That's the point. The government wouldn't be willing, however the populous is. Weaponry is therefore less dangerous in government hands than in your's and your neighbour's, right?
I will first let the founders answer you: "Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" Patrick Henry "The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … " Thomas Jefferson letter to Justice John Cartwright, June 5, 1824 We are treated to an almost daily fare of police chasing down unarmed people and shooting them. This recent event happened right in my own neighborhood: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/gwi...ive-leave-after-kicking-man-in-head/512174994 Having myself been a victim of an attack wherein a Georgia Bureau of Investigation officer was severely reprimanded for an unprovoked attack against me - that didn't work out for him in more ways than one, I say HELL NO. The government is less trustworthy than the citizenry. A wise man once observed: The greatest reason to retain the Right to keep and bear Arms is, as a last resort, to prevent tyranny in government. Check out this link as well: http://www.blacklistednews.com/Poli.../M.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Times since the founding father's certainly have changed. That was the point I was getting to basically, that the second amendment lost its original purpose. The other thing you mentioned clearly points out the problem of too wide spread gun ownership, because police as well as the populous are afraid of one and another. You just look for the cause of the problem elsewhere than I would though. I'd think that the less people have access to guns, the lower the probability of guns being used in a incorrect manner. As I tried to point out before, if mass gun ownership would make a country safe, the USA would be safest country in the world with 88.8 firearms per 100 citizens and second safest would be Yemen with 54.8 firearms. Very dangerous on the other hand would be Japan with only 0.6 firearms per 100 citizens. Doesn't it make you think when you hear that the entire German police force shot less than 100 rounds in one year, while the same amounts of shots might be fired in your sate or even county on annual bases by your local police department?
When you first started this, you pretended to be in search of answers. Why do I get the feeling that any answer I give you will not be sufficient enough for you? Did you attempt to mislead us or am I just dreaming? Now, had you checked my links, you'd find that LEOs here are shooting unarmed victims and beating unarmed citizens. So, maybe if people don't have access to guns, there will be fewer shootings... what kind of logic is that? And people will still die by knives, bombs, trucks, etc. We can throw countries at each other all day long and it won't prove any particular point. For example: Switzerland has one of the lowest murder rates in the world - if not the lowest. Yet its male population between the ages of 20 to 42 is required to be armed at home and their arms at the ready. But, you always have Japan, right? It just proves the point. These comparisons don't prove anything. In my home state of Georgia, we have 159 counties. In each county, you have precincts. Larger counties have more precincts, smaller counties may have only a couple. Either way, we're talking hundreds. Over half of all of Georgia's violent crime is committed in five precincts. ALL of those precincts are in places that are overwhelmingly black and politically liberal. Take those five precincts out of the mix, Georgia becomes just as safe as most of the countries you can name with low murder rates. In Kennesaw, Georgia everyone is required, by law, to have a firearm in their home. Check out their stats: http://www.kennesaw-ga.gov/crime-statistics/ Now, go down the road, less than thirty miles and check out their stats: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Atlanta-Georgia.html The takeaway is that there is little correlation between firearms and crime. Race, economics, which political party is in power locally, the influx of outsiders, and the integrity of local LEOs are more relevant than whether or not people have firearms. Benjamin Franklin said that "He who would give up essential Liberty for the promise of temporary Safety deserves neither Liberty nor Safety." I guess it's because if you do, you end up with neither. I live in a country that has 450,000 people dying from cigarettes each year. My chances, as a nonsmoker, is that I'm FIVE times more likely to die from secondhand smoke than by a gun. My gun can save me and my family from rapists, robbers, burglars, dangerous animals, and tyrants if properly employed. It can also be used to help feed me. Trying to convince me that trading my Liberty for Safety is a good idea is futile. I leave you with this important lesson from history: "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!" –Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago
Seven years ago, the united state supreme court stated, in outright and absolute terms, that the second amendment of the united states constitution, is directly linked to self defense. Owning a firearm is not about partaking in a sport, or about hunting, but rather defending yourself from harm being perpetrated by another. The second amendment is about the constitutional right of the private citizen to use deadly force when it is necessary. Various countries in the united kingdom do not allow for such a standard to even be considered as a possibility. The point being what exactly? How effective would the armed forces be in the united states, where they would be unable to deploy the heavy weaponry that makes them regarded as so dominating? Can the various munitions of a fighter jet be deployed against enemy combatants in a tightly congested urban area such as New York City, and not result in hundreds if not thousands of innocent casualties? Beyond terrain restrictions, an estimated one third of the united states population is armed. That is approximately one hundred million armed individuals. That is a sizable force that must be addressed. When the tactics being utilized involve guerilla warfare, the entire populace is regarded as the enemy forces, due to the combatants blending in seamlessly with the rest of the populace, making it impossible to visually differentiate civilians from combatants. Everyone that is come across, regardless of age, gender, or physical condition, must be regarded as a potential combatant that will kill you without provocation or warning. Perhaps the person in a coat has a concealed firearm. Perhaps the minor with a backpack is carrying an improvised explosive device. Perhaps the