http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

And Zython, if you want to challenge my gun ownership, feel free to break into my home. I’ll be facing you with a very scary-looking knife — presuming you get past my fierce stuffed attack duck.

If that isn’t good enough, then screw you. If I owned any guns at all, I’d say so. I have no reason whatsoever to lie; whether or not I owned a gun now, or ever did, is irrelevant to my arguments. Calling me a “gun nut” simply shows you to be an idiot — and because it’s factually inaccurate as well as an ad hominem attempt at dismissing my points, doubly an idiot.

J.

Zython: I have no way of verifying this one way or the other.

IOW, you say that’s your opinion but I have no way of verifying it actually is your opinion other than you’re saying it is.

That’s got to take the prize for stupidest come back I’ve seen yet in this discussion.

The NRA filed in federal court Friday on behalf of an unidentified gay man living in Valencia Gardens Housing in the Mission District, who said he keeps a gun in his home for protection against hate crimes even though his Housing Authority lease forbids possession of guns and other weapons.

I have no way of verifying this one way or the other.

Although I did recently read something interesting — apparently gun control laws really started emerging in the latter 19th century, to keep them out of the hands of newly-freed slaves. Ain’t that fascinating?

Interesting if true. Even so, I fail to see how that’s relevant.

Don’t own a gun. Never have. No real interest in owning one.

Just an abiding interest in the Constitution, and the rights recognized (NOT granted) therein.

Although I did recently read something interesting — apparently gun control laws really started emerging in the latter 19th century, to keep them out of the hands of newly-freed slaves. Ain’t that fascinating?

J.

Exactly, it’s not that I think average Joe citizen will turn psycho, is that the gun nuts like Jay Tea will turn psycho (if they haven’t already). I wouldn’t trust you people with anything more dangerous than a boiled egg.

Also, Jay (Tea), your “analysis” of your own quote is a bit fault, as it doesn’t mention anything about rights, just interpersonal interaction.

J.

I think you mean Yitzhak Rabin. Mr. Tea, if I’m going to have to spend this much time factchecking, I’m going to have to start billing you.

Ain’t it a great country?

J.

Well, it is Kentucky, so we don’t know for sure. However, in a “polite society”, armed or not, there should not be a reason for people to be armed at work.

And “other guy?” You mean your fellow citizens, those who you (I suspect) are counting on to support Barack Obama for president?

No, I mean bat-shit crazies like your readers.

And “other guy?” You mean your fellow citizens, those who you (I suspect) are counting on to support Barack Obama for president?

If you don’t trust them, individually, to do the right thing, why do you trust them, collectively, to do so? Ever heard of the “mob mentality?”

It’s been my observation that when someone subsumes their identity into a group, they are far more willing to commit more heinous deeds than when they are spotlighted as an individual. That’s why I fear large groups of unarmed people (such as, say, Congress) than any single random person with a weapon.

J.

And remember, it was common practice for town marshalls in the freedom-loving Old West to have everyone check their guns when they came to town. There was no widespread agreement that having everyone walking around armed was a great idea.

This got almost no press at all. Strangely fitting that the SC rules the same week.

HENDERSON, Ky. (AP) – A man who killed five people and himself in a rampage at a western Kentucky plastics plant called his girlfriend two hours before the rampage to warn her that he was going to kill his boss, police said Wednesday.

Just saying.

A sizable chunk of the populace goes around armed — some even with assault rifles and automatic weapons. But the vast majority of violence is carried out by outsiders, using bombs and rockets and mortars. I can only think of two serious shootings by Israelis — the assassination of Menachem Begin and the Cave of the Patriarchs.

More to the point, I have to wonder why so many people have so much distrust for their fellow Americans, why they think that the average person will turn into a crazed psychotic by the mere possession of a firearm.

I have a bit more faith in my fellow Americans. However, I do find it a tad comforting that some of the most irrational ones — say, a good chunk of the regular crowd here — are so paranoid about guns that they would never even dream of owning one. It’s a form of craziness, but it’s nicely self-regulating.

J.

But the plain fact is that the Constitution speaks directly to the issue. The Constitution defines a militia as a body organized and armed by Congress. Whatever the “practices of the time”, Article 1, Section 8 is specific: “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the ervice of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”

It’s important to remember that the 2nd Amendment is a later document than the Constitution and its reference to a “well-regulated militia” can hardly refer to something entirely new and different than what the framers wrote about originally. If that were the case, these rather intelligent, literate folk would have given us another definition of the term “militia”.

If what the Constitution says is important to you, then you have to go with what it says. Or forfeit all that bull about the value of “original intent”.

DC v. Heller: A Dismaying Performance By The Supreme Court

They were adjudicating a very specific case, right? As is their wont?

And why not keep it civil, JWG?