Sounds like you want fascism. Seriously. I mean, once you pass the barfo sphincter test, the constitution is out the window. Why have a congress? They just get in the way, after all. http://gizmodo.com/fbi-can-secretly-activate-laptop-cameras-without-the-in-1478371370 Gizmodo is a technology magazine, not something MARIS would read. Washington Post article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...2ba174-5397-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html
The Post article I just linked has an interesting bit to it. Damn those silly judges. Using the constitution and all that "stuff" to rule against government. Good thing they didn't just decide whatever the FBI wants to do is always reasonable, constitution is obsolete. I chose "fascism" deliberately in my previous post. When you have the FBI and Yahoo! (or other companies we know about, including Google, Verizon, etc.), working together to plant viruses to spy on us, it is fascist.
Regarding the first part... The court didn't have to deconstruct the sentence or particularly parse it in a vacuum. They were able to read the federalist papers, the minutes of the constitutional convention and congress, and other period works that discussed the right to bear arms and what they meant when they wrote it. Regarding the second part... Why do cops wear guns? They don't use them very often, and many or most never fire theirs at a person or animal. Because it establishes a risk in the public that if you take to violence you will be met with violence. So there's a purpose that has nothing to do with killing anyone (maintain peace). What the founders said and wrote at the time is that they did not want standing armies and that an armed population will keep the government honest, like the cops' guns do. And for the most part, it's worked. What they also said and wrote is that they felt they didn't need to enumerate the reasons that gun ownership should be a right enumerated in the Bill of Rights (2nd, only behind free speech). In particular, they were very upset with English game (hunting) law and wanted us to be free to hunt. As to the militia part, they were strongly opposed to a standing army. They felt it is in replacing the armed populace with the standing army that is what tyrannical governments do. They wrote about the right of self defense as being a most important right, when they wrote or talked about the 2nd. When a woman carries a gun in her purse to deter attack, she is exercising that right, of self defense.
Certainly not. Any infringement completely nullifies the entire purpose of The Second Amendment, which is to prevent our military from being able to overpower our citizenry in a coup. Correct. For one thing, tanks are privately owned and corporately owned quite legally, although there are unconstitutional infringements on them. As with machine guns and a number of other arms. Banning nukes is a fine idea and I'm all for it. Only the most diseased minds in the world could invent and wield anything that heinous. But as long as our government has them in it's possession WE THE PEOPLE are guaranteed the right to also have them in our possession. But the new issues will be private ownership of drones and robot soldiers.
If you have no problem letting hundreds of thousands of inbred alcoholic racist cops with an IQ of 2 digits and a history of domestic abuse wield an AK-47 on the streets, at the mall and in your child's school, then why not everyone else?
Then you aren't reading very carefully. I didn't say I wanted government to watch me through my laptop. Just that I'm not going to spend time worrying about it. barfo
Seems to me if you are going to interpret the 2nd amendment literally (and you are), then WE THE PEOPLE are allowed to have nukes whether or not the government has them. I just ordered one from Amazon! It will be delivered by drone in two days. barfo
Talk about bullshit some more. It takes the wealth of a nation and decades to build one nuke. Maybe Bill Gates could spend a good chunk of his vast wealth to build one, but YOU aren't buying one anywhere. Period.
That's pretty amusing considering your post in this very thread: That's not what you said, and I doubt it is what you meant. You like to call legal gun owners out as being kooks for believing their constitutional rights actually mean something. What better way to do that than to paint all legal gun owners as solely having guns so that can they use them for their supposed only purpose? Go Blazers
Thanks for telling me what I meant. You're wrong. Show me where I said all legal gun owners are kooks. I'm trying to have an informative fucking discussion and may have resorted to hyperbole to make a point. I think you have me confused with a liberal stereotype in your head.
I'm not to looking for a long list of this shit, though it is there, but since you ask: The liberal stereotype includes support of gun control. You get into every gun control thread, and your 'fucking discussion' is to pick shit with anyone that doesn't like the never ending drum beat to do just a little more to stop gun violence. So, where is the beef? You are the very definition of a liberal. Go Blazers
Wow, re-reading that thread was enlightening. Here's what I learned: you have anger issues. You want to know why, in the middle of the thread, I came in with total hyperbole? Because you were roid raging all over the place and calling people who didn't agree with you "boneheads," "condescending jerkoffs" and "spineless sheep." So yeah, an easy troll target. I respond to hyperbole with hyperbole. Stick around and there might be intelligent discussion to be had, like I tried to have with you while you flung mass baby murder accusations at me. If you wouldn't be so hilariously irate I wouldn't have to try to troll you. Maybe if you started off in a reasoned manner people would respond in kind. Go ahead and tell me other things that make me a liberal so I can make sure to fit with the stereotype.
So, to sum up, you made up the bullcrap about the only reason to own a gun. You do make people that value their constitutional rights to bear arms out to be kooks. You give others shit for doing the same thing you do. You are a troll. Does that accurately, calmly and concisely sum it up? In the thread from which your quote came, yeah, I was trolling the pompous asses that acted like I was a fool to think the government would try to take my guns. Then they were proven dead wrong by a bunch of idiot legislators from the Portland area who tried to do exactly that. Why shouldn't I call them out for being so profoundly wrong about so important an issue? So tell me, Hoo, do you still think it's stupid to believe that the government will keep trying to take legally owned guns? They tried in CA. They tried in OR. They're doing it in NYC. They've been trying that shit for decades. Why should I think they will stop now? A question for you. How do you plan to protect your loved ones when some giant guy with a bat breaks into your house to do whatever he wants to whoever he wants? One last question. Would you be so kind as so point out where I accused you of mass murder of babies? Or was that just more hyperbole? Go Blazers
I made an incorrect hyperbolic statement and then later acknowledged it as such after you corrected me. I respond to your hyperbole with hyperbole of my own. Don't act like a fucking kook and I won't try to make you look like one. What goes around comes around. Lies and slander. Yes good job, I'm sure the veins in your forehead are ready to burst after getting through all of five lines calmly. You admitted to trolling. You're now a troll. Welcome to the club. I didn't say you shouldn't. What I said was that YOU set the hyperbolic and aggressive tone in these arguments. Then, you act butthurt when you get trolled for it. You'd be shocked at how much I actually agree with you on this issue. But that's not my fight. I am concerned with discourse. I think the general historical trend is a gradual disarming of the populace. Notice I'm not assigning intent. Notice I'm not making predictions for the future. I would probably shoot him. I don't see a guy breaking into my house with a bat (what is he going to do, break the door with a bat?) as an inevitability. Maybe when I too am an "oldguy" I will be just as paranoid. I said you "flung mass baby murder accusations at me." In this sentence, "mass baby murder" modifies "accusations," meanings the accusations are of a mass baby murder nature. You were accusing liberals (this obviously applies to me as I am the very avatar of liberalism in your mind) of turning a blind eye to the mass murder of babies. That is an accusation which relates to mass baby murder. Notice I didn't use the genitive construction "Accusations of mass baby murder," which would have been incorrect. Sorry, this kind of pedantry is what happens when you argue with a linguistics major.
(Directed at no one in particular) The second amendment may have a clause about "well regulated militias" but if anybody tries to use the argument that guns are meant for hunting and not protection against tyrannical, authoritarian regimes, then you don't know your history very well.
In the spirit of civil discourse, I have a few questions for you, oldguy. 1. How many guns and of what type do you feel you need for self-defense against home invasion? 2. How many guns and of what type do you feel you need for defense against a tyrannical government? 3. Is the 2nd amendment open to interpretation?