The Second Amendment and Gun Rights

[B. Hibbs]

"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 Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.

This is always an interesting topic for discussion as some people see
guns as horrible and should be banned while others feel guns are the
most important thing a man can own.

I'll start the discussion my putting my two sense in, I am a firm
believer that basically anyone that wants to own a gun, should be
allowed to. Putting a ban on guns would only stop the law abiding
citizens from owning a gun, it wouldn't even phase the criminal who
probably bought the gun illegally anyway. As Thomas Jefferson once
said "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only
those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . .
Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the
assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides,
for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an
armed man."

But that is just my humble opinion... what do you think?

[RAmchin]

I think guns should either be illegal or be very difficult to obtain.
A gun really has only one purpose: to kill. It rarely happens that
somebody would attack an innocent person, and that person would have
time to find their gun in their house to defend themselves. The more
likelier situation is that the kids of the family would stumble over
the gun and play with it, not knowing what it is, and fatally wound
themselves. Having guns easily accessible endangers the safety of the
community for everybody; I would feel less safe having my children
play with their friends at the house down the street if I knew that
the parents had guns in their house. Also, if guns were illegal, the
government could go after criminals if they have guns. With guns
legal, the police may not be able to prevent dangerous people from
having guns. With guns easily accessible, anybody who wants to commit
a crime can do so without much difficulty. They should at least make
it difficult to obtain a gun. There was the case at Georgia Tech I
think it was, where somebody with psychological problems bought a gun
and killed many people at the school. It was clear that giving this
man a gun was an unsafe thing to do, but I think there were laws that
a person with psychological problems has the right to keep their
problems secret, and the consequences were tragic.

[B. Hibbs]

Ron,

I think the incident you were referring to was Virginia Tech, and
although it was a tragedy for that many innocent people to die so
young, you can't blame the guns. That attack could have been
shortened just as easily with another gun from a law abiding citizen,
the sad thing was, it couldn't because all guns carried by anyone on
the campus were banned.
You claim that the US should make all guns illegal, there are a few
problems with that theory. For starters, what about the hunters, like
me, should we be stuck to use Bow and Arrows, and let the criminals
have the guns, that's not fair. How many criminals claim "since guns
are illegal, I won't get one, I wouldn't want to break the law."
Let's face it, I don' think a criminal gives a "hoot" whether or not
guns are illegal, they are going to get one.
Although your claim of guns killing kids accidentally more then
criminals in a home is a sad fact, what you neglect to mention is that
many people carry handguns when they walk around through cities and
towns legally. Is it fair to strip a women from her right to have a
gun, so some whacked-out pervert can rape and kill her, with her only
means of self-defense her own two fists. In my opinion, that is
unfair. If there was a button that could get rid of every single gun
in the world, I would be one of the first to push it, but there isn't
one. Charlton Heston had a good take on the issue and I agree with
him fully:
"There's no such thing as a good gun. There's no such thing as a bad
gun. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun
in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad
guys."

[RAmchin]

That's why I said that guns should at least be very difficult to
maintain. A store should not be able to sell a gun to any random
person that walks into their shop. They should do background checks to
make sure the person does not have a criminal record. They should make
sure that psychologically the person will not likely commit murder
such as was the case at Virginia Tech. They should also make sure that
if they have children, the gun will be kept in a place safe from where
the children will reach, or locked away somewhere.

If the murderer couldn't obtain a gun, he wouldn't have killed so many
people, despite the campus ban. The point that he could have been
stopped by another law-abiding citizen carrying a citizen, obviously
didn't help much because that didn't happen and seems unlikely to
happen.

I don't think a gun as a defensive weapon will work very well. If a
criminal pulls out a gun, they siezed the offensive, and the innocent
person will have a very difficult time pulling out their gun in time
to pull the trigger first.

Also, there are types of guns that are very dangerous, and those types
are not needed for hunters.

> > problems secret, and the consequences were tragic.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[B. Hibbs]

I'm going to paint a picture of what could happen to someone if there
become tough restrictions on guns.

The president of the US decides, like you, that guns should be very
hard to obtain and must be locked away. A women has hit tough times
and her monetary status has forced her into inner-city Philadelphia.
This women is living in a very bad area and is obviously scared and
decides to buy a handgun to protect herself with. She goes to the gun
store, and because of the rules and regulations she has to wait 2 - 3
weeks because of the background checks. She plans on buying a strong
handgun we'll say a Colt M1911 which is plenty strong enough to stop
an attacker. This women takes a bus to and from work, but the nearest
bus stop is 3 blocks from her house. A week after her gun store
purchase, she is working overtime til midnight, as she is confronted
by a man with a knife and he rapes her, luckily for her, the man
decides not to kill her. She takes off from work, traumatized, and a
week later her gun is finally ready for purchase. She buys the gun
and decide goes back to work. A couple weeks later she has to work
late again and as she is walking home another man confronts her with a
knife. Luckily for her she is prepared with her pistol, she pulls it
out, the man starts to run at her, she fires and hits the man dead
center in the chest, and he is decked into the ground, he dies and she
lives. She is happy she is alive but also angry because it shouldn't
have happened the first time, but those background checks do make the
world "safer".
Now this story very well may have happened but it is something I
thought of off the top of my head.

All gun stores are required by federal law to do background checks and
most gun show sellers do anyway. There was even a system set up known
as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, It checks a
background of a person immediately so there are no waiting periods,
for those that need guns. If a man with a detailed background report
went to buy a gun in a gun store, he would be turned down.

The fact that one would want to ban an inanimate object that is used
peacefully everyday, is absurd. If there was an influx of people
murdering each other with baseball bat's, would you ban those, no.
Would you get angry at your pen for misspelling words, no. You can't
get angry at something that has no control over it's actions.
Seneca the Younger said this right around 64 AD.
"A sword never kills anybody;
it's a tool in the killer's hand."

[RAmchin]

I guess there really is no perfect solution: if guns are completely
legal then people will be able to get a hold of them too easily, and
there will be many tragic accidents. If guns are illegal, (although I
don't thinking owning a gun is necessary) then you are taking away
some freedom that America is supposed to offer. The only thing is that
there are many more stories of people who are victims of gun violence
than of people who are saved from gun protection. So it seems like the
logical solution would be to eliminate guns. Criminals may find other
illegal ways to find a gun, but it will be much more difficult, and
they will most likely be able to commit an assault anyway, whether or
not the victim owns a gun. At least this way tragic accidents like
children getting a hold of their parents' gun, or other Columbine-like
incidents can be avoided.

I'm not angry at guns, but they are only used to kill, and that
endangers all of our safety. Of course you would never ban baseball
bats, or pens, (or shoes), because technically somebody could find
many ways of injuring somebody else if they are creative. Guns however
only do one thing. You don't need guns to play baseball, or to do
anything for that matter.

[B. Hibbs]

I agree that there really isn't a perfect solution to the problem. I
think our current situation in America seems to be the best way to
deal with guns, Let people have them, ban the really unnecessary ones
but let the people continue to use and have fun with their guns. The
gun control argument seems to fall under the category of political
based in which everyone is right in their own regard.

Just for the record I want to clarify that guns aren't used just for
killing. Along with many Americans I frequently go Skeet and Target
shooting with my friends and family and we have a great time while the
only thing that die are the skeet.