[quote]Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Excuse me, I went to a state run school and scraped together enough education to get into a decent university on a grant assisted place.
Cutting poverty is not about giving money to poor people as welfare payments. You are right about the risks of that. Cutting poverty is about having the right financial policies in place to ensure that people are not exploited by financial institutions and that the right grants and funding are in place to allow people to develop businesses and improve impoverished areas.
With this one you show your mindset. You think government is the answer. In order for the government to be giving grants it has to be taking money away from people through taxes. Because of processing fees, mismanagement, corruption, that system will always be much less efficient than merely lowering taxes which gets the government out of the way so motivated entreprenurial people can save their own money and do it themselves.
Your life in Britain has conditioned you to believe that dependence on the government is preferrable to independence. America was founded on Independence and Americans are an Indepedent people we even have a national holiday that is dedicated to Independence. This is why the British and a lot of Europeans for that matter resent Americans so much because they are deeply jealous of Americans and their Independence.
The reason why Europeans and liberals have such an intense hatred for the second amendment is because firearms enable people to be able to Independently provide their own security instead of being disabled and totally dependent on the government, like they are in Britain.
Yes there will always be violence in the world but the amount of it can be cut by improving the conditions that people live in.
[/quote]
What utter twaddle. When your country actually grows up past it’s adolescense then the rest of the world might start to take it a bit more seriously. At the moment it is seen as the brash teenager who’s got a bit of money and thinks it is the dogs bollocks. The rest of the world is busy hiding the nice china and hoping the US will get bored and go and bother someone else with it’s boorish arrogance.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
I think it is a actually pretty clear that at the time the intention was that people could have some sort of weapon that they would keep on their property and get out if the need came to form a militia. This is certainly how it used to work in the UK, people would have their weapons kept nice and safe and clean in their house, and would get them out at times of invasion etc.[/quote]
When this country was founded we still had a frontier. People on the frontier were living on their own far away from any settlements. They had to be able to protect themselves from Injuns, brigands and wild animals. The need could arise without any warning at any time of the day and people would be armed 24/7.
You fantasy of how Britain used to be is false. Historically the British would quite often leave home armed and ready to protect themsleves.
[quote]
What the amendment says nothing about though is the right to carry a gun for self defence purposes or to use the gun to defend your property.[/quote]
What’s the matter Cock can’t you understand plain English? Bear means carry. And securing yourself in a state of freedom with firearms means that you can use them to defend yourself. It would make absolutely no sense to give the right to use firearms to secure your free state if you cannot use them.
To carry from one place to another; transport.
[quote]
Now I am sure that if you asked the founding fathers they would say that of course you should be able to use your weapon to defend your property however they were living in very different times that is why there should be healthy debate about gun control. [/quote]
You need to qualify that statement because you are making absolutely no sense. What does “they were living in a very different time” mean? Other than our modern technology what is different?
Simple minded idiots may go along with you and others when you spew that lie because they don’t have the smarts to question it, but you are going to get away with it here. Nothing has changed. The human condition is the same now as it was when this country was founded.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Now I am sure that if you asked the founding fathers they would say that of course you should be able to use your weapon to defend your property however they were living in very different times that is why there should be healthy debate about gun control.
[/quote]
Wait, hold on, time out, pause…How can there be any argument about what the 2nd means, now? You’ve conceded what they intended.
[quote]Sifu drooled:
When this country was founded we still had a frontier. People on the frontier were living on their own far away from any settlements. They had to be able to protect themselves from Injuns, brigands and wild animals. The need could arise without any warning at any time of the day and people would be armed 24/7.
[/quote]
Sifu also drooled:
Way to answer your own question!
what about the other 13 definitions on that page. Anyway the point was about self defence which is not mentioned in the amendment.
…When your country actually grows up past it’s adolescense then the rest of the world might start to take it a bit more seriously. At the moment it is seen as the brash teenager who’s got a bit of money and thinks it is the dogs bollocks. The rest of the world is busy hiding the nice china and hoping the US will get bored and go and bother someone else with it’s boorish arrogance.
Now you’ve answered my twice posted question albeit indirectly. You fancy yourself the sophisticated, European intellectual and your American “friends” as romantic cowboys desperately clinging to their quaint frontier heritage. You have arrived, haven’t you, bud? Americans haven’t. So it is your duty here on the web to belittle the rednecks, safely from the confines of your hacienda of proper perception.
