Re: You'll get my contribution when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers

> No answer neccessary, I've said my piece.
 
Well, the necessity of an answer depends on more than your wishes to say
more -- like the desires of the other correspondents! ;-)

> Someone should probably enlighten Mr. Billips
> that he is doing absolutely nothing to protect the Constitutional rights
> our forefathers fought for, and paid for----

True, but irrelevant.  It's at least a debatable issue whether the NRA gang
is fighting to protect a right the Founders fought, paid for, established,
or intended to establish.  I don't hold to the interpretation (and likely
neither does Billips) that the 2d Amendment protects much, if any, of an
*individual* right to own firearms, at least not for private purposes.  I
think that at *most*, there is a weak, implied individual right/duty that
has been obsoleted by changes in the way society is organized.

Regardless, at least under current law, the protections of the 2d amendment
do *not* apply to the states, only the feds, so the state governments can
impose the most draconian gun control w/o running afoul of the 2d Amendment.

> Yes there are those people that wish to destroy our rights by any means
> possible.
> For many reasons, some misguided, some diabolical.

It's hardly a "wish to destroy our rights" if the interpretation differs
from yours, especially if only "misguided," rather than in bad faith!  I
don't name-call my NRA buddies, even if I disagree 100%...

> His rantings will certainly help those that wish to disarm Americans.

Nor do I call even Heston and DeLay's good faith arguments "rantings," since
they are good faith beliefs and arguments.  LaPierre is another story, but
not because of his arguments, only his tactics.

> rather fight politically in Washington than have this country go through
> another Civil War, surely the country would not survive.

And here's where the left's fear of gun advocates is justified, the
not-too-subtle threat of armed insurrection.  It's really intellectually
inconsistent, and exposes the 2d Amendment rights argument as something of a
sham.  

The usual argument for the right to "keep and bear" is that the 2d amendment
is there to protect the people from an oppressive gov't by giving them the
means to overthrow the gov't.  You'd think that the oppression feared would
be something other than deprivation of guns, which are only the means of
preventing oppression -- i.e., no need for the guns unless there's some
other, substantive oppression.

But if the loss of the guns, itself, is reason enough for armed revolution
("another Civil War") then the keeping of guns itself is an end, now, no
longer a means.  Gun control advocates are thus pretty justified in thinking
that the anti-control crowd is just plain into guns, with few
philosophically-higher interests, i.e., the unfortunate appellation "gun
nuts."

In any event, the idea that the right to keep and bear is some provision for
overthrowing the gov't if necessary is pretty inconsistent with the whole
Constitutional scheme.  The Const. provides for that kind of overthrow, or
plotting for same, as being punishable treason.  So it's inconsistent to
posit that the same document calls it treason in one place, but protects the
right to do it in another place.  It is also intellectually and politically
schizophrenic to invoke a protection of the system to overthrow that same
system.