How can anyone oppose the second amendment?

The Founding Fathers knew all too well that King George could take away private citizens' weapons if he so desired.

They felt that private gun ownership should be a right, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Responsible gun owners should not be penalized.

topsemag55

[QUOTE="topsemag55"]

The Founding Fathers knew all too well that King George could take away private citizens' weapons if he so desired.

They felt that private gun ownership should be a right, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Responsible gun owners should not be penalized.

THUMPTABLE

In many ways, they are. Not to the same extent with regards to authoritarian rulership by any stretch of the imagination, but the argument bears some water nevertheless.

so they aren't gunshy

I'm pro-gun, but I think the second amendment has been purposely misinterpreted by people to support that stance.

I'm completely for the right to gun ownership-- it's one of our fundamental rights as US citizens. When the government takes away our guns, they can take away the rest of our rights, too.

[QUOTE="airshocker"]

[QUOTE="GabuEx"]

Everyone deserves compassion. Compassion does not entail giving someone whatever they want; it entails acting with their best interest in mind and out of no malice, anger, hatred, or spite of any kind. The abandonment of compassion is the abandonment of one's humanity and the poisoning of one's soul for scant temporary benefits.

GabuEx

They don't deserve compassion at the expense of somebody else, though.

It makes no sense, to me, to care more about the criminal than the victim.

Who's caring more about the criminal than the victim? If someone was robbed, one may easily have compassion both at what happened to the victim, and to desire to rectify their situation, and at the state of mind that lead the criminal to his chosen course of action, and to desire to have him see the error of his ways. I don't understand why people often make this out to be a binary choice between caring about the criminal or about the victim, as though one implies the impossibility of the other. People don't commit crimes because they're evil; they commit crimes because the path they have been placed on in life - their parents, their place of birth, their friends, their schools, their neighborhoods, and whatever else - have lead them to see it as the best option for them in life. And that is nothing but pitiable. It doesn't excuse their actions, but neither does it excuse those who treat them as though they are no longer human simply because of their chosen path in life.

guns are bad mmkay?Jandurin

[QUOTE="Jandurin"]guns are bad mmkay?LJS9502_basic

People that do not have access to deadly force to protect themselves, their property, and their rights are much easier to control....

And it's not like giving the population a bunch of guns is actually going to deter a potential tyrant from going totalitarian on the U.S. - you can't possibly expect to put up a resistance against a mechanized force who can hit your house with a 500 pound bomb if all your rifles do against a fighter-bomber is fail to hit it. Unless you want to go to the extent of letting everyone own their own personal SAMs.

Barbariser

[QUOTE="Barbariser"]

And it's not like giving the population a bunch of guns is actually going to deter a potential tyrant from going totalitarian on the U.S. - you can't possibly expect to put up a resistance against a mechanized force who can hit your house with a 500 pound bomb if all your rifles do against a fighter-bomber is fail to hit it. Unless you want to go to the extent of letting everyone own their own personal SAMs.

Plzhelpmelearn

I was pointing out the fact that a civilian force equipped with M4 rifles can do about as much to the U.S. military as a civilian force equipped with knives, which is along the lines of "kill a couple soldiers here and there if lucky".

Unless you let individual civilians "defend themselves from oppression and tyranny" with SAMs and Javelin Missile Launchers, all a tyrant has to do is roll a bunch of M1A2s towards a rebel threat and your hypothetical resistance is going to get turned into a pile of carbonized flesh. Alternatively, he can call a bunch of A-10s and AC-130s on them and disintegrate them. If your theoretical fascist communist dictator really has the ability and will to install a totalitarian government in the U.S.A., you're screwed regardless of whether or not you have military grade rifles.