I got robbed at gunpoint today....

[kazetsukai]

This is all ridiculous.

In the US we have the right to own firearms, and the 99.9th percentile is responsible with them. It is an inalienable right of the people. For the political left to accomplish a ban is a matter of ignoring the constitution, passing laws they know they cannot get away with legitimately, and either buying off or blackmailing judges on the SCOTUS using NSA dossiers.

For them to enforce it is another thing. They would have to go door to door with SWAT teams, breaking in and killing those who refuse to comply. Make no mistake: Americans will fight back. You would have to MURDER families of good people, whom have done nothing wrong beyond refusing to comply with a fascistic pseudo-pacifist agenda to turn us into cattle resembling the people of the UK or Australia.

To the naysayers: disarm yourselves, you have that option. Move to a country where guns are banned if you want. But advocating banning guns here is advocating mass murder, and the only reason you can sit there guiltless with your cup of tea screaming "disarm!" is because you wont be the ones kicking down doors killing the fathers, sons and military veterans who refuse to become slaves of the state.

[doggobot]

I also got robbed at gun point a few weeks ago, it was in Sydney, Australia. After I gave the bastard my money, he hit me in the face, took my keys and locked me in the trunk of my car. I though I was being kidnap but he didn't drove the car away.

It took 5 hours for the shitty police to get me out of there after someone hear me knocking on the trunk.

[marrkede]

Highly appriciable decision.Good step I like your risk taking potential and ability to analyze the situation.Thaks for the nice contribution.

[canezila]

I seriously doubt that this gun was legally purchased. I'm convinced it was black market. Of course I didnt ask the guy where he got his gun, but from the looks of him I doubt very much that he got it through legal means.

Guns are commodities too. Just like any other black market commodity, if you want to kill the black market you need to deregulate extensively. If this guys only means of getting a gun was through the legal market, then I doubt very much that he would have had a gun to rob me with.

Starting today I'm beginning the process of getting a handgun of my own. I'll also need a license to carry a concealed weapon. And I'll need legal permission from my employer to have it at work with me. There are training courses I'll be taking and certificates I'll be getting. If I do this I'll do it the right way. I want to make sure that I am as safe and responsible with my own gun as can possibly be.

Good luck getting trained and becoming certified. Next time you can hopefully defend yourself. Sucks to have to resort to that but there has been and always will be evil. Arming yourself is a logical and legal precaution.

[Ramiliez]

How is that relevant? It is illegal to rob someone. And even more so with a firearm. Besides, the vast majority of these instances occur in cities where gun ownership is illegal. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, DC, etc. It's pretty dishonest to associate gun ownership with criminal activity.

Do I even need to mention Mexico, where private gun ownership is illegal, but 10,000+ people are killed each year with them by violent criminals? Gun control laws only help criminals, and punish law abiding citizens.

Good luck with explaining it to stalinist

[torsionbar28]

Can you think of any other country that legalizes civilian gun ownership?

How is that relevant? It is illegal to rob someone. And even more so with a firearm. Besides, the vast majority of these instances occur in cities where gun ownership is illegal. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, DC, etc. It's pretty dishonest to associate gun ownership with criminal activity.

Do I even need to mention Mexico, where private gun ownership is illegal, but 10,000+ people are killed each year with them by violent criminals? Gun control laws only help criminals, and punish law abiding citizens.

[smitty3268]

And another one: Thomas Jefferson was a 2nd amendment gun nut, recommending to his college-bound nephew to eschew sports, which were designed to magnify the differences between men, for the gun, which was 'the great equalizer of men.' Hardly the sort to be squeamish about the average citizen being armed.

Heh heh heh. Jefferson was actually looked down upon by the other founding fathers at the time, because he was a little too friendly with the common man for their tastes. Such as inviting them all to party at the white house for multiple days (and completely trashing it) after he was elected.

[Gaius Maximus]

And we end on such a happy note!

"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."

So, what part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not get?

Or are you just so blinded by your own brilliance that you really, seriously think that earlier drafts of the Constitution somehow bear out meanings the final draft conceals?

Smug elitists feigning superiority without even so much as a genuine appeal to valid logic may not assume the moral high ground just because they say so. You're going to have to earn it.

