Church - A place for quiet reflection ...
 

... or packing heat?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z2

I guess this provides yet another reason to avoid going to church.:cool:

That man is insane, plain and simply insane.

The man plays to his base. It is a very base base.

Regards,

D-Ray

His premise: "Cuccinelli indicates that the 'right of self-defense lies at the heart of the right to keep and bear arms.'"

seems to be at odds with the Constitution:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Which seems (despite the NRA) to quite clearly link the carrying of firearms to the protection of the State and not the Self.

Church?

Must be part of the rights desperate desire to make their ideology appear Christ-like.

WWJD? Why pack heat in the Lords House of course. Never know when a brotha might have to jump up and bust a cap in a choir boys ass. Catch an acolyte skimming change out of the offering plate? Ventilate the little f**ers head during communion.......that s**t will never happen again. Hells yeah, dat lil' punk won't nevah disrespect the tithe up in this tip, eveh agin! That's what Glockmaster JC would do!:rolleyes:

Seriously, what makes anyone think they would need to sport iron in the pew?

Really.

Dave

I'm not going to take sides with either faction here but this may explain why someone would want to protect themselves, even in a house of worship. The gulf between a group that believes one thing and another group that believes the opposite is growing ever wider. Who's to say that what we see in this video would not escalate in bodily harm to the people praying at some point?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp0oMKGFTyk

This doctor might have benefitted I suppose;

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html

When I was a young teen we had a armed madman take over our church. The police ended up having to gun him down while we listened on the floor. I saw the large red hersheys' kisses of kill shot blood 'drips'.

The pastor tried to head him off at the back door. My dad and another member guarded the front unarmed.

I have no doubt folks there would've been pleased to have one of the deacons armed.

Jon, people didn't think like that, here in the States anyway. The militia existed to protect the people which did include the state, as the state existed to serve the people.

Pete

The militia existed because the Framers did not want a standing army after their expeience with the British troops. Unfortunately there was enough squabbling among the states that Madison's militia proved to be no match for the Irish regimant that burned the White House.:rolleyes:

Yeah, another quandry hard to solve, be "at all times ready for war" without an army.

But militias did predate the Revolution, as did the right to bear arms.

Pete

The title of this thread does remind me of visiting the John Street Church in NYC. It was the first Methodist church built in the United States. It stands in contrast to the commercial district in which it sits - just a block or two from Wall Street. The feeling inside the church is an even more significant contrast than the architecture. I first visited it when I was in New York for some particularly contentious litigation. The sense of peace a visit to the sanctuary provided was unforgettable. :)

Regards,

D-Ray

Pete visit Williamsburg sometime, the guns were kept locked up in the armory. Ordinary folks probably had hunting rifles but the big stuff was under lock and key.

That's right.

Dave

Been there - 3 times ;) Love how they used them for decor.

I don't know anyone with cannons. Everyone then had rifles, even foreigners like Washington. And horror of horrors, they didn't need a license to buy or keep them.

Pete

Actually, nobody had rifles (yet). They had muskets. Rifles extended the range of muskets several hundred percent. I don't think the Founding Fathers saw that one coming. ;)

Ah so. Long things that looked like guns that propelled small objects rapidly :)

The Constitution has this amazing foresighted bit in there - the amendment process ;)

Btw, I probably wouldn't have kept going back although it was very good - my step daughter loved it there.

Pete

Speaking of Williamsburg, my (now deceased) uncle was a graphics artist employed by Colonial Williamsburg for his entire career. One of his specialties were the period maps you saw in a bunch of the buildings there. His son-in-law (my cousin's husband, also recently deceased) managed all the period musicians who played in the taverns, etc. He played a bunch of period stringed instruments and, in addition to playing in the Colonial Williamsburg venues, travelled widely to cultural and diplomatic meetings where they wanted such entertainment.

Cool place.

We spent a Christmas there, stayed right in the Inn, quite an experience.

I've always wondered whether anti-2nd-amendment types would be consistent in interpretation if elements of the 1st amendment had been phrased with a preceeding justification like...

"A well-informed citizenry being neccessary to make reasoned choices at the ballot box, the right of the people to read books of choice shall not be infringed"

Obviously, you don't vote --- You don't need to be carrying that high-caliber Kindle. Put down that e-reader son, and slowly step away...

The problem with that analogy is that Kindles are not lethal weapons.

It's interesting that you use the terms "anti 2nd Amendment." It might be more accurate to describe such folks a narrow interpreters of the 2nd Amendment.

Are you suggesting that the right to bear arms is more important to a democracy than a broadly interpreted protection of free speech?

Regards,

D-Ray

Irrelevant. The first amendment does not share the squirrelly sentence structure with a dangling antecedent like the 2nd Amendment. It is not an unreasonable interpretation to assert that the 2nd Amendment has to do with militias, not the individual right to bear arms (regardless of your own personal views of the issue). BTW, I'm a life long gun owner and hunter, but not a 2nd Amendment absolutist.

Wonder what they would think of private citizens possessing AK-47s and 50 caliber sniper rifles?

Dave

Finn, the problem is, everything around it is individual rights.

The Founders certainly believed that you couldn't keep the latter without the former.

