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We are able to make a hand held lazer- gun if you will- that can incapacitate - like maybe burn a hole through a person- but it is not used in combat because if it just blinded the enemy that would be inhumane-
So the Geneva convention has banned such devices-

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Guns aren’t problem, lack of responsibility is

    Your April 24 editorial, “Address Schenectady gun culture,” was a misguided attack on firearms. The constant spreading of misinformation regarding the availability of guns being the problem, without looking at why people choose to use them in a violent manner, needs to stop.
    It’s ignorant to perpetuate the gun as the problem, and not how a person resorts to violence. Children have played with BB guns for decades, so the statement that the “. . . BB gun of today . . . — will be the handgun of tomorrow” is an example of this questionable editorial.
    The root causes of gun violence can be traced to our liberal society that doesn’t support responsible parenting, along with as failed schools and gun violence’s main cause — illegal drugs. The solutions are not fast and easy.
    A start would be to place more emphasis on drug treatment and prevention. Our public schools need to create alternatives to provide an education that both interests and prepares our youth for entry into the workplace. The government has to fix the welfare system, which has destroyed the family. Finally, both fathers and mothers together need to teach their children responsibility, not the schools or police.
    MICHAEL A. FRISONE
    Rexford

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Weapons on hips, ‘open carriers’ aren’t gun shy
In some places, gun owners can freely wear them
BY NICHOLAS RICCARDI Los Angeles Times

