Yes. They could have shoot the people voting for him in the democratic elections.

That's right.

You forgot to mention air-to-ground missiles, M1A1 Abrams tanks, flame throwers.  They're just tools like a gun.

Except in the legal sense, in that none of them are commonly carried small arms, and therefore not protected by the 2A.  So I guess it wasn't a good comparison by you after all.

You cannot reason with those people because many of them never experienced living in a country in which you don't have to worry about someone shooting you. United States is a country that was created by killing the natives, then came slavery which brought horrible injustice which left scars that will take generations to heal. We are still half-civilized. Canada was established top-down, the United States were established bottom-up.  We are two modern, civilized coasts with the rest of the land stuck in the late 18th century.

They make fine lawn art too.
I have not heard anyone make the argument that any of the listed items are protected by the Second Ammendment.

Glad your gave up on the 50 cal that is legal.

BTW a Flamethrower is NOT restricted by Federal Law but may fall under State law. In CA possession of an unlicensed Flamethrower is a misdemeanor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamethrower

Those effin commies. How about mustard gas artillery shells? I bet they made them illegal too.

(part left out of quoted post)

ah, if only the natives initially had had guns to protect themselves from those invaders stealing and destroying their land and murdering their people (including women and children).

or if the invaders didn't have guns. how would your country look now?

yes, that is true... but that doesn't change anything about the fact that people voted for him to be their leader. politics. he didn't take that position by force (he tried it once in the early 20's, didn't work), he was elected.

now I still don't see what that has to do with current gun policy in the US...

+ 1

To me (and I think most Europeans) it doesn't make sense, I would be terrified if the nutcases that live in my apartment building would all have guns but it's their country, their law(s) and if they wan't to keep it that way that's up to them.

Anna, this--like so many things--is one of those emotional issues that get "decided" at an unconscious level by many, then rational-sounding arguments are put forth by these people to justify the decision they've already come to.  You can pick off their arguments one by one and they remain steadfast in their initial stance.

Many of us could not disagree more.  A tragedy has happened, but that does not mean the founding principles of the country should simply be discarded.

Overall things have been getting better here for quiet some time with regards to crime:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/10/v … -violence/

Caperucita Roja wrote:
You've all got really, really interesting opinions!

I must request a favour from those interested in this or those who shared their opinion... my very lovely, very talented friend is traveling around the US, filming a documentary on the 2nd amendment.

He's desperate for people to interview, and he'll come to you. He won't take up a lot of your time, and I promise you that this guy is just one of the friendliest people you could meet. He's not there to make you feel uncomfortable or tell you your opinion is wrong! His documentary aims to give a well rounded viewpoint from all kinds of people.

Please please, if you have 5 minutes in March, chat time to spare for a Brit student then you have no idea how much it would be appreciated.

He will provide references from his university in England in case you're worried for your safety, but you need not be because he'll just be there to share a cup of tea and film you expressing your opinion on this subject.

Please PM me if you think you can help, and I'll pass on either his facebook or his email address!!

Please please please please with a cherry on top? *angelface*

Aside from going to a few gunshows where your friend will meet plenty of people as friendly as he is to discuss this at length.  He should also try to talk to Dr. Suzanna Hupp down in Killeen.  I had the pleasure of photographing her for a magazine article maybe a dozen years ago or so, she is a wonderful person to spend time with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl … grIsuO5PLc

like assault weapons are commonly carried small arms???

"commonly" and "small"

You guys could at least try to be consistent in your "reasoning."

You're conveniently forgetting that a machine gun is not legal in all states and is, for all practical purposes, impossible to have. Under the best circumstances you have to go through many extra steps. It's bogus that you some how try to argue that "it's legal."  You pretending that it is isn't helping how my liberties and freedoms are being trampled by the jackbooted feds.

Caperucita Roja wrote:
I come from a family of lawyers, politicians and my own father works with nuclear submarines, so I've been lucky to hear many different perspectives and develop a clear opinion. One thing that they've all agreed on so far is that they don't want gun use legalised in the way the USA has.

So here are my thoughts, based on things I've read and people I've met:

* 2nd amendment quote, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The only person specified as having the right to bear arms, as far as I can see here, is the militia themselves. People who are TRAINED properly, people who are given proper psychological assessment before even being able to call themselves part of the militia.

* Your guns are to 'defend' yourself. But guns, by definition, aren't a defensive weapon, they're an OFFENSIVE weapon, designed to kill. You can't compare that to knives, the primary purpose of a knife is not purely to kill- even if people can use it that way. Comparing guns to knives is the same as comparing guns to your bare hands. Hands aren't designed to kill, they can do lots of things.

