Revisiting Gun Laws in the U.S.

[John_0515]

So, Feinstein has proposed a bill to ban just about every weapon that is sold and profitable to the FFL's. Your magazine fed pistols, rifles and shotguns are all banned. Manufacture of them are banned. People owning them are required to register their weapons in a National Registry. Photographed and fingerprinted. This is the first step to confiscation, and then who knows.

Feinstein's Bill will not pass in this form. There is also rumblings of a civil war and revolution should it make it through Congress, which it has almost no chance of doing so. Feinstein will be lucky to have 60 votes in the Senate.

I'm for gun control measures, but targeting those who need to be targeted, not the law abiding America. I'm entitled to the items I have HIDDEN AND LOCKED AWAY in my home. Many Americans also are taking measures to hide their gear.

Oh, and there are Republican lawmakers bringing up treason charges against Feinstein for this Bill should it be presented.

This is going to be a fight. I believe something will get passed, but not like the above Bill that Feinstein is about to present.

[FF2®]

Originally Posted by John_0515

So, Feinstein has proposed a bill to ban just about every weapon that is sold and profitable to the FFL's. Your magazine fed pistols, rifles and shotguns are all banned. Manufacture of them are banned. People owning them are required to register their weapons in a National Registry. Photographed and fingerprinted. This is the first step to confiscation, and then who knows.

Feinstein's Bill will not pass in this form. There is also rumblings of a civil war and revolution should it make it through Congress, which it has almost no chance of doing so. Feinstein will be lucky to have 60 votes in the Senate.

I'm for gun control measures, but targeting those who need to be targeted, not the law abiding America. I'm entitled to the items I have HIDDEN AND LOCKED AWAY in my home. Many Americans also are taking measures to hide their gear.

Oh, and there are Republican lawmakers bringing up treason charges against Feinstein for this Bill should it be presented.

This is going to be a fight. I believe something will get passed, but not like the above Bill that Feinstein is about to present.

Ever heard of the start of a negotiation?

[John_0515]

Originally Posted by FF2®

Ever heard of the start of a negotiation?

And the other side will sit up straight and negotiate. But it's like I'm selling a Honda Civic, and I say "$1,000,000 dollars" from the get go.

It's going to be a while. Things aren't so cut and dry here - there's more that's going on than just gun control.

[gunnails]

Mark Steyn: Not the absurdity he thought he was exposing | gregory, gun, laws - Opinion - The Orange County Register

David Gregory intended to demonstrate on "Meet The Press" what he regards as the absurdity of America's lax gun laws. Instead, he's demonstrating the ever-greater absurdity of America's non-lax laws.
This video frame-grab image provided byMeet the Press shows host David Gregory holding what he described as a high-capacity ammunition magazine during the Dec. 23 program. Washington police said they were investigating the incident.

By MARK STEYN

A week ago on NBC's "Meet The Press," David Gregory brandished on screen a high-capacity magazine. To most media experts, a "high-capacity magazine" means an ad-stuffed double-issue of Vanity Fair with the triple-page perfume-scented pullouts. But apparently in America's gun-nut gun culture of gun-crazed gun kooks, it's something else entirely, and it was this latter kind that Mr. Gregory produced in order to taunt Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. As the poster child for America's gun-crazed gun-kook gun culture, Mr. LaPierre would probably have been more scared by the host waving around a headily perfumed Vanity Fair. But that was merely NBC's first miscalculation. It seems a high-capacity magazine is illegal in the District of Columbia, and the flagrant breach of D.C. gun laws is now under investigation by the police.

This is, declared NYU professor Jay Rosen, "the dumbest media story of 2012." Why? Because, as CNN's Howard Kurtz breezily put it, everybody knows David Gregory wasn't "planning to commit any crimes."

