Originally posted by: Mardeth
My comment was more about the sillyness of the way you discuss issues like gun control. Shouting words like "liberty", "2nd amendment", "constitution" and quoting people that died 200 years ago instead of looking at cons and pros of things and whats relevant NOW. Things change. You need to be more pragmatic and except that althought the constitution is ideally the best option, and would work if everybody would be like you, that it doesnt work for society as a whole.
You say that because you don't know what it means to be an American. That is understandable, seeing as how you are not an American. So I'll explain something important that I think many non-Americans often miss in these conversations.
Liberty is all important to most Americans. It is the central concept around which our government is formed. The basic premise of America is that if you give people liberty they will thrive, and that the only valid job of government is to protect those liberties.
We might have accepted that there are many other jobs that government needs to do, but every school kid is taught that it all starts from the idea that all men have the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, and that it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted amongst men, and moreover that it is not just our right, but duty to for each of us to safe guard those Rights against the very governments that we institute.
We talk about the 2nd amendment because it is a part of the Bill of Rights, which is a special set of provisions set down as safeguards to prevent our government from becoming a tyranny. We were all taught to guard these rights especially because the erosion of them is the first steps in stripping us of those aforementioned unalienable Rights.
We talk about 200 year old men because their vision created this country. They warned us that the nature of government is to take away those rights. They warned us that if we should fail at the task of guarding our rights that only bloody revolution will win them back.
It is for these reasons that you hear so many 'rabid' sounding arguments about 200 year old men and amendments. We are not rabid, we are upholding a trust given to us.