jack8007
Posts: 392
Joined: 8/14/2007
Status: offline
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quote:
one day you will learn to be civil.
If I could only have the same confidence in you.
Here I was, thinking that forums were for discussion, and any poster could expect to be challenged. You of course are the exception whose mere pronouncement is final. How could I have misunderstood?
You'll have to help me with this, because after 10 years in Marine field artillery and >25 practicing law, I don't know nearly as much about weapons or law as you. At least, I don't seem to have as many feelings about these issues as you.
So may I ask, how exactly do you figure that your personal definition of a gun is material to constitutional rights, or public policy? Just curious.
For any serious lurker, some questions are obvious - where exactly in the constitution (or common law) are "arms" defined? Should we believe that the Founding Fathers wanted people to have AK knock-offs, but not an M240?
2ndly, does anybody really think that their engraved Desert Eagle is going to hold off 2 Federal agents? If they do, I submit that they suffer from exactly the sort of seriously poor judgment that should disqualify them from being armed, at all. Anybody who thinks that David Koresh would have lasted 10 minutes against a platoon of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children hasn't been downrange from them.
Use of firearms is exactly the sort of policy issue where constitutional interpretations hardly mean jack shit - whether you are allowed 20 or 30 round magazines will always be committed to regulation. Whether you are allowed a weapon AT ALL will always be committed to regulation.
Finally, the entire 2nd Amendment issue is an obvious political distractor from real issues - if you can get a bunch of morons fired up that the UN is coming to get their guns, they aren't going to ask about real issues - like, are you sure the Army is invading the right country, or, exactly how much is this bail-out going to cost us, and why aren't these people in the same jail with the Enron boys?
Let me point out something here - many people talk about "guns" as if they provided the same sort of MAD deterrent from crime that nuclear weapons were thought to provide from aggression. Sure, firearms are a big advantage over none - in most cases. But where exactly is any principled limit on firearms? No automatics? Where did that principle come from? Nothing over .50? Where in the constitution does it say that? In fact, if a well-regulated militia is the goal, then every county needs a few tanks.
But there is no principled upper limit, and there is no reasonable expectation that somebody isn't going to have an M2 when you have a revolver, and mutually assured destruction isn't any more sane with .30 weapons than with 30 megaton weapons. There are no magic prescriptions, and your gun is as likely to get you into trouble as out of it. Unarmed bystanders ended the attacks on Giffords and Reagan, while armed people stood around - and that's not really a surprise if you think about the mechanics of using weapons in those situations. Packing a weapon does not mean you are prepared to use it. Give every citizen a weapon without an IQ test, and that by itself creates the belief that somebody is going to pull one and use it, and as soon as somebody acts on that, you will have a firefight among idiots.
My suggestion is that people think with their big heads about these issues. And no Tazzy, I really don't give a shit about your legal theories, even if I'm happy you seem to think you're coherent.
And a D-30 fires a 122mm round about 15km, and a decent crew is able to put one downrange every 10 seconds. A very good weapon.
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RE: What Happened To Democrats. - 
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