Pete

D-Ray:

Never will I attempt to rank the 1st 10 amendments except that the 10th amendment DOES have a clarifier effect on the "scope" of the other 9.. In fact, the 10th amendment makes it clear that the preceding 9 are a special carve-out zone of freedom and liberty from ANY govt intervention (state, federal, local).

The authors COULD HAVE justified any of the other "rights" with some benefit to the state (such as freedom of the press). In fact, the concept of "a press" has changed just as much as the concept of "arms". While you debate what the founders would have thought about AK-47s, you could propose that they never anticipated the dangerous implications of a "wiki" page or the subversive side-effects of twitter (ask Mubarak about that). So the argument can always be made that in terms of actual solid objects referred to in the original words, there is wiggle room. Except that the amendments are not about the objects, but about the excercise of liberty. And if that excersize changes with the centuries, so be it. We have a standing army, so if you abide by the militia interpretation -- you ARE essentially anti-2nd-amendment since that leaves the whole concept null and void. Simple logic folks. If the dangling proposition (militia) is no longer true, the rest is then irrelevent and unenforceable. Except that the right was granted to virtually every citizen of the time. And it is the exercise of that right of individuals that transcends the military organizational chart. Just like 'freedom of the press' is trancendent of the means or organization of communication.

I'll stay with the corroborating testimony of the guys who wrote the 2nd. Makes it clear enough for the current Supremes to declare it an "individual" right.

My bet is that Ben Franklin would have been a major twitter packer AND assault weapon collector.

I think the founders understood full well the power of the press and the power of free speech. I don't see that things have changed all that much in the electronics age to increase that power, in fact that power may have diminished for practical purposes because of the sheer volume and barrage of information, most of which is mis-information.

On the other hand, I don't think the founders anticipated the technological advances in weaponry. If you want to make the 2nd amendment about the gov't being forbidden to regulate an individual's right to bear arms, why aren't you upset that you can't buy a nuke to keep in your garage "just in case?" Or an Apache helicopter? Or any number of weapon systems.

Furthermore, if you want to make the argument that an armed populace is important to ward off tyranny, I think you ought to realize that things are a bit different in the 21st century. The disparity in military power between civilians and governments is too huge for armed rebellion to be effective. Look at the most successful revolutions in recent times... they've been essentially accomplished without weaponry. East Germany, the Soviet Union, Egypt... It's all about hearts and minds, not about a violent overthrow of a regime. The ones that fall via violence only do so with the assistance of other nations' armies, and it seems to me that the ones that fall via violence wind up being less stable than the peaceful revolutions.

It would still be much much harder to subjucate an armed population then an unarmed one.

Besides, in an oversimplified statement, a ragtag bunch of yokels took out one of the great military powers in the world. There was a great disparity.

Using the judicial system to 'reinterpret' the Constitution undermines all our freedom - and is tyranny.

Pete

It seems to me that eleven fully armed states tried to fight the Federal government 150 years ago. How'd that work out?

I think everyone (probably) agrees that the Constitution allows citizens to own muskets, yet allows the regulation or prohibition of fully automatic weapons, rocket launchers or personal nuclear arsenals. The question is where along this continuum you draw the line.

When in doubt, err on the side the people. But who, outside of perhaps Washington and a handful of others, would walk away from more power.

Pete

On the side of which people? So far it seems to be only the wealthy that benefit.

JonL:

Sometimes, given our awful foreign policy and bad choices on using the military, I'm sure that Washington doesn't deserve to wield cruise missiles, tanks, bazookas and ESPECIALLY the keys to the nuke locker. We've bombed SIX (muslim) countries this year. Would YOU issue a nuke license to a country like that?

I don't like the fact that ANY governments have the fearsome armaments they do, and I certainly don't agree with US foreign policy more often than not. That really has nothing to do with the fact that I don't want any individual wackos running around with rocket launchers or even assault rifles. All that BS about watering some metaphorical tree with the blood of tyrants and patriots is a nice sound bite. Tell that to the families of Columbine, or Virginia, or the Gifford tragedy, or... on and on and on and on and on. Far more people have and will be killed by psychos with weapons they shouldn't possess than will be killed in any armed struggle that actually results in "freedom." Freedom from what??? Freedom for whom? Freedom these days is a word that really means "We at ACME Mega Corp want to poison your groundwater with hyrdofracking, spill millions of gallons of oil into your waterways, modify the genetics of your crops to force you to use our herbicides (and then sue your ass when your natural crops get contaminated by cross-polinization), invent ridiculously convoluted financial derivatives to steal your money, etc etc... and do it FREE from regulation and FREE from taxation. You think any of this BS about "freedom" has anything to do at all with helping the INDIVIDUAL? Laughable.

WOW!!!!!

Rock on, JonL!!!!!

Dave

you don't understand, guns make us safe :p

Freedom for government control of everything. And there is no doubt that business has a great deal of influence in government. By both parties. So give government - more power?

Let's not zoom in on sound bites. Here is more:

"Wonderful is the effect of impudent & persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure. ..."

The whole letter: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs...rien/blood.htm

Pete

The only part of that diatribe I believed was the last sentence about natural manure. That this nation was born in violence seems to have set the mood.

All nations have been born in violence.

Pete

not really

No? Some might have changed a bit seemingly peacefully, but if you look back there was always a gun or sword in there.

Pete

In Canada's case it was a pen, the one that wrote the British North America act.:p