Why we have the 2nd amendment

Free men fight those who try to take their liberty away

Iraqi villagers kill 5 insurgents

By Middle East correspondent Mark Willacy

The residents of a small Iraqi village have killed five insurgents who had attacked them for voting in last weekend's national elections.

Several other insurgents were also wounded.

The insurgents raided the village of al-Mudhiryah south of Baghdad after warning its inhabitants not to vote in the election.

The villagers fought back, killing five of the insurgents and wounding eight others.

The insurgents' cars were then set alight.

Al-Mudhiryah's tribal sheikh says his people are sick of being threatened by Islamic extremists.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1295847.htm

I don't think there is possibly anything I could add to this thread.

However, I must say that this news story warms my heart.

What does that have to do with the 2nd Amendment? I wasn't aware that Iraq had officially become a US state under the protection of the Constitution...

Okay, stock, next time a group of armed American insurgents try to kill an American for voting, I fully support that American's right to blow them away and set their cars on fire.

What I mean is that this incident illustrates the foresight and wisdom of the framers of the Constitution ordering the government to guarantee citizens' rights to keep and bear arms. Contemporary people have a hard time understanding the political reasoning behind the 2nd Amendment. They tend to think it's about hunting or as a cause of crime. The real reasons are to protect peoples' lives, property, and political rights from those trying to take them away.



[Edited on Feb 03, 2005 by stockula]

And that is practical in modern north american life how?

http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm

http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-5056.html

That is the EXACT reason I have an M2 mounted in a turret on my roof. Fear of rebellion.

How did I know whose thread this was.

Last I checked, the only people that have threatened American citizens' right to vote in the last 150 years were conservative white men. Know anyone like that stock?

Hey! A 2nd Amendment discussion on the Internet! This is going to be productive for sure.

*furtively scurries away*

And it was other conservative white men who stood up against them.

This country has a long history of relying on those 'conservative white men' (as you call them) when it has needed people to defend it.

I'll just watch and wait until someone enthusiastically mentions John Lott's research on guns and crime, or mentions the crime wave that occurred in Australia after our gun laws were tightened.

Then I'll shout out loud.

In the meantime I'll just state an obvious position. I'm not against gun ownership. I'm against completely unregulated gun ownership. Not that the distinction will matter once the shouting starts.

Damn straight. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. *nods*

I'll bite. Fill me in.

On what??

That's what they want you to think, just before they strike.

On how AU crime didn't rise after most of your guns were banned.

I wonder if those villagers were subject to arrest? As far as I know, the US military was still disarming Iraqi citizens in possession of firearms. Don't you remember this quote:

“If President Bush continues to disarm Iraqi citizens and innocent insurgents we may not endorse him in the 2004 campaign. We don’t think it’s fair that President Bush has confiscated Saddam Hussein’s personal pistol and gets to keep it as a souvenir, while he denies ordinary Iraqis the right to keep guns."

That's from an NRA mailing last year. Our local Western Montana gun nut Gary Marbut has been up in arms about the disarming of Iraqi citizens. Is there a Stockulogic answer for the logic conundrum posed here? I can almost see the future now:

November 8th, 2005. American troops going door-to-door kick down the
front doors of these very men and women in the village of al-Mudhiryah and send them to Camp Bucca for posessing firearms. After some good sessions of ball-shocking and water-boarding, the smoke is cleared and these small-town saviors are released.

Meanwhile, in my present neighborhood Chicago, GOP dirty tricksters stand outside of my polling place warning black men who approach the building that their police records will be checked for warrants before they're allowed to vote. Outside, our legally owned firearms are kept in their cases while me a group of friends slap the shit out of a few scofflaws and burn their cars.

The offical policy in Iraq is that personal weapons are allowed as long as they are registered.

They aren't allowed to carry an AK around on the street every day but they are allowed to keep one in their home. In a lot of ways only slightly more liberal than our laws here.

There was a totally specious and dishonest set of claims offered up after the post-Port Arthur gun buyback by American gun advocates, about how our crime rates had skyrocketed. Such claims were made by the NRA, until our government -- our conservative, pro-US government -- demanded a retraction.

Since then the claims flew around the internet, especially this one from Australian policeman Ed Chenel, whose very existence is questionable. Note all the outrage about how commie and pinko Australia is in the comments below, that we could have allowed this to happen. (In fact, the changes to gun laws after Port Arthur were widely popular.)

I've monitored the violent crime stats since Port Arthur, and read the analyses done by professional data crunchers. There's been no violent crime wave since the buy back and I've posted links to data here in the past supporting that claim. (Snopes have it covered too.)

But without fail, if a gun/crime thread goes on long enough, some idiot American is bound to turn up and rant about how Australia suffered a crime wave after the Port Arthur law change, and probably name-check John Lott's gun research too. Since John Lott now stands as one of the most discredited empirical "scholars" in modern history, that's why I start shouting in response.

OUCH.

Sorry; you have to admit that was funny.

Meh. No funnybone today. I read these threads with apprehension, awaiting the moment some toolhead rushes in to go "AUSTRALIA! CAUTIONARY TALE! BANNED ALL GUNS! RESULT = CRIME WAVE! SEE SEE SEE? WE SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!!!11one DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO AMERICA!!!11eleven"

*sigh*

Fuckinell. I can look the damn data up myself. Why can't anyone else do the same before they start talking shit?

Like I said, no funnybone today.

If the 2nd amendment is to be of use for rebellion, then we need to add RPGs and IEDs. Otherwise it might as well be limited to muskets

Dude... you had to go back over 40 years and could only find two stories from the backwaters of Tennessee and Louisiana. You haven't answered the question.

That was off the top of my head. It's a credit to our system that things like that happen so infrequently. A lot of people, though, take it for granted. I dont.

yes, because I'm sure your kalashnikov will protect you against an F-16, if you ever have to protect yourself from the gummyment.