What should the end goal of our gun policy be?

[Soggy in NOLA]

Our homicide rate is not "because Mexicans".

Your view that only Mexicans come to the US through the open border with Mexico is positively ridiculous. Ratchet back the bigotry, OK?

It's part and parcel of the left.... call you a bigot. It's all they have.

kaz just tried to blame our high homicide rate on darkies. Plain as the nose on your face, dipshit.

Liar. You did, I said nothing about race.

Yeah, whenever you talk about "open borders" you are talking about the one with Canada, right?

Or you are pretending that the vast majority of illegal immigrants who come across the Mexican border are white, right?

Just how retarded to you think we are, dipshit? We all know what you meant. You were trying to draw a causation between the illegal brown people and our high homicide rate, with ZERO evidence.

Nice try, but you got called on it, and now you can't find a way out except to pretend to be innocent of the bigotry from which you so obviously suffer.

Welcome to my ignore list.

That's what loser cowards usually do when they are busted.

It is pretty well documented that the border with Canada is not nearly as big problem, but not problem free mind you. It is equally well document that it isn't just Mexicans coming across the Southern border. Nobody blames anything on "darkies" as you so eloquently put it.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I have proposed a solution here a few times. Instead of registering guns and limiting magazine sizes and whatnot, we should register gun buyers.

If you apply to be a gun buyer, and pass a mental health and criminal background check, your name goes on a list. Sort of like those people who can now get pre-screened before flying.

If you wish to purchase a firearm, the retailer simply looks to see if your name is on the approved gun buyer list. If it is, you can buy as many guns and any size magazines you wish, and no record is kept of what you bought.

If you are a certified nutjob, your name does not get on the list and you cannot buy a gun.

If you are on the list, and then get convicted of whatever crime the people of your state decide warrants your removal from the list, then you are taken off the list.

If you are on the registered gun buyer list, it does not necessarily mean you have bought a gun. Nor does it indicate how many guns you own. Nor does it indicate how much ammo or magazines you own. It just indicates you are an upstanding citizen whose Second Amendment rights shall not be infringed or taken away without due process.

It'll sure make mass confiscation easier.

 

[g5000]

Your view that only Mexicans come to the US through the open border with Mexico is positively ridiculous. Ratchet back the bigotry, OK?

It's part and parcel of the left.... call you a bigot. It's all they have.

kaz just tried to blame our high homicide rate on darkies. Plain as the nose on your face, dipshit.

Liar. You did, I said nothing about race.

Yeah, whenever you talk about "open borders" you are talking about the one with Canada, right?

Or you are pretending that the vast majority of illegal immigrants who come across the Mexican border are white, right?

Just how retarded to you think we are, dipshit? We all know what you meant. You were trying to draw a causation between the illegal brown people and our high homicide rate, with ZERO evidence.

Nice try, but you got called on it, and now you can't find a way out except to pretend to be innocent of the bigotry from which you so obviously suffer.

Welcome to my ignore list.

That's what loser cowards usually do when they are busted.

It is pretty well documented that the border with Canada is not nearly as big problem, but not problem free mind you. It is equally well document that it isn't just Mexicans coming across the Southern border. Nobody blames anything on "darkies" as you so eloquently put it.

So my big mistake was saying "Because Mexicans" instead of "because Hispanics", which I have since corrected.

kaz is trying to blame illegal immigrant Hispanics as the reason why our homicide rate is so much higher than Europe's. Which is fucking bigoted and hilarious at the same time.

 

[g5000]

I have proposed a solution here a few times. Instead of registering guns and limiting magazine sizes and whatnot, we should register gun buyers.

If you apply to be a gun buyer, and pass a mental health and criminal background check, your name goes on a list. Sort of like those people who can now get pre-screened before flying.

If you wish to purchase a firearm, the retailer simply looks to see if your name is on the approved gun buyer list. If it is, you can buy as many guns and any size magazines you wish, and no record is kept of what you bought.

If you are a certified nutjob, your name does not get on the list and you cannot buy a gun.

If you are on the list, and then get convicted of whatever crime the people of your state decide warrants your removal from the list, then you are taken off the list.

If you are on the registered gun buyer list, it does not necessarily mean you have bought a gun. Nor does it indicate how many guns you own. Nor does it indicate how much ammo or magazines you own. It just indicates you are an upstanding citizen whose Second Amendment rights shall not be infringed or taken away without due process.

It'll sure make mass confiscation easier.

