Family Research Center Shooting

[Pinky]

fascinating stuff, but again, it is widely known that gun technology was present at the time, and gun ownership was common for the wealthy.

Wrong.  Not just the wealthy.  Everybody.

So you contend that Slaves, Native Americans, Disloyalists and Blacks were legally allowed to posess guns at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights?

Ugh.  I'll let Royal Governor William Berkeley do my contending.  Again.

The prevalence of arms in colonial America, no less than in England, made the imposition of tyranny a dangerous proposition. In the 17th century, Royal Governor William Berkeley complained it was miserable to attempt to govern "a people where six parts of seaven [sic] at least are [p]oore [sic], [e]ndebted [sic], discontented and armed". [17] Thus it should be of little surprise that at the Revolution's onset, General Gage, in Massachusetts, and Lord Dunmore, in Virginia, first attempted to seize the colonists' gunpowder and arms.

He has failed you.

He failed to mention how many of them had guns, or whose were seized.  So back to the question.

Wrong again.  He says six out of seven.  He also says they're poor, which pretty much throws your "only the wealthy" parse out the window too.  Wrong again.

It certainly does not say that he seized guns that belonged to all the colonists individually.  You can read it for yourself.

This is dangerously close to NotNow levels of dishonesty and prevarication, and I am rethinking whether or not to engage with you.

As I have said Ive made my points, whether or not you are able to discuss them with me any further.

He says that six out of seven at least of the citizens are armed, which disproves your contention that very few people had firearms. 

[Pinky]

This is dangerously close to NotNow levels of dishonesty and prevarication, and I am rethinking whether or not to engage with you.

Gee, I'm all sad.

[Pinky]

fascinating stuff, but again, it is widely known that gun technology was present at the time, and gun ownership was common for the wealthy.

Wrong.  Not just the wealthy.  Everybody.

So you contend that Slaves, Native Americans, Disloyalists and Blacks were legally allowed to posess guns at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights?

Ugh.  I'll let Royal Governor William Berkeley do my contending.  Again.

The prevalence of arms in colonial America, no less than in England, made the imposition of tyranny a dangerous proposition. In the 17th century, Royal Governor William Berkeley complained it was miserable to attempt to govern "a people where six parts of seaven [sic] at least are [p]oore [sic], [e]ndebted [sic], discontented and armed". [17] Thus it should be of little surprise that at the Revolution's onset, General Gage, in Massachusetts, and Lord Dunmore, in Virginia, first attempted to seize the colonists' gunpowder and arms.

He has failed you.

He failed to mention how many of them had guns, or whose were seized.  So back to the question.

Wrong again.  He says six out of seven.  He also says they're poor, which pretty much throws your "only the wealthy" parse out the window too.  Wrong again.

It certainly does not say that he seized guns that belonged to all the colonists individually.  You can read it for yourself.

This is dangerously close to NotNow levels of dishonesty and prevarication, and I am rethinking whether or not to engage with you.

As I have said Ive made my points, whether or not you are able to discuss them with me any further.

He says that six out of seven at least of the citizens are armed, which disproves your contention that very few people had firearms.

omg.....you seriously cannot be this half cocked, can you?

Does it say that six out of seven were armed with guns?  Do you even know the significance of this particular governor or his opinion?  Like what event this refers to?

OMG - You cannot be serious.  Are you suggesting that he was concerned about men who had hunting traps?  Sharpened sticks?  It's a quote from a paper discussing firearms Stephen. 

Furthermore, I'd say that the simple fact that he writes this in the 1700's is significance enough, in that it is a contemporaneous example of how prevalent firearms were at the time.  You can try to discredit historians if you want, but here is history himself speaking. 

And really Stephen, why are you getting all angry and shrill?  We're just kicking around ideas here.  No need to get all sweaty just because I think you're wrong, and oddly, almost pathologically incapable of comprehending that.

[Pinky]

You see, this is the type of dishonest scholarship that so irritates people with historical revisionists.

Governor Berkeley was governor a hundred years before the american revolution, and the Bacon Rebellion was the event that led to the de arming of blacks, slaves, heretics (like the levelers) and native americans.

