US Supreme Court upholds individual right to gun ownership

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles

Mcveigh was insane.

On the Insane chart (1-10, 10 being most insane and 1 being least), McVeigh is about an 8, and you and Ben are about 7.9999.

You are threatened to shoot a poster in this thread for disagreeing with you about the law and this makes *ME* the insane one?

Originally posted by Kidicious


What would I do to stop him? Educate people on what makes a person like that insane. But what does that have to do with you feeling good about people like him being "armed to the teeth."

Clearly no one is happy that the criminally insane are armed and it is absurd to assume I meant this.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Vesayen


You are threatened to shoot a poster in this thread for disagreeing with you about the law and this makes *ME* the insane one?

There's nothing insane about wanting to get rid of insane people.

And I did add the wink, and it wasn't a threat. I just tend to go off on people that I think reach new heights of stupidity. Not having a gun when talking to you and Ben in real life would go a long way to ensuring no one gets killed.

Clearly no one is happy that the criminally insane are armed and it is absurd to assume I meant this.

But you are criminally insane, and you are allowed to have a gun.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Vesayen
Clearly no one is happy that the criminally insane are armed and it is absurd to assume I meant this.

Aren't people with a lot of guns people you would consider insane?

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
But you are criminally insane, and you are allowed to have a gun.

I pay my taxes, donate to charity and am politically active. I do not break the law and am not a criminal.

On the other hand, you are advocating we tear up the constitution.

Originally posted by Kidicious
Aren't people with a lot of guns people you would consider insane?

Not neccesarily, no.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Vesayen


I pay my taxes, donate to charity and am politically active. I do not break the law and am not a criminal.

On the other hand, you are advocating we tear up the constitution.

How many guns do you have? Do you know people who own 5 or more guns? I'm just wonering if you know how many psychos there are out there with too many guns.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Vesayen
Not neccesarily, no.

You definitely should. In fact, I bet there's a strong correlation.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Vesayen


I pay my taxes, donate to charity and am politically active. I do not break the law and am not a criminal.

On the other hand, you are advocating we tear up the constitution.

I'm advocating you amend your constitution, which is precisely how this gun nonsense got in there in the first place.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
The problem is it's not likely to change, you guys are all blinded to the "rights" and "liberties" the 1700's constitution affords you that you can't see the detriment they can have on your society. Or if you do see, you don't care. Because liberty is everything.

You show clear disdain for the concept of rights or liberties. You are advocating we sacrafice our liberty for security, which we will not get anyway. If you were thinking "Does this make me a facist?" then the answer is yes.

Just how many people do you think die from guns every year? According to the FBI, 9,326 were murdered with a firearm in 2004.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
The problem is it's not likely to change, you guys are all blinded to the "rights" and "liberties" the 1700's constitution affords you that you can't see the detriment they can have on your society. Or if you do see, you don't care. Because liberty is everything.

Constitution has changed several times, looks like you're the one who needs a history lecture.

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
At what point will the US realize that what was written in 1787 is not necessarily relevant or even right for a completely different society and country in 2008?

I doubt you've even read the constitution.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Vesayen
A rising tyrant will not be willing to use massive ordinance against a civilian population, lest they lose public support, which they will need. A would be tyrant in America would have to rise to power in light of some "disaster" claiming to suspend all civil liberties, rights etc. They would need time to establish themselves, during this time they will need a military and civilian population that supports them. The armed forces would never be willing to bomb American civilians.

Too many assumptions about how a tyrant would rise to power. Next.

Your worry about firearms is children will get them? Parents should not leave them where they will be found. In 90% of households in America, the familly car keys are within simple reach of children.

The point is that guns, because they are designed to kill people, are inherently dangerous. You need to worry about more than just people that want to kill you, because guns already have the intention to kill built right into them.

Is that why all resistance in Iraq was wiped out rapidly, eh? We've learned between Iraq and Vietnam that a determined resistance which resides in a civilian population can put up a serious fight or at least, be a serious hinderance.

Read that part where I said Bush is a woman's sexual organs. A real tyrant - with the US military at his disposal - would have crushed the Iraqi resistance long ago.

