Net Llama! wrote: > On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, Bruce Marshall wrote: >> On Tuesday 10 October 2006 10:59, Net Llama! wrote: >>> Crushing constitutional & civil rights is far worse than the evils >>> committed by prior administrations. >> And if the Dems come into power.... what will they do to the 2nd >> amendment? >> >> There are evils on both sides of the aisle. > > Its funny how the only ammendment that the Republicans care about is their > right to arm themselves. Who cares if you can be imprisoned forever > without a trial, as long as you can carry a gun around before they lock > you up & throw away the key.
You're making those broad sweeping generalizations you accuse others of. I (and all conservatives I know) care very much about all the rights enumerated in the constitution. Every single one of them has been trampled by Democrats and Republicans at every turn. We've essentially lost them all. The 2nd is the only one that has a hope of helping us get back the others. It's the "enforcement" clause. The Founders understood this very well. As did the Nazis when they passed a sweeping gun confiscation in the early 30s. The American Gun Control Act of 1968 was modeled closely on the Nazi law. It was authored and passed almost entirely by Democrats. > What I've never understood (and would genuinely like to understand) is > how the right to bear arms benefits anyone? Sure, you can hunt animals in > the woods, but I've never heard anyone getting fired up over the potential > loss of that right. Most folks get very ticked off that they lose their > right to defend themselves. What exactly are you defending yourself from? > Unless I'm missing something (and perhaps I am), the only time a gun > benefits you is when the person attacking you has a smaller/weaker gun, or > no gun at all. And as we all know, in an arms race, there are no winners, > only losers. When it comes down to it, unless you distrust the govt, such > that you feel that you're going to need to defend yourself from their > attack, what good is a gun going to do you? And if the govt is coming > after you, the odds of you having sufficient & large enough weapons & ammo > are just about nil. > > So, can someone actually help me to understand all of this? I honestly > would like to understand it better. Thank you. We should all be so willing to learn and listen. Kudos. The right to hunt is a fine sport and way to gather meat. And there are *many* people who get very fired up over the continued eroding of that right. It has been under attack just like all other rights. Example: this is the reason the Democrats in Michigan have been steadily losing their best voting bloc: the blue collar union. Traditionally they always voted Democrat, until the Demos stupidly made gun control a central plank. Michiganders love to deer hunt. But the 2nd Amendment and more generally "the right to keep and bear arms" really has little to do with hunting. Contrary to the Clinton sound bites. I've seen little evidence that "blue state" (urban, coastal) voters care a whit about the right to defend themselves. They seem to think the police will do it for them even tho the stats prove otherwise and the courts have ruled otherwise. If people from those areas actually have ever even thought about such, I'd be relived to hear it. My passion to keep and bear arms comes from my desire to defend myself, my family, and my community from: 1. Dangerous or feral animals 2. The common criminal 3. Government violence 4. Foreign invasion I've listed them somewhat in order of likely occurrence at this moment in time. If I lived in the city the first two would certainly be swapped. It's the second one that is the pivotal one for most of us. But increasingly the third or fourth. Here's a simple fact that has been true for a long time. Statistics from the US Dept of Justice show that you are several times more likely to successfully defend yourself from criminal aggression if you are using a firearm. A firearm. Not a cell phone. Not a can of pepper spray. Not a hair brush. Another *very* well researched fact. Americans use firearms to defend themselves from criminal aggression from 800,000 (low estimate) to 2.4 million times per year. Far more times than firearms are used to commit crimes. It's easy to see from these numbers (and many more) that firearms in the hands of citizens are a net benefit to society. More examples. The UK has outlawed essentially all firearms. They've also essentially outlawed defending ones self from violence. Seemingly without a whimper from the citizens. Before this crime was much lower in Britain than here and was on the decline while ours was climbing. Now, the overall crime rate there is twice the US and climbing while ours is declining. Check the crime rates in Australia since outlawing handguns and semiautomatic rifles a few years ago. A significant part of this is the passage of "right to carry" laws in some 2/3 of the states. Crime rates go down when citizens 'bear'. Crime rates go up when then don't carry. They go really up when citizens aren't even allowed to 'keep' even in their own homes (e.g. Washington DC, Chicago). The evidence of the net benefit to society (as regards crime rates) is mountainous. Google 'Prof John Lott' if you want more. Or allow me to drag out the many volumes I have at home on the subject. I will assert that it is a "settled question". The third and fourth (defending against the government and foreign invasion) are the ones that make many people roll their eyes. I'll deal with the fourth briefly. It's somewhat less interesting because we fat, happy Americans truly believe it could never happen here. It can, it will. Whether it will be my finger on the trigger or my grandson I don't know. Anyway, the history books especially from recent years have plenty of examples of the effectiveness of an armed populace at deterring or slowing foreign aggression. It is said that's the reason The Empire of Japan never seriously considered landing troops on the West Coast "a rifle behind every blade of grass". It was largely a militia effort that freed Texas from Santa Anna. The Swiss defense model is entirely based on this idea. Read about how the vastly inferior Finns defeated the mighty Soviets. I'll dig up more on that one if you'd like. Now, the 3rd - government violence. First, a statistic that should need no explanation. Based especially on the last hundred years, you're far more likely to suffer violence at the hands of your own government than any common criminal, religion, or other non-state source. The prime examples: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot, Mao's China as well as numerous examples from Africa. Note also the killing of some 200,000 civilians in the Philippines by US Government troops. And we'll leave out actual declared wars such as the fission bombs dropped on Japan. The biggest threat any of us face is government. (I will point out that all the specific examples cited above excepting the Philippines were done by leftist governments. Not sure what that means for voting when your choices are a leftist Democrat or a leftist Republican.) So which question do you find more pressing? - Do we need to defend against the US Government? - Do we have the ability to defend against the US Government? I'm going to leave the first question as obvious. How many more years of GW Bush (or Clinton or Nixon or Kerry or Dole) would it take to actually wake us up to fear our own government? To the notion of using my AR-15 or my M1-A to fight off an attack by the US Government, most people would reasonably ask something like "You really expect to be able to do that? You really think you could win?" To which the obvious answer is: "No, I don't." But neither do I think it is necessary. I give you a word: Insurgent. Another: Guerrilla. Here's a simple fact from the history books of the post-WW II era. The guerrillas almost always win. No matter how big the superpower. No matter how thoroughly they control all the key assets. No matter how ruthless they are. Think Russia in Afghanistan. Think US in Iraq. Think about the numerous insurgent wars in Africa. Think US in Vietnam. Now, it's not that the guerrillas outfight the superpowers. That almost never happens. They win by wearing out the will to fight. They win politically. They win morale-wise. They win my not quitting. I've no time to go farther right now. I'll gladly supply more if you'd like. But let me, please, be clear on one thing: I do not want this war. I won't start it. I'll avoid it as long as it can. I'm not a terrorist nor "anti-government". I want freedom. I want my constitutional rights and to be left alone. It is *they* (Bush, Clinton, Feinstein, Daly, Kennedy, Frist, etc.) who make war on my rights, my family, my very ability to exist. I simply have weighed the evidence and realized that it is coming no matter what I do. It will come. It always does. It must. Empires always collapse. Our particular empire is not a very efficient one. The Romans were far better. So were the Brits. Let me know what you'd like more of, if any. Michael _______________________________________________ [email protected] Unsub/Pause/Etc : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
