Originally Posted by: orangebloodOkay, The Bill of Rights (which I have studied extensively) does not guarantee the right to own an uzi. It grants the right to bear arms for the purposes of Militia defense. That's all well and good when the idea of a big arsenal was a whole bunch of muzzleloaders that wouldn't put a dent in a twinkie at 50 yards.[/quote]
For one, the Bill of Rights reads "shall not be infringed." That sounds a lot more like "you have the right be a gun nut if you want" than it does "OK, you can be armed but not too well armed." It's also much more in line with a lot of the Scottish philosophers and thinkers whom inspired much of the Revolutionary movement here in America. Remember: This was a time when military state of the art and "common" weaponry were one and the same. Any old schmuck who had the money could build a battery of cannons if he wanted to and nobody would bat an eye about it.

Second, have you ever even SHOT one of those period muzzle loading rifles? They may not have a high rate of fire, but they do an INCREDIBLE amount of damage. The balls they shot were easily two or three times the mass of your average round shot out of a gun today and there were some DAMN good shots running around the colonies at that time.

Third, legal gun owners are not and never have been the problem. The overwhelming majority of gun crimes are committed by people who have been previously convicted of felonies (and therefore aren't legally allowed to own ANY gun anyway) and using guns bought on the black market. This is because legally bought guns are easily tracable and using one to commit a crime essentially hands the prosecutor your conviction with a pretty red bow on it.

Originally Posted by: orangebloodIMHO and in the opinion of many lawmakers in this country this particular article needs to be re-written to allow the right to own a weapon without granting the right to start an armory. This argument about rights for the sake of rights is idiotic. This article was put in place to allow militiamen to own weapons to protect from British invasion because we didn't have good military support at the time.

And because, in the event that the government they established ever stopped being what they designed it to be, they wanted the people to have the means to overthrow it... That's going to take an arsenal or two.



[QUOTE=orangeblood]The need for such a provision for the sake of Militia support is obsolete at best in this country. While I do feel that a right to own a weapon should be part of our constitution...I question the rationality and reason behind an obsolete article that allows any idiot out there to own an automatic weapon with which they could mow down a whole group of people in seconds.

Nevermind that violent crime and gun crime bears a consistently inverse corellation to gun ownership in this country (with states allowing concealed-carry permits showing the most rapid drops in crime rates), "any idiot out there" can buy any sub machine gun or assault weapon he or she wants no matter what the law says -- the UK and Austrailia are discovering this right now.

What there is a demand for, the black market will ALWAYS supply. Time and time again, it has been proven that outlawing something only takes it away from the people who choose to obey the law. Why not buy an illegal gun as long as you're going to rob a bank anyway? Besides, it's not like anybody can shoot back at you.



Of course, all of this is moot -- nobody here can just go out and buy a machine gun. You need a special (very expensive) permit that you need to go through a very extensive background check to get and then each time you want to buy (an invariably very expensive) weapon which falls under that permit, you have to pay additional expensive fees to the government for the privelege of owning it.

NOBODY is going to go through all of that so they can turn around and start robbing banks or shooting up preschools.