Re: Carrying Firearms

The Riviera Kid wrote:
You may not think it but guns have in fact kept 'us' at the top of the food chain, or else it would look like this:
fish -> bear -> 'us' -> japanese
Those samurai would have pwned us otherwise.
This "guns == top of food chain" line of reasoning is a bit short-sighted, don't you think? Given that repeating firearms have been around about 200 years (a generous estimate), and that regardless of how long man has been around (even the creationists give 6013 years, this October), what about all those thousands of years before firearms, eh?
The Samurai were packing heat, too.
The arquebus, a matchlock gun, was introduced by the Portuguese via a Chinese pirate ship in 1543 and the Japanese succeeded in assimilating it within a decade. Groups of mercenaries with mass-produced arquebuses began playing a critical role.
By the end of feudal period, several hundred thousand firearms existed in Japan and massive armies numbering over 100,000 clashed in battles. By comparison, the largest and most powerful army in Europe, the Spanish, had only several thousand firearms and could only assemble 30,000 troops. Source
Dragging this post back on topic, kicking and screaming---
"God made all men the same, but Samuel Colt made them equal."
The right to carry firearms as a means to defend yourself should not be restricted, IMHO. Regulated--absolutely. Register my firearm? I see no reason not to.
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. " R.A. Heinlein