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jlf1961 -> RE: All things gun control go here (1/3/2013 7:03:54 PM)
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I am going to address a one of the more extreme views against the second amendment.
1) The second amendment made sense when the only weapons available were muzzle loading muskets.
This thought is flawed, since at the time, muzzle loaders were the supreme weapon of the day. The so called "assault weapons" everyone is screaming about are not two things.
They are not Assault Weapons. An Assault Weapon is a select fire standard issue weapon of the military. What is actually in question is the civilian rifles based on military frames.
They are not the weapon of choice for most crimes committed by people with guns. Those are pistols and shotguns.
To quote Thomas Jefferson:
quote:
I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787
I submit to those people in the US that are against guns and call themselves patriots are actually the very people that Jefferson warned about.
How do you people propose that patriots willing to fight for the freedoms of our constitution do that if the government makes laws that restrict or even take away those very rights you so devoutly claim to support?
The second amendment meant that the civilians of this country have guns at their disposal that are comparable in some respects as what the military have.
The creation of the National Guard did not end that responsibility of the private citizen to protect the rights from tyrants. Many states still maintain state militias, as set out in the Constitution. Texas is one such state. Today those forces are referred to as State Defense Forces.
State Defense Force members supply all of their own gear and ammo.
Think about it.
A Ban on Assault weapons is in violation of the 2nd amendment, since it limits the ability of State Defense Forces to maintain a viable force of arms.
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