Honestly, would you hand in your firearms?

When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million. But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as "in startling free-fall" and British rates as of October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two are on a path to converge.

Why the UK needs more guns

The number of people robbed of personal property at gunpoint rose by 53 per cent in the Metropolitan Police area between April and November last year

Guns in the cities

The new gun crime figures also show that handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on the weapons that followed.

Gun crime trebles

I could keep digging these up all day but it would be wasteful and essentially futile. If he believes guns are a scourge and the gun ban's work then he's free to think that. I doubt anything short of actually having his life saved by one would convince him ohterwise but then Im sure he would rationalize it in one of two ways: 1. the criminal should have never gotten a gun to use against me. the laws must be more strict. 2. its a good thing the policeman had a gun. i love policemen.

If people still question the intent of the 2nd Amendment or why the framers included it in our Bill of Rights check out this article. Clear and succinct:

Hamilton, Madison & Gerry

Hello, Mr. Policeman. You're here to collect my handguns? Ummm...don't you people talk to each other? My house was broken into months ago and all my handguns and rifles were stolen. I filed a report and everything. If you recover them, you can have them. You have a search warrent? Fine have at it.

If my government had reason to believe that I might some day want to employ my weapon against it, hiding my gun from that government would be but one of many concerns I had. Guns are only half the battle. What about shooters? If the government thinks my gun is a danger to them, they must believe that I have a will to put them in danger. That means bad news for me and everyone else.

What would happen after the turn-in period when the police came to my door while going down the list of people who hadn't handed over their weapons?
They'd have to knock several times. Then they'd try the bell. Then they'd kick the door in. Then they'd look through my virtually empty house for a while. They'd probably fight over the donut i left on the table... no matter what I order, I can never finish all of the donuts in my possesion- it's a curse. Then they'd make a note to come back later, but it wouldn't help them.

Meanwhile, I'd be at the grocery store somewhere across the state line restocking on cheap staples to carry me through my little move to a more sympathetic and rural area where I could reasonably expect to succeed in laying low and seeing how things panned out.

Because #1. I'd want to be sure that all was lost before I started killing my fellow Americans. and #2. Shooting some cop in the face doesn't really help the cause anyway.

Revolutionaries need the brains to lose well as much or more than the ability to kill. Take Washington- he spent most of the revolution getting his wooden teeth kicked in battle after battle, but doing so in a way that allowed him to keep falling back and keep the British army busy. Imagine how long the revolution would have lasted if he had seen "The Patriot" and decided at the outset of the war to go get himself killed doing a Mel Gibson impersonation. It would have been a short war.

If America really did end up at war with itself to save the constitution, realistically I'd probably end up studying maps for most of the war and telling partisans where they could do the most damage, not running around shooting everything that moves like some kind of ill-concieved movie hero, so when they came for my guns, I'd bolt and go make friends who were as unhappy with the idea as I was, and I'd wait to see if things really warranted a fight and if there was gonna be one.

Vagabond. You have a habit of pointing out uncomfortable truths. Handguns are, indeed, only half the battle where the gov't. is concerned, should the worst ever happen. They must be able to control the owners of said guns. A person can work around bans, finding other tools to protect themselves with. I used to have a book whose title was something like, can't remember the title exactly, "An anarchist guide to home defense" or something like that. VERY useful, in the face of the possibility, however remote I may think it, of gov't. attempts to confiscate weapons.

It is the responsibility of all Americans to defend themselves. And since the government and police will use weapons to control us, we must use weapons to defend ourselves. They have missiles; our militias must have the right to have missiles and all weaponry that the police and government has in order to defend ourselves against them.
You say that most people would simply give it because they fear the repercussions. COWARDS! Let them take away all our guns and see how much worse it will be. Imagine what they could do to a huge unarmed populace. I would bet that then you would have wished you died trying: a hero, a martyr, a patriot.

Originally posted by seagull
Handguns are, indeed, only half the battle where the gov't. is concerned, should the worst ever happen.

As the slogan goes, fear the government that fears your gun. I happen to believe in strong regulatory accountability for gun owners (distinct from restriction).
I don't think there is any denying that guns pose a danger. The exercise of force, by definition, is tyrannical. Our founders left us the second amendment so that if absolutely necessary we would be able to fight fire with fire. We should strive to mitigate potential dangers that come with this right.
But when the government goes beyond concern for those consequences, and goes to catagorically remove the ability of the people to exercise force in their own name as a last resort, then we're talking as much about fear of the people as fear of guns, and that is a dangerous position to be in.

"An anarchist guide to home defense" or something like that. VERY useful,

A few notes on that from someone who has seen several versions of various "anarchist's something or another" books:

1. Some of the things detailed in the books that I have seen were inherently criminal and of no valid use in any situation I could imagine. I can't recommend any book that advocates such criminality. The books I've seen, on the other hand, were quite antisocial and seemed to have been written by maladjusted teenagers who thought it would be fun to hurt people.

2. MANY of the things detailed in those books were extremely dangerous, to the point that some believe they may be a booby-trap designed to make foolish subversives injure themselves. It would be preferable to rely on a personal understanding of any principles relevant to your objective, and sound scholarly sources of extra knowledge. One version of the anarchist's cookbook instructs the reader to grind a highly flamable solid material with a mortar and pestle. The reader may or may not have fingers left after attempting to do so.

3. Some of the chemistry explained in versions I have seen was suspect at best. Just because two common household substances have chemicals, which if combined, should be explosive, does not mean that mixing the two chemicals will form the desired compound, or that said compound if formed will not also include substantial impurities that reduce or nullify its utility. That is, of course, to say nothing of the potential for dangerous unmentioned byproducts.

Personally, if I was going to build a library for a militia so as to teach people how to protect themselves and their country, I'd include a a series of chemistry texts and encyclopedia articles on a few particularly useful chemical compounds, a few easy to understand works on military history, annotated in advance for issues of relevance to the region, works on civil engineering and various detailed maps of the region showing all logistical infrastructure and strategic resources, detailed documentation the proceedures of any relevant bureaucracies to aid in procuring papers and staying unnoticed, all available literature on the systems of potential military threats, etc.

Dime store bomb building advice is for second rate criminals. Someone who intends to be prepared for the unfortunate possibility that they might have to defend their country should understand considerably more than the anarchist books can teach... a sense of responsibility and conscience being first among those things.

[edit on 3-5-2007 by The Vagabond]