Just about everyone is right on this thread! Thom, every cause needs a champion and nobody can be a champion of EVERY cause.

Thom is correct when he points out that the current administration is taking this country backwards in terms of personal freedoms. We are so damn busy telling the rest of the world how to live we aren't keeping things straight at home.

HR256 is EXACTLY the kind of legislation we need. Teenagers are dumbasses by nature and generally should NOT have access to firearms unsupervised. Look what they do with beer and automobiles. Parents that fail to secure their firearms ARE responsible as well. Honestly, if your kid goes to school in a trenchcoat and spends all his free time playing ultra violent video games i suggest you remove the firearms from your house. It's called parenting and is no different than when a responsible father sells his 911 'cause he just knows little johnny can't be trusted around it.

Thanks to el Busho my freedom to bear arms has never been more important. Throngs of illegals freely crossing the border is bad news for all of us. These guys are missing the glue that keeps us all in line (more or less) which is accountability. As free citizens forced to co-exist with people who are exempt from the law and have NOTHING to lose we are forced to be the front line of defense in our own homes.

Erik
Lifetime NRA member
Wilson Combat owner
Beretta owner (duh)
Benelli owner
and most importantly.....father

Where is the authorization for the proposal you've supported in the US Constitutioin?

The Bill of Rights applies to the Federal Government, any time and any place that government is and on any land it controls, period. The Constitution gives no rights at all, to anyone. No one is a terrorist under the law unless they've been convicted of being a terrorist, and the US government has no lawful authority to pursue those suspected of being terrorists unless those have perpetrated their terrorist acts against Americans in America. That's the real law.

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I keep hearing about the Republicans taking Rightts away, yet who has lost any Rightts, criminals, terrorist, please tell us someone you know who has lost Rightts and what Rightts they have lost, BTW, getting special treatment for taking it up the ass doesn't count. The bleeding heart liberals have been destroying this country from within, they have done tons of damage since the they started smoking in the 60s. Guns are a fundamental Right, tapping the phone lines of an terrorist isn't.

Both parties are taking away RIGHTS PROTECTIONS as fast as they can. That's why I'd love to see them all taken off this planet and sent somewhere else. Let them run each others lives, and leave the rest of us alone.

Cool_Chick,

Thank you for making my case. Prior gun confiscation laws have already depleted the ability of citizens to defend themselves against a government run-a-muck. Bans on assault rifles and fully automatic weapons have seen to that.

I never said that a militia of Constitution-defending citizens would win a fight against the police state and military. However, at least for now, politicians still have to curry some favor with the electorate. Political support might fade in the aftermath of another Waco or Ruby Ridge.

Had the Branch Davidians not been armed the whole event would have been over in 5 minutes and we would not have seen what a bunch of thugs Janet Reno had at her disposal. You wouldn't even have heard about those people being rounded up and put in jail, because the complicit media would not have covered it.

I digress. My disagreement with Thom's statement is that many of us are outraged by the erosion of other freedoms and the continued expansion of the Federal Government. However, attacks on something as fundamental as the 2nd amendment do tend to rise to the top a little faster than my outrage over someone listening to an international call to Al Qaeda.

In my state I can buy many of the weapons the government has, all I need is money. No one really knows how many automatic weapons there are in America, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot more than what shows up on the BATFAE's NFA registry.

Pat,

Doesn't congress have the authorization to pass laws? If enacted, it would be up to the courts to decide if that law restricts the right to bear arms in violation of the Constitution.

Granted, given activist courts, such decisions may be difficult to obtain, no matter how stupid the law.

Personally, the pain and suffering that would result from any child gaining unauthorized access to a gun in my home and causing death or serious injury would outweigh any fines or possible jail term. I am more than adequately inclined to safely store firearms in my house as a result. I am also adequately inclined to teach my children to not handle guns without supervision under any circumstances.

Of course, education has no place in this proposed law, as the government prefers a bunch of unarmed sheep to control.

Lothar - a group of armed citizens *has* defeated a police state, and right here in America no less, and just as recently as 1946. http://www.jpfo.org/athens.htm

Each bill is supposed to quote the authorization for it near the top of the bill. Likely they'll use "interstate commerce" as their rationale.

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Granted, given activist courts, such decisions may be difficult to obtain, no matter how stupid the law.

The Supreme Court has refused to grant Cert on a gun control law case since 1938.

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Personally, the pain and suffering that would result from any child gaining unauthorized access to a gun in my home and causing death or serious injury would outweigh any fines or possible jail term. I am more than adequately inclined to safely store firearms in my house as a result. I am also adequately inclined to teach my children to not handle guns without supervision under any circumstances. Of course, education has no place in this proposed law, as the government prefers a bunch of unarmed sheep to control.

