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What happens in a fist/knife fight? You can fight, or you can run (well, most of the time). What happens in a gun fight? You let the bullets fly. Shooting first is best, as every cowboy western duel has taught us. Guns are almost a 100% guarantee that more situations will come down to an actual fight, and that more people will be hurt. If they have the drop on you, you're equally SOL if you have a knife at your throat or a gun at your head. Yes, some hardened criminals have guns around here as well - but they're usually after bigger fish than the few dollars in your pocket. Your average street thug or wacko doesn't have a gun - and if they do they're very much so wanted by the police. "Shots fired" actually get real attention here, and with modern communication you can expect the cops to arrive in a timely fashion.

What happens in a fist/knife fight when it is a 300 lb rapist versus a 100 lb girl? Guns are equalizers, they give anyone, man, woman, elderly, the ability to defend themselves. An armed society is a polite society. Anyone who has a concealed carry permit can tell you that being armed increases ones awareness to not get in such a situation where you might have to defend yourself. Most criminals don't have a death wish and don't want to get shot. Over 4 million times per year, armed citizens use their weapons to defend themselves from criminals. In the vast majority of these cases, the criminal flees once they see their target is armed.

The world has moved on since the Dark Ages. Your (or any other witnesses) cell phone is a more powerful tool than the gun in almost every situation. There are really extremely few situations where you would have time to pull out a gun, and where the gun would be more efficient than the police. Either you have no time at all and would be shot, or you have run off, barricaded or hidden yourself somewhere and the police will arrive in time. It was a different time when you could be all alone on the farm in the countryside, and noone would help if you screamed off the top of your lungs.

There are a few problems with relying on the government to protect you. Firstly, the average response time for a 911 call can be 5 minutes or higher. A criminal can mug you, rape you, or break into your house in far less time. If someone attacks you on the street, you won't have time to call 911 and wait for help. The idea that you could run and barricade yourself until the police come to rescue you is both rediculous and dangerous. There have been many cases where someone heard an attacker breaking into their house, they called the police, but they never came. Most famously, in 1981, this happened to three women who were brutally and repeatadly raped in their Washington D.C. home because the police never came. They sued the city, but the courts ruled that the police are not required nor responsible to respond or help any invididual, their duty is only to protect the public at large, meaning to catch and punish the criminal after they already robbed/raped/killed you.

Do you own a fire extinguisher in your home? I assume you do, because it is a tool that can be used to save your life and your property. You could just rely on 911 and call them for even small fires that you could put out yourself. But then again, a small fire could grow and burn your entire house down before the firefighters arrive.

2) Guns protecting "the people" from the government Sure, a bunch of guys with handguns could be the core of an army in 1776 or thereabouts. Maybe even well into the 19th century. Look around, there's fighter jets, bombers, tanks, artillery, mechanised infantry, machine guns, destroyers and battleships. Hundreds of thousands of men like that died on a single day in WWI, they'd last even shorter today. The closest thing they could mount to a defense would be trying to lead a guerilla war, but they couldn't hold any ground. Any armed revolution that wa

Crapness on the part of the sources yes; have you checked yours?

There are more than three million illegal guns in Britan now. (The Guardian, September 3, 2000) I don't consider "how few" an approrpriate description for that.

It seems like the ban was implemented in 97; at least that's the first year that legally held guns dropped. That year there were 2,647 handgun crimes; in 2000 it increased to 3,685.

Exactly, and someone is dead because of it, so he's in jail now. What's the problem? Still doesn't make him innocent. Revenge is not a part of the legal system in any civilized country.

Revenge was not involved. According to Dictionary.com,

1. To inflict punishment in return for (injury or insult).

2. To seek or take vengeance for (oneself or another person); avenge.

Revenge is done after the fact, not while you're defending yourself against a percieved threat to your life. I don't believe that anyone should have to kill another in self defense, but the truth is that police can't be everywhere at once, and if they could, would you be willing to tolerate that level of scrutiy?

Even if they had the capability, are not required to by law (Town of Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales, South v. Maryland, Warren v. District of Columbia - this last one involved several calls to 911 over the course of a half an hour to report a housebreaking (and assault and rape). "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.") The sad fact of the matter is that many people do consider the woman found in an alley raped and strangled with her pantyhose morally superior to the woman holding a smoking 357 and standing over the body of a would-be rapist. I don't get it.

Protecting citizens from violence is one of the very few jobs the federal government is actually SUPPOSED to be doing, according to the Constitution.

Ask the potential victim of the first crime that's prevented because of the cameras if the price is too high.