In this instance the boorish arrogance you mentioned resides strictly in your crock-of-shit-Cock-cranium, not north of the Rio Grande. But then again you knew that all along. You are here just playing, via the HeadHunter school of T-Nation trolling, i.e., disturbing the peace strictly for the reactions you provoke. Your Canadian ally on this thread is doing the same thing, just being arrogantly argumentative for no other reason than the thrill of the e-brawl.[/quote]
On a thread that was deliberately set up to insult another country based on a lie printed in a terrible newspaper you have the gall to accuse me of disturbing the peace for the reactions I provoke?
No, I am just pointing out the idiocy in what people like Sifu post. As for you, you are an old man who is set in his ways and gets cranky about the kids of today and their new fangled ideas. I get it. Don’t worry the nurse will be round with your medication soon.
Sifu pointed that out a page ago. Regulated doesn’t just mean “make laws banning certain things”. There are ways besides making laws to ban things to regulate something. There is a positive aspect to it as well ie: “well organized” or “well equipped”. It is only recently that the word “regulated” has become synonymous with gov’t banning things, or making laws against something.
Governments use the term regulated to assume control of a thing. Are you suggesting that the Government of the US used the term regulated in this one case differently than any government has ever used it before? You’re just reading what you want in the amendment. No government says it wants a regulated something and means “well equipped” or “well organized”. The fact that the US government used the term in the amendment implies control of the militia by the state. And the term “the people” is directly related to “the state” because that is how the amendment is structured.[/quote]
No. Gun control nuts use the term regulated in a very narrow manner to imply that the second amendment does allow them to infringe the second amendment rights. Which means that if we use their interpretation the beginning of the amendment contradicts the end of the amendment.
To properly understand what “a well regulated militia” means you need to take into consideration the events of the revolution and the standard military doctrine of the time. When the revolution first started the Continental Army was a disorganised, rag tag, band of farmers and woodsmen who were completely unschooled in even the most basic aspects of military doctrine. They did not know how to march in unison, perform the manual of arms or even maintain proper sanitation in a military encampment. Which is what they needed to know and be able to do in order to function as a cohesive force and not give each other diseases when they encamped.
It was only after the addition of a Prussian Army officer named Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben that they were able to emplement a boot camp style program of basic training at Valley Forge.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben [1] (September 17, 1730 â?? November 28, 1794) Prussian army officer who served as inspector general and Major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with teaching the Continental Army the essentials of military drill and discipline, helping to guide it to victory. He wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, the book that became the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812, and served as General George Washington’s chief of staff in the final years of the war.
Training program
Steuben’s training technique was to create a “model company”, a group of 120 chosen men who in turn successively trained other personnel at Regimental and Brigade levels. Steuben’s eclectic personality greatly enhanced his mystique. He trained the soldiers, who at this point were greatly lacking in proper clothing themselves, in full military dress uniform, swearing and yelling at them up and down in German and French. When that was no longer successful, he recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his French-speaking aide, to curse at them for him in English. Steuben introduced a system of progressive training, beginning with the school of the soldier, with and without arms, and going through the school of the regiment. This corrected the previous policy of simply assigning personnel to regiments. Each company commander was made responsible for the training of new men, but actual instruction was done by selected sergeants, the best obtainable.
Another program developed by Steuben was camp sanitation. He established standards of sanitation and camp layouts that would still be standard a century and a half later. There had previously been no set arrangement of tents and huts. Men relieved themselves where they wished and when an animal died, it was stripped of its meat and the rest was left to rot where it lay. Steuben laid out a plan to have rows for command, officers and enlisted men. Kitchens and latrines were on opposite sides of the camp, with latrines on the downhill side. There was the familiar arrangement of company and regimental streets.
Perhaps Steuben’s biggest contribution to the American Revolution was training in the use of the bayonet. Since the Battle of Bunker Hill, Americans had been mainly dependent upon using their ammunition to win battles. Throughout the early course of the war, Americans used the bayonet mostly as a cooking skewer or tool rather than as a fighting instrument. Steuben’s introduction of effective bayonet charges became crucial. In the Battle of Stony Point, American soldiers attacked with unloaded rifles and won the battle solely on Steuben’s bayonet training.
