Stan D asks me a legitimate question.

How do you feel about the Second Amendment?

Let's examine.

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.

Both sound good to me. A state militia (and I don't mean those nutty far-right Christian Identity folks) is a good thing. I think, and I welcome corrections, the National Guard falls into this category. This part of the amendment, to me at least, is a protection from fascism even though fascism didn't even exist in 1789 when this was written. The Founders had some forsight: if a leader goes nuts and takes over, the people at least have the arms to force him, and whatever military force he might have backing him, out.

The second part, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is fair to me. I'm for this. Now, I will never own a gun. I just don't think it's for me. However, I think honest, law-abiding people should have the right to own a gun. I, however, don't believe that if everyone carried a concealed weapon, there'd be no crime. American culture is violent and it always has been, and that's my reasoning for that belief. We aren't Japan, which has no crime but also has no guns. Our culture is based on the individual and not the collective, like Japan, and almost all of Asia, is.

I agree with background checks to an extent. Lunatics and felons should not have guns. Period. Other than that. . . well you get the picture.

Pilots should be armed. I agree with that.

I agree with training programs.

I also agree with the banning of certain machine guns. There's no need for a private citizen to have a weapon of war, unless he's a military man. Then, I can understand if he has an AK-47 in his closet. He needs it to go off to war.

Overall, I'm for the Second Amendment.


an UPDATE:

I think lefties who scream bloody murder about the infringement of civil liberties are being hypocritcal when it comes to second amendment issues. Not all, because there are quite a few on the Left who don't. But some. And it's irksome.