Maniac - Your question is a two part question with judgment factors coming into play.

Would I support them owning guns illegally? Yes, assuming they are neither insane nor have a felony record for violent crime. Absolutely, they should ignore that law and arm themselves for the coming collapse of western civilization or for defense against the next spoiled brat progeny who takes the throne. Note I said defense, not offense. Defense means standing your ground, it does *not* mean taking the fight to Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace or wherever the fuck the Royal Fucktards live.
Would I support them using the guns if necessary? Depends on the definition of necessary. To defend themselves against a power mad inheritor to the throne who orders a family enslaved or murdered for political reasons or what have you? Abso-fucking-lutely Each situation has to be judged on it's own merits.

Oh, and guns aren't banned in the UK. You all can own hunting rifles, right? You go pheasant hunting after all. Can't do that with a sling shot now can you?

Draugnar - I don't think I ever said guns were banned in the UK, I said they were strictly control. In answer to you question, no we can not all own hunting rifles and those that do have a strict number of ammunition rounds allocated each year, each firearm certificate lasts 5 years.

In answer to your questions regarding the jews fighting the nazis, slave uprising the war of independence etc - I think each were justified. I'm sure you could list a hundred more events were force was justified and I could list many more after that. But what about where force wasn't justified. Are the Tamil tigers or basque separatists or IRA or Baader-Meinhoff etc, etc etc also justified? And what about individuals? Some staving guy thinks he's entitled to eat so robs a old rich woman at knife point. He reasons that he has a right to life and stealing is the only way to preserve his life, or he thinks the rich bankers are responsible for his countries recessions so he pops a few city types on their way home from work. When caught and detained he cam't understand why he won't be let off - after all it was right for the slaves to uprise right?

With regard to the UK and our monarchy and house of lords, I think they're an Anathema, but I won't be heading out to shoot them all anytime soon just because I think there are better ways to govern a country.

Your answer about not taking up arms against the house of lords puzzles me, your saying uk people shouldn't take up arms, but you say you only keep your arms to prevent a system like we have been imposed on the USA. You appear inconsistent here so Please clarify....in 50 years time you live in country A who has a king and queen that sign into law all legislation. Such legislation is usually initiated by the people's representives but is scrutinised and amended by Nobles who have never stood for election but owe their position to an inheritance and can trace that inheritance back 800 plus years. Is this the kind of kind of scenario you are keeping hold of your guns for?

"Removing gums from the people.is the first step to subjugating them"

It's not laws that need to change on guns, it's attitudes. The idea that you'd feel oppressed and put down by the state/govt if you weren't packing serious weaponry, how on Earth do they survive in countries like Holland, Sweden, Belgium, Germany.
Are these people being subjugated for not being armed??
If you can bear to hear the words you've spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.
Why not cut all the bullshit, if you like owning a gun for whatever reason so be it, but by doing so you convey that right to any Tom, Dick or Harry to do the same. As has been proved 99.99% of all gun owners can be sensible responsible people, but one in every 10000 will be mentally or emotionally unstable and those are the people that do a disproportional amount of damage.
If you want to curb the carnage you have to agree to curtail some of your own personal freedoms for the common good. No man is an island.....
In the Land of the Free should people need to own & carry guns, that doesn't sound much like freedom to me.
Bottom line is you need less guns in a civilized society, not more. Education will eventually teach you this but whilst your learning try not to pass the disease on to your kids, surely they deserve more.

My point, Maniac, is that there *are* times when violence to overthrow an oppresive and equally violent body is justified and telling people they can't break the gun laws until that time is unfeasible. Hindsight is 20/20 but who decides ion the moment when that time is. So it is right and true for people to arm themselves if they choose in preparation for the worst they can imagine because when the worst comes, it is too late to go about making the preparations. Therefore the British way is stupid. A true despot takes the throne of England and sends troops to Ireland to "cleanse" it of the Irish and the Irish better already be armed or they *will* be "cleansed."

And, you misinterpretted what I said (not surprising, you twist words with the worst of them). I said for *defense* from an oppresive regime. Never for offense. Epic fail. So you should not take up arms against the HoL or the Throne, btu you should have the arms at hand shoudl the HoL or the Throne send troops to try to return to the days of oppresive control. They come knocking on your door and try to drag your daughters off to be sex slaves, you blow them the fuck away. They pass laws that say everything you frow in your backyard garden is theirs and you have to get food from the government approved food carts, you guard your garden and the would be "food collectors" get their asses blown away. But you *don't* walk into the HoL and start shooting.

