Gun and gun control

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Quote by: Winter wind What stupid ass government would attempt that in one go? I get chipping away at the constitution slowly, but obliterating it that quickly? No government would dare try something so idiotic. Not in a country where the Constitution is everything.

Not as long as the public is armed. I didn’t think that a slow chipping away at the public’s rights would work since to do it you would need to eliminate the two party system along with private gun ownership. With a two party system the party for the peoples rights would constantly be undoing what ever the party for tyranny would do to the peoples rights. I believe that the only way that it could happen would have to be swiftly more or less. Disarm the public before hand this removes the threat of an armed resistance, when your numbers are sufficiently large in the government and you hold key positions in the military and congress, engineer an economic collapse of the economy, declare marshal law, shut down the press, kill or imprison any who would oppose you and replace them with your people and when the doors open back up no more freedom the constitution and bill of rights are dead. Explain that you had to do it because the other party caused the collapse in an effort to take over. We had to take over to protect you, your rights will be reinstalled when we are sure the threat is past. And the rights never return.

Quote by: Winter wind I still don't get where guns come into the picture here. If there was a civil war, then either both sides would allow their public to own a gun or not. I know that was vague, so lets pretend the civil war happened again. If there is a gun control law, both the people in the north and in the south don't have as many guns. So it just weakens both sides.

The civil war that would in sue after an egregious act by the government would be the public against the government. I do believe that some states would opt to go with the public but most would stick with the power structure of the fed’s. But the government knows that as long as the public is armed they don’t stand a chance that is why an armed public is a deterrent to tyranny.

Quote by: Winter wind A government in America would never wage war against its people, it's counter to everything an American government is.

I wouldn’t bet my life on that, would you? No government is free from corruption and the US government is no different. The American government is constantly changing its leaders how can you determine that 20 or so years in the future it will still be benevolent? You can’t that is why the founders put the second amendment in to the constitution as a check and balance against the government. Once the public is disarmed and the government holds absolute power over us what assures us that that government will not abuse it’s power and authority? Nothing prevents it accept and armed public. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Quote by: Winter wind So their justification would be...because there's a war going on or something.

Their justification would be anything they chose, since there is no avenue that the public could use to stop them from doing anything they chose to do as long as the public is unarmed.

Quote by: Winter wind My problem with the above is the government would never do something like that solely to gain absolute power. Bureaucracy is not smart enough to be that manipulative. I think what would be more plausible would be a government that took those rights away because a rebel group had gained control over...lets say California (For Hollywood freedom). They would have police control over the country to fight the attack.

Bureaucracy is all about control, why is it that they control just about every aspect of our society. Just about everything you do in the US you have to go through a bureaucrat to attain it, by licensing, fees, inspections and approvals by the bureaucracies. Christ there are some areas where you can’t even cut down a tree in your own yard with out approval? DMV, IRS, EPA, MSHA, OSHA, FDA, BATFE, ETC. It wouldn’t be the bureaucracies that do the manipulation it is the government that gives the bureaucracy its ever-expanding power that does the manipulation. The first order of a bureaucracy is to protect that bureaucracy and to expand the bureaucracy.

Marshal law would only be declared if for instance our economy collapsed and causing rioting in the streets. A rebel group would be handled like ruby ridge, Kent State or the branch dividians were, shoot them or burn them out.

Quote by: Winter wind See, my problem with the above is that people are either for the current government and accept the absolute rule, or they sneak of to California to get grenades and fashion tips. The Hollywood freedom front is getting guns from some international weapons dealer (I'm guessing Jackie Chan) so the guns are part of the movement.

When I last checked the constitution, the government is subservient to the people. The people are supposed to be the masters here not the government but most of our government officials have lost sight of this. This is why the people need to be armed.

Quote by: Winter wind So how can you now fight for your country and fight against it as it comes to take your guns away?

I’m not quite sure what you mean? If you fight for your country it is to protect it, If you fight for your freedom you fight against it.

[quote=Winter wind;485523]They would not go into a police for an economic reason or because of a natural disaster and care about guns.

Really? Didn’t they confiscate guns in New Orleans after Katrina?

