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Guns save lives thread


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I hope the 14 year old girl is ok

She's fine.

One of the bullets fired in the incident hit a neighbor's home, Herman said. No one in the neighboring home was wounded, but a 14-year-old girl inside was startled by the stray bullet and had medical issue.

Herman said she was taken to a nearby hospital and was later released.

Andrade, Herman said, had recently served time in following a conviction for burglary.

From: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Homeowner-shoots-suspected-burglar-4611663.php

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If you were to read this statement on it's own, it does make Americans look worse than Europe..Quick question - If Europeans liked guns, would they become more violent than the US ?

I don't like to think of America as better or worse then Europe, but just different.

Some countries like trains, and some like structures made of stone. And some like different foods. It is not better or worse, just different. Americans use more guns and so more are going to die from gunshot. That is just a fact. To tell Americans that they should get rid of guns to prevent a couple deaths seems to me to be intolerant.

Does the German Autobahn kill more people then say a French highway? Should the Autobahn be banned because French highways are safer?

Does British food kill more people then Italian food? Should the Italians call for the banning of English food?

As to Americans who call out for gun banning, I feel they have a right to speak, but I feel that they have zero chance of success. Most are doing so simply to prove how "liberal" they are. And the few who have good reason, are almost entirely supported by those who do have a political agenda.

I think that Americans have had guns at the individual level for the entire length of US history. Can that be said of most other nations? It seems both Australia and the UK at least both have centuries of gun restriction legislation. Perhaps they have less of a gun culture, because they have been subject to such laws for four or five times as long as the US has.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom

Edited by DieChecker
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I don't like to think of America as better or worse then Europe, but just different.

The part and ONLY part of your previous post that I was looking at that shows you pointing out in terms of gun violence, that America are more violent than Europe.......When you said...

Americans = More Violent = Like Guns

Europe = Less Violent = Not Like Guns

Clearly here you point out that fact - America are more violent than Europe in gun violence...Well you don't actually say gun violence, but as I am not thick, I know you meant gun violence lol

The rest of your post is not relevant to me, as I clearly pointed out previously that I was only looking at one part of your post as it reads above and not the rest.. The rest of your post in response to me looks more like a defence, and I am not here to battle or argue with anyone on America is bad OR Americans should loose their rights to bare arms.. My posts within this thread clearly show that I am on Americas side to keep their rights...( I didn't think I needed to point that out again but anyhoo ) ...But hey thanks anyway.

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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Americans = More Violent = Like Guns

Europe = Less Violent = Not Like Guns

Maybe they're just trying to catch/make up for eurasia's last 3000 years of violent history :)

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Three thousand years of literature and music and art and science and philosophy too.

I wander around German or Italian towns and come across Roman stuff. The oldest you find in the States is Colonial except of course Pueblos.

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Frankly, what this all really boils down to is quiet simple. Throughout all of history, truly free people have been allowed to own weapons to defend themselves, family, land, and friends. Serfs/slaves/etc are not allowed to own weapons. It's really that simple IMHO. By removing people's guns you are both physically and symbolically making them slaves in one fashion or another, for only free men (and women) are allowed to own weapons. And while some people/countries are willing to do that, others are not. :) cheers.

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Maybe they're just trying to catch/make up for eurasia's last 3000 years of violent history

Unless that is sarcasm,( and I'd like to think it was ) I cannot think why would a civilized country want to do that? America is a civilized country ( in my view ) I do not think they want to catch up on any European act of violence, it's hardly a competition....I figured the guy was purely talking about gun violence and not ancient violence throughout history...

Gun violence does not cover all acts of violence.. Well not in my book it doesn't.

Anyhoo.. This is getting away from the thread... We should get back to - Guns that have saved lives....There are hundreds ( if not, thousands ) of stories of how guns have in fact saved a life or lives many others...Many of which tend to get overlooked.

EDIT - *Sigh* grammar

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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Really civilized people do not have guns, or whatever the ancient equivalent was. They live in ordered societies where they are not only not needed but a cause of trouble.

I suppose people who want to own slaves will want to have guns, and this is much of what was behind the Second Amendment, but that doesn't mean people who don't have them need them. Just don't have slaves and you will be okay.

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Frank, can it..The thread is about guns that have saved lives...For the record, America is filled with many civilized folk who own guns... Owning a gun does NOT mean you are not a civilized person....

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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No I don't intend to can it. You are killing people. I feel repulsed and morally must speak.

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Really civilized people do not have guns, or whatever the ancient equivalent was. They live in ordered societies where they are not only not needed but a cause of trouble.

I suppose people who want to own slaves will want to have guns, and this is much of what was behind the Second Amendment, but that doesn't mean people who don't have them need them. Just don't have slaves and you will be okay.

That is not what the 2nd amendment is about or why it was written. Think of the time that it was written, it was written when we were fighting for our freedom from England and taxes. It was written to guard against a tyrannical government taking over again so we can always protect ourselves and the freedom this country was built on.

