Do you support the second amendment?

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Certain kinds, not all of them. You can keep your Glock 42.
 
Grenades do not bug me. You can manufacture a device that can give you a similar effect with materials easily available.

As for nukes, the logistics alone would render that impracticable if they were legal for civilians to possess.

The point of the 2nd Amendment is to enable the people to act as a militia. Therefore the arms most clearly protected by the 2nd Amendment would be any small arm available to the military.
 
For those of you saying that the original right was only for persons to defend themselves against the government, the US Supreme Court in DC v. Heller (2000) has stated that the right also included guns for purposes such as hunting and defense against “private lawlessness”. From Wikipedia:
The court then held that the Second Amendment “protects an individual right to keep and bear arms”, that the “right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution”, also stating that the right was “premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad).”
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So, whether liberals or whoever think the right was solely for defense against the government (or solely for use by state militia, which prior to Heller was the prevailing liberal view) matters not, as the Court has declared otherwise.
 
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Well this is quite the false dichotomy. One can support the Second Amendment and still think we need more gun control. At least per generally accepted jurisprudence.
 
Do you mean a AR15. Civilians can’t own a M16 (unless they have a special license that is not easy to come by), M16 have the option of fully automatic and a AR 15 does not. They look very similar, but the AR 15 is Semi Auto not Full Auto. The majority of civilian owned guns are Semi Auto, even hunting rifles.

Edit… The term “Assault Weapon”, is not even a proper term for a rifle, it was invented by the media. Just thought I would add to this 😉
 
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starshiptrooper said:
The point of the 2nd Amendment is to enable the people to act as a militia.
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Seems to me that if the government is a “Government of the People, by the People, for the People” then the standing government cannot fundamentally distrust “the people” to the point that it would set up laws such that the people cannot act on its own behalf as its own informal “militia” to protect its own nation when necessary. (Edit in response to @Tis_Bearself Do you support the second amendment? - #260 by Tis_Bearself)

It seems to me that only a totalitarian government would seek to fully or totally control “the people” and be that form of government which would seek to fully disarm “the people.” It appears that some in positions of governance are seeking to do just that, or well on their way owing to their presumption that the large majority of the people need to be disarmed BECAUSE they are a threat to themselves and their state which supposedly exists for them.

Is this the fundamental belief that those who wish to repeal the 2nd Amendment hold – i.e., that “the people” by whom and for whom the government exists in the first place cannot be trusted to manage their own governance nor are to be trusted with their own protection?
thatcatholicguy said:
There are lots of things people like to do, but shouldn’t.
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There are lots of things that ruling elites would like to do, but shouldn’t.

Who is more to be trusted, the ruling elites or the people?

If your inclination is to opt for the first (ruling elites), I would suppose you have no problem with establishing a totalitarian state (or at least a ‘nanny’ state); if you are for the latter (the people), your inclination would seem to undermine completely your impulse to disable the capacity of the people to act as its own militia to the end of insuring its own security.
 
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phil19034 said:
Let’s get to the real root of the problem. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
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I agree very much that we do need to address the root of the problem. Fundamentally, we have a crisis of faith and a culture that does not believe it needs God which leads to a loss of respect for human life.

However, I don’t think that negates taking other smaller, concrete, practical measures to decrease the likelihood of these types of tragedies.

I recall reading an article some time back where the author was speaking about how locks on doors are basically there to keep honest people honest. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect that there is 5% of the population for whom locks aren’t necessary because they would not steal your belongings even without them. There is another 5% of the population who is going to be so bound and determined that they will find a way around the locks in order to rob you. So for this group, the locks aren’t effective. But for the other 90%, the locks are there to keep people from taking advantage of opportunities in their weaker moments.

I think the same principle can apply with regards to gun regulations. Certainly, there are those who will find a way to wreak carnage with whatever they can find at their disposal. Gun laws aren’t going to stop them (even if they would make the task more difficult). And maybe this would apply to virtually all perpetrators of these high profile tragedies. But that is only a small percentage of violent killings. How many of gun deaths are crimes of opportunities made possible by the availability of guns? Now, I don’t know any statistics, nor do I know precisely what regulations would best reduce these crimes of opportunity. But it seems quite plausible to me that there is at least a significant enough percentage of violent gun deaths that are more a matter of opportunity that that of someone who is so intent on killing that they’d find a way to kill people with a paperclip if that was all they had at their disposal.

So in short while it is true that we need to get at the root of the problem and that some people will certainly find a way around any regulation, that doesn’t negate the usefulness of having some regulations. We may never reduce the incidence of these events to zero. But if we can reduce them at all, then that strikes me as something worth pursuing.
 
anikins said:
I’m fine with people owning guns. I come from a hunting family myself. However, civilians should never need a military level assault weapon.
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Actual “assault weapons” (many who use that word have no idea what it actually means) have been under tight federal control since 1934.
 
Again, the Supreme Court in Heller rejected the idea that the point of the Second Amendment was the formation of a militia. That was the prevailing liberal view for a couple decades before Heller. I believe the lawyer who argued for DC in favor of gun control in that case was a main proponent of said view. The Court said nope.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I recall reading an article some time back where the author was speaking about how locks on doors are basically there to keep honest people honest. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect that there is 5% of the population for whom locks aren’t necessary because they would not steal your belongings even without them. There is another 5% of the population who is going to be so bound and determined that they will find a way around the locks in order to rob you. So for this group, the locks aren’t effective. But for the other 90%, the locks are there to keep people from taking advantage of opportunities in their weaker moments.

I think the same principle can apply with regards to gun regulations.
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Except that when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s nobody locked anything, and break-ins or thefts rarely occurred.

What has changed?

Seems to me that you are assuming that 90%+ of the population ought not be trusted or with a good measure of distrust, and that this is the ‘normal’ situation as far as humanity goes.

I am challenging that supposition because that wasn’t the case in the 1950s and early 1960s (and earlier.) It was more like 95% “of the population for whom locks aren’t necessary because they would not steal your belongings even without them” and 5% “of the population… is going to be so bound and determined that they will find a way around the locks in order to rob you” anyway. The 95% were sufficient to keep the 5% largely under control.

The question is: “Why has the situation changed so drastically?”
 
i have not read where anyone suggested a person should have used his ccw weapon in this incident.

could they even see the perp to return fire.

a ccw can be effective in a case where the perp is visual and in line of sight
 
I think you missed my point.

I wasn’t arguing that the people are free to form their own formal militia, but that the people are fundamentally responsible for their own security and that of the nation. The militia is the formal military arm of “the people,” but that does not remove from the people their right to secure their own liberty and property.
 
JoyToTheWhirled said:
I’ll admit, this is a part of your culture I simply don’t understand. I’ve heard all the arguments, and I still thank God I am not American and that it doesn’t concern me as an internal matter. My opinion is that if you are comfortable with semi automatic weaponry being so freely available, you kind of have to live with the consequences of that. Makes no sense to me.
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Envy is a toughie… One of the most difficult capital sins.
 
Jeanne_S said:
I am a supporter of the second amendment,however I also support banning semi and automatic weapons.No reason for anybody to have one of these.
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Thank God (quite literally) that it’s not up to you to decide what sort of firearm I can own. Thank God the right to keep and bear arms is a God-given right that is (in the US) constitutionally protected.
 
The NRA does not speak for all gun owners, nor is it the only pro-gun lobbying group out there. It just has the highest profile and tends to shout the loudest. The NRA has at times actively tried to undermine lobbying efforts by other pro-gun groups. From my perspective, they’re so concerned with keeping their little piece of the power pie, they don’t get much accomplished.
 
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