Yes, from my understanding the right to bear arms looks like it was entirely written with the intent of helping to fight off the British. It seems to me ironic but important that the same legislation has over the last century seemed to have done more to keep the American government that implemented the law in check.

You have the right to bear arm, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it.

awwww..did the big bad man on the internet hurt your feelings? How can you have possibly survived the internet for this long with such thin skin. Your "hurt" feelings are just another attempt at distraction and use of emotional manipulation.

No one cares about this argument eh? hrm, that's funny, *you* cared enough to reply to perpetuate it. Again...and again....and again. So, another failed argument. You have a decision to make. I hope you make the correct one.

Lets summarize shall we? You haven't demonstrated how more gun control makes anyone less free, you haven't defined what freedom is or how you even measure it. You keep attempting to evade these questions and tug at heart strings by using words like freedom, and coercion to attempt to manipulate the argument. You make repeated false equivalencies. And you have made no attempt to justify why the right to bear arms is exempt from requirements and other controls the same way other rights and freedoms have requirements and controls.

I answered your question yet you continue to pretend otherwise. I showed you numerous examples of requirements before freedoms and rights are granted and no one is claiming they are less free because of them. You make the claim that people are less free because of gun control but you REPEATEDLY fail to demonstrate how other than to suggest we should be an anarchy. Who cares how many people suffer, they'll learn their lesson eventually right?? right?? Sorry, we tried anarchy, didn't work..we moved on. Just because you wrapped your claim in the form of a question doesn't mean shit other than you're really to play Jeopardy with Alex Trebek. You're still making a claim that people will be less responsible with less freedom. Its your claim, you need to prove it. I've said this before and you still haven't done it.

Debate??!! Who said this was a debate? This is an internet forum. This is merely someone calling another person out on their BS I guess we can add strawman to the list of your logical fallacies now. That and you're making another attempt at distraction. There are actual rules in debate. Oh wait, you think rules take away freedom so I guess you won't be participating.

Don't cry foul, don't whine about name calling...be an adult and own up to your role in this. Suck it up. You chose to step into this and I called out your faulty logic. You made your bed, now lie in it. You claim it's pointless...yet you keep responding and asking for more. You can continue going in circles and bending and twisting your rationalizations as you go, or you can make an alternative choice. Put up or shut up.

Take your own advice. You have freedom and it appears that you have made a mistake. I am awaiting you to learn your lesson.

It's up to you amigo.

Aaaaaaand another thing...

"An assault weapons ban basically equates to "you may not own this item" the restrictions on 1st Amendment rights say "you man not use a word in this very limited list of situations".

Why? Because you say so? I don't think you even know what that means.

Gun nuts choose to believe this is all about taking their guns away so they can't fight back when the government comes knocking on their doors for... some reason. Or that it's some furtive attempt by the government to track them and get them in some national database for mysterious and spurious reasons. This belief is often revealed via terse bullet points and catchy, oft-metered phrases that don't require a whole hell of a lot of memorization or deep understanding. Just short, simplistic regurgitations of bullshit from the rightie cesspool they are drowning in.

Authoritarians? Really? An authoritarian would want ALL your guns. Are you saying any government control is authoritarian, or does the term "government control" give you the "1984" willies? Are the old ladies behind the counter at my local DMV authoritarians, or just slaves to them? How about the building inspector? Passport office? Fish and Game Department? The person who decided there needed to be a red light at an intersection where I'd never had to stop on my way to work before? IRS? Why do I need a license/permit for everything? I mean, with the exceptions of my driver's license, passport, tax returns, fishing license, trail park pass, voter registration, car registration, smog certificate, and their records on the amount of water and electricity I use, I just wish they'd respect my privacy, right?

But, this isn't a privacy issue with you guys, is it? This is about the Alex Jones/Bachman/Palin/Beck/Limbaugh (the Thousand-Yarders) fantasy world where the government is out to get you and throw your children into liberal indoctrination camps. This is about "taking your rights" from you. This is about being prepared for the coming post-zombie apocalypse you hope is right around the corner so you can justify the thousands of dollars you spent prepping. A whole industry has sprung up around prepping, and they are happy to stoke your paranoia and reinforce your belief that you really do need all this gear, not to mention the boxcar shelter buried in the back yard with a year's supply of MREs. Money in the bank.

