GunSense: Gun Control Arguments And Why Many Of Them Are Hopelessly Flawed

Please keep in mind that this page is not yet complete and will probably be continually under construction. The few topics left to cover involve a higher investment of time for research and citing than I currently have. I hope to get them finished eventually, if I ever get around to it.

I won't disagree that some guns are designed to be as lethal as they can. The reason, of course, is because there are many people who rely on that basic effectiveness to protect their lives from those who would do them harm. The fact that it can kill is what makes it so necessary for self-defense (or hunting). In this country, at least (for now), we have the right to use deadly force in protection of our life or the lives of others. Research and simple logic tell us that the more likely a weapon is to kill, the more likely it is to stop a violent attack. Maybe someday an advance in technology will provide us with something that's just effective at self-defense without the same degree of lethality. Unfortunately, that day is not here.

Handguns are designed to kill
This was a bizarre position first expressed to me by a co-worker after telling me he owned a shotgun for home defense. "But I don't own a handgun," he said. "Handguns are designed to kill." I was, and still am, flabbergasted by this statement. Of the three most basic types of firearm (the handgun, rifle, and shotgun), the handgun is simply the least lethal of the bunch! The shotgun is the most effective of the three varieties at short range; the rifle at any distance where its length is not a liability. Here is a man who kept a shotgun for protection, but condemned the less lethal handgun for its killing power?

A handgun can be found for less money than a shotgun, thereby making it more appealing for self-defense than a shotgun to some people. It is easier to store, as a locked container for a shotgun can be quite expensive, not to mention very obvious. In areas with concealed carry laws, the handgun allows a person the right to self-defense outside of the home. There are some who state that the handgun is useless for self-defense, desipte all of the statistical evidence to the contrary. And yet, they don't seem bothered that we arm our police officers with weapons that are "useless for self-defense" and are "designed to kill"? Is their job to protect and serve or to assassinate? To single out handguns for scorn and restriction on this basis is patently absurd.

The only purpose of guns is to kill
This statement is only slightly different from the first argument I present, but the change in its meaning is anything but subtle. At the time of this document's writing, I own five guns. I've used them all quite a bit, and yet I have never injured, nevermind killed, another living creature with them. Obviously, then, either I'm using them "improperly", or this argument is completely ridiculous and without merit. I think anyone who has ever used a gun to punch little holes in a piece of paper or has a shred of common sense will agree with the latter. Of the some 100,000 to 2.5 million estimated defensive gun uses (a firearm used in self-defense) each year, approximately 98% of them don't even involve firing a shot. Such an incredible factor in preventing crimes from occurring, and yet so many of these guns didn't even fire, let alone kill someone.

Uzis, AK-47's and assault rifles aren't needed to hunt
There are two things plainly wrong with this popular saying among gun control advocates. First is that the current arguments over gun control have anything to do with Uzis or assault rifles. You see, they don't. The entire purpose of this statement is to muddle the issue with those individuals whose knowledge of firearms is limited. "Uzi", "AK-47", and "assault rifle" are popular buzzwords in the media, so people are constantly exposed to them, even if they don't know what they are. So we have people who support further gun ownership restrictions without realizing that what they support isn't what they were told it would be.

An Uzi is an Israeli made submachinegun available in a variety of sizes and calibers. As all submachineguns, it is capable of firing on full-automatic mode. Under U.S. law (USC 26 Section 5845), this classifies it as a machinegun. Likewise, an assault rifle (such as the Soviet-designed AK-47) is also capable of firing more than one bullet with a single pull of the trigger. It, too, is classified as a machinegun. Since these things mentioned are all machineguns (automatic weapon), I will cover them in my next subject below. Now, if you are referring to semiautomatic-only versions of these guns, continue further down to the section on that topic.

The second problem with the above saying is that it implies that the only reason to own a gun is to hunt. This is quite common for anti-gun organizations to do, as their intent is to indoctrinate the American public into thinking "gun equals hunting". This completely ignores the right to self-defense, as well as other issues I address below in the category of "The Second Amendment".

