Ban "Cop Killer" Assault Pistol

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The Minutemen as an active fighting force were disbanded, but as is apparent in the 2nd Amednment, the responsibility for citizens to be prepared to form a militia is not. Your laws make that readiness impossible.

I will not shirk the role of fighting the enemies of freedom, you can throw up as many smoke screens as you want, but until you completely fall out of this thread, find a compromise with me, or convert I will not back down.

Do you believe that America will always be internally stable and militarily secure? If yes, explain why.

You didn't address this to me but I'll throw in here that I agree with you. The larger problem though is that those proposing the bulk of changes had no clue what they were talking about.

When the Assult Weapons ban was passed most gun manufcaturers just changed the design of their firearms to make them legal again. The law didn't nothing to reduce firepower available to anyone. It banned cosmetics.

The high-capacity magazine portion of the law is a perfect example. Prior to the ban you could easily buy a 15 or 23 round magazine for many handguns. As soon as the ban went into effect the makers stuck a plastic plug in the bottom of those magazines and they were suddenly legal again. Anyone that bought the new "legal" magazines could pull the thing apart and remove the plug and they had the high-capacity magazine again in under 30 seconds.

Laws like the Assult Weapons Ban don't stop anyone from doing anything. It's "feel good" legislation with no teeth.

Ivory Fury. wrote


I think it's time for you to crawl back into the comic book and disappear. Where the hell did you get the idea that people must agree with your convoluted thinking.

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Do you believe that America will always be internally stable and militarily secure? If yes, explain why.

Do you refuse to answer this question AU?

(I confess, I used A2K search on my own name, hence the one-off response to a post of Thomas's from three pages back)


I believe the example you suggests highlights as clearly as any I could have come up with the folly (or recklessness, if you wish) of your argument.

Seriously. Imagine a Columbine High School where every student had had a gun of his own. (I don't think even gun rights advocates usually plead for giving guns to minors, but I'll roll with you, here, for a moment). For self-defence, of course. Now, the disturbed kids go on their shooting spree. Everybody starts shooting back. Right in the middle of a high school's hallway or where it was - a hundred kids, all shooting at where they think, amidst the chaos breaking out, the original culprits are. Think about it.

How many more dead kids do you think there would have been still? Truly, I wouldnt myself even have dared to come up with such an extreme example to prove my point! :-P

Ivory wrote

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I left my crystal ball with my other suit. I do not believe in doomsday scenarios. When you say always do you mean as in forever? I do believe in the forseeable future the US will continue to be stable. As for the distant future we may blow the world up and fry all it's inhabitants. Now you tell me when and how soon do you expect the US to become unstable makeng it necessary for the Militia to come to the rescue.
By the way this is a discussion not a question and answer session.

Not to pick on Thomas specifically (I swear I'm just going through the thread now, if backwards), but this one too leaves me a little incredulous. I've known two drug dealers in my life, and neither was wont to spend their evening hours behind the PC surfing the Internet for self-study purposes. Nor can I easily imagine either spending the Sunday afternoon in their hobbyshed skilfully assembling metal parts ... ;-)

Yes, theoretically, the drug dealers still could do that, when the law was in place. And the top dogs in the drug trafficking business would I'm sure order some minions to go do exactly that. But re: the petty ghetto drug dealers and gangstas hanging out on the street corner who are responsible for so much of the gun violence, it doesn't seem like the most self-evident "then they would just" kind of scenario.

I admit you have made me think here. (Thanks!) Even I don't believe private citizens ought to own nuclear weapons, for example. There has to be a line drawn somewhere, and I can't give you a principled answer to where I think that should be. I need to ponder this some more.


All guns are registered, and so are all the persons who own one. It's a felony to own a gun without a license (Waffenbesitzschein), which may or may not come with a permission to buy ammunition. It is also a felony to carry a gun without a different license (Waffenschein), or shoot a gun without a license (Schußerlaubnis). Most of these licenses expire after a few years, and are often restricted to explicit places and purposes. I don't own a gun, so don't know first hand how hard it is to get all these licenses. But judging by what I read in the newspapers, and judging by the accounts of people I know who own guns, it's worth the trouble only when your sport is target shooting, or when you need a gun in your job (think hunters).

