The second amendment is old and needs some fine-tuning. What do they mean by a well-regulated militia? It has been proposed that they meant a state-sponsored militia, like a part-time reservist-type militia for that particular state (wherever the person lives who is part of that state's militia). If that's what they meant, then PRIVATE gun ownership isn't part of the equation at all -- you'd need to belong to some well-regulated militia.

Secondly, what did they intend with the word 'arms'? At the time the second amendment was written, they had front-loading one-shot muskets. So what they meant could have been just that, that they thought ownership of front-loading one-shot muskets was okay (if you belong to the well-regulated militia, of course). Or, taken to the other extreme, 'arms' could mean any weapon of any type, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

As a historical fact, the one time the common man actually took up arms and used them to fight our own government in large numbers, it was the Civil War. And they lost. And we'd probably have been worse off if they'd won (a divided U.S., ongoing racism and slavery, blah blah).

As a practical matter, we made our own bed and now we have to lie in it. There are hundreds of millions, maybe BILLIONS, of guns in circulation now. It's not feasible to try any sort of gun control in the U.S. because of that. If we'd had gun control from the start, yes, we could probably be saving thousands of unnecessary deaths each year by keeping gun control. But we didn't, and now it's too late. Every country has problems. Some have endemic disease problems, some lack food, and we have high levels of gun violence. That's just a part of our national landscape now: that you are at much higher risk of being blown away by some retard with a gun than you would be in basically any other first-world country. That's bad for tourism, that's bad for the residents of this country, but it's good for the big-business gun makers, and in any case, there's really nothing we can do about it now.
jamstigator Reviewed by jamstigator on . The Worldwide Gun Control Movement big government socialist neo-cons can learn a thing or two from a real pro-constitution conservative. don't count on communist george dubya to do a damn thing about it, he's more anti-gun than clinton was. The Worldwide Gun Control Movement Ron Paul | June 27 2006 The United Nations is holding a conference beginning this week in New York that ironically coincides with our national 4th of July holiday. Itâ??s ironic because those attending the conference want to do away with one of our Rating: 5