The American 2nd Amendment is an outdated piece of sh**

DT, Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, I found your rebuttal flowing with rhetoric and opinion, but short on evidence and substantiation. I don’t feel like you effectively countered - or even tried to counter - most of my arguments from Round 2. As such, I don’t feel the need to specifically rebut any of your assertions. What I will do is try to re-word my case using some context from your most recent post. To start, allow me to reiterate that I believe the First Amendment is more critically important than the 2nd. In that I agree with you. However, I fail to see how that pertains to whether the 2nd amendment should exist. Yes, talking is better. So what? Our First Amendment is not guaranteed by anything other than a piece of paper. Like the Second Amendment, it can ripped up, overturned, burned, or made irrelevant by circumvention. Guns to protect Liberty You again proclaim the value of Free Speech and international aid, however you offered to rebuttal to the fact the the U.S. is the world’s dominant economic and military power. No one will come to our aid. Do you know why no one came to save the 40 million unarmed people who were killed in the Soviet Union and Communist China? Because they were too big to be easily bullied by international outrage. Modern Military 101, Citizenry dwarfs Military You belittle the idea that civilians can assists in the defense of a nation, yet offer nothing more than bluster to support your view. There are 1.5 millions enlisted U.S. military personnel [7]. Total U.S. population is estimated around 310 million [8]. As of 2007, the ratio of guns: citizens was almost 1:1 [9]. The military is estimated to have over 3 million guns [10]. Point being, citizen guns outnumber military guns 10:1. Whether in defense of the nation as an assistance to the military, or in defense of liberty in opposition to the military. Please offer some evidence to refute these numbers or more compelling logic than the idea that nuclear and bio-chemical warfare render guns irrelevant. They don’t. A ruling government needs living citizens to have a nation. A foreign invader still needs to physically secure territory to have it “won.” Our chronic trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan - despite our “Military 101” dominance - provide plenty of evidence that. As with sports, wars aren’t won on paper. Self-defense You offer no statistical evidence that guns are directly correlated with violence. I have presented from the Harvard Law Journal that says gun possession was inversely correlated to murder [1]: in other words, more guns per capita equated to lower murder rates during the study period. Please make a case utilizing something more than opinion. You also acknowledged that long-range protection is a valid use in some states. Defense against Tyranny This is the most compelling reason to me. You quote John Locke, “for liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.” Allow me to suggest a larger context for Locke’s thoughts. In addition to being a peace-loving and exceedingly rational man, Locke recognized that peace required both civilian and government humility. He was aware that wealth inequality was a recipe for tyranny: “Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.” And most importantly, he recognized that “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” [3] He believed that when government forsook its responsibility to rule with restraint, when it veered into oppression, it was the right - even the obligation - of citizens to revolt. From Wikipedia [4]: “The concept of the right of revolution was also taken up by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government as part of his social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens, to replace the government with one that served the interests of citizens. In some cases, Locke deemed revolution an obligation. The right of revolution thus essentially acted as a safeguard against tyranny.” Here I suppose I must rehash the evidence that the U.S. government is already engaged in political repression (Islamic fundamentalism) and in danger of embracing broader oppression. You seem to be under the impression that the First Amendment is iron-clad, a right and option that will always be available. I believe history says otherwise. As Hebert Hoover said, “It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.” We see it now in Russia. It is not a new story in the history of the world. Under Germany’s Weimer Republic (1918-1933) “Censorship was strictly forbidden.” In 1933, the Nazi party was elected into power. Censorship started under the “Minister of Propaganda”, for the good of the country, and the rest is history [12]. Please provide a compelling and evidence-based argument for how Free Speech is guaranteed to remain safe-guarded in the United States. Again, to reiterate, two centuries of past success is just that: past. All that matters from here is the future. There are reasons to be concerned about the American future. I believe we are seeing the Bill Rights eaten away already as the First and Fourth amendments are well under attack. In Round 2, I provided a long list of ways in which the U.S. government has started down the path toward political oppression. I have also shown evidence of increasing wealth disparity [5], its destructive influence on the political system (0.4% of the population accounts for 65% of the political contributions!!! [6]) and quoted from more reputable sources than myself on the catastrophic societal risks associated with wealth disparity. To repeat Justice Brandeis, since I think he said is as well as anyone, “we can have democracy in this country, or can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” I have explained why wealth disparity leads to political corruption and provided evidence that the U.S. government has acted in both violently oppressive [13] and illegal ways [14]. And just for good measure, the current administration has asserted that it can kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil too [15]. It seems to me the right to bear arms is a very sensible one to keep around at this point in U.S. history. Please, DT, either refute the evidence or both an argument with more cogency and less sass. Preferably both. [1]: http://www.law.harvard.edu... [2]: http://www.brainyquote.com... [3]: http://www.brainyquote.com... [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org... [5]:::http://www.washingtonpost.com... [6]: http://www.opensecrets.org... [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org... [8]: http://www.factmonster.com... [9]: http://en.wikipedia.org... [10]: http://www.gunpolicy.org... [11]: http://en.wikiquote.org... [12]: http://en.wikipedia.org... [13]: http://www.motherjones.com... [14}: http://blogs.wsj.com... [15]: http://antiwar.com...