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Second Amendment Questioned
dheera writes "Attorneys in Washington, DC question the scope of the Second Amendment in the first case in nearly 70 years, citing that the right to bear arms only applies to 'a well regulated militia.' 'We interpret the Second Amendment in military terms,' said Todd Kim, the District's solicitor general."
Anything can be used to kill people, guns don't kill people, people kill people. Ok you want the government to have all the power, so they will never do anything wrong... Ah Tiananmen Square, governments in action with the people having no way to protect themselves. The founding fathers put it in there for a reason... God dammit they were a hell of a lot smarter than you , so just shut up!
Leave it to DC with NO gun rights and one of the highest crime rates in the nation to want to attempt to redefine the 2nd amendment. I wonder if these judges would turn over their sidearms which they carry for personal protection? Oh wait no they won't because they need them for safety. How dare the common folk want the same!
Pretty sure you're wrong.
Dark Reflection
When Second Amendment advocates talk about the right to bear arms, they exclude the materials mentioned above from the category of acceptable small weaponry.
Right. Far better to roll over and play dead. Pussy.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Well, if blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crimes, then clearly it makes sense to take away their guns, although I have no idea how this actually works.
Could you please name a single gun-rights association lobbying Congress for recognition of the right to mortars?
But unfortunately correcting our reading of the second amendment will only go part of the way towards solving the problems. America has a love aware with violence-as a society we simply cannot get enough of it. The only thing americans love more than violence is living in a perpetual state of fear-which feeds directly into the violence. American culture glorifies violence to the point of no return-being beaten and beating others is practically a coming of age ritual. Paradoxically it is not the same people who legally own guns who actively perpetuate this fear and who so greatly value violence. Most legal gun owners are good upstanding citizens. Yet their possession of guns leads directly to the atmosphere of fear and violence. There are probably as many guns in circulation in America now as there are phones. Guns form an ubiquitous presence in American society-they permeate the social fabric, which itself is constantly being torn at and ripped asunder by the unrelenting gun violence. America as a culture and as a nation are simply not mature enough to be entrusted with guns. The frequency of gun related violence in America shows this to be true time and time again.
I know plenty of people who own guns. Of those people I can neither ascribe violence nor violent acts of intimidation using those guns. Why this disjunction-this apparent contradiction-because these people belong to a minority of Americans for whom violence is not a common sense approach to solving problems and disagreements. As much as I long for gun free society however- the reality is - as long as violence belongs to our collective common sense -not only in the sense of using violence to achieve an end, but also expecting violence as a reaction to certain behaviors- we will remain a society which defines itself in terms of it's own self-violence.
Now I know that many, many Americans would feel that their god-given right to own guns would be violated if it were to come to pass that the legislation in place corresponded to a more correct reading of the second amendment. But I feel the violence involved in cleansing our nation of guns, however painful that may be for those whose sense of entitlement would be hurt, still remains a violence much more minor than the never ending wave of gun related violence in American society. Violence still defines the experience of a large part of our society. Gun violence, of which most is domestic, plays a crucial role in the culture of violence in our society-at the same time the cultural products of America worship this same violence- we pay homage to this culture when we purchase the films and music which glorify it. Our fathers teach the value of violence to our sons, as men do to their woman, as children do to each other in our public school system. Many Americans can probably rightfully not identify themselves with the picture I paint here-but I suspect that a larger group of Americans will be able to identify themselves with such a picture as those who identify themselves as living in a civilized society of non-violence.
Alright, what the fuck? Why is it that I can't even fart in Slashdot's general direction without some extremist leftist fuckwit modding me troll or flamebait in a kneejerk fit of PC hysteria?
What do you think of a government that collects taxes and uses the money to subsidize corporations that would otherwise go out of business or pass laws that enable existence of their unnatural business models (such as intellectual property laws that imply that you don't own your own head and thoughts within).