So what? Neither are the overwhelming majority of his fellow high-capacity-magazine-owning Americans. Yet they're expected to know, as they drive around visiting friends and family over Christmas, the various and contradictory gun laws in different jurisdictions. "Ignorantia juris non excusat" is one of the oldest concepts in civilized society: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Back when there was a modest and proportionate number of laws, that was just about do-able. But in today's America there are laws against everything, and any one of us at any time is unknowingly in breach of dozens of them. And, in this case, NBC was informed by the D.C. police that it would be illegal to show the thing on TV, and they went ahead and did it, anyway: You'll never take me alive, copper! You'll have to pry my high-capacity magazine from my cold dead fingers! When the D.C. SWAT team, the FBI and the ATF take out NBC News, and the whole building goes up in one almighty fireball, David Gregory will be the crazed loon up on the roof like Jimmy Cagney in "White Heat": "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" At last, some actual must-see TV on that lousy network.

But, even if we're denied that pleasure, the "dumbest media story of 2012" is actually rather instructive. David Gregory intended to demonstrate what he regards as the absurdity of America's lax gun laws. Instead, he's demonstrating the ever-greater absurdity of America's non-lax laws. His investigation, prosecution, and a sentence of 20-to-30 years with eligibility for parole after 10 (assuming Mothers Against High-Capacity Magazines don't object) would teach a far more useful lesson than whatever he thought he was doing by waving that clip under LaPierre's nose.

To Howard Kurtz & Co, it's "obvious" that Gregory didn't intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, "obviousness" is one of the first casualties – and "obviously" innocent citizens have their "obviously" well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, 11-year-old Schylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so "obvious" that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth-grader? Because he's got a TV show, and she hasn't?

Anything involving guns is even less amenable to "obviousness." A few years ago, Daniel Brown was detained at LAX while connecting to a Minneapolis flight because traces of gunpowder were found on his footwear. His footwear was combat boots. As the name suggests, the combat boots were returning from combat – eight months of it, in Iraq's bloody and violent al-Anbar province. Above the boots he was wearing the uniform of a staff sergeant in the USMC Reserve Military Police and was accompanied by all 26 members of his unit, also in uniform. Staff Sgt. Brown doesn't sound like an "obvious" terrorist. But the TSA put him on the no-fly list, anyway. If it's not "obvious" to the government that a serving member of the military has any legitimate reason for being around ammunition, why should it be "obvious" that a TV host has?

Three days after scofflaw Gregory committed his crime, a bail hearing was held in Massachusetts for Andrew Despres, 20, who's charged with trespassing and possession of ammunition without a firearms license. Mr. Despres was recently expelled from Fitchburg State University and was returning to campus to pick up his stuff. Hence the trespassing charge. At the time of his arrest, he was wearing a "military-style ammunition belt." Hence, the firearms charge.

His mom told WBZ that her son purchased the belt for $20 from a punk website and had worn it to class every day for two years as a "fashion statement." He had no gun with which to fire the bullets. Nevertheless, Fitchburg Police proudly displayed the $20 punk-website ammo belt as if they'd just raided the Fitchburg mafia's armory, and an obliging judge ordered Mr. Despres held on $50,000 bail. Why should there be one law for "Meet The Press" and another for "Meet Andrew Despres"? Because David Gregory throws better cocktail parties?

The argument for letting him walk rests on his membership of a protected class – the media. Notwithstanding that (per Gallup) 54 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the NRA while only 40 percent have any trust in the media, the latter regard themselves as part of the ruling class. Which makes the rest of you the ruled. Laws are for the little people – and little people need lots of little laws, ensnaring them at every turn.

This is all modern life is. Ernest Hemingway had a six-toed cat. The cat begat. (Eat your heart out, Doctor Seuss.) So descendants of his six-toed cat still live at the Hemingway home in Key West. Tourists visit the property. Thus, the Department of Agriculture is insisting that the six-toed cats are an "animal exhibit" like the tigers at the zoo, and therefore come under federal regulation requiring each to be housed in an individual compound with "elevated resting surfaces," "electric wire," and a night watchman. Should David Gregory be treated more leniently than a domestic cat just because when Obama tickles his tummy he licks the president's hand and purrs contentedly?

There are two possible resolutions: Gregory can call in a favor from some Obama consigliere who'll lean on the cops to disappear the whole thing. If he does that, he'll be contributing to the remorseless assault on a bedrock principle of free societies – equality before the law. Laws either apply to all of us or none of us. If they apply only to some, they're not laws but caprices – and all tyranny is capricious.