The first results of Steuben’s training were in evidence at the Battle of Barren Hill, 20 May 1778 and then again at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. Steuben, by then serving in Washington’s Headquarters, was the first to determine the enemy was heading for Monmouth. Washington recommended appointment of Steuben as Inspector General on April 30; Congress approved it on May 5. During the winter of 1778-1779, Steuben prepared Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, commonly known as the “Blue Book.”[3][4] Its basis was the training plan he had devised at Valley Forge.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
orion wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
What the amendment says nothing about though is the right to carry a gun for self defence purposes or to use the gun to defend your property.
That’s where you get nutty. Why would anyone want to give up their natural right to defend themselves or their property? You’ve admitted that you’re not a utopian and you accept that their will always be violence. What would you have to gain by giving up your right to defend yourself from that violence?
How is a gun a natural right? I still don’t get that part. Also I wasn’t arguing about the rights or wrongs of gun ownership I was pointing out that the second amendment doesn’t mention anything either way about self defence.
Don’t act stupid. Defending yourself and your property is a natural right. The second amendment doesn’t have to point out the obvious.
Defending yourself and your property is a natural right, I would agree with that for the most part, what has that got to do with guns?
Well if other people have clubs, you need a club, if they have guns you need a gun.
Ever heard of “never bring a knife to a gunfight”?
To exercise a right you need the means to exercise it.
Next you will argue that the right to life hardly includes the right to oxygen.
Oxygen is a privilege, right?
OK so if the criminals have hand grenades, rocket launchers and helicopters like they do here in Mexico does that mean I should be able to have them?
The government in the UK has nuclear submarines, where do I sign up for mine?
Your argument is clearly ridiculous unless you are saying that anyone should be able to buy anything. If you argue anything else then you come down to where the line should be drawn and guns are not therefore a natural right.[/quote]
Nuclear Submarines? So you are still resorting to over the top histrionics. What is even worse is you point out the complete failure of gun control in Mexico and then present more of your histrionics in the form of a question.
In Mexico it would do a lot to redress the balance of power between the people and the criminals if they loosened up their gun control laws.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
NinjaTreeFrog wrote:
If owning a gun is such a natural right, why is that right taken away from convicted felons who have served their sentence? Once a sentence has been served they regain their natural rights to liberty, life and property. Why not the right to defend themselves?
The reason is because guns NEED to be regulated. Ownership of a gun is not a natural right, it is a privilege. If it wasn’t, then convicted criminals who’ve done their time and the harmless but mentally insane could not, in good conscience, be denied the natural right of gun ownership.
I can see why these discussions get heated and personal. It’s like explaining life to a 2 year old.
A convicted felon, or someone who is insane has proved that he is a danger to society and is likely to misuse a gun, therefore he isn’t allowed to have them. He could still defend himself and his property, but without a gun he is at a severe disadvantage. And you say, guns need to be regulated. Well they are. Law abiding citizens can purchase a gun, felons can’t. What more do you want?
So if I commit a non violent felony, go to prison, serve my time, show contrition, turn my life around, why do I lose my natural right to defend myself?
Again, like talking to a fucking two year old. You do not lose your right to defend yourself or your property. Read before you respond. You may lose your right to do so with a gun, but different states have different laws regarding non violent felons and gun ownership.
But if the gun is a natural right then you shouldn’t lose it. If however it is a privilege that we only trust certain people with then your argument makes perfect sense.[/quote]
You are coming up with assinine bullshit. You really are an idiot.
Freedom is a right. But guess what? If you comit a crime you can lose you freedom and go to jail. That is how crime and punishment works.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
pushharder wrote:
phaethon wrote:
But New York has some of the tightest gun laws in the country and they have been getting tighter so surely the crime should be getting worse…[/quote]
That is not how things work. Once they disarmed people enough to cause a free for all it doesn’t follow that as they make the laws even tighter that the free for all is going to increase on a linear scale.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
So before guns there was no liberty?
Fuck you. You know what I mean. A lot of good people who at the time were considered British subjects lost their lives fighting the British government so they could enjoy freedom and liberty in this country. You are just another typical, shit talking, jealous, Brit who wants to get pissy because unlike the British, the Americans have not forgotten the lessons that they learned from history.
