I am sure when most people hear the second commandment they ‘hear’ the second of the 10 commandments God gave Moses (even though there are over 633 commandments in the OT). That is not what I am referring to. I am referring to the second of two great commandments that Jesus said ALL the commandments hung upon:
Matthew 22:36-40
(NIV)
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Love your neighbor as yourself. Do you love yourself enough to protect yourself from harm? If so the bible says you should love your neighbor enough to protect them as well. We could all devote our lives to learning Ninjitzu in order to catch bullets with our hands- or we could Arm ourselves to equalize the potency of protection capabilities.
According to Jesus in the Bible, as a matter of the heart, punching someone in the face is the same as murder. Because the INTENT to cause harm to others is the root. It is hatred whether it is ‘provoked’ or not. When I talk about guns I am only talking about the freedom to protect against those who hate me or intend to cause me harm. Being correct and being in the majority is almost ALWAYS a contradictory position.
Someone might argue, “I dont want to end the 2nd amendment…Lets do what they asked and what they KNEW and INTENDED when they wrote it…You can have a single shot musket, pistol, cannon, knife or bow and arrow. Or I get to have nukes.”
I see what you mean, however…It is my understanding the the US Constitution was not designed to define the rights of citizens. It was to LIMIT the rights of the Federal Government. For example the supreme court in 1875 in U.S. v. CRUIKSHANK ruled that First and Second Amendment rights are only limitation on Congress. These rights are not granted by, nor in any manner dependent, upon the Constitution. They are given to all men equally by God.
In 1896: BROWN v. WALKER Justice Field quoted the counsel for the appellant saying: “The freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press; the right to bear arms; exemption from MILITARY dictation;. . . . . — are, together with exemption from self-crimination, the essential and inseparable features of English liberty.”
In 1900 the supreme court in the case of MAXWELL v. DOW – Cited PRESSER v. STATE OF ILLINOIS on how “all CITIZENS capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government”. Additionally 29 years later in UNITED STATES v. SCHWIMMER – A woman’s petition for Naturalization was rejected because she was not willing to “take up arms” in defense of the U.S. The court mentioned the right to keep and bear arms and stated, “Whatever tends to lessen the willingness of CITIZENS to discharge their DUTY to bear arms in the country’s defense detracts from the strength and safety of the government.”
Unfortunately the ‘government’ of 1929 is NOT the same government today…
For decades now, there has been an overt push against the 2nd Amendment. Bills have been considered and some passed to ban/limit everything from Automatic Weapons (1968), Semi-Automatic Weapons, Handguns, Large Capacity Magazines, Center Fire Ammunition, Bulk Ammo Purchases, Purchasing more than one Gun a Month, Open Carry, Concealed Carry, Create Gun Free Zones, on and on an on. None of which has done anything to curb violence. In fact, the United States has over 25,000 gun laws on the books and nothing has changed anything.
On the flip side of the Coin, guns in the hands of average Americans are used more than a million times a year to protect one’s self against muggings, rape, beatings, robbery, car jacking, home invasion, murder and every other imaginable crime. In approximately 98% of these self defense cases, the guns are never fired. Just pulling a gun on a would be criminal/murderer will normally stop the act of aggression. There are several long term studies available on the subject.
Yet, the media, in all its hype, never sees fit to run ANY of these self defense stories. If they truly were fair and balanced in any way, shape or form, we’d see dozens of stories about guns being used properly for self defense for every one story regarding a criminal shooting. The silence and omission is in itself a form of propaganda.
Our founding Fathers were not the dumbed down Americans of today. I cannot believe that as inventors and founders and trailblazers they thought we would always have muzzle-loaded black powder weapons.
Nukes by definition have zero capability of being used in self defense simply because the carrier of a nuke would be the first to die if one were to try and use it as self defense or defense of one’s country. They have only malicious applications and require malicious INTENT in their use. I am all for banning the use of nuclear energy as a weapon. Let’s ban using weather as a weapon as well. Oh wait, we DID ban weather modification being used as a weapon decades ago yet the criminals are above the law. And in this case the criminals are the government.
And even if we banned guns, we cannot ban all weapons because ANYTHING can be USED as a weapon. The same day The tragedy hit the news of 20+ deaths at a school shooting in America, news broke of 20+ children at a promary school in China http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html.
