Case closed it is a right !
Screwed up by freedom hating people !
Gun control logic
by Gregor 174 Replies latest social current
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Satans little helper
really? the freedom to what? the freedom to have to worry about being blown away by some fool who has easy access to guns.
Well done, I envy your "freedom"
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5go
really? the freedom to what? the freedom to have to worry about being blown away by some fool who has easy access to guns.
Well done, I envy your "freedom"
or eaten by some animal while hiking or stalking said animal.
Freedom isn't safe my friend.
Animals in capitivity live much longer lives than free ones.
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5go
the freedom to what?
To own protective device. In the US body armor was nearly banned. Tell me what can you kill with that.
I have a job that some day I might want body armor ( bullet resistant vest ) why should I not be allowed to have it. Just because some fools used it to rob a bank and kill people.
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heathen
wonderful post 5go . Yes guns may be illegal in other countries but the record shows that there are more illegal guns in those countries . So basically they are only ciminalizing their citizens since it's apparent there is a majority who do like owning guns.
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Abaddon
heathen
If you're not going to bother replying why bother PM'ing me? Seems you want to blame me for your inability to express yourself without sounding like a bigot.
5go
Thanks for a well-researched reply.
But... describing "St. George Tucker" as a "Revolutionary War militia officer" does kind of spoil the first 'Ooo, look, lots of data' reaction. I was unaware that one-year-old infants commanded militia in the Revolutionary War.
So what he wrote isn't nearly as important or pertinent as you'd (or who ever this comes from originally) have us believe. Such are the problems with cut and paste, eh?
Justice Story more or less proves the intent behind the ammendment;
How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.
This is talking about "the People's" right to bear arms in an organised fashion NOT willy-nilly at citizen level regardless of the impact this has on society. Rawle refers to again to 'the People', not to individual citizens, and I suggest the differentiation between the two is worthy of research.
Hamilton again shows the differentiation between 'the people' and an organised militia and indivdual disorganised ownership;
Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
So, where do gun owners go and assemble them once or twice in the course of a year? Hmmm? Seems they hold guns outside the provisions of the 2nd Ammendment if they do not.
Madison's entire quote revolves around 'the people' and 'the militia'. Not any mention of citizens having an unalienable right to play with guns no matter what the societal damage is.
But the whole point about AMMENDMENTS is that they are AMMENDMENTS and thus show that AMMENDMENT is possible. ALthough it is reasonably clear (the 2nd ammendment is widely regarded as being the most obscurely orded of a badly worded bunch of Consititutiuonal documents), if women fight to get to vote, they can get an ammedndment. If black people fight for the right to vote, they can get an ammendment. Only with the 2nd Ammendment do people suggest it is unammendable even if enough people fight it.
And the guff about freedom is lovely; your 'freedom' to bear arms is paid for by gun companies and gun hobbiests. The only reason you still have it is that this lobby group pays better than the anti-gun group. Wow, freedom is dollar's whore. Again.
Of course, now we get to the interesting point in the discussion (as we all know the gun laws will not change, and that the situation is beyond recovery without truely heroic measures), and start talking about how in the land of the free civil inequality is what drives the violence in American society, everyone goes quiet.
Seems some people think freedom is the freedom for other people to be disadvantaged and downtrodden on a generational and largely chromatic basis.
But hang on, if it's in the Bill of Rights that people can fight governmental despotism by armed force, that means people who are disadvantaged and downtrodden on a generational and largely chromatic basis have a legal basis for armed insurrection! Provided they form militas, that is...
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heathen
This is ridiculous , now you are ascerting I need to apologize to the Korean people for stereotyping ? You are a nut case abaddon. NUFF SAID THERE.
Back to the constitutionality of guns . Our guns were never intended to fight other peoples conflicts for them either , they are supposed to defend freedom and liberty of americans of which you gun control people are trying to take away.
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Brother Apostate
The Gun Supply Myth
Source: Data points from Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York 1997, and FBI Uniform Crime Reports. (Handgun homicide rates became available in 1966.) [More recent gun suppy figures are available here and here.]
Discussion
More guns more crime? More guns less crime? Without the entire picture, one could play all sorts of statistical games with the above data. Depending on the starting year and time frame, we could find "evidence" to support either position. However taking the long view it appears that the gun supply does not have a significant impact on total homicides or suicides. (Since 1945 the handgun per capita rate has risen by over 350% and over 260% for all firearms.)