Nigee - Please realize we already have gin control laws that prevent the mentally unstable and those convicted of crimes from owning guns. No one is talkign about reversing those laws. All these incidents in the last coupe of years have been with stolen weapons or, in the case of the theater shooting, someone who slipped through the cracks. There needs to be some more *reform* but not more restrictions on the types of weapons owned. The reform needs to come in forcing even gunshow and private sales to do background checks and reevaluation periodically for suitability to own a gun, just like we have to renew our driver's license every four years here.

If I were a gun-owner I would love to have one of those serious ones to play with, the big ones that can fire really quickly. But should I be able to buy live ammo for these things and if I could where and when would I use one of those machines.
I could also understand why people might want to collect these weapons just for no reason but just as a hobby..
I would be interested to know how many people don't own guns and if not do they live in constant fear of crime at the hands of criminals because they are unarmed. If they don't live in constant why don't they because the people who own guns seem to live in fear. Why is it so different for some and not others?
Does more gun ownership really mean more freedom for the people??

Do people who don't have car insurance live in constant fear of the law and or having an accident? Do those that *have* life insurance live in constant fear of dying and leaving theory loved ones desolate? The answer is no on both counts. Gun owners believe in being prepared for the worst but it doesn't consume their every wakong thought. They know they are ready so there is no fear beyond the same fear a non-gun owner has. You attribute preparedness with fear and that is a billshit argument.

Well said Draugnar.

I...clearly need to go back and read the last 50 or so posts (school just started, sorry for my absence from a thread which, well, *I* started, after all) but as a preliminary, as I've heard this one before and it needs to be dealt with:

@Draug:

I've heard far, FAR too many times now as an anti-gun control trope "See, the Jews weren't allowed to own guns in Nazi Germany, if they DID have guns, The Holocaust could have been averted, it happened because they couldn't protect themselves with guns."

I'm not sure if that's your exact position, but you touched on a similar note above...

And I can't even BEGIN to say what a gross misunderstanding and distortion that is of not just the reasons for The Holocaust but it's importance as the single worst crime in all of Western Civilization (a lofty claim, maybe, but I think a justified one...really only a handful of other things--The Atlantic Slave Trade and The Treatment of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas comes to mind--can approach it, if pushed I'd "rank" all three of those together in that "Biggest Crime in the West" slot, each is just as deserving of that horrid place as the others and they're all uniquely horrible in their own way.)

The Holocaust was, really, the result of SO MUCH over SO LONG a period of time in the West, quite frankly, it's absurd to say it could have been lessened or even averted had the Jews been allowed guns.

That's a bit like saying if the people of Pompeii had a five minute warning in advance before Vesuvius blew they'd have been alright, or at least more would have survived--because, really, that's pretty much what The Holocaust was:

Something that built up over a period of centuries and centuries of pressure, things getting hotter and more and more tense, in one form or another, until finally things came to the most tragic and inescapable of ends.

I say inescapable not to justify the Holocaust--far from it--but merely to point out that when a people are persecuted for over 1500 years the way the Jews were, when everyone from popes to Martin Luther poison the common well of Western community, ie, religion with Anti-Semitic hatred for over a millenia, when being forced into niche occupations leads to ghettos and the stigmatization of Jews and those professions over hundreds of years, when pogrom after pogrom has gone on in Russia, when Jewishness comes to be understood as necessarily opposite to the sort of unifying concept "Christendom," when even great artists like Wagner and otherwise-enlightened individuals such as Voltaire profess hatred for the Jews, when ALL of that and far, far more builds over hundreds and hundreds of years AND a Great War is fought....

AND the Germans lose and have their economy go in shambles as well as suffer a humiliating diplomatic defeat by being forced to take blame for the war...

AND all of this is going on as Jews are fleeing Russia for America by sea and Germany by land and thus flooding a now-impoverished nation with loads of foreigners that the people of Germany had been conditioned by everyone from Martin Luther down to Richard Wagner to hate...

When all THAT happens, I'm sorry--there's no averting a horrific Holocaust, you could just as easily avert a volcano that's been building up pressure for millenia.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Holocaust was so inevitable in a sense that if Hitler had died in his first attempt to become leader or, indeed, if he'd just stuck to painting and died inconsequentially, the Holocaust would have gone on in some other form, in some other way...

Given how bad things because for Jews in other European countries at that time, it could've happened in most of them, really; if history had turned out just a little differently and France lost WWI and not Germany, and France came to have an economy in shambles and a fascist leader talking, not of a Third Reich, but a revitalization of The Napoleonic Empire for France (ironic considering Napoleon's not-too-horrible rulings on the Jews)...