Just let me ask you this. Did Bill Hazen need a gun?

http://www.healylaw.com/self-def.htm#1990

Bill Hazen was in his cabin near Bakersfield, Calif., shortly after midnight when an intruder forced a sliding glass door. The Los Angeles minister was armed and ordered the man outside. During an ensuing scuffle the attacker ran, but an accomplice appeared in a pickup truck and tried to run down Hazen. The minister fired at the advancing truck and when the vehicle stopped, its occupant got out and said, "I counted six shots; you're out and now I'm going to get you." Hazen fired his large-capacity semi-automatic once more, dropping his adversary. Both men were taken into custody by sheriff's deputies.

You have the authority to say that Mr. Hazen should be dead, then? You might also read some of the other stories, and you can judge whether those people who defended themselves NEED a gun or not.

Anyway, why should you care if law-abiding citizens around you have guns? The only time you're going to see it is when it's defending a life. They are not any more of a threat to you than anybody else.

How right you are:

"A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. Riss v. City of New York, supra. The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed. At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community." From Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App. 1981). Emphasis is my own. Full text of the court decision here.

bluGill wrote: Don't recall which case, but the supreme court has ruled that cops do not have to protect you. Case came out when one man broke into a house where 3 women lived, trapped them all in a bedroom, and was raping them.

You are probably thinking of Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App. 1981), which is often cited in by folks opposing gun control. It is not a US Supreme Court case, but the principle you cite that the police are usually not civilly liable to you for failing to protect you personally from a crime is pretty well established.

In the Warren case, three women were in the house, and two men broke in. While one woman was being raped, another of the women in a different room heard her screams and called the police. While waiting for the police to arrive the two women who were not being raped crawled onto the roof for safety.

The police came to investigate, but didn't investigate too far. One knocked on the door, but there was no answer, and nothing appeared to be amiss from the outside, so they left. The women on the roof crawled back into the house and hearing the third woman's screams, made a second call to the police. No police were dispatched. The women thought the police might be in the house, so they called out . . . unfortunately drawing the attention of the rapists.

To make a long and horrible story short, all three women were kidnapped to one of the rapists' apartments, and were raped and brutally beaten for the next fourteen hours. They sued the District for damages and lost.

If you want to read the case you can find it at http://www.healylaw.com/cases/warren2.htm

Seems to me that there's no such thing as a conditional freedom. At the risk of sounding like I'm making a false either/or proposition, either speech is free -- whether or not we like what is said -- or it's not.

Well, if you think "the promise we made to ourselves" is a positive "freedom of speech", you're wrong. For the first 81 years of the republic, the 1st amendment prohibited only Federal abridgement of speech. States could, and did, pass such laws. In 1868, the 14th amendment was passed, and then the Bill of Rights applied to the States as well. The funny thing is, nobody knew that until 1925 when SCOTUS told New York they couldn't make Gitlow shut up because the 14th amendment incorporates all the other amendments. Now, this reasoning is faulty, because unlike the 2nd amendment which asserts a positive "right to bear arms", the 1st amendment still doesn't. An incorporation would mean that a State can't force Congress to create a speech-abridging law, but of course, that is absurd.

Those of us who are truly interested in our rights, online or otherwise, don't like this kind of legal hocus pocus. If the Constitution can be made to mean anything, then it means nothing. The question of whether or not there should be a right of free speech, or privacy, or protecting the children, or almost anything else, is a policy question, not a legal one. These issues are properly decided by legislators, not judges.

And don't get me started on the Commerce Clause.

Even assuming that the phrase in the Bill of Rights is intended to limit those who are eligible rather than to simply give a reason for the inclusion of the 2nd Amendment (and I think that assumption is false) [...]

Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagrees with you.

According the the U.S. Code, Title 10, Section 311 the definition of militia is:

Note that the petitioner carefully neglects to quote the rest of Section 311, which clearly distinguishes between the "organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia" and the "unorganized militia, which consists of all members of the militia not members of the National Guard and the Naval Militia"; the latter, not being "well-regulated", are not included in the Second Amendment's "well-regulated militia".

The U.S. Code is, of course, trumpted by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that "The President shall be commander in chief [...] of the militia of the several states" -- which means that unless you took orders from Bill Clinton last year, you are not a member of the militia.

Further, under Article I, Section 8, "The Congress shall have power to [...] provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States" -- which, combined with the preceding, strongly indicates that the militia was meant all along to be interpreted as a military body. This is the basis for the Supreme Court rulings cited by the esteemed AC, ruling that the National Guard now fills the role of the constitutional militia.

[And yes, I'm well aware that the NRA has become quite skilled in tying these rulings in pretzel knots trying to argue that they don't mean what they plainly say...]

The gun lobby has never won a Supreme Court case based on their interpretation of the Second Amendment.[*] An unbiased observer would conclude from this that the gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment is wrong.

[*] And only one federal court case (out of dozens before and since that rejected its misguided lead), which is currently under appeal.
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