The Right To Keep and Bear Arms

You can readily sell your firearm to a variety of gun stores if it is in good shape or sell it to select pawn shops or close personal friends. I hope most gun owners avoid selling their gun to someone who raises red flags.

I believe in the right to keep and bear arms, however I also believe in the government's right to regulate said arms and keep them out of the hands of people who shouldn't any business keeping them in the house, such as people with criminal records and severe psychological disorders.

Why? Because even if you ban all guns, there are people who will have guns anyway through violating the law. That puts law-abiders at a disadvantage because they can't adequately protect themselves and follow the law at the same time. Yes, I realize we should have the police force to do the protection for us, however that protection is not always available. If somebody breaks into your house armed with a gun, it's better to have your own weapon than to be a sitting duck.

So I like the system America has now—you gotta have a license before you can have a weapon like a pistol. A little extra paperwork never hurt anyone.

That's my two cents. They may be incomplete, but that's how they are now.

edited 24th Jul '11 4:20:45 PM by annebeeche

California lets you sell your guns to anybody without a paperwork trail, though personally I would only sell to somebody I knew.

I'd never sell my guns to a gun shop or a pawn shop, they would rip me off and try to buy a gun for like 25 percent of the price I bought it at.. My Howa rifle that I've kept in mint condition? My local gun store wanted to buy it for 300 bucks.. I bought it for 1100. It hasn't had tons of rounds put through it, I keep it really clean, and it has good optics on it and a custom stock. So I'm selling it for like 650 to a friend. No paperwork needed.

That being said, I like what Tuefel said. The problem with it is that the restrictions on who gets what are too open to interpretation. The system for a concealed carry license in Tuef's state of Nebraska is the same that we have in California, the difference is that in California you could write the most convincing essay in the world on why you are a responsible gun owner who its ok to have possessing a gun in public, and they would still not give a shit unless you are a retired cop, politician, celebrity, or businessman.

That's the problem I have with this sort of thing. Not only do I already own guns, I fully intend to keep them and buy more at some point. "Gets more complicated" means "Do a bunch of paperwork to justify why you should be allowed to get one" and that doesn't jive for me, since someone with sufficient power could just decide to only ever approve the paperwork of people they like, such as with the above California description I gave.

edited 25th Jul '11 12:57:42 AM by Barkey

Thankfully, I live in a country with no cultural elements of "this land was founded by a bunch of gun-wielding yockels, so we should all be gun-wielding yockels too".

Getting a gun here is infamously hard, and it's still too easy, considering those two school-shootings a few years back.

how different the outcomes

revolutions can bring

edited 25th Jul '11 2:18:46 AM by Driscoll

The thought of random people being able to get guns frightens me.

America is the perfect example of a society where owning guns hasn't made it any safer.

Bob is a proud gun-owner, or rather he own a gun because it makes him feel safe. Now Bob has a lovely wife, Carol, and Carol doesn't care either way. With their two kids Suzy and Timmy, they have a lovely life.

Bob comes home one day to find Carol in bed with Julio, Bob is angry, and his world just got destroyed. Out of pure frustration he reaches for his gun and shoots Julio and Carol. Julio's head splits open like a ripe melon. Carol gets her entrails pierced by two bullets before Bob decides to try a third time through the heart.

Jack is a burglar, and knowing that people can own guns, he carries one himself. Every time he enters a home, he knows that he's the one who needs to shoot first. So one day he hears a noise behind him, and instinctively he shoots. Mortally wounded an old man drops to the floor.

Young Steve grew up in a household with guns. He knows where to find them, and his father taught him how to use one. After all, young Steve needed to know hoe to respect the gun, because it would make him a more responsible person. Young Steve is 16 and has no friends, he gets bullied day after day, his anger grows and he has nobody to talk to about his problems. One day he's pushed to the limit. He goes home, grabs a gun and kills his classmates.

I don't like the thought that people have the means to kill with the ease a gun allows. People are weak, they're slaves to their hormones. They're easy to manipulate and they're even easier to fool. People tend to have distorted views of situations. What seems like a dangerous situation of life and death to one person might actually prove quite innocent afterwards.

The whole notion that you should own a gun to keep the government in check is ludicrous, because if someone were to assasinate Obama or Bush Jr. they would be considered lunatics and they'd change absolutely nothing. Good luck standing up in court and claiming you did what the founding fathers would have wanted you to do, since whomever you just shot was part of a government you think is illegitimate.