We need to ban automatic weapons
Statements like this just go to show how uninformed many members of the public really are. They get their information from dubious anti-gun sources or an unreliable media, and argue to enact laws that already exist.

Every automatic weapon is classified by the federal government as a "machinegun". In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act (NFA) which states every person (a class III dealer) who wants to own an automatic weapon must be registered and approved by the U.S. Treasury (BATF), with the exception of military and law enforcement agencies. In addition, in 1986, a law passed outlawing the further manufacture or import of machineguns (with the exception of military and law enforcement agencies).

Since the passing of this law, no legally owned machinegun has been used in a crime. Class III dealers are generally rare and most states have their own restrictions on ownership or transfer of class III weapons. Since any fully-automatic weapons used in crime are illegal in nature (smuggled in, stolen from police/military, or illegally modified), banning those weapons has already been accomplished.

Semiautomatic weapons aren't needed to hunt
And shoes aren't needed for walking. Technically, guns aren't even needed for hunting at all, if you consider bows and arrows, blowdarts, and spears. I could point out that there are many common, widely-accepted semiautomatic hunting rifles available, but that would be conceding that the only purpose of a gun is to hunt. It is not. Hunting is not even the only type of sport shooting, as marksmanship competitions are more popular than ever. Olympic shooters use semiautomatic handguns in several events.

Guns are weapons of mass destruction
This was a strange argument that was presented to me. Obviously anything can be a "weapon of mass destruction", depending on how (badly) you define the term. Unfortunately, there is no definition in my dictionary for this phrase, nor is there any legal definition that I know of (the closest to my knowledge is "destructive device" which includes bombs and guns with bores of over half an inch). In general, though, this term has been used to refer to nuclear weapons and other high-yield explosives, or to chemical or biological agents intended to cause death over a wide area. There's simply no basis at all to put guns into this category when rocket launchers and mines are not even classified as such.

Assault weapons are the guns of choice of criminals
Not according to the BATF they aren't. Their studies conclude that small, less expensive guns are the most commonly traced weapons involved in crime. This, of course, is one of the driving factors behind the push to ban all "Saturday Night Special", a term that has no exact or legal defintion but tends to encompass all small and inexpensive handguns. Unfortunately, these are also the same self-defense weapons most popular among less well-to-do citizens. Therefore a ban on these guns results in disarming the poor population who are most in need of self-defense in the first place. Crime overwhelmingly occurs in poor neighborhoods and the result of Saturday Night Special restrictions is that politicians are leaving those residents at the mercy of criminals.

Non-lethal means should be used in self-defense
A nice concept, and one that I'd wholly embrace if not for the fact that non-lethal means are nowhere near as effective. The martial arts take a great deal of invested time in order to gain proficiency (as compared to firearms) and are often ineffective against many forms of attack. Pepper spray and similar products won't stop the most determined of assailants and are commonly ignored by attackers under the influence of drugs and alcohol. So-called "stun guns" are close-quarters weapons, which means you have to let your attacker within stabbing range in order to use it (usually not a good idea). Tasers are not only hard to find, but you only get one shot. Better hope you don't miss because even if you hit, their performance is unpredictable.

People only own guns for a power trip
No, people own guns for a lot of different reasons, including hunting, competition, and self-defense. People become politicians for a power trip. They just live to tell others what to do.

On the flip side are the crime rates that are allowed to flourish in an unarmed society. Except for murder and rape, violent crime rates are now higher in "gun-free" England, and their homicide rate is slowly closing the gap. England and Australia insisted that their wide-ranging gun bans would make their subjects safer, and yet the opposite seems to be true.

