Do you support the second amendment?

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RobynP said:
That still doesn’t change the fact that banning or putting regulations on the sale of firearms will have no effect on whether we can defend ourselves from a tyrannic government or not. If the military itself revolts, then we have a different story. They will have supplies none of us have that would make the fight even. But our freedom is not dependent on Joe Blow’s ability to buy a rifle at Wal-Mart, as much as Joe Blow might want to believe that.
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Sure it can. The path to gun confiscation is incremental. The Founding Fathers realized that the Constitution wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on, if the people (not the gov’t) couldn’t ultimately enforce it. Oh, and the military WOULD revolt if the US gov’t went nutso and started firing on its citizens.
RobynP said:
The key word there is “heavily.” You’d need to be heavily armed to actually be able to mount a resistance against a highly trained army. But I would hope everybody here agrees that the idea of giving civilians easy access to machine guns and rocket launchers is ludicrous.
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What “army”? Bureaucrats, some leftover federal marshals and some federal facility guards? I think you have a very warped sense of how things would go if the US Gov’t turned on its people. This is a HUGE country. Millions of armed citizens would make a huge difference.
RobynP said:
That’s all I’m saying. If the reason for opposing any and all regulation on firearms is to protect us from some possible dictatorship, then logically we shouldn’t oppose banning machine guns and other extreme heavy weapons for civilian use. But most people do. Why? Because they recognize that the potential for catastrophic damage that making such weapons easily available would lead to far outweighs whatever potential there is for a dictatorship. I think it’s a reasonable question to ask whether that is also the case with other firearms. Does the negative outweigh the potential good?
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I’m not against banning machine guns. They have been under tight federal control since 1934 with the signing of the National Firearms Act – at least for honest citizens. A politically driven act spurred by violence stemming from bootlegging. Yesterday’s massacre was the first big crime I have heard of in the US using machine guns since Prohibition – yet they were always around or could easily be made for use by criminals, so the NFA really didn’t do much.
RobynP said:
Guns rights activists can argue against regulation on other grounds if they wish. But the argument that we ‘‘need’’ guns to protect us from tyranny just leads to absurdity. Which is why I said it’s the weakest argument against gun control.
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“Absurdity” to you because you clearly don’t grasp the situation. This is a complicated issue. I’m not impressed by those who feel they can pass judgement on “Joe Blows” from Walmart when they themselves seem to have such incomplete mastery of the facts.
 
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It really depends on the types of “gun control” and most importantly on enforcement. You can pass laws from now till doomsday, but if they are either not enforced or, from a practical standpoint, not enforceable, you have just made yourself feel good and accomplished nothing.
 
Any reaction to the Las Vegas tragedy should be based on reason and logic, not emotional hysteria. The media, which shapes and controls most of world’s thinking these days, is based on emotion and hysteria, because they sell, and because they promote the media’s ideology.

Why is it so easy for a gun, a knife, a blunt object, to find a murderer? Think about that. Are we reaping the harvest of the culture of death? No cogent argument against that. You want to save lives and the environment? Ban motor vehicles. 35,000 deaths each year, but no one gets hysterical about those. They are just as dead. Just as much sorrow and lamentation.

So 35,000 deaths are acceptable, but 58 are not?

OK, let’s be all emotional and ban all guns. What next? The law abiding will turn them in. Q: Who is left?
A: Street criminals as in N.Y.C., D.C., Chicago, and Detroit - where they have the strictest of gun laws, as well as psychologically unstable loners.

As in all tragedies, there was a combination of numerous small details, the elimination of any one of which would have prevented this. This fellow was not normal one second and crazy the next. He planned this. Like ISIS terror, it took time. It provided clues. All of which had to be ignored in order for this to occur.

They call Las Vegas “Sin City.” Something else to ponder. Is it really a mystery why this took place, sooner or later?
 
There is absolutely nothing to ponder about Vegas being called “sin city.” This would be an evil act no matter where it took place. These kind of posts are akin to those that try to justify tragedy, be it natural disaster or terrorism as an “act of God.” which is very dangerous thinking.
 
thephilosopher6 said:
Automatic weapons have been illegal since 1986. Fully automatic guns owned before this law are still legal, but they’re very hard to come across.
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Not true.

Beginning in 1986, no new machine guns could be added to the NFA registry. Those already on the registry can still be legally bought and sold between licensed dealers and private citizens willing to pay the associated taxes.
 
Australia is just about the LAST country the USA would want to look to in an effort to become a safer society.

 
SuperLuigi said:
I have no problem listening to new ideas, but gun control is an old, failed idea. And basic rights are not up for compromise.

In the USA, most of the military supports the #2A, so it’s a moot point. The whole idea behind the #2A is to act as a deterrant. It’s not a permission slip to be macho with a gun—that’s actually #1A, and only if you don’t hurt others.

Also, you really need to stop comparing us to other countries. That’s what far-left propagandists AND the Russian media does in order to get us to compromise our freedoms and promote their agenda. Most of the comparisons are flawed any ways and are based on metrics designed to fool the low-information citizen and the person who watches their 5 PM News and believes it.

Other countries in the First World are homogeneous and long story short have very strict cultural controls. It is the culture, NOT the government, that keeps the society in line.

Otherwise, some values are different Japan, for instance, will actually wiretap suspected extremist groups in the broadest sense with VERY wide latitude that would NEVER stand up to American court precedent.

