From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com>
>A well-regulated militia was intended to protect the powers of the
>states against federal usurpation (which is why states were
>supposed to be their regulators); this was also the reason for the
>10th amendment (that all powers not specifically granted to the
>federal government should devolve to the states). However, the
>Civil War proved that states could not exercise a right to secede
>from the Union, and the state National Guards keep their weapons
>in armories, unlike the militias, which depended upon the
>citizen-soldiers to furnish their own.
The purpose of the Second Amendment is so that individuals acting
either alone or in conjunction with their neighbors can protect
themselves not only from criminals, but from any form of
government, federal, state, city, what have you.
>But gun control was not practiced by those governments - citizen
>disarmament was. There should be no argument that while sane and
>law-abiding citizens should have the right to keep and bear, that
>the means to commit quick and easy long-range mass murder should
>be, as much as possible, kept out of the hands of kids, criminals
>and psychos, who cannot discharge the resposibilities concomittant
>with such rights in a responsible manner. Certainly they should
>not be able to simply walk into a Wal-Mart and legally purchase
>such killing tools at a moment's notice. This is the type of gun
>control that I, and all reasonable people, support.
As I've pointed out at length a number of times, it is already
against existing federal law for kids, criminals, and psychos to
buy or be in possession of firearms.
A fact you continue to ignore.
Here in Illinois we already have:
1)Licensing
2)Waiting periods
3)Instant Background checks
4) Chicago has a 20 year complete ban on handguns (except for the
mayor and city council).
Plus a variety of other laws, all to no effect.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Adler Planetarium www.adlerplanetarium.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Mars Society, www.marssociety.org
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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