Quote by: Winter wind Yes, but the move you are talking about sounds like the government won't be able to take names that fast. If the government has disarmed the public and has announced that the president is now supreme commander for life, there will be a coup, it will be swift and will destroy the government before anyone has time to say 1984. Why wouldn't there be a coup?

Who will run the coup? The military is just a mindless killing machine (your words) and if the commanders of that military are in the pocket of the President and the party of tyranny where will the coup come from? The only ones left are the people and they are unarmed.

Quote by: Winter wind The reason why number one doesn't work is because, for tyranny to make sure the military and the rest of Congress doesn't take his/her head off is have the people on his/her side. Then it really doesn't matter if the public has guns.

All you need is the military in your court and you don’t need to sweat congress. What are they going to do? They have just been made irrelevant. Of course the ones in the presidents party in congress would back him up and there would be a majority in his favor.

Quote by: Winter wind And I'd use my pen to skip to Brussels and write letters to countries asking them to put pressure on America to return to democracy. They would agree because a tyrannical state is always and unpredictable state. America would be forced to return to what it was or become an isolated state which would last all of five seconds before the military would say "screw you".

Why would they? Since the greater majority of countries on this planet are not democracies they would relish the fact the US is no longer a force to be reckoned with either militarily or economically, since our military would be at home keeping the people in line.

[TRIGGER]

Quote by: Sonart .LOL!! Or Russia. Oh goodie, I fee so much better. Now if only we were less violent than the world's civilized nations. What's ignorant is to believe a nation awash in guns, and fueled by the mythology of a gun culture, is NOT affected by guns. .

What is really ignorant is that there are 300,000,000 people in the US with 100,000,000 gun owners and still there are only 14,000 homicides and you act like it is an epidemic. When looking at the death statistics for the US homicides are at .7% of all deaths. When compared to the population it’s in the thousandths of a percent. If it were a disease no one would be even bother looking at it. It isn’t about guns it is about control.

CAUSES OF DEATH

Quote by: Sonart .The rule with one lower court. They'll be going AGAINST a 70 yr-old standing precedent of the USSC and rulings by the overwhelming majority of lower courts. Probably explains why, in 70 years, the NRA and the gun lobby has never actually supported a challenge to any of the evil "20,000 gun control laws" as violations of 2nd Amendment Right to Bear Arms that they keep telling Americans they all have. .

It appears that you were a little premature with your post, even the attorney for DC wouldn’t even try to float the fallacy of a collective right in front of SCOTUS. As we have always claimed it is an individual right and it seems that 8 of 9 on SCOTUS appear to agree. Because of 70 years of courts claiming it to be a collective right, a false precedent that was never set by Miller even the attorney for DC and the DC government knew it. The courts are finally recognizing the people’s rights. This only the first step for the people to reaffirm there god given rights to be able to protect themselves and their families.

Quote by: Sonart For one, the 2nd Amendment needn't be repealed. Simply left the way it is now... moot... meaningless... irrelevant... because a well-regulated militia is no longer necessary for the security of our free state. .

This of course is your own uninformed and ignorant opinion. To allow a corrupt government to have complete power over its people is dangerous to the lives of that populace. As proved through out history, as if the 56+ million murdered in just the last century alone by their governments isn’t enough to prove how deadly governments can become. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Quote by: Sonart For another, most actually do seem mostly opposed to not being able to buy the latest AR-15 to shoot at woodchucks.

Actually once the public have been educated as to what an AR-15 is their mind changes since they realize that the anti gun movement has perpetrated a false assumption on the public that an assault weapon is a machinegun. I have educated many on this and once they realize the difference your argument falls on def ears. If you can’t sway people with the truth then they are truly ignorant.

Quote by: Sonart I don't trust that one in a thousand law-abiding citizen who ceases to be law-abiding the moment they commit their first crime, which could easily be an act of murderous rage or stupidity made possible because a gun was all too readily available.

First off lets not misinform anyone with this since the number you really meant to say is more like one in five hundred thousand to one million or more is what you really meant to say right? I guess that is only off by 500 to 1000 %. The occurrence you have mentioned is so rare that to make laws about this is just ridicules since you would deprive 300,000,000 people of their rights because of something that may happen a few hundred times a year instead of going after criminals.