The availability of nuclear weapons is exactly the point you brought up, and I shot it down by pointing out that it is simply not an option, and, thus, your point is invalid. Or do you not quite grasp the finer points of logic? Maybe you should take a class in it.

And here's a history lesson for you. Every tyrant, including King George, to attempt to conquer their own people made the confiscation of the people's weapons a primary point in their plans, and always to disastrous effect.

And another one: Thomas Jefferson was a 2nd amendment gun nut, recommending to his college-bound nephew to eschew sports, which were designed to magnify the differences between men, for the gun, which was 'the great equalizer of men.' Hardly the sort to be squeamish about the average citizen being armed.

And yet another history lesson: However anyone read or interpreted any of the amendments had more to do with their personal biases and efforts to decieve an ignorant public. From the very beginning, we've had foreign powers trying to corrupt us from within and without. Their opinions must be regarded as such. After all, I have mine, too, and you don't much care for them. I can read it, and, as we've already seen, get something completely different from it than you do. But then I have some experience in language, especially ours, and what today seems like the overly quaint uses of 230 years ago. For example, noting that a militia is any armed body, including the military, police, FBI, BATFE, IRS, and now even the EPA, among others, but that the people are not a militia even if they are armed, but remain individuals, then it seems obvious to me that what keeps those militae well regulated is the fact that the people are just as well armed, which makes perfect sense. All the blathering about what a milita is, or who's in it comes across as attempts at subterfuge.

Oh, and, by the way, no, I am not obliged to follow whatever Congress or the President decide. Look up the Nuremberg decision. Study the UCMJ. Moreover, the amendment process is for clarifying the Constitution in fine, NOT for redifining it, and certainly not for taking away from it. And that is just what military members swear an oath to protect. Otherwise, what are they defending? And from whom? If the Constitution can be whatever anyone decides it is, then there's nothing to defend, indeed nothing worth defending.

And just what has your vaunted role in assembly line production to do with anything? When you lay your life on the line to keep the United States what its founders intended, give us a call. Till then, you're just a poser.

[johnc]

they were fallable since we've, thus far, had to amend their work twenty-seven times.

"Had to" is a bit of a stretch.

[liam]

Personally, I view the problem as one of intelligence, and I keep seeing utterly stupid arguments like this one from people who pretend to be intelligent with a completely straight face.

I've worked with nuclear weapons. You couldn't have and maintain one even if international regulation to keep their constituent parts out of your hands weren't in place. Nuclear weapons are easier to find and track than a gun in a metal detector. It takes the resources of an entire nation just to get such a weapon, and the might of a nation to keep it.

The fact is that bombs, big bombs, rockets, and all kinds of devastating weapons were plentiful, and in private hands when our fouders wrote our Constitution. And they had seen those weapons used in anger. They may very likely have had some of them themselves. And yet they saw fit to insist that such weaponry should continue to be available to everyone. You may not like it, or agree with it, but it is simply so. So ask yourself why they might have done so. The fact is that they saw more, and knew more that you likely ever will.

Moreover, unstable, irrational Pakinstan has them, and yet Afghanistan and Iran were apparently never too concerned about it.

Clearly, you find yourself to be an insightful, analytical genius, but I find that your words betray a dangerous naivet? that, if allowed its full expression, would end in our suffering the same fate as the Jews of 1930s/1940s Germany.

You have utterly no idea what you're talking about, so, please, spare us your blind insights.

I, as an American citizen, do have the right to keep and bear whatever arms I see fit. As a former member of its armed services, I am obliged to stop you from any attept to change that fact using whatever level of force is necessary to do so.

Be as smart as you try to play it. Recognize that I'm not your enemy. You are mine. Figure it out.

Saying, essentially, "because the Founder's said so" is hardly any kind of argument. For one, it is simply an argument from authority, second, they were fallable since we've, thus far, had to amend their work twenty-seven times.
I'm not sure we'll ever have an amendment that overrides the second, but that doesn't mean it has a rational basis.
BTW, Godwin's Law is also a bit silly. If the jews had weapons they still would've been steamrolled by the nazis, guerilla warfare or not (keeping in mind germany/austria/poland are hardly afghanistan-like country) since that was a war of extinction and the nazis, early on, were the finest army in the world.