The anti-gun nutjobs would have us believe that the words "the people" refer to individual rights in every single part of the Constitution other than the 2nd amendment.

No. But, legally speaking, if they intended the only enforceable part of the second amendment to be the second half, they should have left the first half off and put their justifications into a separate document. None of the other amendments have introductions.

At the very least, the unique structure of the second amendment complicates an absolutist interpretation. Why have an explicit justification? Why, in that justification, further specify "well regulated" militias? The word "regulated" may have changed meanings slightly over he centuries, but I'd posit that whatever the meaning, it is there to differentiate between "a well regulated militia" and "a mob".

The reports that don't make it into the statistics go straight to you, I suppose?

Training has a lot to do with that Radar. The man who sent his armed militia up against U.S. Troops in....say...Fallujah in November of 2004 should be strung up by his yoohoo's. Even George Washington brought in a Prussian Military Officer to write one the Army's first regulations and help train his troops. It's a lot like the movie 300, without training they were just a bunch of farmers and city folk with rifles. The training, along with tactics learned from the Indians gave them what they needed to win.

The Bill of Rights was a compromise between federalists and antifederalists... those who wanted no constitution, no strong central government. The federalists believed that in the constitution, the people "surrender nothing, and retain everything" (Hamilton), rendering a bill of rights unnecessary. The antifeds didn't believe that shit for one second, and because of them, many states refused the ratify the constitution as is, instead stipulating that certain natural individual rights be enumerated - the important 9th amendment covering those natural rights not enumerated.

The feds and antifeds also disagreed about whether there should be a well regulated militia, "under the regulation and at the disposal of" the federal government. Patrick Henry et al didn't like the idea... at all (fearing the president would use his powers like a king and turn his army against the citizens)- the compromise on this issue is the second amendment.

If you're (in general) arguing that the 2nd amendment somehow limits the right of an individual to bear arms, I'd love to see some citations. Specifically, which of our founders were making that argument?

It says well-regulated militias are necessary for a free state to exist, and this is why THE PEOPLE (individuals) retain the right to keep and bear arms. This right isn't granted by government, it's a right we're born with that the Constitution protects. There is nothing "enforceable" about a militia. There is no requirement that those who keep and bear arms be members of a militia. The only enforceable part of that amendment is the part that says THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE (note: It doesn't say "the people who are members of militias" or "the militias") SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED

Even with the unreported crimes being taken into consideration, the countries with the most restrictive gun laws have more violent crimes than those with the least restrictive.

OK, for one thing, it's quite clear that what you've presented isn't a fact, but let's just say it was for the sake of you feeling good about yourself.

In that case, it means that being an Australian I'm more likely to get punched or raped than I am of getting shot. Having been a victim of both these crimes, I'd say I'm pretty happy with the outcome...still being alive and all.

Sorry but that is fucking sick. I would have rather killed the bastard.

yeah...or those people could have killed me.

It's a two way street. That's what people such as yourself seem to keep forgetting.

I'd rather have a two way street than a one way street where only the bad guys have guns. They would, like they do in every nation.

Well, there's bad guys and then there's the idiots that commit crimes on impulse. Crimes of passion. Call them whatever you like. Any crime that's premeditated can be committed with a gun regardless of where you live, but when idiots aren't allowed to walk around with them, it means they can't do as much damage (death) when they decide to act on their impulses.

How many people do you think commit murder on purpose? How many murders do you think might not have been murders if the purpetrator had not happened to be carrying a gun?

I don't know the answer, but I think it's a fair assumption to say there'd be less if people couldn't carry guns. I'd base that assumption on the difference in the number of murders per capita between the US and Australia as an example. However, if you believe Radar, then you couldn't possibly agree with that assumption. He thinks we have more murders per capita here in Australia than in the US. This clearly is not the case regardless of what his claims are.

Aliantha, you aren't being sensible.
 

Okay, now when would you know enough to take that action? The JPFO's literary contributors have some hints.

Oh. Fucking. Lovely. If I understand you rightly, your grandchildren may die helpless because your mind was so closed. Aliantha, that ain't exactly the nurturing way, and it isn't moral either. I'm not going to make your mistake -- I know too much.

The necessary preconditions for a genocide are three: 1) Hatred, on whatever pretext. Most of the time that's economic or religious. 2) Governmental power, which is why the State isn't much bulwark against genocides. Instead it's the sinews of the State that power or protect the actions of the haters. 3) Targets without weapons. The most efficient way ever found to do this is to forbid arms ownership and to make armed self-defense unlawful, as an occasional addition.

This is how they did it, in Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, in Red China, in the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. This is how they didn't get it done in Iraqi Kurdistan, still the habitation of Kurds. Where is European Jewry these days? Quite a bit of it is in ash piles.

Disgusting, is it not? Something to fight against, is it not?

So, if you don't have an anti-gun society, you don't have a society that can be wiped out by State-sponsored brutes, or brutes in charge of the State. Members of such societies would, I think, better approve of my approach than of yours.

Antigun attitudes are the handmaiden of antigun laws, which can lie in wait for decades to do their evil work, as was the case in Cambodia, where the relevant laws were enacted in the middle 1930s.*

Your battle is really not with me; it is with the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. They note that while so-called gun control laws are the most efficient means to disarm a population, laws are much more easily wiped away than either hatred or the State. Their argument has completely convinced me that they've found the better road.

*Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" Is The Key To Genocide, Simkin, Zelman and Rice; pp. 303 et seq., particularly pp. 318-9

Actually, you're forgetting it's a two-way street. Antigunners are famous for that. Consider how much raping a guy can do with a smoking, spurting hole where his testes used to be, or if he's got the immediate concern of keeping breathing with a nasty case of pneumothorax from a round or two in the approximate center of his mass. Trying to shoot him right through the zipper is also good gunfighting tactics; if you get excited and take too much front sight, you hit high, and your assailant goes down with a blue hole between his eyebrows and the back blown out of his head, as Kipling put it.

If you decide not to have armament in your hands, it all goes the other guy's way, doesn't it? Criminally assaulted and you can't stop it. That's not a life, that's a walking death. I'd rather have a life myself, and I think you should have something better than walking death yourself. I give a damn, Aliantha.

Frankly, your handling of arms would be responsible. You have the necessary and becoming reluctance to deal out death. Still, "He's dead, and I'm alive, and that's the way I wanted it." Kind of hard to object to so favorable an outcome.

Though there is no reason to actually expect that idea to carry water, in the Constitution or out of it. The Constitution is not entirely nor purely a legalistic document; it is in the nature of setting up the provisions of the social compact as well as the lineaments of the government.

I would not read the clause as defying or complicating an "absolutist" interpretation at all. It is the consensus of Constitutional scholarship that the first clause of the sentence does not modify nor restrict the second clause. The sense of "well regulated" has been proven to have changed, also -- nowadays they would be termed "well trained," that is, skillful enough to be effective against an enemy force. Further, the explicit intent of the Militia Acts passed pursuant to this Amendment was to mandate the militia being every bit as well armed as the best national infantry and cavalry of the day. From this point of view, it is disturbing how comparatively less equipped we citizens, we Unorganized Militia as defined in USC Title 10, are in recent times. The Swiss show us that civilizations do not decay from exposure to selective-fire assault rifles with 200 rounds of ready ammunition in about every basement. Are the Swiss really so very different from us?

Your last point is your best; they weren't any happier about mobs then than they are now, as the developments of Shays' and the Whiskey Rebellions serve to illustrate. Put down with a bare minimum of casualties, too; maybe an officer's horse threw a shoe and some infantryman got a blistered heel. It was about like that.