There's one major problem with your point of view: a person carrying a gun in public doesn't have a sign on his/her forehead that reads either "law-abiding citizen" or "crazed-out extremest wackjob", and public safety, due to previous incidents, for better or for worse, demands that he/she be assumed as the latter rather than the former.
So people at a gun ralley get shot by a guy with a gun, who (presumably) gets shot down by the other people who are also carrying guns... That would set back the movement why? It seems that a person with a gun who goes to a gun control rally and starts shooting up people who can't shoot back would do more harm than that. Ed O.
I don't think there is any such demand. Guns are just tools. They are powerful tools, but anyone who's crazy enough to start shooting in a population where they know others are armed, too, is not going to be crazy for very long, because he or she is going to be dead. Ed O.
That depends on how many others there are, how prepared for sudden gunfights they are, and whether my weapon is fully-automatic or not. Er, I mean, the crazy person's weapon. barfo
Martyrs from all backgrounds don't care about that, do they? They care about taking as many with them before they themselves are killed. Like the old guy who shot up the Holocaust museum several months ago. Would everyone packing heat have stopped him from doing that?
Sure. At least stop him from shooting it up as much as he did. But why would it be more likely to happen at a gun rally? People can bring handguns anywhere. Doesn't it seem more likely that a martyr would be able to kill more unarmed people than armed ones? Ed O.
This time it wasn't SCOTUS that was referred to, it was PUBLIC OPINION. That ruling is also a split decision with respect to where the public stands on these issues. In a recent Washington Post poll, 72 percent of all Americans said they believe individuals have gun rights under the Second Amendment, that such protections are not limited to "militias." Twenty percent thought the constitutional guarantee covers "only the rights of the states to maintain militias."
They only accomplished 1 and 3. This event didn't get much publicity. I'd argue that these tactics harm their cause. Maybe. I've had a gun pulled on me by a crazy guy who thought I was in cahoots to rip him off. I don't support banning firearms for the record. Could this armed march start a trend though? We've already seen some people arm themselves at Tea Party rallies and we've also seen violence at various protests. I hope not but it would make polices' jobs a lot more harder if people start arming themselves when they rally
Same ridiculous arguement can be made to restrict people from driving nice cars, wearing a diamond wedding ring, or sporting $200 kicks, except innocent people are MORE likely to get hurt in those cases and the criminal lives to repeat the crime over and over. Armed or un-armed, few people will simply hand over their belongings to some lowlife with a gun. I certainly wouldn't. This is why the vast majority of injured or killed robbery victims were unarmed ones.
Tea Party and Pro 2nd Amendment groups are 2 separate entities, with very little else in common other than a desire to retain what few rights they have not lost. And you are correct in that it only takes one moron with a gun, say a trigger-happy Portland Police officer or some Ohio National Guardsman, to open up on a crowd of unarmed civilians and set this country back 200 years.
Thankfully, our founding fathers were wiser than you, or we'd all be British pansies with poor dental health.
Sounds like you don't get out much, are afraid of your own shadow, and have no grasp of the most basic concept of our Justice system, "innocent until proven guilty". It is not uncommon in Beautiful Central Oregon to be in line at the supermarket next to a guy with a .45 on his hip. Happens fairly often year-round, and all day long during hunting season. Local cops don't blink an eye and neither do local residents. I don't assume every cop is a crazed loony who will shoot me despite the fact it is nearly a daily occurence in our nation, and despite the fact that an off-duty (now former) Bend Policemen once chased my car for 5 miles trying to run me off the road with his child in the back seat of his Taurus (combination of road-rage and roid-rage), then charged me with gun in hand when I stopped, screaming unintelligible jibberish in front of all my coworkers. Most of cops use common sense and restraint, and I don't just assume they're all nuts.
I certainly hope so. Police are nearly always the instigators of violence at otherwise peaceful protest rallies, which are protected by Freedom of Speech, and the 2nd Amendment was enacted in part to prevent them from infringing on these lawful acts through armed intimidation of lawfully assembled citizens.
Exactly. I mean if you are against the 2nd Amendment so much that you go there to make a crazy statement against it, taking a gun and killing people seems like it would kill only your credibility.
I think you added a few 0s to that number. I just googled "Second Amendment March" (in quotes) and only got 352,000 hits. Besides, google hits is not a good measure of how well the media covers a story. Also, you took my last quote way out of context. I'm not saying the second amendment should be repealed, I'm saying it's not good to arm people at peaceful protests. Arming people at a violent protest is probably a very good idea.
Right number, wrong search engine. It was Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=Second Amendment March&form=MS8TDF&pc=MS8TDF&src=IE-SearchBox Nobody "armed" anybody.
