http://www.gunfacts.info/
Great stuff, the author points out sources for his info too.
As for the 2a being written for a well regulated militia, perhaps you should read it more closely.


http://www.gunfacts.info/
Great stuff, the author points out sources for his info too.
As for the 2a being written for a well regulated militia, perhaps you should read it more closely.




Sort of. You have to keep in mind that there was private ownership of warships in the 1700's. Nobody needs a dozen deck-mounted cannon for home defense.
The way I see it, you have to look at a number of aspects of society from that period. The focus was that you weren't supposed to have to rely on the government for your own defense, not just as individuals but as a community. If you had ships, you could have your own navy to protect them. If you OWNED a town, and several people did, you could have your own, private militia and police.
Back before the civil war, whether as colonies or states under the Articles of Confederation, places like Pennsylvania and Delaware and Maryland were supposed to act as independent nations, with their own militaries. Occasionally, they did set up to shoot at one another.
After the civil war, the federal government federalized national military actions and centralized the means and authority for the use of force. This is a fundamental change from the context of the 'founding fathers' on a scale even more profound than that of the pre-civil war regulation of slave ownership.
Really, original intent is not that relevant, but it is the means by which the Supreme Court reviews legislation, so it defines the terms of the conflict. Everything would be avoided if the Congress simply repealed the second amendment, like it repealed prohibition. Instead, Congress and the individual states act through legislation, which is easier to pass and easier to amend, but requires the constittutional review of the Supreme Court on the issue.
The fundamental arguments are that people should leave all law enforcement, use of force and defense issues to the government or that people should be responsbile for themselves and involve the government only in those situations where someone has a disproportionate ability to manipulate the relevant social group (like when dealing with unions or organized crime figures, depending on your views of who is or is not a villain).
The people drafting the bans hope they can have them passed because it is easy to argue that other people should not be allowed to own or use things easily adapted to the purpose of hurting other people, since most of the anecdotal references to the use of such things involves the hurting of those other people. The people against the bans hope they can block them because the bans aren't related to actual risks or actual harm, and allow the people promoting the bans to manipulate the public into limiting access to guns on a purely emotional basis, which paves the way for future arguments as public standards of behavior change.
Notions of people being able to defend themselves from the goverment are out off date, as illustrated by the extraction of Elian Gonzales back in the 90's. No private militia is going to have enough guns to stand up to federal law enforcement groups, and against the US military, any direct confrontation would have the same result as with the former Iraqi army.
Civillian disarmament isn't about preempting the ability to confront a totalitarian state. With the Patriot Act, we're already voting to implement one. It's about managing the degree of deference and argument directed to the resulting authority.
Better surveillance will have a result of decreasing crime, and if a gun ban is instituted, it will be credited with that effect. I don't expect that it will have any actual effect on crime or on violence or on gun-related accidents.
Last edited by maximvsv; 04-08-2007 at 09:58 AM.





