A Reasonable Decision

Quote: "if we should suffer a catastrophic collapse of society then those with guns will be a heck of a lot better off than those without".

About a country's future one doesn't know much. But one can at least conclude two things: One — it is created by causes that turn into effects. And two — there is most often a camouflaging time-delay between these causes and effects.

And it's within that time-delay that one still is free to delude oneself, that ugly causes really can turn into beautiful effects. / Matthew 26:52

"if we should suffer a catastrophic collapse of society then those with guns will be a heck of a lot better off than those without."

Really? Maybe if you find yourself in a Hollywood movie and have only to survive to the 90-minute mark. But in a situation lasting more than a few days, I'm not sure how much having guns would help you. I lived in Russia in the 1990's, when society did collapse in a lot of ways, and I think you're much better off having some good friends and well placed acquaintances than a bunch of guns.

Put yourself in a "you vs. everybody else" situation (I think having guns encourages this mentality), and I can tell you who will win.

I'm glad to hear that you agree with the ruling George. The criminals were ignoring the gun ban anyway so I don't see how this ruling could make DC any more dangerous. What it does do is give the good people the ability to defend themselves.

I was surprised that the court ruled this way, especially the bit about the trigger locks and disassembling that DC required. Given the erosion of our rights during this administration, I was expecting them to somehow uphold the ban. The ruling is long overdue and finally clarifies what I always thought was the obvious meaning of the 2nd amendment.

This calls to mind the old saw that freedom isn’t free. This idea seems to have degenerated into the thought that the small percentage of the population who joins the military risks their lives defending our freedoms and the rest of us are just along for the ride. Freedom by its very nature is risky and by the act of demanding our freedom we accept the risks that follow from that decision.

It is Ironic that one of Antonin Scalia’s arguments against Habeas rights for detainees in Guantanamo was that some hypothetical Americans may get killed in some hypothetical future attack from a detainee that may hypothetically be released on a Habeas challenge. I say even if that were to happen it is the cost of freedom.

Liberals tend to be afraid of a broad reading of the second amendment, conservatives tend to be afraid of the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and possibly ninth amendments. I say we be a brave nation and embrace all of them and freely accept their inherent risks. Then we can say we are “The land of the free and home of the brave”, not “Land of the scared and home of the slave”.

Karl Neal quote: "I say we be a brave nation and embrace all of them and freely accept their inherent risks. Then we can say we are “The land of the free and home of the brave”, not “Land of the scared and home of the slave”."

Well, the irony is that the latter alternative is already about to unravel itself — more so the the first alternative. Michael Moore for example, talks about his countrymen as "the frightened race".

As for the idea of "hideout + guns = safety", I suggest you guys to do a Google-search on below very interesting article:

"The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States".

I used to be like most liberal thinking people – totally brainwashed by the liberal line against guns. But following the realization that my government is no longer a government but instead a criminal organization, I changed my mind. I don't care if a tiny percentage of people that own guns are nut cases, and I know for certain that criminals that want guns as a tool will get guns regardless. But the ultimate argument in favor of gun ownership spread widely amongst the masses is that it might turn out to guard liberty in a way the Founders were not thinking about as the first-order risk (a well regulated militia was to be the military force, and there was not to be a standing army). Indeed, dear reader, our country is so out of control that the overall state of liberty is better served by such huge gun ownership.

Most of the Bill of Rights is already a dead letter with the fake war on terror. 9-11 was in the very least a partial inside job. The day before 9-11 Rumsfeld admitted in an ABC report that as much as $2.3 trillion could not be accounted for by the Pentagon and now the figure for all government agencies is north of $6 trillion (that's almost half of the GNP for a whole damn year - a HUGE number). We have about half of the Federal budget monies wasted in the final analysis by over-charging, graft and sheer stupidity. We have a financial sector that has more in common with corporatism than capitalism and as corporations with legal person status grow to further dominate and abuse the civic sphere of our commons, we creep closer to pure fascism. Furthermore, this change in the corporate sector is most certainly DIRECTLY linked to the visible and well known risks of IKE's concept of a Military Industrial Complex. IKE spoke of losing control of our military and our liberties, but he could not have known how right he would prove to be in but a few decades. While it's ironic that the professionalism of the military has actually been one of the few areas we've seen some adult supervision (and huge institutional power acting almost like a 5th branch of government) come in and squash the plans of mad-dog the Constitution is "just a god damn piece of paper" George Bush and Dick secret government architect Cheney, the police state that is growing up around us is nevertheless real, worthless for stopping terrorism, and designed entirely as a hoped for means by which the oligarchy can control the masses when America moves into Great Depression like economic difficulty (the latter could actually be on the horizon, given the credit crash and the impact of peak oil).

Should a peak-oil/economic crash happen, I hope James Howard Kunstler is proven correct and the Federal Government has enough trouble answering the phones. But I see a Katrina style New Orleans martial law abuse far more likely.

No, dear liberal. Stop thinking as far as the point of your nose. The world has changed. Your government has assassinated your own leaders (JFK, RFK, MLK and quite literally thousands of small-time actions on US soil). Your government is a financial criminal syndicate that channels up to $6 trillion a year either directly through the budget or by assisting organizations in the private criminal sector globally (especially the monster sized international drug trade). The oligarchy has no concern about tending to the sheep if the food (oil and energy and the ability to do work it has provided) suddenly becomes harder and harder to procure and use for global growth. It isn't an accident that the peak of American middle class economic health roughly matched the peak of US oil production in the early 1970s. No...... wake the heck up. Your government is afraid of you. That's why it is investing so much to attempt to control (or at least know everything about) you.

Gun ownership by the masses at least serves as a check against abuse by this power. They have bigger guns and tools, but they number 2 million (at most) against 300 million. Even a national general strike, never mind guns and violence, is more powerful than the oligarchy. I'd rather have people like Dick Cheney thinking that his task of running martial law would be harder to achieve rather than a cake walk. How about you? And if you think martial law isn't possible in the US, you simply haven't been paying attention. The powers that be are planning for it – gaming it out right now. It may not come, but it most certainly can be executed in an "off the shelf" manner. Thank god 60+ million Americans own guns, for those millions serve as a deterrent against those that claim to rule us in our interests.