Kleck in Targeting Guns commenting on the gun stock relationship:
"About half of the time gun stock increases have been accompanied by violence decreases, and about half the time accompanied by violence increases, just what one would expect if gun levels had no net impact on violence rates. The rate of gun suicide is correlated with trends in the size of the gun or handgun stock, but the rate of total suicide is not, supporting a substitution argument--when guns are scarce, suicide attempters substitute other methods, with no effect on the total number who die. Trends in the size of the cumulated gun or handgun stock have no consistent correlation with crime rates."
Incidentally regarding non-lethal violent crime:- Offenders were armed with a firearm in 10% of all violent crimes; a knife in 6% and some other object used as a weapon in 5%.
- Offenders used or possessed a weapon in an estimated 27% of overall violent incidents, 8% of rapes/sexual assaults, 52% of robberies, and 25% of assaults.
Why is violent crime decreasing?
The FBI lists many major contributing factors to violent crime in their 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report.
As for the declining violent crime rate over the last several years:
"There is, at present, little consensus among criminologists, legal analysts and law enforcement officials about the explanation or causes of the decrease. Possible explanations include: increase in the incarceration rate; community based policing; changes in drug markets; aging of the criminal population; and cyclical trends in the homicide rate." (Conference announcement: Why is Crime Decreasing, Northwestern University School of Law).
Reporting a record 7-year plunge in crime rates a Los Angeles Times news article stated:
"Law enforcement experts credited a variety of factors, including a booming economy and declining unemployment, greater attention to community-based policing, more prison beds and tougher sentencing in some areas through measures such as California's 'three strikes' law. But they stressed that no one factor can explain the downward spiral" (May 17, 1999, p. A6)
Excerpted from the abstract of the Koch Crime Institute's paper, The Falling Crime Rate (April 1998):
"The consensus on the falling crime rate is that there is no singular event, policy implementation, or social action that can account for the decrease during the last six years. Individuals and organizations assessing the cause and implications of this decline are arriving at a unified theory attributing collective efforts and change as the reason or reasons."
The Chicago Tribune reported a surprising finding:"Two widely respected scholars studying the causes of the declining U.S. crime rate, one of the intriguing social puzzles of the decade, have reached a provacative conclusion: Legalizing abortion in early 1970s eliminated many of the potential criminals of the 1990s..."
"Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stanford University Law professor, conclude that legalized abortion may explain as much as half of the overall crime reduction the nation experienced from 1991 to 1997..."
"[T]he authors conclude that the women who chose abortion were those at greatest risk for bearing children who would have been most likely to commit crimes as young adults. These women are teen-agers, minorites and the poor--all groups of women who have abortions at higher rates than the overall population of women of childbearing age..."
[I]t is not simply who has the abortion that leads to the lower crime rate...but the ability of the woman to choose better timing for childrearing that lowers criminality." (Los Angeles Daily News, August 8, 1999, pp. 1, 18)
What about the Brady Bill and other gun control measures?Didn't the Brady Bill play a big part in reducing gun crime? See GunCite's analysis of that claim.
Four scholars discuss "Does Gun Control Work?" in PBS's moderated panel discussion, Think Tank (aired June 3, 1995).
What can be done about violent crime?
To read where enforcement of the numerous, already existing laws is working and achieving dramatic results in reducing gun related violence and homicide, without additional gun control laws, see enforcing the laws we already have.
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Brother Apostate
But... describing "St. George Tucker" as a "Revolutionary War militia officer" does kind of spoil the first 'Ooo, look, lots of data' reaction. I was unaware that one-year-old infants commanded militia in the Revolutionary War.
Wrong as usual:
St. George Tucker’s View of the Constitution of the United States was the first extended, systematic commentary on the Constitution after it had been ratified by the people of the several states and amended by the Bill of Rights. Published in 1803 by a distinguished patriot and jurist, it was for much of the first half of the nineteenth century an important handbook for American law students, lawyers, judges, and statesmen. Though nearly forgotten since, Tucker’s work remains an important piece of constitutional history and a key document of Jeffersonian republicanism.
Two reasons may account for the neglect of Tucker’s work and of related, supportive writings. First, his view of the federal government as an agent of the sovereign people of the several states, and not as the judge of the extent of its own powers, was buried by the outcome of the Civil War, the ground for the triumphant views of Abraham Lincoln having been well prepared by Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court and lawyer, orator, and Senator Daniel Webster. Second, Tucker’s constitutional writings were appended as essays to a multivolume densely annotated edition of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England that was never reprinted.
St. George Tucker was born in 1752 in the British colony of Bermuda. The Tuckers were a numerous and talented family, many of whom emigrated to the mainland colonies in North America, where several made their fortunes. For example, St. George’s brother, Thomas Tudor Tucker, made his way to South Carolina, represented that state in the first two Congresses, and was treasurer of the United States from 1801 until 1828, on appointment of President Thomas Jefferson.
St. George Tucker reached Virginia in 1771. For a year he studied law at the College of William and Mary (as did Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall) under George Wythe, who shortly thereafter became a signer of the Declaration of Independence and chief justice of Virginia. Talented, urbane, and sociable, Tucker had no trouble making his way in the best society. In 1775, at the age of twenty-three, he was admitted to the bar. In that same year he was present in Richmond when Patrick Henry made his stirring appeal to "liberty or death!" Tucker then took part in an expedition to Bermuda that gained possession for the colonists of a large quantity of military stores that were of great use to the army of George Washington.
St. George married well, in 1778, to a wealthy widow, Frances Bland Randolph, and acquired large estates in Chesterfield County. He also acquired three stepsons, one of them the five-year-old John Randolph, later to be famous as "Randolph of Roanoke." The relationship between Tucker and Randolph was often tense.
Tucker took an active part in the Revolutionary War. In addition to the expedition to Bermuda, he was elected colonel of the Chesterfield County militia and led them to Nathaniel Greene’s army in North Carolina, and is said to have distinguished himself at the Battle of Guilford Court House. During the Yorktown campaign, serving as a lieutenant colonel of horse and an aide to Governor and General Thomas Nelson, he was wounded.
Tucker’s letters to his wife during his military service were published in the Magazine of American History in July and September of 1881, and, in addition to exhibiting marital felicity, are a valuable source of historical information on the Revolution’s last Southern campaign.
After the war, Tucker’s law practice flourished. He was appointed one of the committee to revise the laws of Virginia, and he served with James Madison and Edmund Randolph as Virginia commissioners to the Annapolis Convention. Tucker’s career as an expounder of the new constitutions of Virginia and of the United States began in 1790 when he succeeded Wythe as professor of law at William and Mary.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Tucker0257/Constitution/HTMLs/0023_Pt01_Foreword.html
So what he wrote isn't nearly as important or pertinent as you'd (or who ever this comes from originally) have us believe. Such are the problems with cut and paste, eh?
Nope. Wrong again.
Red Herring?
Yup.
BA- Educating foreigners
PS- Madison, the author of the Second Amendment, well understood that the right to keep and bear arms is a pre-bill of rights right, the Second Amendment simply protected that right and added to it the necessity to have an armed populace that could protect itself from tyranny, from within, or without.
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Brother Apostate
A sentence similar in structure to the Second Amendment is discussed:
An Analogue
"A well-educated electorate being necessary to the preservation of a free society, the right of the people to read and compose books shall not be infringed."
Obviously this does not mean that only well-educated voters have the right to read or write books. Nor does it mean that the right to read books of one's choosing can be restricted to only those subjects which lead to a well-educated electorate.The purpose of this provision is: although not everyone may end up being well-educated, enough people will become well-educated to preserve a free society.
Nor can it be construed to deny one's pre-existing right to read books if there are not enough well-educated people to be found. The right to read books of one's choosing is not granted by the above statement. The rationale given is only one reason for not abridging that right, there are others as well.
Similarly the Second Amendment states, the people from whom a necessary and well-regulated militia will be composed, shall not have their right to keep and bear arms infringed.
It was the Founders' desire "that every man be armed" such that from the "whole body of the people" (militia) a sufficient number would serve in the well-regulated militia.
"Before a standing army can rule the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."
--- Noah Webster of Pennsylvania, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787(For a legal analysis of the Second Amendment's structure see The Commonplace Second Amendment.)
