Why the fervor over the 2nd ammendment but not the 1st?

That IS the study I referred to. From its conclusion "
Our estimates that at least 50% of male and female wealthholders owned guns in 1774 colonial America are the first carefully weighted national probate-based estimates for gun ownership in eighteenth-century America."

and its sample sizes were small, and it's only looking at probate records for "wealthholders".

 

Again these cases should be (and hopefully are being) taken to court. Arming both sides isn't the answer to this.

 

If the police were doing their job, there would be no problem. How long should one expect to be beaten before one is allowed self defense? From this point of view, if Antifa knew the conservatives were armed, they would be well kept at bay. I deplore the idea of violence, but simple cost benefit suggests to me that self defense would save effort, time, and money.

 

Here ya go @Seepalaces I think this is the video you are referring to?

 

Thank you! I was actually going to post a link talking about the 2017 Berkeley free speech events. I truly think most on the left do not understand how horrible these actions were because they were ignored by mainstream media. “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams

 

I'm still not convinced that this guy isn't OdinTheDO, of course he is more chatty and he did come back.

 

This is the beauty of free speech: freedom is contagious. Open minded people will always land on the idea of smaller government and individual rights.

 

Don't know if second amendment is good or bad, do know that for some reason at the present time, 1900 to 2020, a lot of bad things have happened and a couple hundred million people have been killed. At present time some of the failed states, Mexico, Guatemala, most of the north African coast, much of central Africa, a lot of the middle east, etc are all not safe places to live and rather than improve their standard of living, each tribe, religion, ideological group, destroys the country to prevent its opponents from benefiting. I personally do not trust the courts, Andrew Jackson and the Indian removal proved that they only work if their decision is enforced by the other branches of the government. In addition many judges over time have made decisions based on their opinion of the law and they are selected by those in power, not by any real attempt to continue our system. As a child growing up I spent quite a bit of time with my distant cousins on my grand dads farm. By then they were allowed to leave the reservation without a written pass. I find it interesting and somewhat ignored that at the same time the blacks were freed, the native Americans were placed on reservations and could be imprisoned or killed for leaving them. I have several friends that grew up in the Japanese camps during WW2. In my humble opinion, based on what I have seen during the Vietnam war protests, the destruction of Detroit, Lansing, Flint, etc with the exit of the jobs and the family breakdown and chaos the followed, I don't really wish to do anything major to tinker with a system that has worked in the past. I have little hope in our nation again becoming a rational society, most of what I see in the media is trying to divide us into ever smaller groups based on race, ethnic group, religion, income, poverty, economic systems, and so on and every political and racial group is grabbing all the power and loot they can. The left and the right both have visions of taking control and bringing in a new order. Every system that they advocate has failed in the past and I don't think that the answer that we just didn't do enough of it will work. Pol Pet and Mao's great leaps forward were well thought out and total failures that killed millions. Here in New Hampshire we are constantly bombarded with black heritage, and while it is interesting, in actuality the number were so small, less than 1 %, that for the most part they were part of the general population and their successes and failures were lumped into the mass.

In short, don't really know how we have kept this system going as long as we have and hate to start "improving it" by changing the checks and balances that seem to have worked. Losing a lot of things due to technology, facial reading, license plate readers and toll transponders, cameras every where, cell phone location tracking, etc. While I hear a lot of new theories, it is usually the old wine in a new bottle, and things don't look good. The latest from Richmond. Western Rifle Shooters Association

 

I don't think it was a small factor. First off a lot of the civilian colonial forces were armed with rifled weapons that were much much more accurate. The accuracy requirement for a brown bess British musket was being able to hit a 6 foot square at 200 yards. Many civilian colonial marksmen with their personal rifled weapons could hit a man in the head at that range, and in the torso without hardly even trying. 3 to 4 men could stand side by side to fill a 6 foot square, but most likely if in marching ranks only 2, so a single shot with a brown bess had a 50% hit ratio at best. British troops mostly marched and fought in ranks. Colonial civilian fighters sniped from cover and concealment often.

My point is Civilian Colonial fighters were often using their personal weapons and were very good with them. Many of the British forces were conscripts poorly trained and from the cities. I think the civilian guns were a very great important factor.

 

Yes and I covered that as well. It worked as they both had the same weapons.

 

Just as an example (you brought it up) outlawing semi-automatic weapons would not be outlawing all weapons. If you are hunting a single show rile works fine. If protecting yourself its hard to imagine that if if a 5-6 shot revolve isn't enough that a semiautomatic would be any better.

 

Even if that is true (and it could be), it is not the case today. and no one has replied to the question of "at what point would you take up arms against the government"?

 

So relative to your comment in Japanese internment (certainly a very dark stain on our history) do you think things would have turned out better if they had taken up arms against the police?

 

But you don't have the same weapons anymore. and again at what point would you take up arms against the government?

 

Again your choice and that's fine. But its very different from the choice the vast majority of Americans have made.

 

Right, which would have been a much worse outcome (not that actual outcome was good, but it could have been worse).