Discuss the second amendment here.

[GRT]

the u.s. arms laws prohibits the private own/use of anything beyond a semi-automatic

so consider yourselves lucky, because if that guy in VT had an automatic the fatalities would at least triple

which brings the topic to illegal firearms... do you know the price difference between an illegal semi-handgun (which you can easily obtain legally) vs. an illegal automatic assault rifle (which is strictly controlled even in police force)?

if you ban firearms altogether then illegal handguns would greatly increase in prices too, and even though that might not effect organized crimes/violences too much, you would much less likely see some random individual going to their school/work and make a big mess like the one in VT

of course, other problems will indeed arise with the ban, but claiming that the ban wouldn't decrease deadly violence is just blantly ignorant

[Rammses]

Outright banning guns is not a solution, as even in your perfect world people will still just resort to another form of violence. Are you going to outright ban all knives? All sharp martial weapons? All baseball bats?

31 college studens would not have lost their lives today if the VT guy attacked with a baseball bat.

[Fhqwghads]

@ whoever commented about a shotgun not being a good home defense weapon: If you're an intruder sneaking down a hall and hear a shotgun being cocked, do you a) get the fuck out or b) proceed as planned? Not to mention that in poor lighting and without a lot of shooting practice, you most likely stand a better chance of hitting an attacker with a shotgun than a pistol.

That was me, and the point still stands. If someone is going to be scared hearing a shotgun being cocked, they'd do the same hearing a semi-automatic handgun being cocked. However, not everyone would potentially run off hearing a gun. Say for instance, if they had a gun, and were some freak who was in a residence for more than petty theft. Perhaps they want to commit rape, or they want to commit murder, and are insane enough to continue despite hearing a weapon being readied. In that situation I'll take a handgun, thank you very much. As a matter of fact in any case (outside of the need for a long range discharge of a firearm) I'll take a handgun.

[BIGSTIC]

Gregorio: I see what you're saying. Back in the era of the constitution, a bunch of guys with hunting rifles/muskets/whatever was a legit military force. Nowadays, personal firearms don't even compare. Even if every citizen had an ak-47, the military would have no problem handling a mass rebellion.

You may want to believe this but i would have to say you are wrong. There are alot of people in the US that have close to the same amount of fire power as the Iraqi's have and OMG we are so winning that fight. Sheer fire power does not always win unless the government decided to just start dropping nukes on random citizens protesting. Any one remember the Shootout in LA with the bank robbers? I recall that the LA police went to local gun shops to get rifles and ammunition because the guns supplied by the county/city were too weak.

As for right to bear arms, I have a concealed carry permit and most likely will have a pistol under the seat of my vehicle. Why? Well you just never know. I go to gun defense classes almost yearly and am at the shooting range almost twice a week. Funny thing is though that the pistol under my seat will always be locked in a box while in my car so really it ain't even for defense. Just like i keep my ammo totally separate from my guns at home and both are locked at all times. I LOVE my right to own guns and probably own way to many but i guess for me it is a hobby just like collecting coins is to somebody else. I just find people that say gun control is the problem funny. I guess they don't realize that ANYTHING can and has been used to murder people. Say lets ban guns for hunting but allow bows well OMG a bow is just as lethal as a gun so we take the bows away and so no hunting and now we have a problem with animal over population due to the ever growing human population growing into the animals area....and well it is a never ending cycle.

The tragedy in VA today was not due to gun control laws and you will never see guns go poof and disappear. The more laws you put on guns the more secretive the gun owners will be. Most the guns i have are registered because i chose to and the ones that aren't are old muzzle loaders. I am planning on trying to get licensed to own fully automatic weapons but the red tape is horrendous and well i see why most people buy them off the black market. You know if the red tape wasn't so bad more people would register their weapons and then OMG the government would actually know how many are out there and who has them.

PS: I grew up in a big city in Ohio and never got interested in guns until i got to college. I started in skeet competitions and moved onto the hunting and collecting from there. To this day i still don't know why my dad started me shooting from such a young age because he hates hunting cause it is easier to buy beef from the store. But i will say he taught me alot about respect during those days at the shooting range as a young kid.

[Chips]

I laughed out loud at your statement in bold. And while we should keep trying to reduce crime, drugs and terrorism, I wanted a fucking gun in my bedside table so I can stop the son of a bitch trying to rob me.

Because you're able to justify killing someone who's attempting to steal... what, 1000$ worth of crap from your house? That's like saying if someone got caught robbing a convenience store you wouldn't mind if they got sentenced to death.

