Cobb

1. No such "amended language" was needed. Real assault weapons have been regulated to the hilt since the mobster era, and banned outright since the first Bush Administration.

2. There is no RKBA for a "well regulated militia." When in doubt, diagram the sentence. Once clause refers to the necessity of a well regulated militia to the secuirty of a free state. The other refers to the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms.

3. Impossible ideas are dumb ideas, by definition.

4. Disarming the population generally is a really dumb idea, even if it were possible to do so. Guns are used defensively, and successfully, by law-abiding citizens every day.

I really like point three. But I'm not so sure about four. I didn't follow the John R. Lott debate, but I think he got completely destroyed by the blogosphere.

If you mean something different than drawing a bead on would be crooks, I might agree with you. I don't think that happens nearly often enough to be the deterrent people might believe.

This reminds me of the time I got caught in a shootout. I think I'll dig that up...

Some things about Lott - using an assumed name on Internet chat rooms, for example - got destroyed by the blogosphere. Most of his research and Mustard's did not, however, and besides, he's hardly the first or last researcher to look at the gun control issue. Even his detractors, who believe his data does not bear out the "more guns, less crime" maxim, concede that concealed carry has not INCREASED the crime rate; they merely dispute his contention that it has decreased it significantly.

Long before Lott came on the scene, Gary Kleck of U. Florida had already pretty much destroyed any serious arguments that gun control leads to reductions in violent crime. More recently, Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser U. has researched the issue and reached similar conclusions in Canada, Australia and the U.K. Even the notoriously anti-gun Center for Disease Control has concluded that at a minimum, existing research provides no evidence that gun control reduces crime.

In other words, depending on whose studies you choose to believe, gun control is either (1) a complete waste of time and an unnecessary restriction on individual liberty, or (2) much worse than that.

Strangely, as someone who's normally to the left of you, I disagree on this one.

"When the people fear the 'government,' that is tyranny. When the 'government' fears the people, that is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

But you're right, of course.. it really doesn't matter whether the government against which the people need protecting 'allows' guns or not. If needs to happen, it'll happen, and the rulebook is moot.

Someone reminded me of this precedent the other day:

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience... Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." -- The Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945-1946.