So you can’t argue the point and instead decend into insults. Typical.[/quote]
The truth hurts that is why you think I was being insulting. I wasn’t even trying to be insulting, ask around I am capable of much worse. But I have to say that being bludgeoned with your ignorance is making me feel I should give up on civility.
[quote]
To borrow a phrase from the NRA, a gun is just a tool, liberty comes from people not from tools.
Typical high minded crap that would appeal to a tosser like you.
We have liberty in this country because people had the tools to fight for it and keep it.
Again, no atempt to address the point just insults.[/quote]
Yes I did address it.
[
quote]
Innocent people die regularly due to guns in the US, they are being sacrificed for your beliefs.
According to the US Departmentof Justice there are over 400,000 people alive today because they were able to defend themselves with a gun. There are a lot more people alive than dead because of guns and the places with the highest death tolls are the ones with gun control laws that stop people from defending themselves. If anyone is dying for someone elses beliefs it is people who are dying because gun control has rendered them defenseless.
What a ridiculous statistic? That number is totally meaningless. What timescale are you talking about? how is it estimated? I have a stat for you from a report written in 2000
‘Since 1962, more than one million Americans have died in firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings.’ Trumps your 400,000.
Thank you for that. This proves the weakness of your argument. Suicides are totally irrelevant to this discussion. The total US suicide rate is still lower than many of the countries of Europe that have gun control and the number one country for suicides is Japan which has the worlds strictest gun conrol.
The only reason why you would bring such an irrelevancy into this discussion is to pad your figures to make things seem worse than they really are. And because you either think we are too stupid to realize that suicides are irrelevant or you yourself are too stupid to understand that they are irrelevant. So which one is it Cock? Did you think we are stupid or is it because you are stupid?
Without the ability for people to defend themselves we would be adding the 400,000 that are still alive to your figures, the suicide rate would not be any lower it might even be higher and the ghetto’s would be a free for all so there would be even more murders, assaults, rapes and worse gang problems.
No I plucked a random stat to show how meaningless your random stat was. Thank you for agreeing with me. [/quote]
400,000 people being alive today is not a random statistic it comes from the US Department of Justice. Insterestingly enough when Larry Elder confronted Michael Moore with that statistic his response to it was “who cares”. Which is a typical flippant attitude amongst control nuts like him and you.
No I do not agree with you. You have shown that you are so desperate to come up with something to support your arguement that you will use statistics that include irrelevancies like suicide.
[quote]
Personally I think the issue is far deeper than gun control. Whether people have guns or not, crimes happen. What needs to be worked on is the cause of those crimes. This is more important than arguing back and forth over gun control.
There is no realistic chance that within our lifetimes that all of the guns in private ownership in the US will be taken by the government. There is also no realistic chance that the UK will repeal it’s gun laws.
If there is no realistic chance that Britain will repeal it’s gun laws then there is no realistic chance that they can reduce their rising violent crime without even more draconian steps to turn the country into even more of a police state.
The US has plenty of areas that have a rising crime rate so guns are evidently not the answer.
Do you have some figures to back that up? Even if you do historically crime rates have been tied to the economy. When times are bad crime goes up. This is nothing new. The rates of increases that the US is seeing are less than Britain despite turning into an Orwellian police state to deal with it.
Which is exactly the point I was making, crime rates are not related to gun control they are related to poverty and education. You totally agree with me on this but still want to scream on about the UK being an Orwellian Police state (which also implies to me that you haven’t actually understood any Orwell.)[/quote]
No I do not agree with you at all. The economy and gun control are seperate and distinct factors that can each have it’s own affect on crime. I have been very clear and consistent in what I am saying. You are trying to play spin doctor again and it isn’t working.
Sifu pointed that out a page ago. Regulated doesn’t just mean “make laws banning certain things”. There are ways besides making laws to ban things to regulate something. There is a positive aspect to it as well ie: “well organized” or “well equipped”. It is only recently that the word “regulated” has become synonymous with gov’t banning things, or making laws against something.
Governments use the term regulated to assume control of a thing. Are you suggesting that the Government of the US used the term regulated in this one case differently than any government has ever used it before? You’re just reading what you want in the amendment. No government says it wants a regulated something and means “well equipped” or “well organized”. The fact that the US government used the term in the amendment implies control of the militia by the state. And the term “the people” is directly related to “the state” because that is how the amendment is structured.
