To: Nick, Re: NRA, Bill of Rights, Gun Control, Pencil Dicks

Damn I'm long-winded aren't I? I started responding to some of Nick's comments from the last post and I realize my own comment would make people scroll forever. Plus I wanted to add an image that I saw somewhere... so I apologize yet again for transposing to here.

On to my ramblings...

(Nick said what's italicized)

the NRA might carry too much political muscle... and I'm not here to take it away because it's simply my opinion.

I can relate to you on this one. I definitely don't like some of the agendas pushed by political powerhouses like AARP and Natl Org of Women (not that I have anything against chicks or geezers). However, I'm with you in that I wouldn't want to silence them.

There is a difference between the First and Second Ammendments... Quills couldn't kill people...

Well, I have two things that popped into my head when I read this. The first is that there actually isn't anything different at all between these two issues in the Bill of Rights (or any other for that matter). If we read our history, we'll see that they are a list of some (not all) rights that the Constitution writers felt were innate, preceded government, and could not be touched. Each was just as important as the next to everyone that called for the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. Our Constitution was not going to be ratified without all of them. Some states tried to remove some and failed.

The second thing I thought of is that you're 100% right. It is true that firearms can kill. That's actually the point. The founders wanted to ensure that the people had the means to keep their new government in check. Citizen militias just got done beating the best army in the world to start our country. Americans are supposed to have guns to resist tyranny. This is indisputably the intent of the creators of our government. It sounds strange in today's world, but it doesn't make it any less important.

I don't think gun control has to be an all-or-nothing issue.

Neither do I. I support sensible gun control. Criminals and the insane should not have legal access to firearms. Also, non-self-defense shootings should be severely punished. Sentences today are a joke if you look into them. The average time spent in jail for attempted murder is six years. So, apart from making it illegal for a criminal to even be in the presence of a gun (which is a law), what else are we really trying to do? There are around 30,000 gun laws on the books, and criminals still illegally get guns and shoot people. I'm definitely not saying that a repeal of all gun control laws will make all violent crime vanish. All I'm saying is that gun control laws certainly aren't helping (and I've shown stats/anecdotes elsewhere on here that suggest they may be hurting).

is carrying a revolver any less effective at stopping a criminal in the act than an uzi?

Definitely not. I carry a revolver sometimes and feel perfectly fine. This one, to be exact:

Smith & Wesson Model 642

No law-abiding and sensible person would carry an uzi on the street for protection for many reasons that I won't go into (size, control, etc). I have much more powerful firearms at my disposal right now than a snubby .38 revolver, but I don't carry them down the street. By the way, you want us to carry revolvers for protection? You can't do it in Toledo or any other city in this country that has a "Saturday Night Special" law. Yep, my little revolver is too small for them.

Remember, guns can't be too small. They can't be too big. They can't shoot big bullets. They can't shoot little bullets. You can't buy a muffler for the sound, but cities shut down outdoor ranges because they're too loud. You can't have steel bullets because they're "cop killers", but don't worry, the government will force you to install very regulated and expensive ventilation to get lead out of the air since you can't shoot steel bullets and lead are a "health hazard". Etc, etc, etc, ad nauseaum for 30,000 laws.

Do we really need weapons with the capability of causing such mass terror?

I fear you're looking at this the wrong way. Good people won't cause mass terror. It should be (and is) illegal for criminals to have firearms. Your question goes back to the indisputable intent for the Second Amendment. If it were up to the framers, they would encourage every citizen to have the same weapons that a personal soldier in a standing army would have. We're not talking nuclear bombs. We're talking personal weapons. Anti-gunners say, "citizens only had smoothbore muskets in the 1800's." Well guess what? That's all that the British had too. This concept isn't unheard of today. Switzerland issues every man over the age of eighteen a fully automatic machine gun and they are required to have at least 1000 rounds of ammo at all times and pass a yearly marksmanship qualification. They must pay much higher taxes if they fail that qualification. Switzerland's violent crime rate is very, very low. So the availability of guns does not cause crime. Guns are just tools. It takes evil and criminal intent to make them kill. Now here's the image that Google helped me find (courtesy of Oleg Volk at A-Human-Right.com).




Again, I am not an advocate for forcing people to have guns like they do in Switzerland. But I am against people telling me "because Joe Gangbanger is killing people illegally, you can't have the choice". So, to try and summarize a long-winded response to what you originally asked... people wouldn't walk around with a "Minigun and a rucksack of ammo" for personal protection.

As an aside, just in case some don't know, any law-abiding citizen can buy a fully automatic machine gun right now if they wanted to submit themselves to the paperwork and an exhorbitant tax stamp that has made the price of machine guns skyrocket. The reason why the majority of shooters don't have machine guns isn't because they are difficult to get. The majority of shooters don't have them because they're friggin' expensive to get. The cost is about $20,000 thanks to government regulations. That's the legal price. It is a documented fact that law enforcement officers say that full auto guns on the black market go for somewhere between $300-500.

...being filled so full of lead that he'll be using his dick for a pencil.

El Guapo: "What does that mean?"
Lucky Day: "I don't know."

Hilarious. What a classic. See Nick, I think we could be friends if this damnable typing wasn't so easy to misinterpret at times as sarcasm or dickheadishness when we never mean it to.