03-18-2018, 04:10 PM
There was indeed an armed rebellion in America's history. Similarly Australia was a prison for violent criminals. Neither tells the whole story although there is truth to both.
I can sympathize with those who don't want the government to dictate how they can protect themselves in their homes given how poorly the government does many other things. There is the joke of somebody doing 70 mph through a neighborhood with a speed limit of 35 mph and the government response being "We'll fix that! We're lowering the speed limit to 25 mph!" Can't remember where I heard this joke. Maybe here? Anyway it seems apropos.
OTOH I am baffled by the fanatical resistance to any gun control laws at least among some camps. The authors of the 2nd amendment could not have imagined how society has become today. The affordability and availability of firearms is probably 1,000 times greater than it was in their time and the lethality of each firearm is also probably 1,000 times greater today than it was back in the time of muzzle loaders. Plus, it was an amendment. Why not amend it again if doing so was such a good idea in the first place? Sacrilege, I know. I am not really going there, just expressing my belief that some people hide behind the 2nd amendment.
I'm sure that there were always crazy people. I think that the good old days to some degree just seem that way because not every heinous crime in a small town made the news coast to coast a couple of generations ago. I do think that a couple of generations ago it was much harder as an individual to amass the amount of firepower seen in the last few mass shootings. That has to be a large part of the problem. The design of the AR15 and similar guns with multiple high capacity banana clips is part of the problem. I have difficulty imagining my semi-auto Marlin 60 (hugely popular since 1960) with a tubular magazine being part of the problem so demonizing semi-autos seems to validate the complaints of the pro-gun side.
I can sympathize with those who don't want the government to dictate how they can protect themselves in their homes given how poorly the government does many other things. There is the joke of somebody doing 70 mph through a neighborhood with a speed limit of 35 mph and the government response being "We'll fix that! We're lowering the speed limit to 25 mph!" Can't remember where I heard this joke. Maybe here? Anyway it seems apropos.
OTOH I am baffled by the fanatical resistance to any gun control laws at least among some camps. The authors of the 2nd amendment could not have imagined how society has become today. The affordability and availability of firearms is probably 1,000 times greater than it was in their time and the lethality of each firearm is also probably 1,000 times greater today than it was back in the time of muzzle loaders. Plus, it was an amendment. Why not amend it again if doing so was such a good idea in the first place? Sacrilege, I know. I am not really going there, just expressing my belief that some people hide behind the 2nd amendment.
I'm sure that there were always crazy people. I think that the good old days to some degree just seem that way because not every heinous crime in a small town made the news coast to coast a couple of generations ago. I do think that a couple of generations ago it was much harder as an individual to amass the amount of firepower seen in the last few mass shootings. That has to be a large part of the problem. The design of the AR15 and similar guns with multiple high capacity banana clips is part of the problem. I have difficulty imagining my semi-auto Marlin 60 (hugely popular since 1960) with a tubular magazine being part of the problem so demonizing semi-autos seems to validate the complaints of the pro-gun side.