* Many more countries in the world live just fine without access to guns. Many more countries are happier this way.

* Yes England USED to have a stupid law, which meant that if you hurt or killed someone trying to attack you, that you would be imprisoned for being the attacker, despite the other person 'starting it'. That law has actually changed now because someone finally realised it was stupid, so stop bringing that argument into your gun debates.

* I realise that getting rid of guns at this stage in America would be impossible, but do you really need an AK47? If you're going to have a gun, why should it be more than a 6 bullet shooter? That's stupid.

* The problem with granting everyone the same gunrights, is that you're granting it 90% of the time to stupid people. Yes, most of us make up that stupid percentage. Dumbasses cause accidents, so prevent is as much as possible. Sure taking away guns won't stop death, but if history shows anything it can have a really fucking good effect.


* I saw this today. No idea if this is correct compared with statistics, but if it's true then there are a lot of American's in denial about the true effects of their almighty, godly gun use.



I guess, whether your pro or not, you can't deny there's a need for real change and real restrictions!

1) You misread, The people i the second amendment is the same The People as the first,fourth,fifth,ninth,tenth. Under your reading, freedom of speech would only apply to those "trained".
Not to mention all sorts of case law in the US on the militia.
2) I can use my offensive weapon in a defensive manner.
3) yeah, I hear the North Koreans are ecstatic. As well as a lot of women in countries where they are still considered the property of their fathers or husbands.
4) Stupid,ineffective law....I can think of more than a few. In the meantime how many people had their lives turned upside down by that law? How many submitted to a crime because of that stupid law? How many women were raped or beaten because of that stupid law? Better not to make reactionary stupid law?
5) More than 6 shots is stupid?...hmm, unless you need a 7th round? The woman who shot the guy 5 times in the face did NOT kill him on the scene and was out of rounds. I'm betting she might disagree with you. BTW, the Bill of Rights isn't about "need".
If I am "safe" enough to use 6, then I am safe enough to use 100.
6) speak for yourself. I do not accept the notion that 90% of my fellow citizens are stupid. I may disagree with many of them on a regular basis but we have approx 300 million guns and approx 300 million people, if 90% were so stupid as you pretend, half of us would be dead.
7) really, by that logic, I am ASTONISHED you guys haven't banned all kinds of other weapons (still seem to be murders in your part of the world. Again by your logic, if Africa banned machetes there wouldn't be any more genocides?
8) the cartoon is based on nearly every poorly done "study" I have ever seen. Of course it also ignores the more than a MILLION defensive uses of guns a year.

Sorry if I am repeating things from other posts, I didn't have time to read the whole thread.

So, you think that the Brownshirts didn't use violence and intimidation as part of the tactics to get Hitler into power?

You believe that the populance being armed and able to resist them wouldn't have had an impact?

You beileve that the Jews would have quietly gone to their death in Concentration Camps even if they had the means to resist?

1) according to FBI, a gun was the best single defense to ALL types of crime.
2)  Nope, but maybe if she had a gun, he wouldn't have been able to say "she was asking for it" the next day.
3) IF, IF, IF...I am pretty sure there are circumstances NOTHING prepares you for. Not a knife, not kung-fu, not mace, not a whistle....see #1 above.
4) Some women do, some don't. See #1
5) Some do, some don't see #1
6) If he is holding on to you with one hand and holding his knife/gun with the other hand...what the hell is he grabbing your gun with?
7) You are right...nothing can be done. You should simply accept your victimization. Fighting back might piss him off. That is exactly what LAW ENFORCEMENT told American women for DECADES. Women started fighting back on their own, aginst this recommendation. it made a big enough impact that MOST law enforcement now suggests AGGRESSIVE resistance.
8) Funny, I never said guns were THE solution. And just how will taking away MY property (assault weapons, Hi-cap mags) stop a child from being raped?

9) I have no idea what I am talking about?....pretty presumptuous on your part.

It is relevant to me in that it illustrates that ALL countries and ALL governments are subject to being dangerous to their own people...thus the second amendment.

Kind of like how you have approached the issue of guns?....and Anna has approached rape?

You might want to read up a bit.
The term small arms usually means something you can carry on your person, as opposed to needing a truck to move it around, or even a mule.
As to commonly carried, many of the weapons on the ban list are very similar in looks, caliber, and size to the standard issue infantry weapon of practically EVERY army in the world. The primary difference is the military versions are full auto capable. The weapons on the ban list are NOT.

Actually, he wasn't.

He was appointed. And then a referendum was held to vote on support of his new position, Das Fuhrer.

Now, here is a couple of options for you to think about.

