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Rant

They're not NRA members, they're gun owners

Jan 29, 2013 5:13AM PST

Discussion is locked

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Iagree with you.
Feb 2, 2013 5:14AM PST

Firstly, I Hope you don't mind me butting in.
I live in Wales U.K. Ihave loved guns since I was a toddler. I served in the army and have fired a shot in anger.

I live in a vallies town of 5000 and know exactly where the nearest firearm is located to me 100 metres. This belongs to a friend who shoots deer and boar.
After Michael Ryan and the Dunblane incidents the government banned the use of sidearms and automatic shotguns.

Apart from our airports and stations you will not see an armed cop on the beat although an ARU is never far away. So why would an individual need a 30 shot clip?
And as for the people who jeered the father of one of the victims, they are just morons and represent everything that's bad in America.

Dafydd, Wales U.K. unlikely to get shot tonight.
P.S. Wales lost to Ireland at rugby good job I ain't got a gun.

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you're right
Jan 30, 2013 10:33PM PST

"Need" shouldn't enter into it at all!

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Then you also have no objections to
Jan 30, 2013 11:08PM PST

Civilians owning tanks, rockets, missiles, drones.

What gives America the right to restrict weapons in the rest of the world and NOT restrict American citizens from owning any weapon THEY want?

IF you want it...you can have it?

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Governments have been known to use heavy weapons
Jan 30, 2013 11:54PM PST

on their own citizens. Our government has aided those citizen fighters by supplying arms to fight government that have run amok. Why should our government feel that, should it run amok, its citizens should have only knives, bricks and bottles?

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The 2nd Amendment never mentions guns
Jan 31, 2013 8:55PM PST

It says "arms." So yes, your point is a good one. If people are going to be so obstinate about the word "infringed," then I should be able to keep nukes in my apartment.

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It's because they weren't called guns back then
Jan 31, 2013 9:32PM PST

They were muskets, blunderbusses (thunder tubes), pistols, etc. Guns tended to refer to larger weapons such as battleship cannons. You can't argue past language using today's definitions.

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If you're going to insist......
Jan 31, 2013 10:26PM PST

......that the Amendment means the same thing now as it did then, and that the term "well-regulated militia" means the same thing now as it did then, then "arms" means the same thing now as it did then -- armaments. Armaments would include RPGs, missile launchers, bazookas, pretty much anything including nuclear weapons. The US/Soviet arms race was called an arms race, not a nukes race.

If you want to limit the term "arms" to what was available in 1789, I'm good with that. Let's see someone shoot 70 people in 90 seconds with a musket.

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Let's see ANYBODY
Jan 31, 2013 11:12PM PST

other than military with AUTOMATIC weapons shoot 70 people in 90 seconds, Josh. AUTOMATIC weapons have been banned since 1930 except for the military and federal agents. The largest clip capacity for a SEMI-automatic weapon is 100 bullets.....that means that someone would have to physically pull that trigger 100 times over and over until that clip was empty. Most people's trigger finger would cramp up long before that....and their aim would have to be that of a sharpshooter.

Do you really believe that someone as advanced in 'technology' as Benjamin Franklin and men who fought in wars who made up the Founding Fathers didn't KNOW that arms would be advanced over time? If they could see far enough into the future to know that the Federal Government had the capacity to try to take away States' rights and limited it, they were already pretty damned intelligent people.

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The Aurora shooter shot 70 people in 90 seconds
Jan 31, 2013 11:16PM PST

You didn't think I pulled that number out of thin air, did you?

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Didn't he actually
Feb 1, 2013 5:47AM PST

have multiple weapons?

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Yes, so?
Feb 1, 2013 11:56PM PST

He wasn't using them all at the same time. He only has two hands.

You didn't think it was possible. It is, and it happened quite recently.

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There have been semi auto
Feb 1, 2013 8:29AM PST

rifles converted, in multiple cases during my lifetime.

I can't remember the particulars off the top of my head, but there was some model in the 80's that was particularly simple for anyone that learned how to convert.

Besides, if the idea of an armed militia is guareenteed by the constitution to prevent the new government from becoming dictatorship (how you feel about this administration), the citizen is by the 2nd amendment given the right to own everything the military does.

Not that may of us can afford a modern tank, but it should fall under the militia cause and weapons changing over time if you can and want one. I won't even argue against it you keep it and its shells on your land. If you take it off loaded, I want you locked up for a long long time.

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most people
Feb 1, 2013 7:14PM PST

who want to insure a decent chance of self defense while moving around in public would only be carrying a weapon of personal defense such as a handgun. I seriously doubt they'd want to lug a shotgun, machine gun, or other heavier armament around unless there was a known current valid threat that might require it, and in that case they are even less likely to leave home to move about publicly.

That sort of thinking concerning heavier weapons is like thinking someone will be lugging a fuel filled heater around everywhere in the winter, instead of just putting on a good coat when leaving home.

People keep introducing ridiculous situations that in real life rarely to never happen and then try and use that straw man argument to belabor a misguided point they hope to make.

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(NT) don't get it
Feb 1, 2013 8:40PM PST
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Sorry, thought that NT was deleted not posted.
Feb 2, 2013 12:19AM PST

I just reviewed and realize it was elsewhere, but overall I've not opposed what you just posted. I was saying that the arguments about home defense often claim you need the huge magazines to defend against a home invasion by multiple individuals. I didn't make that argument I was acknowledging it when I said in some ways I didn't care what you had at home. I'm responding to the arguments, not initiating them. Neither side had a monopoly on hyperbole or plain stupidiness.