nearby trashcan is the improvised explosive device. It is just one of the reasons that the war on terror in the middle east has not been a success for the united states military, and is still going on nearly sixteen years after it began. The original intention of the second amendment, according to all available study, was to prevent government from infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms for legal purposes. There is no reason to believe the founding fathers would have been overly specific in stating that the right only applied in certain, narrowly defined circumstances, and ceased to apply in any other circumstance that might come up. And yet the united state supreme court ruled that it is not obsolete, it has never been repealed, and it is still in effect today. It is no more obsolete from a legal standpoint than if it were enacted yesterday. Of all the countries that make up the united kingdom, how many of them believe that the individual members of public have a legal right to use deadly force for the purpose of defending themselves from harm at the hands of another, not simply in theory, but in actual legal practice? How many of those countries allow members of the public to legally carry lethal implements for just such a reason? None of which had access to communication technology of today, and the ability to organize in the same manner. Villages were far and removed from one another, with days worth of traveling to get from one to another. Such is no longer the case. As to the armored knights analogy, such was only possible because the private ownership of crossbows was outlawed, as their existense and use eliminated the need for lifelong development of skill in archery to make the bow an arrow an effective weapon. Do you honestly believe such could actually be utilized within the united states? Has the entire discussion pertaining to self defense been skipped over? It has long been established by the FBI, that at least eighty percent of all violence in the united states, not simply violence related to firearms, is carried out by those who legally cannot possess firearms under any circumstances. Illegal aliens, convicted felons, those with documented histories of mental illness, etc. Yet all of them are allowed to remain free in society where they can do the most harm, as they are free to offend as they please. Incorrect. Which, again, is incorrect. An incorrect assumption. A lack of legally owned firearms, does not in any way translate to a lack of illegally possessed firearms. The two standards are not even close to being related to one another. The law enforcement officers of the united states are far less professional, and far more violent, than the law enforcement officers of various other nations, and held to far lower standards of review and conduct. They are not highly trained professionals who are experts in their fields of employment. They would never even be considered for a role in law enforcement in other nations.
Now that was what I wanted to know. The second amendment's purpose then isn't the "freedom and security of a free state" but rather your right to shoot someone in order to protect yourself. The point was based on what was said to me in this topic if you read thru it again. It was pointed out that the intent of the second amendment was to protect against governmental overreach. So if that is the intention, it hardly does fulfill that narrative today, does it? 100 million armed people without being organized though and without a real common goal. It is hard already to get 10 people in a restaurant ordering the same food, never mind 100 million people agreeing on a common cause and organizing under new management, other than the US government's. Like stated before, the lack of Organization and the lack of everybody being on the same page and knowing what to do makes a group very weak. That's been the case for centuries and is the reason why military personal is so strictly governed from top to bottom. One soldier on the front lines fighting needs in this day and age about 50 people working to supply them with food, bullets, weapons, medical care, housing etc. To take one gallon of fuel to the front lines takes usually 10 - 12 gallons of fuel just to get it there. Why am I mentioning this? If you want 1,000 people fighting in guerilla warfare, you'd need a supply chain of 50,000 working people. This means you would have to live in a city with roughly 100,000 inhabitants and all following the cause in order to have 1,000 fighting personal. If this is missing the soldiers are forced to steal from the area they're in. This problem arose in WW2 already when Partizan troops were robbing their own people, because they didn't have a supply chain. You're also mixing the issue of conquering a foreign land where the vast majority of the people are predisposed to dislike you, vs. a civil war scenario where some of your neighbours might have your position while others may not. In Afghanistan or Vietnam it was pretty obvious to the locals who was there bombing them, whether they knew and understood the reason or not. The same cannot be said for something local, because I doubt you can tell by just looking who's from your state vs. someone from another state. That is very important! That's the key information so far, because so far the point of the second amendment was overreach by the government and the populous having the ability to defend themselves from such an overreach - at least that's how I understood it. That's why I kept claiming this is a fantasy. In this case I get your point, because you answered it in the previous paragraph. Apparently so. The text as I see it doesn't mention the right to shoot other people in a self defense scenario. Self defense and what constitutes as such varies from state to state. Some have "standing your ground" laws, some don't. Self defense therefore really isn't part of the second amendment, unless I missed something. But it is good to know that you feel pretty much everybody in the western world should be armed for self defense purposes. I don't doubt that most crimes are committed with illegally obtained weapons, because I cannot imagine it being different here either. My point was more linked to the statement of your's that the populous in the western world should be armed. I just used the numbers as an example to point out that the number of guns doesn't necessarily improve the safety. But since you brought up self defense this time around, maybe you can address it now specifically. It is worrisome that you acknowledge the low standard of training of American police officers. Why doesn't the local government (if not the federal) then raise the standards?
