Choosing a Gun

[IQS.RLOW]

I edited after because you added to your post.

There are restrictions but not on hand held weapons for example restrictions on explosives do not breach the 2nd

Your position is not clear, so I'll ask you to clarify.
Do you support restrictions on types of guns and if so, why?

[Rorschach]

My personal position is irrelevant.

But I'll tell you what it is in general. That is, not relevant to the US situation specifically.

I know just how dangerous guns and other weapons are. I have handled many firearms but choose not to own any. I have even fired military weapons on military ranges and once qualified as a marksman at Singleton. I'm handy with a sword (foil) and I own a recurve bow. I even owned a replica of a Winchester 1892 when I was a kid, some of my favourite toys were firearms.

But in the real world I don't believe that firearms should be owned by ordinary citizens. I especially see no need for them to own military weapons or military style weapons. They are built for only one purpose, and that is to kill as many of the enemy as possible.

I believe the Military and Police should be the only people with access to such weapons. If you want to fire them... join up. Otherwise I see no real use for them.

I don't believe everyone should have the right to bear arms. Certainly the criminal and mentally unstable should never have access to them.

Where and why do you disagree?

[IQS.RLOW]

Simply the fact that the US already has them and their constitution. Eradicating or outlawing them would be impossible.

A war on guns in the US would be as successful as their war on drugs

[AiA in Atlanta]

the American gun lobby is goin' down

[IQS.RLOW]

The NRA ad makes a valid point but that clip is a perfect ad for bloated leftist pompous sanctimony

[AiA in Atlanta]

The NRA ad makes a valid point but that clip is a perfect ad for bloated leftist pompous sanctimony

The gentleman on the right is a former disgusted Republican congressman.

[IQS.RLOW]

So? It not as if the republicans haven't had a few wets in amongst the dries...there's probably a reason why he's an ex and now appears on NBC

[AiA in Atlanta]

So? It not as if the republicans haven't had a few wets in amongst the dries...there's probably a reason why he's an ex and now appears on NBC

He is simply stunned, as many Americans are, at the fringe position the NRA has taken. As for Scarborough himself, he is still conservative and still a Republican but the GOP has taken a fringe position too. The GOP was once full of reasonable moderates. There is no place for them now.

[Rorschach]

Simply the fact that the US already has them and their constitution. Eradicating or outlawing them would be impossible.

A war on guns in the US would be as successful as their war on drugs

Oh I agree. The US needs another solution. But restriction and greater regulation can be part of that, it just depends on how you go about it.

Personally I think the 2nd amendment is outdated and outmoded. I believe it was written in another time for conditions that no longer exist. I also believe it does not entitle all Americans the right to bear Arms.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This bears out my understanding of the 2nd amendment.

The Right (and those who have bought into their argument) would appear to completely dismiss the first phrase relating to the militia, the phrase that gives the leading, primary meaning of the sentence and to which the second phrase relates. The word “militia” is defined in the Constitution itself:

“The Congress shall have Power . . . To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” [Article 1, § 8.]

More from the article...

I am on the side of the collective right argument, the argument that the Second Amendment does not protect individual gun ownership, an argument supported by credible real scholarship by real scholars that supports the collective right argument.

I emphasize the word real because it is clear that too many Americans live in an alternative reality that confuses belief with facts, and are unable to distinguish scholarship from fanciful propaganda and scholars from lobbyists.

We may even have members of the U.S. Supreme Court who have succumbed to what is nothing less than a National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun lobby sales pitch that fits their right-wing, corporatist, authoritarian mentality.

I believe too many of the American public, politicians and mainstream media have been hoodwinked by the radical Right, the billion-dollar gun industry and the NRA. Yes, we are over 300 million individuals, but we are individuals who do not live in isolation but share a society.

On a personal note: I know what it is like to face a 22 revolver in the hands of a 9-year-old boy (reputed to have been disturbed) just two inches off my forehead (in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the early ‘70s). Believe me, I remember what the color “gun metal” looks like and know the sensation of feeling that all the blood has left my body. I want to see strong, sensible gun regulations.

I want the country of my birth to regain its sanity.

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/01/21/th ... s-history/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

“As the Second Amendment says, a well-regulated militia is essential to our national identity,” former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell told the Morning Joe crew on Monday, adding that gun control advocates need only follow the Amendment in order to accomplish their goals.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/21/colin-po ... -you-know/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[IQS.RLOW]

Regarding malitia, the supreme court had a different interpretation- so that argument is done and dusted.

In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court issued two landmark decisions officially establishing this interpretation. In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm, unconnected to service in a militia[1][2] and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home within many longstanding prohibitions and restrictions on firearms possession listed by the Court as being consistent with the Second Amendment.[3] In McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025 (2010), the Court ruled that the Second Amendment limits state and local governments to the same extent that it limits the federal government.[4]