Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
TGreene
Trad climber
Jonesboro, Arkansas
|
|
I agree w/ that last statement (in that the 2nd is in violation), because the way the 2nd is written, I should be able to have my own Apache with a Vulcan on the nose!
|
|
up2top
Big Wall climber
Phoenix, AZ
|
|
Joe, that's a "well regulated militia" -- not well regulated firearms. The statment "well regulated" in this context simply means "well trained" or "well disciplined."
Any attempt to register firearms is a step toward regulating them. Any step towrd regulation is a step toward "infringement". We have taken quite enough steps toward infringement, as it is, IMO. We have age regulations. There are laws and plenty of regulations about who can or can't carry concealed. There are laws regulating where I may or may not carry (National Parks being the most absurd of these, IMO). Frankly, I think we've done quite enough to try to infringe upon my right to keep and bear arms.
Bottom line is no matter what laws, regulations, or registration you have on the books, it is only the criminals that will find a way around them. Criminals don't respect the law -- period. So any attempts at regulating firearms only affect law abiding citizens.
Do you honestly think that registration would do one singular thing to reduce violent crime? I say not a chance.
Ed
|
|
TGreene
Trad climber
Jonesboro, Arkansas
|
|
How much money was wasted on the Brady Bill..?
I can't begin to tell you how many changes were applied to the FORM-4473 as various politicians get in office and began adding their two cents... The policies changed about as often as the flight regulations are changing today, yet as dealers, we were bound by law to be 100% in compliance at all times, even though our local BATF office rarely had the answers we often needed. On more than one occassion, I had a cop ask me questions about firearms laws, when he was actually sent out to investigate ME...
It's obvious that healyje is some type of a compliance engineer, because this stuff is what their wet dreams are made of!
|
|
HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
|
|
"Joe, that's a "well regulated militia" -- not well regulated firearms. The statment "well regulated" in this context simply means "well trained" or "well disciplined." "
So the implication there is that you need to be part of the militia to bear arms, and the militia would be "well regulated."
I would be interested to know what the policy was on wealthy landholders owning canons in the early 19th century was. If we are trying to preserve the Founding Fathers' original vision (which is NOT what they expected of us) perhaps we should allow muzzle loaders to be owned freely and without permit to keep things on a part with the technology of the day.
TGreene the problem is that anything that our Congress would actually propose is too timid to actually DO much, and filled with exceptions and blah blah blah. No other industrialized nation on Earth has a problem keeping guns well-regulated. Why are we so inept?
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2006 - 05:21pm PT
|
"Joe, that's a 'well regulated militia' -- not well regulated firearms. The statment 'well regulated' in this context simply means 'well trained' or 'well disciplined'."
On what basis do you make that claim? Given the original wording of the amendment when first submitted to the House specifically mentioned "military service" I would have to strongly disagree. Your interpretation is far fetched at best to my mind. "Well regulated militia" to me means the effective management of all aspects of a military capability - that would include effective management of armarments and weaponry.
|
|
up2top
Big Wall climber
Phoenix, AZ
|
|
Well, how about if we simply go by the Wiki definition of "militia":
... "a group of citizens organized to provide paramilitary service"
Militia is a noun refering to the group, not the weapons. Further:
"...The entire able-bodied male population of a community, town, or state, which can be called to arms against an invading enemy."
or,
"A private, non-government force, not necessarily directly supported or sanctioned by its government."
Sounds like any reasonable definition of "militia" you want to use refers to the group of people and not firearms.
Ed
|
|
up2top
Big Wall climber
Phoenix, AZ
|
|
Or better yet, from "FindLaw" -- cited directly from the U.S code:
Section 311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied
males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section
313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a
declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States
and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the
National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
It is we the people who are all considered to be part of the unorganized militia. It is who we are. It is the birth right of every American.
..."The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People."
 Tench Coxe, 1788.
Ed
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 6, 2006 - 05:49pm PT
|
up2top, yes I am aware that is how current US code reads. The question is the intent, meaning, and scope of "regulated". I would argue that it means just that - regulated - that the militia be regulated. I would summarily dismiss your definition out of hand. My intepretation of a "regulated" militia would be one where the status, identity, and disposition of every member, weapon, and round would be known at all times.
There is nothing about "regulating" (registration, licensing, and traceability) that infringes on any aspect of the right of ownership or the "bearing" of arms.
|
|
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
|
|
if you've read the Federalist Papers it's completely clear that the concept of the entire population being the "militia" is exactly what was intended.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 6, 2006 - 06:39pm PT
|
Again, it isn't about who has guns that is at issue so much as how that ownership is "regulated".
|
|
feelio Babar
Trad climber
Sneaking up behind you...
|
|
"You know, Eisenhower told everyone about this nearly 50 years back...amazing how no one has noticed the fulfillment of the prophecy."
actually Eisenhower warned about the union of business and military...or more precisely...the term he coined ....the military industrial complex.