No. Gun control nuts use the term regulated in a very narrow manner to imply that the second amendment does allow them to infringe the second amendment rights. Which means that if we use their interpretation the beginning of the amendment contradicts the end of the amendment.
To properly understand what “a well regulated militia” means you need to take into consideration the events of the revolution and the standard military doctrine of the time. When the revolution first started the Continental Army was a disorganised, rag tag, band of farmers and woodsmen who were completely unschooled in even the most basic aspects of military doctrine. They did not know how to march in unison, perform the manual of arms or even maintain proper sanitation in a military encampment. Which is what they needed to know and be able to do in order to function as a cohesive force and not give each other diseases when they encamped.
It was only after the addition of a Prussian Army officer named Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben that they were able to emplement a boot camp style program of basic training at Valley Forge.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben [1] (September 17, 1730 â?? November 28, 1794) Prussian army officer who served as inspector general and Major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with teaching the Continental Army the essentials of military drill and discipline, helping to guide it to victory. He wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, the book that became the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812, and served as General George Washington’s chief of staff in the final years of the war.
Training program
Steuben’s training technique was to create a “model company”, a group of 120 chosen men who in turn successively trained other personnel at Regimental and Brigade levels. Steuben’s eclectic personality greatly enhanced his mystique. He trained the soldiers, who at this point were greatly lacking in proper clothing themselves, in full military dress uniform, swearing and yelling at them up and down in German and French. When that was no longer successful, he recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his French-speaking aide, to curse at them for him in English. Steuben introduced a system of progressive training, beginning with the school of the soldier, with and without arms, and going through the school of the regiment. This corrected the previous policy of simply assigning personnel to regiments. Each company commander was made responsible for the training of new men, but actual instruction was done by selected sergeants, the best obtainable.
Another program developed by Steuben was camp sanitation. He established standards of sanitation and camp layouts that would still be standard a century and a half later. There had previously been no set arrangement of tents and huts. Men relieved themselves where they wished and when an animal died, it was stripped of its meat and the rest was left to rot where it lay. Steuben laid out a plan to have rows for command, officers and enlisted men. Kitchens and latrines were on opposite sides of the camp, with latrines on the downhill side. There was the familiar arrangement of company and regimental streets.
Perhaps Steuben’s biggest contribution to the American Revolution was training in the use of the bayonet. Since the Battle of Bunker Hill, Americans had been mainly dependent upon using their ammunition to win battles. Throughout the early course of the war, Americans used the bayonet mostly as a cooking skewer or tool rather than as a fighting instrument. Steuben’s introduction of effective bayonet charges became crucial. In the Battle of Stony Point, American soldiers attacked with unloaded rifles and won the battle solely on Steuben’s bayonet training.
The first results of Steuben’s training were in evidence at the Battle of Barren Hill, 20 May 1778 and then again at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. Steuben, by then serving in Washington’s Headquarters, was the first to determine the enemy was heading for Monmouth. Washington recommended appointment of Steuben as Inspector General on April 30; Congress approved it on May 5. During the winter of 1778-1779, Steuben prepared Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, commonly known as the “Blue Book.”[3][4] Its basis was the training plan he had devised at Valley Forge.
[/quote]
Interesting bit of reading. I’ve got to get some books on the American Revolution - I’ll admit that the genesis of my country is rather boring in comparison to American independence. Thanks for that.
However, I still need to disagree with the first part of what you said, namely that in my interpretation the beginning of the amendment contridicts the end. In fact, the beginning of my interpretation of the amendment contridicts your interpretation of the end. As I see in my interpretation the beginning of the amendment qualifies the ends. In puts restrictions on “arms”, which may or may not have been referring to “guns”. In an earlier post, I mentioned that “bear arms” had a particular meaning in the 18th Century - namely to bear instruments of war. This includes all sorts of tools of warfare in addition to rifles and pistols. No matter how many times I reread the amendment, with the first and second parts combined, this is how it reads. Many of you gun-rights supporters seem to read the amendment as two seperate statements. But they’re not.