This was just one of two instances today. And right, it looks like the worst cases are just critical condition. So no one has died…YET. But this is an epidemic in china. Not just killing with knives. I have seen videos of Chinese killing each other with bricks in the street while passers by watched. The majority of the stabbings in china the last fews years DID end in the deaths of hundreds. Are the Chinese trying to ban knives at the same time the US Government is trying to ban guns?
I believe the columbine shooting happened during clinton’s assault rifle and high capacity magazine bans didn’t it? Will banning knives or guns help a societal problem?
As I said, this is a societal problem. We keep making it worse by putting mental people on psychotropic drugs. Almost EVERY multiple victim murder is committed by individuals on psychotropics, statins, antidepressants. Instead of treating the (societal) disease, we want to try and make it less likely for symptoms to arise? We are going to be satisfied with the fact that it was a knife, not a gun, so the 22 victims were only maimed and NEARLY dead but they didn’t die?
In my humble opinion it does not make any sense to make inanimate objects the target of scrutiny. If we really want to prevent this from happening, then ban psychotrpics and statin drugs, don’t allow people to play unhealthy amounts of violent video games, allow people to smoke marijuana to mellow them out, give every single person who is charged with caring for children a carry permit and the training to use it to protect the children they are paid to protect, so that they don’t have to cower on the floor and ‘wait for the good guys’.
Stop putting signs up that say ‘mass murderers welcome (gun-free zone)’ because how many gun shops have you heard of being robbed or mass murders happening near?! It doesn’t happen. EVERY TIME one of these tragedies happens it is somewhere that even a crazy person knows it is unlikely that an educated, armed citizen is going to be there to thwart their attempt at causing harm. EVEN the Ft. Hood shooting on an army base was a ‘gun free zone’ and if we REALLY want to stop these crimes then there is only ONE thing we need to do… make sure that we get a supreme court ruling stating that gun free zones and free speech zones are unconsitutional, because they are.
Because as the foundr of Oathkeepers said,
“Yes I think assault rifles and high capacity magazines should be legal. I don’t think we need more guns, we need more training. Well regulated of course applies to the second ammendment since it is in there- We can begin to deduce what well-regulated meant from Alexander Hamilton’s words in Federalist Paper No. 29:
The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, nor a week nor even a month, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry and of the other classes of the citizens to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people and a serious public inconvenience and loss.”
— The Federalist Papers, No. 29.
So no, I don’t think I am ‘so smart’ but I don’t have to be. If one reads the words of the people who wrote the constitution they don’t have to be smart. There is nothing to figure out. If I had only one chance to say something to the parents it would be this: The reason your children are dead is because of ‘gun free zones’ that only mean ANYTHING to law-abiding citens.
If criminals don’t respect the law, then why the HECK would we make a law forbidding good people to excercise the right to protect ourselves against people who don’t respect the law?!
And what about registering of firearms? One potential benefit of registration would be the return of stolen guns to the legitimate owners – but I wouldn’t bet on that happening! On the other hand, when a gun is stolen now, the police ask for a description and the serial number. If a nationwide database were created of stolen guns, they could potentially be returned. I for one would be more than happy to pay the shipping costs and a small handling fee to get my personal property back. Why are our legislators not proposing laws to see to see to it that citizens have their personal property returned to them after being discovered to be stolen? It wouldn’t require registration of all guns, just a record of all guns reported stolen. They could then be removed from the list of stolen guns once they were returned to their rightful owner.
The real social problem is illegal use of guns by what are by definition criminals. It is neither appropriate or effective to impose restrictions or financial burdens on law-abiding citizens. Another probable consequence of requiring a fee for owning a gun, is that retired people, living on fixed incomes, may find that given a choice between eating and keeping their gun, they would choose to buy food. Yet, when one is old and frail, the need for self-protection, in the form of a gun, may be greater than when they were hale and hearty. Our insensitive Democratic legislators, who feel that they know what is best for everyone, would take that right away if they had their dithers. Also, violent crime is an activity of youth, not old people. Yet, the proposed registration would apply to everyone.
No one is seriously suggesting that we should ban cars or somehow restrict ownership of cars by adults. However, the same cannot be said for guns. Registration is a strawman. It only has two real uses: to collect taxes and to serve as a database for later confiscation of the guns.
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