Stefanie wrote:

flynn23 wrote:
Although I do have serious reservations about the TYPES of weapons owned. You can collect WW2 rifles or even historic machine guns, but there's no reason why someone should have an operational M2 or an AK47, both of which I know of several people who possess.

Is that for you to decide? Let's say you live alone in a rural area, with no immediate neighbors, and four or five armed thugs decide to invade your home. You might be better served by an H&K USP, an StG44, a SIG 510-4, etc. than a six shot revolver in .38 Special. Each of us should be able to decide which weapons are appropriate for our specific circumstances. I live in an apartment, so semi-automatic pistols in .45ACP and short-barreled 12 gauge shotguns make more sense for me, because they're unlikely to penetrate walls, but very likely to stop a criminal in his tracks. While I do own plenty of other military-style and hunting firearms, they wouldn't be good first choices for defense of my apartment, or for defending myself on the street. Were I to buy a house in an isolated area, I might have different requirements, which might include fully automatic fire.

Not that our discussion of self-defense is irrelevant, but people seem to forget that personal self-defense isn't the primary reason that we need the Second Amendment. We have both the First and Second Amendments to ensure that We The People remain in charge of this nation, by remaining in charge of our government. If we, as individual citizens, lose the right to free speech and the right to arm ourselves, all other rights become illusions, and we lose everything.

First let's put aside the idea that the citizens of this country control anything for a second.

Using your logic, when does it end? If I'm really rural and have many material possessions that someone may try to steal, why not get high powered explosives? Why not armor or artillery? Hell, why not small scale nukes? If there's no limit, then there's no limit, and that's the problem I have with this idea. People will always want to own the biggest, baddest, most powerful weapon that can be had (legal or not) because they can. I don't see that fitting into the idea that they just getting the right tool for the job to protect themselves. There's many ways to secure yourself from being raided by a group of thugs and few of them even require a weapon.

I do agree that the spirit of the 2nd Amendment was to ensure that the government never got too cocky or too powerful to pull one over on its citizens without reprisal. And to this end, I could even see the need to have serious fire power that might match up with the State's arsenal. It wasn't about protection or providing then, because that was a GIVEN in the 1700's. But if you think that's a check and balance that hasn't already been circumvented for oh, the last 150 years, then I want what you're smoking.

The US has if not the highest, certainly close to the highest, personal ownership of weapons in the world. That doesn't seem to stop the abuse of the people by the folks "voted" as our representatives.

RE: Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com