I can understand if the robber was a threat to your family or something... except robbers don't aim to cause bodily harm. If they were, you wouldn't have had time to reach over to your bedside table -- you'd already be dead.

[Misterjingles]

Gregorio: I see what you're saying. Back in the era of the constitution, a bunch of guys with hunting rifles/muskets/whatever was a legit military force. Nowadays, personal firearms don't even compare. Even if every citizen had an ak-47, the military would have no problem handling a mass rebellion.

You may want to believe this but i would have to say you are wrong. There are alot of people in the US that have close to the same amount of fire power as the Iraqi's have and OMG we are so winning that fight. Sheer fire power does not always win unless the government decided to just start dropping nukes on random citizens protesting. Any one remember the Shootout in LA with the bank robbers? I recall that the LA police went to local gun shops to get rifles and ammunition because the guns supplied by the county/city were too weak.

As for right to bear arms, I have a concealed carry permit and most likely will have a pistol under the seat of my vehicle. Why? Well you just never know. I go to gun defense classes almost yearly and am at the shooting range almost twice a week. Funny thing is though that the pistol under my seat will always be locked in a box while in my car so really it ain't even for defense. Just like i keep my ammo totally separate from my guns at home and both are locked at all times. I LOVE my right to own guns and probably own way to many but i guess for me it is a hobby just like collecting coins is to somebody else. I just find people that say gun control is the problem funny. I guess they don't realize that ANYTHING can and has been used to murder people. Say lets ban guns for hunting but allow bows well OMG a bow is just as lethal as a gun so we take the bows away and so no hunting and now we have a problem with animal over population due to the ever growing human population growing into the animals area....and well it is a never ending cycle.

The tragedy in VA today was not due to gun control laws and you will never see guns go poof and disappear. The more laws you put on guns the more secretive the gun owners will be. Most the guns i have are registered because i chose to and the ones that aren't are old muzzle loaders. I am planning on trying to get licensed to own fully automatic weapons but the red tape is horrendous and well i see why most people buy them off the black market. You know if the red tape wasn't so bad more people would register their weapons and then OMG the government would actually know how many are out there and who has them.

PS: I grew up in a big city in Ohio and never got interested in guns until i got to college. I started in skeet competitions and moved onto the hunting and collecting from there. To this day i still don't know why my dad started me shooting from such a young age because he hates hunting cause it is easier to buy beef from the store. But i will say he taught me alot about respect during those days at the shooting range as a young kid.

Isn't it true that while you cannot buy a .50cal machine gun legally, you can legally buy all the parts and ammo and put them together? There was some video with some "people" firing off some assault weapons at some firing range...

[Gregorio]

Gregorio: I see what you're saying. Back in the era of the constitution, a bunch of guys with hunting rifles/muskets/whatever was a legit military force. Nowadays, personal firearms don't even compare. Even if every citizen had an ak-47, the military would have no problem handling a mass rebellion.

5 years ago I would have agreed. But as the war in Iraq various other struggles in the world have shown, a well motivated and lightly armed population can do pretty well vs. an established military.

[BIGSTIC]

Isn't it true that while you cannot buy a .50cal machine gun legally, you can legally buy all the parts and ammo and put them together? There was some video with some "people" firing off some assault weapons at some firing range...

Hell give me 20 minutes and $10 worth of parts and i can turn the legally baught Semi auto AK-47 into a fully auto...and this is all brought to you by the wonderful WWW. Hell 10 minutes of searching and you can discover how to build a bomb from to very common garage items that will blow a building in half(hi2u Oklahoma Federal Building)

Screw it i am gonna build a bunker in the antarctic and hide till i die so no one will hurt me.....

PS: Here is a video of some average citizens having a weekend of fun. Mind you every one of those gun are fully tracked by the government and all those people are licensed. You really think we couldn't put up a fight cause i can say for every 1 licensed fully auto in this video there are so many that are not because people want them and the red tape is mind blowing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg3FqEW4K2g

[Gregorio]

I laughed out loud at your statement in bold. And while we should keep trying to reduce crime, drugs and terrorism, I wanted a fucking gun in my bedside table so I can stop the son of a bitch trying to rob me.

Because you're able to justify killing someone who's attempting to steal... what, 1000$ worth of crap from your house? That's like saying if someone got caught robbing a convenience store you wouldn't mind if they got sentenced to death.

I can understand if the robber was a threat to your family or something... except robbers don't aim to cause bodily harm. If they were, you wouldn't have had time to reach over to your bedside table -- you'd already be dead.

