not the people in Washington.

Gun laws should not be made by the local, state, or federal government. No government at any level has any legitimate authority to place any restrictions or limitations on gun ownership.

We are born with an UNLIMITED right to keep and bear any number of any type of weapon we want with any kind of ammo we want without any government permission, registration, or oversight.

As long as people don't try to make laws that place limitations or restrictions on the number of weapons, type of weapons, or kind of ammunition or body armor civilians may own, I don't hate them.

If they support any restrictions, registration, waiting periods, etc. they are an enemy of liberty and are causing deaths to law abiding people. These people are my enemy.

If you can prove that we are born with UNLIMITED rights to keep and bear any number of any type of weapon we want with any kind of ammo we want without any government permission, registration, or oversight I will agree with you.

You are trying to make philosophy fact Radar, it just doesn't work. If a society agrees that we have the right to an UNLIMITED right to keep and bear arms then fine, let them have it but if a society doesn't agree that we have an UNLIMITED right to keep and bear arms then gun laws should be in place.

You cannot prove that the universe gives us rights, so don't force it down other people's throats. If you really want the right to bear arms, move to a place that will allow you too or protest to change/preserve your wanted right. If you don't want to move or you cannot change/preserve your wanted right, than you have to accept the rulings in that area. Its that simple.

But our country was founded on this principle.