• Fewer guns, more death
• Gun crime spreads 'like a cancer' across Britain
• Britain: A Thieves' Paradise
• Why Britain needs more guns
• This is what happens when governments try to ban guns
• Guns in the U.S. and U.K.
• Britain, Australia top U.S. in violent crime
• Empty-Barrel Gun Policies
• Gun crime rockets to record high

People would not be able to kill so many so quickly without a gun
In Oklahoma City, 168 people were killed by a homemade bomb that also left some 500 other injured. No guns were involved in that terrorist attack. Many gangs are now turning to homemade incedniary devices as opposed to guns because of the cost and criminal penalties of firearms. The Columbine attack was accompanied by a series of amateur explosives, the largest of which, fortunately, was never detonated. These devices cannot be reasonably be legislated, as they are made of common household materials. The worst school attack in U.S. history actually occurred when Andrew Kehoe bombed a school in Bath Michigan back in May, 1927, killing 45 people, mostly children. The majority of well-known serial killers do not use guns to commit their murders. The so-called "railway killer" apparently had no trouble beating, strangling, and axing his victims. Ted Bundy didn't use a gun to kill any of the estimated 36 women he victimized and murdered. The elimination of guns will unfortunately never mean the end to mass murder. All it will do is leave ordinary law-abiding people open and vulnerable to such attacks.

School shootings have become common because of the easy access to firearms
Guns are more restricted now than any time in America's history. Federal laws have consistently made it more and more difficult for people to buy guns over the years since the National Firearms Act of 1934. And yet, these school shootings were basically unheard of in the U.S. before 1997.

If guns did not exist, we would not have any need for self-defense
Men spent thousands of years refining ways to kill each other before the invention of the firearm. The typical steak knife is more than enough to produce deadly results. In Rwanda, mass murders were committed recently by machete-wielding mobs. Over 6,500 people are murdered each year in the United States by methods other than guns. Murder and violence were not created with the invention of the gun.

The number of gun deaths surely outweigh any possible benefit they offer
As stated earlier, there are some 100,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) each year. The lower figure comes from government studies, while independent studies find the number to be higher than 1 million. The crimes averted by the display or use of a firearm range from vandalism, burglary, robbery, assault, and rape all the way up to murder. How many murders were prevented it is nearly impossible to guess. If 20% of all DGUs stopped a murder, that would mean more lives were saved by guns than were taken by them through an act of homicide if you use the low government count of 100,000. At a small 1%, the 2.5 million estimate also exceeds the gun murder rate in number of lives preserved by a good 6000 or more. I don't include gun suicides since I don't consider them to be related to guns at all. If you include accidents, the former numbers more or less even out; the latter count still puts DGUs ahead.

But we can't stop there. Criminals surveyed have stated almost unanimously that they fear armed citizens far more than the police. And why shouldn't they? Citizens kill many more criminals in justified shootings than the police. This makes perfect sense of the studies showing violent crimes (excluding homicide and rape) and robbery are higher in England (now a virtual no-gun nation) than the United States. After passing its recent gun bans, England and Australia suffered sky rocketing crime rates, especially in terms of robbery and home invasions. Why? Criminals knews they no longer had anything to fear from a disarmed public. Police cannot be everywhere at all times and violent thugs use this fact to their advantage.

It is the job of the police to protect us from criminals
Wrong. It is the job of the police to enforce the laws. While that obviously includes preventing crimes when they can, they cannot and will not be able to do so in the majority of cases. Court rulings have stated clearly that the police cannot be held responsible for failing to react in a timely manner. No, the role of the police is to investigate crimes and catch the criminals. Cold comfort to those who suffered through the crime or are lying on an autopsy table, isn't it? Law enforcement officers have a very difficult job, poor budgets, and too little backup. What this means is that while everyone should support the police, no one should expect to rely on them for their own personal safety. Not only are police response times unpredictable, but it is far too easy for a home invader to simply cut your phone lines on the outside of your house, meaning that even if you had the time and opportunity to dial 911, you may not be able to. What it comes down to is "Do you want to put your life and the life of your family in the hands of a stranger?" If your answer is yes, maybe you don't value your life or your family's as much as I do.