For your edification:
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2011/04/01/howard-zinn-chapter-3-persons-of-a-mean-and-vile-condition/

IN 1676, SEVENTY YEARS AFTER VIRGINIA WAS FOUNDED, a hundred years before it supplied leadership for the American Revolution, that colony faced a rebellion of white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and servants, a rebellion so threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown, and England decided to send a thousand soldiers across the Atlantic, hoping to maintain order among forty thousand colonists. This was Bacon’s Rebellion. After the uprising was suppressed, its leader, Nathaniel Bacon, dead, and his associates hanged, Bacon was described in a Royal Commission report:

He was said to be about four or five and thirty years of age, indifferent tall but slender, black-hair’d and of an ominous, pensive, melancholly Aspect, of a pestilent and prevalent Logical discourse tending to atheisme… . He seduced the Vulgar and most ignorant people to believe (two thirds of each county being of that Sort) Soe that their whole hearts and hopes were set now upon Bacon. Next he charges the Governour as negligent and wicked, treacherous and incapable, the Lawes and Taxes as unjust and oppressive and cryes up absolute necessity of redress. Thus Bacon encouraged the Tumult and as the unquiet crowd follow and adhere to him, he listeth them as they come in upon a large paper, writing their name circular wise, that their Ringleaders might not be found out. Having connur’d them into this circle, given them Brandy to wind up the charme, and enjoyned them by an oath to stick fast together and to him and the oath being administered, he went and infected New Kent County ripe for Rebellion.

Bacon’s Rebellion began with conflict over how to deal with the Indians, who were close by, on the western frontier, constantly threatening. Whites who had been ignored when huge land grants around Jamestown were given away had gone west to find land, and there they encountered Indians. Were those frontier Virginians resentful that the politicos and landed aristocrats who controlled the colony’s government in Jamestown first pushed them westward into Indian territory, and then seemed indecisive in fighting the Indians? That might explain the character of their rebellion, not easily classifiable as either antiaristocrat or anti-Indian, because it was both.

Nathaniel Bacon. He was not a member of the "rabble".

And the governor, William Berkeley, and his Jamestown crowd-were they more conciliatory to the Indians (they wooed certain of them as spies and allies) now that they had monopolized the land in the East, could use frontier whites as a buffer, and needed peace? The desperation of the government in suppressing the rebellion seemed to have a double motive: developing an Indian policy which would divide Indians in order to control them (in New England at this very time, Massasoit’s son Metacom was threatening to unite Indian tribes, and had done frightening damage to Puritan settlements in “King Philip’s War”); and teaching the poor whites of Virginia that rebellion did not pay-by a show of superior force, by calling for troops from England itself, by mass hanging.

Violence had escalated on the frontier before the rebellion. Some Doeg Indians took a few hogs to redress a debt, and whites, retrieving the hogs, murdered two Indians. The Doegs then sent out a war party to kill a white herdsman, after which a white militia company killed twenty-four Indians. This led to a series of Indian raids, with the Indians, outnumbered, turning to guerrilla warfare. The House of Burgesses in Jamestown declared war on the Indians, but proposed to exempt those Indians who cooperated. This seemed to anger the frontiers people, who wanted total war but also resented the high taxes assessed to pay for the war.

Times were hard in 1676. “There was genuine distress, genuine poverty…. All contemporary sources speak of the great mass of people as living in severe economic straits,” writes Wilcomb Washburn, who, using British colonial records, has done an exhaustive study of Bacon’s Rebellion. It was a dry summer, ruining the corn crop, which was needed for food, and the tobacco crop, needed for export. Governor Berkeley, in his seventies, tired of holding office, wrote wearily about his situation: “How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed.”

His phrase “six parts of seaven” suggests the existence of an upper class not so impoverished. In fact, there was such a class already developed in Virginia. Bacon himself came from this class, had a good bit of land, and was probably more enthusiastic about killing Indians than about redressing the grievances of the poor. But he became a symbol of mass resentment against the Virginia establishment, and was elected in the spring of 1676 to the House of Burgesses. When he insisted on organizing armed detachments to fight the Indians, outside official control, Berkeley proclaimed him a rebel and had him captured, whereupon two thousand Virginians marched into Jamestown to support him. Berkeley let Bacon go, in return for an apology, but Bacon went off, gathered his militia, and began raiding the Indians.

Bacon’s “Declaration of the People” of July 1676 shows a mixture of populist resentment against the rich and frontier hatred of the Indians. It indicted the Berkeley administration for unjust taxes, for putting favorites in high positions, for monopolizing the beaver trade, and for not protecting the western formers from the Indians. Then Bacon went out to attack the friendly Pamunkey Indians, killing eight, taking others prisoner, plundering their possessions.