If you are interested, the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control has a webpage with some international comparisons about gun ownership, gun laws, and gun violence.


You're right, my hypothetical was too extreme. Guns, like cars, are dangerous, and people should be legally allowed to carry them in public only when they are old enough to know what they're doing, and when they've been taught how to handle them. Under this rule, the school children wouldn't have been armed, but the teachers would have, and maybe the pupils above 18. Do you still think this scenario would have been worse than what actually happened?

More generally, contrary to how my posts in this thread might look, my intent in writing them wasn't to throw radical political opinions around. It was to point out that gun control, for stricter or looser, isn't a free lunch. It is a tradeoff between forbidding bad guys to shoot (which is good) and forbidding good guys to defend themselves effectively (which is bad). Therefore you can't just assume that tougher gun control will make people safer, and demand such control on that assumption. You have to predict the consequences, and provide good reasons for your prediction. Providing those reasons is hard (either way). Several scholarly studies have been made to correlate the strictness of gun control with gun homicides, gun accidents and such, and their multiple regressions fail to show a correlation either way.

Makes for an untidy world, doesn't it? To further muddy the statistical waters, we really need to show some sort of correlation between gun control and other violent crime. There could easily be a higher incidence of robberies, beatings, and even murder, committed without firearms, if all firearms are prohibited. Certainly, if no one had access to guns, gun related crime would cease to exist - possibly to be replaced by a corresponding increase in other crime. Going to extremes, I'm not at all sure I would prefer being beaten to death over being shot.

For what it's worth, Thomas, when I was stationed in Germany in the late 60s, it was common knowledge (hearsay) that most German gun owners just kept their firearms secured at their shooting or hunting clubs.

I dont think thats a legitimate equation. It takes just one second to be shot; it takes a minute to shoot a lot of people. Being beaten to death, in comparison, requires quite an investment of time and energy for the common criminal; time there most often isn't available in the heat of the robbery or burglary. Basically, if you're the girl at the cash register of the place thats being robbed, the chance that they're going to hang around long enough to beat you to death is rather minute - especially compared to what is now all too quickly wrecked with a gun in their hand. Or, to use another example, gang violence is indeed of all ages, and if they didnt have guns they'd use knives; but in one two-minute drive-by shooting, more people get killed, random passers-by included, than could conceivably be 'achieved' in stabbing even in an elaborate exercise of avenge.

I can see how one can argue about who gets to have the guns with and without gun control laws. But the argument that it's all relative anyway, the proliferation of guns in the street - if it wasn't guns it'd be something else - is a dud, I think. As in war, in crime the degree of death and destruction wrecked is a function of intention times technology.


Dunno. If the teachers had had their guns at hand, cocked inside their jacket perhaps, the killers could have been expertly eliminated before they'd done half the damage they did. On the other hand, in the same scenario, if several teachers and older kids, from doorways or galleries, had come to the same idea and started shooting at the culprits who themselves were rushing through the building, I still foresee a bloodbath worse still than what was done.

Moreover: teachers with guns in their pockets: do we want that? Do we think that would do more good than harm? The hypothetical number of lives they might have saved at Columbine needs to be balanced out against the other deaths that might have come to be, at other times. Accidents. Criminal teenager stealing gun from teacher. Can you conjure up the scene, in fact? This is more than just being flippant about the details of an example; I believe it's a pars pro toto kind of metaphor for the question we're discussing.

Myself, I put it this way, the personal way. In your life, you will encounter criminals. If I don't have a gun, I get robbed or beaten up (and I've been beaten up once, and had someone point a knife at me). If I have a gun and I win, I don't. But if I have a gun and I lose, I'm dead. I prefer the financial or even physical damange of the first scenario over the Russian roulette of the second.