Actually you don't need much of a supply train at all. The VC did it with SKS's and old M1's a couple of canteens and a food tube with rice and rat meat. Then you have Aghanistan, a third world country about the size of Texas that can't be suppressed despite about 400K men in the process.
While your opinion is appreciated, it is just an opinion, and not a fact. We'll keep our 2nd Amendment, and our firearms, because they are the only thing between us and the state having a monopoly on force. This concept -- the very basis for the 2nd -- is never outdated.
The most basic proposition of our Constitution and the earlier DoI is that government is subordinate to the People. In many, if not most, countries of the world the reverse is true. The Constitution was brilliant in its design to provide a system of checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of tyrannical power. The BoR, virtually all the amendments, was intended not only to protect existing individual rights, but provide an additional check, one based in the People. If you want to see what would happen in a civil war here, scale up the Troubles in NI 60's-early 90's. The Brits were not successful in eradicating the forces against them. One major difference was there, the Brits were considered an occupying force. In the US, many, large numbers, of the military and security forces would be sympathetic to those fighting to restore a Constitutional government and any tyrannical government would have to expend resources to protect their military weapons, tanks, planes, etc. from being used against them by their own forces or falling into the hands of Constitutional patriots. As for supply chains, a tyrannical government would have as much trouble as any insurgence considering they would have to rely on the People for funding and labor. Then, there is a question of political motivation. Those fighting to restore a Constitutional government would be fighting from what they would see is a moral purpose... restoring the rule of the people and for liberty... any left, liberal government would be fighting for what? What cause would sustain them? Ultimately, I don't believe most politicians on the left are stupid enough to invite war, one of the reasons the few in power driving the left's strategy has been trying every tactic, every means, mostly through dishonesty and deceptive propoganda to disarm the populace. As I have posted previously, the left in this country is following the long term strategy of the U.K. to effect that...if you read the following, the elements of the strategy are clear... http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html BTW, many in the US and elsewhere believe the Troubles in NI were initiated and sustained by republican forces intent on re-Uniting Ireland, a BBC (the original Fake New source) narrative. The unification of Ireland was but one solution, hoping unification would lead to the rights the Irish enjoyed in the republic, to the real issue the triggered the troubles in the late 60's. Republicans and nationalists in NI were seeking equality and pursuing civil rights by the peaceful means of civil disobedience exemplified by Martin Luther King a few years earlier. The majority, those with power, backed by the Brit forces violently suppressed those seeking equality under the law and in a particularly violent series of suppression efforts in August '69, a Phoenix rose from the ashes of the debris they left in their wake. Ironic, however, unification may result in the next year or so in the wake of BREXIT... https://www.ft.com/content/7a48e040-0d67-11e7-b030-768954394623 Since BREXIT, Sinn Fein has become the largest political party in the North and the South and the lat two elections have shocked the loyalist/unionist factions in the North, and Theresa May, and left them scrambling. The recent history of NI provides a good example of tyranny in government, selective disarmament policies, and armed resistance. Their population is about 1.6 m... multiply that 150 times. I frequently remind folks, the US has between 400-600m guns among the 120+ m gun owners here; more weapons than all the combined armies and security forces of the world. Think that goes unrecognized?
