Again....But it's never the guns!

[TaraJo]

The government also has tanks and nuclear weapons. Should we have those, too?

What makes a tank dangerous, Tara? The guns. Furthermore, people can own tanks and do. And . . . the government is not supposed to have nuclear weapons. Try again.

Who says the government isn't supposed to have nuclear weapons? Is there some nuclear arms treaty I don't now about?

And anyway, to follow your logic it doesn't really matter if government is supposed to have nuclear weapons, it matters that the government actually does have nuclear weapons. Your example seemes to be stating that whatever force the government uses, we should be able to match. The government is able to use nuclear weapons; should we be able to match that?

The guns they had then were primitave muskets, not semi-automatic assault rifles. It's worth considering what the framers would have said if such destructive weapons existed then.

Oh, yes, primitive weapons that could set fire to towns and destroy them, tear through the sides of buildings and kill people just easily as your assault rifles. Pfft. Seriously, if you think a gun is any more destructive than gas, swords, cannons, etc., you are yet another victim of history lesson failure. The Civil War. Read about it.

Bullets start fires? Not likely, especially the primative pellets they used back then. Yes, you can do just as much damage with a gun as you can witha cannon which is why I also don't think the public needs to own military artillary. Would you argue that the military should be able to own artillary cannons? You can actually do more damage with a sword than a gun, largely because swords don't run out of bullets, but you don't see these mass shootings happening with swords (and if we did, I'd be calling on us to put regulations in place to regulate sword use).

The major technological advances between the revolutionary war and the civil war made guns even more destructive. They used rifles, not muskets. There's a huge difference between the two; after you fire with a musket, you had to turn the musket upside down, pour powder in the top, put another pellet in and stuff them. That took so long to do that it actually would have been faster to reload with a bow and arrow.

And if we're going to consider the civil war, let's take another look at things. The war was bloody and deadly because of a lack of hygenic practices. You got shot in the arm, they responded by cutting the arm off... and then they used the same saw, without cleaning it off, to cut the arm off the next guy. Scores after scores of people died from infection. While the guns were still dangerous, they still aren't nearly as destructive as the body count alone would indicate.

But if we're looking at the constitution, let's take a better look at the second amendment, shall we?

Haha. Yes, let's do.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Let me put that into plain English. "Because militia is necessary to the security of this country, the right to bear arms will remain indefinitely." It does not say it has to be for militia.

Kinda disingenious of you to specifically exclude the phrase that I emphasized, isn't it? I think that's an important phrase because I don't, and never have, believed that we should just take everyone's guns away; I do believe that they should be 'well regulated,' just like the constitution references. While taking guns away would be unconstitutional, regulating those guns is totally kosher.