As most you know I have a CCW/CWLfor 48 states ...(excluding Calif and Illinois)...we here in Idaho ALL carry guns and do so responsibly!....Boston is a sad situation....and MANY un determined factors still exists!......BUT....had someone with a CCW/CWL carrying a weapon on them ...things may have been different!...Just my thoughts....(que the left wing liberals now)...guess i will just STFUAC.....sorry off topic but it is TODAYS news....across the world ...we all have OUR RIGHTS>>>good night from 2nd amendment IDAHO!

~5150

Comments welcome.....couldb5150@cableone.net

I fail to see how people carrying guns would be of any help in preventing the detonation of bombs. Are citizens supposed to carry guns and fire upon any person they find suspicious? I have little faith in the abilities of citizens carrying guns to make appropriate decisions that even trained officers have difficulties making.

An outsider would instantly assume that you're doing some sort of over-the-top NRA satire, but as someone who has seen your past work, I'm quite certain you actually believe what you're saying.

I'm trying my best to understand a scenario where someone with a concealed weapon could have saved the day, but then I remember that I'm a sane person and this scenario doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist because there were already 100 weapon-carrying cops assigned to every block.

And it doesn't exist because you can't go around shooting everyone who sets their duffle bag down next to you.
(seriously, don't do it)

Even if you somehow figured out that there was an explosive device hidden in that bag, the best use of your gun would be to shoot it in the air to scare people away, and then to dial 911 with it.

ok enough with that.

Let's hear your thoughts on the Chinese bird flu.

Where is the sanity, in feeling safer knowing we are disarming good people, against those with bombs and guns meant to hurt good people? I don't see the deterrence.

Won't individuals with criminal motivations, feel less encumbered to succeed, than deterred?

And then there is the question of surveillance drones. How many, how few?

After total drone surveillance and disarming a population fails to achieve an effective criminal deterrence, not unlike we just saw in Boston, will AI (artificial intelligence) be next on the list of sacrifices we will have to make, in the name of feeling safer? However our future pans out, its a brave new world, isn't it?

Slow down Mike, ease off the weapons.

In the earlier days of the US there were a few towns that prohibited weapons. As I recall only a sheriff in those towns was allowed to wear a gun belt and everyone else just had a riffle at home to protect against wild animals on the homestead. But in town - NO GUNS ALLOWED.

This was a very sane way of doing things. And that should have been the way forward in all the USA.

In the big cities where millions (or thousands) of people band together, guns are only a danger, not making things safer. And protecting the homestead...?

Think of an towerblock with over one hundred homes in it. And now think of all the alcohol and drugs that are consumed in those homes each day. Then imagine over one hundred riffles/guns in these homes, still in one towerblock.

Then concider an item on the news like Boston. And the fear that the news people install in you and your fellow Americans by pounding and pounding on the stress of yet another ATTACK on the USA....

So, more drinking of alcohol, more drugs use.... and then somebody rings the doorbell.

And this is only one towerblock... in one town...

How safe do you think people feel KNOWING that behind each frontdoor there could be a crazy guy with a gun living there....?????

Sorry but it's a penis substituion problem.

Pfft if fire-arms protected us from bombs then we wouldn't get blown up on the road in by IED's in Afghanistan.

I really don't think more less people carrying weapons around really solves all that much in the long run. People just want to find scapegoats for Social issues that are much more complicated than the Rhetoric that people posts on their facebook statuses. I think many people need to spend more time studying history.

I don't or ever do plan to own a personal firearm, but I support the 2nd amendment. Taking responsible adults rights away is not going to stop violence. But on the other hand arming everyone is not going to decrease or prevent it either.

I thought you had blue pills for that, not blue steel bullets?

I don’t know if having armed citizens would have made a difference in Boston. The question is if an armed citizen did see ‘suspicious’ activity is he/she more likely to investigate it because they could defend themselves.