No, the amendment DOES fulfill its original intention: it protects the rights of the American people to be armed. Yes, the people have ignorantly allowed the government to grow far beyond the constraints placed upon it by the Constitution and the dishonest, contemptible philosophy that allowed it to happen is accepted without question by too many Americans today, but that doesn't mean the Amendment "doesn't fulfill its original purpose." Even as advanced as modern weaponry has become, the people still have the tools they need to fight against tyranny if necessary. However, your position is based in a horribly corrupted viewpoint. "Well, it's useless now, so we'll just ignore it." It doesn't work that way. If gun control advocates had any integrity whatsoever they'd acknowledge that what they want is contrary to the Constitution and they would work towards a Constitutional amendment to make it possible. Instead, they came up with a litany or weasel words and rationalizations to try and work their way around the Constitution instead of dealing with it directly, and they have done horrible damage to our nation as a whole by doing so.
No, that is not accurate. Self-defense of the individual is the very foundation of protecting "the security of free State". If individuals are forced to rely on others to defend themselves, that is a policy doomed to failure; exactly why the courts have ruled that the police have no obligation to protect the individual. Security of the Free State begins with the individual; or it would, if our willingness to accept responsibility for ourselves hadn't been corrupted by self-absorption and the belief it was somebody else's job to keep us save. Even if your statement was accurate over the whole of the country (which it isn't) it remains the responsibility of the people to be willing to stand up and say, "No more!" Sadly, too many Americans today lack the backbone to make such a stand anymore. Because it costs money. Cities, states, the government; none of them care about protecting the people. They'd rather sink tax dollars into the wrong thing... and the people let them. Cops make barely above the poverty line; some not even capable of affording life in the cities they are sworn to protect, and the people treat them with contempt and derision anymore. Anytime useless social programs get enacted - to convince people something is "being done" - they always pull money from police budgets to pay for it. An instructor I knew was once asked to help evaluate training standards for the NYPD. He found things to be infinitely worse than he would have expected, but when he brought his findings to the department he was told his ideas cost too much money. It was cheaper to hire and train a new officer than to see all officers properly trained, and the city got tons of positive PR results out of holding those fancy, elaborate funerals for fallen officers. So, why spend money on better training? The instructor told the city where to stuff it and told them never to call him again.
So a right to a speedy trial or to due process pre-exists government? How about the powers reserved to the states? I think you're just making a gross over generalization about the Bill of Rights.
And the very next sentence is: "But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day." Patrick Henry was actually making an argument for a state right to arm the militia in that quote. He thought entrusting the states with such a right was the best way to ensure every man in the militia was armed. That proposal was rejected by Jefferson's contemporaries. So it appears to be his opinion only.
Among other things. The second amendment protects firearms ownership and use in general without being overly specific about when it does and does not apply. As to the security and freedom of the state, such cannot be had if the public is legally obligated to be at the mercy of the criminal element that that government can do nothing meaningful about. Such is a judgement question. It is not something that can be answered by myself. Would not the federal government essentially declaring war against the people of the united states, serve as a common goal to motivate organization? The concept of a civil war, with regard to this particular discussion, is a war between the citizens of the united states, against the federal government itself and its personnel. It is not a matter of people from the state of Arkansas warring against the state of Texas, or something along those lines. Noted. There is nothing in the bill of rights that supports the notion of the constitution recognizing and protecting a right to have an abortion, or homosexual marriage, or a myriad of other so-called rights that are enjoyed by the public in this day and age. And yet despite that, the supreme court found grounds to conclude that these rights not only exist, but are protected against government interference. Where would you like to begin? As with most other reasons for why improvement does not come about, raising the standards is not considered to be cost effective. As it is now, local police agencies are having trouble recruiting new police officers because too many cannot meet the current standards, so there is discussion of lowering standards even further.
Where is the evidence to support this interpretation? Beyond such, there is nothing in the presented quote to suggest that Patrick Henry believed that only state governments should have firearms for the purpose of arming the militia, and that said firearms were to be reclaimed once the militia had fulfilled its duties.
Wasn't Cruikshank overturned? The bizarre thing about Heller is that it states that the RKBA may be more limited than its explicitly stated purpose. People may be banned from owning fully automatic weapons even if such weapons would be useful and necessary in a militia. However, people can own weapons for the purpose of personal self defense even though the Second Amendment says nothing about owning weapons for such a purpose. So apparently the Supreme Court wants us to believe that what is not even in the Second Amendment should play a greater role in interpreting the Second Amendment than what is in it.