The point is that the federal government has no Constitutional authority to pass such legislation, and neither do the states. You can't legislate away stupidity.

lothar is spot on. only the craziest bdu wearing soldier of fortune types actually believe they could physically thwart a gov't assualt.

to date the tyrants in the white house (i'll bet that phrase got me on a watch list somewhere!) have been very careful to feed their needs in a manner that appears very non-threatening to the general public. kinda like grabbing cash out of a register when nobody is looking vs. jumping up on the table and yelling 'nobody effing move' a-la pulp fiction.

if we ever had a 'jump on the table' type that actually admitted to having dictatorial leanings we would be totally screwed (assuming the military followed orders).

While that is good to know, it could take years for a case to reach the Supreme Court. In the meantime, enforcement of gun control measures would obstruct people's 2nd Amendment rights.

Also, there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will continue to uphold the 2nd Amendment. They had no problem with Eminent Domain for transfer of property to private entities in Kelo vs. New London.

If the court gets loaded with a bunch of Ruth Bader Ginsbergs you can flush all of your Constitutional rights down the toilet.

I'm not sure that it true... Look at what's going on In Iraq... Looks to me like the USA government with all weapons at its disposal is having a very hard time suppressing a group of lightly armed civilians.. Something to think about.

The ROE for our soldiers are also highly restrictrictive--ironically to make our presence more palatable to the anti-war segments both here and internationally. I highly doubt any such restrictive ROE would be placed on a civil war.

The Kelo decision was correct in my opinion; in that the Supreme Court said that was a state power matter, and there was no authorization in the Constitution for the fed to interfere. That position strengthened the powers of the states, for good or bad, and that's seldom a bad idea. Most of the southern states have passed eminent domain reform since then. Last year, the city Government of Greenville got a real comeupance in a jury trial over eminent domain. The city had taken all the buildings in a certain area for redevelopment and paid the so-called "fair market value" for the properties, not what the owners were asking. The jury, prohibited from giving the property back because all owners were willing to sell, awarded the owners their asking price AND all legal fees. That forced the city government to rethink the merits of eminent domain for the foreseeable future.

Excuse me? "Lightly armed civilians??" Not sure which news you are watching (course its all biased) but they are finding arms of all sorts over there.

Each male occupant in a house is allowed to have one AK-47 full rock and roll automatic rifle in Iraq. Every house and every male in the country is allowed one auto weapon.

The soldiers are finding cache's of auto weapons in some houses, along with RPG's, 12.7 (aka .50 cal) heavy machine guns, rockets, howitzer shells, mines, shape charges and so on.

Iran is sending explosives and shape charges along with mines and so on to these people to "fight the Western menace" so this is not a group of "lightly armed civilians" we are dealing with.

Well I think we just have a definition issue here- To me, "Lightly Armed" means: armed with something that you can carry around. No Tanks, or armored vehicles, or stationary rocket launchers... The point I am making is that the USA military has far superior weapons, in fact the best in the world, while the Iraqis are armed with weapon technology that is basically 50 years old.

Points made about ROE are very valid. I respect that.

I agree that power shifted away from centralized government is a good thing, but you have plenty of activist judges below the federal level. How did that case ever get to the USSC? How did a state court not find the seizure of private property for use by another private entity to be flat out theft?

The outcome might have been positive. I'm not sure the end justified the means.

In North Carolina, rapid growth has raised a suggestion that private land developers should forfeit a portion of their land for the building of government schools without compensation. Last I heard, it's the state's responsibility to provide public education, not the developers. Granted a school is not use by a private entity, but the lack of compensation for the land is argued for on the basis that the developer is already making so much money off the development project. Can they guarantee that?

No, and unfortunately, that thinking proves how far North Carolina has drifted towards socialist land policies. Do remember that a corporation is really not private under the law, it's an entity created by government and the thinking is that a corporation can be forced to do anything the state wishes in exchange for the benefits offered by incorporating.

Removing the firearms from the house is not parenting. Instead of letting you kid play video games for 10 hours a day how bout spending some time with them. That is parenting.

Mr Wiz i think a major part of parenting is removing/mitigating the potential for bad things to happen.

I never supported letting your kids play games 10hrs a day. Man, you water cooled guys need to slow down and rtfp sometimes;)

Good point. I'm sure all builders must incorporate for tax and liability concerns. However, many corps are small businesses looking to shelter profits from employment taxes. They are in many cases the exclusive income producer for an individual or family. So why are corporations at the mercy of the state? Who thought that one up?