Define illegally Neal. New York and Connecticut in legislation passed in literally the dark of the night created 100k new potential criminals by some estimates just because they refuse to register the firearms they already possessed. They should all be tossed in the clink? That poor woman from PA in the news recently who made the mistake of telling a New Jersey cop she was packing a firearm that was legally permitted and registered just up the road in her home state should have gone to jail too?

I know you're talking about gangs and real criminals but I think it's just to easy to criminalize large swaths of Americans who have not nor intend to hurt anyone to make such a sweeping generalization.

I'd just like to add a little to that. The prefacing clause has led many gun opponents to believe that the sole purpose for the 2nd Amendment is to guarantee the ability of citizens to form and organize militias. While the clause gives one reason, the statement itself requires no more reason than any other right. It doesn't say "the right of the militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", nor does it even imply that.

James Madison was opposed to having a Listing of Rights in the Constitution, on the grounds that someone down the line might try to deny some right simply because it wasn't listed. He believed, as do I, that all rights belong to the individual, and may not be denied by the government.

As to the question of citizens with rifles versus armies with tanks and airplanes, just because someone believes the citizens would have no chance is not a valid argument for said citizens being denied the right to arm themselves.

You want to put a damper on violent crime? Own a firearm and encourage pro-gun governmental stances. Don't think a high firearm ownership rate deters violent crime? Take Kennesaw Georgia (where gun ownership is mandated) - right outside Atlanta (a really high crime area) and compare it to even just the national average....

Violent crime rate in 2012 Kennesaw: 52.7
U.S. Average: 214.0

Violent crime rate in 2011 Kennesaw: 36.1
U.S. Average: 214.1

Violent crime rate in 2005 Kennesaw: 62.6
U.S. Average: 258.9

Violent crime rate in 2004 Kennesaw: 57.3
U.S. Average: 256.0

Violent crime rate in 2003 Kennesaw: 53.6
U.S. Average: 262.6

Violent crime rate in 2002 Kennesaw: 61.8
U.S. Average: 272.2

Violent crime rate in 2001 Kennesaw: 51.4
U.S. Average: 276.6

Violent crime rate in 2000 Kennesaw: 56.6
U.S. Average: 277.6

Source: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Kennesaw-Georgia.html

Fact: More guns in the hands of responsible, law abiding citizens equates to less violent crime. Criminals don't want to end up dead. Deal with it.

Confusing correlation and causation again? :hmm2:

http://www.tylervigen.com

Not unless you want to claim that Harvard decided to publish research by 2 professors (one a PH. D. from U.C.) that did the same thing......

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/...useronline.pdf

Just because you don't like the facts doesn't mean everyone will ignore them because of your strawman attack.

Underlining emphasis added....

Go ahead - would you like to continue your attacks simply because you don't want to accept the reality?

Not unless you can prove that firearms and self defense have absolutely nothing to do with each other. :hmmm:

Again, the ownership of guns were a for granted given before and after the constitution that has somewhat evolved, the 2nd somewhat clarifying the militia issue.


A must read for understanding militia and guns

https://books.google.com/books?id=TL...pieces&f=false

If that is so then why do European countries have a much lower violent crime rate than the US?
I don't know how reliable this links are (look a bit funny to me but it was the best I could find that quickly):
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-...d-States/Crime

http://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_...=United+States

Following your logic we should be drowning in crime.

We traded our crime safety for the oppressive regimes, communism in the east and feudalism in the west

Yeah, this is true, I used the wrong word in that sentence...the wrong description so to speak. Goldenrivet said before hand that the 1st Amendment, which says:

means that:
My point is that in the 1st Amendment it says nothing about the specific type of free speach or religion that it addresses, whereas the 2nd Amendment states that part of it is to do with a 'well-organised militia'. It's not the only thing it states, this is true, and where I went wrong is to use the word specifically (a word I can barely say, let alone use correctly).

