Who are these "people" who think that the only thing keeping the government from rolling over us is the 2nd amendment. I smell a strawman.

Guns don't deserve rights, and certainly this experiment that more guns in the hands of less responsible people has been a disastrous failure.  I'm tired of being shot at because I'm not heterosexual .... granted its only happened once thus far, but once was too many times ... I have also had a lot of friends and family friends who had some close call "whoopses," including a classmate in high school playing with his older brother's gun and accidentally shot his friend in the hip.  Not one person I personally know has ever fended off an armed intruder with a gun ... and statistics seem to show this is the norm:  a gun is more likely to be wrongfully discharged in an 'accident' or intentional mis-use than it is to fend off an intruder.

Trying to dodge and re-define "well-regulated" by claiming it actually meant something else in the past is just that -- a dodge, a falsehood.  The word "regulate" in English has meant "to govern by restriction" since its first uses in the 1620s.  Source:  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=regulate&allowed_in_frame=0

Armed mobs are no less tyrannical than autocratic governments, and anyone who believes allowing mobs of people to arm themselves is somehow improving liberty has not thought this through.

No government is above rolling over their citizenry's rights.  I certaintly don't trust this government not to do it, though I suspect they wouldn't use brute force- it's too obvious.

You fail at English.

To govern by restriction has fuck all to do with making laws.  A dam governs the flow of water by restriction.  Weights and springs govern the keeping of time by restriction.  A governor is not just a guy in office.

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.

It's simple logic, militias are people keeping and bearing arms.  People have even tried to argue this as being reason to restrict people from having guns because "the national guard" and joe schmoe are two different things.  If militias shall not be infringed upon, well regulated cannot mean what you've convinced yourself it does.

A sentence gives a reasoned restriction on government, and asshats around the world gravitate to the one meaning a word can possibly have that comes in direct conflict with the rest of the sentence.  Proof people are morons.

You are also hilariously wrong on what you think crime statistics show.  You have over an 80% chance of being the victim of a violent crime before you die.  Congratulations on being in the 4 out of 5, might I suggest not hitting on rednecks?  I find it highly unlikely that you were shot at by a law abiding citizen, with exception to being shot at of course.  Barring the redneck joke(you didn't, did you?), the odds are far better that you were shot at by some gang banger asshole that bought his gun from the same guy he gets his coke from.

No one actually keeps statistics on defensive gun use, but the surveys suggest the number is a million plus every year.  There aren't even 20,000 homicides per year, and that's homicide, not murder with a firearm.  Even if you look for the lowest estimates, defensive gun use beats homicide rates 4-1.  Accidental shootings are a rounding error, we should outlaw bath tubs if we're going to start making decisions based on freak accidents and people not properly raising their children.

Those low estimates are assuming that everyone who draws on some punk that runs away bothers to report a crime to the police knowing they wont even bother to show up.  Unless you actually shoot someone, they don't give a fuck.  Most people aren't like me, they're squeamish about removing scum from the gene pool.  Shooting is their last resort, instead of the primary response to a threat.  As such it's extremely rare because few criminals are stupid enough to continue an assault when it becomes a choice between murder and death.

Move to the UK, they've all but eliminated hand gun ownership.  You can enjoy getting knifed or clubbed instead of shot.  Twice as often.

Violent crime rates in the UK(actual comparisons in specific types of crimes, not the tard comparison between what each country classifies as violent crimes) are around twice as high as they are in the US.  So the answer is twice as often as getting shot.

We could kill all the fucking lawyers and get rid of the nanny state though, that would easily knock it down to around a tenth what it is once things rounded out.  Between the welfare state from the left and the war on drugs from the right, the inner cities are fucked.  On top of that the lawyers make sure it's as hard as it can possibly be to actually punish criminals by making sure nothing effective gets done from both sides of the court room.

Our low homicide rate is amazing considering how hosed the country is.

....BTW...probably not a 'tard comparison'....as all 3 countries above will define 'homicide' just the same....good old OED...

Hence my comment.

It is an argument utilized by some, however.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Organizations+with+the+view+that+the+2nd+Amendment+keeps+the+Government+in+check

Most of the rest of the world did not fight for their freedom from Tyranny.  Makes a big difference.

How's that free speech of yours?  Can you talk about the carbon tax yet?

I'm not sure about carbon tax but I'm pretty sure they still can't play Saints Row 4 because the "expert" masters of society decided cartoon anal probe weapons were a threat. I guess once they solved guns that was next on the existential threats to society list.

If I had to guess, and I'm sure that DrGuy will correct me if he disagrees, he means that societies that fought and died for their rights do more to ingrain protection of those rights into the documents that form the basis for government.  There was active discussion in the colonies during and after the revolution about what shape government should take to protect an individual's rights against intrusion by the state.  This wasn't some theoretical non-violent discussion.  They were in the middle of, or had just concluded, fighting a war over that very fact.  

Because of this the US constitution took extra measures to protect the rights of individuals.  In fact one of the chief arguments against the US Bill of Rights was that it could be interpreted as a list of the only places that individuals were protected from the state when in fact they meant is as places deserving of special protection.  They never enshrined something like protection from being compelled by the federal government to purchase private products because, quite frankly, the idea was so ludicrous that they never would have considered it realistic.  

Unfortunately we've slowly morphed the Bill of Rights into a list of our only protections rather than a list of the most sacred protections. 

I'd think all democratic constitutions take measures to protect the rights of individuals. The US is, I think, unique in the world in specifically mentioning/protecting the right to bear arms, but other than that there's nothing else vastly different than other democratic constitutions that I'm aware of. Each country will of course have some specific protections unique to its culture and history so you'll see some in other countries' constitutions that don't exist in the US' and vice-versa.

That'll change eventually....would you believe it was one person in one state that was the barrier to the R certificate for games....