Guns, the NRA, the constitution and senseless shootings

Just going through this thread and noticed this post. No country has the mindless geographic sprawl we do, sacrificing community for "independence" (read: isolation). That may be the factor that puts us over the top, especially when it comes to these mass shootings.

Americans simply don't know how to interact civilly.

 

And as was noted earlier, cars serve a vital purpose to how our society functions.

Guns do not.

Comparing guns to cars are two very different discussions.

 

Finally finished reading the thread. Was it my imagination or were there some serious arguments to the effect that our populace needs to have guns in case our government becomes tyrannical?

I think we better get some tanks and nuclear missiles too.

 

I was wondering how long it would take JR to blame this on the U.S., too. Gee, and just when I was starting to like you.

 

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are
neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that
those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity...will
respect the less important and arbitrary ones... Such laws make things worse
for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to
encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with
greater confidence than an armed man."

~Thomas Jefferson, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in "On
Crimes and Punishment."

 

The weapons Thomas Jefferson had to worry about:

 

I touched on that argument because it's the one that I find, intellectually, most intresting. But you raise a great point. What good does a handgun do against a government that has planes, tanks, etc? If you take this argument to its logical ends, especially considering the firepower our government possesses, how can you ban any firearms? An AK-47 is legitimate for a citizen to have if we're protecting against a well-armed government. So is a tank or a missile for that matter.
A very interesting argument, from both sides.

 

All due respect to Jefferson, in a country where we can't get 50 percent of the people to the polls in peacetime, I don't think widespread armed rebellion's in the cards.
Unless they take 24 off the air.

 

Well, as we've seen in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, you don't need high-tech arms to cause problems for an army with superior technology.

 

Good point.

 

Has anyone seen a statement from the NRA since the shootings?

 

This thread took longer than I expected to degenerate into name-calling by one side (the liberal wing, inevitably) when their grasp on the argument began to slip away.

Some stuff is just counter-intuitive. For instance, you'd think a handgun in your house would be waaaay more dangerous and deadly than a pool in your backyard. But the book Freakonomics established – and this is pretty much unassailable, but try if you must – that backyard pools are responsible for many more deaths in a year.

But I'm really disqualified from pushing my end of the argument very far. I have cashed a number of NRA free-lancing checks in my career and that so utterly blinds me to the arguments on the other side that I'm just not a reliable source.

Funny how all the First Amendment absolutists have no trouble blowing up the one that follows, though.