On Tue, 02 Dec 2003 00:58:42 GMT, yourname wrote:
eople, mass has 8 such, with enough pop in those
8 cities alone to make 2 N Dakotas, yet my 99 numbers [apples to
apples, eh] put their murder rate at 1.6, not so big a spread. Bet if
you took the numbers from mass with all cities over 86 k removed we
would look even better.
And this proves what? That Eastern City dwellers are more prone to
homicide? Or has much larger minority groups that tend to skew the
homicide figures by murdering more? Think hard on what you just
claimed..you cannot win either way.....
No it means that population density is a factor in crime, what did you
think it meant? In north dakota you have to find someone to kill them.
The fact that with much lower population density that the rate is as
high as it is means more people as a percentage of population are looking.
Hummm...then you are claiming that the per 100,000 figure means
nothing? The folks in North Dakota manage to find each other well
enough to ****, else the population would be plummeting. Please
advise what population density has to do with the murder rate? Japan
has a far higher population density, than does Mass.
One also should mention that its a given that the inhabitants of North
Dakota have far more firearms than those living in Mass. So it it was
the guns, of course, they would all be dead.
Either gun laws matter or they don't. If they do, then I haven't seen
any evidence that there is higher crime in gun law states, quite the
opposite. Perhaps there is less need for permitting with instant
background checks, but I'll bet you weren't crazy about those either.
Of course I wasnt happy with those. What part of "Shall not be
infringed" do you not understand?
The part that does not include "a well regulated militia being necessary
to the security of a free state"
Read the constitution and you will see no mention of private militias,
only gov't ones. No mention of defense against crime. either. If the
White house wants to go to the supreme ct with their bs, let 'em,
probably get laughed out. strict constructionists have their bad points too
So the Second amendment only applies to the National Guard?
Which btw..was formed in 1907.
TITLE 10 Subtitle A PART I CHAPTER 13 Sec. 311. Next
Sec. 311. - Militia: composition and classes
(a)
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at
least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title
32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of
intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female
citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b)
The classes of the militia are -
(1)
the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the
Naval Militia; and
(2)
the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia
who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia"
As to the term Well Regulated....
Well regulated according to Princeton's Wordnet means: "orderly adj,
4: marked by or adhering to method or system, a well regulated life."
The following are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and
bracket in time the writing of the 2nd amendment:
1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated
Appetites and worthy Inclinations."
1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the
world."
1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of
time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."
1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person
will blame the Mayor."
1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine
proceeding."
1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated
American embryo city."
The phrase "well-regulated" was in common use long before 1789, and
remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of
something being in proper working order. Something that was
well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected.
Establishing government oversight of the people's arms was not only
not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was
precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the
founders wrote it.
http://www.constitution.org/mil/cs_milit.htm
Militia
"The militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves,
.... all men capable of bearing arms;..."
— "Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic", 1788 (either
Richard Henry Lee or Melancton Smith).
"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that
we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall
have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other
terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American
.... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the
federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever
remain, in the hands of the People."
— Tench Coxe, 1788.
"How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things
have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to
make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If
during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there in
their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door
and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had
nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush
of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at
hand? The organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of
officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed
machine would have ground to a halt."
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winner and author of The Gulag
Archipelago, who spent 11 years in Soviet concentration camps.
If we are ready to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to
our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would
deserve the chains that our measures are forging for them, if they did
not resist.
— Edward Livingston
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
— Mao Zedong, Nov. 6, 1938, Selected Works, Vol. 2
The meaning of "militia"
The word "militia" is a Latin abstract noun, meaning "military
service", not an "armed group" (with the connotation of plurality),
and that is the way the Latin-literate Founders used it. The
collective term, meaning "army" or "soldiery" was "volgus militum".
Since for the Romans "military service" included law enforcement and
disaster response, it might be more meaningfully translated today as
"defense service", associated with a "defense duty", which attaches to
individuals as much as to groups of them, organized or otherwise.
When we are alone, we are all militias of one. When together with
others in a situation requiring a defensive response, we have the duty
to act together in concert to meet the challenge. Those two component
duties, of individuals to defend the community, and to act together in
concert with others present, when combined with a third component duty
to prepare to do one's duty and not just wait until the danger is
clear and present, comprises the militia duty."
So my friend...you are yourself indeed a member of the milita. If you
were called up tommorow..could you field the proper equipment?
Just wondering...chuckle
Gunner
"No man shall be debarred the use of arms.
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm those only who are neither
inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants.
They ought to be designated as laws not preventative but fearful of crimes,
produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by
thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."
- Thomas Jefferson