30 years ago semi-autos being military only? WTF. 30 years ago my dad's friends were rocking class IIIs, banned bayonets (those dangerous sharp things on the end of rifles) and a plethora of other questionable 'accessories.' Now it's a standard run of semi ARs and AKs... it's been streamlined from the filter of supply/demand/legality. I was going to gun shows in the early 90s that looked like a weapon trade show for third world banana republics. Now you'd get some legal beagle lecturing you on the legal use of a flash suppressor. The gun grabbers have made gun owners neurotic with all their nanny state bullshit.

Only if that 'WE' part of the conversation was removed, something akin to a free, open market might actually re-establish itself. I just love all this 'we can't let' or 'we must control guns' rhetoric from people... people that I would imagine have never been around a gun, much less fired or own one. Piece of advice - before you advocate getting rid of something, try and enjoy it a bit first. You may just change your mind.

Exactly. You could give every US citizen alive a brand new semi-automatic rifle, even rig it to go fully automatic, and hold 30 rounds, and they would still have no shot against tanks, planes, gunships, and training of the military. It's a fantasy argument. Not to mention that even if they did manage to have some success (and there would likely be some successes locally) that if those successes became a real threat, then the military would just move up a notch and deploy even more modes of horrible death and destruction against an ungrateful citizenry.

The only way revolutions are successful now is to be non-violent and convince enough of those in said police and military forces to not follow orders and side with you, or to get foreign military involvement, or preferably both.. But I do admit it might be comical to watch a bunch of NRA members out shooting their guns at the tanks rolling down on them, and dodging the strafe fire from the planes above them, not to mention watching all the cool explosions from the gunships' missiles that would be hovering nearby. Actually, that sounds like the premise for a pretty cool video game...

The collective right vs individuals rights thing comes from the mid 20th century. You are basically doubling down on revisionism and applying modern concepts to periods they were not applicable.

If you dig into what Cruikshank and Presser were you will see they were about whether specific state regulations contravened the 2nd amendment. States rights used to be a bigger deal than today and those cases basically aligned with that. Miller I think kind of also fits that model, but I'm going by memory from what I read like 30 min ago... I think that one was the one about folks carrying a shotgun across state borders.

Still, stop shifting the goalposts. I never said there was no controversy about gun control, or that collective rights advocates are non existent. I specifically objected your characterizaion of the Heller decision as judicial activism and your selective "originalist" analysis which completely ignored historical context.

First of all, I said MOSTLY. And second of all, I own five firearms, have hunted since I was 12, and served in the US Army. Piece of advice - before you make a judgment about someone's background, you might want to actually have some info on said background.

And finally, AGAIN, I never have (and never will) advocate for banning all guns. That was one quote I've always agreed with. The only way they'll take my (legal for now) guns away from me is to pry them from my cold, dead hands. Hunting is a valid use of guns. Self defense is a valid use of guns. Sports are a valid use of guns. None of those uses should be curtailed. But you simply don't have to have every new weapons system that comes along to do those things. Some guns/weapons can cause so much death and destruction in so little time that they simply should not be readily available to anyone who might be a nutcase (or is just having a bad day) to get a hold of and cause so much harm.

I'm starting to think you're one of those who actually does advocate for all weapons to be available to the public. Yeah, I'm never going to agree with that, and I think you're fucking insane IF, and I say IF, that's your view. You keep arguing the all or nothing argument, and that's bullshit. Any sane person would agree some weapons/guns should be banned. So any sane person supports gun control There is no debate on the need for having some sort of line drawn. The only debate should be where it's drawn (and that's where there ARE a wide variety of valid arguments to be made). Yours might be different than mine, but I'm not advocating for banning all guns any more than I hope you're not advocating for making all of them publicly available. Oh, and not for nothing, if that is your stance, even the 5-4 split Heller decision didn't go there, as it clearly stated the government did have the right to ban some guns.

Come on now Wpegg, you know very well the expresion "watch the watchers" is not literal... the watchers are the ones with the pseudo monopoly on violence. Which is very obviously power, regardless of the level of abuse of said power or lack thereof nowadays... watching them means keeping that in check.

Let's turn around your point and say that police power in itself is likewise undemocratic because it is coercive. Does that make any sense? Logically sure, but it shows your point about holding back democracy is rather nonsensical. Our liberal democratic systems are still fundamentally based on violence. The core difference is about who gets to hold that power. A lot of people want that centralized and trust there will be no autoritarian abuses, or that non violent methods of protest will suffice, whereas others would rather hold onto some small amount of power on their own hands.

Again, thanks for the honesty, I myself also mentioned somewhere higher that the assumption of "gun nuts" is not they will be able to fight the army alone, but that a substantial part of the army would side with them.

I'm not shifting any goal posts. You were the one that said the Heller decision was based on 200 years of jurisprudence that I was "revising" when in fact, all studies to date have shown the same thing, this idea of an individual right to own a gun didn't start showing up in the legal area until about 50 or 60 years ago. It's you who is ignoring and revising history.