People have the "right" to feel safe from gun violence
What does this mean? That you have the authority to tell others how to live their lives until they coincide with what you're comfortable with? There is no "right" to feel safe, because such a right would be impossible to enforce. You have no right to tell your neighbor that he can't use his grill to barbeque because you're irrationally afraid it will tip over and set the neighborhood on fire. You have no right to prevent others from driving just because you fear that they will hit your car and injure you (even if the 40,000 death toll from automobile accidents makes such a fear reasonable). Life is a series of risks and whether or not you feel "safe" is entirely up to the individual. People suffering from paranoia have an illogical fear of the most innocuous things. Do they have the "right" to eliminate them in order to preserve their own mental well-being? Where do rational fear end and paranoia begin? Does a racist or homophobe have the "right" to feel safe from blacks or homosexuals?

It'd be nice if we could all feel safe. However, your fear of my gun is at direct odds with my concern of criminal violence. Alleving your fear interferes with my life. Mine has no bearing on yours at all (as long as you are not a criminal intent on causing me physical harm). Over 99% of guns are never used in a criminal fashion. Whose fears are irrational?

There is a loophole in the (now expired) assault weapons ban
Okay, let's see. The definition of loophole that I found is "an ambiguity (especially one in the text of a law or contract) that makes it possible to evade a difficulty or obligation." Missing from this, I believe, is the concept that a "loophole" is an unintentional ambiguity. Even with the definition as it is, however, it is plain that no loophole exists in the assault weapons ban.

Why? Because there is no ambiguity. None at all. One so-called "loophole" is that weapons and magazine described in the law are exempt if manufactured prior to enactment date of the bill. The reason that they are exempt is because the law says that they are. "Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession or transfer of any semiautomatic assault weapon otherwise lawfully possessed on the date of the enactment of this subsection." Folks, that is not a loophole. That is the clear and undeniable intention of this law, to grandfather all pre-existing such firearms. There's nothing ambiguous about the grammar or intent. So much for that "loophole" theory.

The other professed "loophole" is that guns covered by the law either by name or by functionality can be modified and/or sold under a different name to become legal. How is that a loophole? If I create a ban on red cars, is it an underhanded exploitation of a "loophole" for people to start making the same cars in different colors instead? Anti-gun legislators passed a stupid, incompetent law and now complain that it doesn't do what they want. They made it clear which kinds of guns are considered assault weapons and which ones aren't. So why would they complain that manufacturers changed a firearm's configuration so that it was no longer considered an "assault weapon" under the law? The gun is now just like thousands of others that are perfectly legal... where's the loophole? How is this modified version any more evil than the models that are functionally identical but exempt by nature or by name (many particular models are specified in an appendix to the law). They're not. They are not assault weapons because they do not fit the criteria stated in the law. There is no loophole.

What frightens me is that 75% of the firearm models specifically "exempted" from the law by name are not even semiautomatic and therefore cannot be covered by a ban on semiautomatic "assault weapons" by even the furthest stretch of the imagination. Almost as bad is that the few guns that are semiautomatic are models that do not even have the attributes (or do not possess enough of them) that would classify them as assault weapons. The reason this appendix of exempt firearms was included was to appease gun owners that their popular sporting guns would be protected. Instead, we were thrown a phantom bone and most of us don't even seem to realize it. Wow, they excluded a bunch of guns that wouldn't even have been illegal to begin with. How gracious.

There is a loophole in the Brady law in regards to gun shows
If you repeat a lie enough times, people will believe it. There is no gun show loophole in the Brady Law. Why? Because the Brady background checks specifically apply to federally licensed firearms dealers. Private firearms sales and transactions are not covered by the law. Why not? Because the law was never intended to do so. It was written to cover only FFL owners, no one else. It was always known that the law would not required private citizens to impose Brady background checks when selling guns, whether they were doing so at a gun show or in the privacy of their own home. There is plainly nothing ambiguous in the law, therefore there is clearly no loophole.