It may be hard for some people to understand that guns do save lives. Here in the US we have lots of places to live that is in real country-country so we don't get police protection and if we do, it's more than 20 minutes away. Criminals are everywhere, don't fool yourself and they have guns. If you make guns illegal, only criminals will have them.

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Your history is not what I learned; I learned it was pushed by southeners to protect their militias' ability to put down slave rebellions.

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Your history is not what I learned; I learned it was pushed by southeners to protect their militias' ability to put down slave rebellions.

That's wrong, you weren't taught the truth. We didn't even have a south when that happened. We started out with 13 colonies, all on the east coast. We didn't even have slaves then, no one had the money. We were all immigrants from England, some from Ireland too.

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You didn't have a south? My word but you are misinformed. There was Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia. Even then Maryland had lots of slaveholders.

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Your history is not what I learned; I learned it was pushed by southeners to protect their militias' ability to put down slave rebellions.

That is the biggest crock of bull**** I have ever heard...

The second amendment has nothing to do with slavery!

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Obviously American textbooks gloss over some of the more unpleasant aspects of its history.

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Obviously American textbooks gloss over some of the more unpleasant aspects of its history.

Whatever, dude.....

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Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment!

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No I don't intend to can it. You are killing people. I feel repulsed and morally must speak.

I am not living in the US, nor am I an American..

I asked you to can it because, you fail to understand that many people in America have guns for their OWN protection and they OWN a right to do so... Calling any of them uncivilized off the top of your head is unfair...

If you lived amongst them, and gotten to know more about them, you may not be as fast to judge millions of people like that...It is far too easy to sit at home and cast judgement on an entire country based on what the media reports....Too easy...

I must lay the emphasis on this - We do not like it when others put down our people and our culture...do we? If you feel it is unfair to do this, then think twice before you do it to millions of others.. I aim that at anyone else who feels the need to put down Americans with guns.

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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The Congress of the US, and other groups, are constantly passing resolutions about "human rights" in Vietnam, mostly out of ignorance, while such a huge human rights violation persists in the States in the form of failure of the government to protect the citizens from gun violence.

I would certainly oppose an alliance of other nations going into the States to force a change in American gun attitudes, but I see nothing wrong with trying to change their minds.

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The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The reference to a "well regulated" militia, probably conjures up a connotation at odds with the meaning intended by the Framers. In today's English, the term "well regulated" probably implies heavy and intense government regulation. However, that conclusion is erroneous.

The words "well regulated" had a far different meaning at the time the Second Amendment was drafted. In the context of the Constitution's provisions for Congressional power over certain aspects of the militia, and in the context of the Framers' definition of "militia," government regulation was not the intended meaning. Rather, the term meant only what it says, that the necessary militia be well regulated, but not by the national government.

To determine the meaning of the Constitution, one must start with the words of the Constitution itself. If the meaning is plain, that meaning controls. To ascertain the meaning of the term "well regulated" as it was used in the Second Amendment, it is necessary to begin with the purpose of the Second Amendment itself. The overriding purpose of the Framers in guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms was as a check on the standing army, which the Constitution gave the Congress the power to "raise and support."

As Noah Webster put it in a pamphlet urging ratification of the Constitution, "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe." George Mason remarked to his Virginia delegates regarding the colonies' recent experience with Britain, in which the Monarch's goal had been "to disarm the people; that [that] . . . was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." A widely reprinted article by Tench Coxe, an ally and correspondent of James Madison, described the Second Amendment's overriding goal as a check upon the national government's standing army: As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Thus, the well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state was a militia that might someday fight against a standing army raised and supported by a tyrannical national government. Obviously, for that reason, the Framers did not say "A Militia well regulated by the Congress, being necessary to the security of a free State" -- because a militia so regulated might not be separate enough from, or free enough from, the national government, in the sense of both physical and operational control, to preserve the "security of a free State."

It is also helpful to contemplate the overriding purpose and object of the Bill of Rights in general. To secure ratification of the Constitution, the Federalists, urging passage of the Constitution by the States had committed themselves to the addition of the Bill of Rights, to serve as "further guards for private rights." In that regard, the first ten amendments to the Constitution were designed to be a series of "shall nots," telling the new national government again, in no uncertain terms, where it could not tread.

It would be incongruous to suppose or suggest the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, which were proscriptions on the powers of the national government, simultaneously acted as a grant of power to the national government. Similarly, as to the term "well regulated," it would make no sense to suggest this referred to a grant of "regulation" power to the government (national or state), when the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was to both declare individual rights and tell the national government where the scope of its enumerated powers ended.

In keeping with the intent and purpose of the Bill of Rights both of declaring individual rights and proscribing the powers of the national government, the use and meaning of the term "Militia" in the Second Amendment, which needs to be "well regulated," helps explain what "well regulated" meant. When the Constitution was ratified, the Framers unanimously believed that the "militia" included all of the people capable of bearing arms.

