Your Right! Amendment II 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. There, I bolded the 2nd half of the amendment for you! Directly from .gov and not some third party biased translation. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
Which "linguists and historians" are you going to listen to, in your humility? Are you going to reason better from what they say, than you have in the past - when claiming, for example, on the authority of these experts, that the State supplied the weapons for the militia in the Revolutionary War? You did not read them carefully. The local militia was commonly not a "group of men", but all of them in a given region. The region was not a "State", or even a colony, but a geographical area in communication - a town, a county, a valley, a particular range of mountains. The training they described did not meet your standards of "regular" - you were taking them from the modern Swiss (remember your "once a week"?) - and even so reduced the militia they described were not a universal kind, but examples of a kind that did exist. And I posted a link to a better example for you than those papers provided, of a more complete description of an actual Colonial militia that did come fairly close to your description - you're welcome. I also posted a link to lists of actual militia of the time, which did not meet your standards. Dozens of them. The common run. Of course they were led and trained by the best they could find - these were often people familiar with fighting, and they valued good leadership as people who actually face combat do. They often named themselves after their local war chief, the guy they followed into combat (you can see that in the list). Small scale military conflicts were common all up and down the colonies, the King's law and order was mostly on the other side of an ocean (and allied with local Reds or their less congenial neighbors, often). But they weren't leaving their families at home in the country without men and getting together once a week, or even once a month, a day's ride over bad roads from their farms, in the middle of winter or the middle of harvest or the middle of planting or the middle of hunting season, to practice army drill for a few hours. And that was the situation for a lot of them. Not all of them - there were towns, even cities at ports, where the shopkeepers and hostelry operators and such could meet and drill on the green - but a lot of them, and a lot of the better regulated ones as it happened: the veterans of the Red wars, the guys who hunted in parties regularly, the riflemen nearer the frontier. Once again (how many times?): "Well regulated" here has nothing to do with government regulations in particular. Nothing. It means put in good order, properly organized and equipped, capable and effective. It's the word involved in the regulator on a scuba tank or a car engine, the regulation of a mechanical watch. It was commonly used to refer to a properly fitted and maintained sailing ship, merchant or military, with no reference to any State or landlubber's laws. It means in particular here that your militia don't show up for service barefoot with pitchforks in their hands and no water bottle, having not fired a gun in months (or since the last "training"), weeks of training plus much gear from being able to fight well - the all too common situation in Ireland and England and Scotland and France and Germany and so forth, where the peasantry had been disarmed by their government. This is obvious from the context, if you aren't familiar with older prose and literature; it's right there in the construction of the sentence. It's the clever reason "the people" needed to keep and bear arms - you can teach somebody flag and trumpet signals, coordination on the march and battlefield, in a few days; you can't hand somebody a black powder firearm and expect them to maintain and shoot it effectively under combat conditions in any such time. Militia were raised at need, not standing forces, from a largely rural (even wilderness) population. Look at the dates on that list I handed you, click on the blue ones for their time of formation. You're right. It's a bunch of guys whether they have guns or not. No, that is not what the US has today. Again: within thirty miles of where I sit right now there are hundreds of well trained, well armed, militia. Many have combat experience, command experience, logistic experience. They can be raised quickly, organized in a matter of hours. This is exactly the situation put in place by the Founders. Now whether this is necessary for the security of the free State - that's a good question. But there is no question that this is what the 2nd Amendment protects. Or the people. The States don't get it all. Not just the States, but the people, are guaranteed powers. Including keeping and bearing arms. Look: you don't need this. You don't have to beat head on this wall - there is plenty of room for effective efforts to reduce school shootings in the US, long before anyone bumps into the 2nd Amendment. This is how those readily available efforts get bogged down, blocked.
I guess I just assumed you had some idea before posting this: The killers of people (for the most part) are not on any medications. Additionally, the majority of people seeking help for the above do not go out and kill other people. The effect of having such laws can result in less people seeking help for mental illness. Compiling lists of mental health issues for the fbi to access for background check reasons? Analogy: Nah, I am not taking my 16 year old in for depression. She has the rest of her life and the risk of it being used against her in the future, should she want a job/run for office/join the military is too great. I know for sure most people with depression/bipolar lead productive and law abiding lives and I am not willing to let people with an agenda abuse/marginalize people, especially my own family, to ease other peoples paranoia. If you are so afraid of guns, why dont you go get some meds to ease your anxiety?
And you know this how? How would you know such a thing without background checks. I'm not afraid of guns. I'm just wary of mentally ill people who have free access to guns. Is it discrimination? Awww...tough shit. I'm sure you'll get over it.
I'm certainly afraid of guns in the wrong hands. Tell me [I have not been following this thread much] how would you try and kerb the gun violence and massacres that take place in an otherwise civilised first world country? Let it be, it doesn't matter? We can't infringe on people's rights to bear arms as per the US constitution? How come other first world countries are able to exhibit reasonable gun control without any uprising? Your next door neigbour for example, Canada. Do you believe that you and other US citizens maybe obsessed with your old western cowboys and Indians culture as so often displayed in Hollywood movies? Why cannot your constitution be changed? Afterall it was signed in the 1700's. Does it make you and other US citizens feel rather macho? While agreeing with the above entirely, even otherwise sane people can crack under pressure and be inclined to grab a gun as a solution. PS: I know absolutely no person who has a gun, and I have never owned a gun in my life. In fact my only access to any firearm was a Enfield .303 rifle in the school cadets. I'm rather happy and proud to say that gun ownership in my country is rare.
