Sorry, you seem to have bought the right wing antifa lie. Where did you get this explanation?

Most people caught shooting or committing arson were dressed as antifa but were in fact right wingers, largely boogaloos boys, who's plan is to commit crimes and blame antifa and BLM in hopes of sparking a civil (and race) war. Nearly 100% of shootings and fully 100% of attempted bombings fit that model.

Because someone wears a black facemask is no indication they support antifa. If they're armed, it's a near guarantee they are anti antifa.

1) the kid came from out of state with armed friends intent on confronting unarmed protesters with guns, you don't do this to protect a random gas station, you do this in hopes of shooting someone.
2) he sure didn't look like he had been sprayed as he ran from the murder he just committed, hands were on his weapon or above his head, not covering his face like a sprayed person.
3) white pedophile? Explain please....how would you know...because he had a 17 year old girlfriend?
4) white guy in a crowd of black men shouting "nigger"?! Doesn't sound right, and I haven't heard it in any videos, but are you saying that excuses the militia boy shooting him and others?
5) gunshot from Antifa?!? Now I know you're duped by right wing media. Antifa is pretty hard to identify unless you're dishonest and just call any black mask wearing person antifa. Also, what evidence is there of this single gunshot from the BLM crowd?
6) he was NOT running to police lines, he was running past them. He didn't stop at them and say "btw, I just shot at least 3 people and maybe more when I just shot into the crowd.", he just walked on by, still carrying the smoking gun.
7) again, where are you getting this info?

8 ) in short, a cowardly murderer who crossed state lines heavily armed who shouldn't have been there but went looking for trouble, started a fight, murdered another man, ran away armed pointing his gun at many uninvolved bystanders, shot and killed those trying to stop an armed murderer (should have emptied that glok if it existed) so he shot one, murdered another and fled the scene, the city, and the state without ever reporting that he had shot at least three people and killed at least two.

I hope he gets sentenced to life in prison, his dad too if they went together, he went heavily armed to a protest hoping to shoot some liberals, he did, now he wants to use the fact that some citizens tried to disarm and citizens arrest him after he shot someone in the head as an excuse for both murders and the other shootings?! And you buy it?!?

I'm so extremely disappointed you would buy such obvious self serving slant where the out of state multiple murderer who travelled armed looking for conflict is the victim.
That's totally asinine. I have much higher expectations for you.

Again, references for these claims please.

Turkey and other countries including the USA see the PKK (Kurdish workers party) as a terrorist group after they tried to form their own Kurdish state. Turkey thinks all Kurds are PKK or have ties to PKK.

The US has been adamant that not all Kurds are linked to the PKK. Specifically the YPG and YPJ which are male and female militia groups respectively. YPG and YPJ are predominantly Kurdish but have lots of ex US and UK military, among others, volunteering with them because of their fight against ISIS and work to bring order to and stabilize parts of Iraq and Syria.

There are many good docos about the YPG and a few about the YPJ.

@harlequinn:

Putting the legal concerns (It is in the constitution, so we have to heed it) aside, what do you think about the Second Amendment?

Was it meant to enable the people to
a) defend against foreign incursion (in lieu of a standing army)?
b) defend against an oppressive government (as a militia)?
c) assume police duties?
d) defend themselves (in absence of police)?
e) none of the above? (Please state what you think its intended meaning was.)

For your selected reason/s given above, does it/do they still apply today?

What do you think is the reason for the staggering amount of gun violence/deaths in the USA when compared with other countries?

Is the reason for the Second Amendment worth the amount of gun violence in the USA?


Full disclosure:
I am genuinely interested in your answers since you seem to have given this some thought (an impression I frankly do not have about bobknight33) .
I am not from the USA and against any form of private gun ownership except under some very rare circumstances.

"The modern interpretation".

Which brings it in line with the original intention of the document. I.e. the people are the militia and they have a right to bear arms.

"I can't imagine that Franklin would have expected that children should go to elementary school in fear of being murdered by their classmates either."

I'm glad you can't imagine it, because statistically it's occurrence is almost zero. They should fear this no more than fearing being eaten by a shark, struck by lighting, or killed in a plane crash.

"with a few lobby organizations like the NRA"
Why are you including the NRA? At the last presidential election they didn't even make the top 50 contributors.

https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/318177-lobbyings-top-50-whos-spending-big

Does this change your assessment?

The word "militia" comes up time and time again in those founding documents. That the citizens should have access to arms as party of "a well regulated militia."

The modern interpretation of the second amendment has done away with the idea that a citizen ought to be a part of an organized militia to bear arms.

The founders of the US said other things too:

“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”

I imagine that Franklin thought the republic would need defending against other monarchies, not from large corporations who, after centuries of wealth concentration would, with a few lobby organizations like the NRA, become the de-facto unelected rulers of the land.

I can't imagine that Franklin would have expected that children should go to elementary school in fear of being murdered by their classmates either.

Who the fuck cares? ANYTHING IS ACCEPTABLE AS LONG AS WE CAN KEEP OUR GUNS!!! EVERYONE KNOWS A GOOD GUY WITH A GUN IS THE ONLY THING KEEPING YOU SAFE EVERYONE I KNOW KNOWS IT GUNS GUNS GUNS GUNS GUNS

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

regulated
regulated
regulation
regulation

regulation
[ reg-yuh-ley-shuhn ]

1) a law, rule, or other order prescribed by authority, especially to regulate conduct.
2) the act of regulating or the state of being regulated.