    PROVO, Utah — For years, Kevin Jensen carried a pistol everywhere he went, tucked in a shoulder holster beneath his clothes.
    In hot weather the holster was almost unbearable. Pressed against his skin, the firearm was heavy and uncomfortable. Hiding the weapon made Kevin feel like a criminal.
    Then one evening he stumbled across a site that urged gun owners to do something revolutionary: Carry your gun openly for the world to see as you go about your business.
    In most states there’s no law against that.
    Kevin thought about it and decided to give it a try. A couple of days later, his gun was visible, dangling from a black holster strapped around his hip as he walked into a Costco. His heart raced as he ordered a Polish dog at the counter. No one called the police. No one stopped him.
    Now Kevin carries his Glock 23 openly into his bank, restaurants and shopping centers. He wore the gun to a Ron Paul rally. He and his wife, Clachelle, drop off their 5-yearold daughter at elementary school with pistols dangling from their hip holsters and have never received a complaint or a wary look.
    Kevin said he tries not to flaunt his gun. “We don’t want to show up and say, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re armed, get used to it,’ ” he said.
    But he and others who publicly display their guns have a common purpose.
    The Jensens are part of a fl edgling movement to make a firearm as common an accessory as an iPod. Called open-carry by its supporters, the movement has attracted grandparents, graduate students and lifelong gun enthusiasts like Kevin and Clachelle.
    “What we’re trying to say is, ‘Hey, we’re normal people who carry guns,’ ” said Travis Devereaux, 36, of West Valley, a Salt Lake City suburb. Devereaux works for a credit card company and sometimes walks around town wearing a cowboy hat and packing a pistol in plain sight. “We want the public to understand it’s not just cops who can carry guns.”
    Police acknowledge the practice is legal, but some say it makes their lives tougher.
    Police Chief John Greiner recalled that last year in Ogden, Utah, a man was openly carrying a shotgun on the street. When officers pulled up to ask him about the gun, he started firing. Police killed the man.
    Greiner tells the story as a lesson for gun owners. “We’ve changed over the last 200 years from the days of the wild, wild west,” Greiner said. “Most people don’t openly carry. ... If [people] truly want to open carry, they ought to expect they’ll be challenged more until people become comfortable with it.”
IN THE OPEN
    Kevin and others argue that police shouldn’t judge the gun, but rather the actions of the person carrying it. Kevin, 28, isn’t opposed to attention, however. It’s part of the reason he brought his gun out in the open.
    “At first, [open carry] was a little novelty,” he said. “Then I realized the chances of me educating someone are bigger than ever using it [the gun] in self-defense. If it’s in my pants or under my shirt I’m probably not going to do anything with it.”
    As Clachelle pushed the shopping cart holding their two young children during a recent trip to Costco, Kevin admired the new holster wrapped around her waist. “I like the look of that low-rise gun belt,” he said.
    The Jensens’ pistols were snapped into holsters attached to black belts that hug their waists. Guns are a fact of life in their household. Their 5-year-old daughter, Sierra, has a child-sized .22 rifle she handles only in her parents’ presence.
    Clachelle is the daughter of a Central California police chief and began shooting when she was about Sierra’s age. She would take her parents’ gun when she went out, and hide it in her purse because the firearm made her feel safer.
    “I love ’em,” Clachelle said. “I wouldn’t ever be without them.”
    Kevin’s first encounter with guns came when he was 11. His grandfather died and left him a 16-gauge shotgun. The gun stayed locked away but fascinated Kevin through his teenage years. He convinced his older brother to take him shooting in the countryside near their home in a small town south of Salt Lake City.
    “I immediately fell in love with it,” said Kevin, a lean man with close-cropped hair and a precise gait that is a reminder of his fi ve years in the Army Reserve. “I like things that go boom.”
    Kevin kept as many as 10 guns in the couple’s 1930s-style bungalow in Santaquin, 21 miles south of Provo. In January 2005, he decided to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, mainly for self-defense.
    “I’m not going to hide in the corner of a school and mall and wait for the shooting to stop,” he said.
REGULATIONS
    When Kevin bought a Glock and the dealer threw in an external hip holster, he began researching the idea of carrying the gun in public and came upon opencarry.org.
    The Web site, run by two Virginia gun enthusiasts, claims 4,000 members nationwide. It summarizes the varying laws in each state that permit or forbid the practice. People everywhere have the right to prohibit weapons from their property and firearms are often banned in government buildings like courthouses.
    According to an analysis by Legal Community Against Violence, a gun control group in San Francisco that tracks gun laws, at least eight states largely prohibit it, including Iowa and New Jersey. Those that allow it have different restrictions: In California, people can openly carry only unloaded guns.
    Utah has no law prohibiting anyone from carrying a gun in public, as long as it is two steps from fi ring — for example, the weapon may have a loaded clip but must be uncocked, with no bullets in the chamber. Those who obtain a concealedweapons permit in Utah don’t have that restriction. Also, youths under 18 can carry a gun openly with parental approval and a supervising adult in close proximity.
RANGE OF REACTIONS
    Most of the time, people don’t notice Kevin’s gun. That’s not uncommon, said John Pierce, a law student and computer consultant in Virginia who is a co-founder of opencarry.org.
    “People are carrying pagers, Blackberries, cellphones,” Pierce said. “They see a black lump on your belt and their eyes slide off.”
    Sometimes the reactions are comical. Bill White, a 24-year-old graduate student in ancient languages at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wears his Colt pistol out in the open when he goes to his local Starbucks. Earlier this month a tourist from California spotted him and snapped a photo on his cellphone.
    “He said it would prove he was in
the wild west,” White recalled.
    But there are times when the response is more severe. Devereaux has been stopped several times by police, most memorably in December when he was walking around his neighborhood.
    An officer pulled up and pointed his gun at Devereaux, warning he would shoot to kill. In the end, eight officers arrived, cuffed Devereaux and took his gun before Devereaux convinced them they had no legal reason to detain him.

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Let's take gun control to another level
First published: Wednesday, June 11, 2008

It's about time we get real about gun control in our cities. If we can have sobriety checkpoints and now motorcycle checkpoints, why don't we have cops creating gun checkpoints? Have them create checkpoints in the city where the gun violence is running rampant.
Give the cops metal detectors and make people stop and get checked for guns. They are illegal and they are a lot worse than drunken drivers, and motorcyclists without the correct credentials. Let's get real here and start doing something about all these guns on our streets.
     
If it's legal to stop people driving a car down the street to see if they are drunk, why isn't it legal to stop people walking down the street to see if they have a gun? I'm sick of reading in the newspaper day after day about the gun violence and everyone is up in arms about stopping it. What is really being done -- a few protests where everyone is saying they want them off the streets, yet it's their families out there with them shooting up the streets like it's the Wild West.
Let's get real. Start stopping people and let's find out who is carrying guns and get them off our streets.
MARK ARRAS Schenectady

Quoted from Admin

http://www.timesunion.com

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Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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Supreme Court's Gun Ban Decision Likely to Spark New Round of Court Battles

Thursday , June 26, 2008

WASHINGTON —

One of the first results of the Supreme Court's decision Thursday to overturn Washington, D.C.'s gun ban is likely be a legal onslaught by the National Rifle Association, which is gearing up for a nationwide campaign to make sure the court's decision is enforced.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told FOX News moments after the court struck down the 32-year-old ban on loaded weapons inside the homes of residents in the nation's capital that his group is targeting other localities that have blanket prohibitions on gun ownership.

