Amendment 2: - Right to Bear Arms DAMN RIGHT! Get over it!

reply to post by zookey
How are we rubbing our right's in other countries faces? Are you jealous, perhaps?? If you would have said we meddle in other countries business, yes you would be correct. I hate that we are basically World Police, I don't agree with it. I fail to see however, how us US citizen's are rubbing our rights in your face. I for one, don't care what your rights are if I don't live in your country.

reply to post by lifecitizen

Anyway, the world knows America has a gun/weapon problem

No what America has is a societal problem that has allowed certain groups to become disenfranchised from society. Because of this (real or percieved) disenfranchisement and the propogation of a culture that supports it we have reaped a crime problem. A big part of this problem comes from the black market economies available in drugs, prostitution, and illegal immigrants. When a person feels they have no legitimate means to advance to the position of a Warren Buffet or even an "upper middle class" income they will be tempted to find illicit ways.

It is not a weapon or a gun problem. If it was the murder rate would not have dropped by more than 50% over the last thirty years. Gun laws have been getting more lax. They haven't gotten more strict. Yet, we are seeing a reduction in crime and not blood washed streets. We are seeing a reduction in all violent crimes. We are actually safer on a per capita basis than England or Scotland.

In 2005 Scottland was declared the most dangerous "developed nation" in the world by the UN. England is actually the most violent country in Europe now. It has a higher crime rate than America. Sexual assualt, domestic abuse, and assault against females are all on the rise. Tell those ladies how happy they should be that thy don't have a gun problem. Maybe it will reduce the sting of being left to bleed and cry in an alley.

If America has a gun problem I will happily keep that problem. At least it gives me and my wife the chance to protect ourselves from predators. I much rather have a falling crime rate and the right to protect myself than a rising violent crime rate.

Let's not focus on countries where women are raped and beaten. We can forget about countries like Brazil that have a much lower rate of gun ownership, and extremely strict gun regulation, yet has a higher per capita "gun murder" rate. We can forget about similar countries like Jamacia and Russia.

In Jamacia an American was recently jailed for having a single round of ammunition in the crease of his luggage. It was a bag he had used to carry guns to the gun range at home. The single round was a loose round that was left in the bag completely by accident. Their gun laws are ridiculously restrictive. Yet they still have a murder rate of 60 per capita. That is roughly 12 times that of America.

Hey we'll even give Venezuela a pass. Their murder rate is so high that Chavez has made it illegal to report the numbers. They have even outlawed all civilian guns in certain parts of the country. The murder rate still has not dropped enough to make it digestable to the outside world.

If you want to talk about a gun problem, a weapon problem, or a murder problem there are 88 countries well ahead of us. Many of them with much stricter laws than America.

Like I said I'll keep our so called gun problem. It is serving us much better than the highly restrictive policies in many other countries.

God you all are sooooooooooo stupid.. Every one knows that the 2nd amendment is the Right to kill a bear and keep its arms..

You hear me?????

Kill a bear and keep its arms!!!

reply to post by p00hbear


First off, let me apologize if this has already been addressed, but even though I have been a member for quite a while I almost never log in...I'll lurk and read what's happening from time to time but I lost interest in participating in threads that degrade into idiocy after the first two pages or so long ago, and I don't have the patience to read through 17 pages of poor grammar, poor spelling, and ideology from both sides of the issue. I am posting this in response to p00hbear's questions since I see them continually being brought up by non-Americans time after time and I am married to an English woman who was originally equally baffled by the gun situation here and scared of guns in general.

Before I address the specific questions, I need to point out that the US Constitution, unlike the English or UK "constitution" is an actual document that is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, amendable only under extraordinary means as opposed to being an unwritten body of accumulated common law that can be changed at will by legislation or judicial fiat. Also, the US Supreme Court recently affirmed that the 2nd Amendment indeed confers an individual right to own firearms. The reasons and arguments can be found elsewhere, including the Federalist Papers (a series of publications explaining the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the populace), so I will not discuss that here.

Until the period shortly before and after WWII, the general populace had the ability to be better armed, or at least as well armed, as the armed forces, with submachine guns, self-loading rifles, and other such weaponry, provided one could afford it.

One caveat I must make is that gun laws vary wildly from state to state and even within states by municipality, so my answers are by necessity generalizations.

Now to the questions...

1.When is it legal to fire a weapon with intent to kill?

Lethal force is authorized in defense of one's own life or that of others immediately threatened.

2.Can you fire at someone for illegally entering a property?

No, not unless they pose an immediate threat. You can't just kill someone for trespassing.

3. Is there any control over the storage of guns and ammo?

An intelligent person does this without thinking...the laws vary by locality, but generally speaking they should be locked up separately and some states/localities have strict requirements.

So it's a mixed bag of laws...some places make it almost impossible to own any weapon, others have no restrictions at all. Interestingly, places with the most restrictive gun laws also tend to have the highest gun death rates (big cities with gangs) as opposed to places where people are armed and the bad guys know they might get shot. It is what it is and I'm not going to get sucked into any debates. Hope this is useful. Good Night.

I think my mother is putting some money down on a pistol next friday

She has had her FOID card for a while now and has'nt even bought a bullet........

I have a feeling that is going to change real soon...I told her she needs to excercise her rights and start shooting at the range......Long term family security protocols.......