We need our guns to stop a tyrant as he TRIES to rise. It would be impossible to dethrone a tyrant who is well entrenched. It is much easier to stop their rise, a would be tyrant would require popular support initially, bombing civilians would instantly destroy this. The armed forces will not follow a leader who orders the bombing of Americans. An armed populace who resists a tyrant shows the military that their authority is illegitimate and ENCOURAGES the military to defect from a would be tyrant.

A tyrant without the support of the military is not a tyrant. Define your terms better.

You are in fact missing my point. We need things which can kill people. You are assuming I am against things designed to kill people. I am not. Without things designed to kill people, how will we kill them, when neccesary?

This isn't a response to what I said, so I'm assuming you're conceding the point to me.

There is nothing delusional about the concept of liberty. Liberty is freedom from coercive force, it is as simple as that.

Liberty is fine. Feeling safe because you think armed American citizens could take on the US military, on the other hand, is delusional.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


Constitution has changed several times, looks like you're the one who needs a history lecture.

I never said it's never been changed, just that this part is unlikely to change.

I doubt you've even read the constitution.

We had to when I went to public school in California -- it was part of history class.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Vesayen


You show clear disdain for the concept of rights or liberties. You are advocating we sacrafice our liberty for security, which we will not get anyway. If you were thinking "Does this make me a facist?" then the answer is yes.

Just how many people do you think die from guns every year? According to the FBI, 9,326 were murdered with a firearm in 2004.

Only 9,326 people murdered per year. How many severely injured? How many braindead? How many paralyzed?

How many people are affected by this?

Jesus, only 9,326. Do you have any concept of life at all, or the value of it?

In 2000, 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental injures from guns in the US.

Your murdered number is substantially higher in 2005, BTW.

In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 5% with shotguns, and the rest with a type of firearm not specified.

How many people use handguns to hunt, Ben?

How many tyrants did these people kill, Ves?

Also:

Due to the lethal potential that a gun brings to a situation, the likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a gun. The mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.

[Elok]

Wait, so sixteen percent of people with GSWs to the heart survive? Damn, modern medicine rocks! Even assuming that sixteen percent are just cases where the bullet barely got through the sternum...wow.

Ves, I don't think Asher is a "facist." FFS, if you're going to cheapen the word even further than it's already been cheapened, you can at least spell it correctly. Use Firefox's handy auto-spellcheck. You won't be "sacraficing" anything.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Jesus, the whole handguns and rifles will stop a tyrant is the dumbest argument ever (slight, and I stress "slight", exaggeration). That dream was over when technology decided to keep on moving forward. Unless, though, you believe bearing arms means allowing private citizens to have tanks and nukes and stuff.

I can just imagine these lunatics rubbing their hands together waiting for Britain to come under tyranny saying "if only they hadn't banned handguns!". I can see them like Marxists sitting around saying "It's going to come! One day, you'll see!!"

[PLATO]

Okay...I guess I am from the South and take my comfort from Guns and Religion.

I am very happy that the court sided with individual liberty.

That being said, I will point out that there are nearly 500 million firearms in the US. If we made them illegal today it would be a very, very long time before they were gone, if ever. Once they are illegal then only criminals will have guns (by definition, right?). I don't see how that is really going to stop crime much. I would guess that a large percentage of gun crimes are committed with stolen weapons anyway.

What needs to happen is for people to carry more guns. Criminals will think twice about pulling a gun to mug somebody when 30 passersby might pull one on them. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, in places where carrying concealed weapons has been legalized, the crime rates have gone down.

The problem with gun violence is that the criminals are not facing consequences. It is quite a different matter to spend life in a prison with TV, 3 squares a day, and no real responsibility versus the possibility of having your brains blown out.

As far as crimes of passion...eh..maybe. Still I think that an angry wife/husband will just as easily pick up a lamp and crash it across someones head as they would shoot them.

All in all, I think that people having access to firearms is a good thing...but I guess you all figured that one out!

So...let me have it those of you who think the gov't should run our lives!