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You made a bet that you could get Smash to call you an idiot?

Shit man, Smash calls *me* an idiot and he likes me

The terms: That I could get at least one poster to treat me in the same way that posters treat him, without provoking the response by any name calling, vulgar innuendo or similiar type of stategy. That the responding post would be confrontational, personally inappropriate and without merit.

Whatever, pussy. Run along now and spend your $20 wisely on mayonnaise and nipple clamps. Maybe for your next bet you can see if you can get thrown out of a 'wiggles' concert for slapping the guitar player in the face with your ****.

No. The other uses are to just HAVE it, like I have swords that I will never use and a bunch other other **** that I will never practically use; just to have them; and also to be able to go and shoot them at a range because it's fun. Simple. Ever fire a Thompson? It's fun. Simple as that.

This country is already a lost cause. The American people trust its government far too much to ever want to overthrow or defend its self against it so why do people need such sophisticated firearms? As for shooting guns for fun you should still need to register. Hell I need a license to go fishing.

Edited, Mar 31st 2007 10:33pm by Lefian

Do you even know what an 'assault weapon' is? Please, oh wise one, define that term.

Gonna respond to this bit right off the bat:



This is the great misleading argument of the anti-gun movement. While the statement is true in an absolute sense, it's somewhat equivalent to arguing that the 4th ammendment should not provide protections to data held on home computers because computers didn't exist when it was written and back then the average person didn't have the ability to own 15,000 images of child **** (or whatever other illegal material one might possess).

It's not like the firepower of the average military has stayed static while the home owners options have gotten more powerful. In fact, quite the opposite. Back when the 2nd amendment was written, the average privately owned firearm was a higher quality then what would be issued to soldiers in the military. Aside from atillery, the citizenry was typically vastly better "armed" then the military was. Amazingly, violent crime didn't overwhelm the nation as a result.

It was not until the 20th century that this really started to change. And it changed in the opposite direction to what your argument implies. The "gap" between the weapons legally usable by private citizens and that which the government could employ has grown exponentially. My point is not to argue that private citizens should walk around with Ak-47s, but rather that the broad idea that the founding fathers when writing the 2nd amendment somehow intended to restrict the meaning of "armed" only to those weapons available at that time is absurd. They knew that weapons tech had improved over time. They knew that it would in the future. They did not restrict the freedom. We should not assume that they intended to do so but for some reason just didn't write it down...



The problem is with the "these types of weapons" statement. If you are talking about fully automatic weapons, or anti-tank rockets, or any of a number of weapons we typically would think of as military only, you've got a valid point. Not necessarily from a 2nd amendment point of view, but from a "this is a bit over the top" PoV. Most people are ok with such restrictions as a "reasonable" limit to the 2nd amendment.

The problem is that by labeling weapons "assault weapons", they make most people assume we're talking about fully automatic weapons. But that's (again) not what they're trying to restrict. They're trying to make normal weapons that perform no differently then any other automatic weapon (one pull per shot) illegal simply because they put them on a list and call them "assault weapons".

It's either a collosal waste of time (because there's no performance difference between the named weapons and a dozen others that aren't on the list), or it's a stepping stone towards illegalizing all firearms (which is a violation of the 2nd amendment). Either way, it's a bad law...

Yes, it's one of history's greatest mysteries why Boston didn't fall under the rule of roving bands of ruffians armed with muzzle-loaded longarms and single-shot flintlock pistols.

There was no "vast" difference in firearms at the time. You had muskets and you had rifles. The muskets were fairly quick loading (though still single shot) and inaccurate. The rifles were more accurate but slow to reload. And you had pistols which were slow to load AND had crappy aim. But they were smaller.

The typical citizen would have owned a rifle. It took upwards of a minute to reload but it would have been useful for hunting game or to make a single shot count in defense since it was more accurate. But the militias had rifles as well. They also had calvary carbines which the typical citizen would have no use for. And Charleville and Brown Bess muskets; the former supplied by the French and the latter captured from the British. And, of course, the miltias had artillery.

In no way was the average better armed the the military. There wasn't much of a gap in firearm technology, sure. But they didn't have better.

In no way was the average better armed the the military. There wasn't much of a gap in firearm technology, sure. But they didn't have better.

I think the idea he was trying to obliquely hint at thinking about getting across was that the actual intent of the 2nd amendment was an armed population capable of violent overthrow of the government keeping it's ability to curtail liberty in check.

Perhaps not, as we all know that was passes as 'argument' from Gbaji is to be as vague and cryptic as possible so he can later claim both that you didn't understand his point and that he previously argued anything that might come up.