Now why, you may ask, didn't they force background checks on all transactions, not just those of FFL dealers? Some people have said that it has to do with the right of private citizens to deal with their property as they see fit without government interference. Yet, some states do have gun laws that demand background checks when purchasing from non-licensed sellers, often specifically targetting handguns. While I am not convinced that all private transactions should be exempt from background checks, I am firmly opposed to singling out gun shows and the sales that go on within. If you want to impose checks on all sales, then try to do so. Don't make up some nonsense about a loophole that doesn't exist.

Armor-piercing ammunition should be outlawed
It already is. Apparently someone forgot to tell the politicians and media though. Or maybe the politicians do know... The problem is, while they say "armor-piercing" what they often really mean is "any ammunition capable of defeating a bullet-proof vest". While this sounds like a reasonable concept at first, the problem is that nearly every single rifle caliber cartridge is able to pentrate a so-called "bullet-proof" vest. To ban any kind of ammo that can do that is to ban virtually every kind of rifle used for hunting, target shooting, or self-defense. Which, of course, is the intent of these politicians... it's just a whole lot easier to do it this way than to admit the end goal.

We register cars, and so we should register guns as well
This is a discussion that has gone on a long time and yet has pretty much gotten nowhere. What it boils down to is that cars and guns are very different, but that doesn't prevent this analogy. It must be pointed out though that cars do not have to be registered. Really? Yes, as long as you are not driving it on public roads. As long as you drive only on private property, it doesn't need tags or registration. Obviously this isn't the kind of gun registration scheme being pushed, that you have to be registered in order to use one on public property. But that's how it would be like if we did it like cars.

Since we're discussing registration, let's ask what the purpose is. As the overwhelming majority of guns used in crime are illegal (stolen, black market, crooked dealers, smuggled), how is gun registration going to prevent crime? Janet Reno claims it is for safety reasons, so that in licensing owners we can verify they've taken safety courses. This seems pretty weak in that 20 times more people die in motor vehicle accidents than in gun-related accidents. Clinton doesn't cite safety as his motivator, but crime. So, again, how is gun registration going to lessen crime?

The one thing that it mosts facilitates is a follow-up ban. People who would not willingly admit gun ownership for a ban may very well do so for a comparatively "harmless" gun registration act. Anti-gun activists know very well that a comprehensive ban in the United States is effectively impossible to enforce because the government does not know exactly where the guns are. With only registration implemented first, it is a short, easy step to confiscation. And it is not without precedent. Washington D.C., New York City, and California have all gone down that route.

Using trigger locks should be required by law
What goal is this trying to address? The ever shrinking number of people killed in gun accidents each year? Barely over 1,000, that number hardly justifies the rabid support such laws have garnered. What trigger locks do is compromise the right to self-defense that each and every American is born with. A large number of guns are owned for defense of self and family. Keeping them readily accessible is often vital to the survival of the user. Trigger locks, on the other hand, impose a potentially lethal delay on bringing a gun into use. A member of Handgun Control, Inc (now the "Brady Campaign"), in attempt to prove the quick and easy nature of a gun lock, spent several minutes fumbling with the controls before finally opening it. His defense? "Most people aren't as clumsy as I am." Pity, then, those that are, since by their own actions HCI has shown that their propositions will do great harm to the ability of citizens to defend themselves. Also, consider that the majority of trigger locks should never be used on a loaded firearm. Ever. What this means is that even more time must be spent loading the weapon, subtracting precious moments from the already brief response time a person may have.

Some parents are negligent. Many accidents happen that could have been avoided. But such ridiculous blanket legislation is not the answer, as it will also affect millions of gun-owners who have no children in their homes. Must their right to self-defense be hampered to pass feel-good laws which will do little and cannot be enforced without violating even more of our civil rights?