While I agree that someone who would kill someone to stop a robbery is pretty dispicible, he didn't exactly say he'd kill them. "Stop the son of a bitch.." could be seen as shooting to kill, or just as holding at gunpoint until the police arive.

And you can't claim robbers don't aim to cause bodily harm, that's just silly. The fact is that you can never know how a robber will react if confronted. Some may run away, some may try to hurt you or your family.

[Devek]

I'm working out a deal now to get my hands on a M1014 shotgun.. anyone have any experience with those? I can't exactly get a chance to test it before I buy it and the seller wants quite a bit..

Assault weapons are banned but they are pretty popular in the midwest :D

Oh ya and lol@short sighted people.

Just because today MOST people don't need a gun to be safe doesn't mean it will always be that way.

Just because YOU don't need a gun to be safe doesn't mean someone out there does.

The government is eroding freedoms left and right and who will protect you when a police officer you pissed off breaks into your home to kill you?

It isn't the criminals with guns that scare me.. I would only be ok with a gun ban if that ban applied to ALL police, military, and government employees.

[Charla]

Gregorio: I see what you're saying. Back in the era of the constitution, a bunch of guys with hunting rifles/muskets/whatever was a legit military force. Nowadays, personal firearms don't even compare. Even if every citizen had an ak-47, the military would have no problem handling a mass rebellion.

5 years ago I would have agreed. But as the war in Iraq various other struggles in the world have shown, a well motivated and lightly armed population can do pretty well vs. an established military.

Iraq is not the case of a "mass rebellion". It is a number of guerillas scattered throughout a population carrying out relatively small acts of attrittion in order to break the endurance of the established military in question. What's more, the guerilla force in such a situation has plenty of access to weapons regardless of their legality, for obvious reasons.

Say lets ban guns for hunting but allow bows well OMG a bow is just as lethal as a gun

1. A bow is a hell of a lot harder to use
2. A bow has a much slower rate of fire than a gun, making it unsuitable for the type of situation that this thread was originally about. Not that that has much to do with this particular derail of course.

[aru]

When was the last American militia you heard of?

militias have been formed whenever there has been a threat on US soil by an outside nation. i suppose it is easy to forget since the US has fought only on foriegn soil for so long, but militias have been formed since before WW2 when militias guarded our ports and shores from german u-boats and japanese invasion of the aleutian island chain in alaska.

It's more than an issue of legal vs illegal weapon statistics. Both groups affect the attitude and view people have on guns. And that's the big problem in USA. There are simply fewer people in Europe who would come up with the idea to get a gun and shoot everyone. Guns are not socially acceptable here and there are extremely few individuals who would even think of getting a one.

you can speak for an entire continent of people and their various cultural groups? ireland is part of europe, is it not? i forget, what was that whole civil war buisness about again? i'm sure they werent using guns as you say.

5 years ago I would have agreed. But as the war in Iraq various other struggles in the world have shown, a well motivated and lightly armed population can do pretty well vs. an established military.

i guess if you consider ak47's with armor piercing bullets, RPG's, IEG's and grenade launchers "lightly armed".....

[Charla]

The normal form of the "we don't need militias anymore" argument is that the National Guard is the modern version of the militia.

[BIGSTIC]

2. A bow has a much slower rate of fire than a gun, making it unsuitable for the type of situation that this thread was originally about. Not that that has much to do with this particular derail of course.

Speed Archery

This is a variation on target archery but the aim is to shoot arrows both quickly and accurately. The competition is won by the archer who shoots the greatest number of arrows shot into a target in one minute. Archers use only unmarked and unsighted bows. and follows the rules set down by the Guiness Book of Records i.e. that the diameter of the target in inches equals the number of complete yards in the shooting distance. The minimum shooting distance is 15 metres. The current world record, recorded in the Guiness Book of Records, stands at 21 arrows in one minute.

I know this is a derailment and quite askew cause this is a world record but i doubt the average American could shoot 21 rounds through a pistol in under a minute and still hit the target. Bows are very deadly in the right hands and in the wrong hand they make hunting so sad. Nothing worse than walking up on a dead dear in rifle season that has a arrow in its hip and bled out because the bow hunter never found it after it did a shitty ass shot on it.

[Chips]

While I agree that someone who would kill someone to stop a robbery is pretty dispicible, he didn't exactly say he'd kill them. "Stop the son of a bitch.." could be seen as shooting to kill, or just as holding at gunpoint until the police arive.

And you can't claim robbers don't aim to cause bodily harm, that's just silly. The fact is that you can never know how a robber will react if confronted. Some may run away, some may try to hurt you or your family.