George Mason, one of the Virginians who refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights, said: "Who are the Militia? They consist now of the whole people." Likewise, the Federal Farmer, one of the most important Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution, referred to a "militia, when properly formed, [as] in fact the people themselves." The list goes on and on.

By contrast, nowhere is to be found a contemporaneous definition of the militia, by any of the Framers, as anything other than the "whole body of the people." Indeed, as one commentator said, the notion that the Framers intended the Second Amendment to protect the "collective" right of the states to maintain militias rather than the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, "remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis."

Furthermore, returning to the text of the Second Amendment itself, the right to keep and bear arms is expressly retained by "the people," not the states. Recently the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this view, finding that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right held by the "people," -- a "term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution," specifically the Preamble and the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Thus, the term "well regulated" ought to be considered in the context of the noun it modifies, the people themselves, the militia(s).

The above analysis leads us finally to the term "well regulated." What did these two words mean at the time of ratification? Were they commonly used to refer to a governmental bureaucracy as we know it today, with countless rules and regulations and inspectors, or something quite different? We begin this analysis by examining how the term "regulate" was used elsewhere in the Constitution. In every other instance where the term "regulate" is used, or regulations are referred to, the Constitution specifies who is to do the regulating and what is being "regulated." However, in the Second Amendment, the Framers chose only to use the term "well regulated" to describe a militia and chose not to define who or what would regulate it.

It is also important to note that the Framers' chose to use the indefinite article "a" to refer to the militia, rather than the definite article "the." This choice suggests that the Framers were not referring to any particular well regulated militia but, instead, only to the concept that well regulated militias, made up of citizens bearing arms, were necessary to secure a free State. Thus, the Framers chose not to explicitly define who, or what, would regulate the militias, nor what such regulation would consist of, nor how the regulation was to be accomplished.

This comparison of the Framers' use of the term "well regulated" in the Second Amendment, and the words "regulate" and "regulation" elsewhere in the Constitution, clarifies the meaning of that term in reference to its object, namely, the Militia. There is no doubt the Framers understood that the term "militia" had multiple meanings. First, the Framers understood all of the people to be part of the unorganized militia. The unorganized militia members, "the people," had the right to keep and bear arms. They could, individually, or in concert, "well regulate" themselves; that is, they could train to shoot accurately and to learn the basics of military tactics.

This interpretation is in keeping with English usage of the time, which included within the meaning of the verb "regulate" the concept of self- regulation or self-control (as it does still to this day). The concept that the people retained the right to self-regulate their local militia groups (or regulate themselves as individual militia members) is entirely consistent with the Framers' use of the indefinite article "a" in the phrase "A well regulated Militia."

This concept of the people's self-regulation, that is, non-governmental regulation, is also in keeping with the limited grant of power to Congress "for calling forth" the militia for only certain, limited purposes, to "provide for" the militia only certain limited control and equipment, and the limited grant of power to the President regarding the militia, who only serves as Commander in Chief of that portion of the militia called into the actual service of the nation. The "well regula[tion]" of the militia set forth in the Second Amendment was apart from that control over the militia exercised by Congress and the President, which extended only to that part of the militia called into actual service of the Union. Thus, "well regula[tion]" referred to something else. Since the fundamental purpose of the militia was to serve as a check upon a standing army, it would seem the words "well regulated" referred to the necessity that the armed citizens making up the militia(s) have the level of equipment and training necessary to be an effective and formidable check upon the national government's standing army.

This view is confirmed by Alexander Hamilton's observation, in The Federalist, No. 29, regarding the people's militias ability to be a match for a standing army: " . . . but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights . . . ."

It is an absolute truism that law-abiding, armed citizens pose no threat to other law-abiding citizens. The Framers' writings show they also believed this. As we have seen, the Framers understood that "well regulated" militias, that is, armed citizens, ready to form militias that would be well trained, self-regulated and disciplined, would pose no threat to their fellow citizens, but would, indeed, help to "insure domestic Tranquility" and "provide for the common defence."

Taken from: http://www.lectlaw.com/files/gun01.htm

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Ladies, you're beating a dead horse with Frank. He's an otherwise wise old man set in his ways. Nothing's going to change his mind.

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Really civilized people do not have guns, or whatever the ancient equivalent was. They live in ordered societies where they are not only not needed but a cause of trouble.

I suppose people who want to own slaves will want to have guns, and this is much of what was behind the Second Amendment, but that doesn't mean people who don't have them need them. Just don't have slaves and you will be okay.

What this? We still have slaves? Thought physical slavery was abolished in the U.S. over a 150 years ago? If that's still going on, we need to protest that. Somebody organize that ASAP.

Ladies, you're beating a dead horse with Frank. He's an otherwise wise old man set in his ways. Nothing's going to change his mind.

I thought he was an expert in past and current American history?

Edited by Purifier
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