Probably half toe households in the Us have a gun somewhere inside. Buthow many of those households can reliably use it to protect themselves from an intruder? I know many regard hunting as an enjoyable sport, sometimes with even a little edible reward, and I know a few people enjoy survivalist lifestyles; those can justify gun ownership. Pistols are concealable, but rifles and shotguns are harder to hide. Seems to me that owning concealable weapons has much less justification. I can see no justification for semi-automatic weapons. Probably the only justification for mass ownership is for protection against criminals.
Even here it is a tricky thing.With our judicial system as it is, if you defend yourself in you home with a weapon, the criminal often has a right to sue you for damages, at least if he does not shoot first. My friend says, if you shoot for protection, do as the police do and shoot to kill. Problem is that you only get one shot for such, or you may get into big trouble with the police too.
I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.
Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.
NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.
Some facts vs. myths you may hold regarding guns:
The Cold, Hard Facts About Guns
by
John R. Lott, Jr.
America may indeed be obsessed with guns, but much of what passes as fact simply isn't true. The news media's focus on only tragic outcomes, while ignoring tragic events that were avoided, may be responsible for some misimpressions. Horrific events like the recent shooting in Arkansas receive massive news coverage, as they should, but the 2.5 million times each year that people use guns defensively are never discussed--including cases where public shootings are stopped before they happen.
Unfortunately, these misimpressions have real costs for people's safety. Many myths needlessly frighten people and prevent them from defending themselves most effectively.
Myth No. 1: When one is attacked, passive behavior is the safest approach.The Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with a gun. Men also benefit from using a gun, but the benefits are smaller: offering no resistance is 1.4 times more likely to result in serious injury than resisting with a gun.
Myth No. 2: Friends or relatives are the most likely killers.The myth is usually based on two claims: 1) 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances and 2) anyone could be a murderer.
With the broad definition of "acquaintances" used in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, most victims are indeed classified as knowing their killer. However, what is not made clear is that acquaintance murder primarily includes drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by first-time customers, gang members killing other gang members, prostitutes killed by their clients, and so on. Only one city, Chicago, reports a precise breakdown on the nature of acquaintance killings: between 1990 and 1995 just 17 percent of murder victims were either family members, friends, neighbors and/or roommates.
Murderers also are not your average citizen. For example, about 90 percent of adult murderers have already had a criminal record as an adult. Murderers are overwhelmingly young males with low IQs and who have difficult times getting along with others. Furthermore, unfortunately, murder is disproportionately committed against blacks and by blacks.
Myth No. 3: The United States has such a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns.There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as Americans, yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40 percent lower than Germany's, and New Zealand had one lower than Australia's. Finland and Sweden have very different gun ownership rates, but very similar murder rates. Israel, with a higher gun ownership rate than the U.S., has a murder rate 40 percent below Canada's. When one studies all countries rather than just a select few as is usually done, there is absolutely no relationship between gun ownership and murder.
Myth No. 4: If law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry concealed handguns, people will end up shooting each other after traffic accidents as well as accidentally shooting police officers.Millions of people currently hold concealed handgun permits, and some states have issued them for as long as 60 years. Yet, only one permit holder has ever been arrested for using a concealed handgun after a traffic accident and that case was ruled as self-defense. The type of person willing to go through the permitting process is extremely law-abiding. In Florida, almost 444,000 licenses were granted from 1987 to 1997, but only 84 people have lost their licenses for felonies involving firearms. Most violations that lead to permits being revoked involve accidentally carrying a gun into restricted areas, like airports or schools. In Virginia, not a single permit holder has committed a violent crime. Similarly encouraging results have been reported for Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee (the only other states where information is available).
Myth No. 5: The family gun is more likely to kill you or someone you know than to kill in self-defense.The studies yielding such numbers never actually inquired as to whose gun was used in the killing. Instead, if a household owned a gun and if a person in that household or someone they knew was shot to death while in the home, the gun in the household was blamed. In fact, virtually all the killings in these studies were committed by guns brought in by an intruder. No more than four percent of the gun deaths can be attributed to the homeowner's gun. The very fact that most people were killed by intruders also surely raises questions about why they owned guns in the first place and whether they had sufficient protection.
How many attacks have been deterred from ever occurring by the potential victims owning a gun? My own research finds that more concealed handguns, and increased gun ownership generally, unambiguously deter murders, robbery, and aggravated assaults. This is also in line with the well-known fact that criminals prefer attacking victims that they consider weak.
These are only some of the myths about guns and crime that drive the public policy debate. We must not lose sight of the ultimate question: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save lives? The evidence strongly indicates that it does.
Dr. John Lott, Jr. is the John M. Olin law and economics fellow at the University of Chicago School of Law
A cunning linguist...





