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Which, of course, completely explains why the violent crime rate is lower in the UK, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Canada, France, Germany, and a whole host of other countries where firearms are strictly regulated.

Wrong.

Well, the 2nd amendment right to bear arms is for the citizenship as a whole, and protects the individuals rights. You have to consider the context for which it was written. The people of the colonies stood up against the English rule. Our founding fathers recognized the fact that the day may come when the government of the United States may become so corrupt that even through the structure they laid out, the people wouldn't be able to correct the problems. (i.e., severe corruption throughout all three branches of the government) At that time, when the people themselves had recognized that something needed to be done, they were still empowered to make a change against their own government.

    The 2nd amendment wasn't a mistake that opened the ability for a civil rebellion, it is there by design.

    I am not advocating taking arms against the government. I've worked through all the possible scenarios, and none of them are without severe losses to both sides.

    But, in a SHTF scenario, no the lone soldier would never make it. Well organized groups would be the survivors. Those organizations will likely not even form until the scenario begins, but with the people armed for their own defense and proper leadership, they will be the survivors.

    I know in apocalypse movies and tv shows, there's always some lunatic fringe group with a chaotic leader. Most normal people wouldn't follow someone like that, but it would be up to strong good leaders of equally or better armed groups, to protect against such things. In that, I'm not saying the police or military, although they'd likely align with friendly peacekeeping civilians. In all out chaos, you have to look for help anywhere you can find it. Even in a situation where the government turns on the people, internal conflict will splinter their ranks. This has been brought up before.

The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. A thirty (30) day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to the local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms. Consider the following statement: I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government.

    If that situation occurred, it would divide not only the enlisted men, but their officers as well. How many US citizens on US soil, following the laws as established by the US Constitution (et al), would be killed before a substantial number of troops refused their orders. Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect it would be significant numbers in the first days or even weeks, and that would be an actual civil war.

    I haven't watched Jericho. Well, I have seen parts of a couple episodes, and got bored very quickly. Maybe I just watched the wrong episodes.

Give me a break - you can make all of the bullshit Revolutionary analogies you want, the fact is if a US single pilot were blinded by a DVD-homebrew-laser we'd all be forced to get permits for our DVD burners. For fucks sake, every air traveler in the country has to remove their shoes because one wacko thought he could put a bomb in his loafers.

Funny, I can still buy ammonium nitrate here in the admittedly-far-from-perfect US.

What is the government of Australia going to do when someone burns down a nightclub, killing a hundred people in ten minutes with a can of gasoline? Ban gasoline?

It reminds me of the bumper stickers I see every once in awhile, the ones with the photo of Osama bin Laden. "I'm still free, how about you?" The US isn't perfect, but Australia treats its people like infants. Apparently, no Australian adult is allowed to own anything that would be dangerous in the hands of a lunatic or a drunken retard. (How's that working out for you, anyway?)

I had come across the 146% through some reading else where, so it might be over stated, but as for the increase in violent crimes by gun since further controls were started, they are on an up according to any search I've done.

The first three listing when searching google for 'australian gun ban':

http://www.gunowners.org/hlr-au.htm
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/aus.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15304

Just about any study I've ever seen about the subject has seen an increase in gun related crimes right after further gun controls were enacted. There are some few places where such laws work, Iceland maybe?, but not most.

Well said. I also feel sorry for all those people living off of the government and becoming slaves to the government. Try reading http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/790.html

The people may not be dying by guns (since you can't have them) but that doesn't mean you're any safer.

Now this spyware issue, the banning ceremonial swords and toy guns, crime rates rising, and the security camera epidemic. How much freedom are the citizens of these countries willing to give up?