Quite the opposite. Your purchases are not registered. What part of "no record is kept of what you bought" did you fail to understand?

 

[g5000]

What we have is a fundamental difference of opinion about rights. Conservatives and our Founders believed we have rights. Liberals do not.

The catastrophic mistake liberals are making is that by claiming we can deny a right means we can deny the right to dissent or the right to privacy or the right to a jury of our peers or the right to equal protection of the laws.

 

[g5000]

Freedom is not painless. It comes with a price. It means we have to live with midget porn and protesters and handguns and Nazi parades in Skokie. But the benefits far outweigh the costs. The benefits have made us the greatest nation in the history of world. A model which other nations followed to freedom.

This liberal attempt to immanentize the eschaton is a path that leads to submissive obedience to tyrants. It is the belief a tyrant will know what is better for me than I do, which is an extremely condescending attitude.

 

[Little-Acorn]

The vast, vast, vast majority of shootings do not take place in "gun free zones".

And mass shootings take place in locations in which the shooter is familiar. At school or at work. It has little to do with it being a gun free zone.

When liberal fanatics lose the debate, they start making up "statistics" that seem to support them, as this one is doing... with no attempt to back them up. You can guess why.

The really desperate one even venture into mind reading, telling us what the mass murderer's logical thought processes are.

Despite the fact that a number of such mass murderers have been seen to drive PAST locations where armed guards or police are present, and seek out locations that don't have any. When Buford Furrow shot up a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles in 1999, he first drove up to two other such schools, but did not stop once he saw they had armed guards. Only when he got to the JCC and found they didn't have any armed personnel, did he stop, go inside, and open fire.

BTW, did you notice how the liberal fanatic quietly changed the issue being discussed, from "mass shootings" to simply "shootings" while making up his "statistics"?

 

[Little-Acorn]

What we have is a fundamental difference of opinion about rights. Conservatives and our Founders believed we have rights. Liberals do not.

The catastrophic mistake liberals are making is that by claiming we can deny a right means we can deny the right to dissent or

That's very true.

Just recently I saw a liberal fanatic write, in the throes of massive namecalling and insulting:
"We need to purge the conservative movement of these retarded pseudo-cons and get things back on the right track."

I'm glad to hear you acknowledge just how wrong that liberal fanatic was.

Identifying a problem is the first step on the road to solving the problem.

 

[g5000]

What we have is a fundamental difference of opinion about rights. Conservatives and our Founders believed we have rights. Liberals do not.

The catastrophic mistake liberals are making is that by claiming we can deny a right means we can deny the right to dissent or

That's very true.

Just recently I saw a liberal fanatic write, in the throes of massive namecalling and insulting:
"We need to purge the conservative movement of these retarded pseudo-cons and get things back on the right track."

I'm glad to hear you acknowledge just how wrong that liberal fanatic was.

Identifying a problem is the first step on the road to solving the problem.

Your problem is that you have confused me with a liberal. This just demonstrates the level of your stupidity.

 

[Pogo]

Why was the 2nd is written without qualifications?

Actually it isn't. Right at the beginning of it is the conditional phrase "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the Security of a free State, ...." That's a qualification before the Amendment is even voiced.

Exactly what that means is highly debatable and not the topic here, but it's a worthy one. In any case, you're not getting away with the myth, because it's right there in the document.

 

[there4eyeM]

Compulsory safety courses, severe penalties for infractions, no 'accidental discharges' of firearms.

 

[Little-Acorn]

Why was the 2nd is written without qualifications?

Actually it isn't. Right at the beginning of it is the conditional phrase "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the Security of a free State, ...." That's a qualification before the Amendment is even voiced.
Exactly what that means is highly debatable and not the topic here, but it's a worthy one.

(sigh)

Yet another ignoramous who can't read the normal English in the Constitution.

Time for another reprint.

From Taking On Gun Control - The Unabridged Second Amendment

The Unabridged Second Amendment
by J. Neil Schulman

If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you'd ring up Carl Sagan, right? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution?

That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, editorial coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers -- who himself had been recommended to me as the foremost expert on English usage in the Los Angeles school system. Mr. Brocki told me to get in touch with Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus.

A little research lent support to Brocki's opinion of Professor Copperud's expertise.

Roy Copperud was a newspaper writer on major dailies for over three decades before embarking on a distinguished 17-year career teaching journalism at USC. Since 1952, Copperud has been writing a column dealing with the professional aspects of journalism for Editor and Publisher, a weekly magazine focusing on the journalism field.