There is evidence that the rank and file of both Bacon’s rebel army and Berkeley’s official army were not as enthusiastic as their leaders. There were mass desertions on both sides, according to Washburn. In the fall, Bacon, aged twenty-nine, fell sick and died, because of, as a contemporary put it, “swarmes of Vermyn that bred in his body.” A minister, apparently not a sympathizer, wrote this epitaph:

Bacon is Dead I am sorry at my heart,

That lice and flux should take the hangmans part.

The rebellion didn’t last long after that. A ship armed with thirty guns, cruising the York River, became the base for securing order, and its captain, Thomas Grantham, used force and deception to disarm the last rebel forces. Coming upon the chief garrison of the rebellion, he found four hundred armed Englishmen and Negroes, a mixture of free men, servants, and slaves. He promised to pardon everyone, to give freedom to slaves and servants, whereupon they surrendered their arms and dispersed, except for eighty Negroes and twenty English who insisted on keeping their arms. Grantham promised to take them to a garrison down the river, but when they got into the boat, he trained his big guns on them, disarmed them, and eventually delivered the slaves and servants to their masters. The remaining garrisons were overcome one by one. Twenty-three rebel leaders were hanged.

It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. The Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the whole colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists’ tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the King. Berkeley himself, returning to England years earlier to protest the English Navigation Acts, which gave English merchants a monopoly of the colonial trade, had said:

… we cannot but resent, that forty thousand people should be impoverish’d to enrich little more than forty Merchants, who being the only buyers of our Tobacco, give us what they please for it, and after it is here, sell it how they please; and indeed have forty thousand servants in us at cheaper rates, than any other men have slaves….

From the testimony of the governor himself, the rebellion against him had the overwhelming support of the Virginia population. A member of his Council reported that the defection was “almost general” and laid it to “the Lewd dispositions of some Persons of desperate Fortunes” who had “the Vaine hopes of takeing the Countrey wholley out of his Majesty’s handes into their owne.” Another member of the Governor’s Council, Richard Lee, noted that Bacon’s Rebellion had started over Indian policy. But the “zealous inclination of the multitude” to support Bacon was due, he said, to “hopes of levelling.”

“Levelling” meant equalizing the wealth. Levelling was to be behind countless actions of poor whites against the rich in all the English colonies, in the century and a half before the Revolution.

Right Stephen - it proves MY contention that firearms were common and prevalent at the time of the writing of the Bill Of Rights, and indeed had been so for a very long time prior to that.  By your own accounting, some hundred years prior.

Sheesh.  And I'm the revisionist??

[Pinky]

Look Skip, we're clearly not going to agree on this, more that anything else because I still have absolutely no idea what your position on firearms being used for self-defense are, beyond "Everyone else is wrong".  Oh, and that you don't seem to like NotNow very much.  But really, as far as what you actually believe, or the position you're advocating, it's a total mystery to me.  All I'm seeing from you are constant, frequently nasty efforts to disprove and disqualify anything said by anyone else.

While I'm sure that endeavor is wholly, even pathologically satisfying to you, it's grown tiresome to me.  And so I think I'm just gonna leave this one in the "agree to disagree" pile.  You don't think firearms are cool?  Don't own them.  I fully support you not being anywhere near firearms frankly.  I however take great comfort in having firearms, and indeed, having them at hand most of the time.  And fortunately for me, I'm allowed to do so, because a whole lot of people read the constitution differently than you seem to. 

I bid you peace.

[NotNow]

Heller..........

[Pinky]

By the way, welcome to the forums Pinky.

Its a pleasure to have you aboard!

Good debate.

"That's not an argument; thats just contradiction!"

"No it's not!"

- Monty Python

[BridgeTroll]

By the way, welcome to the forums Pinky.

Its a pleasure to have you aboard!

Good debate.

"That's not an argument; thats just contradiction!"

"No it's not!"

- Monty Python

I'm with you Pinky.  I was duped again into thinking an honest debate about a subject could be had with Stephen.  Turns out he along with a few other revisionists are able to turn historical fact into fiction.  This of course required to get to the end game.  Discredit what the constitution says... and very clearly means... in virtually any argument... so legislation usurping the constitution can be passed.  It is paramount for stephen to show that "arms" means crossbows(rare), traps(just weird), and swords or sabres(slightly less rare than crossbows).  You are now just being stubborn Stephen.  This is a common tactic... we have just wasted six(6) pages on the meaning or arms in the second amendment... Really?