I am also, predictably, sceptical about the argument of gun ownership as a means to avoid tyranny. Thomas has been referring to statistical research about the correlation between gun ownership and crime rates. I suspect that similar research is not available about the correlation between gun ownership and tyranny. But I'll remind you that, apart from oft-cited Switzerland, the other country in Europe with near-unparallelled gun ownership is Albania, where no self-respecting head of the family will do without (especially in the North).

Other Balkan countries, like various former Yugoslav republics, have pretty high gun ownership rates too. If anything, there as in other regions of the world where small arms proliferation is extensive (such as different West- and Central-African countries), it has contributed to an instability that breeds tyranny, handing a particularly powerful card to the underground networks that might well shift from crime to politics and back.

Well, the link to the Coalition for Gun Control I posted above does give statistics on gun ownership across countries. No tyrannies are included, but the table does show me that I knew much less about actual ownership rates than I thought I did. Did you know Finland has a higher percentage of gun-owning households than America does? I didn't, until yesterday. That makes me doubt how much I really know about gun-ownership in Albania, Ex-Yugoslavia, and Africa. Do you have any sound statistics on that?

As to the chaos in the gun-rich countries you mention, your point is well-taken. I would note, though, that when dictatorships kept these populations disarmed and subservient, the dictators turned out to be pretty murderous too. To prove your point, you would have to show not just that Albania and Central Africa are doing bad under the influence of weapons proliferation; you would also have to show that it's worse for them than being disarmed by the dictators. I guess you could make this case for Yugoslavia, that for Albania is harder, and that for Central Africa it's pretty hopeless. I mean, Bokassa was just evil!

But sure, a correlation between gun ownership, gun control and tyranny would be interesting to see. And if you could show that the correlation isn't what my ideology predicts, that would force me to change my mind.

Well, put it in a personal way, I agree. In my personal outlook, I prefer not to place myself at the mercy of someone bigger, stronger, and with demonstrated criminal tendencies, but that's just me. I have no desire to see you armed against your will and beliefs.

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How can you not believe au? Civilians in confrontations with military forces happen constantly throughout history, distant and very recently. Look in a history book, watch the news. This isn't like preparing for a meteor to strike us or an alien invasion, its' just preparing for the inevitable waxes and wanes that every nation on Earth has and will continue to go through. It would be naive to assume we're going to be stable enough and militarily powerful enough to be invulnerable to tyranny a 100 years from now and on.

Yeah its' speculative and I can understand that we Americans with our national invincibility complexes would think it nuts that we're ever going to decline as a free nation. I don't think I can change such a deeply rooted feeling of superiority as an anonymous thing of text on your computer screen. What is a lot more concrete though is the unconstitutionality of gun control that makes Militia's ineffective. You can think that the founding fathers were fools for including that in the bill of rights or that they would change their minds and take it out if they could see things now, but you cannot deny the meaning of it and our obligation to follow the Constitution 'less we amend the Bill of Rights.

We know that Militias are all eligible civilians made into an unprofessional fighting force who obey first and foremost the authority of the people. We know that no U.S. Military force fits that definition and ever will, because it is under the direct authority of the U.S. government. So any gun control laws that make Militias ineffective at insuring the security of America as a free nation are in fact unconstitutional. This you cannot deny, you can try to amend it or even pass legislation that is in fact unconstitutional, but as long you understand that a lot of gun control is in fact unconstitutional, I guess that is good enough for me.

And just to ram home the message of the 2nd Amendment, whether you agree that civilian defense against military force is pertinent or not, here are some quotes by the writers.

"... arms... discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ...Horrid mischief would ensue were (the law-abiding) deprived the use of them." -Thomas Paine.

"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p322.

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson, Bill for the More General diffusion of Knowledge (177 .

"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them..." -George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380.

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." -Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-B.

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined...The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.: -Patrick Henry.

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -Patrick Henry

"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..." -Richard Henry Lee writing in Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic (1787-178 .

"The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms." -Samuel Adams, debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87.

"...the people have a right to keep and bear arms." -Patrick Henry and George Mason, Elliot, Debates at 185.

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." -James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).

"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves... and include all men capable of bearing arms." -Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (178 at 169.

