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very, very good news...............

  • #21
but the issue becomes that the 2nd amendment gives all the others teeth.......with out the second how do you defend all the rest?.....as far as liberal stuff....i dont understand how some of the other "liberal" stuff would come infront of the supreme court....gay marriage, we are guarenteed "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" if marrying a guy makes you happy i dont see the issue so long as its between concenting adults......sure isnt anything in the constitution against it.......one guy wants 3 wives? so long as its concenting adults who gives a rats rear what goes on behind closed doors......on the eminant domain case they ruled on, they ruled like the constitution says, however strongly stated that individual states can write their own laws preventing state and local agencies from doing it if they wish as the law only says what the feds can do and local laws can control local government on the issue, with no local laws on the issue it automatically goes by the federal law.....
 
  • #22
The Constitution needs to be amended to recognize a couple of hundred years of social change and to allow State and local governments to protect their citizenry by banning guns.
Lets pretend that a city completely banned guns to protect it's citizens. Oh wait I don't think we have to pretend or imagine what will happen. DC banned anything that shoots and it became the murder capital of the nation.

The old saying is so true, when you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have a gun.

We need to put our effort into taking the guns out of the hands of criminals. We also need to develop the technology that will only let certain people fire a certain gun.

I don't think that the pros of having a gun outweigh the cons of accidents (6 year old killing 8 year old sibling)
I can tell you about the story of a girl that I knew when I was in the 8th grade. Her parents left a 30/30 in a van while they went inside a phone company to pay their phone bill. The girls brother accidentally shot her in the neck and killed her. The fault was with the parents not the gun.

I can also tell you a story that happened to me. To make a long story short. I was at a place where a man was trying to stab two woman. There was a 5 or 6 year old girl in the same room. In the house were more little kids. I grabbed my gun and without even having to point the gun or say anything to the person he decided to stop and leave. He was arrested.

This situation could have turned out way different. At the very least that gun saved the lives of two women, and probably that little girl. It also possible save the live of the other kids in the house.

Guns in the hands of responsible citizens pose NO danger to the public. Weapons in the hands of unstable people or criminals are a great menace to our society.
 
  • #23
for the record.......since your not sure on some of the supreme court stuff Ozzy

Justices who voted for Heller(gun owners) and who appointed them
Roberts - Bush Jr.
Scalia - Reagan
Kennedy - Reagan
Thomas - Bush Sr.
Alito - Bush Jr.

Justices who voted against Heller(gun owners) and who appointed them
Stevens - Ford
Souter - Bush Sr.
Ginsburg - Clinton
Breyer - Clinton

and from the looks of things to come the next president will appoint atleast one if not 2 Justices to the court.....this is the true power of any president......
 
  • #24
It was not the gun's fault. It was the parent's. The child could have stabbed the other one with a kitchen knife, but we aren't suggesting we ban knives. The parent's were irrresponsible and had no place having a gun if that's the best they can do. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. It's like saying "Cars kill people". No they don't. If you don't get in a car, it's not going to do anything but sit there. Drugs don't kill people. A bottle of aspirin is not going to kill you, but you can kill yourself if you take the whole thing. All of these things have something in common. They are inanimate objects. They can't do ANYTHING or hurt ANYONE unless a human intervenes and misuses one.

Kids today are stupid as hell. Anyone who would play with a gun fast the age of five as if it is a toy is absolutely stupid. Any parents who allow their kids to have access to a gun, even for a second, are in no position to have custody of children or a gun if that's the best job they can do.


Max, you DO support tighter gun control though, right?
 
  • #25
what do you mean tighter gun control.....there are something like 3000 gun laws on the books....im allfor inforcing curent laws and strict punishment of violent crime where a gun was used but we sure dont need more gun laws....hell i live in one of the states with only the federal laws and none of its owned and every time i buya gun from a store they call the feds on me for a background check everytime, even though ive bought a dozen guns from the one store alone

as far as keeping guns out of the hands of kids i grrew up with guns never being locked up and never had an issue with anyone in my large extended family other than one cousin who did something stupid while crossing a fence while holding a pellet gun.....a couple of my rifles are generally within easy access of the girls and they never pay them any attention to them....why? cause i let them hold them everytime they ask...i have watched them ignore a 22 leaning against the couch for a month and never even notice it till i tell them to grab it, we are going out shooting....the girls have been around guns for as long as they have known me and dont find them any more interesting than a hammer laying on a table...course they have also been taken hunting alot and have seen what happens when a bullet hits flesh....they know guns arent toys and do not treat them as toys
 
  • #26
See my above post. I think it's too easy to get a gun.

A pellet gun isn't quite the same, but IMO children should not have guns, even pellet guns. How old are your kids? Eight? I thought your daughter was like... 13 or 14. That's old enough to be trusted to not kill themselves with.. but I still wouldn't give them a gun if they were my kids. I'm just not trusting. One kid in the eight grade blew his brains out while cleaning a gun. Somehow, an eighth grader was stupid enough to look down the barrel of a gun and pull the trigger while cleaning it. That is profoundly retarded and I'm a d ick for saying this, but at least he didn't breed. When I say children, I mean children children. If you let an eight year old have access to a gun, you don't need the gun or the kid in my opinion. Children are unpredictable and lack the comprehension necessary to use a gun. Until they can have political discussions about gun laws and know what's going on, they really shouldn't have a gun in my opinion :p You see seven, eight, nine and ten year old kids who kill animals in hunting magazines all the time. They had no business with a weapon regardless if there parent was there or not. I don't think anyone under 16 really had any business using one.
 
