posted March 29, 2008 02:47 AM            

I really don't understand the controversy. How is this amendment misunderstood?

"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."

The words are as clear as flipping daylight! Seriously! Being the intelligent, wise and eloquent men that our forefathers were, wouldn't they have been more precise if they really only meant to don that power to the individual states' governments?!?!

Good grief. I may not own a gun and I pray to God that I don't ever have to make that decision, but I'm sure as Heaven not insane enough to agree to abolish the very law that ironically secures the very peace and freedom that I cherish. This right to bear arms is only a side-effect of the real issue, not the root or cause of it. In cases like these, we are battling a fierce Serpent and, as with all serpents, if you do not strike the Head you will falter.

Mannu,

If you have lost someone close to you by the use of a firearm, please do not take my words too harshly. It is not that I do not have any sympathy for those innocents who have lost their lives and the lives who have lost their innocence. The solution to this war, however, is not harnessed by this weak usurper of an idea as a solution...

posted March 29, 2008 11:31 AM            

quote:

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Nosis , you are one of those blind woman. Wish that I could spit and apply to your eyes and give you a vision to see what I see

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You've yet to disappoint us with incorrect assumptions, Mannu.

******

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights.)

"The great object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun." (Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution.)

"The advantage of being armed . . . the Americans possess over the people of all other nations . . . Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in his Federalist Paper No. 46.)

"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." (Second Amendment to the Constitution.)

In my studies as an attorney and as a United States Senator, I have constantly been amazed by the indifference or even hostility shown the Second Amendment by courts, legislatures, and commentators. James Madison would be startled to hear that his recognition of a right to keep and bear arms, which passed the House by a voice vote without objection and hardly a debate, has since been construed in but a single, and most ambiguous Supreme Court decision, whereas his proposals for freedom of religion, which he made reluctantly out of fear that they would be rejected or narrowed beyond use, and those for freedom of assembly, which passed only after a lengthy and bitter debate, are the subject of scores of detailed and favorable decisions. Thomas Jefferson, who kept a veritable armory of pistols, rifles and shotguns at Monticello, and advised his nephew to forsake other sports in favor of hunting, would be astounded to hear supposed civil libertarians claim firearm ownership should be restricted. Samuel Adams, a handgun owner who pressed for an amendment stating that the "Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms," would be shocked to hear that his native state today imposes a year's sentence, without probation or parole, for carrying a firearm without a police permit.
http://www.constitution.org/mil/rkba1982.htm

******

I don't care if anyone feels or believes that banning guns is best. Fine, great, whatever. But that's not what was intended by the U.S. Constitution or any of its founders and a basic understanding of the men who wrote the thing would prove that obvious and beyond a doubt. But people keep trying to see more than is there, to look for a loophole to disarm the citzenry thereby leaving guns only in the hands of the government and criminals.

posted March 29, 2008 11:35 AM            

Question: What does the title mean: More Guns, Less Crime?

John R. Lott, Jr.: States with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes. Thirty-one states now have such laws—called "shall-issue" laws. These laws allow adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness.

Question: It just seems to defy common sense that crimes likely to involve guns would be reduced by allowing more people to carry guns. How do you explain the results?

Lott: Criminals are deterred by higher penalties. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.

Question: What is the basis for these numbers?

Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Question: Your argument about criminals and deterrence doesn't tell the whole story. Don't statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?

Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don't understand is that this "acquaintance murder" number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. "Acquaintance" covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

Question: But how about children? In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won't tragedies like this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn't this be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of "shall-issue" laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent.

For other types of crimes, I find that both children as well as adults are protected when law-abiding adults are allowed to carry concealed handguns.

Finally, after extensively studying the number of accidental shootings, there is no evidence that increasing the number of concealed handguns increases accidental shootings. We know that the type of person who obtains a permit is extremely law-abiding and possibly they are extremely careful in how they take care of their guns. The total number of accidental gun deaths each year is about 1,300 and each year such accidents take the lives of 200 children 14 years of age and under. However, these regrettable numbers of lives lost need to be put into some perspective with the other risks children face. Despite over 200 million guns owned by between 76 to 85 million people, the children killed is much smaller than the number lost through bicycle accidents, drowning, and fires. Children are 14.5 times more likely to die from car accidents than from accidents involving guns.

Question: Wouldn't allowing concealed weapons increase the incidents of citizens attacking each other in tense situations? For instance, sometimes in traffic jams or accidents people become very hostile—screaming and shoving at one another. If armed, might people shoot each other in the heat of the moment?