One thing I will concede is that there was a precident at the time that all free men had the right to own their own guns - for hunting and protection from the wild frontier. Also, I understand that the Constitution explicitly states that the document in no way diminishes the rights of free men at all. So it seems that in America, you have the right to gun ownership based on historical precident. This individual gun ownership was not protected in the 2nd because it didn’t need to be.
I’ve also been reading a bunch of the links you’ve provided regarding violence and gun ownership, and I’ll admit that the statistics are confusing. I say confusing because for my entire life I’ve been fed the idea that more guns = more crime. Now, I haven’t vetted these stats thoroughly, so I can’t be sure that they aren’t political constructs themselves, but I am trying to be open-minded about this and see the truth amid the shit.
…the point I was making, crime rates are not related to gun control they are related to poverty and education.
I’m not getting this. You state “crime rates are not related to gun control” but you still insist on doing the rooster strut on this thread crowing about how necessary gun control is and how guns are unnecessary for self defense.
You arguments are circular. Your reasoning is brittle. And you still haven’t answered my questioned posted two days ago, "If you know that AND in your misguided opinion it doesn’t affect the crime rate AND you don’t live here, never have and likely never will, why does this issue consume you so??[/quote]
Because he is afraid that people in Briatin will wake up and see the light. It’s already happening, his type of thinking is falling into disrepute there.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Excuse me, I went to a state run school and scraped together enough education to get into a decent university on a grant assisted place.
Cutting poverty is not about giving money to poor people as welfare payments. You are right about the risks of that. Cutting poverty is about having the right financial policies in place to ensure that people are not exploited by financial institutions and that the right grants and funding are in place to allow people to develop businesses and improve impoverished areas.
With this one you show your mindset. You think government is the answer. In order for the government to be giving grants it has to be taking money away from people through taxes. Because of processing fees, mismanagement, corruption, that system will always be much less efficient than merely lowering taxes which gets the government out of the way so motivated entreprenurial people can save their own money and do it themselves.
Your life in Britain has conditioned you to believe that dependence on the government is preferrable to independence. America was founded on Independence and Americans are an Indepedent people we even have a national holiday that is dedicated to Independence. This is why the British and a lot of Europeans for that matter resent Americans so much because they are deeply jealous of Americans and their Independence.
The reason why Europeans and liberals have such an intense hatred for the second amendment is because firearms enable people to be able to Independently provide their own security instead of being disabled and totally dependent on the government, like they are in Britain.
Yes there will always be violence in the world but the amount of it can be cut by improving the conditions that people live in.
What utter twaddle. When your country actually grows up past it’s adolescense then the rest of the world might start to take it a bit more seriously. At the moment it is seen as the brash teenager who’s got a bit of money and thinks it is the dogs bollocks. The rest of the world is busy hiding the nice china and hoping the US will get bored and go and bother someone else with it’s boorish arrogance.[/quote]
If we are the adolescents then what is a Britain that still needs her majesty to play the mummy role? We aren’t the ones with vast swathes of our adult population on the dole and incapable wiping their own arse. With CCTV everywhere like some kind of high tech crib monitor. Or health and safety monitors everywhere to make sure you don’t get a boo boo. At least as an adolescent we don’t need an over bearing nanny state to change baby’s doodeed nappy’s like the British do.
You didn’t address my point that you think the government is the answer to everything. Should I take it that you concede the point?
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu drooled:
When this country was founded we still had a frontier. People on the frontier were living on their own far away from any settlements. They had to be able to protect themselves from Injuns, brigands and wild animals. The need could arise without any warning at any time of the day and people would be armed 24/7.
Sifu also drooled:
You need to qualify that statement because you are making absolutely no sense. What does “they were living in a very different time” mean? Other than our modern technology what is different?
Way to answer your own question! [/quote]
Then I will take it from your answer that you concede that I am right and that the worn out cliche of “times were very different then” is completely false.
Well I am quite certain that “bear arms” wasn’t refferring to the arms of a bear. The Supreme court ruled in the Heller case that the second amendment does grant a right to self defense so again you are wrong.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Nuclear Submarines? So you are still resorting to over the top histrionics. What is even worse is you point out the complete failure of gun control in Mexico and then present more of your histrionics in the form of a question.