Has nothing to do with your right to bear arms or defend yourself, or registering your rifle...has to do with war being good for business, and making people money.
A very good recent film about this topic...
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
...it has come to fruition.
I have one thing to say about owning weapons. Katrina and Marshall law.
When the roving bands come to take your food and water, or rape and kill your wife/daughter.....maybe you can throw some rocks or something. I'll be knocking them down froma safe distance humming "Oh say can you see"
Tgreene...that is the craziest home-defendo I have EVER seen.
|
|
Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
|
|
The arms trade is absolutely necessary for the US to help correct its balance of trade deficit. No way out of it unless we come up with something else to sell abroad. Suggestions?
|
|
WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
|
|
Senators and Congressmen. Sell them all and we can start over.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 7, 2006 - 05:04am PT
|
That's another system we need - one to keep track and trace each time a senator or congressman is bought and sold...
|
|
TGreene
Trad climber
Jonesboro, Arkansas
|
|
{{ That's another system we need - one to keep track and trace each time a senator or congressman is bought and sold... }}
Or behind the wheel of a car near creeks, or in DC Parks at night, or reaching into a deep freezer, or...
|
|
Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
|
|
Good stuff:
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
|
|
healyje wrote: "We do it quite well for pharmecuticals."
Uhhh... not true, based upon the many (and very large) illegal "pharmecuticals" transactions I've personally seen in my much earlier wild days. Are we REALLY "winning the war on drugs?" Have we EVER been?
Actually, has our government won ANY of its various "wars on ___" (war on poverty, war on crime... war on terrorism, to name just a few) in recent decades? Keep in mind that the USSR imploded on itself--we "won" the cold war at the cost of national debt so absurd that the phrase "mind boggling" is an outrageous euphemism.
healyje wrote: "I'd like see the average US suburb defend itself from anything. Irrespective of the presence of weapons, the idea of the average individual, neighborhood, suburb, town, or state defending itself against the 'government' is ridiculous and anachronistic in the extreme. It was a plausible concept when governments had pistols, rifles, and light canons - now it is laughable beyond words. In our obese, entertainment-based society it is simply a romanticized and vestigial myth we cling to tighter than our guns. What a joke."
So, let me get this straight. The arguement is: "Because people have turned into self-gratifying slugs who can't defend themselves against corrupt government anyway, the 'solution' is for Big Brother to take away the last line of defense they might have had. After all, everybody knows that a fat man can't shoot straight."
Funny that I don't hear anybody, including healyje, decrying ice cream!!! That damned, horrible, creation of communism to weaken our national will is RESPONSIBLE for the fact that we have a nation full of fat people who can't shoot straight! And parents just keep eating it and feeding it to their kids by the gallon!
Control ice cream! That's the real evil! Set up a government agency to monitor every carton manufactured, trace every carton to its ultimate home freezer, track how long it takes each family to consume it, issue fat vouchers to ensure that people can't MAKE themselves and their kids obese with too much of the stuff, and get those lean kids out into the woods at a young age to play airsoft until they are old enough to learn how to use real guns! SAVE LIVES! FAT KILLS!
Or, let's really get serious about security and saving lives....
With speed limits, helmet laws, and all other legislation designed to save us from ourselves and justified by appeals to "if it can save even one life...," I want to see CONSISTENCY! Highway fatalities, shootings, and accidents of all sorts, all put together, absolutely PALE in comparison to the real national tragedy.... Healyje ASSURES us that the government can effectively control every individual round of ammo, so I want airtight controls on FAT!!! We lose HUNDREDS of thousands of people in this country each year to totally preventable diseases, SOLELY so they can stuff themselves like wallowing, gluttonous pigs with atrocious, unhealthy diets! Then, as they are dying, because we live in an almost completely socialistic, hive-minded society already, we pay and pay and pay to try to save them as they die anyway! CONTROL FAT!!! SAVE LIVES!!!
If our freedoms can go right out the window on the justification of "saving lives" and "providing security," then let's get TO it and do it RIGHT! Of course I know that we will have to give up ALL of our "freedoms" (falsely so called anyway, because "you can't be free if you don't have security"), and government will have to monitor EVERY aspect of our lives, but that's a small price to pay for security (which is true freedom, after all). Always remember: if it can save even one life....
As healyje obliquely suggests, "The land of the free and the home of the brave" is a pathetic joke now anyway. The former has been made into a joke by the security-suckling pitiphiles that now populate what once WAS the latter. Let's go ALL the way and be done with it!
It's an old saw, but still rings true: "Gun control is a steady hand."
|
|
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
A gun is a gun. You are just as dead if you get shot with a .22 rimfire as you are if you catch a 7.62 out of an AK. There are a lot of idiots out there who definatly should not have firearms though. if they actually enforced the laws that we allready have it would make a big diference... Super strict laws did not prevent the canada school shooting. leagalized prostitution might help a lot. Most of these crazy bastards who go on shooting sprees just don't get laid enough..
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!