Lott: During state legislative hearings on concealed-handgun laws, possibly the most commonly raised concern involved fears that armed citizens would attack each other in the heat of the moment following car accidents. The evidence shows that such fears are unfounded. Despite millions of people licensed to carry concealed handguns and many states having these laws for decades, there has only been one case where a person with a permit used a gun after a traffic accident and even in that one case it was in self-defense.

Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won't more guns put more women at risk?

Lott: Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman's ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

Question: Aren't you playing into people's fears and prejudices though? Don't politicians pass these shall-issue laws to mollify middle-class white suburbanites anxious about the encroachment of urban minority crime?

Lott: I won't speculate about motives, but the results tell a different story. High crime urban areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed to carry concealed handguns.

Question: What about other countries? It's often argued that Britain, for instance, has a lower violent crime rate than the USA because guns are much harder to obtain and own.

Lott: The data analyzed in this book is from the USA. Many countries, such as Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland, and Israel have high gun-ownership rates and low crime rates, while other countries have low gun ownership rates and either low or high crime rates. It is difficult to obtain comparable data on crime rates both over time and across countries, and to control for all the other differences across the legal systems and cultures across countries. Even the cross country polling data on gun ownership is difficult to assess, because ownership is underreported in countries where gun ownership is illegal and the same polls are never used across countries.

Question: This is certainly controversial and there are certain to be counter-arguments from those who disagree with you. How will you respond to them?

Lott: Some people do use guns in horrible ways, but other people use guns to prevent horrible things from happening to them. The ultimate question that concerns us all is: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save lives? While there are many anecdotal stories illustrating both good and bad uses of guns, this question can only be answered by looking at data to find out what the net effect is.

All of chapter seven of the book is devoted to answering objections that people have raised to my analysis. There are of course strong feelings on both sides about the issue of gun ownership and gun control laws. The best we can do is to try to discover and understand the facts. If you agree, or especially if you disagree with my conclusions I hope you'll read the book carefully and develop an informed opinion.

posted March 29, 2008 11:36 AM            

Joyce Lee Malcolm | November 2002 Print Edition

On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."

In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year's Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.

None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and 1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America's Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.

The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by the world's gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a 1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England's low rates of violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."

In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.

The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies. Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the proposition that people don't need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.

This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal security was ranked first among an individual's rights by William Blackstone, the great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in his moment of need. A century later Blackstone's illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey, cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."

But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual's right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."

The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption and a Bolshevik revolution. In the circumstances, permitting the people to remain armed must have seemed an unnecessary risk. And so the new policy of disarming the public began. The Firearms Act required a would-be gun owner to obtain a certificate from the local chief of police, who was charged with determining whether the applicant had a good reason for possessing a weapon and was fit to do so. All very sensible. Parliament was assured that the intention was to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons. Yet from the start the law's enforcement was far more restrictive, and Home Office instructions to police -- classified until 1989 -- periodically narrowed the criteria.

At first police were instructed that it would be a good reason to have a revolver if a person "lives in a solitary house, where protection against thieves and burglars is essential, or has been exposed to definite threats to life on account of his performance of some public duty." By 1937 police were to discourage applications to possess firearms for house or personal protection. In 1964 they were told "it should hardly ever be necessary to anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person" and that "this principle should hold good even in the case of banks and firms who desire to protect valuables or large quantities of money."

In 1969 police were informed "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person." These changes were made without public knowledge or debate. Their enforcement has consumed hundreds of thousands of police hours. Finally, in 1997 handguns were banned. Proposed exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.

Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry in a public place any article "made, adapted, or intended" for an offensive purpose "without lawful authority or excuse." Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon. Police were given extensive power to stop and search everyone. Individuals found with offensive items were guilty until proven innocent.

During the debate over the Prevention of Crime Act in the House of Commons, a member from Northern Ireland told his colleagues of a woman employed by Parliament who had to cross a lonely heath on her route home and had armed herself with a knitting needle. A month earlier, she had driven off a youth who tried to snatch her handbag by jabbing him "on a tender part of his body." Was it to be an offense to carry a knitting needle? The attorney general assured the M.P. that the woman might be found to have a reasonable excuse but added that the public should be discouraged "from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them."

Another M.P. pointed out that while "society ought to undertake the defense of its members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent offender."

In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: "The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy. I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves." But he added: "Unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however large, can do it."

That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."

The original common law standard was similar to what still prevails in the U.S. Americans are free to carry articles for their protection, and in 33 states law-abiding citizens may carry concealed guns. Americans may defend themselves with deadly force if they believe that an attacker is about to kill or seriously injure them, or to prevent a violent crime. Our courts are mindful that, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife."