"May we[the states] not discipline and arm them, as well as Congress, if the power be concurrent? so that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, &c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed. The great object is, that every man be armed." http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/a4_4s9.html
It's really not a fantasy, and the idea is not to "go to war" against the government at all. But as a deterrence against the government to oppress its population. Think about it. If people are unarmed, the government has all the power to control the population, even without bloodshed. They can go into any home, whenever, arrest anyone, for any reason. If the people are armed, the government can still do all these things, yes. But not without ramping up the violence themselves. And governments really don't want to do this, because then they would be illegitimate among the silent majority too. So, not so much about overthrowing the government, more about not letting the government have a chance to overthrow the people. Japan and Yemen aren't western societies. Japan is an extremely monoethnic society, with a high standard of living. That's why Japan is safe, not because they have, or do not have guns. Norway is pretty much the same, but with a lot of guns. Still pretty safe. The gun ownership rate is not the deciding factor of what makes a country safe or not. A country will not be safer with, or without many guns. Also, the US is not that unsafe as it's portrayed to be. Especially when you compare it with their Central American neighbors. Of the countries on the American continent, only Canada has a lower murder rate than the US. And Canada has less poverty, and a more monoethnic culture too.
The Cruikshank decision was not overturned. Some portions are said to have been invalidated by the Supreme Court, but therein is a constitutional issue. In order to overturn Cruikshank, the United States Supreme Court has to legislate from the bench. How are you going to have the highest court in this land say that a law means this today and something 180 degrees opposite tomorrow? No doubt the court had the power to say what they did in Heller, but they clearly and unequivocally lacked the authority. Otherwise, you don't need a House of Representatives and a U.S. Senate. Just let the Supreme Court define the laws. "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!" Patrick Henry Soon the people may have a hard choice to make.
Indeed it was not. The united state supreme court did not rule on machine guns in Heller, because machine guns were not at issue in the Heller case. What was ruled on, however, was that the second amendment protected firearms that are in common use for legitimate purposes, such as but not limited to self defense. This was echoed again in McDonald. It was further echoed again in Caetano, in the very first sentence of the ruling, when it stated that the second amendment extended prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding. The quote speaks of the militia. Where does it speak of the authority of states to dictate what firearms may be privately owned and held by the public, especially those that are not part of the militia due to age or gender?
Galileo, I know you are the proponent of the interpretation that says the Amendment’s stated purpose is found in the preamble. I note Congress had already been given the ultimate authority over all militia arms before the Amendment was drafted. Indeed Patrick Henry’s complaint, which you cite to, is a specific complaint about giving this total power over militia arms to Congress in Article I Section 8. Now if, as you argue, the Amendment’s purpose is somehow to protect a “well-regulated militia” from Congress’ power to disrupt it, then tell me how this works. If Congress decided to disarm the militias by refusing to properly arm them, and by also forbidding others to do so, then how does the 2nd Amendment overcome this? Does it somehow repeal Congress’ ultimate power over militia arms, or does it grant some concurrent power to arm the militias if Congress refuses to do so? And if it did, then where would these weapons come from? Would there not have to be some source of arms beyond the reach of Congress that can be drawn upon? (Could this be your meaning for the “keep” part?) Further, even if we assume the operative clause containing the RKBA is intended to preserve the “well-regulated militia” from Congress’ power to damage it, then why did the Amendment only protect arms? What about Congress’ other powers over the militia? Congress has the organizing power, and can utilize it to set the size of the militia so small as to be ineffective no matter how well armed its members could be. Congress also has the training power, and the states are expressly limited to the training approved by Congress. What if Congress creates a wholly inadequate training regimen? Was it not Socrates who once observed that “a disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house”? So if the protection of the “well-regulated militia” is the object of the Amendment, then why limit the right—that which Congress may not infringe upon—to protecting arms and leave these other Congressional powers unmentioned and unabridged? Are they not as potentially disruptive to the “well-regulated militia”? In short, can you state for me how the Amendment works to fulfill the purpose you believe it was written for?
diversion and nonsense. I think you haven't a clue about constitutional theory or scholarship. You just are upset that the second amendment, if properly enforced, destroys the schemes the ARC tries to impose
