> I traveled to Montana to attend the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Society
> Convention in Billings, MT. After attending the convention, I drove to Butte where
> I stayed for a night or two and then to Missoula where I stayed for a couple of nights
> (also biked the Route of the Hiawatha Trail in Idaho and visited Wallace, ID).

> I'm as liberal as they come, but my only negative encounter was with a cop chasing
> me off a platform at the ex-Northern Pacific depot in Missoula.



Mr Buff, what the hell pray tell; has any of those activities, or the cop chasing you off; have to do with your self avowed liberalism (more likely pseudo-liberalism). Since the mentioned activities and ideology are irrelevant to each other; perhaps you should take the good advice I recently read on this forum; and I quote "Try not viewing the world only through ideological glasses."


And further, what does the 2nd Amendment have to do ideology, either. It is simply there, an established fact for 217 years; saying what it says, first establishing the whys and then declaring precisely what SHALL NOT HAPPEN! Moreover by law, even if it were not there, the unalienable right it expressly preserves would still be there anyhow. The Constitution is very explicit about that too.

And like or or not, it is clear and concise, leaving no weasel words at all. So what does your avowed liberalism, or someone else's conservatism have to do with any of that! - It already is what it is. Note that should the amendment ever be deleted, ignored, or otherwise twisted and distorted - its English words will still mean just exactly what they have always meant - what the Founding Fathers meant - just exactly what the words already say.


As to my own perspective, I personally despise guns, having had very unpleasant experience with them in combat (Vietnam). But far more so, I love the Constitution as it is written; took an oath to die defending it if necessary; even those parts of it I might personally not care for. But still, though long ago honorably discharged, I will not stand idle and watch while the current "Law Breaker in Chief", or anyone else, attempts to dismantle it.

The current "Law Breaker in Chief" first earned my ire by repeatedly claiming during his 2008 campaign that "the Constitution often just gets in the way". Well sir, in the long run, that is a dam good thing! - lest some autocrat get in the way of our liberties.