This concept of market "flooding" by gun manufacturers is rather new, but ridiculous in the extreme. Gun makers no more "flood" the market than toilet paper manufacturers do. You will be able to find plenty of both on a store shelf. Extra unsold guns are not tossed into refuse bins to be picked up by neighborhood gang members. The only way to stop legally purchased guns used in crimes would be to stop all legal purchases completely, which of course is exactly what the anti-gun lobby wants. Unfortunately, legal purchases are not a major source of criminal firearms. Crooked dealers, smuggling from outside the country, and theft from citizens, police, and military are. Instead of whining about illegal guns, maybe the government should do their jobs and actually stop the dealers who sell illegal arms.

Inexpensive "Saturday Night Specials" are inaccurate, and useful only for shooting randomly into a crowd
Strange, then, that these "Saturday Night Specials" are the same weapons used by many police officers and other law enforcement agents as backup guns. I mean, what would a cop need with a gun that is useful "only for shooting randomly into a crowd"? While no one says small, inexpensive guns are accurate, extreme precision is not necessary for the very close ranges that these firearms are reserved for. They are designed to be used as last-resort weapons at short distances, useful because of their small size and equally small price. As so many states now boast concealed carry laws, the necessity of small, cheap guns cannot so easily be dismissed.

Inexpensive "Saturday Night Specials" are poorly made and present a danger to anyone who uses them
Rather than unsuccessfully attempt to paint such guns as the choice of the criminal element, some states are now passing "consumer protection" measures that describe these firearms as deathtraps for their owners. Highly convoluted laws with questionable "requirements" for construction now seek to prevent "cheap" weapons from posing a danger to consumers. When was the last time you heard of someone suffering from a catastophic manufacturer defect in a firearm? I have never heard of any specific instance in my years of firearms study. Considering this, it seems obvious to me that these construction and composition laws have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with keeping people unarmed. Many of these new laws are so complex that manufacturers don't bother distributing to areas so affected. This is exactly the effect those laws are intended to have. Not to preserve the safety of the citizens, but to make it too troublesome for gun owners to do business there.

The most telling aspect of these laws are their common exceptions for law enforcement officers. Here we have guns that misleading anti-gun politicians are trying to label as "defective" and dangerous, and yet they say that police officers don't need to worry about these safety regulations. How can it be that guns can be considered good enough for people responsible for keeping the peace, but too poorly made for anyone else to use? Some of the supporters for these laws don't even try to deny their ultimate purpose. They publicly admit that their true purpose is to ban guns, one model at a time. At least they're honest about it.

Expensive custom guns are too accurate, so they can kill too effectively
This further demonstrates the philosophy of gun grabbers -- since they've been unsuccessful in their attempts to ban all guns, they try to demonize them one at a time, imposing a ban step by step. At the same time they complain about cheap "Saturday Night Specials", they accuse expensive custome guns of shooting too accurately, making them assassination weapons. The problem is that such weapons are among the least used in crime. They are sporting arms, plain and simple. You cannot deny the need for precision in hunting and competition shooting. Indeed, these are some of the very firearms used in Olympic matches every four year. To say that a weapon needs to be inaccurate is to defeat its very purpose.

The gun lobby is simply protecting their money-making industry
I don't own a gun shop. I don't work in a gun shop. I own no stock in Smith & Wesson, Ruger, or any other gun manufacturer. I don't work for one either. And yet, I pay money to support gun rights. I write my congressmen and senators. The gun lobby is made up of millions of other people like myself. Without us, there is no gun lobby. Our goal is to defend our liberty and preserve the rights we will be passing on to our children. Statements like the one above are concocted in order to drive a wedge between gun owners and policitical groups like the NRA by suggesting they don't represent us. It's plainly not true.

