[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Chloé Palmas

Btw Hugh I still have to reply to post number 66 to you but the double post feature makes it look all messy so I'll leave it a couple hours and then hit a message back on that one, soon to you. (Thanks for your patience!)

Fascinating answers from US Gun Owners to the question:

Is there a valid justification for individuals to own assault rifles?

Some of them echo the point you are making i.e.

Free people don’t need valid justifications for owning things. The government needs a valid justification for preventing them from owning things.

The real question though, is there any reason to forbid the person who can afford to buy such a weapon from owning it? I'll take it further, if a person has the kind of disposable income that enables him to purchase military grade weapons, can congress or anyone else prevent him from buying or making them?

Why do you need a justification from someone who chooses to exercise a Constitutionally protected right ? My answer to you is " I choose to" that is enough justification

Why would someone need a justification to own an object that is legal? If someone wants one and has the means to purchase it they need no justification. If I want to buy a Rolex GMT Master II for $8,500 why would I need to justify it to you or anyone else? Yes I could buy a Timex for $29.00 that tells time but that’s not the watch I want.

Fascinating ... but what these people and I suggest you also, Chloé, are missing is that these people already have a line drawn in the sand that precludes them from buying certain gun types.

As you pointed out, you cannot buy or own a fully automatic weapon. People seem to accept it and the "militia" are not building barricades in the street to protest?

So we have the concept of a line over which you must not step. There is a boundary, it exists. All that is suggested is that the boundary is adjusted in light of gun evolution and the uses of said guns in mass killings.

If you apply the logic of the arguments made in this article to their logical conclusion then all guns should be legally available since, as one of them puts it:

Ummm… how about the FACT that owning the most effective firearm you possibly can is a moral obligation?

Our founders realized that, in the end, all that really mattered was that the new citizens of the new country must be able (if, and almost certainly, when) to take control of the country should our government turn out like any previous governments—

That is only possible if the citizen is as well-armed as the soldier—hence you can not be a good citizen without making yourself available/useful to the ‘militia’ if that event were to occur…

Incidently, the huge number of privately held semi-autos and scoped/hunting rifles in this country renders it essentially impossible to invade—another excellent reason to assume your place in the protection of America by owning very serious guns…

Do your job—it’s part of being a correct American.

This is the sort of parity that the founders had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. Those who spout the sophistry that the founders couldn’t have anticipated modern weapons entirely miss the point: The armed body of the public was supposed to have weapons on par with the military.

The founders trusted their neighbors with weapons more than they trusted professional soldiers. The unruliness of the militia was its strength. Where professional soldiers were ultimately loyal to their chain of command, the founders believed that the militia (the armed body of the public) would always be loyal to the people of the United States, because they are the people of the United States.

That’s the Constitutional justification for owning assault rifles (and yes, I realize that semiautos are not really assault rifles).

It seems to me that you accept lines in the sand and then a consensus can be sought on where this is drawn or you accept the inexorable conclusion of the 2nd Amendment and accept that citizens should have the right to own any weapon that is available to the Military.

The assertion that:

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.

only has meaning if said militia is capable of parity, in military terms, with the Armed forces of the Government it is there to insure against.

To do this, it needs to own and deploy commensurate levels of weaponry which is clearly ridiculous so, in my opinion, justifying the need to bear arms capable of more than reasonable levels of self defensive capability is an historical anachronism.

The Prosecution rests ..