A response was written ‘Are citizens supposed to carry guns and fire upon any person they find suspicious?’ No where in the original post does it say that citizens should fire upon people because they are suspicious! And on that note look at the situation of the rouge cop in California a couple of months ago – the cops were so paranoid they were firing upon vehicles that did not match the one they were looking for, and in one case (if I remember correctly) had a mother and daughter in it as the only occupants. So if you worried about innocent citizens being shot maybe we should worry about the cops doing it!

If I was in the movie theater in Colorado when the bullets started flying and I had to pick one of the following:

1. hide and hope that I don’t get shot
2. hide and hope that the cops will get there within 5 minutes, and that I don’t get shot
3. run, and hope that I don’t get shot
4. shoot back and hope that I kill tmfah shooting

I’ll pick #4 every time.

Look at the results of the subway shooter years ago – crime went down something like 70% in the subways for the following week, and 40%-50% the next week (if I remember my statistics properly). Why? The criminals said – ‘ the dummies finally learned to protect themselves’!

The cops are not responsible for protecting you, they are only responsible to react to a situation. If you don’t want to protect yourself, and rely on the police, go ahead. If I want to protect myself stop trying to limit me.

The founders of our country made sure we had the right to bear arms to protect ourselves - from criminals to a government run a muck.

Here are a few quotes from people like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, ….

-- A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government. -- George Washington, commanding general of the Continental Army and the country's first president.

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. - Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are neither inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1764

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn't.
-- Ben Franklin

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
-- Thomas Paine

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.
-- Patrick Henry.

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
-- Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.

The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
-- Samuel Adams, debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87.

The right of the people to keep and bear... arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country...
-- James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.
-- Patrick Henry.

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
-- Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.

The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
-- Samuel Adams, debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87.

The right of the people to keep and bear... arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country...
-- James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).

Here are a few more quotes, statistics and studies:

"[The Swiss] love guns so much that their government picks up the tab to ensure that people own them and form militias," writes Piccione, advocating for a similar approach here in the states. "That's right, government funded civilian militias are the foundation of the most peaceful of European countries."

Heinrich Himmler:
"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA-- ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."

German Firearms Act of 1937:
"No civilian is to have a firearm without a permit and permits will not be issued to [persons] suspected of acting against the state. For Jews this permission will not be granted. Those people who do not require permission to purchase or carry weapons [include] the whole SS and SA, including the Death's Head group and officers of the Hitler Youth." [Kates, Restricting Handguns pg. 185, 1979]

"In 1982, a survey of imprisoned criminals found that 34% of them had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim."[7] When Florida began allowing its citizens to carry a concealed weapon, Florida's firearm homicide rate fell by 37% while the national average increased by 15%.
Studies by John Lott and others indicate that gun control causes higher crime rates.[9] Washington, D.C. has one of the highest crime rates in America even though it completely bans private handguns.[10] "Switzerland, Israel, Denmark and Finland, all of whom have a higher gun ownership rate than America, all have lower crime rates than America, in fact, their crime rates are among the lowest in the Western World."[11] Lott demonstrates that in Britain, Australia and Canada, increased gun control in the late 1990s led to increased crime, the exact opposite of what the proponents of the gun control promised.[12] States in the U.S. that have enacted concealed-carry laws enjoy lower crime rates.[13]
Subsequent to gun control in England:[18] - "from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now [as of 2002] six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people."[19]

1911 – Turkey disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1915 – 1917 they murdered 1.5 million Armenians.
1929 – Russia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1929 – 1953 they murdered 20 million Russians.
1935 – China disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1948 – 1952 they murdered 20 million Chinese.
1938 – Germany disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1939 – 1945 they murdered 16 million Jews.
1956 – Cambodia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1975 – 1977 they murdered 1 million Educated people.
1964 – Guatamala disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1964 – 1981 they murdered 100,000 Mayan Indians.
1970 – Uganda disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1971 – 1979 they murdered 300,000 Christians.
It isn't a firearms statistic that liberal progressives and gun banners like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein will want to hear but it's true nonetheless: According to the most recent statistics, the more guns that have been sold in the Golden State, the fewer gun deaths and injuries there have been.
________________________________________
The foremost expert on the subject, economist John Lott, whose book, More Guns, Less Crime, concluded, "[a]llowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crimes, and the reductions coincide very closely with the number of concealed-handgun permits issued."