You're a German. You don't really support Hitler, but you don't think he's a madman. You agree with some of what he says, you want Germany to be strong. But there is something about him and what he says, about how he wants to blame all the ills of the nation on the rich Jews that bothers you.

So, you go to the polls to vote in the referendum on 19 August 1934 on merging the posts of Chancellor and President (Hitler being the Chancellor who had been appointed by Hindenburg). Standing around the polls are Blackshirts, the Nazis - thugs. Men who make it very clear that not voting for the merger of the posts will lead to violence against you and your family. You have no way to defend yourself against those men.

What do you do? I expect you do what 89.9% of Germans did. You vote for the merger.

In 1936, you do the same... like 98.8% of the voters. And in 1938, the same again, like 99.01% of the voters.

Now, change one thing... give you and the rest of the German people the means to defend yourself against the Blackshirts....

Remember, when Hitler didn't control the polling places and the government, only 36.8% of the Germans voted for him (1932) and 33.09% (1933).

And yet there are legally owned machineguns in EVERY state I can think of?

How can you forget H&K and Fabrique-National?

Nope.
The left constantly tells me how dangerous Nuclear energy is and we are killing the planet and the US has a shitload of fault-lines and we have hurricanes that come through on a semi-regular basis and riots when your basketball team loses and the world hates us and water riots and ....
Just based on the lefts views, I am just being a good boyscout.
And it will have to be a LONG term issue before I run out of ammo.

SOME shitstorm hits 5-10 countries a year (just say)...sooner or later we will win the lottery.

Bad analogy...
My legally owned, responsibly handled guns in my well trained hands are NOT the same as the criminal use of guns we are discussing in the most recent threads.
For it to hold, the guns would all have to be legal( they're not), owned legally (they're not), used legally (they're not)...
Last I checked Mexico was pretty tight on gun control...how's that working out?
Or hell, Chicago?
other than that...

It's not a misnomer. It's a flat-out lie. Hitler was never elected to a position of power until he was already in the position to control the vote and the polls.

Although a lot of what you say is true, thinking that the populous wasn't armed and didn't resist Hitler is just not true, the communist party had their own paramilitary and they did resist.
Even before WWII there had already been 12 assassination attempts on Hitler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassinat … olf_Hitler

The way how Hitler did rise to power is a lot more complex then most people think and stating that if the people had arms things would have been different is a simplistic view.
Just watch this and get yourself educated on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hEG-5_9nK4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation … qPc93Pvs0U

Caperucita Roja wrote:
I come from a family of lawyers, politicians and my own father works with nuclear submarines, so I've been lucky to hear many different perspectives and develop a clear opinion. One thing that they've all agreed on so far is that they don't want gun use legalised in the way the USA has.

So here are my thoughts, based on things I've read and people I've met:

* 2nd amendment quote, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The only person specified as having the right to bear arms, as far as I can see here, is the militia themselves. People who are TRAINED properly, people who are given proper psychological assessment before even being able to call themselves part of the militia.

* Your guns are to 'defend' yourself. But guns, by definition, aren't a defensive weapon, they're an OFFENSIVE weapon, designed to kill. You can't compare that to knives, the primary purpose of a knife is not purely to kill- even if people can use it that way. Comparing guns to knives is the same as comparing guns to your bare hands. Hands aren't designed to kill, they can do lots of things.

* Many more countries in the world live just fine without access to guns. Many more countries are happier this way.

* Yes England USED to have a stupid law, which meant that if you hurt or killed someone trying to attack you, that you would be imprisoned for being the attacker, despite the other person 'starting it'. That law has actually changed now because someone finally realised it was stupid, so stop bringing that argument into your gun debates.

* I realise that getting rid of guns at this stage in America would be impossible, but do you really need an AK47? If you're going to have a gun, why should it be more than a 6 bullet shooter? That's stupid.

* The problem with granting everyone the same gunrights, is that you're granting it 90% of the time to stupid people. Yes, most of us make up that stupid percentage. Dumbasses cause accidents, so prevent is as much as possible. Sure taking away guns won't stop death, but if history shows anything it can have a really fucking good effect.


* I saw this today. No idea if this is correct compared with statistics, but if it's true then there are a lot of American's in denial about the true effects of their almighty, godly gun use.



I guess, whether your pro or not, you can't deny there's a need for real change and real restrictions!

Warped... propaganda... lies...

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly.  In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed

http://www.saf.org/journal/16/guncontrolinengland.pdf

Caperucita Roja wrote:
I come from a family of lawyers, politicians and my own father works with nuclear submarines, so I've been lucky to hear many different perspectives and develop a clear opinion. One thing that they've all agreed on so far is that they don't want gun use legalised in the way the USA has.

