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Pastimes : Guns and Weapons -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fangorn who wrote (15)	4/26/1999 12:24:00 AM
From: WTSherman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149

Steven, you wrote: <As to the Second Amendment I take the Constition literally when it says "the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall NOT be infringed". The meaning of "militia" as understood by the Founders was all males from 18 to 45 (ages approximate as I am to lazy to dig it out of the bookshelf) capable of bearing arms in the particular state or county being talked about. It does no good to call out a militia that has no weapons. Check out a couple history books.< The second amendment reads as follows: 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 That's the whole thing. It's one sentence and being that its one sentence its pretty easy to see that the notion of a a "well regulated militia", the "security of a free state" and the "right...to keep and bear arms" are completely tied together. In other words, the nation must have a means of defending itself. In 1788 this meant having a militia(a large standing army wasn't seen as practical or necessary) and that a militia needed to be armed to be effective. The constitution doesn't say anything about people having a right to have any kind of weapon they wanted just because they wanted to have it. The only reference is directly related to having a means of the nation defending itself. Over two hundred years this has been twisted into unabridged right to possess any kind of weapon that people would like to possess for whatever reason they would like to possess it. Well, that's not what's in the constitution. What's really the issue is that people who think its great that there are 300 million guns floating around think that we're all better off for that fact. They also think that if 30,000 or so people die each year from guns that that is the price we pay to fend off the pod people who are going to come and get us some day. Lastly, you asked for some reference to the number of firearm fatalities, this cites 1996 data showing 35,000+ firearm deaths in the U.S. It also cites the number of deaths in Canada(106), Japan(30), Great Britain(15) and Germany(209). handguncontrol.org