A question of guns

Originally Posted by wstar

Well, I think it's true we have more pro- than anti- gun posters in this thread. But again, that shouldn't be a deciding factor in anything.

And of course, everyone is biased. The idea of "unbiased opinions" is hogwash. There's such a thing as unbiased evidence, but never unbiased interpretation of that evidence.



Well, California is somewhere I've never fired a gun. I don't even take my guns on trips to California, the laws there are too strict. More than half of the weapons I legally own here in TX are flat-out illegal to possess there. I'm really hoping the recent Heller decision by the supreme court will eventually lead these gun-restricted parts of the country to finally slacken their gun laws back down to something reasonable. There are still lots of follow-on and appeals cases to go through in the wake of Heller before it really starts having big effects though.

Prior to the Heller case, while the historical evidence on the meaning of the second ammendment (such as the other writings of its authors, the federalist papers, etc) was pretty clear, there was a lot of debate in this country about the meaning of the second ammendment. The anti-gun lobby was playing semantics games and trying to say that it only applied to the military due to the phrase "well-regulated militia". In the Heller decision, the US Supreme Court finally (for the first time in history) gave a direct answer to that question, and settled the matter legally. The second ammendment does in fact protect individual gun ownership.

More info here: District of Columbia v. Heller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia