Thrilling. It's still BS. Militia have been around since before this chunk of land even started thinking about being a country.

~J

Not exactly,

The delegates were called together for a constitutional convention. Granted, they were asked to fix the Articles; however, in a convention you can change anything ... up to an including the base document. This is of course what they did.

I love history though I hated taking classes on it.

- theartthief

What are you saying? Simply because the concept and terminology existed prior to the writing of the 2nd Amendment doesn't imply that its meaning is limited to antiquated definitions. This is pure falacy and as akin to saying that since armies have been around for a long time, if I write a bill that provides money for buying armor for the army, I must purchase field plate and give it out to knights.

Not exactly? More like not at all. The articles of confederation were deemed wholly inadequate for forming a country, which is why the Constitution was drafted and presented to the states for ratification. I have no idea how you could ever concievably call this treason.

Saying that militia were intended to defend against tyranny is much like saying that the original purpose of roads was to allow cars to drive on them, which is false.

~J

I don't believe anyone in this thread ever thought something so idiotic. I felt it was pretty clear that he was saying that militia— in the context of the Constitution, the early formative years of the United States, and the minds of the Founders— were intended as a last line of defense against a corrupt state and a means for the installation of a new government with a mandate from the people shuold that happen. This may not have been the only reason for its inclusion in the Bill of Rights, but it is incontrovertibly one of the reasons it was included.

*cough* Oklahoma City *cough*

(Incidentally thanks, Raygun, for re-quoting some of the US Constitutional articles relating to governing of militia I dropped into this thread on p.2. At least when you repeat them, it leaves a ripple.)

I'm always nitpicky

This is an absurdly broad definition of tyranny. Why not say they're there to protect against terrorism while you're at it?

~J

Now that's patently absurd. The days when a militia could effectively stand up against a true army are gone.

~J

Yeah, really. We are so winning in Fallujah. And Afghanistan in the 80s? Those Aghans didn't stand a chance against the Russians. And the Afghans now? Well, we've got them all beaten. Man. We so showed them in Somalia.

One minor fallacy there; make guns illegal and there are fewer gun in circulation for a criminal to get hold of. Many of the ways for a criminal to get a gun involve the perversion of legal channels - getting someone else to buy the gun, falsifying documents, etc. I am not saying your argument is wrong, just flawed.

(in the UK, you can get a handgun if you have £25 and the right contacts - I will not elaborate)

And yers, I would make organised religion illegal. If I see a Jehovah's witness on my doorstep, I want the right to have him removed with a shovel...

This itself is wholly ignorant of the black market gun trade, however. While it differs from country to country, a very large percentage of illegal guns were never acquired legally. Do some research on the red mafia some time and you'll be rather disturbed with what they can rather easily deal in, all without ever having stolen a gun from someone who bought it legally. That, and, of course, the debate from here can turn into criminals with knives and citizens not being able to own their own knives. Just trying to point out incorrect information.

What did I just say? I know the black market gun trade exists, it even exists here in the UK. Now look at us, we do not have half the gun crime the US does and yet we still have that black-market gun trade.

The black market in such weapons is usually part of some organised crime group, which tends to use these weapons more selectively than your average street thug.

I find it odd that I was more free when I was in the army as a private.

That's not slippery slope. Guns have legitmate uses just as knives do. They may differ slightly, but removing implements capable of causing death sounds like police state presumption of guilt. One absolutely does not do this in a free state.

Not quite. To simply look at the UK as a parallel to the US only with stricter gun control is dangerously myopic. You brits have major cultural differences that can account for a lot, among many, many other potentiall causes in your lower rate of gun crime. And I would like to point out that despite all your strict gun control laws, violent gun crime (with the exceptions of rape and murder) are at the highest rates they've ever been at in your country. Not to mention that the right to defend has become a fairly significant issue in Parliament, as I understand it.

Now, now, that's a logical fallacy. Just because all free men (ostensibly) own guns doesn't mean that all gun owners are free.

I hope it does.

Kagetenshi, I generally consider you one of the smarter individuals posting around here, so I guess I'd have to put this down to a case of your emotions clouding your ability to reason if you think that this is at all true.

And other than police, military, and licensed security firms, they'll be the only people that have guns. I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of being the ill-prepared, likely target of opportunity stuck in the middle. (Hot chick sandwiches excluded.)

You know, I was hoping that the next time I heard someone say this it would sound smarter, maybe even something like a good idea. But it doesn't. It sounds just as ignorant and puerile as it did the first time I heard it. Dang.

That's the difference between you owning the gun and The Man owning the gun and allowing you to use it.

So by that you mean to suggest that guns don't have legitimate uses? Police seem to find plenty of legitimate uses for them daily. Like protecting your way of life so you don't have to. If someone broke into your house and held a family member a knife point, I'm sure you could find a legitimate use for a gun pretty fast, even if you did choose to rely on someone else to wield it.

It's your choice. But you're going to have a hard time convicing me that individuals of a society shouldn't have that option available to them. It isn't likely that someone else is always going to be there to protect you. It's even less likely that everyone else on Earth lives the same lifestyle you do. Perhaps you should consider those things more often.

I'm not saying that you're wrong about this (especially if you live outside the US), but considering some of the things you've said this far, I'm afraid I can't take your word for it, either. These statements are always nicer to see when they're backed up by some other, perferrably objective, source of information.

You think maybe in your profession you might run into more of those kinds of individuals than you would the kind that keep and bear arms responsibly?

You know, I've never seen a cop actually need a firearm for anything. I favor disarming police. Night sticks ought to cover all the bases. That will surely cost taxpayers a lot less money. What do you think?

Well, it may just be me, but I really don't expect a lot of people who come to firearm training classes for the first time to be terribly proficient in the skills needed to use firearms effectively. I kind of expect them to be coming in to learn that kind of shit. Color me crazy, but you gotta start somewhere.

In other words, there is no proven causality between "Get Gun" and "Become Free", which then means that me getting a gun doesn't mean I get any more free, so I shouldn't get one. OK, I can live with that.

I suppose this is no problem in training, when they can do those mistakes in a controlled environment with experienced people around them. However, had they bought those weapons without taking any sort of training...

Enforcing a "shooting license" similar to a driver's license is, in my mind, a great idea. This would not be particularly expensive compared to a driver's license, because guns and ammo are cheaper than cars, and you've got an army and a police force full of qualified instructors. It might increase the overall cost of becoming a gun-owner by $100-200, but that doesn't seem too bad compared to potential benefits. Armed and police forces could provide this for free for their personnel.

How easy is it, really, to get illegal guns in the US? If it cost $200 for the license in addition to a $500 handgun, would Average Joes go for an illegal gun at $300-400?

Give me $50US in small bills and two to four hours.

I'll have a 9mm Glock and two full clips of Black Talons in my hand.

Personal Notes

A) I fired my first handgun when I was 8, my first rifle when I was six, stopped shooting around 12 when my father changed jobs.

B) 7 years later I took a hunters safety course so I could get my hunting license and surprised the Instructors when I repeatedly shot sporting clays with a .50caliber muzzleloaders loaded with single slugs on a bet.

Really? You have to take a written test before you can even train on one, you have to pass a use/driving test admistered by a state representative and you have to carry lots of insurance.

In no way do those tests require you to be a good or even descent driver. They generally require you to take the test till you pass (not hard). Where I took my driver's test, it consisted of six left turns and about half a mile of driving on straight roads. Not to mention that there's little regulation on people once they get that first license approval to maintain competence.

And some don't see why Joe Public should have to go through it to be allowed to drive to work in his Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit. But he does. The Western world has decided that it's a good idea to make sure everybody with a car can drive it safely enough to minimize damage to himself, others, and everybody's property. I don't see why exactly similar logic couldn't be applied to gun licenses.

That is, in fact, exactly what I'm proposing.

And if the driving tests in the US don't require you to be a good driver, then your system has got serious problems, and it might go a long way to explain why so many people die there in traffic accidents. You had twice as many deaths in traffic accidents per capita in 2002 as we did. And around here, if you're an idiot you don't get a driver's license, period. If you're bad at it, you practice and practice until you get good at it. And there's the 2-year check-up with more stringent requirements than the original test, like I mentioned before.

I saw one at a gun show in San Antonio, Texas last year, though it didn't look in too hot a shape.

How's the SMLE shoot?

Backing off on my previous assertion, it seems to me, looking at the cases that you cite, that free men and women don't own guns, they own explosives. Any reason why I should buy a gun when a large amount of fertilizer or a man-portable SAM would seem to be far more effective in ensuring freedom?

~J

Your definition of an "extensive background check" and mine are probably quite different. The forms I had to fill out to get mine were about 100 pages long and were followed up by FBI interviews, etc. In the US, you already undergo a background check which should uncover any of the federally mandated reasosn you can't own a firearm.

As for qualifying testing for automobiles, you probably can't compare per-capita accident rates between the US and anywhere in Europe. From what I've seen and heard, Americans drive in greater numbers and drive greater distances. My wife, for instance, has put 20,000 miles on a car in the last 10 months. And that's only with normal driving to and from work and around town. Most cities don't have very good public transportation, if for no other reason than that there is just too much ground to cover.

Try reading the whole thread.

so your saying that insurgents could have won in all those cases without any firearms at all? Now THAT is absurd. Come on dude you might as well abandon that track altogether.

This line of discussion came up for two reasons. First, it was argued that the deaths caused by motor vehicles had them on the same order of magnitude as firearms, but there were no background checks required to get a car and a license (aside from a few very rudamentary things).

My statement about background checks was simple. If you give the government the right to impose testing and qualifications on a person before they're allowed to own a handgun, those regulations will grow and become more extensive. If the government can say that you're not qualified to own a handgun because you don't meet requirement x, what's to stop them from bringing in requirement y. Why, maybe they should add x and z in there, too. You know, to keep those who have undesirable thoughts from owning them.

