The founding fathers didn't write the 2A for hunting

unsung wrote:

Trying. Being Libertarian isn't as popular as I would hope.

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I'm telling you... the thing to do is to work it out with the other Independent Parties. Come to agreeable compromises. Start small, hitting small congressional districts. Get a hold in the House... take root. Become a viable voting block that is neither Republican nor Democrat.
From there... take on a Senate Seat. All you really need is about 5... to upset the the balance of 2 parties. Make your issues heard.
That's how it's going to happen. The trick is getting the Independents to agree/compromise form a viable alternative. If you can't do that, you might as well vote for Republican or Democrat or abstain.

i was just thinking about something...

most of the pro gun folks on here are paranoid or fearful about the government becoming tyrants. if the government became tyranical, who are they going to send in to take your land or guns, or whatever?

the military. the army, the marines, at the behest of the pentagon. it will be your automatic rifles against tanks, humvees, rockets, planes, drones, things that you can not possibly defeat with your automatic weapons.

the ironic thing is that the people who are pro gun seem to be yelling the loudest about the pending cuts to the pentagon and the military.

if you were really worried about a government of tyrants, why would you not want to cut the defense and pentagon and military budget???

seems to me all of you would be better served to support going over the fiscal cliff and cutting military spending, because it is that military that would do the fighting against you at the behest of the government.

just my late night random thoughts...

I don't know if I should post this here or on the other 1000 topics about guns but here we go.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/18/opinion/d ... ?hpt=op_t1

What do you think about this opinion?

THE 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the one about the right to bear arms, has among the most rubbish grammar in the English language, writes Stan Denham

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MY English teacher at Crows Nest Boys' High in the early '70s was a stickler for grammar. The dreaded dangling participle - "flitting gaily from flower to flower, the football player watched the bee" - was near the top of her grammar 101 list of don'ts.


Her reasoning, firmly explained to us, was that bad grammar could be the cause of much confusion.

It's a pity Mrs Hossack wasn't around in the late 18th century when America's Founding Fathers were framing their Constitution.

That's because the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the controversial one about the right to bear arms, contains one of the most hotly debated pieces of rubbish grammar in the history of the English language.

The 2nd Amendment is so poorly written it can be interpreted in a number of ways - and successive generations have been arguing about the meaning for a century.

As first ratified by Congress, it reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

With representatives of the states thrashing out agreement on the document, Thomas Jefferson took out a couple of commas. But it hasn't helped much.

In America, the question generally asked is whether it applies only to keeping a citizen militia in the defence of the state or whether that right is extended to every citizen.

It's especially pertinent since that amorphous revolutionary military body has now morphed into the National Guard and the world's most powerful standing army.

When it was first drawn up, the 2nd Amendment - based on the Protestant right to bear arms of the earlier English Bill of Rights - probably covered personal ownership of a few hundred thousand muzzle-loading muskets and rifles by citizen soldiers ... hopefully enough to keep the pesky British at bay should they return.

It had a role to play, but history performed a nasty pea-and-thimble trick. Today the US is chock-a-block with modern, high-powered weapons. Current estimates are that there are 300-350 million legal firearms in the US. Just about one for every man, woman and child.

In Britain the right to bear arms, like many other laws that make up its Constitution, eventually came to be seen more as a position on the supremacy of an (elected) Parliament over iron-fisted rule at the whim of an absolutist monarch.

Our laws can be changed by (elected) parliaments, and evolve with the times. In the US, what's in the Bill of Rights is set in stone (or at least written on a bit of paper) and has come to mean something different to different people.

Plenty in the gun lobby in the US will tell you, without a hint of irony, that they keep arms as a safeguard against the tyranny of their own (elected) government.

But here's the reality: While US politicians seek not to rock the boat with the powerful US gun lobby and the debate goes on about whether the 2nd Amendment is an anachronism, lunatics can still legally obtain high-powered firearms. The gun lobby won't see the correlation between easy availability of firearms and mass shootings. It will wring its hands in feigned despair and deplore the actions of the man with the gun, but the gun won't carry any blame.

And its members will tell you that, regardless of the damage done, they own firearms for good reasons. Such as "it's our 2nd Amendment right" and even sensible controls would infringe that right.

In a society that is hugely rights-driven, Americans more often than not seem to have their priorities completely inverted. Even those gun owners - the majority - who say they need a handgun under the pillow or a semi-automatic in the hallway cupboard to deter criminal intruders are tossing up a red herring.

Yes, there are lots of illegal guns in the US in the hands of criminals and, yes, it's a valid argument up to a point. But the real debate is now about the type of firearm you should be able to own, the type of controls, if any, and whether identical controls should be brought in across the US.

More kids die in the US from accidental shootings with legally owned firearms than do criminals caught in the act and shot by homeowners or businesspeople.

As for rights ... how about the right to send your cherished child off to school in the not unreasonable expectation they'll come home smiling and with an empty lunch box, not in a wooden box.

They're the real natural rights and I'm all for rights - free speech in particular, even the right to own a firearm, provided there are sensible controls and checks and balances on ownership and use.

One thing's for sure, though: the Founding Fathers would be turning in their graves if they knew that a bold idea guaranteeing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness had slowly turned a wonderful experiment into a giant human shooting gallery - all because of a few poorly chosen words written on a piece of paper.

Zoso wrote:

unsung wrote:

See I have a issue with us making any change to anything to be like other countries.

why? other countries look at what the US is doing good and copy to a point.. why can't the US do the same? see what is going on around the world in a good way and copy it? That would mean what? The US is weak or something?

Yes, successful companies do this all the time. Benchmarking.

I still love this cartoon...




In today's world, the second amendment is antiquated. If we truly should be armed to protect us against a tyrannical government, then we should be allowed to have tanks, fighter jets and nuclear weapons.

No one is throwing a fit about restricting those, but the restricting semi-automatic rifles or magazine is suddenly the end of the world.