You'll get the chair before you can even mutter the words "god bless america"

losing a war

edited 25th Jul '11 2:32:45 AM by Driscoll

80 million people, of which how many are going to actually revolt? You're living in some wacked out libertarian la-la-land if you think the USA is ever going to have a second revolution where 80 million people are going to end up fighting the government.

If it didn't happen under Bush Jr. when he stripped away your precious freedoms one Patriot Act at the time, it's not going to happen unless it's a bit chilly in Hell and they're breaking out their ice-skates.

Face it, with the way the country and its political landscape is structured, you're not going to have a wide-spread revolution. It's nothing more than a survivalist's wet dream. I don't even think the Tea-Baggers are that deluded that they think there's ever going to be a time to rise up and start a revolution.

Looking at the Middle East and pointing to them as an example... well you might just as well point at a cat and a dog fucking and call that an example of why it's possible for the USA to have an armed revolution in this modern landscape.

There will never be any "consent of the governed". When Bush Jr. took to the office of president people were screaming and yelling that it wasn't a legitimate move... but did the government get overthrown? No.

As for Britain losing its hold over America... you need to open up a book that wasn't written by a 1987 parody of the Republican Party or Some Tea-Bagger with a Sarah Palin bumpersticker.

edited 25th Jul '11 3:25:05 AM by Esteban009

edited 25th Jul '11 4:04:34 AM by Driscoll

Esteban, are you suggesting that the US Revolutionary War was propaganda?

edited 25th Jul '11 4:07:40 AM by Deboss

I'm suggesting that it's been used as propaganda by Right Wingers in the USA, by simplifying the conflict and factoring out elements to present a simplified version of history to suit their political needs.

Take out the various factors that contributed to the victory, replace them with patriotism, and you've got something that's easy to sell to a public that gobbles that stuff up.

Britain lost not because they faced an armed populace, but because they were waging a war across the ocean and they couldn't actually afford to keep it up. They cut their losses and gave up.

To compare that situation with a modern revolution in the USA is just plain retarded.

The situation is completely different, on a social level, a political level and a technological level.

You cannot compare it to the revolution in Egypt, nor the one in Libya (which is turning out to be a mass clusterfuck with a painful amount of casualties) because those countries have a different history, a different culture, the people there have different outlooks and wishes.

I think an armed revolution would happen only once the ballot box completely broke down, like several years after the imposition of martial law or something equally ridiculous. In that case, accurate hunting weapons and powerful high explosives (of which there are enormous amounts of both) would probably prove the most useful, since no guerilla worth his salt has too much use for a a rocket launcher or machinegun. Such weapons would be abundant in the US, since a campaign for the confiscation of weapons in such a political environment would probably be very unsuccessful and impossible to enforce. That said, the national and state guard armories—numerous, poorly guarded, and chock full of mothballed heavy small arms—would probably be prime targets for looting. Fighting a guerilla war on US turf would be an absolute meatgrinder for any military I can think of, domestic or foreign.

On an unrelated note, while it's a commonly romanticized image, has a CCW wielding civilian bystander ever actually been on the scene of a rampage killing?

Meh, I'll stay out of that.

edited 25th Jul '11 7:09:19 AM by blueharp

^^^

So you have little to no proper understanding or confidence in the use of firearms, good for you.

For those of us who do, we would rather nobody ruined it for us.

You guys need to remember as well, in the event that the US military tried to crack down on the populace, soldiers deserting or changing sides in a civil war is not uncommon, and we happen to have a lot of veterans who have counter-insurgency experience, and are deeply intimate with exactly how the USA handles counter-insurgency.

And if you want me to not flanderize people who are against guns as all being that way, quit flanderizing all gun owners as "yokels" or "rednecks" who are nuts. Most of us are not yokels, rednecks, nutcases, or weird ass survivalists. Most of us are people with a hobby.

Pfft, maybe yours, ours are under lock and key. I'd know since I protect one.

The Army doesn't protect theirs for shit though..

edited 25th Jul '11 8:31:02 AM by Barkey

That just made my day, it's love to see them try that in NC.

2 years ago in Colorado there was a string of shootings in Denver at local churches. The gunman came to a church in Colorado Springs to do the same and as soon as he pulled his gun a lady there with a CCW and a pistol shot his ass down.

It made headlines not only in Colorado but across the country.