So here are my thoughts, based on things I've read and people I've met:

* 2nd amendment quote, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The only person specified as having the right to bear arms, as far as I can see here, is the militia themselves. People who are TRAINED properly, people who are given proper psychological assessment before even being able to call themselves part of the militia.

* Your guns are to 'defend' yourself. But guns, by definition, aren't a defensive weapon, they're an OFFENSIVE weapon, designed to kill. You can't compare that to knives, the primary purpose of a knife is not purely to kill- even if people can use it that way. Comparing guns to knives is the same as comparing guns to your bare hands. Hands aren't designed to kill, they can do lots of things.

* Many more countries in the world live just fine without access to guns. Many more countries are happier this way.

* Yes England USED to have a stupid law, which meant that if you hurt or killed someone trying to attack you, that you would be imprisoned for being the attacker, despite the other person 'starting it'. That law has actually changed now because someone finally realised it was stupid, so stop bringing that argument into your gun debates.

* I realise that getting rid of guns at this stage in America would be impossible, but do you really need an AK47? If you're going to have a gun, why should it be more than a 6 bullet shooter? That's stupid.

* The problem with granting everyone the same gunrights, is that you're granting it 90% of the time to stupid people. Yes, most of us make up that stupid percentage. Dumbasses cause accidents, so prevent is as much as possible. Sure taking away guns won't stop death, but if history shows anything it can have a really fucking good effect.


* I saw this today. No idea if this is correct compared with statistics, but if it's true then there are a lot of American's in denial about the true effects of their almighty, godly gun use.



I guess, whether your pro or not, you can't deny there's a need for real change and real restrictions!

Generally agree but there is a factual error which needs clarification:

It has ALWAYS been legal to use whatever force was necessary to protect yourself from an intruder in your home in the UK, including killing the intruder.

The key difference between the UK law and the US "Castle laws" is that you were (and are) ONLY permitted to use "reasonable force" to protect yourself and there is no automatic right to kill an intruder in your home.  The onus is, and always was, on the prosecution to prove unreasonable force was used.  This makes it very difficult to bring a prosecution.

There was no need to change the law as it was in the UK:  VERY few people were ever prosecuted for defending themselves with excessive force because in the heat of the moment you cannot be expected to act rationally. 

Those few cases that were prosecuted included shooting a 17 year old in the back and killing him as he fled from the house down the garden to get away, and the man who was tied up by burglars and then went out on the streets with his mates later, searching for the burglar before killing him.  Neither of these cases were in any way justifiable as "self defence" and, unless you consider summary execution an appropriate punishment for theft, completely unjustifiable and rightly prosecuted, and would have been prosecuted in the US as well.  (except Texas for the first case!)

The law has simply been clarified, stating that the benefit of the doubt will always be given to the home-owner in these cases.  The right to self-defence remains the same, as does the illegality of vigilante action and summary execution.

The law on this in the UK was never "silly".

How is my approach to the issue of guns similar?

My apologies. I mistook you for another member.

Mexico is awash in guns, and they have lots of gun violence.

Chicago is awash in guns, and they have lots of gun violence.

I'm inferring that you think I'm advocating a ban on guns. I'm not. The liquor is available, and our functional drunk is going to find it whether he's told to or not, because he likes it and will keep doing it, and that stuff is lying all around.

I didn't say it was simple. But you surely can't claim that the German people at large were armed. Would things have been different if they had been armed? Who knows? But we do know that they had no way to protect themselves from the SA and SS and that the Nazis surely did use intimidation and violence in their rise to power.

And really, using a youtube video to "educate"?

Let me give you a few better sources:

http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/ … itler.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesi … rev1.shtml
http://www.ithaca.edu/history/journal/p … Hitler.htm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger … 32032.html
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/hitrise.htm

Curt at photoworks wrote:
like assault weapons are commonly carried small arms???

"commonly" and "small"

You guys could at least try to be consistent in your "reasoning."

First of all, "assault weapon" is a made-up term with no universal defining features.  You probably shouldn't use it if you want to seem credible.

And as far as what is commonly carried, the AR-15 is the most popular-selling rifle in the United States, and I've seen estimates that there are as many as 30 million of them legally in private hands.  There probably isn't a single model of gun aside for maybe the Ruger 10/22 that is owned by more Americans.  It is the very definition of a "weapon in common use" put forth in Heller.  It's 100% consistent reasoning and has case law supporting it.  That you didn't happen to know about it doesn't make it any less true.

Lolz, okay so National Geographic isn't a reliable source????
Did you even take a look at the video's or at the sources/people they used to make this documentary????
I bet you didn't otherwise you wouldn't have posted these links (and trust me it is a really interesting documentary, I've seen it several times)