But English courts have interpreted the 1953 act strictly and zealously. Among articles found illegally carried with offensive intentions are a sandbag, a pickaxe handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper. "Any article is capable of being an offensive weapon," concede the authors of Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, a popular legal text, although they add that if the article is unlikely to cause an injury the onus of proving intent to do so would be "very heavy."

The 1967 act has not been helpful to those obliged to defend themselves either. Granville Williams points out: "For some reason that is not clear, the courts occasionally seem to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater moment than the safety of the robber's victim in respect of his person and property."

A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:

� In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.

� In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.

� In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.

� In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted �5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin.

The failure of English policy to produce a safer society is clear, but what of British jibes about "America's vigilante values" and our much higher murder rate?

Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen found New York's homicide rate consistently about five times London's. Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."

Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked, whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance before England's more restrictive policy was established in 1967.

The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.

The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study, found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."

Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America's has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.

Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1 percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty" English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government plans to combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect's previous crimes.

This is a cautionary tale. America's founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.

The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen, confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to "have arms for their defence," insisting upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens. It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the English tendency to decry America's "vigilante values," English policy makers would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which stood them so well in the past.

posted March 29, 2008 11:36 AM            

Your spiritual vision is that comprehensive, is it? That's interesting, seeing that you have been dense enough to judge me a "blind woman" when I am a man.

Prabhu, do not keep wishing the enforcing of your "vision" upon others. It is exactly this type of non-thinking that creates situations such as the one which you claim to abhor within this thread. You'd be better off spitting in your own eye, giving yourself the vision to really see what you see.

As you have taken the liberty with me, so shall I do with you, Prabhu.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

May we both arise above our weighty faults, brother.

posted March 29, 2008 11:38 AM            

The number of privately owned guns in the U.S. is at an all-time high. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) estimates that there were about 215 million guns in 1999,1 when the number of new guns was averaging about 4.5 million (about 2%) annually.2 A report for the National Academy of Sciences put the 1999 figure at 258 million.3 According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 60.4 million approved (new and used) NICS firearm transactions between 1994 2004.4 The number of NICS checks for firearm purchases or permits increased 3.2% between 2003-2004.

Gun Owners.

The number of gun owners is also at an all-time high. The U.S. population is at an all-time high (294 million), and rises about 1% annually.5 Numerous surveys over the last 40+ years have found that almost half of all households have at least one gun owner.6 Some surveys since the late 1990s have indicated a smaller incidence of gun ownership,7 probably because of some respondents` concerns about "gun control," residually due, perhaps, to the anti-gun policies of the Clinton Administration.

Right-to-Carry.

The number of RTC states is at an all-time high, up from 10 in 1987 to 38 today.8 In 2004, states with RTC laws, compared to other states, had lower violent crime rates on average. Total violent crime was lower by 21%, murder by 28%, robbery by 43%, and aggravated assault by 13%.9

"Less Gun Control."

Violent crime has declined while many "gun control" laws have been eliminated or made less restrictive. Many states have eliminated prohibitory or restrictive carry laws, in favor of Right-to-Carry laws. The federal Brady Act`s waiting period on handgun sales ended in 1998, in favor of the NRA-supported National Instant Check, and some states thereafter eliminated waiting periods, purchase permit requirements, or other laws delaying gun sales. The federal "assault weapon" ban expired in 2004. All states now have hunter protection laws, 46 have range protection laws, 46 prohibit local jurisdictions from imposing gun laws more restrictive than state law, 44 protect the right to arms in their constitutions, and 33 prohibit frivolous lawsuits against the firearm industry.10

Studies by and for Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress, the National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even researchers who support "gun control," have found no evidence that "gun control" reduces crime.11

Crime.

posted March 29, 2008 11:43 AM            

Criminals Applaud Court Decision Delaying Concealed Weapons Law

Fake News written by Martha Throebeck on October 11, 2003

from the costume-party-where-everyone-wears-ski-masks dept.

ST. LOUIS -- Shouting "Yes! Yes! Yes!", hundreds of career criminals celebrated in downtown St. Louis on Friday evening, giving each other high-fives and mugging nearby pedestrians. The party started when a St. Louis judge issued an order delaying the implementation of Missouri's concealed weapons law.

"This is a great day for petty thieves, burglars, and carjackers, who are only trying to make decent a living in this world," explained one person who goes by the moniker 'X. Kahn'. "Just as the new Do-Not-Call list would put thousands of telemarketers out of business, this new concealed gun law would put thousands of hard-working malefactors out of business, which just isn't fair."