Or he can embrace the role in which fate has cast him. Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. Eleven-year-old girls fined for rescuing woodpeckers, serving Marines put on the no-fly list, and fifth-generation family cats being ordered into separate compounds with "electric wire" fencing can all testify to how near that point America is. But nothing "raises awareness" like a celebrity spokesman. Step forward, David Gregory! Dare the prosecutor to go for the death penalty – and let's make your ammo the non-shot heard round the world!

[Winstonbiggs]

Originally Posted by long island leprechaun

Your last paragraph is important. There's the rub. Messy liberty or organized equality by force. We've always been somewhere in the middle, but the preservation of liberty in the mix has been our saving grace. Without our core protection of rights, we would have long ago succumbed to social totalitarians of one stripe or another... all with good intentions and the absolute conviction that the world would be better if it just looked like them. We should be suspicious of any policy or law that forces active social behaviors, as opposed to protecting rights.

The biggest force for active social behavior may well be our tax code. It's also the place were many of our elected officials establish their power base. Again not even in debate during the current expiration of the previous tax code. The reality is we are not very suspicious of most of what government does we vote based on our own self interest which is often in direct conflict with protecting rights and very limited in scope.

Lets face it any modern state today that provides a social safety net is pitting social behavior directly against rights of individuals. All of our rights are connected that's the point of organizing societies. One gives up something for the greater good.

[long island leprechaun]

Originally Posted by Winstonbiggs

The biggest force for active social behavior may well be our tax code. It's also the place were many of our elected officials establish their power base. Again not even in debate during the current expiration of the previous tax code. The reality is we are not very suspicious of most of what government does we vote based on our own self interest which is often in direct conflict with protecting rights and very limited in scope.

Lets face it any modern state today that provides a social safety net is pitting social behavior directly against rights of individuals. All of our rights are connected that's the point of organizing societies. One gives up something for the greater good.

Good points. Another difficulty you are raising indirectly is the definition of "rights." There are a whole host of social behaviors inherently built into the operational exercise of our Constitution. And you're right that this is fundamental to any state. I'm not arguing that we should live in anarchic liberty like stray cats. The issue is where to place the balance in the great compromise between liberty and governance.

I think there is an additional concern - the definition of "liberty." Is it defined as the indulgence of selfish interest, or does it entail a responsibility of citizenship? Can we unhook liberty from community, or from the nature of character, from a cast of internal principles, and still call it "liberty?" If the liberty of adolescent self indulgence is what we are preserving, we have preserved an empty shell - a dish without sustenance. I'd be very doubtful that the founders, in their wisdom, were ever speaking of liberty in the sense that many today imagine it. Madison's "shining city on the hill" was not decadent Rome. Liberty was not mere selfishness, it was freedom with a purpose.

[JetPotato]

Originally Posted by long island leprechaun

I think there is an additional concern - the definition of "liberty." Is it defined as the indulgence of selfish interest, or does it entail a responsibility of citizenship? Can we unhook liberty from community, or from the nature of character, from a cast of internal principles, and still call it "liberty?" If the liberty of adolescent self indulgence is what we are preserving, we have preserved an empty shell - a dish without sustenance. I'd be very doubtful that the founders, in their wisdom, were ever speaking of liberty in the sense that many today imagine it. Madison's "shining city on the hill" was not decadent Rome. Liberty was not mere selfishness, it was freedom with a purpose.

The founders understood that one of the primary side effects of liberty of the individual is benefit to the community.

The ultra-self-indulgent who are driven to always have "more" leave behind them a wake of jobs and wages in order to get there. As long as they are not violating the rights and liberty of other individuals in their path, they are providing benefit to society by pursuing the benefit of themselves. Even if not outwardly pursuing the benefit of others, it naturally occurs. These individuals can not succeed without others, so their pursuits create opportunity for mutually beneficial contracts and arrangements.

Likewise, shifting balance away from individual liberty and towards more government, you create more inefficiency in society. Government is and always will be inherently wasteful, as there is no incentive to improve. If you were to donate $100 to a private food bank and then an additional $100 in taxes to the federal Food Stamp program, which do you think will see a larger percentage of that money actually make it to hungry people in need? Give responsible individuals the freedom to make that choice, and enough of us will give that $100 to those who need it, knowing they will actually see most of it. Sure, some won't, but that increase in efficiency will more than make up for it. And those people would have been given a choice (you know, that whole silly free will thing).