He's on the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam Webster's Usage Dictionary frequently cites him as an expert. Copperud's fifth book on usage, American Usage and Style: The Consensus, has been in continuous print from Van Nostrand Reinhold since 1981, and is the winner of the Association of American Publisher's Humanities Award.

That sounds like an expert to me.

After a brief telephone call to Professor Copperud in which I introduced myself but did not give him any indication of why I was interested, I sent the following letter:

"I am writing you to ask you for your professional opinion as an expert in English usage, to analyze the text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and extract the intent from the text.

"The text of the Second Amendment is, 'A well-regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

"The debate over this amendment has been whether the first part of the sentence, 'A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State', is a restrictive clause or a subordinate clause, with respect to the independent clause containing the subject of the sentence, 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

"I would request that your analysis of this sentence not take into consideration issues of political impact or public policy, but be restricted entirely to a linguistic analysis of its meaning and intent. Further, since your professional analysis will likely become part of litigation regarding the consequences of the Second Amendment, I ask that whatever analysis you make be a professional opinion that you would be willing to stand behind with your reputation, and even be willing to testify under oath to support, if necessary."

My letter framed several questions about the text of the Second Amendment, then concluded:

"I realize that I am asking you to take on a major responsibility and task with this letter. I am doing so because, as a citizen, I believe it is vitally important to extract the actual meaning of the Second Amendment. While I ask that your analysis not be affected by the political importance of its results, I ask that you do this because of that importance."

After several more letters and phone calls, in which we discussed terms for his doing such an analysis, but in which we never discussed either of our opinions regarding the Second Amendment, gun control, or any other political subject, Professor Copperud sent me the follow analysis (into which I have inserted my questions for the sake of clarity):

[Copperud:] "The words 'A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,' contrary to the interpretation cited in your letter of July 26, 1991, constitutes a present participle, rather than a clause. It is used as an adjective, modifying 'militia,' which is followed by the main clause of the sentence (subject 'the right', verb 'shall'). The 'to keep and bear arms' is asserted as an essential for maintaining a militia.

"In reply to your numbered questions:

[Schulman:] "(1) Can the sentence be interpreted to grant the right to keep and bear arms solely to 'a well-regulated militia'?"

[Copperud:] "(1) The sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people."

[Schulman:] "(2) Is 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms' granted by the words of the Second Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume a preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms, and merely state that such right 'shall not be infringed'?"

[Copperud:] "(2) The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed. The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for the sake of ensuring a militia."

[Schulman:] "(3) Is the right of the people to keep and bear arms conditioned upon whether or not a well regulated militia is, in fact, necessary to the security of a free State, and if that condition is not existing, is the statement 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed' null and void?"

[Copperud:] "(3) No such condition is expressed or implied. The right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia. No condition is stated or implied as to the relation of the right to keep and bear arms and to the necessity of a well-regulated militia as a requisite to the security of a free state. The right to keep and bear arms is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence."

[Schulman:] "(4) Does the clause 'A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,' grant a right to the government to place conditions on the 'right of the people to keep and bear arms,' or is such right deemed unconditional by the meaning of the entire sentence?"

[Copperud:] "(4) The right is assumed to exist and to be unconditional, as previously stated. It is invoked here specifically for the sake of the militia."

[Schulman:] "(5) Which of the following does the phrase 'well-regulated militia' mean: 'well-equipped', 'well-organized,' 'well-drilled,' 'well-educated,' or 'subject to regulations of a superior authority'?"

[Copperud:] "(5) The phrase means 'subject to regulations of a superior authority;' this accords with the desire of the writers for civilian control over the military."

[Schulman:] "(6) (If at all possible, I would ask you to take account of the changed meanings of words, or usage, since that sentence was written 200 years ago, but not take into account historical interpretations of the intents of the authors, unless those issues can be clearly separated."

[Copperud:] "To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that would affect the meaning of the amendment. If it were written today, it might be put: "Since a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.'

[Schulman:] "As a 'scientific control' on this analysis, I would also appreciate it if you could compare your analysis of the text of the Second Amendment to the following sentence,

"A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.'

"My questions for the usage analysis of this sentence would be:

"(1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this sentence and the way the words modify each other, identical to the Second Amendment's sentence?; and

"(2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict 'the right of the people to keep and read Books' _only_ to 'a well-educated electorate' -- for example, registered voters with a high-school diploma?"

[Copperud:] "(1) Your 'scientific control' sentence precisely parallels the amendment in grammatical structure.