Because it was common sense! All the historic context proves it! Just go and read the wikipedia article please. Or watch some western movies? Were all those guns fantasy? :)

Making the individual nature of the right explicit became increasingly necessary (well, necessary if you are against gun control obviously) because of the collective right advocates that wanted gun control and started gaining ground in the post WW2 context.

Look I don't want to be too personal, but it seems to me you are taking a very specific context from the past 50 / 60 years and retroactively trying to fit it to the previous 150 years where there was zero controversy. Everyone understood and lived by concepts of self defense and gun ownership that would be considered "gun nuts" today.

I just can't fathom how you can actually believe that was not the case, to the point of (it seems to me) imagining some individual versus collective rights controversy back in 1780s... I'm really scratching my head here, and I'm not even American.

Anyway, I'm going to take Klumpen's hint and step out. I want to thank you for being mostly civil. I didn't like your NRA comment but whatever, you clearly care about the topic, are putting effort into the posts, so that's water under the bridge as far I'm concerned.

I totally think you're wrong, but that's your right.

Actually, I was trying to be metaphorical with the "gun to the watchers" thing, but I accept that was a little bit vague.

It is interesting that you mention policing, as actually there is a lot of debate in the UK about focussing on the concept of "Policing by consent". It was part of the introduction of the police in the UK, and is/was why they are considered a tool of democracy here, rather than a coercive force. So actually, it was not holding back democracy, it was advancing it. I will admit that recently our police has been heavily criticised for partisan activities and overly casual press relationships, and that is why there is the debate on this (not one we intend to solve with guns :)).

So I disagree that our democratic systems have any basis on violence.

However to return to the subject at hand, I would be interested to know your opinion. Given the arguments you've made, and the approach you've taken, I'm assuming you're against significant gun control; So, do you personally feel we took a negative step in the UK when we banned (almost all) firearms? Perhaps because of our geographical and political situation, we had that luxury, or do you feel we have left ourselves vulnerable?

Friendly question, I won't resent any answer, but I am curious.

I think we're gonna need all the weapons we can get for when the martians show up. It's only a matter of time.

Having handguns against someone barging with an automatic weapon is not much help in my opinion.
I can't possibly imagine journalist in NY or Washington going to work with semi-auto weapons.
In my opinion, the charlie hebdo incident or the australian café shooting are on par (planification and resource wise) as a school shooting.

If you want to discuss the Arras train incident, you have to realize that you can literally go on foot from the middle east to any seat in any of those trains . Only the Eurostar between Paris and London has check-ins, the Thalys goes all the way to Germany and Netherlands and you have to rely on cctv to check on passenger (I don't think the policy changed much since I took it years ago).

Point is : I don't think public guns possession have yet been of any use against terrorism. Or at the very least I expect it brought more harm than good. I am not disputing the need to own guns in 'bear infested' areas or the likes btw.

You're free to see it as a tangent, but that doesn't invalidate it. Guns are the most popular means and also the most effective. Their success rate lies around 90%. Other popular means, such as cutting one's wrists or taking an overdose of medication, have success rates closer to 10%. This isn't about a suicidal person going out to buy a gun, it's about a suicidal person already having a gun in the home and taking the leap right then and there. You don't have to believe me, but here's an article that elaborates on what I said.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/01/20/the-gun-toll-ignoring-suicide/xeWBHDHEvvagfkRlU3CfZJ/story.html

Anyway: Yes. And even critics of the research mentioned in the article I linked to agree with that. I acknowledge the fact that guns are useful for hunting or target shooting, but the prevalency of lots of firearms in a country comes with a set of positives and negatives and we get back to the question on whether it's a net positive or negative. In other words, is widespread gun ownership worth the deaths it causes, both to its owners and others? My opinion is no, but there's no doubt there are plenty of folks who think otherwise. I get that it's kind of a nasty way to put the question, but it still comes down to the same thing.

I have no issue stating the same about cars, by the way. It sounds harsh, but society's use of cars is IMHO completely worth it despite the death toll. Since cars and guns are frequently compared, I'd also like to bring up the fact that the car industry unlike the gun industry is still actively working to lower that death toll through various means. You have a weird definition of child's toys is all I will say. My little nephew just plays with Lego. Also, who needs armor piercing bullets? What the hell do you hunt? Buzzy Beetles?

You have left yourselves more vulnerable.

I've had sarcastic replies, humorous replies, even the occasional logical reply... then I realized that I'm on an internet message board arguing about guns with a bunch of people from Canada, the UK, and Australia. I should have my goddamn head examined for diving into that shark tank.

And to Erpy, if you think that a single shot .22 rifle is a dangerous weapon of mass destruction then we have nothing left to discuss. Meeting adjourned. We are from such different cultures that we might as well be on different branches of the animal kingdom.