Metal detectors use magnetometers and only detect ferrous metals. Lead and copper, the traditional metals used to make bullets, are non-ferrous and would not be detected by metal detectors.

Copper and lead are non-ferrous so they wouldn't set off a metal detector (which only indicates the presence of ferrous metals). You are absolutely correct though that this is nothing but hype and an attempt to cull freedom.

Then why is it that the areas with the least restrictive gun laws in the U.S. have the fewest gun crimes? Guns aren't the problem - it's culture in urban areas that embraces thuggish behavior and a "war on drugs" that create incentives for gang turf wars and related violence that are the problem. You don't have a similar "war on drugs" in Europe. It's a real problem here both for gun violence and for creating a huge prison population. Mexico has very strict gun laws but has incredible levels of violence as well. Why? Same god-damn drug war, that's why. It creates incredible monetary incentives because of the black market drug trade which in turn creates the wars between among the cartels and gangs to control that lucrative trade and since it's already a criminal enterprise it attracts those sociopaths who could care less about others.

If you eliminated the drug related deaths from our "body count" we'd have an extremely low rate of murder and gun related deaths. Basically, you're advocating eliminating the rights of the law abiding because of the acts of those who are not law abiding. Research has shown that those who have a licensed to carry a concealed firearm are even more law abiding than law enforcement. So, again, it's not guns that are the problem but the criminals who use them.

The point was NOT that Hitler disarmed the German people, but that they were disarmed. The Weimar Republic enacted draconian gun laws because the Treaty of Versailles required them to disarm their military and they did not want to have their people armed and their military disarmed so they passed laws confiscating firearms before their military had to be disarmed. The Nazis simply made good use of those laws and strengthened them as against groups that they wanted to murder.

Shortly after the Nazis took power, they began house-to-house searches to discover firearms in the homes of suspected opponents. They claimed to find large numbers of weapons in the hands of subversives. Bernard E. Harcourt, writing for the University of Chicago Law School and Political Science Department, notes: "the Nazi gun laws of 1938 specifically banned Jewish persons from obtaining a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. Third, approximately eight months after enacting the 1938 Nazi gun laws, Hitler imposed regulations prohibiting Jewish persons from possessing any dangerous weapons, including firearms." Here's a copy of the 1938 law, in English, if you're interested in reviewing it: http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/NaziLawEnglish.htm (from the group "Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership"). Israel Gutmann, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and world renowned scholar of the Holocaust outlined how the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis was hampered by the fact that imprisoned Jews did not have access to adequate arsenals of firearms, although their resistance did lead Goebbels to note in his diary: “This just shows what you can expect from Jews if they lay hands on weapons.”

Really? Regarding the Communists and Stalin, in October 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars (the Communist government) ordered citizens to surrender all firearms, ammunition, and sabres, having first mandated registration of all weapons six months earlier. Just like the Nazis, Communist Party members were exempt from the ban. A 1920 decree then imposed a minimum six month prison sentence for any non-Communist possessing a weapon. After the civil war, possession became punishable with three months hard labor plus fines. After Stalin came to power, he made possession of unlawful firearms a crime punishable by death. Stalin didn't originate the gun control laws, but his Communist predecessors did and he furthered them and it enabled him to oppress his political opponents and murder tens of millions.

It's not that I don't care, it's just that gun control advocates use the generic term 'children' to evoke images of 5-10 year old kids dying in the streets when the truth of the matter is that very few young children die as a result of gun violence and that most of the victims of gun violence are young adults aged 16-19 who are themselves criminals but are called "children" by gun control advocates to confuse the matter and gain sympathy for their cause. Approximately 90% of all victims of gun violence in the U.S. are themselves criminals and most of it occurs as a result of their criminal activities. Let's face it, people won't be as sympathetic to the cause if they know that most of the victims were criminals and weren't really young children but young thugs who are dealing drugs or active gang members. Your tactic is bullshit sophistry and you know it.

As I've demonstrated, it's your ignorance that sticks out here.

The German people as a whole may not have felt oppressed but the Jews, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, Gypsies, Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, gays, and every other group the Nazis targeted sure as hell did and the Nazis made damned sure they weren't armed. The same thing happened in the USA after the civil war - Southerners didn't like blacks protecting themselves when they came to lynch them so oppressive laws aimed at eliminating firearms from blacks were enacted. In our country firearm laws originated from racism. The powerful always want to disarm the powerless.