In regards to the latter part of your post, I haven't said...or at least I don't believe that I have, that the ineffectualness of rifles against tanks and drones is a reason for the 2nd Amendment not to exist. Although considering how I ramble when I write it's a possibility that my words may be construed to say such things. My intention was to put forward the point that the reason that some pro-guns (not just the anti-guns) put forward for the 2nd Amendment in order to protect themselves against a tyrannical government depends wholeheartedly upon the co-operation of the US military. Like I've already said, on three points the 2nd Amendment holds up on 1 and a half. It's a good thing for defending the homeland against foreign aggression (although it'll probably result in a lot of deaths through civilians becoming poorly trained cannon fodder...but you get that in many major wars), it's fairly good against personal safety although there's an argument that the ease of access to firearms helps to increase the possibility of a firearm being used in a crime, but that's for another debate, but in the protection of a citizen from a tyrannical government it fails unless supported by the military.
Is this an arguement for the removal of the 2nd Amendment? Not really, but more a doorway into thinking about the wider implications of it, which is something I'm sure that every American has been doing after each gun related massacre, and will do again I'm sure. As I've already stated, I hope that it is something that Americans will be able to resolve, about where the 2nd Amendment stands in a modern society, and how to stop teenagers picking up a gun and killing dozens of fellow teenagers, or a lunatic walking into a cinema and indiscriminately killing the people there...to use but two examples. I think that until they are able to resolve this, you are going to get people from outside America commenting on this because, to be honest, we really struggle to understand it, no matter how many times it's explained, because we don't have that underlying desire and need for personal protection through a lethal firearm. If we do desire personal protection we use mace, a stun weapon or at worse a knife. Things that are less lethal, or in the knifes case, require a close range operation, rather than the 'point and click' of a gun. As a result, in 2010 11,078 homicides by firearm took place in the US, whereas in the UK the number was 140. Population difference one might argue, so we can account for that by dividing and multiplying. In 2010 there were 62.77 million people in the UK, and 309.3 million in the US. That works out as 1 firearm related homicide per 448357 people in the UK, which multiplies up to about 689 firearm related homicides if the UK had the same population as the US...if I've done my maths right. (numbers taken from - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...st-gun-deaths/ and https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...3/hosb0212.pdf)

Ironically, that's almost the same number of homicides by sharp instrument there is in the UK for that year...in the US that's 1704 in 2010, so if we play the numbers game again, we come out at 1 knife related homicide per 89928 people in the UK which scales up to 3439, if my math is correct.
So whilst the US may have a gun problem, one can legitimately argue that the UK has a knife problem. This being said, those figures are now just over four years old, and knife crime has declined in the UK and I believe that gun crime rates have also declined in the US, although obviously it varies from state to state, just as it varies in the UK from county to county.

So there's some food for thought, if indeed my maths are correct, then if one was to repeal the 2nd Amendment one would most likely notice a ridiculously large upswing in knife crime, so perhaps what I said earlier about the cylical nature of personal firearm protection vs ease of access by criminals to guns was, whilst possibly accurate in its literal interpretation, inaccurate in its ultimate conclusion. Whilst ease of access to guns will perhaps increase gun crime rate, lack of access will not necessarily reduce crime, just move the statistic to another weapon. :hmmm:

That was quite a ramble, wasn't it? :dead:

You've got more intentional homicides than we have! :O:
But you've also got a larger population so it actually balances out, so we're 0.2 more violent than you are, but only on match days. :O:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._homicide_rate

That wikipedia article makes me wonder if I've screwed up my figures in my last post...could someone just go over them and check for me? :hmmm: Maths has never been my strong suit.


EDIT: Talk about timing, unfortunate timing at that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-30649673

second verse ....same as the first, same old same old Tribesman.

IMO, we were never given the legal right to own a gun, because it had been a natural common right. If some congressman in the 1700's stood up and said he was gonna pass law to make guns legal, people would've shouted angrily "since when were they illegal" and ran him out of town on a rail...

Gun ownership extends way beyond the constitution to English common law as a for granted natural right for hunting and self defence. There was never a debate that gun ownership a legal right, it was an accepted natural right just as much as the need for food and water. If there were no militias, I doubt we would've see guns mentioned in the BOR or other legal document at that time

"Thomas B. McAffee and Michael J. Quinlan have stated that James Madison "did not invent the right to keep and bear arms when he drafted the Second Amendment; the right was pre-existing at both common law and in the early state constitutions.""

"In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence"

The 2nd amend simply connects this natural right to the legal right to bear kept guns in the use of militias. Based on this, people now want to say the legal right to have a gun is based on having a militia and nothing else, hunting, self defense, forgetting the natural accepted given right that had always existed. Since the 2nd amend doesn't address the natural right outright, people use it alone as a legal statement arguing the intent of gun ownership.

While you're willing to waste brain cells to post the usual gibberish rants, I shall waste no more of mine to read them....:salute:

I have one of those, its an old Soviet 7.62x25 caliber TT-33 complete with CCCP embossed Bakelite grips. No safety lever, just have to bring the slide back, release it, and its ready to go. Removing it from the holster and loading one in the chamber is unbelievably easy and quite fast. Its was, and still is IMO, an excellent combat pistol for the poor untrained huddling communist masses, something even a conscript could easily master. :)