Alright anti-gunners, lets have it out

With the upcoming SCOTUS ruling on the 2nd Amendment (I'm not holding my breath in hopes they will side with freedom and liberty), I thought I would invite all anti gun folks to post their little anti gun "arguments" here so that I (a 2nd Amendment amateur expert) can disabuse you of your wrong and just plain senseless anti gun opinions.

Fire away.

Well, if we give up our guns, they might let us live a little bit longer.

I never been against guns, always against bullets being so cheap.

They should charge $50 for each (same principle they use for printers, cheap printer but expensive ink), then everybody would think more then twice about killing someone (Chris Rock got it right)

That aside, I never understood what makes any gun owner think that he/she is responsible enough to carry/operate one ? On what grounds is that determined ?

This should be fun.

In my state, you have to walk down to the police station with your tail between your legs and ask permission to buy a gun before anyone will sell one to you, then you have to register the gun and provide fingerprints. Oh, but first you have to pay for a five hour course to make sure you know not to shoot yourself in the face.



My stance (this week), is that we should have no licensing nonsense, no background checks, no registration, no safety courses, none of it. While we're at it, we need to institute a mandatory death sentence for anyone caught carrying a gun during the commission of a violent crime for which they are later found guilty. Make the execution public, and carried out by firing squad for added irony.

How's that for a novel approach to achieving a greater degree of liberty while preventing the misuse of firearms?

That's a no-hassles solution to the problem of all these wannabe thugs who want to whip their pieces out at every opportunity and wave them around so we'll all know how hard they are.

reply to post by slackerwire

Slackerwire, you may find some good points over here to give your side of the issue some "more ammo"...

If you charged $50.00 a bullet wouldn't you be making arms obsolete to the poor? Money is power why give it more?

reply to post by 5thElement

That aside, I never understood what makes any gun owner think that he/she is responsible enough to carry/operate one ? On what grounds is that determined ?

What makes a person think they are responsible enough to drive a car, operate a screw-driver, or even responsible enough just to screw?

Sadly it seems there aren't any anti gunners in sight.

Perhaps they actually had some sense knocked into them.

Originally posted by jackinthebox
What makes a person think they are responsible enough to drive a car, operate a screw-driver, or even responsible enough just to screw?

There goes Jack again, trying to unscrew the inscrutable...

Actually, I believe that the best arguments in favor of the 2nd Amendment comes from those very same people who ratified that Amendment in the first place!
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine & a number of passages in the Journals of the Continental Congress contain a preponderance of evidence (more than what would be required even in the Supreme Court) that favors individual's Right to Bear Arms...As the last resort for the People to defend any of their other Rights against a government going tyrannical.

As one of the Rights that "Congress shall make no law abridging," that means that any limitations or restrictions whatsoever that may pass subsequent legislation are completely Unconstitutional & must not be enforced at all. There wouldn't even be a question about whether or not to repeal said restrictions because those restrictions were never valid in the first place. There is absolutely no "due process" that could make them valid in the first place, even including "popular vote" by the People! The Constitution was written so that not even the People can "vote away" their own Rights!

[edit on 25-6-2008 by MidnightDStroyer]

People always like to yammer on about all of the crimes committed with guns, but they are missing a very big piece of the picture. And I'm not talking about the old, yet still very valid argument of the people defending themselves from criminals here.

I am talking about the "criminals" exercising their Constitutional rights to rebel against tyranny. In this case, they are rebelling, albeit without any organization for the most part, against deliberate economic oppression. If they do organize to stand against economic slavery, they are hit with RICO charges.

Originally posted by jackinthebox
I am talking about the "criminals" exercising their Constitutional rights to rebel against tyranny. In this case, they are rebelling, albeit without any organization for the most part, against deliberate economic oppression. If they do organize to stand against economic slavery, they are hit with RICO charges.

Maybe so, Jack...But even RICO can be SLAPP'ed. As long as the "criminals" being charged under RICO have valid complaints against the government's practice of committing Constitutional Torts, then the government itself becomes the "organization" in which the People can defend themselves.

[edit on 25-6-2008 by MidnightDStroyer]

Guns are for killing and I'm not a great believer in any tool that has been designed for that reason. I think your (US) statistics show eloquently the impact of allowing ANYONE to own and use these killing tools. And, no I’m not in favour of Armies/Police either as their record of death is wholly evident on a global scale, fact!

The only reason any government has to deny Arms to the populace is to make it easier to suppress the People...
Look here.

its safe to own a gun if you can controll youre anger and greed.Or should i put it like controll your NEED FOR SPEED.


[edit on 25-6-2008 by spy66]

reply to post by mlmijyd

I think your (US) statistics show eloquently the impact of allowing ANYONE to own and use these killing tools.

What statistics are you referring to? Are you referring to the propaganda that lack of gun control is dangerous or do you have a source? By and large these claims are not founded on statistics. The statistics seem to back up logic in the fact that the areas that have minimal gun control have less crime. When everyone has a gun and everyone knows everyone has a gun people are less likely to commit crimes against another. Alternatively where gun control is high it ends up being only the criminals and law enforcement that have the guns. Want to guess who ends up being the victim in those areas?