It's also true that many millions are on anti-depressants who aren't necessarily "mentally ill." But a background check would at least show up medical records accessing a violent condition, especially if the person has a history of hospital stays in psych wards or criminal incidents. Unfortunately the gun show loophole allows many to simply purchase guns without paperwork from unauthorized dealers and the internet. We need to close that loophole, as only 60 percent of gun purchases are from authorized dealers.
Canada's gun control isn't much different from the US - the biggest difference is probably that they never went through a handgun craze the way the US did after the invention of the revolver. Handgun invention made a huge difference in US gun culture. That and they never had plantation slavery or prohibition, the other big factors in the history of gun violence in America. btw: The European countries who have had government control of peasants's weaponry for hundreds of years have no great track record of peaceful civilization thereby - the systematic denial of weapons to Jewish communities, for example: how'd that work out for y'all? Some, yeah. It's a problem. As everyone on this forum has been informed many times now, it can. It has been, many times. Some, yeah. It's a problem.
Because I have read the information. Background check will only show a past Involuntary Commitment in most states. Many of those past commitments have been expunged from the system. Like an involuntary commitment to treat homosexuality for example. Should it be expunged? Of course it should be. And in the not too far future we will be looking back on the abuse of kids with ADHD 'diagnosis' with reflections on the other past mistakes of the mental health industry. How is this related? Because psychiatry/mental health has some pretty dark stains concerning human rights and the collusion with the state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry#United_States CONCLUSION: Our results show that these demographic factors, including ethnicity, have effects on diagnoses in psychiatric inpatients. Furthermore, these variables may help prediction of psychiatric diagnoses. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22993517 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...became-black-disease-interview-jonathan-metzl The FBI document lists Williams as a "freelance writer and janitor." It said that (Williams)"...has previously been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and has advocated and threatened violence... considered armed and extremely dangerous." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Williams The FBI has a history of using its power against political outliers. Sanctioned by various presidents to achieve an agenda that conflicts with 'we the peoples' various rights including free speech, right to assemble, religion, right to bear arms and privacy. http://www.npr.org/2015/07/11/422008505/leading-u-s-psychologists-secretly-aided-cia-torture Be careful what you wish for. Every 15 years or so they re-define what is/isnt a mental illness.
It's not about mental illness. Most people with mental illnesses aren't violent. The problem is with the angry, the violent. All the talk about mental illness is just shifting the focus from where it should be.
"After another young man unleashed horror inside a Colorado movie theater this July, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them—25 in the last seven years alone. Nearly 80 percent of the perpetrators in these 62 cases obtained their weapons legally. Acute paranoia, delusions, and depression were rampant among them, with at least 36 of the killers committing suicide on or near the scene. Seven others died in police shootouts they had little hope of surviving (a.k.a. "suicide by cop"). And according to additional research we completed recently, at least 38 of them displayed signs of possible mental health problems prior to the killings. (That data is now included in the interactive guide linked above.)"===http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/jared-loughner-mass-shootings-mental-illness
I don't know that Mother Jones is the ultimate source for these kinds of things but out of 62 shootings having 38 of them display signs of "possible" mental health problems prior to the killings isn't saying much. Again, depressed people don't kill due to depression. Violent people with mental health issues are acting out of violence. The world is full of people with varying forms of mental health issues but they aren't violent.
"Acute paranoia, delusions, and depression were rampant among them, with at least 36 of the killers committing suicide on or near the scene. Seven others died in police shootouts they had little hope of surviving (a.k.a. "suicide by cop")."
Mother Jones is a generally reliable source of physical fact, if you pay attention to exactly what the claim is. And having more than half of the major shootings - including the more sensational and damaging ones - made preventable via mental health measures particularly directed toward gun violence potential - stockpiling of guns and ammo, say - would be a major improvement. That can change. Not only the psychiatric background of the gun obtaining, but the gun background of the psychiatrist consulting, are up for consideration. The event most people regard as the beginning of the modern era of occasional gun amok, the Texas clock tower shooting, was a tragedy in that respect - Whitman, the shooter, had apparently been seeking professional help for his increasingly severe episodes for some time, and apparently none of those he talked to thought to ask after his guns in particular, or make recommendations to him regarding them.
Yes I agree. That's nearly 2/3's of the mass murderers---2 out of 3. We could make a sizeable dent in these crimes with better background checks and better mental health documentation. As for the merely disgruntled employees, postal workers, and bullied teens? We can only improve the outreach of counseling services and a growing social consciousness of the symptoms of pent of rage.
For which mental health conditions do you propose the state negates the 2nd and 5th Ammendments - innocent until proven guilty - with this 'minority report' for-your-own safety interest?
