So I guess I don't even understand the whole machine gun argument either, why did we give in on that one to begin with. The way I read the second amendment is like this: Because having an army is needed to make the free nation survive and because that army, in the wrong hands, can do terrible thing, the people need to be unrestricted in what they can posses in order to combat that army and government. Seems pretty simple to me.QUOTE]
therein lies the conundrum. Where do you draw the line? Machine guns or semi-autos? There will never be a perfect answer. Being a history buff of sorts, I was thinking about this while on Battle Road in Lexington and Concord. Go walk it sometime its a great place. Those lobster backs were marching to Concord to guess what? to seize ammo and weapons of the local citizenry. Sound familiar? The Brits were equipped with some of the best weaponry of the time. Our guys had good weapons but did not have the cannons and other ordinance of the British Army. I believe the ability of Americans to put up a reasonable defense in the face of a tyrannical government was what the founders had in mind when they wrote the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] amendment. They were thinking of Lexington and Concord.
No translate that to modern times the disparity between military and the citizenry weapons is now so wide it will never be close that’s obvious. But what I like to point out is the armed citizenry should at least have the firepower similar to the police and a common military ground pounder. I stopped an anti with this argument when he said I was arguing that citizens should be able to possess tanks, F-16s, grenades and rocket launchers, blah blah. I am not, but a semi-automatic rifle with a 30 round magazine was certainly a legitimate weapon for self-defense and in the hands of many responsible citizens is a powerful deterrent to a tyrannical government or police force. Usually when you point this out, the constitution is an out of date document written by old white men argument comes out, that’s when you got them. I then invite them to leave the country.
If you really dig in and look at how a lot of the wars have been fought over the last 200 years - you can easily rip apart the whole - "then civilians will want F-16's and cannons and nuclear weapons" argument.
Here's the truth- civilians that go up against government forces will often take massive casualties - but they usually WIN - in the end. The Afghans have been kicking ass on the British, then the Soviets and now us. They really don't have too many heavy weapons - other than mortars and the occasional rocket from what I understand.
If civilians wanted to kick the government's ass - all they really need is the same firepower as the average infantry unit - and enough anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to take out all of those resources - and then you're talking equal fight.
I just watched Charlie Wilson's war the other day - and it made the point well that once the Afghans got missiles to knock down the Soviet helicopters - the war almost instantly started going their way.
The Vietnamese didn't defeat us with heavy weaponry - they defeated us with superior tactics - light weapons (militia weapons) - and by being willing to keep taking losses over time - while we couldn't continue to sustain our losses.
The Yugoslavians tied down many German divisions during WW2 with guerilla attacks, sabotage, and random attacks.
Chris Dorner is once again giving us all a lesson on how impotent a large military/police force can be.
The reality is that a lot of the weaponry in the government's hands is only really good for causing massive destruction. Just causing massive destruction doesn't necessarily win you a war.
