Yes, that’s right. To be able to defend ourselves against our own Government.

Based on that logic, why would we forbid ourselves the same firepower that we allow to our Government? Put another way, why would we grant our Police and Military an excess of firepower (i.e. assault weapons) that we don’t allow ourselves?

The right of the people to hunt? The right of the people to own specific kinds of weapon? When did our Bill of Rights become a “Bill of Needs?” All of these are petty arguments.

Wake up folk. We are participating in the great experiment of Self Government. We ARE the governing voice. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, We need to be ready, able and willing to DEFEND it. That’s the main reason for our right to arms.

Think about it. If we are truly self-governing, how can we allow a standing army to be more powerfully armed than the people themselves?

Hence the 2nd Ammendment.

Wake up folks.

In the words of George Washington, arms are the people’s “liberty teeth.”

They have recently changed that, but the point is still valid. With 85% of their households containing automatic weapons, Sweden had virtually no gun violence. And that means the guns themselves aren’t the issue.

Agree with your point about slaves, and yes we could revisit the second amendmnet. Just understand that it has NO CHANCE AT ALL of being modified or repealed in our lifetimes, there are too many gun owenerrs and too many states that would never agree to it.

Disagree completely with your point about hunting. I am not a hunter, but I know many and bow hunting causes the aniumals dramatically more pain and suffering, increases the risk of injury to the hunter for larger game, and would drastically reduce the number of tags filled – and right now filling those tags is how we keep the deer from overrunning our agriculture and destroying our parks.

Agree we can change things, and agree that there is no “god given right” to kill things. That said, other countries have other issues and their models don’t work as well for us. For example, in Sweden, Switzerland and Israel, a high percentage of adult men (and many women) have automatic weapons. I don’t think you want to copy them. Japan has very tight control of guns but a wildly higher suicide rate – I dont think you want to copy them, either.

Gun ownership by law abiding citizens, in and of itself, is not the problem. Miuse of guns is the problem. Addressing the real problem by targeting the one group that ISN’T the problem is hardly a good approach.

Some of them also thought personal slaves were a good idea. Just because someone 200 years ago thought something was a good idea, does not mean it still is. You could have made the same argument in favor of the practicality of slavery and the need for slaves to keep the land under control.

You don’t need guns to go deer hunting, you could be real sportsman and use arrows. More skill and more sport. Just like you don’t NEED to have slaves to dig your ditches. You don’t need to raw through the woods on a quad motorbike, you could peddle through the woods on a mountain bike.

We can change the way we accomplish things. There is not a god given right to kill people and animals you don’t like. We have to start to use more rational and safer methods for wild life control, or do it an a well regulated way.

I think we can learn from other countries. We are not getting it right and the constitution was not anointed by god.

Lets start looking at the way other nations handle guns and stop putting our heads in the sand, and declaring well that can’t work here because we are ‘special’.

We could START by looking at the way Canada regulates guns, and work from there.

I actually had a gun control discussion earlier today. I’m studying in Serbia for a few weeks and some interns at a security NGO were very interested in why our gun laws are so permissive. My only answer was that the right pushes hard for them and the left doesn’t push back very hard. This turned into an exchange with a professor of mine who took the same line that new regulations would only punish lawful gun owners, and sure, they would feel a pinch. But you can also increase the mandatory sentences for unlawful gun ownership and gun use, start buy-back programs and keep thorough registries of who owns guns and how many. This way it’s easy to track stolen or illegally fenced weapons. In these cases it may be too late to save a victim of gun crime, but it would be a good start to culling illegal weapons from the country.