I mean, if you're a libertarian you might have some dangerous seperatist ideas (there's always a nut at one of those meetings, I swear). So let's make it so that any members of the libertarian party can't own handguns. Or anyone who has ever been to a milita meeting. Or anyone who speaks out against x and y.

This is what I meant by a background check. Right now, to you have to be disqualified from having a gun, you don't have to prove that you should get one. There's a vast difference in the two.

Like Kagetenshi said, small-caliber firearms aren't effective against armies alone in unconventional warfare. A large majority of coalition force casualties in Iraq since the end of the actual war have come from mines, bombs and rocket attacks, only a small minority from firearms.

The one thing most often referred to as the thing that won Afghanistan for the Mujahadeen were the AIM-92 Stingers that the US supplied them with. Without those, they couldn't possibly have threatened the Soviet helicopters, which would have allowed the Soviet forces to rain fiery death on the insurgents without any fear for their own safety. The lack of any effective SA-weaponry, combined with a lack AT-weapons, mines, bombs, grenades, etc on the part of the Mujahadeen could easily have won Afghanistan for the Soviets.

Without RPG's, Black Hawk Down would never have happened. The Black Hawks could take incredible beating from small arms, as witnessed by the supply drop in the night when a BH got completely peppered by the concentrated fire of hundreds of militia and still flew safely back to base. Without RPGs to shoot down the BHs, the Habr Gidr militia couldn't have done anything to the helicopters, and the people in the HMMWVs would have suffered way fewer casualties. Without the BHs going down, the convoy could have been out of there in 30 minutes like they were supposed to be, and who knows what might have happened then.

The point is, firearms alone are not effective weapons in unconventional warfare. If you want to argue that you need firearms to protect yourself from the tyranny of a government, and in particular against the military and police such a government might unleash upon you, then you should also argue that you need explosives, hand grenades, mines, SAMs, ATGMs, etc. Those are the weapons that really make the difference.

There's a difference, if you're talking about adding later requirements concerning the skill of the wielder. However, it is completely beyond me how it's a smaller step to go from "Must know how to handle weapon" to "Must not have voted for Democrats" than it is from "Must not have restraining order from a court on an ex-wife".

You've already got a number of requirements before you are qualified to own a handgun. By this logic, there should be nothing stopping the government to create more requirements even now, adding a testing and license system should make no difference whatsoever.

Unless you're talking about adding more requirements relating to the skill level of the potential gun owner, or some other quality on which the government could not impose a restriction without a test. And this does not seem to be the case.

It seems you already have such an agency. The section of the FBI that runs the NICS (which someone linked to earlier in this thread) can tell you whether or not you are qualified to own a handgun.

But this still has nothing to do with testing potential gun owners. Requiring that you pass a firearms handling test (with specific regulations on exactly what you must accomplish, written into federal law) can simply be added to the list of requirements that already exist, and no more power is given to any organization relating to the ability to deny someone the ability to own guns, except when the reasons to deny that ability have something directly to do with that person's gun-handling skills.

This may help start/perpetuate a flame war, but most of the arguments in the US
revolve around the words "well-regulated militia".

The part that most people forget about is the historical background around those words. At the time that the Bill of Rights was included:

1) They'd just finished a war with the mother country fighting for their rights as Englishmen, as they perceived them.
2) The prevalent belief was that a standing army was more of a threat to the citizenry than any foreign power.
3) They believed it was the right and duty of common citizens to defend their country from invaders or opressors, and to be familiar and competent with the tools to do so.

Folks may argue that times have changed, but the fact of the matter is that the ability and will to fight for one's rights was considered at the time to be one of the differences between a citizen and a subject.

I personally do not hunt, am not terribly afraid of criminals, and do not own a firearm. I have served in the military, and in general am confident in the respect the services in the US hold for the Consitution.

But I'd have to agree with the most foaming gun-nut that the Amendment, when written and approved, was clearly designed to protect the private possesion of weapons of all sort, even assault weapons, armored vehicles, and high explosives.

After all, the Bill of Rights was included to the constitution as a set of guarentees that the States and citizens of the US would have protection _from_ the central government. Otherwise, the states would have never ratified the Constitution. It would have been of little use if it only guaranteed the right to bear arms that would be ineffectual against traditional armed forces. The right to bear arms has nothing to do with hunting or crime. It's all about the ability to defend one's nation against oppressors, foreign or domestic.

Now, this sort of thinking may make folks uncomfortable. But I am an opponent of gun control legislation as long as the Amendment is part of the constitution. Not because I dissagree with the goals of those who propose it (because I think they are very sincere people), but because they are approachng the issue in a dishonest manner. Their first step should, if they are honest, be to repeal the Amendment, not try to sneak around it. This would provoke an honest discussion of the reasoning behind the amendment and whether it is appropriate to today's world.

And the open discussion would be to the benefit of the country as a whole. Too often we sidle around issues instead of actually looking hard at them.

Well, that's my rant for the day.