  • #27
Max, you DO support tighter gun control though, right?

It depends. Tighter than whose? Every state seems to have different rules, some of them too lax, some of them too tight. It's WAYYY too easy to get guns in some states, and places like California have too many arbitrary restrictions on what sort of guns you can have. So I'd tighten some places and loosen others.

Max
 
  • #28
I meant in general :p Overall, I believe the country in general is too lax on guns laws.

There are lots of arbitrary laws about everything :p I guess we have to keep the legislative branch busy somehow lmao.
 
  • #29
lets put it this way, guns have been in easy reach of both girls since they were atleast 6 if not younger.....took a couple months of instruction plus them witnessing a deer being head shot by their grandpa to get the idea that guns arent toys, the oldest starts hunting this fall the youngest cant wait to start when she hits 12......both have been present for most of the critters killed in the last 6 years, have watched the animal be shot, have seen upclose the damage a bullet on flesh does, has been present and helped gut the animal and help butcher it and put it in the freezer.....i dont care how young someone is watching a living creatures head explode gets the point across 100% that you do not point a gun at something you are not willing to destroy.....i trust the girls with my life, however i do not trust their friends which is why there is no friends in the house if we arent there......

i grew up at my grandfathers farm where there was ALWAYS a rifle leaning next to the front door......24 different grandchildren ranging from babies to teenagers running around the house at various times from 7 very different families and not one kid touched the rifle without asking......we got Kate a rifle for x-mas when she was 11, i had my first rifle....KEPT IN MY ROOM at 12.....course i also carried a pocket knife to school post Columbine as well as having a truck parked across the street from the school loaded up with hunting gear and every teacher in the place knew we had "high powered sniper rifles" in the truck and no one batted an eye.....hell my calculus teacher knew i carried a pocket knife and occasionally asked to borrow it in class......education trumps legislation every time........you murder someone in the commission of a crime, i say light the SOB up in the electric chair.....but there is no reason any law abiding citizen should not be able to get their hands on what ever they want when ever they want.....they are by definition in this country innocent of any crimes so why make it difficult to get them for law abiding citizens....
 
  • #30
I'm glad you trust six year olds that much. I am NOT saying that there aren't six you old who can't respect boundaries. There absolutely are. I'm just saying I don't trust them. Even my own kids if I had some. The most I would let a kid have is a BB gun and only if they absolutely refused to have a paintball gun instead :p But it's very easy for me to say these things. I never had any interest whatsoever in guns. My rents bought me a RedRider BB gun as a kid and I never touched it :p I'm not into hunting or archery either. Really the opposite of my dad lmao. The most Involvement I'll have with his hobby is helping him pull deer (and one bear :p ) out of the woods. Personally, I have no ethical problems with hunting. I eat animals he's killed, and I don't care if he or anyone else does it. I just couldn't bring myself to personally kill my own food. Just like I couldn't bring myself to have an abortion if I were a woman, but I support pro-choice ideology 100% and wouldn't think more or less of a woman if she decided not to or to have an abortion respectively. Maybe I'm a hypocrite lol.

I'll also be the first to say that kids from when you were growing up on your grandparents' farm are a lot different today. Had I been around back then, I probably would have trusted kids younger than sixteen. Even preteen from the 90's are different from the preteens of today. Is it me or are they getting dumber and less responsible?

A law abiding citizen is perfectly able to be absolutely nuts and go on a killing spree with a knife or gun without breaking the law prior to that. It is a crime to bring a weapon into school, so by definition they are not innocent. Even if they didn't use it or take it out off their pocket, it's a crime to possess it. It's not about whether or not they will do it, it's about circumventing the opportunity for it to happen. If it were legal, the teacher may see it and think nothing of it. An hour later they just may be a dead body with a slit throat in the bathroom. That's why it's illegal, so the teacher could have addressed the possession of a knife before someone died instead of ignoring it. I remember a story of a girl who got in trouble because her Tweet Bird key chain had a chain longer than some predetermined length, and so she got suspended. That's ridiculous. That's a weapon, but not pencils, pens, and scissors which flow like wine in any school? OK.


There was a guy who had like a six inch knife in the eighth grade showing it off to us. In fact, he was my best friends boyfriend and we had always been on good terms. I reported him (without anyone knowing it was me, of course) because he said he was going to go on a rampage. Literally, that's what he said. He had a smile on his face and the guys beside me were laughing like it was a joke. It may have honestly been a joke, and it probably was, but the columbine dudes' friends thought they were joking, didn't they? They weren't. I don't play around and I don't take chances with the lives of other people (maybe my own :p) If he HAD killed someone, I would have had to live with the thought that I could have done something, but didn't. He went to alternative school for like a year. You may think I'm a d ick for doing what I did, but I'd rather be a d ick that possibly prevented a murder than someone who kept my mouth shut and let someone die.
 