Quote by: Sonart Dreamy horsesh!t. The Civil War put an and to that silly idea. The U.S. government possesses the most power military in the history of the world. You really think you band of side-armed Minute Men are going to overthrow the U.S. ala 1776?

If you really look at the civil war you will see that the main reason the north won was because of superior numbers in population. If a revolt were to happen the US military would be out numbered by 100 to 1 you may believe it’s dreamy HS but anyone with half a brain can see it isn’t and the only way it would be dreamy HS is if those revolting were unarmed.

Quote by: Sonart That would be called assymetrical or guerilla warfare. The Vietnamese used it against us, and the Afghans used it against the Soviets... both losing over a million dead in the process. The big difference, of course, was that they weren't kicking their oppressors out of their own countries.

LOL in both of those conflicts the guerillas eventually won with inferior numbers. Here the revolt would have the advantage of a superior number to the oppressor.

Quote by: Sonart By the standards of our earlier civil war, 600,000 dead (no idea how many civilians) out of a population of 30 million... out of 300 million Americans today, that's about 6 million dead.

That number is pale in comparison to the unarmed murdered by their governments and oppressors in the last century. Over 56 million murdered by government.

Quote by: Sonart That's real romantic and all, but to be honest, I think the methods of non-violent methods Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and Corazon Aquino would work a whole lot better in changing the government.

The only reason that Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and Corazon Aquino were successful is that they were fighting democracies had the governments been tyrannical all of them would have never graced the history books. They would have ended up face down with a bullet in their back in an unmarked mass grave before anyone would have known who they were. Right along side of the tens of millions of other name less dissidents that decayed in unmarked mass graves in recent history.

Quote by: Sonart And here we demonstrate the absolute stupidity of the gun loons lack of an arguement. When someone else tried to say that cars are more dangerous than guns, I pointed out the obvious... that there are more passenger cars in America than privately owned guns, and that among those cars, each is used hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of times more often than guns....which are responsible for about 30 to 40 thousand deaths a year, not your absurd figure of 600, making automobiles many thousands time safer than firearms.

Here are the flaws in your logic and statistics. One guns are used more often than cars a car is only dangerous when it is being driven, a gun is as you said is dangerous because of it being accessible, I agree with this. A law abiding gun owner has 24/7 access to their guns, you don’t drive a car 24/7. Pumping up the numbers did you? it’s around 14 to 15 thousand. I never used 600 where did you get that #?

[TRIGGER]

Quote by: Sonart Well, my worthy opponent didn't like my exercise in logic and told me to prove it, so I actually went through the process, with links for each point... the number of automobiles operating in the U.S., the average number of times driven each day, the number of fire \arms in the U.S., the number of times firearms were used in defense (their numbers) the number of hunters in the U.S., the estimated number of times they went hunting, the number of firing ranges in the U.S. and the average number of people who used them, the number of firearm deaths and injuries, etc. etc. etc. And yep, it was pretty overwhelming... Guns were thousands of times more likely to cause death or injury than automobiles.

Don’t pat your self on the back so quickly I don’t like it either since you are not even close. You should leave it to the professionals. The odds of you being killed in a car accident is 1 chance in 247, the odds of being killed by a firearm is 1 chance in 5,808. you are 24 times more likely to be killed by a car than a gun. This is especially interesting since 1 out every 3 people in the US is a gun owner and those gun owners have 24/7 access to those guns. A car is only deadly when being driven. Another interesting fact since you are 24 times more likely to be killed by a car and there 100 million gun owners to even out this figure there must be 2.4 billion drivers in the US then….. oops that’s right there are only 300 million people in the US. Nice try…

Here is the link to the statistical odds. Odds of Dying - NSC

Quote by: Sonart AND YET, we must register our automobiles before we can legally operate them, we mush qualify for a license to operate them, and we must have insurance in case of an accident.

LOL that registration, and qualification really makes a difference…LOL

Quote by: Sonart But you say we don't have a right to drive, but we do have a right to own a deadly weapon. Ignoring the obvious, which is why don't we have a right to transportation. As to the right to bear arms... well, no, as of right now we do NOT have an individual right to bear arms. That's what the upcoming case is all about.