Selfishness is an inherent part of the human condition. It carries a bad connotation, but it is an essential piece of the survival instinct that advanced us as a species. Almost every act you perform is bred out of selfishness. Even the most "selfless" acts, like donating to charity, and working hard to put food on the table for your kids, are selfish acts because when all is said and done, you get gratification and a sense of purpose from them. Selfish pursuits are responsible for all the comforts you have in your home and the relationships with your loved ones.

Give a man the freedom to think and do, and there is almost no limit to what he achieve. Lock him down and watch us stagnate. This is what the founders understood.

[Warfish]

Originally Posted by JetPotato

The founders understood that one of the primary side effects of liberty of the individual is benefit to the community.

The ultra-self-indulgent who are driven to always have "more" leave behind them a wake of jobs and wages in order to get there. As long as they are not violating the rights and liberty of other individuals in their path, they are providing benefit to society by pursuing the benefit of themselves. Even if not outwardly pursuing the benefit of others, it naturally occurs. These individuals can not succeed without others, so their pursuits create opportunity for mutually beneficial contracts and arrangements.

Likewise, shifting balance away from individual liberty and towards more government, you create more inefficiency in society. Government is and always will be inherently wasteful, as there is no incentive to improve. If you were to donate $100 to a private food bank and then an additional $100 in taxes to the federal Food Stamp program, which do you think will see a larger percentage of that money actually make it to hungry people in need? Give responsible individuals the freedom to make that choice, and enough of us will give that $100 to those who need it, knowing they will actually see most of it. Sure, some won't, but that increase in efficiency will more than make up for it. And those people would have been given a choice (you know, that whole silly free will thing).

Selfishness is an inherent part of the human condition. It carries a bad connotation, but it is an essential piece of the survival instinct that advanced us as a species. Almost every act you perform is bred out of selfishness. Even the most "selfless" acts, like donating to charity, and working hard to put food on the table for your kids, are selfish acts because when all is said and done, you get gratification and a sense of purpose from them. Selfish pursuits are responsible for all the comforts you have in your home and the relationships with your loved ones.

Give a man the freedom to think and do, and there is almost no limit to what he achieve. Lock him down and watch us stagnate. This is what the founders understood.

Agreed, and well said (I'm saying that alot of late).

Any attempt to redefine liberty as some form of inherant social debt of the individual to serve or surrender to the interests of the group is offensive to me.

Liberty is not "how best can we serve the State and the Collective". Thats better described as Tyrany.

Liberty is the penultimate core human right of the individual to be as free as possible from the State interfering with, controlling or simply taking his rights and freedoms and life.

Liberty must of course be balanced with Society, no doubt. But that balence best rests with the ideal that "my rights end where yours begin". Of course, that concept too has been warped and manipulated by the supporters of collectivism to suit their interests as well, to the point where rights that do not exist were created specificly to limit the individuals freedom based on some percieved infringement on the rights of others (being offended the best example, given there is no right to not be offended).

[FF2®]

Originally Posted by John_0515

And the other side will sit up straight and negotiate. But it's like I'm selling a Honda Civic, and I say "$1,000,000 dollars" from the get go.

It's going to be a while. Things aren't so cut and dry here - there's more that's going on than just gun control.

Of course. Which is why nothing every gets done.

[JetPotato]

Originally Posted by Warfish

Agreed, and well said (I'm saying that alot of late).

It does seem as some order is being restored.

Originally Posted by Warfish

Any attempt to redefine liberty as some form of inherant social debt of the individual to serve or surrender to the interests of the group is offensive to me...

...being offended the best example, given there is no right to not be offended).

[Buster]

Originally Posted by JetPotato

Give a man the freedom to think and do, and there is almost no limit to what he achieve. Lock him down and watch us stagnate. This is what the founders understood.

Please explain how that squares up with the "Founders" allowing slavery and that only white, male landowners could vote?

[John_0515]

Originally Posted by Buster

Please explain how that squares up with the "Founders" allowing slavery and that only white, male landowners could vote?