What would people say if Donald Trump was found wiretapping every mosque or animal rights meeting in the country? It would violate their Constitutional rights. But other countries don’t have these.

When there is a mass shooting where there is gun control, the results are the same as we saw with Andres Brevik or the truck terror attacks in Europe.

But even so, the changing demographics of we call the First World are challenging some of that because there are breaks in the homogenous cultural fabric.
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That is such a key point that so many either ignore or have no idea about is existence! In Switzerland, there are ~3 millions guns/ for a population of ~8 millions. Shooting is a tradition there. It’s a huge part of their civil defense. With a simple 50 Euros permit, you can buy 3 guns (handgun, shotgun, rifle, even full auto). No need to be member of a shooting society, no safe needed. When you finish the army, you can keep the Swiss assault rifle Sig 550 in 5.56 at home, you can have the old Swiss assault rifle Sig 510 in 7.5, too.

If you keep these rifles at home, you must qualify every year in mandatory military shooting tests. You go to the range, they give you free military ammo, and you shoot, they check the rifles, and everybody is happy. Many Swiss have the military rifles/handguns from their grandfather, father, uncle, and many of these rifles are no more registered. With the amount of guns around, Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rate of the world.

It really is the culture. Unsafe use of firearms simply wouldn’t be tolerated.
 
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I am liking this post except the “Sin City” part. The people of Vegas are no more sinful than anyplace else. God also does not “target” places for bad happenings based on what residents do. In some cases, people living in a city contribute to a tragedy, for example by not opposing a Hitler threat over time, but that isn’t the case here.
 
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My brother is an assistant state prosecutor in Florida. He is constantly throwing cops off witness stand for trying to lie to get a conviction.
 
Cops deal with criminals all day and it affects their mindset. They figure if the guy didn’t do the crime of which he’s accused, he probably did something else. If a prosecutor cares enough to boot a cop out for lying, then he’s more responsible than many others who are happy to manufacture evidence to keep the conviction rate up.
 
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.
 
Four suicide bombers. And shootings. Three co ordinated teams did all that. Not one man with automatic weapons from one place.
( although there are now claims more then one shooter in Las Vegas)’

See the difference?
 
We have not had one mass shooting since Port Arthur. Port Arthur was our worst Mass Killing
My old boss lost his sister and her husband in it.

There has also been a huge decline in gun crime here since guns were restricted.

www.independent.co.uk

Murder and suicide figures plummeted in Australia after gun control laws were put in

No 'mass shootings' since John Howard's government banned rapid-fire weapons
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk

’ Since then Australia has not suffered another mass shooting, defined by academics as the killing of five or more people, not including the perpetrator.,
 
We have gun amnesties frequently. They are common. They are not for guns brought in to the country illegally. Try getting anything in here illegally. We have the toughest border security going.

We have no gang violence.

We have a rise in youth crime, currently being mitigated. It runs parallel to the problem with ICE. A drug. That problem is currently being mitigated too. There are no Chicagos or off the DC beltway issues here.

And I pray there never are.
 
I’m not American and I’m from a place with uber strict laws on guns so I don’t personally understand this issue as much as I wish to.

Guns in the US seem to have a correlation with a high rate of deaths from gun violence (not just mass shootings, but suicides and/or accidents) so it seems rather obvious to limit firearm access. I also don’t understand the reason of having it for self defense, maybe someone here could show me some stats that show how much violence was prevented or stopped from escalating because someone else had a gun. I actually would like to know because I haven’t heard from it from rather intelligent conservatives who have made compelling arguments before.

However…the US is a huuge country and I don’t think just limiting access or confiscating guns would make a huge difference. I do believe it’s more than just access to guns. Americans are aggressive and there’s obviously a mental health problem. That hardly gets attention because it’s difficult to combat it.
 
Their term, not mine. Gambling is legal. Drugs and prostitution not so much, but still present and accounted for with plenitude. Certainly sin is universal, but with a nickname like that, there can develop a general attitude of licentiousness.

God does not ‘target’ anyone, except us, for salvation. He permits this evil (who is it that demands it?) so that He alone may bring good from it. The prince of this earth is the one who dwells there, prowling up and down (Job 1:7, 2:2), like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).
 
It isn’t quite that simple. First all, you cannot just go out and buy an “automatic weapon” in the U.S. (I’m assuming you know the difference between an automatic and a semi-automatic).

The Las Vegas shooter did not have automatic weapons as best as I can determine from news reports. His semi-automatic rifle was equipped with a “Bump Stock” (a legal accessory) that allowed him to shoot faster, but it still was a semi-automatic.

And besides, as soon as you were to ban automatic weapons someone would come along with a new weapon that shoots just as fast but doesn’t fit the legal definition of an automatic weapon.

The greater problem though, is that guns are really not the problem. It’s the evil in people’s hearts that are the problem. It’s much harder to solve that problem.

-Lost Sheep
 
Not sure this poll is well-made. A person could fully believe in the need for the second amendment while also believing in the need for gun regulation. That should then be contrasted with people who believe civilians shouldn’t own guns, which is properly being against the second amendment.
 
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Of course I support the second amendment. We need to be able to defend ourselves and others from evils. Technically, all men 18 and older are in the militia: the selective service. If our country was ever invaded we can and should do anything we can to defend it.
 
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