The Holocaust, in an alternate history, COULD have occurred with a fascistic French leader preying on nostalgia for old French dominance and a long history of French Anti-Semetism as well as official Catholic preaching against the Jews (the Vatican teaching the Jews, living and dead, were responsible for Jesus' death, a mantra they held until 1964) as a religious root instead of Hitler, the Third Reich, German Anti-Semetism and Martin Luther as a religious Anti-Semitic root...it could have happened in France.

It could have happened many places.

Germany, tragically for ALL, just happened to be the unlucky site of the Last Straw.



So PLEASE...don't go on about how the Jews might've turned out better if they'd had guns, or even that if they'd had guns they would have had their freedoms protected.

NOTHING could have protected them from The Holocaust, NOTHING.

I'll buy guns can protect you from quite a bit...maybe more so in the past than today...

But something like The Holocaust?

To take another of the great tragedies of WWII...

That'd be like saying guns would've protected the people of Hiroshima from the A-bomb.

There was NOTHING those poor people could have done except get out--

And in both cases, by that time, it was just too late.

"When all THAT happens, I'm sorry--there's no averting a horrific Holocaust, you could just as easily avert a volcano that's been building up pressure for millenia."

I couldn't disagree more. This robs the Nazis and their generation of Germans for the responsibility that is uniquely theirs. Did earlier generations of Germans set them up for it through abominable behavior and words? Absolutely. But was it inevitable to the point that it couldn't have been avoided? No. Not even close. The earlier generations, after all, had so far resisted whatever temptation they may have felt to butcher millions of their Jewish compatriots.

Moreover -- not to get involved in the argument over whether guns could have slowed or prevented the holocaust, but your point doesn't really logically engage with Draug's. It may be that they could have, and so if the holocaust _was_ inevitable, then it merely means that depriving the Jews of guns was also inevitable.

Armed Jews might not have stopped the Holocaust cold, but it would certainly have been an impediment. Again, read Solzenitzen (sp?), those that actually did the rounding up would think twice if their units received armed resistance. Would it have stopped the Nazis? Likely no. But, if they're going to kill you anyway, why not make then pay a price and hope that the price becomes too dear?

@Obi - Please tell me where I said the holocaust could have been averted? Please tell me where I even referred to all the Jews having guns meaning jack shit? I referred to the Jews in the Belorussian forest who *did* arm themselves and caused a hell of a lot of hassle for the Nazi pricks trying to kill them and asked if they, as Maniac has implied, should have obeyed the law and just let themselves be slaughtered. As Conan said (paraphrased and shortened) "Crom, no one will remember who fought here today or who won or lost. What matters is that few stood against many..."

+1 for quoting Conan.

Godwin's Law strikes again.

This is developing into a crazy arguement. I think that most people believe it was right to stand up to the Nazi ( although as late as summer 1941 38% of Americans still wanted to negotiate with Germany. ) I think most people would want to defend themselves if we look at some of the brutally of historical rulers (UK rulers incl), but that does not mean that everyone then has to agree to the need to stockpile weapons in case another Hitler comes along. I could agree to the stockpiling of arms if it kept everybody happy if those arms didn't have the potential to be used to kill innocents between now and the second coming of Hitler.

What the gun lobby want us to accept is x amount of certain deaths now is worth the price of saving y amounts of possible deaths later.

Can I also throw in here that both Scotland and Northern Ireland have had strong independent movements for hundreds of years. Northern Ireland descended into violence and now have a peace process but no sign of a referendum. Scotland had similar arguements, never fired a shot and have a high degree of devolution already and have an independence referendum next year. One can defend their principles and fight to win the battle of ideas without stockpiling guns and bombs.

I can trace my family back to England's civil war and they have been involved in most conflicts ever since, I have first cousins who's lives have been adversely affected by the IRA for nearly forty years, so I know firsthand the effects of people who think they can solve disputes with guns.

I fully accept btw that the nationalists had a legitimate cause, I just don't think it should ever of descended into violence.

Maniac,

Deaths happen, and will continue to happen despite legislation designed to prevent them. The issue is that the a gun is a means of self defense and self defense is a right that cannot be taken away. In a Republic, the rights of the minority are ALWAYS protected from the whims of the majority. Fear is NOT a reason to restrict rights. The anti-gun people want us to be afraid of gun violence and to give up our rights as a reaction to their fear.

@Maniac - Once again you take a different slant from the discussion as if that was the discussion all along. The right to bear arms is not the right to stockpile weapons. This is the *first* time anyone has mentioned stockpiling. Stop equivocating! Admit that men should have the right to bear arms to defend themselves even (nay, *especially*) if their government doesn't want them to.

