[lsbskins1]

Quote by: The Dunedan I'd never shoot you if you didn't have a weapon. That's what God made sticks for. You shoot someone who aggresses against you with lethal or potentially lethal force, or aggresses against another person thus. If you managed to take my stick away as I was beating you about the head and shoulders with it, that would prove pretty conclusively that you were a physical threat to me with your bare hands. If needed, -that's- when I'd shoot you. In my State, it would be perfectly legal for me to do so, since you were trespassing on my land, staying after I told you to leave, and disarmed me as I attempted to subdue and eject you. Of course, this assumes you could get the stick out of my hands as I'm beating you about the head and shoulders. If you didn't manage it, I'd just cudgel you off down to the road. If you were knocked unconscious, I'd drag you to the road and call an ambulance. Unarmed burgalers are why God made hickory sticks. Armed burglars are why Colt made his revolver. Suffice to say that I am prepared for either with the gifts of both. As regards your comments on the law: Would you tolerate, say, the Gov't denying Muslims the right to pray in public, teach their children Arabic, and make the Hajj? That's how we look at such a thing. A calculated, forcible cultural attack. When we see guns being melted or chopped after one of those rediculous "gun buy-back" programmes, it has the impact of a Rabbi watching Sturmtruppen burn Torah scrolls. Firearms are the means by which we protect our lives and liberties, both of them gifts from God and our ancestors and nothing to throw away lightly. If the Gov't imposed or threatened to impose full Nazi or Soviet-type censorship, for instance, would you not be enraged? That's how important this is to us. Believe it or not, we're not the stereotype you love so much. We treasure or at least respect the rule of Law. But we recognize, just as I'll credit you by assuming you would in the case above, that certain rights are inviolate. Period. The End. And that violation of them may warrant resistance and dissent. I hope you would recognize the need for resistance to censorship, remembering that it is with this same regard that we gunowners approach the 2nd Amendment.

This is what I know and understand: No right that, by it's assertion, renders society manifestly more trecherous for a majority of the members of that society, is inviolate. You, by asserting that right, do not protect yourself from the danger you claim to fear, and on the great ledger sheet of benefit vs. harm, force society to come out on the negitive end of the equation. Please explain how protecting religious freedom or thwarting censorship would create that same danger to society. I appriciate that you consider this right to be inviolate, but you are ignoring the plain fact that many nations, just as free as the US, curtail the "right" you wish to protect and are not now examples of Facist or Dictatorial hell-holes. What you feel and what you can demonstate are vastly different. I do appriciate the fact that the law, as it stands, does not completely agree with my position. Yet, I would never advocate shooting those who sought to enforce the law as it exists simply because I disagree with that law. And that stance is based on the fact that we live in a society where people have the protected and functioning right to participate in and effect the outcomes of said rule of law. I would fight against a sytem that imposed laws that effected the rights of individuals to live in reasonable freedom without benefit of participation. Democratic process is democratic process, and if the majority of the people feel and can demonstate that an aspect of law is needed and just, they have the right to enact that law. How do we function otherwise?