I'm in agreement with you overall, but there are a few problems.
Wintermute_ said:
Ok, even without considering the recent events in Tuscon (So hundreds/thousands can die each year from gun crimes but if its a politician then suddenly "holy shit, guns may be dangerous"?) I'm really tired of hearing anyone in the news or wherever talk up 2nd amendment rights.
Politicians deal with gun crime in the legislature. Politicians aren't the victims of gun crime terribly often since there aren't very many of them and they're typically in relatively safe environments. Actually having this happen to one of them is like a wake-up call. They can't continue just trying not to think about it quite as easily.
Wintermute_ said:
Hate to tell you, but the 2nd amendment is RIDICULOUSLY OUTDATED.
It reads
"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The overwhelming majority of the Constitution is similarly outdated. The idea is to keep to the core ideas rather than the specific instantiations of them.
Wintermute_ said:
Lets run this down. Firstly, the second amendment was written when there was still a serious threat of Indian attack, British attack, and in general no exceedingly superior standing army in the U.S.. The National Guard was farmers and home owners with rifles and pistols. further more, it was written to ensure that if ever a oppressive regime took power, the American citizens could revolt much the same way we did against the british.
But hey guys, guess what?
The primary reason for the Second Amendment was defence against OUR OWN government, not against foreign enemies. If it were about foreign enemies, it would have been included in the original Constitution. The Bill of Rights is just that -- a set of RIGHTS (protections for citizens against their own government).
Wintermute_ said:
In regards to the second half of that statement, if the U.S. government today suddenly was ridiculously oppressive, enough to warrant a revolution of some kind, sorry to tell you that U.S. citizens would be screwed. As the owners of the most powerful military in the world, average, untrained citizens armed with pistols, rifles, and maybe some semi or automatic weapons are not going to defeat the well trained, organized, supplied, well armed, and massive U.S. army. It would not happen. We would need bazookas, jets, tanks, the best automatic weaponry, and a lot of ammo. We reasonably can't give those to citizens. Why give them light weight guns that usually end up in the perpetration of crimes instead?
Not even remotely true. Urban warfare SUCKS. A LOT. A large uprising would be effectively impossible to fight in conventional terms (you can't just bomb cities because they contain YOUR supporters too) and the US military is TINY compared to the actual US population. Not to mention the number of troops that might themselves join the rebellion.
Wintermute_ said:
Secondly, you don't need an automatic weapon. You are not fighting any insurgents. Cops, officers of the law, have those to stop all those gangs or criminals that got their hands on automatics who whoa! did illegal things with them. You do not need more then at most 1-2 guns. What the hell are you using them for if its for defense, unless your a collector, and even then, collecting tools of death is questionable. What I'm getting at is everyday someone who has a gun uses it for criminal purposes. Furthermore, having a gun or concealed weapon means the likelihood of you firing your gun and killing someone just soared into the realm of very possible, instead of not possible. Gun regulation should be intensified several folds before I can see it being reasonable to own weapons.
Cops don't have automatic weapons. Automatic weapons are, by and large, not a problem. There are of course some incidents where the fact that the weapon was automatic made a situation worse, but by and large it's the run-of-the-mill semiautomatics that cause the overwhelming majority of problems. As for collecting, I completely and totally agree. There ARE solutions allowing collectors to continue too. Imagine a secure facility that stores weapon collections for instance. You could easily prevent the "grandfather's arsenal" problem with gun collections.
Wintermute_ said:
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, the groups of hardcore gun owners/advocates that hide behind the second amendment for their right to own a god damned AK-47 or something of another unnecessarily large scale need to have that shield taken away so law making can continue and reduce the levels of gun toting potential criminals and deaths.
There are so many laws and rulings in place that prevent you from owning a fully automatic AK that it's almost silly. People hiding behind the "shield" of the Second Amendment for that purpose are hiding behind a shield that doesn't exist. Eliminating the nonexistent shield doesn't make it any more nonexistent.
Finally, it doesn't make sense to have an option that says "it is not a right to own guns" because it is. You might say "it SHOULDN'T be a right", but saying that it isn't is like saying "people don't kill people" rather than saying "people shouldn't kill people".
Like I said, I agree completely with changing things. Guns are tools designed for the express purpose of killing people. Most other weapons get by on being actual utilitarian tools with other uses, like knives, but guns are JUST for killing people. You might find them fun to use for target shooting and such, but that isn't what they're designed for (at least not the sort of guns used for personal defence). I don't think it's okay for someone to go into Walmart and buy something that is DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR KILLING PEOPLE. Yes, it might be killing people "for defence", but the main reason you need that defence is because guns are so easy to get hold of. Add on top of that all of the usual statistics regarding how little carrying a weapon actually improves your safety (the real statistics, not one or two isolated places where the opposite happens to hold).