December 28, 2012
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Gun Control
I'm an over-age gun nut. For almost all my life I've owned and shot multiple firearms - mostly pistols, but I do have a '03A3 .30-06 Springfield, a shotgun and a couple of .22 rifles. My handguns are target pistols and, along with the rifles, kept unloaded and well secured. I was, in a far-off time a pretty good target shot (In what are now called "bullseye"matches - not very popular nowadays - hitting a 3.5"-5" bullseye from a one-handed standing position at 25-50 yards is too difficult for most modern gun owners - and their pistols).
For some time I was an NRA member - back when they espoused gun competence and gun safety, before they became an arm of firearms manufacturers and modern-day anarchists (Remember, an anarchist is someone who by definition, is against all organized government - which certainly defines the modern NRA, as well as the Tea-party, come to think of it).
The US constitution calls for a "Well organized militia" and thus thinks all citizens should have the right to bear arms. The NRA and its fellow anarchists tend to ignore the "Well organized militia"part of the Second Amendment - which surely implies some sort of control - and demand that all citizens, no matter how ignorant they are of proper gun use, have the right to unrestricted gun ownership - of just about any type of firearm - maybe up to and including cruise missiles.
I think all gun owners should be required to register and demonstrate proficiency, sort of like automobile drivers have to. Also I think the production and sale of assault-type weapons, ammunition, and clips should be tightly controlled.
When we are seriously suggesting that school teachers should be armed to protect their students, the country is in deep trouble.
Comments (5)
I have a great shot, even though my body has a hard time holding the M16 because I'm short. I could take out a bunch of moving targets.
I get what you're saying. People will do nothing but create massive disorganization if they go against the government. Their power is their lack of productivity.
I would like to disarm them, but then I remember how much I hate Obama and would love to see him flounder, so they can keep them until we get a decent leader.
Ignorance kills. It's a beautiful thing.
That is a thing difficult to understand. The second emendment, i mean.
That any citizen has the right to shoot somebody to protect himself.
I mean, i always believed that security protection should be made by competent people, not anybody.
And anyway, the statement that anybody is safer because weapons are spreadly available looks like a nonsense. You have a gun. I don't, but if i have and i am arguing with you, i believe that you would be able to kill me and i wouldn't, just because your ability of using your weapon is better than mine. So, what kind of increasing of protection would be, for me, to own a gun?
And the fact that you kill me doesn't mean that you are a better person, that you have right in the arguing or that you are more peaceful of me.
The freedom to own a gun is like the freedom to impose yourself on somebody else, which doesn't look freedom at all.
Anarchist movements are something somehow more serious that what you depict.
Being against a government is not a bad thing itself. Shooting people (belonging to government or not) is.
Happy new year
@italian_culture - Hi Dario
You are right about the peculiarities of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. It one of the shortest: " 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".
This was one of the "Bill of Rights"added to the US Constitution when it was ratified by the states and first put into effect. These ten amendments were based roughly on the French "Declaration of the Rights of Man"that was being circulated at the time.
The idea was to protect a free people from the tyranny of a foreign tack-over attempt, as in fact happened when the British attacked the US in 1812.
The militia system never worked very well as it was organized by the various states and was composed (supposedly) of all the adult able-bodied males in each state, but there never was much of an attempt to really train and organize militia units, although for a time the US - on paper- had the largest army in the world - and certainly the most generals, as each state appointed its own.
The system demonstrated its problems in the US Civil War (1861-65) and in the Spanish-American War in 1898. It was supplanted by the Militia Act of 1896 that more-or-less replaced it with the National Guard - which is virtually an arm of the US regular Army.
The Supreme Court has, however, ruled that militia or not, every US citizen still had the right to "Keep and Bear Arms". The argument has been always whether or not the States and Federal Government can regulate such a right.
Incidentally, the argument that all citizens have the right to keep in bare arms is just that - an enumerated RIGHT. e.g. "...the right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed". The way it's worded lists it as an enumerated unquestioned Right - just like that of free speech. Whether congress has the right to specify certain aspects of that right - licensing, testing, etc. is unclear
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