Several partygoers, however, admitted that the battle isn't over. "This will still go to the state Supreme Court," said felon Mike Slaughter. "And while tens of thousands of children depend on their family's income from pick-pocketing, bank robberies, carjackings, home burglaries, muggings, and shoplifting, that may not be enough for the court to rule in our favor. Still, won't somebody please think of the children?"

If the law were to take effect, according to supporters, a certain percentage of the population would be packing heat at any one time, making it difficult for crooks to operate without fear of getting their brains splattered across the Mississippi.

"Now, if the state would make the list of permit holders open to the public, then maybe it would be okay," Slaughter admitted. "I could obtain a list of all the people carrying concealed weapons and then, through a process of elimination using a phonebook, I could make a list of all the unarmed, undefended suckers out there which would make easy targets. But no, the damn state legislature -- which certainly doesn't care about protecting my interests -- had to go out and try to make my life a living hell. Thank goodness for liberal court judges!"

Many of the revelers at Friday's impromptu celebration also celebrated another somewhat overlooked fact: if carrying concealed weapons is unconstitutional, then that means cops won't be able to carry them either.

"This is so cool!" screamed Bob "Bald" Harry, ringleader for a group of experienced license plate sticker thieves. "There's no asterisks or footnotes in the Missouri Constitution which say, 'Cops are above the law', even though some might believe that. Undercover cops won't be able to hide their weapons, which means they will have to wear them on the outside -- and therefore they won't be undercover anymore! Oh, this is going to be great. I can't wait!"

posted March 29, 2008 11:46 AM            

You missed my point your right cerebral that deals with creativity needs to be fixed. Your right brain is the woman in you and your left brain that man.

Any how go back to your religion nosis and be contend with the dogmatic definitions of man , woman. Satan , God. And all other craps.

Lets continue our chat after you have done that.

Eleanor, Will look in to your posts later after lunch.

posted March 29, 2008 11:47 AM            

quote:

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You missed my point your right cerebral that deals with creativity needs to be fixed. Your right brain is the woman and your left brain that man.

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That was supposed to be the point of

quote:

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Nosis , you are one of those blind woman.

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posted March 29, 2008 11:53 AM            

My aquaintance of him on other forums shows me he is struggling with his spirituality. He still has that arrogant I in him and was teasing him.

>>>>I see the pedals spinning furiously ... only they're going backwards

posted March 29, 2008 11:59 AM            

Is this dancer spinning in clockwise motion or counter-clockwise motion?

posted March 29, 2008 12:15 PM            

In the minds of the founders of this nation as well as the citizens who lived within the borders, no such controversy existed. The constitution did not "grant" citizens the right to keep and bear arms. That right, they already had. The 2nd Amendment was merely a "restriction" on the federal government to not "infringe" that right. It was also understood in the times that the 1st Amendment was not a grant of rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, feedom of the press and freedom to assemble and petition government. Those rights already existed. Notice the opening words of the 1st Amendment is a restriction on the federal government...not a grant of rights of the people who already had those rights. "Congress shall make no law".... Not a granting of rights but a guarantee citizens already existing rights would not be infringed by legislative acts of Congress.

I always have to laugh when I hear or read the tortured logic those employ who wish to limit rights or take them away altogether; either through terminal ignorance and stupidity or conspiracy to deprive. These people employ so called experts to tell us what the founders really meant and especially about the 2nd Amendment. Of course, these same so called experts never, ever bother to simply publish the remarks of the founders who were quite able, being very articulate, to express what they meant about the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms...and also what they considered to be the militia. But, what the founders said drives a stake straight through the heart of the gun grabbers arguments. So, instead, we hear pompous dissertations about what the founders really meant from those who don't and could not possibly believe a word of what they're writing or saying...when they're talking about the meaning of the 2nd Amendment or the "intent" of the "founders".

What these people are really doing is attempting to overthrow the 2nd Amendment which is the last and final resort of the people to defend themselves should all other measures fail to restrain tryants, or overthrow tyrants who might arise on these shores. They richly deserve a hardy...UP THEIRS.

It is clear, crystal clear the founders considered the entire citizenry to be members of the militia who could be called upon to respond to put down riot, insurrection or invasions...with their own privately owned firearms....and also to put down any tyranny which might be attempted by government itself.

RICHARD HENRY LEE (Signed Declaration of Independence, introduced resolution in Continental Congress to become independent, proposed Bill of Rights from beginning, author of Anti-Fed Papers, Congressman and Senator from Virginia)
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms." 1788 (Federal Farmer, p.169)
"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..." 1788 (Federal Farmer)
"No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizens and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen."