This was something that was recognized, and allowed men (African Americans) to be freed. Good, hard working, honest men. Had they all been criminals would it have been right to free the slaves? No. Furthermore, the pending "weapon ban" punishes those who are "hard working", "honest", and "law abiding". Why punish those who are responsible? AND, create a registry where you are forced to enter into, fingerprinted and photographed, because you are an owner of firearms?

Reward people for being good, and stop punishing all of America. Where is the fight against drugs? Alcohol? No, this is another step towards social reform.

[JetPotato]

Originally Posted by Buster

Please explain how that squares up with the "Founders" allowing slavery and that only white, male landowners could vote?

As Mangini would put it, "it's a process". Educate yourself before you regurgitate liberal talking points. The Founding Fathers also understood the conflict between liberty and slavery, and many set in motion the steps to end it. Most opposed slavery, yet understood it wasn't something you could turn off overnight. And of course, with some, innate prejudice was present. You think we've remained culturally stagnant from 1780 to now? So easy to judge people from a different time and frame of reference, isn't it?

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...rs-and-Slavery

http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissue...les.asp?id=122

[Buster]

Originally Posted by John_0515

This was something that was recognized, and allowed men (African Americans) to be freed. Good, hard working, honest men. Had they all been criminals would it have been right to free the slaves? No. Furthermore, the pending "weapon ban" punishes those who are "hard working", "honest", and "law abiding". Why punish those who are responsible? AND, create a registry where you are forced to enter into, fingerprinted and photographed, because you are an owner of firearms?

Reward people for being good, and stop punishing all of America. Where is the fight against drugs? Alcohol? No, this is another step towards social reform.

Wha?

It took 80 ish years to outlaw slavery.

What "pending" weapon ban are you talking about?

Nothing is even close to being decided.

Get a grip.

There are 300+ million guns in the USA.

IMHO, there will be probably be some new tighter regulations. Folks will have to pony up for their own background check. Maybe, MAYBE new semi-auto guns firing 5.56 (.223) cartridges will no longer be sold. But that is it. IMHO.

Don’t worry, you will still have your guns.

[long island leprechaun]

Originally Posted by Warfish

Agreed, and well said (I'm saying that alot of late).

Any attempt to redefine liberty as some form of inherant social debt of the individual to serve or surrender to the interests of the group is offensive to me.

Liberty is not "how best can we serve the State and the Collective". Thats better described as Tyrany.

Liberty is the penultimate core human right of the individual to be as free as possible from the State interfering with, controlling or simply taking his rights and freedoms and life.

Liberty must of course be balanced with Society, no doubt. But that balence best rests with the ideal that "my rights end where yours begin". Of course, that concept too has been warped and manipulated by the supporters of collectivism to suit their interests as well, to the point where rights that do not exist were created specificly to limit the individuals freedom based on some percieved infringement on the rights of others (being offended the best example, given there is no right to not be offended).

Here's where we always part ways. If that were the ideals of the founders, they would not have drafted the Constitution at all and we would have something even less than the miserable Articles of Confederation. There are many many elements in our Constitution that bind us to a collective purpose, including self-defense of our nation, the general welfare, a judicial system, requirements to participate in citizenship as well as to serve in the branches of government, etc. Our nation was not founded solely on a principle of negative liberty (freedom from state intrusion) but on positive liberty that accounts for our actions in the community/state. Nor was it created on a model of Friedman economic priniciples, where selfishness somehow transmutes into social good. The founders rejected and dispised the model of greed that had corrupted the states during the Articles of Confederation and identified a need for something more orderly and regulated, as well as something that actually served the nation as a nation. Now I would be the first to acknowledge that we've come a long way from that model to the current super-state in which the federal vastly outweighs the states and the states poorly represent their citizens and in which corporations and media are heavyweight players of the fifth and sixth estates. Whether that balance can shift remains to be seen. Technology is creating new counterweights... the internet being one of them.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by JetPotato

As Mangini would put it, "it's a process". Educate yourself before you regurgitate liberal talking points. The Founding Fathers also understood the conflict between liberty and slavery, and many set in motion the steps to end it. Most opposed slavery, yet understood it wasn't something you could turn off overnight. And of course, with some, innate prejudice was present. You think we've remained culturally stagnant from 1780 to now? So easy to judge people from a different time and frame of reference, isn't it?

