[Info-vax] Nice printers for OpenVMS?

[Fritz Wuehler]

Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl> wrote:

> JF Mezei wrote:
> > In a proper democracy, I do not understand why citizens should have the
> > right to bear arms and essentially riot with machine guns against their
> > own elected government.
> >
> > Such debate cannot be held in the USA due to the NRA lobby.
> >
> > As was explained to me, the original intent of the right to bear arms
> > was to allow citizens to defend themselves against either their won
> > government or invading forces from Britain (this being the 100th
> > anniversary of the war of 1812, it should be repeated that there have
> > been wars between canada and USA).

Those mostly had to do with inferior American beer (Canada wins, although
the situation has improved significantly since then) and superior American
everything else (Canada loses bigtime).

> > To the rest of the world, that amendment in the USA constitution is an
> > anachronism and people are puzzled as to why the USA citizens are so
> > adament to leave that in when at the end of the day, all it does is
> > allow civilians to own guns for "recreational" purposes and has nothing
> > to do with the original intents of the constitution. (especially when
> > "recreational" includes turning video games into reality and going on a
> > shooting spree in some public place).

That's a little stupid. No moral, law abiding person wants to kill anyone or
break any laws. It's exactly because there are too many rotten apples
(including governments) that such a provision was necessary. And you need to
understand what the Constitution is, which is unique in human history. It is
not a document about what the people can do, it's "chains around government"
according to Thomas Jefferson. It is based on the understanding and written
to declare that The People, individually and collectively, are preeminent
over the government and that the government is only there to carry out their
will, and not the other way around as it is in the rest of "civilization".
Since governments have killed more people and done more evil than all the
private citizens multiplied by each other, it was a damn good idea.

For a little eye opening background, try reading the Federalist Papers and
the Record of the Constitution Debates and you will attain a full
understanding of just how great the people that drafted these documents
were, what statesmanship was like when it still meant something, and how
educated they were in human nature and human history. If "the rest of the
world" would understand the high level of scholarship and integrity posessed
by the people who wrote the Declaration and the Constutition, they would see
just how wrong they are to think they're anachronistic. Quite the opposite,
they were longsighted in the extreme.

Anyway your myth was recently dispelled by SCOTA, they actually ruled the
Constitution means what it says, specifically, RKBA *is* the right of
individual citizens to own arms for militia (non-recreational) purposes. It
significantly weakened state laws that had usurped that power.

> Sorry to have to say this, but sometimes I get the impression that half 
> the US population mentally is still living in the mid 19th century.

If only that were true.