I'm caught somewhere in the middle on the issue of gun ownership. Obviously there is the Constitutional argument in favor of ownership.

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.

I think that a lot of gun-owning Americans, these days, tend to attribute an opinion to the framers that, simply, is far too extreme in its assumptions. All too often the first half of the amendment is completely ignored....you know, the "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State," bit. We no longer live in a society where there are functional militias defending States rights and 'freedom.'

Neither guns, nor society, are the same as they were when the framers created the Constitution and the right to bear arms. Thinking of the time frame in which the Amendment was written, it was one of political repression by the reigning authorities on the colonies. They were not allowed to have guns or form their own militias, and the amendments were a response to that oppression. Today, at least I feel, the mentality that a lot of, not necessarily all, gun-owners follow these days is not one of owning a gun to feed the family and protect the common good, but instead some form of romantic attachment to a 'cowboy' mentality from the American western advance.

Guns are no longer a symbol of defense from oppression, but, instead, have become a symbol of defiance and aggression, and often a symbol of oppression itself. How many people defend their posession of guns with the idea that it is for home or personal protection? Many. How many have actually been in a situation where they have had the opportunity to test their theory? I'd wager, few. In this respect, I believe that guns are unnecessary.

The majority of the civilised, democratic world do not allow, or are highly restrictive of, gun possession. Not Unironically, the rest of the civilised, democratic world has a significantly lower per-capita rate of crime. Is there a correlation? Yes. Is it a causation? Perhaps.

But, this is where my opinion gets muddled.

I used to be completely against gun ownership. But, as I have grown older and have begun to see a scary change in the political culture of the United States, I have begun to see the value of gun ownership. Don't get me wrong, my political leanings tend to ally more with leftist socialists than anything else, but when the Libertarians and Survivalists say "they're(the government) coming to take away your freedom..." I tend to agree and I tend to agree that there is a good chance that violence, or the threat of violence,(IE revolution(IE terrorism)) may be the only course of action in order to retain freedom.

Unfortunately, and to add to the muddledness, it seems to me that the individuals who own the guns, and are more likely to gravitate toward violence to preserve their way of life, are the ones that tend to side with those that I feel would take away my freedom....so, really, its a lose-lose situation, as far as I can see.

At this stage in my life, I believe in the rational regulation of firearms, rather than the prohibition. I think there should be a need for the posession of firearms. For instance, My father, brother and uncle are all gun-owners. My father, for a time while we lived in Alaska, did a bit of hunting, had several guns, but after he stopped hunting, he sold a few of them. My uncle owns several guns, as well as several bows, and is an avid hunter. I think in their cases, their ownership is rational. They hunt(ed). My brother on the other hand, lives in Miami and owns an assault rifle and a sniper rifle, which he justifies ownership along the "home invasion" lines...this is not rational, and he should not be allowed to own such weapons...unfortunately, he's the eact type of gun-owner I fear most...with the "bring 'em on, cowboy" mentality. It is a complicated issue.

(Continued)

I think the issue is that we lack an honest discussion about where we want the nation to head, as a whole, because people on both sides of the argument tend to be so extreme in their opinions. I for one follow the idea that moderation is the best policy...in most respects.

Guns. They kill people, or they enable people to kill people therefore I don't like them.

That's my softie, liberal emotional response.

I grew up in the south ( Florida) where having a gun is just part of life. When I first came to the UK I found it very strange, for people not to have the right to own a gun -I was shocked when I discovered that even the police didn't have guns!

When I lived in Switzerland I was shocked how many people had guns. The Swiss have one of the highest gun ownership rates in Europe.

I do believe that the it gives them - The power of life and death shouldn't be given so freely to a people who cannot seem to control their base emotions.

I think it is the US governments responsibility to control gun ownership because most Americans aren't socially mature enough to have that power.

I don't write that as an attack on Americans at all - I love Americans - My family mostly - It's an emotional response to the gun control issue.

*shrugs*

reply to post by madhatr137



I think the pro-gun side of this thread have proven your point about the "cowboyism" that goes along with the gun lobby. A tad baiting and agressive to say the least.

BTW: I think your post was quite eloquent.

mlmiyjd
How can you make that point about gun ownership in the US being responsible for our crime rate, without seeing the glaring contradiction?

There are other countries where gun ownership rates are very low, and gun crime is very high (i.e., Mexico), and there are countries where gun ownership rates are very high, and gun crime is very low (i.e., Canada).

Look at South Africa, where it's very difficult to legally purchase and license a gun - they have one of the highest gun-crime rates in the world and ~98% of those crimes are committed with illegal guns. This should be a hint that maybe criminalizing guns isn't such a silver bullet solution, if you'll pardon the pun.

Even if you managed to completely get rid of the guns, illegal and legal, consider this - if people don't have guns around, they'll kill each other with knives, sticks, rocks, or their bare hands. Taking away dangerous objects does absolutely nothing to reduce violence in our society. The massacres in Rwanda were predominantly perpetrated using primitive agricultural tools like machetes and clubs.

[edit on 25-6-2008 by WyrdeOne]