"the occasional rabid painter"??? Please explain.

Other than that, Amos, I agree with what you said, and I think it supports my point admirably. We both agree that today's society is radically different than the society of 1776...and that the words in the 2nd Amendment arose in a different context than what we have now.

Despotism nowadays is accomplished through high technology communications media conglomerates and high tech military weapons that ordinary people have no effective access to. That's the difference.

GUEST - But I truly get the impression on a day to day basis that Canada IS a freer and more reasonable society than the USA. And safer and less violent. How do we explain that? I think the British tradition that was passed on in Canada without a violent revolution is in fact a superior (much more peaceable) tradition socially to what happened in the USA in a number of respects. We do have a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I'll see if I can look it up and find out how it compares to your Bill of Rights. I don't in the least mind that Canada remained a Dominion of the British crown. So what? So did India. Is India a slave of England now? I don't think so. Neither is Canada. I don't give diddly-squat about Canada's historical ties to England being any kind of threat to freedom here. The Queen has considerably less power here than ABC, NBC, and CBS, I assure you. It is the USA that controls Canada nowadays, not England, and it is done by corporate mass media and by corporate funding.