I realize that he didn't specifically say that he would shoot to kill, but when confronted in a dire situation such as that (your nerves would most certainly be shot, adrenaline would be high) you wouldn't be thinking straight. While it would be a broad generalization to say that most people would kill the robber, I'm sure that's the situation in most cases because of two reasons:

1) People who own guns aren't exactly trained to be experts in the art of accuracy, so if all they wanted to do was to immobilize their target by shooting them in the leg or non-deadly area, they would either miss the target completely, or hit the bigger, more vital area of the body. Through this logic, if you had the chance to stop someone from robbing your house, would you take the chance at hitting him in a non-lethal area so he has a chance at getting away? Or would you go for the obvious and more bold area which would stop be dead in his tracks (no pun intended).

2)While writing my first reason, I forgot what I wanted to say here >.>

And uh, I meant that when robbers go into a house to obtain said valuables, their original intentions aren't to come in and go rooftop sniper on your family's ass. Obviously the situation changes completely when confronted.

I don't really know how to answer this, because I'm against guns... however, I don't see how someone could stop a robber unless they went super stealth and jumped him from behind without a gun... and I don't agree with letting him get off scott-free. So...

[Khamsin]

Speed Archery

This is a variation on target archery but the aim is to shoot arrows both quickly and accurately. The competition is won by the archer who shoots the greatest number of arrows shot into a target in one minute. Archers use only unmarked and unsighted bows. and follows the rules set down by the Guiness Book of Records i.e. that the diameter of the target in inches equals the number of complete yards in the shooting distance. The minimum shooting distance is 15 metres. The current world record, recorded in the Guiness Book of Records, stands at 21 arrows in one minute.

I know this is a derailment and quite askew cause this is a world record but i doubt the average American could shoot 21 rounds through a pistol in under a minute and still hit the target.

I doubt the average American can shoot 21 arrows in under a minute, either. Let alone matching the world record and putting them all through a target.

What's the guiness book of records say about the highest number of bullets put through a target in one minute (by a pistol)? That'd be a more fair comparison about what's possible (record bullets vs record arrows, as opposed to average american bullets vs record arrows).

[Hapernack]

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/128834..._to_bear_arms/

[Charla]

2. A bow has a much slower rate of fire than a gun, making it unsuitable for the type of situation that this thread was originally about. Not that that has much to do with this particular derail of course.

Speed Archery

This is a variation on target archery but the aim is to shoot arrows both quickly and accurately. The competition is won by the archer who shoots the greatest number of arrows shot into a target in one minute. Archers use only unmarked and unsighted bows. and follows the rules set down by the Guiness Book of Records i.e. that the diameter of the target in inches equals the number of complete yards in the shooting distance. The minimum shooting distance is 15 metres. The current world record, recorded in the Guiness Book of Records, stands at 21 arrows in one minute.

I know this is a derailment and quite askew cause this is a world record but i doubt the average American could shoot 21 rounds through a pistol in under a minute and still hit the target. Bows are very deadly in the right hands and in the wrong hand they make hunting so sad. Nothing worse than walking up on a dead dear in rifle season that has a arrow in its hip and bled out because the bow hunter never found it after it did a shitty ass shot on it.

Good point, sort of... Now, at short ranges the equation is completely different. A bow becomes mostly useless while a gun becomes much more accurate (not to mention visible and therefore threatening).

[Gregorio]

Iraq is not the case of a "mass rebellion". It is a number of guerillas scattered throughout a population carrying out relatively small acts of attrittion in order to break the endurance of the established military in question. What's more, the guerilla force in such a situation has plenty of access to weapons regardless of their legality, for obvious reasons.

Ok, so who explicitly commands, that in the extreme off chance of an invasion/rebellion, that we could not do the same thing, but in larger numbers and more frequency? The point is that even a comparatively small number of people could put up a formidable resistance.

And it's not too hard to get a weapon now, why would it be in the instance of a rebellion?

i guess if you consider ak47's with armor piercing bullets, RPG's, IEG's and grenade launchers "lightly armed".....

Compared to the U.S. Army, Israeli army, or other militaries...the Iraqui, Palestinian, IRA, and any other guerilla forces are lightly armed.

[Raineer]

Mass shooting @ VA Tech. Wut?

That's the reason for the damn thread, hi.

Link that event to the 2nd amendment and you can have a cookie, unfortunately you can't.

I didn't see anything mentioing it <.<

You didn't even read like 5 posts into it then.