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...rs-and-Slavery

http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissue...les.asp?id=122

Your original post set the founding fathers as the guys who had it right and that we should always emulate.

But now you take a step back.

Typical.

also,

The Founding Fathers also understood the conflict between liberty and slavery, and many set in motion the steps to end it

The Founding Fathers planned on our Civil War as a solution to Slavery?

500,000+ deaths was the planned solution. Good planning founding fathers!

If we only had more plans like that!

[long island leprechaun]

Originally Posted by John_0515

This was something that was recognized, and allowed men (African Americans) to be freed. Good, hard working, honest men. Had they all been criminals would it have been right to free the slaves? No. Furthermore, the pending "weapon ban" punishes those who are "hard working", "honest", and "law abiding". Why punish those who are responsible? AND, create a registry where you are forced to enter into, fingerprinted and photographed, because you are an owner of firearms?

Reward people for being good, and stop punishing all of America. Where is the fight against drugs? Alcohol? No, this is another step towards social reform.

Why did the founders put into the Second Amendment that odd word "well-regulated? I would argue that they understood that arms were both a necessity and a danger if not properly managed. The right to keep a weapon in no way means that Joe citizen should be unencumbered by safeguards and rules for "keeping" arms. In fact, beyond the collective organization of militias through a well regulated mechanism through the community/state, it makes sense to me that the average individual should be severely restricted in the availability and use of arms for personal use. The right to have arms should not be infringed, but the nature of the arms kept and their regulation is frankly essential. The founders were pretty clear that they were not recommending individual vigilantes to protect the security of the free state. The couple of times that happened in the early years of the Republic, the fools were simply crushed at Washington's explicit instruction. He had no quarter for self-styled insurrectionists claiming oppression by the federal government.

[JetPotato]

Originally Posted by Buster

Your original post set the founding fathers as the guys who had it right and that we should always emulate.

But now you take a step back.

Typical.

Step back? These guys put in place a system that is centered around government for the people, not vice versa, with an understanding that as times and people change, so will its laws. That's why they gave you a Constitution that limits the power of the Federal Government and an ability to Amend it. No one is taking a step back from that but the people who want to do what they want, their way, NOW, even if it means reverting back to what we once had to fight to get away from.

Originally Posted by Buster

also,



The Founding Fathers planned on our Civil War as a solution to Slavery?

500,000+ deaths was the planned solution. Good planning founding fathers!

If we only had more plans like that!

Excellent straw man. Or is this just your colossally poor grasp of American History?

[long island leprechaun]

Originally Posted by Buster

Your original post set the founding fathers as the guys who had it right and that we should always emulate.

But now you take a step back.

Typical.

also,



The Founding Fathers planned on our Civil War as a solution to Slavery?

500,000+ deaths was the planned solution. Good planning founding fathers!

If we only had more plans like that!

Come on now, be fair. The institution of slavery was pretty well embedded in our culture from the beginning. The founders did indeed struggle over how to address slavery, with obvious supporters among the South as well as Southerners who found the institution reprehensible. They wanted to form a government that worked and they had to have the participation of the Southern states to do it. As Jefferson stated, they had the wolf by the ears and it was going to be very difficult to find a way to end the institution of slavery without some conflict. The importation of slaves was curtailed almost immediately. And then the long, angry process of trench warfare commenced. Slavery was a horrific stain on our nation, even at the beginning of its founding, as many European countries had moved on and condemned it. But if you had been a founder, what would you have done? How would you have thought it best to handle this issue? Not one of our great minds, including Lincoln, could come up with simple, even workable solutions.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by JetPotato

These guys put in place a system that is centered around government for the people, not vice versa, with an understanding that as times and people change, so will its laws. That's why they gave you a Constitution that limits the power of the Federal Government and an ability to Amend it. No one is taking a step back from that but the people who want to do what they want, their way, NOW, even if it means reverting back to what we once had to fight to get away from.

For the people.. cept for slaves, non-males and non-land owners.

But for the "People".

And what if the "people" wish to change the rules governing gun ownership (which i personally see little evidence of)?

My original post was just making fun of (you) and everyone else who always sees the "founding Fathers" in lock-step agreement with their ideas and political view.

It cracks me up.