Cambodian gun control was a legacy of French colonialism. A series of Royal Ordinances, decreed by a monarchy subservient to the French, appears to have been enacted out of fear of the Communist and anti-colonial insurgencies that were taking place in the 1920s and 1930s throughout Southeast Asia, although not in Cambodia. The first law, in 1920, dealt with the carrying of guns, while the last law in the series, in 1938, imposed a strict licensing system. Only hunters could have guns, and they were allowed to own only a single firearm. These colonial laws appear to have stayed in place after Cambodia was granted independence. The Khmer Rouge enacted no new gun control laws, for they enacted no laws at all other than a Constitution.

As soon as the Khmer Rouge took power, they immediately set out to disarm the populace. One Cambodian recalls that

People being forced out of villages and cities were searched thoroughly, and weapons and foreign currency were confiscated. To the limited extent that Cambodians owned guns through the government licensing system, the names of registered gun owners were of course available to the new government.

I am not blind to gun violence, if that's your implication, I just attribute the it to it's proper cause - a failed drug war and gangs. Guns themselves are not the problem as evidenced by the hundreds of millions of guns not used in the U.S. for anything improper and by the fact that the places with the least restrictive gun laws have the least gun violence.

You're saying that bearing arms to prevent tyranny is a weak reason, but your opinion does not make it so (like anal sphincters, everyone has an opinion). As I stated, I do not ignore the deaths of criminals but I acknowledge that it is their criminal activity that is to blame - not the gun. Their criminal activity does not justify depriving the law abiding of their right to protect themselves and their country.

As for suicides, I believe that people have the right to end their own existence -- my desire is that no one would but would rather see them seek help and speak to others about their problems and find support but the reason they don't is because there are a lot of shitty people in this world and not enough to lean on. Suicides in this country are not out of line with other countries and in Japan where firearm ownership is rare, suicides are far higher.

We didn't have to engage the Iraqi people - they welcomed us at first. However, when Islamist forces tried to create havoc it certainly did create issues and we didn't have much success against that until we tried to win over the local population because the military realized that they couldn't succeed without the support of the locals. We have over 300 million firearms in our country - I think even our military would be hard pressed to successfully suppress our civilian population and it would be further complicated for them because they are our neighbors, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers and it would be difficult for the military to get the troops to sustain a campaign against their own people and it would be easier for citizen rebels to infiltrate the military itself and cause harm from within. Your shallow analysis and ignorance is what's laughable.

There's no such thing as a civilian .55 Magnum. There's the .44 and the .45 and a .50, but no .55 unless you're talking about the BOYS anti-tank rifle. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_anti-tank_rifle), which is not civilian. In the case of the handguns, they are useful for defending one's life and the lives of your loved ones. The Department of Justice under the Clinton Administration determined that guns were used to defend against crimes approximately 1.5 million times per year and some estimates range as high as 2.5 million times per year. The anti-tank rifle was very useful to the British in WW II until it was phased out for something better because it was ineffective against heavier armored tanks.

Thanks for the dialogue and I'd be glad to discuss it some more once you've actually researched a little bit and become more informed. Don't just read the DailyKos or the Brady Campaign, but look up sites that advocate for the Second Amendment, like GunCite.com.

Moon terrorists! Quick, let's send everyone from DHS to the Moon!

Ah, the appeal to "let's do it for the children" argument - usually an appeal to emotion from someone that doesn't want to look at the facts because they are not favorable to their goal.

Outright tyranny may have a small chance of happening in any given year in any given country, but the consequences of it happening are far too great to ignore. Look to the real tyranny that has taken place during the 20th century - 20 million killed by Stalin, millions dead by Hitler's regime, 3 million (out of a population of 8 million) killed due to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, millions killed by Mao, etc. Each of these populations had been disarmed. The history of the 20th century was the history of tyranny and the fight against it and if the populations had arms they may have been able to resist their oppressors. While children have died at the hands of guns, when you look closely at the stats regarding children who have died from gun violence, the overwhelming majority are gang members who are 16 and older and could barely be called "children."