[/quote]
Kind of besides the point but what is wrong with a private citizen owning a nuclear submarine? I hope he knows that a nuclear submarine isn’t a submarine with nukes :S
Of course I understand that terrorists could potentially make a bomb out of the nuclear material in the submarine; however if they could be constructed in a way that you didn’t use weapons grade material then there would be nothing wrong with owning a nuclear submarine.
Sifu pointed that out a page ago. Regulated doesn’t just mean “make laws banning certain things”. There are ways besides making laws to ban things to regulate something. There is a positive aspect to it as well ie: “well organized” or “well equipped”. It is only recently that the word “regulated” has become synonymous with gov’t banning things, or making laws against something.
Governments use the term regulated to assume control of a thing. Are you suggesting that the Government of the US used the term regulated in this one case differently than any government has ever used it before? You’re just reading what you want in the amendment. No government says it wants a regulated something and means “well equipped” or “well organized”. The fact that the US government used the term in the amendment implies control of the militia by the state. And the term “the people” is directly related to “the state” because that is how the amendment is structured.
No. Gun control nuts use the term regulated in a very narrow manner to imply that the second amendment does allow them to infringe the second amendment rights. Which means that if we use their interpretation the beginning of the amendment contradicts the end of the amendment.
To properly understand what “a well regulated militia” means you need to take into consideration the events of the revolution and the standard military doctrine of the time. When the revolution first started the Continental Army was a disorganised, rag tag, band of farmers and woodsmen who were completely unschooled in even the most basic aspects of military doctrine. They did not know how to march in unison, perform the manual of arms or even maintain proper sanitation in a military encampment. Which is what they needed to know and be able to do in order to function as a cohesive force and not give each other diseases when they encamped.
It was only after the addition of a Prussian Army officer named Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben that they were able to emplement a boot camp style program of basic training at Valley Forge.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben [1] (September 17, 1730 Ã?¢?? November 28, 1794) Prussian army officer who served as inspector general and Major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with teaching the Continental Army the essentials of military drill and discipline, helping to guide it to victory. He wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, the book that became the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812, and served as General George Washington’s chief of staff in the final years of the war.
Training program
Steuben’s training technique was to create a “model company”, a group of 120 chosen men who in turn successively trained other personnel at Regimental and Brigade levels. Steuben’s eclectic personality greatly enhanced his mystique. He trained the soldiers, who at this point were greatly lacking in proper clothing themselves, in full military dress uniform, swearing and yelling at them up and down in German and French. When that was no longer successful, he recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his French-speaking aide, to curse at them for him in English. Steuben introduced a system of progressive training, beginning with the school of the soldier, with and without arms, and going through the school of the regiment. This corrected the previous policy of simply assigning personnel to regiments. Each company commander was made responsible for the training of new men, but actual instruction was done by selected sergeants, the best obtainable.
Another program developed by Steuben was camp sanitation. He established standards of sanitation and camp layouts that would still be standard a century and a half later. There had previously been no set arrangement of tents and huts. Men relieved themselves where they wished and when an animal died, it was stripped of its meat and the rest was left to rot where it lay. Steuben laid out a plan to have rows for command, officers and enlisted men. Kitchens and latrines were on opposite sides of the camp, with latrines on the downhill side. There was the familiar arrangement of company and regimental streets.
Perhaps Steuben’s biggest contribution to the American Revolution was training in the use of the bayonet. Since the Battle of Bunker Hill, Americans had been mainly dependent upon using their ammunition to win battles. Throughout the early course of the war, Americans used the bayonet mostly as a cooking skewer or tool rather than as a fighting instrument. Steuben’s introduction of effective bayonet charges became crucial. In the Battle of Stony Point, American soldiers attacked with unloaded rifles and won the battle solely on Steuben’s bayonet training.
The first results of Steuben’s training were in evidence at the Battle of Barren Hill, 20 May 1778 and then again at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. Steuben, by then serving in Washington’s Headquarters, was the first to determine the enemy was heading for Monmouth. Washington recommended appointment of Steuben as Inspector General on April 30; Congress approved it on May 5. During the winter of 1778-1779, Steuben prepared Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, commonly known as the “Blue Book.”[3][4] Its basis was the training plan he had devised at Valley Forge.
Interesting bit of reading. I’ve got to get some books on the American Revolution - I’ll admit that the genesis of my country is rather boring in comparison to American independence. Thanks for that.