The individual right has already been decided. You do have a right to defend yourself, family and your rights though. You don’t have a right to a car do you?

Quote by: Sonart Sounds just like these two young men... ...country well-trained in firearms, they followed procedure and used their rifles exactly as advertised. From over 200 ft away they killed four fellow students, their teacher, and wounded 10 more as they filed out of the school building in compliance with Johnson's tripping a false fire alarm. And neither was a criminal until the moment they pulled those triggers. .

They broke the law the moment they took those guns. This case is isolated and cases like it are rare. It is just plain stupid to make laws based on rare occurrences. The responsibility lands on the shoulders of the parents of those kids not society.

[Sonart]

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Quote by: TRIGGER The odds of you being killed in a car accident is 1 chance in 247, the odds of being killed by a firearm is 1 chance in 5,808. you are 24 times more likely to be killed by a car than a gun.

And once again, that's because we operate automobiles, and are near to automobiles being operated, hundreds of thousands of times more often than we operate guns or are near guns being operated.

It's like saying that we're probably thousands upon thousands of times more likely to be killed in an automobile accident than to be mauled by a tiger.

Which is obviously true. However, if every adult American interacted closely with tigers 2 to 10 times a day, and were surrounded by thousands of other peoples tigers day in and day out, I suspect that figure would change significantly.

Wouldn't you?

I can sit on a nearby bluff overlooking a few miles of Interstate 805, and in probably just a few afternoon hours watch more cars drive by then the number of guns operated in the entire county over a entire week.

Quote by: TRIGGER LOL that registration, and qualification really makes a difference…LOL

And once again, given the number of automobiles being operated daily across America compared to the number guns being operated, and the yearly total of deaths from each... yeah, it apparently makes a difference.

Quote by: TRIGGER The individual right has already been decided. You do have a right to defend yourself, family and your rights though. You don’t have a right to a car do you?

Not according to the Constitution, TRIGGER. Do I have to spell it out again?

The Constitution says the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal lower Courts are the deciders what is and is not constitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court and the majority of lower Federal Courts have decided that you do NOT have an individual right to own firearms.

If you insist on thinking you have that right anyway, then I can certainly think I have a right to a car, but we both know that doesn't make it so. But you know all this, don't you, because we've been here before.

Quote by: TRIGGER They broke the law the moment they took those guns.

How about that. So apparently criminals aren't always criminals until easy access to firearms made it possible... and attractive.

And not just possible... we're talking about two pre-teen boys, maybe 100 lbs each soaking wet, who were able to kill and seriously injure 10 people from 200 ft away with just the pulls of their fingers. That's an absurd power to be handing out to whoever wants it.

Quote by: TRIGGER This case is isolated and cases like it are rare. It is just plain stupid to make laws based on rare occurrences.

No TRIGGER... if the U.S. experiences the most gun violence per capita than any of the worlds 37 wealthiest nations, the 8th most gun deaths per capita than all the worlds nations, and the 24th most murders per capita of all the worlds nations, then such incidents are entirely too common.

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[Muckraker]

There is a lot of interesting information here:
Bureau of Justice Statistics Firearms and Crime Statistics

Especially in the articles linked at the bottom of the page. One of the articles notes that, of all the household burglaries each year, roughly 326,000 of them involve theft of a firearm. I wonder what effect 326,000 yearly gun thefts, where presumably most of the stolen guns were legal and licensed, would have on overall gun crime. I imagine that most of the stolen guns stay in the black market.

According to the 1997 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those possessing a gun, the source of the gun was from - a flea market or gun show for fewer than 2% a retail store or pawnshop for about 12% family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source for 80%

They also noted that less than 1% of victims of crime attempt to defend themselves with a firearm during the crime.

[Piscean]

The planet is overpopulated anyway. How damn safe do we wanna make it. So safe that we can get 20 billion people here at the same time, and consume the planet and then we all die? I'm so sick of the excuse that the world is being made safer by limitation after regulation after law after etc. etc. As soon as everyone is completely helpless, complacent and defenseless what do you really think will happen to the masses? Think hard!!