As to accidental gun deaths - In 1998, 53 children under age 10 died from accidental gun deaths. When all children under age 15 are examined, the total number of accidental gun deaths totals 121, of which 26 were identified as involving handguns. By comparison, from 2005-2009, there were an average of 3,533 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 347 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents. About one in five people who die from drowning are children 14 and younger. For every child who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care for nonfatal submersion injuries. If you really care about the children, ban swimming pools and swimming in lakes and oceans. Far more children die as a result of drowning than from guns.

Even without the issue of defense against tyranny, guns save far more lives than they take in the U.S. During the Clinton years, the Department of Justice estimated that guns were used for self-defense 1.5 million times per year. Some estimate the number to be as high as 2.5 million. In areas of the country with less restrictive gun laws and higher gun ownership, violent crime is lower. The stats speak for themselves.

Funny thing is, at the time of ratification, there was no "law enforcement" and the second amendment was written to directly confront the danger of a standing army. See Federalist 29:

BTW, where do you think law enforcement are getting their weapons? The military sells or donates a significant amount of their surplus to law enforcement - LEOs are permitted automatic weapons, .50 cal BMG rounds, tanks, militarized vehicles, sniper rifles etc. They can also use weapons that the military cannot because of the Geneva conventions (tear gas and other chemical weapons are one item that comes to mind).

Your distinction between the weapons used by the military and law enforcement is a distinction without a difference.

Usually, when someone says that they don't understand the arguments in favor of the 2nd Amendment, they usually mean that they don't agree with them, not that they don't understand them (as the reasons are simple and easy to understand). In similar vein, gun control advocates like to state that they are simply asking for "reasonable and common sense" restrictions, which is just their way of insulting opponents without looking like they're being insulting - after all, if you disagree with their proposed restrictions you must be inference be "unreasonable and stupid."

The reason the framers of the Constitution gave for including the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights is two fold - protection of the people against a standing army and protection from invasion by an outside power. Defense of self was deemed a natural right (as one naturally has the right to protect oneself from an aggressor) and, as a natural right, the right to bear arms pre-existed and did not depend on the Bill of Rights. As stated by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #29:

So, the original intent was that the states would regularly engage all free citizens in military training (which is what "well regulated" means - well trained) so that the citizens would be able to either resist invasion or resist tyranny from the State.

As to the nature of the arms which a person could possess and/or bear, the citizens at the time of the ratification of the Constitution had cannons, rockets, rifles, pistols, bombs and even war ships (the government would issue Letters of Marque for private individuals with warships to attack and capture enemy vessels).

Essentially, citizens were allowed to own and/or bear any kind of arms that the military could bear because they had to have the ability to resist an army should power become consolidated and a tyrannical government arose. The founders wouldn't have blinked twice to see a citizen owning a machine gun, a flame thrower or even owning a tank. The only restriction on ownership would be if the citizen had demonstrated that he was unfit to own such weapons by way of lunacy or extreme immorality (felony convictions back then normally resulted in a death sentence so the offender not only forfeited the right to arms but also all of his property and usually his life). Therefore, anything that the military could own, the citizen could own, subject only to his ability to marshal the resources to make or purchase the arms.

As confirmed by: Mythbusters and Straight Dope

But bullets are made from copper and lead - both non-ferrous materials. Metal detectors only detect ferrous metals so the bullets won't set the metal detectors off.

But, you see, that's exactly the problem. If it only caused issues for the plebs, politicians wouldn't care but 3d printers can now make guns that can bypass technology that protects the politicians and they damned sure aren't going to stand for that.

BTW, Saturday Night Specials were inexpensive guns usually made from inexpensive zinc alloys and manufactured using low cost techniques - the reduced costs meant some guns could sell for less than $50.00. The politicians didn't want guns that were cheap because that made them widely available and empowered the poor so they could defend themselves. Saturday Night Specials were outlawed in many jurisdictions by defining firearms that had a melting point below 800f to be unsafe and therefore illegal. Of course we know how often people pack heat when it's 800f outside.

First let's ban all plastics, then ban servo motors since they're used to build 3-D printers from scratch, power supplies are used too! What? You can make guns using CNCs and a lathe? Get out that ban hammer! It's never been about gun control, it's about people control. Fucker will probably want to make a registry of everyone who learns basic chemistry or who possesses fertilizer or aluminum or hydrogen peroxide or any of countless other things that can be used to make explosives or firearms. Freedom's dangerous Mr. Lee, but tyranny is even more so.