"It's a great day," LaPierre said. "We're going to make sure this freedom is carried out.

LaPierre said that the first round of lawsuits will be in the suburbs of Chicago and San Francisco, where bans are in place. The NRA is going to see to it that "every American has equal access to guns," he said.

"The fact that it's an individual right, individuals all over the country have to get access to it. It cannot be walled off by the elite. So this is the opening salvo of a step-by-step process providing relief," he said.

The court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the Second Amendment grants an individual, not just a "well-regulated militia," the right to bear arms. The ruling reinforced the rights of marksman, hunters and others, even in crowded or high-crime cities, to keep a gun in his or her home. The long-anticipated decision was the high court's first explicit ruling on the Second Amendment in 127 years.

La Pierre likened the ruling to those that have upheld freedom of speech and the freedom to vote.

"You can't say you can vote in some parts of the country but not in others," he said. "Individual rights means individuals everywhere, and the NRA will not rest until individuals everywhere can exercise this freedom."

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which favors restrictions on firearms, said the decision has set new parameters by reducing legal extremes — a ban inside the home on one side and unfettered access to firearms on the other. But it allows for reasonable restrictions.

"You can deal with middle-ground restrictions. ... We can enact common-sense measures to make it safe," he said, including banning assault weapons and closing a loophole that allows easier purchasing of weapons at gun shows.

The decision also made strange bedfellows of some Republicans and Democrats who frequently are on opposite sides on other issues.

Liberal Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy and Russ Feingold both praised the court's ruling. So did more centrist Democrat Sen. Jon Tester of Montana. Tester stood alongside conservative Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Orrin Hatch at a brief news conference outside the court that sits across from the Capitol.

"The Supreme Court has recognized the personal right to bear arms, guaranteed in the Second Amendment of the Constitution, and expressly held for the first time that our Bill of Rights includes this right among its guarantees of individual liberty and freedom. That is a good thing," said Leahy, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman.

"I am very pleased the Supreme Court finally recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. This is an important decision for millions of law-abiding gun owners. Public safety must be ensured without depriving our citizens of their constitutional rights," Feingold, of Wisconsin, said.

"This is a great day for the country, for the Constitution, for the people to affirm the fact that we have a right to keep and bear arms, regardless of where you live, whether it's in rural Montana where I come from, or whether it's in Washington, D.C.," Tester said.

Hutchison, of Texas, led the effort to pen an amicus brief signed 300 lawmakers and submit it to the court. She called it "a clear opinion, and from this day forward the people of our country will have the right in any jurisdiction in America to protect themselves and their families in their homes, and that was our goal."

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called the ruling "a resounding victory for the American people and sets a strong precedent that the rights and liberties provided in the Constitution may be regulated but cannot be extinguished by the law."

But the the court's ruling was cause for disappointment and alarm in other circles.

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said the current in-home gun ban law will stand for 21 days until his administration creates emergency laws to comply with the court's ruling. But he said he does it reluctantly.

"As mayor of the District of Columbia, I think I speak for the near unanimous population here in this city when we say we're disappointed, we wish the ruling had gone the other way, but that we stand here and we respect the court's power to make this ruling and their deliberation that got them to this point," Fenty said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that her experience as a former mayor of San Francisco leads her to believe the court's decision will open the door to more, not less street violence. She also criticized the conservative members of the court, who she said did not follow the legal principle of "stare decisis," the Latin term for using earlier court decisions to strongly guide new opinions.

"I remember both (Chief) Justice (John) Roberts and Justice (Samuel) Alito sitting in front of us and indicating how they would respect 'stare decisis' and precedent — and this decision takes down 70 years of precedent," Feinstein said, referring to the two justices appointed by President Bush. "I think it opens this nation to a dramatic lack of safety."

She added: "I happen to believe that this is now going to open the door to litigation against every gun safety law that states have passed — assault weapons bans, trigger locks and all the rest of it."

Feinstein said the court's decision, which also struck down a D.C. trigger lock requirement, is also faulty because those regulations prevent guns from being used by thieves or others who do not own the weapon.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that her experience as a former mayor of San Francisco leads her to believe the court's decision will open the door to more, not less street violence.