They mostly aren't militias either. They're just people with guns standing behind the word.
Makes perfect sense without a standing army. Makes sense that behind that was the pragmatic use of weapons for everything from livelihood to food.
On the utility of guns and hypotheticals
It takes a lot of imagination to entertain a hypothetical where a force beats our combined armed and nuclear forces and is upset by a lot of Bubba's with guns they bought at the Walmart. And it only takes a news report to see what the present holds and trends are regarding mass shootings and gun violence.
No, they don't disagree with me. I'm all for arming them for their duty. An army is armed to be an aggressive force with a very different mission, which is why they have tanks, planes, missiles, etc. They aren't assembled to provide home security.
It would be irresponsible to arm the police with nuclear weapons. But neither of those has anything to do with what I'm speaking to, which is dramatically impacting mass shooting and gun violence in this country by following any number of more successful models in other Western industrial democracies.
Just saying that doesn't make it so. We've made certain speech illegal. That's limiting what you are allowed to say without serious consequence, some of it civil and some criminal, depending. The same is true for any right and the present one under consideration warrants the same serious examination and not an elevation above that consideration for no justifiable, rational accounting.
I disagree and suggest the facts speak contrary to your inclination. Limit access and you limit opportunity.
When Australia took those guns out of circulation they went from 13 mass shootings in 18 years to 0 in over 20 years. People didn't coincidentally, suddenly get better and sustain that improvement over time. What changed was that those people lacked the easy opportunity to do sudden, large scale violence with an easily concealed and transported weapon, one requiring little expertise and a nominal expense.
So you believe that the nearly 60 murdered and 500 wounded in Las Vegas would have met the same fate another way?
I'm a gun owner, not hater. I've been clear on my position in support of the 2nd from the start, as well as my own participation in that right. Now back to the problem in your attempt to parallel. Nuclear weapons are necessary for Russia because they can be overwhelmed in a conventional war by China. There's no real parallel here. I suppose if criminals outnumbered the lawful citizenry and were all carrying semi automatic and automatic weapons it would be different, though to be a meaningful parallel the criminals would have to outnumber the rest of us with a close to 7 to 1 advantage instead of being outnumbered by 2 to 1 if we include all criminals of any sort, instead of the violent sort, in which case our advantage grows.
Which if true means 60% don't, though given some of what they support it's no wonder. And the last poll I saw had working on 10% of Republicans agreeing with the repeal. But in the public at large only 21% would have it, so it's not a movement that has enough muscle to matter on the point.
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If you can say or write it (and a bit more than this) it is absolutely speech. The distinction is over protection, which goes back to that line we draw that restricts any semblance of an unrestrained right. With religion, you can earnestly believe that as an expression of your faith you need to cut the heart out of a willing participant, but it's not going to work out.
You just changed your focus in mid stream there. You compared ownership, not use, with use, not possession. That's a neat trick, but fails for it. Writing a known falsehood would be parallel with using a firearm to rob someone. Both acts would constitute proscribed exercise.