  • #31
you do realize i graduated high school in 2000........i was in school when Columbine occured.....watched it live in a history class as a matter of fact.......
 
  • #32
A law abiding citizen is perfectly able to be absolutely nuts and go on a killing spree with a knife or gun without breaking the law prior to that.

i take it you want to issue everyone bubble wrap armor and safety helmets to.....cause either we are a free society to do as we wish UNTIL we break the law or we are a nanny state that takes everything away so we cant accidentally hurt ourselves for our own good........
 
  • #33
yes but the supreme court has also ruled that it is not the polices job to protect you from an attack....their job is to arrest the perpitrator and haul them infront of a jury of their peers for punishment.....State and Local governments are not required to provide you with personal protection...thats YOUR JOB...its YOUR job to lock your door not the polices job to keep someone from walking into your house....


It's easier to defend yourself if the attacker doesn't have a gun, even if you don't.

Gun ownership is a throwback to the days of the Wild West. Gun ownership might be justifiable in sparsely populated rural areas, but not in densely populated urban areas.

Among the various states the murder rate varies directly with the rate of gun ownership.
 
  • #34
your right.....its lower in the states that have the most lax gun laws....places like the DC area Illinois, California, New York with the strictest gun laws have the highest rates of gun violence....states with liberal gun laws like Florida tend to have lower gun violence rates....

not to mention you should read up on the "wild west" per capita gun violence was much less in the "wild west" than in present day gun fights were few and far between which is why things such as the OK Corral shootout are so famous THEY WERE THE EXCEPTION....everyone was armed, everyone knew it....other than the occational hothead ppl were quite polite to one another because of it...

btw if you look up various places such as Japan where gun ownership is rare they have actually quite high murder rates from guns considering no one is supposed to have them.....you are never going to get rid og guns, hell some compare the number of AK 47's in the world to grains of sand on a beach.....to think your going to rid the world of guns, well you must be smoking really good stuff....besides all your doing is making criminals out of normally law abiding citizens....the criminals will not turn in their guns......so criminals will have guns and those that dont will be the law abiding citizens who now have to try and defend themselves with kitchen knives.....

hell just look at England and Austrailia...both have outlawed handguns owned by private citizens and murder rates, via hand guns are screaming through the roof.......
 
  • #35
Just for the record, the states with the highest rates of gun violence are Louisiana, Maryland, and Mississippi.

In the US we have 2.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people.
The UK has 0.12 per 100,000 people.

Capslock
 
  • #36
yes but the UK rate has been climbing steadily since they went to town outlawing firearms....same with Australia....their crime rates were going down BEFORE their gun bans....after the bans they started going up

BTW should have stated in the original places like Cali, NY and such have some of the higher.....well out of proportion given they have the stricter laws....
 
  • #37
hmmmmm bout ever study i can find, and everyone please search for their selves, murder rates and violent crime are actually dropping quite steadily in the US overall, murder rates especially have dropped like a rock since the 80's yet nothing has changed as far as guns being less availible to the general public...just as easy to get them now as in the 70's......however in countries like England, Austrailia, Germany, France ect. these rates are climbing, some years making remarkable jumps especially in Australia in the years after the 1996 ban.....
 
  • #38
Murder (and crime) rates tend to track with poverty more than gun laws. Gun laws take a LONG time to take effect, since there are so many guns out there already in the US. Plus, in California, while we have some odd gun laws that are arbitrary and restrictive, we are nevertheless able to assemble a vast and lethal arsenal of various types of guns in no time at all. The restrictions we have will have almost no effect on gun violence in general.

Three things make me a gun rights supporter:
1) My reading of the 2nd amendment is that it clearly gives us this right.
2) I may need a gun for self defense against criminals, a govt. gone crazy, foreign invaders, zombies, who knows?
3) We already have so many guns in the public that even total bans would take decades to thin the number of guns out there. For those decades, mostly criminals alone will be armed.

Having said that, it's pretty clear that our gun culture also makes us a relatively violent country. Our violent crime rates are high by international standards. It IS a valid choice for a country to ban guns, but I feel like we're already too far along our path to change our minds about it.

Capslock
 
  • #39
the only modern first world country that has even half way come close to success, and mind you it is a very limited success on gun control, is Japan, and the only reason it has half way worked there is that they are a "western" country with ZERO gun heritage, they were still holding on to the samurai culture during WWII....all Europeans, but especially the English, Germans and Italians(along with their colonies), have a very rich gun heritage, same with Switzerland......
 
  • #40
It is said that, "Guns don't kill. People do." But what are people using to kill? They use whatever they have available. If it's a gun... they use it. In a headline from last year a totally fed up pastor's wife used the gun in the house to kill her husband. Why was the gun there in the first place.... self defense? Protection? From whom? Well I'm sure the pastor wasn't thinking his old lady would do him in!

And what about Lorena Bobbitt? Man, if she had a gun handy, instead of a pair of scissors, her jerk of a husband wouldn't have lived to say, (after a sewing operation) "Thanks, man.... wanna beer?"
 
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