He writes that the result of his research "clearly imply that nondiscretionary [concealed carry] laws coincide with fewer murders, aggravated assaults, and rapes," and he contends "[w]hen state concealed-handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by about 8 percent, rapes fell by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults fell by 7 percent."

Naysayers have repeatedly tried to refute Lott's work and his conclusions, but the cold, hard facts - the FBI's own statistics - seem to bear out his words: that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, for the purpose of self-defense and to protect others, help keep crime rates lower.
--------------------------------------------------------------

I have yet to meet someone who supports gun control that will discuss it using facts. What I do get from them is an emotional ‘parroting’ of all the inane crap that they have been spoon fed by the leftist media.

This is America, if you don’t like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights move to China, where you can have no gun & 1 kid only.

JW

Sure, the swiss love guns. They also regulate them quite a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

It's so comforting to know that people like James Yeager own guns.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/422856/january-14-2013/stephen-colbert-s-double-barrel-blam-o-rama---piers-morgan---james-yeager?xrs=share_copy

The Onion makes me laugh.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-onions-tips-for-passing-gun-control-legislatio,32103/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=standard-post:headline:default

The purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect the country as a whole, not to protect the individual from criminals or the government. If the nation was committed to its security, it needed a regulated militia, and for this to happen, Americans needed the right to bear arms. The other option would have been a standing army, which the founding fathers were very much against. They'd witnessed military coups in Europe, and Jefferson called them an engine of oppression.

You know I should probably stop here, seeing as you have a John Wayne avatar. That's like arguing against the existence of god with the pope.

Also, I'm a Canadian. When I hear the right to "bear arms", this is what I think of -
http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/185854/still-life.html

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RablPaIREkk[/youtube]

Written in response to my post:
‘The purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect the country as a whole, not to protect the individual from criminals or the government’

The person who wrote that seems to believe that he/she knows the intent of the laws written, and our independence won, better than those involved with the US Declaration of Independence & Constitution, and who helped establish the USA

I put much more credence in what:

George Washington wrote:
-- A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government. -- George Washington, commanding general of the Continental Army and the country's first president.

‘Any who might attempt to abuse them’ seems like a ‘catch all’ statement to me that includes criminals, non criminals, other governments, ….. & ‘include their own government’ – self explanatory!

Thomas Jefferson wrote:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are neither inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1764

Ben Franklin wrote:
Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn't.
-- Ben Franklin

Thomas Paine wrote:
Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
-- Thomas Paine

Patrick Henry wrote:
Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
-- Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.

So, where do you get: ‘‘The purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect the country as a whole, not to protect the individual from criminals or the government’ from? To have a standing militia was ONE of the many reasons for having the right to bear arms – not the only reason. Again, read what our founders wrote and there meaning can’t be any clearer.

Also written in response to my post:
‘You know I should probably stop here, seeing as you have a John Wayne avatar. That's like arguing against the existence of god with the pope’.

So, I guess you don’t like to argue with someone who might not agree with you? I am always open to discussing things even if they are contrary to what I believe. If someone has a different belief from mine I welcome a discussion (not an argument) with the sharing of facts (not emotions and empty statements) to support that belief. If in the end the other person makes a good case and I find my self in error I’ll thank that person for their time and effort in helping me learn!

I’ve posted quotes & facts – are any of them wrong? Do you have statements from the ‘founding fathers’ that are contrary to the ones I posted (if you do please post the full statement and not a portion taking it out of context)? Do you have facts that challenge the ones I posted?

JW