Ok, but wouldn tasers or pepper spray be sufficient for protection ? At least there's a lower chance of accidental killings, no collateral damage in the form of stray bullets, and less potential for intentional mass killings.
I'd argue they're both equally useless. Ideally the person who tries to rob doesn't have a gun either, but maybe that's just me.
And that's where your argument falls apart. Criminals, by nature, don't obey the law, and will continue to own/use a gun if it is to their advantage.
Yes you can, pretty much every amendment gets that treatment, yet somehow certain people treat this one as being superior to the others for no good reason whatsoever. It's incredible how many people can constantly ignore that every amendment has its limits.
Except I didn't ignore it. You should read what I wrote instead of going into some canned diatribe about the 2nd amendment. I specifically said we should be in the practice of NOT infringing people's rights if they aren't breaking society's rules, such as hurting others would be.
What is even more funny, is how many of the very people who defend the 2nd amendment to their death
Why is that funny?
Sic semper tyrannis.
How can someone treat the 2nd amendment as holy while at the same time wanting to take away all the other rights from a person just because he did something terrible?
It's simply hypocritical. Either all rights are guaranteed or none, you can't just pick whatever you currently like.
What the hell are you talking about?
Rights are often surrendered when you are guilty of breaking society's rules.
This isn't new.
Apart from that, the 2nd amendment was never ever meant to be what its current defenders claim it to be. It wasn't about being able to carry a gun, and it sure as hell wasn't about being able to use weapons in self-defense.
Actually, it was... specifically self-defense from indians (or other enemies if you extrapolate that reasoning).
Read the Federalist papers.
On the contrary, the version which specifically mentioned self-defense was rejected and replaced with a version that left it out completely. If the founding fathers thought you were supposed to use a gun in such a capacity, they definately wouldn't have removed that sentence from the amendment, but they did.
*definitely
There were exactly two reasons why they wanted to allow the population to be armed:
a) to defend against an attack from a foreign power (e.g. England trying to get its land back), making it necessary to raise militias quickly.
b) to make sure that a central government wouldn't be able to take over the country through the use of a standing army.
What are you basing this limiting definition on?
Hunting? Hello.
This was reduced a short time later to just a), because they decided that the country was indeed better served by having a standing army.
Jesus, are you just completely making this up?
Today's position of the NRA is a joke that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original idea of the 2nd amendment.
Coming up with further reasons than your two is not a joke.
Your limit of 2 reasons is the joke.
"Land of the free", ha, it's the land of the scared, or paranoid, take your pick. No one who has to hide behind a gun out of constant fear over something is free, it's very much the opposite.
This is such a short-sighted thing to say.
So, taking steps to defend yourself and your family in case something goes bad is stupid?
Is it stupid to have some food stores and supplies on hand when you live in a hurricane zone?
Paranoid? Maybe, but that doesn't mean it is incorrect or stupid.
****
Guns are the great equalizer. They are the triumph of the thinking man over the brute.
We're a little jelly....
Those rights can be taken away, and are taken away under shady circumstances, but it's a change from a licensing scheme that's some are more equal than others to a revoking scheme that's some are less equal than others.
