Reference/Background reading material
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100512145456AAwD7bs
http://www.constitution.org/mil/mil_act_1792.htm
http://deadguyquotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/milita-act-of-1903-transcribed.pdf
Ok, he is not serious, but the concept is. What if everyone was mandated to own a firearm? Would that be any different than mandating everyone has healthcare insurance? I hate to think what some “liberals”/”progressives” would think of that (Note: My old progressive classmate, well he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, so he can shoot the far right conservatives and religious conservatives when they come over the hill to convert him.)
Heck, it - mandating firearm ownership - could even be justified under the Second Amendment and the various acts of Congress enabling the Militia Clause of the Constitution. Come to think of it, if the 1795 law is still in effect and just supplemented by the 1903 act (which some allege replaced/repealed the earlier law, but I have not found anything to document that contention), then all males 18 to 45 who are U.S. Citizens or desiring to be are REQUIRED to have a military grade weapon, ammunition and a knapsack or backpack. Take that gun control advocates. Note that the requirement applies to the organized as well as the reserve (unorganized) militia under the law. The “organized” militia is explicitly defined as consisting of the federal military Reserves and the state National Guard formations and the reserve militia is everybody else, except for those who have a religious objection.
Ok, I am not advocating that everyone get a weapon courtesy of the federal government, nor am I advocating that everyone run out and get one. I know a lot of people who do not want one and wouldn’t know what to do with one if they had one … that is prescription for an accident waiting to happen. However, in order to be consistent (which I try to be, probably unsuccessfully in some eyes), I do think that every adult does have a right, if not an obligation under this nation’s social contract, to do just that: Go out, get a firearm and learn how to use it.
It will be interesting to see how the gentleman above who made the suggestion (I suspect somewhat tongue-in-cheek) will be responded to by his opponents.
Remember: Guns kill people
(no. actually: People kill people, guns are merely an instrument to that end.)
Oh, and my preference? Well, all things being equal I guess I would take the Glock 9mm or the Beretta M92, but I also would want a Mil-Spec M-1911A1 (,45 Caliber, because that is the pistol I carried during the Gulf War), an M-1903 Springfield (chambered for a Winchester .308 caliber) or possibly another Winchester .309 bolt action weapon (I just like them, and .308 Winchester is the civilian version of the military’s 7.62mm round), Ruger M-14 (chambered for the Remington .223 caliber round – the civilian version of the military’s 5.56mm round) and some solid 12-gauge pump-action shotgun (the preference being an M-97 model, but that is only because I am familiar with it from the Navy days),
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