Maybe not, but there are plenty of angry, moronic, gullible 30 year olds in militias who hear this as a "self defense" defense to attempted murder. They really don't need much encouragement....just ask the Bundies supporters or Charlottesville skinheads.

So, you support shooting all the Bundies and the militia men that stood with them in the back....to death....right? Even if they're running away unarmed?
That wouldn't have been Obama and his Jack booted thugs murdering citizens in your mind, it would be an armed gang of criminal thugs getting what they deserve?

I don't believe that for one picosecond.....they're white.

You're trolling particularly hard recently, personal issues or just upset that Trump is failing on so many levels causing you to lash out?

Taking you seriously for a moment, I've never understood the armed militia/tyrannical government idea. Personally, I'd trust a soldier long before I'd trust a corporation or a judge, and never a lawyer. It's not the army people need to fear, they are us, it's the wealthy whose outlooks are alien.

Former friends of mine had a remarkable business surge that took them from lower middle class WELL into the 1%. The diminished empathy that came along with it is why they're former friends, not current ones. It was gross how their attitudes and beliefs changed.

You want to defend yourself from bad government with an AR-15? How did that work out for the people in Waco? An AR-15 isn't going to defend you from the government. A Michigan militia isn't going to cut it either. The only thing that will defend you from the government is a 2+ Star General who doesn't like what the government is doing and gets his troops to agree.
For dealing with Robbers/Mice - A normal cat, is much better suited in that case. An AR isn't going to provide you any more protection, in fact it will likely provide less. There are 2 schools of thought for home protection - A big bang to scare/kill a robber or accurate and a little less deadly. I'd go for less deadly as then I don't have to worry so much about rounds flying through walls and hitting other people. A 12 gauge with bird shot should be perfect for that, loud as hell, but wont blast through the drywall and hit a kid. Plus it will get a nice spread, so I'm likely to hit whoever was dumb enough to come into my house. An AR-15 will go right though the walls - of my house and maybe the one next door.
So I don't need a bad cat to defend myself. A good cat does it well enough and it isn't worth having the bad cats on the streets keeping me up all night.

@eric3579 -- I agree that that is a sticking point. I have trouble buying it because there are already limitations on the "right to bear arms".

The 2nd amendment:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


Certainly, one could argue that licensing / registration of firearms would count as infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. However, "arms" is rather unspecific. Merriam Webster defines it as "a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially : firearm".

The government has already decided that limiting the access to some "arms" is fine, and doesn't infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. For example, in many states it is "legal" to own a fully automatic, military use machine gun. BUT:
1) It had to be manufactured before 1986
2) Said machine gun has to be registered in a national database
3) The buyer has to pass a background check

So there's 3 things already infringing on your constitutional right to bear a specific kind of "arm". A firearm -- not a missile, grenade, or bomb or something "obviously" ridiculous. And actually, even "destructive devices" like grenades are technically not illegal to own, but they require registration, licenses, etc. that the ATF can grant or refuse at their discretion. And their discretion generally leads them to NOT allow civilians to exercise their right to bear that particular sort of "arm".

If those limitations / exceptions aren't an unconstitutional infringement on the right to bear arms, certainly reasonable expansion of the same sort of limitations might also be OK.

I empathize with pro-gun people's fear of "slippery slope" escalating restrictions; the potential to swing too far in the other direction. But at some point you gotta see the writing on the wall. To me, it seems like it would be better for NRA-types to be reasonable and proactive so that they can be part of the conversation about where and how the lines are drawn. In other words, accepting some reasonable "common sense" limitations (like firearm licensing inspired by driver's licensing) seems like a good way to keep any adjustments / de-facto exceptions to the 2nd amendment reasonable (like the laws about machine guns). Otherwise, you're going all-in. With a not particularly good hand. And that's when you can lose everything (ie., 2nd amendment removal rather than limited in sane ways that let responsible people still keep firearms).

But if the police can have assault weapons and citizens can't, you remove even the appearance that armed citizens can stand against authority...even local authority. That might be a good idea, but is a really hard sell in America.

True, the idea that even a well armed militia could stand against the smallest of federal law enforcement groups should have died with Koresh. They had more powerful guns than you can get today, and more than they could use. Didn't help a whit in the end.

In 1934 the Thompson submachine gun was banned partly because of it's image and connection to Gansters and gangster lifestyle.
In the same way the AR-15 has an image and connection to a different lifestyle: that of the special ops badass chuck norris/arnold/navy seal killing machine. then they join a militia, all sporting these military weapons. there's a fuckin LOOK to it. a feel, a code, an expectation there. It's socialized into us.

That image is big fuckin factor in just how attractive that particular weapon is to a delusional teenager.

One way to resolve the issue might be to redirect some of the immense intelligence focus from Islamic terrorism to domestic terrorism.

That is what this is, domestic terrorism. It may not always have a manifesto behind it, but that is not relevant. There were numerous people who said this person was probably a school shooter in the making. He was doing things with white power groups and militias. Why didn't our mass spying that we do catch that? Because it wasn't an Islamic group.

We can ban assault rifles or put limits on them, we can make mandatory psych evals required for gun purchases, or we could do any number of things. While we look into what we can legislate, we should also be looking into how we can use resources we have in place to STOP JUST THIS SORT OF THING.

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a hardcore supporter of the right to bear arms. I am not an NRA member, because they aren't really concerned about the right to bear arms, just that they keep getting money from gun manufacturers. I still think we can keep AR type rifles, but we should have a national mandate on clip size, number of clips allowed, and we should have a mandatory psych eval required if you plan on purchasing anything other than a hunting rifle. Yes, that includes handguns.