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But if there's no well-regulated militia--its duties today being done by the police, the military, the national guard, etc.--what need for the weapon?
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To keep the police, the military and the national guard in check.
Getting rid of citizens' rights to bear arms means that all arms will be held by the government. This creates an imbalance of power in the government's favor. Why do you want to create a police state, Andy?
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Also Andyfox's assumption is that the cops are doing their job. Obviously this is not always the case:
(B) Former Florida Attorney General Jim Smith told Florida legislators that police responded to only 200,000 of 700,000 calls for help to Dade County authorities.
(C) The United States Department of Justice found that, in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence for which police had not responded within 1 hour.”
http://thomas.loc.gov/
One of the points of the 14th amendment was to allow black people to protect themselves from the KKK because the police sure weren't going to do it.