The 2nd Amendment? It's not a holy relic. The Amendments are subject to interpretation and limitation by Congress. If Congress passes an assault weapons ban, it's not denying you your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. It's simply defining it, just as the 1st Amendment has been further defined by the legislative and judicial branches of government since it was ratified. The 1st Amendment doesn't give you the right to slander someone, yell fire in a crowded theater, or reveal state secrets, etc., just as the 2nd Amendment doesn't necessarily give you the right to arm yourself with anything you please, wherever you please.

Good troll, btw.

Welcome to Ameriguns!
Puns set aside..
You all seem to miss (If my short memory recalls correct) that the old man was a vietnam vet. So he's probably not dera.. oh wait no war can quite fuck you up, and make you paranoid. And he was old, oh.. probably not a suitable gun owner. And he used to shoot foreigners like them in his youth so perhaps it was a "flashback" moment he had and just pulled the trigger.
Blahblah, I would more like to reply to dirk.
1. Emergencies requires speed. (That inclued both ambulance & private)
2: I think the discussion to regulate torque/horsepower has come up somewhere before. But if you think long about it.. it ends up quite uneccesary (if you follow the next points) to limit this
2.1 Just see to the whole history and scale of motor vehicles. There's probably alot of engineering, problem of controlling, bad fuel consumtion (low gear vs high gears etc) that makes implementation of limits a bad idea. Cars are, much more than guns, an actual symbol of mans (modern) freedom. Freedom to travel, move, explore and work, transport and evolve. It's also a passion for so many people. Racing and amateur racing.
2.2 So no chance people would obey or accept somthing limiting their horsepowers.
2.3 Not really a big problem. Yes, some people speed and some die as a result. Atleast to be qualified for a license you HAVE to learn, pass an exam and have a license.
2.4 The US state does alot to "nanny" the traffic and highways already.
-----Reply to your second segment----
First I think comparing guns to any other item of possesion is just going down a route of stupid argumentation. I'd rather see 99% of all arguments and discussion stay on-topic instead oft taking the try-to-win-a--point-with-farfetched-comparisons turn.
But. Already said, vehicles and cars most often requires licenses, are monitored, regulated, taxed and enforced etc. Also, could I turn this steak over 180? As cars are taxed, registries are of them and police can force you to show license/revoke/stop you when drunk etc. Shouldn't all the same things they do here also apply to guns?
--Third segment--
A. Removing all guns would be great, but not possible as that just is not the world we live in (Or as for USA, the country they live in). So the question is rather: Who shall be allowed to buy them? B (to answer the actual and sole question I could read): They Kill people, alot easier than cars (and what dangerous hobbies are you thinking of?), so we are less inclined to ban fast cars. But sure, we could ban fast cars as well, which leads to
C: Invalid argument. Let's just say the actual sequence of events would be: "Yes, now we are banning guns, and you are right about fast cars as well. They are to be forbidden next month. Oh, I see some argue that if no fast cars, then why sharp knives - they kill as well. That's correct, next month they will be banned as well." And then it just rolls on.. down to forks and metal cutlery. See the fallacy?
--Final part--
I'm not going into what I believe a state should, or should not do. And how ignorant and missing the point of the point of having a state in the first place, there is to ... saying that it should either completely be THIS - or completely do THAT. It's not a do-or-don't; black-and-white way, that state, laws and regulations work (or is meant to work).
I will go on your "OR we have to accept" since that's more sensible way to have a society. Then I have
To be clear: My opinion is that I see no point in civilian ownership of HIGHLY lethal weaponry. Guns are not comparable to anything else (almost) that exists. Everything else that is as potentially lethal is already forbidden or reduced. A gun can so ridiculously easy destroy so much, so fast. I simply see no point in any-one and everyone able to own one. Yes, hunters (limited to rifles) and hobby marksmen (limited to X mm gun/rifle - controlled and licensed and trackable etc) I believe should be able to use or practice their livelyhood or passion. But as easily as it is now, no way.