Sounds like this Dr John Lott is an expert defense witness.
Anyway, what do you think I was incorrect about?
I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.
Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.
NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.
You were using a fair number of generalizations that we do have figures for, such as the number of people (approximately) who use guns defensively and we know the outcomes which speaks directly to your question “But how many of those households can reliably use it to protect themselves from an intruder?” Or your comments on concealed handguns when studies find states that passed CCW laws had a decrease in crime as more law abiding citizens carried concealed weapons, as pointed out in other places in the thread and the article below.
Other comments regarding “justification” and semi auto guns tells me you hold some of the myths and or don’t know much about guns in general.
Your comments on the legal issues of self defense are also overly simple, and BTW, police do not “shoot to kill” they shoot to stop the threat. There is a difference between them, etc, etc.
I have posted more than enough reading and URLs in this thread for anyone really interested in the topic of guns, so no reason to beat the dead horse. Here’s a short article on guns and women I like, and seems especially applicable given the community of women who frequent this forum:
WOMEN, 911 AND GUNS
American women are often taught to rely on emergency 911 police
responses in the event of physical aggression. Unfortunately, more
than 95 percent of 911 calls are not dispatched to police in time to
stop a crime or arrest a suspect.
This sad statistic is unlikely to improve significantly in the near
future because almost every state has ruled that police have no legal
obligation to protect citizens from crime.
The slowness of 911 emergency response -- and the ineffectiveness of
restraining orders issued by today's courts -- suggests that
self-defense may be a better option, according to attorneys Richard
Stevens, Hugo Teufel and Matthew Biscan.
"A woman with a firearm...can credibly threaten and deter an attacker
of any size, shape, or strength," they write in THE WOMEN'S
QUARTERLY. "Even though weaker and unskilled in the use of firearms,
she can sometimes protect herself with a sidearm without firing a
shot. In more than 92 percent of defensive gun uses, the defender
succeeds by firing only a warning shot or never firing the gun at
all." (The article is excerpted from their chapter in the Independent
Institute book LIBERTY FOR WOMEN: Freedom and Feminism in the
Twenty-first Century, edited by Wendy McElroy.)
The above may help explain why, in recent years, women have
reportedly purchased firearms and enrolled in gun-safety classes in
record numbers.
Stevens, Teufel and Biscan conclude: "Individual women in peril quite
frequently fare better when they develop skill and confidence in the
carrying and using of defensive firearms. Victim disarmament ("gun
control") laws that discourage women from developing the skills and
using defensive firearms actually heighten the risks of criminal
violence that women face. Such laws place women at a disadvantage
against violent men and run against the feminist goal of equal
treatment under the law."
See "Disarming Women," by Richard W. Stevens, Hugo Teufel III, and
Matthew Y. Biscan (THE WOMEN'S QUARTERLY, Summer 2002)
http://www.independent.org/tii/light...ink4-30-3.html
A longer version of this article appears in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN:
Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Wendy
McElroy. See http://independent.org/tii/content/briefs/b_lfw.html
************************************************** *********************
Professor Joseph Olson Hamline University School of Law
<[email protected]>
Last edited by Will; 04-10-2007 at 10:32 AM.
A cunning linguist...



Isocrates: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”





Cowboys in white hats shoot to disarm or disable. Cops shoot to kill, as the chest is a bigger target. They certaily do not shoot in the chest to disarm. I was quoting some news source (CBS or CNN) on the percentage of households. At least two problems with household gun protection - the gun is not where you are when you need it, and the robber/etc has a gun trained on you before you have one trained on him or he overpowers you or he's there to steal your gun, etc. Still if most households had a weapon for protection the number of robberys etc might decrease if you assume the perpetrators are rational enough to calculate odds. And I guess I can see one use for semi-auto's, make sure you kill the bear or puma (or murderer or drugged up armed robber) before he kills you. I know criminals have guns and I don't so that gives them a big advantage. But where did the criminal get the gun? Some of this is tongue-in-cheek, but I'm trying to be neutral here and see both sides.
End of comments.
I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.
Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.
NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.
False. You didn’t read my comments correctly. I didn’t say disarm, I said stop the threat vs shoot to kill. There are very specific differences between them both physical and legal.
As you state below, tongue-in-cheek is the above. You are speculating on various scenarios vs using the actual data that exists. What matters is not a specific possible scenario but the data that exists that examines whether or not the net effect of law abiding citizens having guns is a net negative or positive on crime rates, etc. So far, the data, some of which I has supplied, points strongly to a net positive for citizens. If this topic interests you, additional resources can be supplied.
No doubt!
Criminals get their guns from various sources, but get them they will period.
You promise?![]()
A cunning linguist...





Then you should read my response to that exact same post.
Because of todays events 16 April, 2007 this author has decided to place for free the .PDF version of his book.
Last edited by ArmySGT.; 04-16-2007 at 06:20 PM.


I want to bump this thread.
BUMP!
This is so great, and wonder how many people that felt this way in 07 have been manipulated by the media and all this gun control craziness.
I personally like the pirate idea. :-)
I know it was mentioned that the founding fathers didn't have a clue about the type of weapons that would exist, but the same goes for government and military.
Their weaponry technology is was more advanced that assault weapons and automatics.
Bookmarks