Boston Marathon

[sweetts18]

Ever live in a rural area? ...cops around here take about thirty minutes. ...and yes, as a matter of faith, I DO believe that an armed good citizen that's right here, right now is better than the cops that showed up when it was over to draw chalk outlines around the bodies of innocent children.

[sweetts18]

Hey, since it doesn't even matter if the COPS are armed... lets take their guns and give them judo training and teddy bears! Surely, it's just the blue lights are what scares off armed individuals with malicious intent.

[nysprod]

They didn't! ...because they had just started a new nation. ...but they recognized that people with power tend to abuse it... if you read the Washington quote, its obvious that he meant for firearms to be a safeguard against ANY threat to freedom and liberty.

In order for that to be true, you'd have to interpret the constitution as saying, "OK people, please feel free as your constitutional right to take up arms against the U.S. government anytime you believe it's gotten too big."

"And thanks for your concern!"

[trish]

I DO live in a rural area and I also grew up in one. When I was growing up one of the kids three blocks down from where I lived found a gun in his dad's dresser and shot himself. They called the cops. The cops called the coroner. Time wasn't an issue. Shit like that happens every day in the U.S. Do you think if every teacher kept a loaded gun in their desk drawer children would be safer?

[sweetts18]

In order for that to be true, you'd have to interpret the constitution as saying, "OK people, please feel free as your constitutional right to take up arms against the U.S. government anytime you believe it's gotten too big."

"And thanks for your concern!"

No. what it means is "please feel free to take up arms against the government when it no longer stands for the rights written here, and you (as in the majority) feel that you've become subjects without free will, rather than citizens with a say in government."

[sweetts18]

I DO live in a rural area and I also grew up in one. When I was growing up one of the kids three blocks down from where I lived found a gun in his dad's dresser and shot himself. They called the cops. The cops called the coroner. Time wasn't an issue. Shit like that happens every day in the U.S. Do you think if every teacher kept a loaded gun in their desk drawer children would be safer?

And I am GENUINELY sorry to hear that. And I won't argue that gun accidents aren't horrible things, but growing up I saw guns in every corner of the house. I knew what they were, I knew what they were capable of if misused, and I NEVER messed with them. Not always, but usually, the guns involved in childhood accidents are found by the children, and they view it in curiosity, because all they know about it is what they see on television.

[trish]

No. what it means is "please feel free to take up arms against the government when it no longer stands for the rights written here, and you (as in the majority) feel that you've become subjects without free will, rather than citizens with a say in government."

Before I'm going to give the okay to private citizens arming to teeth so that they're sufficiently prepared to defeat the combined armed services of the United States military, I want to know a bit more about what constitutes feeling "that you've become subjects without free will, rather than citizens with a say in government." How about another president allegedly from Kenya? Would that suffice? How about the passage of a single payer health care bill? Would that do it? Where's the line? Just what are we afraid of here?

[trish]

...and I NEVER messed with them.

Lucky for you. I'm not for banning all guns. But I would like to see real regulations. Loopholes closed. Magazine capacity limited and liability for owners and manufacturers for accidents and crimes committed with their guns for starters. Making guns less readily available, especially to children, idiots and losers; and making owners take partial financial responsibility for deaths and injuries caused by their weapons imo would diminish the risk of harm to others.

Gotta go. See ya later.

[sweetts18]

That isn't for me or for you to decide. pay attention. ...When the MAJORITY of people are convinced that they need to take up arms... the MAJORITY will do just that. What I'm talking about, and what this amendment is about is what the majority has the means to do when its agreed that there is an issue... and its intent is to be the LAST resort... its there for the chance that all due process fails.

[fivekatz]

Guns settle nothing, they only end it.

The NRA has become reduced to an argument that a safe society can only be a society where everyone is packing.

Let's take the amendment literally and every citizen is entitled to a musket. That is one form of "gun safety" since the gun loads slowly and isn't super accurate.

Or let's go the other extreme and say I have the right to keep a Stealth Fighter Jet in my garage armed with nuclear warheads and anthrax because if the government denies me the rights that a bunch of 18th Century rich white guys stoned out of their minds on madera and rum thought I should have, I can project my freedom.

Freedom is a terribly miss used word IMHO in the post industrial Western World. It means you as a corporation are free to do whatever it takes to enrich your shareholders. It means that freedom from disease is a marketplace product and any interference with that marketplace that might create democratic access to health care is actually an assault on "freedom". Freedom is the right to engage in business that you know will destroy the environment and kill your fellow man, while tyranny is when the government attempts to regulate the rate at which you destroy the environment and kill your felloe man.

More guns mean more death. There is not a reliable study not done by the industry that suggests packing deters anything but long life.

This argument is always turned into a zero tolerance argument because the elimination of firearms from America is impossible. But reason can be applied and it can result in reduction in needless death. And for all they rather not use their imaginations, the gun industry could still prosper. But just like auto makers fight any regulation whether it makes long term business sense or not, because capital wants to play without restraint and human cost is never perceived until it is personal.