Privledge vs Right? and other 2nd Amendment questions.

[elkhuntCO]

The way I see it, 2A was intended to arm the people of the USA against all enemies foreign and domestic. Right now the biggest threat to the USA is terrorism and the anti-gun movement. Without our weapons we can not stop the government from doing anything that it wants. If the antis are successful in disarming the people of the USA, there will be no way for us to keep them from taking away or rights to free speech, etc. If the people of this great nation are to protect themselves and this country they must be able to control the government by force if necessary. If the government orders the miltary to arms against the people of this nation, the only thing in the way of them is the armed citizens. Those citizens must be able to maintain an arsenal of weapons adequate to withstand an attack by military personnel, foreign or domestic, should that situation arise. I for one will be there to protect this country at all costs.
SEMPER FI

[HK4U]

Although I think terrorism is a danger I feel the gravest threat is from within. There are those that will use any treat either real or fabricated as a means to strip away our freedoms so that they may be able usher the sheeple into their One World Government/New World Order. The 2nd Amendment is there to give us the means to defend against something like this. The powers that be of course know this all to well.

[elkhuntCO]

The main reason that I included terrorism as a major threat is the new administration of appeasers who think they can talk to the radicals and talk them out of hating us. I fear that they will try to stop all of the fighting overseas and that will give the terrorist a green light to bring the fight to us. JMHO.
Semper Fi

[krazyk]

Originally Posted by elkhuntCO

I fear that they will try to stop all of the fighting overseas and that will give the terrorist a green light to bring the fight to us. JMHO.
Semper Fi

Why do you think they hate us in the first place? we are an empire and Washington is headquarters.
we used to be loved around the world if you were American you could say so and peaple would help you.
Try that now and @ vary least your family will get a ransom note with a finger or ear attached .
what you see happening is called blow back and your seeing it in Mexico, blow back from the war on drugs you see it in our streets (Blow Back from the war on poverty ) "what you resist persist" so to speak . we are going to have to deal with it sometime lets just get it over with and quit trying to be so politically correct about it just think what we would do if Russia decided to invaded Mexico,how do you think we would feel,
if we are going to claim Christianity then we need to live by Jesus teaching ,"do one to others as you would have done to your self"Also as Christan's we have something called the Christan document for a just war,Ya ,we did not do a vary good job by that little document. and if that document is irrelevant than so is the Holy Bible. just my 2cents

[GaryR56]

Originally Posted by Pele

Just for the record, I'm pro second amendment. I just want to get a few definitions straight.

Here's the exact wording from the little pocket sized version of the Constitution that I have on me.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Couple of questions:

What exactly counts as "Arms"?
Could a rocket launcher be covered? Mortar? Flame thrower? Truckload of fertilizer and heating oil?
Nuclear InterContinental Ballistic Missile with Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles?
Where does one draw the line at what Arms are appropriate for a civilian?

Who counts as "the people"?
Perhaps I've held up my share of banks and retail stores. Hey, it pays better than a 9 to 5, AND you don't have to deal with those pesky W2 or 1040 forms. Maybe I've even wounded someone or worse... I still retain my American citizenship. Don't I still count as "the people"?
Where does one draw the line at who gets what rights when they've proven to abuse them?

And what's with that bit on a Militia? Or those words just previous, "well regulated"? How do those come into play?

I'll get a little more on those from Webster's. I can't access this site at work. It comes up as "Access Denied - Illegal Content"... Must be because I work in D.C.

To answer the first question, you don't draw any lines at all. That's how we got to where we're at today; i.e., by continually compromising with the government. You don't compromise with criminals and thieves. Having said that, the Constitution means what it says - that we have the right to be armed in order to defend ourselves. Period. It doesn't place any limitations or make any specifications as to what types of weapons we may use because the object of the Second Amendment has less to do with weaponry and more to do with the fact the founders believed we could not trust our own government and, thus, needed to be armed in case it became tyrannical - which it has. We are, thus, left to our own devices, as far as arming ourselves goes. Whatever works for you. I'd caution that an intercontinental ICBM is bit slow on the draw, though. ;)

To answer the second question, "who counts as the people?," again, the Second Amendment places no restrictions on who may bear these "arms." Though this leaves criminals and psychotics armed, as well, the fact that the average citizen would be equally as well-armed (if it weren't for the government's tyranny, that is) would tend to even this out; a level playing field, as it were - and as it was not very many decades ago. When citizens were armed, the criminals were less inclined to be as bold as they are today. As for the crazies, same thing. That crazy punk at Virginia Tech would have been toast if the other students were packing heat, also.

As for the militia, at the time the Constitution was written, the militia was a citizen organization, not a state-funded military organization and, thus, the militia was a volunteer force that could be called together in time of emergency. As such, it wasn't funded enough to possess its own armory and the several volunteers each had to provide his own weapons. Thus, the citizens had to be armed in order for "a well-regulated (in other words, properly equipped and trained) militia to exist, let alone fight an aggressor. Such a situation doesn't exist today only because, as a people, we've increasingly allowed government to do for us the things we should be doing for ourselves, including providing for our own defense. We have surrendered our power to the government and in this topsy-turvy arrangement we have become the servants and they the masters, which is exactly the opposite of what the founders intended. If this were not the case, then perhaps we the people would still be taking a more proactive role in our own defense, instead of leaving it up to an increasingly despotic government which has, at every turn, seized the opportunity we've been giving it to grow ever larger, ever stronger and ever more dangerous.

Gary
The Free Zone with Gary Rea

[GaryR56]

Originally Posted by elkhuntCO

The main reason that I included terrorism as a major threat is the new administration of appeasers who think they can talk to the radicals and talk them out of hating us. I fear that they will try to stop all of the fighting overseas and that will give the terrorist a green light to bring the fight to us. JMHO.
Semper Fi

Look again...more carefully. The "terrorists" are the ones running our government, not a bunch of Arabs on the other side of the world. Our government was hijacked in 1913 by a gang of criminals (i.e. the international banking cartel) who have imposed upon us, through illegal means, the Federal Reserve (a private bank, owned by the same gang of criminals) and the income tax (which is used to pay the interest on the debt-based currency printed by the Federal Reserve). This same gang of criminals has used the wealth of the people of the United States for 95 years to gain control of the media, academia, the legal system, the economy and, of course, the government via an interlocking group of organizations they also own and run (the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, etc) and they have hand-selected every president we've had since Woodrow Wilson. They own both political parties, which are merely two factions of a single-party system that shares the same covert agenda: the incremental subversion and ultimate destruction of the United States, followed by the establishment of a global police state, with the upper echelons of the international elite in control.

I'll give you a break to absorb all that before I continue. Meanwhile, you may want to check out a few alternative sources of information, as I see Fox News Channel seems to be your dominant source, currently. And don't take this as an insult or a personal affront. My interest is in awakening as many Americans as I can to what is really happening in the world, so that we may unite to stop it before it's too late.

Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

The Free Zone with Gary Rea

Gary