The Holocaust and similar events can only take place when a large enough mass of people decide to remain silent. People remain silent when they feel powerless. A philosophy of determinism leads to feelings of powerlessness. Therefore I must reject Obiwan's determinism and belief that the Holocaust was unavoidable, and I must urge Obiwan to seek out a personal philosophy that is empowering instead of disempowering, that is hopeful instead of hopeless.

That said, I don't believe violence is the only way to withstand evil. Nonviolent politcal action has a pretty good track record around the world, and even had bright moments against the Nazis.

Draugnar - to be 100% uneqivocable "Men (and women) do not have a natural or god given right to own guns for their own defense or otherwise" I agree that a society can decree that such things are a legal right, and they can even set a barrier for challanging the legal right. But just because something has happened in a certain country for so many years and some of its citizens want to keep it that way does not mean it is a god given / natural right.

I'm grateful to this thread in particular because I now understand a lot more about the underlying reasons why Americans in particular want to retain lax gun control; but I still disagree with them.

The notion that a well armed population would have slowed down Hitler is probably correct, would it have stopped him - probably not. If however the Jews would have had ricin or a nucleur bomb! Now thats what we really need, I doubt if any government would fuck with us if we had a big fuck-off A-bomb. An A-bomb is of course property and property rights are natural/god given rights so no government could stop us owning them.

OK, I admit keeping an A-Bomb might be difficult and there might be the odd maman who steals it and takes out lower manhatten, but I think thats a price worth paying to protect ourselves from the very real likelihood that our democratically elected representatives will one day turn against us and condemn us to servitude.

Is that unequivocable enough for you Draugnar?

The things that interests me is why we ever have discussions about 'would gun control work' and spend time argueing about which countries laws are the best and provide lowest crime rates. I now realise that if the whole world had say the UK gun laws and had a gun death rate of 1 per million and the USA ad its existing gun laws and had a death rate of 10 per million, that it would make no difference to the gun lobby's position. You see it as a natural right and no evidence or discussions about Natural and legal rights is ever going to change your view.

The right is self defense. If you don't want defend yourself, don't -- but don't try to tell others that they have to share your view. Unless ALL guns are removed from EVERYONE, the right of the People to own guns should NOT be infringed. Whether defense from tyranny or just regular self defense, guns are used against the People by governments and criminals, therefore the People have the right to own them as well.

What's the opposite of Godwin's Law? You know, the principle that if you can begin any debate with a comparison to Hitler, you should. If it's not yet named, suggest one. Gunfighter06's Law? Draugnar's Law? MichiganMan's Law? Let's put it to a vote!

+1 MichiganMan!

We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and these include the rights to life (which, by extension is the right to defend our life with dealy force if necessary), liberty (which, by extension, includes the right to defend ourselves from someone attempting to take away our liberty without cause) and the pursuit of happiness. Provided we do not infringe upon others rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we may exercise our rights as we see fit.

Last year in Chicago alone, 435 people were deprived of their right to life by people using guns.

Another question: Why do America have a constitution? Isn't it to insure domestic peace and tranquility? If the second amendment doesn't serve the purpose for which it was designed to do, surely it needs to be re-thought?

Also, earlier on in this thread there was a lot of talk about property (guns) being an 'Natural' right and the founding fthers thought so too. Why then do they say the states can issue Letters of Marque allowing citizens to seize people and GOODS from other nations. A constitution that tramples over a person's 'natural' rights can not be used to support the concept that such rights are 'natural'.

I'm sure this has already been brought up, but I've always thought the language of the amendment exceptionally unclear.

"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."

As an English major, I read this first clause as a conditional clause, whereupon the rest of the sentence of is contingent. Take for example, the following statement: "All things being equal, I'd drive a Bentley instead of a Volkswagen." This means that, if all things are equal, I will buy a Bentley. All things, however, are not equal. Thus, I drive a Volkswagen.

In a similar way, I don't think many people would argue that a well-regulated militia is currently necessary to the security of a free state. A great many free states, including the United States, do not have a well regulated militia. For this reason, I would argue that the conditional clause is false, thus nullifying the dependent clause that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Discuss.

I think if you love guns, you have a fascination about guns, you enjoy them then you will make or defend any bullshit arguments like the govts use them against the people therefore people should have them..... what !!!
In my naivety I thought we voted in a govt and paid our taxes so that we can afford a professional army and then you don't need a Dads army gun-totin freak show waiting for the Russlies to march down Main Street.so they can shoot em up.
I want to believe that the views of MM and Draug are extreme because if everybody in the USA thought like this what hope is there for peace in this world. We need less gun totin maniacs not more.