Patrick Elliott wrote:
> And, if you can't be drafted, you know, like after they removed the 
> draft?

Selective Service is still in force.

> I am also pretty sure that no one expects you to bring your own, 
> basically random, weapons any more... lol

But that's not the point. The federal law says who is in the militia, right 
there. So even the argument that the weapons are only for the militia falls 
down, even if you ignore all the arguments that it meant or should mean the 
general populace.

>>> The one is making the argument, "removing these will make things
>>> better", the other, "adding them will".
>>
>> No, my point is that you can't really tell until you try it, because
>> it's not logical.
>>
> Chaos social engineering then.. Yeah, that always works *so* well... 
> What matters is, "Is it true", not, "I would like it to be", or, "I hope 
> it is". 

Right. So why are you arguing with me?

> There are consequences to being wrong, and just because you are 
> not going to pay them is not justification that you can make others pay 
> them instead. It *is* true that even rational people can go over the 
> edge, and arming them makes that more dangerous. But *is it true* that 
> arming everyone counters that? If you don't actually know, its not 
> exactly ethical to just shrug and go, "Ah, well.. lets try it anyway."

On the other hand, you're the one arguing to *change* things, so it's really 
your responsibility to argue that your solution would be *better* than what 
we have now. You're basically begging the question.

>>> end up being declared "temporarily insane", we don't know that games
>>> do *jack*.
>>
>> You don't know that games *don't* do jack.
>>
> I certainly have enough evidence of a correlation, if not necessarily 
> causation, than they do for guns. 

This whole sentence doesn't make sense, unless you're agreeing with me.

> You know, to some extent I have been playing devils advocate here. I see 
> no damn reason why, technically, you need to change the constitution to 
> set limits and rules of use, on weapons. You are not telling someone, 
> "You can't have a gun", by telling them you can't just carry it around 
> with you, anyplace you like, etc.

Except you go to someplace like new jersey, and even though the law says 
"you will get a permit to buy a gun in 30 days unless we can come up with a 
reason for you not to", it still doesn't happen.

The problem with this argument is that if you allow everyone to buy guns 
only to keep them locked up at home (which would certainly be enough to 
satisfy the "in case of revolution" need), you're still creating a market 
for guns and access by criminals to those guns. You haven't really cut down 
gun crime at all. Crazy people will still have access to guns, and if 
shooting people being illegal isn't enough to stop them, taking it out of 
their home isn't enough to stop them.

> and while we are currently talking about adjusting the law to ban extra 
> large magazines, no one seems to be talking about fixing the loopholes, 
> or properly enforcing the existing laws.

Yep. Nobody really wants to close the loopholes. They only want to do stuff 
that *looks* like it's helpful to folks who think laws that far back in the 
causality chain will affect criminals.

> As devil's advocate, I have to ask the question, "At what point do you 
> conclude that this is unmanageable, and something more extreme has to be 
> done to stop it?"

http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html

Seems like firearm deaths, including shooting people in self defense and 
police shooting people, counts as a bit over 1% of all deaths. Automobiles 
kill more people than guns, but nobody talks about outlawing them.

Now, down at the bottom of
http://washingtonceasefire.org/resource-center/national-firearm-injury-and-death-statistics
you see that about 60% of the firearm deaths are suicide, while 40% are 
homicide (including self defense and police), and 2% are accidents.

Which rate are you trying to reduce, given that homicide is already (mostly) 
illegal, so making carrying a gun around illegal wouldn't prevent that?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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