re the usual in article viking ponderous cc iastate edu viking iastate edu dan sorenson writes yes i am pro gun and yes i do disagree with this statement nuclear weapons in and of themselves are dangerous radioactive decay of plutonium and uranium as well as the tritium in the weapon tends to be somewhat dangerous to living things can you say neutron flux can you say i get more background radiation from living in denver or having an office in a limestone building than i do standing next to a power reactor at full power or standing next to a nuclear warhead that is armed look up shielding in your dictionary you don t need six feet of lead to make decent shielding your dead skin cell layer does an excellent job on alpha particles and neutrons are slowed by mere water what do you think of you is but whatever the neutrons hit has a good chance of absorbing the neutron and becoming radioactive itself mostly that means water turning into harmless heavy water but some neutrons would also hit bones and the resulting harmfull secondard radioactives would remain in the body for decades i think an unshielded nuclear warhead could reasonably be considered a public health hazard as for a shielded warhead i think a fair amount of maintaince is required for it to remain safely shielded e g storage in a dry temperature regulated facility etc for private ownership to be unregulated i think a single individual must be able not only to keep the weapon but keep it in a safe condition if any random private citizen could not properly keep maintain and store a nuclear weapon then some regulation is clearly appropriate plus these things have no self defense purposes it s kinda hard to justify their use as a militia weapon when at best they are meant for battlefield use low yield weapons or at worst for industrial target obliteration translation cities and population centers if the militia has as its job the overthrow of an illegal government they are indeed useful weapons to the militia i disagree with this purpose the job of the militia is to defend themselves and their community if you look at the american revolution as an example the militias won by seperating themselves from and becoming independent of a repressive government they didn t overthrow it and those communities canada and england for example that didn t defend themselves were still under that same old regime if the role of the militia were offensive to go out and destroy repressive governments nuclear weapons might be appropriate but their jobs is defensive and nuclear weapons aren t suited for that there is also the question of personal and collective arms the second amendment definately protects ownership of personal weapons since the very nature of the militia requires members to provide their own arms but it isn t clear if it covers other arms certainly not all members would supply for example a tank only a few could or if they were to be used effectively should however those providing the heavy weapons have a disproportionate control over the militia and its fierpower the militias as the framers envisioned them were extremely democratic if only of the members supported the cause only would respond to a muster and the militia s firepower would be proportionately reduced militia firepower and the popular will were therefore linked but if a small minority of the members supplied a large fraction of the firepower in the form of heavy weapons this would all change the militia s firepower would depend on the will of a small minority not of the general public worse that minority would be quite different from the general public at the very least they would be much richer as a result i think the nature and character of the militia requires that each member provide a roughly equal share of the militia s firepower his personal weapons and some equitable fraction of a squad s heavier firepower frank crary cu boulder