"(2) There is nothing in your sentence that either indicates or implies the possibility of a restricted interpretation."

Professor Copperud had only one additional comment, which he placed in his cover letter: "With well-known human curiosity, I made some speculative efforts to decide how the material might be used, but was unable to reach any conclusion."

So now we have been told by one of the top experts on American usage what many knew all along: the Constitution of the United States unconditionally protects the people's right to keep and bear arms, forbidding all governments formed under the Constitution from abridging that right.

As I write this, the attempted coup against constitutional government in the Soviet Union has failed, apparently because the will of the people in that part of the world to be free from capricious tyranny is stronger than the old guard's desire to maintain a monopoly on dictatorial power.

And here in the United States, elected lawmakers, judges, and appointed officials who are pledged to defend the Constitution of the United States ignore, marginalize, or prevaricate about the Second Amendment routinely. American citizens are put in American prisons for carrying arms, owning arms of forbidden sorts, or failing to satisfy bureaucratic requirements regarding the owning and carrying of firearms -- all of which is an abridgement of the unconditional right of the people to keep and bear arms, guaranteed by the Constitution.

And even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), staunch defender of the rest of the Bill of Rights, stands by and does nothing.

It seems it is up to those who believe in the right to keep and bear arms to preserve that right. No one else will. No one else can. Will we beg our elected representatives not to take away our rights, and continue regarding them as representing us if they do? Will we continue obeying judges who decide that the Second Amendment doesn't mean what it says it means but means whatever they say it means in their Orwellian doublespeak?

Or will we simply keep and bear the arms of our choice, as the Constitution of the United States promises us we can, and pledge that we will defend that promise with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor?

------------------------------------------

©1991 by The New Gun Week and Second Amendment Foundation. Informational reproduction of the entire article is hereby authorized provided the author, The New Gun Week and Second Amendment Foundation are credited. All other rights reserved

 

[alang1216]

So far as I know .45 is the largest commercially available caliber ammunition available. Muskets are like antique cars they would fall in an entirely different status and the rules would be unique to them.

I regularly shoot solid slugs from a 12ga Mossy shotgun with a rifled barrel and iron sights. Their diameter is .729 inches. Perfectly legal (which is more than I can say about the laws restricting bore diameters). And they resolve disputes even better than a .45.

BTW.... -50-cal-325-grain-jhp,MRI .50AE 300 Grain JHP (DEP50JHP300B), MRI .50AE 350 Grain JSP (DEP50JSP350B), MRI .50AE 300 Grain HP/XTP (DEP50HP/XTP300), Desert Eagle, .50 AE, Burnt Bronze, Desert Eagle Pistol Charm (ACCLPDE50)

I stand corrected but my main point is that there needs to be an arbitrary line between what the public and buy and what is restricted (to military, police, special groups, etc.) Where that line is drawn would depend on people making a case for or against. Does anyone really want unrestricted sales of M2 machine guns?

 

[Little-Acorn]

Compulsory safety courses,

And if a buyer does not take the safety course, what happens? Does the govt forbid him to buy a gun?

 

[Timmy]

What we have is a fundamental difference of opinion about rights. Conservatives and our Founders believed we have rights. Liberals do not.

The catastrophic mistake liberals are making is that by claiming we can deny a right means we can deny the right to dissent or the right to privacy or the right to a jury of our peers or the right to equal protection of the laws.

Playa please . Other than the 2nd , it's the conservatives that attack our personal rights all the time .

That's why they hate the ACLU so much .

 

[Timmy]

Compulsory safety courses,

And if a buyer does not take the safety course, what happens? Does the govt forbid him to buy a gun?

Well he doesn't get a license . Then he can't buy one wh out a license .

 

[g5000]

What we have is a fundamental difference of opinion about rights. Conservatives and our Founders believed we have rights. Liberals do not.

The catastrophic mistake liberals are making is that by claiming we can deny a right means we can deny the right to dissent or the right to privacy or the right to a jury of our peers or the right to equal protection of the laws.

Playa please . Other than the 2nd , it's the conservatives that attack our personal rights all the time .

That's why they hate the ACLU so much .

I can't recall the ACLU defending the 2nd Amendment, ever.

I think you will find I have a pretty good track record of defending rights when the pseudo-cons attack them, too, which is one of the reasons the retards think I am a liberal.

 

[Little-Acorn]

And if a buyer does not take the safety course, what happens? Does the govt forbid him to buy a gun?

Well he doesn't get a license . Then he can't buy one wh out a license .

