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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (688915)	12/21/2012 6:53:44 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573814

Hi J_F_Shepard; Thanks for answering my post! Re: "The Civil War? What government was overthrown, the Confederates tried but were defeated with millions of dead and wounded. They were still using muskets and front loading cannon, rifles just coming in." Okay so you're a little confused about weapons. As far as I know, there were no smooth bore shoulder fired weapons used in the civil war. The only smooth bore weapons I'm aware of from the Civil War era were cannon. So go ahead, show me wrong here. Here's the wiki article on the Springfield Model 1861, "the most widely used US Army weapon during the Civil War, favored for its range, accuracy and reliability: en.wikipedia.org And here's the complete wiki list of rifle models used in the civil war: Springfiled Model 1861, Pattern 1853 Enfield, Pattern 1861 Enfield Musketoon, Lorenz Rifle, M8141 Mississippi Rifle, Fayetteville Rifle, Richmond Rifle, Whitworth Rifle, Sharps Rifle, Colt revolving rifle, Burnside carbine, Tapley carbine, Smith carbine, Henry rifle, Spencer repeating rifle and the M1819 Hall rifle. Re: "The majority can't infringe on the rights of the minority...they can win in voting but the vote may have to stand before the Supremes.... Majorities tried to keep segregation and the National Guard was used to enforce the law...." The structure of the US constitution is not a protection of minorities. It's well known that the Supreme Court was completely compatible with slavery for decades. Enough said. Re: "The military will obey the orders of the President.....when they don't you will have your revolution.. Not gonna happen in the US, especially for the values you represent." The value we're talking about here is survival. It's the deepest survival rule man has. On much less fundamental values the military has, in the past, not only refused orders but fought back. Re: "With 300 million guns?" Yes, gun owners are a minority despite there being about as many guns as Americans. The reason is that the average gun owner owns a lot more than 1 gun. The total number of gun owners in the US is around 70 to 80 million so they're less than 25% of the population. Re: "Robert E. Lee was an anachronism still fighting wars like the Romans did, ie straight line formations standing up in the face of cannon fire and rifle fire from behind fortified positions. ..." I agree with you on the incompetence of the generals (both sides) in the Civil War. But my point is that the US military did not "obey orders". The US military was split by the war and in the event of any similar modern occurrence would be split again. Re: "Remember Little Rock and Ole Miss? That was the National Guard that enforced the law and there wasn't much fight from the Red states.... So dream on, goober." What's your point? The US military led the way in desegrating itself years before Little Rock and Ole Miss. But as of now, some of the most enthusiastic gun owners are military or ex military. And forcing Texas to disarm is not at all like forcing Ole Miss to desegragate. Universities are very small places. To disarm a State you have to go house to house across the state. The National Guard is simply not going to do that. Re: "Hi-tech engineers are generally liberal ..." What a laugh! From my experience, software engineers tend to be liberal but weapons engineers are always amazingly conservative. You just don't go into that career if you loath the military. Let me repeat: Gun ownership is an individual issue that has to be enforced by individual police officers. Again, there are 765,000 local police officers. The FBI has 36,000 and they're already busy chasing after terrorists and the like. There simply aren't Federal forces available to enforce gun laws (or marijuana laws). You mention Ole Miss and Little Rock but these are actions that require a couple hundred people at very small locations for limited amounts of time. That's not at all the same as collecting weapons. Anybody with a tinge of brains would no to hide weapons. And what do you think the Feds are going to do, dig up everybody's lawns with metal detectors? No, getting the weapons out of the US is something only a police state could do. It's in your dreams only. After most of 100 years the Federal government hasn't been able to control drugs even when they had the assistance of the States. The primary purpose of illegal drugs is entertainment. Why do you think they could possibly succeed in controlling guns in States that worked against them? The primary purpose of guns is survival. Eradicating that instinct is going to be a tall order. -- Carl