DialecticMaterialist said:
Amature I wish to first off say the post above was not directed at you, they were directed at the pro-gun fanatics/extremists, as I think you made some fairly good points. I'm sorry about the confusion. However I think in the end your arguments are still unsufficient and your irrelevant.
Irrelevant? No. The issue here is the Second Amendment. It's not "should a civilized society allow its citizens to own guns" in general? Your arguments about the relative lack of guns in other countries is irrelevant, as they all lack a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
First off you say "guns don't kill people, people do." In a sense you are right, but that misses the point. The point is its a matter of degree, and guns make it far easier to kill a person. That's like saying "terrorists don't kill people: people kill people." "Marxism doesn't fail: people fail."
Ummm....terrorists
are people.
A gun left alone has never killed anyone. Despite anti-gun rhetoric and the ridiculous defense used by ignorant teenagers and others who "accidentally" kill their friends or relatives while playing with their daddies' guns, guns do not simply "go off." They discharge because someone pulled their triggers, released their hammers, or dropped them--in each case with a chambered round and with the safety off (although accidental discharges in this last manner are very rare).
Guns are a very convenient way to kill people. So are cars. So are javelins used at track meets. So are tent stakes. So are kitchen skillets.
Secon, all the mentioned countries may still have murder, but much less then the US overall. You can point to rare incidents of violence, but they are exactly that: rare. Like protests in China.
BS. Murder was not invented in the U.S. Gun murders are relatively rare outside the U.S., but outside the U.S. persons simply find other means for accomplishing the same. Violent crime exists everywhere on the planet, and always has, and always will. Humans, like most other predatory and territorial animals, are violent creatures by nature, under the right circumstances. Civilization will never remove certain natural impulses from humans, despite the silly hopeful wishes of so many idealists and peaceniks.
Your main point seems to be that we need guns to balance the government. I maintain such a protection is an illusion and not worth the cost.
We'll never know unless the U.S. exeriences a huge invasion from a foreign invader, or the Government begins attacking its citizens on a wide scale, or factions of the U.S. military attempt a coup, will we? Perhaps the armed portions of the citizenry might play a substantial role in repelling the attack.
My main point is that the Second Amendment was enacted precisely to provide the citizenry a means of protecting the basic liberties and rights guaranteed by the constitution and upon which this nation was founded. Three main threats to such liberties were recognized at the time: 1) foreign invasion; 2) insurrection; and 3) tyrannical use of force against the citizenry by the government (or its military).
Those three threats remain today, just as they have to other societies throughout the history of human civilization. To contend that somehow modern civilization has advanced to the degree that all modern democracies are now benevolent and would never attempt to do its own citizens harm is to be completely ignorant of both ancient and modern history, and/or utterly foolish.
Dare I do it? Mention Nazis or fascists? How do you think they came to power? They did it with the willing cooperation of their countries' citizens, who had been democratically governed immediately before their seizing power. Never mind that the mostly peasant populace of post-revolution Russia willingly embraced communism and its promise of a better life for them. Never mind that the communist government very quickly evolved into totalitarianism and culminated in the most oppressive and murderous regime under Josef Stalin that the modern world has ever seen.
Think that none of those things could ever happen in modern America? Hmmmm.... Who predicted Hitler's phenomenal rise to power and near total domination of continental Europe, both east and west? Who predicted Stalin's suppression of all his opposition by mass murder and exile?
Today America faces the ever-present threat to civil liberties of its own citizens willingly trading them for a sense of greater security. One of the liberties so many of its citizens so often and so passionately argue should be abolished is the right to bear arms. It is perhaps the most important one, however, as an unarmed citizenry is literally defenseless from the three threats enumerated above. Once the citizenry is rendered defenseless, all liberties may be taken away, with or without force.
This sounds extremist and paranoid, I readily admit. Nevertheless, our nation was founded by extremists and radicals. They were rebels. They had every right to be paranoid. They understood far better than we do today why trust in the benevolence of government can be so dangerous and misplaced. Health skepticism and wariness is utterly American and utterly justified after even a cursory look at history.
I'm all for keeping the Second Amendment. Yes, we have to put up with "gun nuts" and extremist private militia groups. Yes, we have to accept that many guns end up in the hands of those who would misuse them for crime. Yes, we have to put up with accidental shootings. You take the good with the bad.
Freedom of the press, for another example of a fundamental liberty, means that the Weekly World News and The National Enquirer can print their ridiculous and patently false stories, and that Larry Flynt can publish Hustler, and that porno mills in Los Angeles can use and abuse young women hoping to make it in Hollywood. You wouldn't seriously argue that those blights mean we should scrap that part of the First Amendment, would you?
Why then, should gun crime and violence be used as justifications for disarming the populace who chooses to be armed? Why should it be used to eviscerate much of the intent of the Second Amendment in the first place, which was to place military weapons in the hands of the citizenry (in the form of federal bans on "assault rifles" and machine guns without special and highly restricted licenses)?
I don't get it. The anti-gun lobby sounds far too much like the flag burning amendment proponents. It simply misses the point of liberties guaranteed by the constitution and why they are so essential to our nation's freedom. It misunderstands or ignores the founders' concerns about factionalism and oppression by and tyranny of the majority.
Even if the majority of Americans ever decides to scrap the right to bear arms, it will be the wrong decision made for the wrong reasons. Spout rhetoric all you want, watch "Bowling for Columbine" until you wear out your DVD, and cry over the innocent kids killed by stray bullets in bad neighborhoods, but those things will never change the sound historical and modern reasons for the enactment and vigilant protection of the Second Amendment and its intended purpose.
AS