---
I think alot of this problem is simply the fact that it's written clearn in your constitution - the right to bear arms. Was written very long ago, or more so: so much has gone so fast and evolved since then. It's not a necessity now; as it was then, they were sure not as effective then as now, and several other things that has evolved and made the reasons for bearing arms (lacking a huge law enforcement agencies as no#1) seem good then: just be stupid theese days.

just a little responsibility to go along with those rights. That's ALL we ask.

No one wants to take your guns. I know this video doesn't represent gun owners as a whole, but can we at least demonize the kind of behavior shown in this video or is that too much of an "infringement" of your right to bear arms too?

"Like most Americans I believe the second amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms."

Damn Obama trying to take away our guns!

Where does it say that? And what rights are being stripped? Good luck with your coup. I think you should all start immediately. Those digital camos, face paint, and Maxpeditions full of ammo and MRE's should serve you well against drones, gunships and HD satellite imaging. I'm sure Ted Nugent would be willing to bravely lead you all into battle, like he did during Vietnam.

Reminds me... got into an argument with a guy at work who thought the right to bear arms was an inalienable right. He didn't know what he was talking about either.

A deep constitutional scholar such as yourself probably already knows this:

"For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “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.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon.

Enter the modern National Rifle Association. Before the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. had been devoted mostly to non-political issues, like gun safety. But a coup d’état at the group’s annual convention in 1977 brought a group of committed political conservatives to power—as part of the leading edge of the new, more rightward-leaning Republican Party. (Jill Lepore recounted this history in a recent piece for The New Yorker.) The new group pushed for a novel interpretation of the Second Amendment, one that gave individuals, not just militias, the right to bear arms. It was an uphill struggle. At first, their views were widely scorned. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who was no liberal, mocked the individual-rights theory of the amendment as “a fraud.”"

source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html

It's called an amendment because things change. And our Supreme Court may be the highest law in the land, but that doesn't mean they are infallible.

From what I read on this (very little, admittedly) they believed the 2nd Amendment describes an individual right, and not a right to arm as a part of a militia only, because the English Bill of Rights already recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right. What I don't get is why the smartest people in the country at that time, the Founders, would even mention state militias if they meant that portion of the Amendment to be completely ignored as if it were just errant babble. Scalia seems to be a constructionist when doing so serves his ideology.

Contemporary commentary on the second amendment indicates that people at the time considered that it guaranteed an individual right to bear arms. Our Supreme Court ruled that that is the correct interpretation.

don't put words in my mouth. I never said that there is no point in being able to defend oneself. The strawman argument is that the goal is to take all weapons away. no rational person is making that argument.

the reality is that guns are romanticized in America. The reality is that this clouds our judgement.

your second statement is also putting words in my mouth. I never said the CCW went in with "blazing" guns. They were lucky that's all.They were lucky they were there, they were lucky the shooter ran, they were lucky the shooter's gun jammed. They were lucky the shooter didn't have another gun. These things are not hard to grasp.

Can a CCW make a difference...of course it *CAN* It doesn't mean you rely on it. It doesn't mean you shove more guns into peoples hands and just hope it all works out for the best.

the article could be biased/slanted whatever but it has plenty of grains of truth. The odds are in your favor if you run. The odds are in your favor if you hide. It takes a hell of a lot of persistent training to obtain that muscle memory. It takes training to fight the natural urge to freeze up or to panic.

Is it an obtainable goal? sure! What people are actually advocating is that there be increased requirements for someone to obtain and keep a weapon. Thus reducing the odds that some deranged individual is going to get one.

There is no magic way of stopping this stuff from ever happening, but the reality is that if you can reduce the number of guns in circulation, you reduce the odds of someone getting a gun and doing something harmful with it. If you increase the requirements of what it takes to obtain and keep a gain, you reduce the amount of untrained wannabe gunslingers out there and increase the odds that if someone does have a gun, they are trained to use it wisely.

Bottom line is that you have a right to bear arms, but with that right comes a responsibility. I hear a lot of people talking about rights, but precious few talking about responsibility. You might want to think about that.

let's fight muskets with muskets against a tyrannical government!
err, assault rifles with drone strikes or atomic weaponry... hmm..

Why do these defenders of the 2nd amendment fail to remember that the coordinated militia is as emphasized as the the right to bear arms?

We should all be thankful for our right to bear arms.