What is the 2nd Amendment really for?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

If you think the founding fathers wanted more gun control then your crazy.

There are two problems with this argument. The first is that you are attempting to put words in the mouths of men who lived hundreds of years ago, by assuming words and deeds spoken and acted in the eighteenth century translate directly to a particular position in a partisan debate occurring two centuries after their deaths. We don't know how the Founding Fathers would have felt about gun control, or any article of public policy from the 21st Century, because they are dead and ergo unable to tell us. I know it's tempting to assume otherwise, especially if you have only a casual understanding of history, but context does indeed matter, and support for the Minute Men of 1775 is exactly that — a response to a specific historical event that does not tell us anything about how George Washington's 285-year-old corpse would feel about universal background checks. The second problem, of course, is that the Founding Fathers were for a lot of things — like slavery and male-only voting — that we have since realized are bad ideas and removed from our Constitution.

Also, *you're. #ApostropheLivesMatter

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I don’t know if you know this but even the founding fathers who owned slaves didn’t believe in slavery.

Thomas Jefferson had in the Declaration of Independence the freeing of all slaves but ben Franklin told him no because NC SC and GA would never sign on.

This is really tangental to the subject at hand; but yes, I am aware of this. Technically, the account you give is not, strictly speaking, accurate (Jefferson was trying to abolish the slave trade, not slavery itself); but this is still an important point that ought to be remembered in any discussion of slavery's role in American history... which this is not.

Okay if the founding fathers believed in gun control then why didn’t they ban some of the most powerful guns then?

What? That is not my point at all. Please read my post again.

Times were different then

Exactly! And it is for precisely this reason that we should not project 21st Century political views onto deceased historical figures based on something they said or did 200 years ago: "times were different then," and to pretend as if we know where the Founders would stand on gun control, or immigration, or gay marriage had they lived to see the present day is intellectually unsound.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Most gun owners know how to use a gun

Excellent! Then it shouldn't be a problem for them to demonstrate that proficiency to receive a license.

even if some retard shoots them self in the foot then that’s there problem not the government.

You know, if you're going to use a word like "retard" to describe the victims of accidental firearm fatalities, you should really check to see if you've used the correct spelling of "there/their/they're" first. In any case, people being killed by in accidents caused by incompetent gun owners clearly is a community concern.


I'm actually curious as to why someone would oppose introducing a proficiency test for new gun owners. I can understand why someone of a conservative persuasion might balk at the idea of a national gun registry, an added tax on bullets, or things of that nature; but a proficiency test strikes me as something that ought to be uncontroversial, given that we're talking about something that is literally designed to kill people (unlike, say, cars). Is the reasoning that the 2nd Amendment is a right and a proficiency test is therefore akin to literacy tests for voting, or is there a practical concern?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Cough Chicago cough

You really ought to do something about that cough before you choke from trying to draw conclusions from isolated situations rather than overall statistics.  The very fact that Chicago stands out from other communities with similar gun regulations ought to be a clear clue that it ain't the gun laws there that have led to the spike in crime there.

All I’m saying is Chicago has the worst gun laws anywhere and they have more shootings then anywhere in America.

Also it’s not just Chicago there is New York,Connecticut,Massachusetts,rhode island. They have tough gun laws and they still have mass shootings but Vermont which is super pro gun never has any shootings.

Mass Shootings?  Those amount to but a tiny fraction of the deaths from guns.  If that's where your focus is, then it is sadly misplaced if your goal to reduce gun deaths.

Murders? Those amount to but a small fraction of the deaths from knives(most come from accidents). If that’s where your focus is, then it is sadly misplaced if your goal is to reduce knife deaths.

Well, if this statement were true, and if your goal really we're to reduce death-by-knifing, then this would be a reasonable sentiment, wouldn't it?

Of course, comparing firearms to knives is perhaps the most blatant example of apples-to-oranges reasoning, but you know.