So you support govt having the power to decide which of us can own or carry a gun, and which of us can't?

How does that square with what I said earlier?

Remember that it is GOVERNMENT that is being forbidden from taking away people's weapons. And the foremost reason it's forbidden, is so that the people can use them against government itself, if/when the government becomes tyrannical. And the Framers knew that if government were given even the tiniest exception, there would be a tendency to turn that tiny loophole into more and more twisted, warped excuses to take guns away anyway, far beyond the "reasonable" exception of being able to take away a mass-murderer's gun at the scene of his crime.

The only way the Framers could find of avoiding the far-greater evil of a tyrannical government disarming its people, was to make NO EXCEPTIONS WHATSOEVER to an explicit ban on government disarming even one of us.

So where does that leave us on the question of the cops taking the mass murderer's gun at the restaurant?

It's inconceivable that the Framers would want the murderer to retain his gun even as they haul him off to jail.

But it's VERY conceivable that the Framers would want government to have NOT THE SLIGHTEST EXCUSE, NO MATTER HOW "REASONABLE", to take away the weapons of their populace in general. Because the slightest excuse, the tiniest exception, could be stretched into a huge loophole. And the Framers regarded a government that could somehow finagle its way into disarming its own people, as a far greater threat than the occasional murderous nutcase in a restaurant.

And history has proven the Framers right, time and again.

My own guess is, the Framers intended for the principle of Jury Nullification to apply here. The restaurant mass-murderer tells the cops they have no power to take his gun. The cop responds by cracking the guy's skull with his billy club, hard, and taking away his gun anyway. Did the cop violate the strict words of the 2nd amendment by doing so? Maybe yes. But is there a judge or jury in the world that will convict the cop for it? Probably not.

And yet when government makes the slightest move toward disarming even a little of its populace by legislation, they can be met with the absolute, no-exceptions ban codified by the 2nd amendment. No loopholes, no nothing. ANY legislation that infringes on the absolute right to KBA, is unconstitutional. Period.

I suspect that's how the Framers expected this particular law to work.

 

[Contumacious]

None of the above. None are really relevant.

I've been saying since I got to this site, on this very issue at the time, that the issue of firearm violence is not legislative but cultural. We are a culture that worships violence like an idol. Until that changes it's not going to matter what laws do or don't do.

Politicians who either crow about more gun regulations or crow about Second Amendment rights, are doing nothing more than pandering for votes. Neither amounts to a proverbial hill of beans as regards the issue. Both are directly avoiding it.

Yes, you have mentioned your view that if we make guns uncool criminals and gangstas will lose interest in them. We haven't gotten a plan to accomplish that yet from you ...

As FREE PEOPLE, we expect the federal government to respect and honor our ABSOLUTE RIGHT to bear arms .


WE THE PEOPLE hereby DEMAND that

The Gun Control Act of 1968 be abolished

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 (Brady Act) be abolished

The Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) be abolished

National Firearms Act (NFA) 26 USC 53 be abolished


those laws were UNLAWFULLY enacted. NO authority was granted to fedgov to regulate and/or infringe upon our right to bear arms.

The purpose of those laws are to incite violence against WE THE PEOPLE and to provide pretexts to fedgov to persecute law abiding citizens.

 

[OldLady]

The "mentally ill" thing is a smokescreen. Sure, some mass shootings are carried out by people with a history of mental illness. Mass shootings make a big splash in the media and in the fearful mind.

But we are not losing 16,000 Americans a year to mass shootings or the mentally ill. We are losing them to one-on-one gun homicides.

No one on the Right is offering a viable solution to this problem. They toss out "mental health" red herrings after a mass shooting, and call it a day.

It's a good point that the mass shootings like the Colorado theater and Newtown were a huge splash, but as awful as they were, they account for not many of the gun deaths in this country. Most killings one-on-one or one-on-two are by people who aren't mentally ill. Since it is impossible (I think) to know who would take another citizen's life when you sell them the gun (except for the restrictions we already have in place) that is why it seems like the only way to put a big dent in these killings is to severely restrict the number and type of guns available for general consumption.
I know lots of people with guns and none of them worry me. I don't like the thought of disarming them. But what else can be done, except to shrug and give up and let the killings keep going on and on?

Disarming America would require us to repeal the Second Amendment. And when you are willing to start denying rights in the name of the common good, then you cannot make an argument against the banning of dissent.

No, you are going to have to come up with a better plan.

Don't some people think the Second Amendment actually speaks to a militia, not individual citizens?