Al Cook wrote: It's funny, but the number one thing that I find that my circle of friends outside the States (Canadian, English, Australian, Swedish, and beyond) agrees on about Americans: as a group (and rather pointedly among far too many individuals) they lack the ability to be rational.

Sorry, but I don't think being irrational is the strict purview of Americans, excluding any other country or group as if to say we, as a nation, generally lack the ability to be rational.  Read a newspaper from any other country or stories about other nations.  Being irrational is being human, it's not because one lives in a specific nation. I also find your comment to be an extremely elitist view, but what can I say?  Must be because I lack the ability to be rational.  

For reasons that defy explanation, gun-supporters do not associate guns with gun-related crimes.  It's people, not guns, that kill, they insist.  While there is a degree of truth to that -- I'm sure humans have been killing each other since before a rock was tied to a stick to form the first spear -- why make it as easy as a finger movement?

How many kids are killed by a knife ricocheting through their bedroom while they sleep due to a fight on the street?

Al Cook wrote: Don't put words in my mouth, Matt Reed.  I am not saying at all that irrationality doesn't exist elsewhere.  I was passing on an observation that to outsiders it seems a little more prominent among Americans.

I didn't, Al Cook (since we have suddenly changed to using formal names).  You said that Americans, as a group, have individuals that bring irrationality to a higher level that non-Americans.  That's what you said and that's bullshit. 

QUOTE: The responses in this thread in defence of handguns and against revisiting the Second Amendment are examples.

Examples of what?  I can point out hundreds of positions by people in other countries over contested legislation or general opinion about their government that would be equally irrational.  But somehow Americans, in general, and certain American citizens, specifically, are more irrational than citizens of other countries?  Absurd. 

QUOTE: I'd be happy to debate this elsewhere if you'd like to start a separate thread; in this one I think we'd be wise to focus my comments at their source from this thread:  the high degree of irrationality that raises up from Americans every time someone broaches the subject of gun control in the United States.

Al Cook wrote: It's unfortunate you feel that way, Mr. Reed.

Al Cook wrote: It's something that you're more than welcome to disagree with...

Al Cook wrote: As I say, it's unfortunate you feel that way, but you're free to do so.

Thank you for not only allowing my feelings but being condescending about it as well.  Fantastic.

Al Cook wrote: Again, unfortunate that you feel that way.  But you're free to display all the irrationality about it you want.

Was waiting for this.  Surprised it took you so long.  Par for the course.

In so far as the 2nd amendment can be seen as "states" protecting themselves against overreaching by  "federal government", it was my impression that the Civil War sort of "put the foot down" on that. Lincoln's argument against the legality of secession would suggest that states have no right to protect themselves against the federal government.

(Regardless of whether one might argue that the south had a legal right to secede and reclaim federal land, the outcome of the war settled the issue. Victory in war is a "common law precedent" that seems to override any written law, even the constitution. )

How does that change in the relationship between the states and the federal government affect the position of a militia etc. and the notion of an individual's right to own a gun to defend himself against governmental tyranny (primarily foreign, but also possibly domestic)?.