Oh, I know what he was trying to get at. But the statement that the citizenry was "vastly" better armed was so full of shit that I couldn't let it stand.

I hate to say it, but Gbaji and the anti-ban people do have a point about the arbitrary classification of some firearms as "Assault weapons".

Partly this is because any restriction on the sacred Second Amendment requires a lot of political deal-making to get through the Congress. Between the NRA, U.S.-based gun manufacturers and the average nut on the street, very few Congress-people are willing to step out on a limb and vote for any broad restrictions.

The 1994 ban grew out of the Stockton Schoolyard Massacre in 1989 and so it aimed at "military-styled" weapons like the Chinese AK-47 knock-off used by the perpetrator - pistol-grips, large-capacity detachable magazines, folding stocks, and other cosmetic features became the touchstones. Also, the late 80's were a high point in the crack-related gang violence with lots of media coverage about how the dealers where better armed than the police. So, a bunch of specific weapons used by drug dealers (Tec-9, Mac-11, etc.) where specifically named as "Assault Weapons." Even then, these cowardly congress-critters game themselves an out by making the law "expire" after ten years.

Thats the reality of our legislature at work.

A broad ban like "any firearm with a barrel length shorter than 20 inches must be single shot" or "any firearm with a barrel length of 20 inches or more must have a magazine capacity no greater than five rounds" would never pass.

The difference between fully-automatic and semi-automatic versions of similar weapons comes down to how fast can you move your index finger. A fully-automatic AK-47 has a cyclic rate of about 600 rounds per minute, so it takes approximately 3 seconds to empty one of those 30-round banana clips. A semi-automatic version like the one used in Stockton requires that you twitch your index finger once for each round fired. It might take as long as ten seconds to empty the clip into a crowd of screaming eight year olds.

I feel so much safer knowing that fully automatic weapons are illegal, and only semi-automatic hunting rifles are availabe at my local Wal-Mart. Always Low Prices!

**edit for spelling

Edited, Apr 3rd 2007 12:36pm by naatdog

The point is that you cannot search the computer without a warrant. You can't just assume that since the capability of a citizen to have vast quantities of illegal "paper" content (in this example child ****), we should limit that capability so as to make it easier to search it if and when we need to.

That's the argument I was going towards. We've extended the protections of the 4th ammendment even as the definition of what constituted "private papers" changed over time, and in ways that the original writers likely could not have concieved of.

In *exactly* the way that firearms have changed. However, firearms haven't changed nearly as much as "private papers" have. Yet, you are trying to argue that we should chuck out the words of the 2nd ammendment based on those much smaller changes. Let's face it. Other then rate of fire and accuracy, firearms haven't changed much. When they get to where you can recieve a mental implant that allows you to think someone to death on the far side of the planet *then* we'll be starting into a new realm of "arms" that would have been outside the conception of the people who wrote the 2nd ammendment. Weapons that fire bullets, but do so faster and more accurately just don't compare...



Certainly. However, the 4th ammendment does not guarantee you the right to have anything you want on those private papers. It only provides that the government must have a warrant before searching them. The 2nd ammendment *does* guarantee the right to bear arms. Again. I think it's reasonable to limit those arms somewhat. And the idea of the difference between artillery type weapons and personal firearms is a good start. Presumably fully automatic weapons are as well. As someone pointed out (might have even been you), the NRA doesn't seem to worry about bans on those weapons, nor put any effort into reversing them. So the question you should be asking is: "If the gun guys aren't complaining about that, why are they complaining about this?". The answer is that the anti-gun folks don't seem to be happy with "reasonable" restrictions on firearms. They keep wanting to creep that line farther and farther back towards total bans. The NRA has to draw a line somewhere because if they don't, eventually there will be a total ban (already are in some areas of the country).

It's not the gun guys fighting to make powerful weapons easier to obtain. It's the other way around. The issue is over where that "line" should be. What is a "reasonable" firearm that private citizens should be able to possess?



Um... Why not continue on to the freaking next paragraph?



Did you just not even bother to try? C'mon...

Edited, Apr 3rd 2007 6:09pm by gbaji

An "Assault Weapon" is a gun that could effectively fill the roles of both a Rifle(Long Range) and a Sub Machine Gun.

Sub machine guns are not assault weapons because they are only effective at close range. Normal Rifles are not assault weapons because they are not as effective at closer range.

Assault Weapons would fill the need for both of these roles. The prerequisites that are sited in the bill do make sense. Even though they do include Semi-Automatic rifles; the rifles that are included are light in weight, capaple of recieving extended capacity magazines, and are effective at close and far ranges.