[richlevy]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

Dismissing the importance of the 2nd amendment because you don't own a gun is like dismissing the 1st amendment because you don't own a television station. Don't ever think that you can attack the constitution on one front, and have it held sacred on the others. It's either [capital]The Constitution[/capital], or a flimsy set of guidelines written in pencil. No middle ground. We're not talking about some "no donkey riding on Sunday" law in some backwater -- these are the basics upon which all of this country's laws are based.

And the 2nd amendment guarantees the safety of the rest, in the final analysis.

I'm not dismissing the importance of the second amendment because I don't own a gun. I'm saying the 2nd Amendment is at best a tool to guarantee the other amendments. If you had to choose between owning a gun and freedom of assembly, speech, religion, the press and petitioning of grievances, which would you choose?

The guns that actively protect the Constitution are in the hands of the soldiers who have taken an oath to do so. Civilians who are not naturalized citizens have not taken that oath. The guns might be nice to have. They may even provide protection in the event of a breakdown of society, but they would not provide protection againsts tanks and automatic weapons.