ALEXANDER HAMILTON (Member of Continental Congress, Aid-de-camp to General Washington, commanded forces at Yorktown, New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention, wrote Federalist Papers, 1st Secretary of Treasury for George Washington, wanted 'President for life')
"Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped." (Federalist Papers #29)

TENCH COXE (friend of Madison, member of Continental Congress)
"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American...

PATRICK HENRY ('Liberty or Death' Speech, member of Continental Congress, Governor of Virginia, member Virginia convention to ratify U.S. Constitution, urged creation of Bill of Rights for Constitution )
"The great object is, that every man be armed.... Every one who is able may have a gun." (Elliot p.3:386)

JAMES MADISON (Drafted Virginia Constitution, Member of Continental Congress, Virginia delegate to Constitutional Convention, named "Father of the Constitution", author of Federalist Papers, author of the Bill of Rights, Congressman from Virginia, Secretary of State, 4th President)
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.. (where) ..the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (Federalist Papers #46)

SAM ADAMS (Signed Declaration of Independence, organized the Sons of Liberty, participated in Boston Tea Party, Member of Continental Congress, Governor of Massachusetts)
"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the right of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; ...or to prevent the people from petitioning , in a peaceable and orderly manner; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions." (Debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788, p86-87)

JOHN ADAMS (Signed Declaration of Independence, Continental Congress delegate, 1st Vice President, 2nd President)
"Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense..." 1788(A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the USA, p.471)

THOMAS JEFFERSON (Author of Declaration of Independence, member Continental Congress, Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice President, 3rd President )
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." (Jefferson Papers, p. 334, C.J. Boyd, 1950)
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." (Thomas Jefferson Papers p. 334, 1950)
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Letter to William S. Smith 13 Nov 1787 (Jefferson, On Democracy p. 20, 1939; Padover, editor)

GEORGE WASHINGTON (First President)
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour." (Address to 1st session of Congress)

Some very heavy hitters there and so ends the F-ing argument as to what the founders meant when they debated and wrote the 2nd Amendment.

posted March 29, 2008 12:49 PM            

quote:

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My aquaintance of him on other forums shows me he is struggling with his spirituality. He still has that arrogant I in him and was teasing him.

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Mannu, you've got stones in your mind as much as I do. You so often take this stance of superiority and you generally fail to see your own arrogance. It's right in that quote there. Use the same focus that you used on the dancer to see her rotating in both directions on your own words. Your points (or lack thereof) usually branch off into a non-sequitur. I often enjoy non-sequiturs, but I'll be sticking to the point of this thread here.

What is this "vision" that you see but cannot muster the diligence to express? You only mention it as if it was this deep, mysterious secret that my poor, unevolved brain could not possibly comprehend. Come right out with it, Man!

Wait. On second thought, just keep it to yourself. I will do quite well without the smell of mental defecation in the air.

posted March 29, 2008 05:21 PM            

If I stated the "reason" first for what came next that would be perfectly grammatically correct.

"Because" sales and profits are plummeting; it is necessary to restructure the company.

The "because" came first telling why the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" was not to be infringed.

So, rather than being a "condition" upon which the people could keep and bear arms; a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state is the reason NOT the condition upon which rests the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

We already know whom the founders considered the militia because they told us and told us in unequivocol language...and in English. it was the entire population of men whom were able to bear arms.

No artifice of government..such as sitting up a national guard or reserves to do away with the reason the peoples right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed is valid. Such artifice will not suffice to do away with the intent of the framers. Neither was there any necessity for "military enrollment" mentioned as a condition or even considered. The reason that's true is that the very people who might attempt a tyranny were those very people under whose control those military forces would fall.

The controversy here is contrived, it's not credible. The founders said exactly what they meant and they said it over and over.

Of course, there are those who after reading the founders own words as to what they meant, will continue to argue about what they meant; as though the founders didn't know what they meant and didn't really understand English.

So, let's see who these people are arguing with and against, the men who didn't know what they meant.

GEORGE WASHINGTON
THOMAS JEFFERSON
JOHN ADAMS
SAMUEL ADAMS
JAMES MADISON
PATRICK HENRY
TENCH COXE
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
RICHARD HENRY LEE

And not only these but a cast of thousands who debated in public, in the Federalist Papers, in the news papers, in the Assemblies and Senates of the various States and the Continental Congress and then wrote and ratified each word of the US Constitution.

Ummm, I can just see and hear the reaction of the people of the times...if anyone had told them only those enrolled in a formal militia had the right to their private arms. If told by the government, there would have been an armed revolution to put down what they would have thought of as a tyranny against their rights, rights they already had.