The comment about those semi coverted to automatic during my lifetime was in response to the idea that individuals didn't have automatic weapons because they were outlawed in the past. Odd in that thos arguing the criminals will always get guns would argue no one had automatics because they were illegal.

Many people who are not really criminals do thing that are technically illegal. Often they feel that since it's just at home, no harm no foul. Some people who are not drug crazed, nor psychopaths, nor even a threat to the public, just love guns and collect them, even ilegal ones just to own them. It's similar I guess to those that will buy are they can't show to the public because it's provinance is so uncertain. You never knew anyone that would love to have a old working 50's style machine gun just because they wanted it? people that would never be out shooting up the mall.

The point about heavy argument was in regard to if your argument is based on the 2nd amendment keeping the citizens armed enough to prevent a government from becoming tyrannical, the citizen has to have the same weaponry as the military.

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Response
Jan 30, 2013 7:42PM PST
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Response
Jan 31, 2013 10:48AM PST

Why do tools like David Frum need the 1st Amendment Right of Freedom of the Press?

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(NT) why do any of us?
Feb 1, 2013 8:29AM PST
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Exactly my point.
Feb 5, 2013 7:32PM PST

Rights are not based on "need" - Mark

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So Shouting "Second Amendment"
Feb 5, 2013 7:55PM PST

Was NOT a response to the question.

"Why does anyone NEED an Assault type weapon?"

THAT was the question.

So the guy was being heckled, NOT getting an answer to his question.

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you haven't yet described
Feb 5, 2013 8:36PM PST

what you consider an "assault weapon" and why it's worse being killed by that than another gun which shoots the same ammo. More timed space between shots makes death a little easier to accept? All this blather about "assault weapons" is just so much hooey.

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So you define "heckling" as pointing out flawed reasoning.
Feb 5, 2013 9:04PM PST

I think we've found the source of the problem.

Mark

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I would call.....
Feb 5, 2013 10:53PM PST

.....chanting slogans and otherwise aiming to merely disrupt vs. engage as "heckling."

That it was being done to a man who lost his six-year-old son in a mass shooting two months ago just adds a low-class element to it.

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I wouldn't call...
Feb 6, 2013 6:36PM PST

...quoting the Bill of Rights "chanting slogans", and I wouldn't call correcting false testimony "aiming to merely disrupt".

And it was being done to someone who was testifying at a public policy hearing. This is not like those Westboro Baptist Church d-bags heckling family members at a funeral (who, incidentally, have the Right to do so even though they don't "need" it).

Mark

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we should make up a set of rules
Feb 1, 2013 7:27PM PST

that should be used to "infringe" the First Amendment to the same extent they have infringed the Second Amendment and see if the Liberal News Media would accept such equality of application.

1) If you've ever reported an inaccurate story, you can be fined. (look out Dan Rather and Connie Chung!) Repeated violations will result in loss of license to report.

2) You must first pass a govt check before you can be issued a license to report.

3) "Open carry" means you are not allowed "confidential sources" unless licensed for "concealed confidences"l

4) You may not act as a reporter anywhere other than at home or at your workplace (reporting range)

5) There will be only certain seasons when you can hunt for certain stories.

6) You must do all your reporting using pen, pencil, and paper and only at your place of business can you use a computer since it can process too much information in a short period of time.

7) You will be limited on the number of pens, pencils, and sheets of paper allowed to be kept at home unless you recieve a special reporter's "collector's license" allowing you to possess more.

Cool If you accidentally discharge a story which slanders someone to the extent their reputation is injured causing them financial harm or grief through your character assassination, you will be charged with "murderous slander" and tried for that crime in court on a felony charge.

9) All paper will have special "tags" placed in them same as gunpowder, so any papers discovered at a news site which may be under investigation for murderous slander, that paper can be properly tracked back through it's sources between you and the original producer, including all paper suppliers both wholesale and retail who are required to keep accurate records of such paper and it's tags.

10) ............

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(NT) should that be applied to all internet forums and blogs too?
Feb 2, 2013 12:20AM PST
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If they came to constitute a
Feb 5, 2013 8:37PM PST

viable news source reaching a large audience.

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The Texas Reply
Feb 2, 2013 12:09AM PST
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Guns!
Feb 2, 2013 6:00AM PST

Wow! this is one busted country. Come on, Billie the Kid, Pat Garret, and John Wayne all died long ago.
Dafydd.
Wales. U.K.

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in fairness to the control side
Feb 2, 2013 7:12AM PST

the speaker is deliberately ignoring one significant difference, and trying to confuse it by referring to a piece of plastic handle/grip.

The hunting rifle shown, unless I'm badly mistaken, requires you to insert shells one at a time until the built in magazine is full.

The so called assault weapons share a specific aspect besides a "scary looking gun", they use quickly changeable clips.

The time to reload and fire multiple rounds is substantially different between the two types.

I'm not advocating the outlawing of ammo clip guns, at least not yet. However, I think it is just as wrong for the gun lobby side to indicate there is no difference between the two types as it is for the "assult weapon" ban crowd to blame Sandy Hook on assault weapons.

It proves that the BS isn't one sided, never had been, never will.

Everyone tries to gloss over and distract from facts detrimental to their argument.

One inaccuracy is just as wrong as the other.