Gun manufacturers can incorporate personalizing devices into their weapons so that only authorized people can use it, but they don't
And car companies can build personal flying machines that would replace cars. Yet they don't. Why? Because they're hideously expensive, untested, and unreliable. When someone suggests to you that so-called "smart guns" should be mandatory, argue that you'll only consider the idea when all law enforcement officers have already implemented such devices. After all, a large number of police killed by firearms are murdered with their own weapons. There aren't too many officers on the street using "smart" gun technology, because like me, they aren't willing to risk their lives on untested technology that may fail when they need it most. In fact, every instance of a law mandating "smart guns" in the United States has explicitly exempted police officers from its requirements. This is because every single police organization in the U.S. has opposed mandating "smart gun" technology for officer duty weapons. Hey, if the cops don't trust it, why should we?

Somewhat shorter answer: The Embarrassing Second Amendment

Even shorter answer: Language drift and unfamiliar sentence structure have caused quite a bit of confusion when it comes to reading the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The amendment itself is quite short: "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." A lot of people simply see the word "State" and their brains immediately shut down; if it has the word state, then clearly it only applies to the states, right? Well, no.

A return to elementary school English class is apparently necessary to get to the bottom of this great mystery! Every sentence should have a subject and verb. In this case, we only have two possible choices: "being" or "be". Unfortunately, "being" is not used as a verb here. The phrase "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State", with its obsolete comma, is an adverbial phrase that is there to provide reasoning (why). It cannot stand alone. Read it by itself; it is not a complete sentence. Because it is an adverbial phrase, the reader is left hanging, waiting for the rest. On the other hand, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" (also with an archaic comma) has a clear subject and verb. The subject is "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms". The verb is "be", but more accurately, the entire verb phrase is "shall not be infringed". It's passive voice (English teachers cringe!), but its meaning is unavoidable.

The NRA gets flak for focusing on the latter half of the amendment and glossing over the first. There are probably two reasons for this. First, as I've shown, the second half is the meat of the sentence. That's where your subject is, that's where your verb phrase is. The second reason is that the form of the adverbial phrase is not typical in modern grammar, as it does not begin with "because" or "since", and as a result it seems to cause confusion. The phrase would have the same meaning and purpose if it was written "Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State..." It is an explanation of intent and reasoning behind the prohibition that follows. It is, in effect, saying "We, the founding fathers, believe that liberty and security depend on the militia, and because of that..." As such, while the adverbial phrase is important for understanding the founders' intent, it does not set up any kind of prerequisite or qualifier upon the noun or verb in the sentence. The militia is mentioned in the adverbial phrase's explanation of intent, but the right is clearly relegated to "the people" when you get to the setence's subject and verb.

Another source of confusion is the inclusion of the word "State". This is the result of language drift. Because modern Americans view the word "state" to refer to a territory or province within the larger framework of a nation, we can often forget that the original use of the word was to refer to a nation itself. Many of the founders really did consider our states to be sovereign and independent nations, unified under a single federal alliance. Over time, as the relationship between state and federal governments has evolved, so has the meaning of the word. To fully understand this, consider that terms such as "State Department" and "Secretary of State" have nothing to do with individual states. The term in those instances, as in the second amendment, refers to the nation as a whole.

The militia specified in the Second Amendment is the National Guard

The US Supreme Court in US v Miller in 1939 declared that the Second Amendment does not apply to individual citizens

The Second Amendment only refers to muskets and muzzle-loading rifles of the time it was written

Even an armed populace could not hope to withstand the might of the U.S. armed forces if a despotic government came to power

The Second Amendment does not restrict states, counties, or local governments

Just as the First Amendment does not prevent reasonable restrictions on speech (threats, slander, obscenities, shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre), the Second Amendment should not prevent reasonable restrictions on gun ownership
Anyone who's ever argued "you can't shout 'fire!' in a crowded movie theatre" may as well have the words "I am a giant idiot" scrawled across their forehead. If you understand the concept of an anology, you can see why this position makes no sense. First, consider why you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. To do so would create an immediate atmosphere of probable harm to those people inside. Your actions are endangering those around you. This is analogous to using a firearm in a reckless or irresponsible manner such as firing it into the air or haphazardly in a populated area. Both are illegal, neither are supported by any

If you have the right to own a gun, why not a tank, bomber, or nuclear weapon?