"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age..." -Title 10, Section 311 of the U.S. Code. (see http://www4 . law. cornel 1 . edu/uscode/)

"The people are nor to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." -Zachariah Johnson, 3 Elliot, Debates at 646.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950).

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of
self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government,.."-
Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist (#2 .

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -Tench Coxe, Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution, under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1989 at col. 1.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States... Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America." -gazette of the United States, October 14, 1789.

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe, the supreme power in America

"They that can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts(only) as they arejinjurious)to others." -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1.785) .

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." -George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 425-426.

"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent_in_the pe_ople; that they may exercise it bythemselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
-Thomas Jefferson.

"(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -James Madison.

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria.

"Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual
discretion... in private self defense..." -John Adams, A defense of the
Constitutions of the Government of the USA, 471 (178 .

As for the argument against defense against criminals. I really don't think the argument that people shouldn't have the right to defend themselves because sometimes things don't pan out so well the armed victim is insane.

If some of you want to continue to be so anti-armed civilians, that is alright, I am not going to be able to change beliefs so rooted in fear, distrust, and unfaithfulness of your fellow countrymen. But as long as you know that for your beliefs to be legislated in the form of restricting arms of civilians so as to make them ineffective in self-defense against criminals and/or military forces is in fact Unconstitutional I'm satisfied.

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I got an error and had to reload, when I did, it double posted, my apologies, please delete this post, thanks.

Sound statistics are rather hard to find in Albania, especially about such contentious issues, but widespread gun ownership in the country is widely documented in anything from anthropological studies to news reports. To be fair, the problem to a serious extent specifically dates back to the looting of the arms depots during the brief civil war in the mid-nineties. But that was on top of a longer tradition of gun culture in the country and adjoining Kosovo.


No, I don't actually. My stated point, after all, was not to claim that a disarmed society systematically leads to less tyranny; it was merely that there was good reason to be sceptical about the opposite argument, repeated several times on this thread, about gun ownership as a good means to avoid tyranny.


I am not here to change your mind!

But even to make that case, you have to account for the fact that Albania and Central Africa differ from Western Europe and America in aspects other than gun control. These other aspects make Albania and Central Africa look worse under the arrangements you prefer as well as under the arrangements I prefer. Hence, I don't see how your observation that they do look worse establishes any case for gun control, against gun control, or even for skepticism either way.


You may not be, but I am. If your position is more defendable than mine is, I want to change my opinion. I admit this doesn't happen until a while after the thread is over. I'm a bit slow intellectually, so there's always some lag. But still, that's why I'm trying to tease out reasons from you for changing my opinion.

An ongoing epidemic in the US.

Deaths Reported in Minn. School Shooting

RED LAKE, Minn. (AP) -- Several people were shot and some were killed Monday at a Minnesota high school, the FBI said. The FBI did not say how many people had been killed or wounded, and did not release any other details.

Chief deputy Tom Lyons told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that the shooting occurred about 3 p.m. at the school in Red Lake. He said that as many as 14 people were injured.

Re: Ban "Cop Killer" Assault Pistol


Because there is no reason to ban it.

In addition, they should release the AP ammo for the gun, so people are better able to use them for self defense.





Schumer is pretty dishonest.

The pistol is not an assault pistol, and it is not for killing cops.





Not quite. Some bullets made for the gun can penetrate a class IIIA vest.

The ammo available to the public, however, does not.

This should change, so people can use these guns better in self defense.





The journalist who wrote this article is pretty dishonest. It is not an assault pistol.





The lawmakers who said that are pretty dishonest.

Self defense is a perfectly legitimate use of the gun for civilians.





It can be concealed no more easily than any other full-size semi-auto handgun.





Yes. This needs to change. They need to let the general public have these bullets.





Bryan Miller hates our freedom.

Re: .


The .45 Winchester Magnum isn't the most common caliber, but it is out there. It is for semi-auto pistols.

18 gauge would be bigger than a 20, and smaller than a 16 gauge. I can't help on that one - I don't know whether the guns exist or not.