.45 Coulter

The Framers’ primary reason for including the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights was so that the people could defend themselves against the government just as they do by means of the vastly-overrated 1st amendment. Interestingly, the Supreme Court is constantly having to remind Americans of their 1st Amendment rights - issuing over 100 decisions in the past half century alone.  The Court has only ruled on the 2nd Amendment in a handful of cases ever - the last time in 1939.

As Alexander Hamilton observed, “…if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

…It must [also] be said that the Framers were not unaware of the crime-preventive qualities of firearms. Standing armies in this country and in France had become nothing more than roving bands of criminals. The 2nd amendment was in part a response to the earliest cases of police brutality.

Incidentally, why is it that the same people who have the least confidence in the police and military are the most willing to allow only the police and military to have guns?!

But I'm getting exasperated by the Constitutional argument.  Too few people - girl people in particular - appreciate the central point: guns are our friends.

Guns are our friends because in a world without them, I’m what’s known as "prey" – all females are. What the arms-control faithful really want is a world without violence, not a world without weapons. But we can’t have a world without violence because the world is half male and testosterone causes homicide. A world with violence – that is to say, men – but without weapons is the worst possible world for women. As the saying goes, ‘God made man and woman, but Colonel Colt made them equal.’

As Democrat darling, Thomas Jefferson, once said [quoting Cesare Beccaria], "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

-Ann Coulter, in an article she wrote after being the victim of an attempted robbery near her home in D.C. [where carrying a handgun was against the law]