Dedicated to Pinky...

http://www.youtube.com/v/kQFKtI6gn9Y

[ChriswUfGator]

Then why can't I have a personal nuclear bomb? It's an arm.

His point is that it's not a catch-all, we can (and do) regulate some arms and allow others.

Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

[BridgeTroll]

Then why can't I have a personal nuclear bomb? It's an arm.

His point is that it's not a catch-all, we can (and do) regulate some arms and allow others.

Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

Chris... if that was his point we would be wayyyyyyyyyyyyy past this already.

[BridgeTroll]

lol... I'm done... enjoy your weekend... it is supposed to be nice. 

[NotNow]

Do you think that StephenDare! even realizes that he didn't actually PROVE any of his points?  He just says it is so.  I saw a good bit of verification from others.  I have even shown (several times) the reasons that the "nuclear weapon" argument is moot.  And yet we still get the lengthy post about all of the arguments that were disproved, when in fact, just the opposite occurred and SD's  points were laid to rest one by one.  Chris, a simple review of a few USSC cases would answer your concerns (read the thread).   Just amazing.

Love and kisses,
Troll

[BridgeTroll]

Defending your home in UK...

Farm tenant arrested after burglars shot was 'plagued by break-ins'

By Nick Britten
7:44AM BST 03 Sep 2012

The man is believed to have grabbed a legally owned gun after they were disturbed by the break-in early yesterday.

He is understood to have fired at the intruders who then fled the isolated house at Melton Mowbray, Leics, before calling the police.

Minutes later, an ambulance was called to treat a man with gunshot injuries nearby. It is understood that call was made by one of the suspected burglars.

The arrested man's mother said: "This is not the first time they have been broken into.

"They have been robbed three or four times. One of them was quite nasty.

"They have not been injured but property has been stolen."

Local farmers said the area has been increasingly targeted by car thieves.

One said: "We had three Land Rovers stolen. We had fitted one with a tracker and it was recovered in Birmingham."

A second man was later treated for gunshot injuries after arriving at Leicester Royal Infirmary, 10 miles from the scene of the shooting. Neither of the men is said to be seriously injured.

Yesterday the businessman and his wife were arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm. Four men, understood to be the suspected burglars, were also arrested.

The case will reignite the debate over a householder’s right to defend his property, which began in the late 1990s after the farmer Tony Martin shot two burglars at his remote Norfolk home. In 1999, Martin fired at Brendan Fearon, 29, and Fred Barras, 16, after they broke into the house in Emneth Hungate.

Three shots were fired, Barras was hit in the back and despite escaping through a window died moments later. Martin was convicted of murder and jailed for life, which was reduced on appeal to manslaughter and five years’ jail.

In 2009, the millionaire businessman Munir Hussain fought back with a metal pole and a cricket bat against a knife-wielding burglar who tied up his family at their home in Buckinghamshire. Hussain was jailed for two and a half years, despite his attacker being spared prison.

Appeal judges reduced the sentence to a year’s jail, suspended.

The case prompted David Cameron to announce that home owners and shopkeepers would have the right to protect themselves against burglars and robbers.

Last year, Peter Flanagan, 59, who fatally stabbed a burglar armed with a machete at his home in Salford, Great Manchester, escaped prosecution after the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that he was acting in self defence.

Yesterday the Melton Mowbray cottage was sealed off by police. Welby Grange Farm is owned by John Hobill, 84, and his wife Evelyn, 76, and is the registered address for JT and RT Hobill, which lists itself as a farming business.

A woman who answered the phone said they were “not allowed” to talk about the incident. She said the cottage was privately rented and the incident was nothing to do with the family that owned the farm. She said the person living there was not a farmer.

A Leicestershire Police spokesman said: “A 35-year-old man and a 43-year-old woman were arrested in Melton on suspicion of GBH and four men, aged 27, 23, 31 and 33, were arrested at Leicester Royal Infirmary on suspicion of aggravated burglary.” All remain in custody.

[NotNow]

Since you are going to go Constitutional on the subject, Bridge Troll, where in the Constitution does it even mention guns?

Um, yes, it does.

And look!  I am right again!

[NotNow]

I don't have to underline the word "guns".  You asked where the Constitution mentioned guns.  It is in the second amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."