However, I still need to disagree with the first part of what you said, namely that in my interpretation the beginning of the amendment contridicts the end. In fact, the beginning of my interpretation of the amendment contridicts your interpretation of the end. As I see in my interpretation the beginning of the amendment qualifies the ends. In puts restrictions on “arms”, which may or may not have been referring to “guns”. In an earlier post, I mentioned that “bear arms” had a particular meaning in the 18th Century - namely to bear instruments of war. This includes all sorts of tools of warfare in addition to rifles and pistols. No matter how many times I reread the amendment, with the first and second parts combined, this is how it reads. Many of you gun-rights supporters seem to read the amendment as two seperate statements. But they’re not.
One thing I will concede is that there was a precident at the time that all free men had the right to own their own guns - for hunting and protection from the wild frontier. Also, I understand that the Constitution explicitly states that the document in no way diminishes the rights of free men at all. So it seems that in America, you have the right to gun ownership based on historical precident. This individual gun ownership was not protected in the 2nd because it didn’t need to be.
I’ve also been reading a bunch of the links you’ve provided regarding violence and gun ownership, and I’ll admit that the statistics are confusing. I say confusing because for my entire life I’ve been fed the idea that more guns = more crime. Now, I haven’t vetted these stats thoroughly, so I can’t be sure that they aren’t political constructs themselves, but I am trying to be open-minded about this and see the truth amid the shit.[/quote]
When you look at the historical context of how the army got it’s first training in how to do things like marching or putting latrines at the edge of an encampment you can see how well regulated can mean a lot more than just having rules limiting a right that is not supposed to be infringed.
I have lived and worked in the city of Detroit so I have first hand experience with how gun control laws work in the real world. They really are not stopping the bad people from getting guns but on the other hand if you respect the law your reward is that if you run into a bad guy you are completely defenseless and at their mercy. I know people who own party stores and gas stations in the city who could not stay in business there if they could not arm themselves. I know people who have to have a gun in their hand when they come out of their store and close up at night to go home. Before the law changed to allow CCW’s when they got into the suburbs they had to worry about getting pulled over for a speeding ticket or a tailight out and have that snowball into a felony firearms charge. It was a really unfair situation.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
orion wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Uncle Gabby wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
What the amendment says nothing about though is the right to carry a gun for self defence purposes or to use the gun to defend your property.
That’s where you get nutty. Why would anyone want to give up their natural right to defend themselves or their property? You’ve admitted that you’re not a utopian and you accept that their will always be violence. What would you have to gain by giving up your right to defend yourself from that violence?
How is a gun a natural right? I still don’t get that part. Also I wasn’t arguing about the rights or wrongs of gun ownership I was pointing out that the second amendment doesn’t mention anything either way about self defence.
Don’t act stupid. Defending yourself and your property is a natural right. The second amendment doesn’t have to point out the obvious.
Defending yourself and your property is a natural right, I would agree with that for the most part, what has that got to do with guns?
Well if other people have clubs, you need a club, if they have guns you need a gun.
Ever heard of “never bring a knife to a gunfight”?
To exercise a right you need the means to exercise it.
Next you will argue that the right to life hardly includes the right to oxygen.
Oxygen is a privilege, right?
OK so if the criminals have hand grenades, rocket launchers and helicopters like they do here in Mexico does that mean I should be able to have them?
The government in the UK has nuclear submarines, where do I sign up for mine?
Your argument is clearly ridiculous unless you are saying that anyone should be able to buy anything. If you argue anything else then you come down to where the line should be drawn and guns are not therefore a natural right.
Nuclear Submarines? So you are still resorting to over the top histrionics. What is even worse is you point out the complete failure of gun control in Mexico and then present more of your histrionics in the form of a question.
In Mexico it would do a lot to redress the balance of power between the people and the criminals if they loosened up their gun control laws. [/quote]
How is it histrionics? Where do you draw the line as to what arms someone has the right to bear? Either you allow them free rein to use whatever they want or you decide that some weapons are not practical for the public. If you decide that some weapons are not practical, where is that line?
Personally I don’t have a problem with private gun ownership as long as that person can show that they are responsible and well trained enough to handle the gun.
We expect people to pass a test before they drive on the roads but in some states I can just wander into a store and buy a gun. That doesn’t make sense to me/