First topic for debate

[Gabrosin]

Hey look, a politics forum where every poster is in agreement and no one has flamed anyone, ever!

That won't do.

Let's kick things off with a question that has always intrigued me. The Constitution guarantees the rights of American citizens to bear arms. Now, in the time of our founders, I doubt they could have imagined the sort of armaments people have access to today. Nevertheless, there are no Constitutional provisions on what sort of weapons a person is allowed to have. So where do we draw the line on what sort of weapons are acceptable? DO we draw a line? Most people will agree that the Constitution protects a person's right to carry a handgun or a knife, but what about an automatic? Grenades? Shoulder-mounted rocket launchers? Chemical weapons? At what point does it make more sense to prevent catastrophe (and protect the "general welfare") by outlawing a weapon than it does to allow an individual to possess that weapon? And if you can make such an argument about any weapon, what's to stop that argument from extending to a handgun?

[Mista T]

So where do we draw the line on what sort of weapons are acceptable? DO we draw a line?

Why draw any line?:confused:

[postalworker]

My stance on the gun control issue has always been this:

Simply making a law preventing one from owning a certain type of firearm will never deter a criminal from getting one anyway.

If someone is hell bent on getting an AK-47 for criminal purposes, he's probably going to get one, legal or not. Imposing laws that mandate that no one can own these types of weapons will do nothing to stop murderers and psychopaths.

Enforcing these kinds of laws would actually be counter-productive- locking someone up simply because they own a gun (or whatever) wastes resources and time that could spent on real criminals- you know, the ones who have actually harmed someone else.

Owning a registered weapon is not and should not be a crime. It's a dangerous thing to begin punishing everyone because of the actions of others.

[Hrafn]

I usually keep myself far away from politics forums because of my European point of view seldom is met with great understanding, but this topic craves my attention.

I agree with postal on criminals getting their hands on the weapons they "need". But let me introduce a theory of what controls these needs of the criminals.

If the general public sports knives, criminals will need hand guns to gain the upper hand. If people in general have hand guns, criminals will need sub machine guns. Or as in Sweden, were I live and any weapon is outlawed. Most criminals, at least the ones preying on ordinary people, only need a knife.

If you accept this idea - criminals will do what is necessary to have the upper hand if voilence ensues. Banning weapons would decrease the magnitude of violence requiered for the criminals and thus probably lowering the amount of damage inflicted. This combined with the fact that it is very much harder to kill or injure someone with a knife than a gun, or at least is combined with greater risk for the assailant.

The better weapons, the more damage. Hence it should be in the common interest not to escalate the situation since the criminals will probably always gain the advantage of quality of weapon and always have the advantage of surprise and ability to first strike.

[Raineman]

Well, I just spent 20 minutes typing a response to this thread and when I went to post it I got kicked out. WTF!

Short version. You should separate the Gun issue and the Crime issue.

Law abiding citizens should be able to buy, carry , and use firearms for recreation and PROTECTION.

Crime would go down. The semi-novel I wrote was better than the short version.

[Hrafn]

Let me start out with saying that you can use guns for recreation and hunting in Sweden as well, but need a licence and keeping the firearms under lock.

I don't see how the gun issue and crime can be separated. Who exactly is it you need protection from? The King's men?

I would like for you to try to explain just how you get to the notion that crime would go down if more guns were to be put on the streets?

[Raineman]

It is very simple to separate. The issues are different. Gun licensing and registration are totally separate from enforcement of crime laws.

Being from/in Sweden, do you understand American laws and buraecracy(sp)?
(not being a smart ass, just finding out). As far as the "kings men", there was a little thing called the American Revolution that this would apply to.

Much work to do today, but I'll see if I can't come up with some links for you tomorrow, including ones where crime rates have gone down due to carry laws.

As far as your earlier statement that banning weapons would decrease the magnitude of violence. :187734: Is that like being a little pregnant? Have you been to America? If you take away our guns, criminals would have a field day.

[Hrafn]

This will be a half explaining, half retreat kind of post, and might be a bit incoherent, but bear with me.


As far as the "kings men", there was a little thing called the American Revolution that this would apply to.

My King's men comment was meant for just that. To point out that the law is from a time where it was fully understandable that one would need a gun since there was a palpable threat from the former lords and not much of a state to secure one from it, but that this carries very little weight now and needs to have a better reasoning behind it and maybe the carry laws reasearch do just that. (More on this later on.)


Being from/in Sweden, do you understand American laws and buraecracy(sp)?


As far as my understanding of US laws and bureaucracy I would say it is at least decent, since the US is the dominant force in the world and I read US papers online from time to time. Never having been to the US hardly has anything to do with it, since being a tourist in a country gives you a very limited understanding of it.

For you to understand where I was coming from, I guess I better outline what lead me to speculate in this issue.

Practically no one in Sweden carries guns - murder rate is very low. Many people have guns in the US - murder rates are very high.

This could of course be ascribed to more crime due to worse social security or many other factors.


I'll see if I can't come up with some links for you tomorrow, including ones where crime rates have gone down due to carry laws.

No need for links (unless they are excellent) as your post made me check up a bit on carry laws. The criminals are already in possession of fire arms, so passing harsher gun laws now will do little to lessen the number of criminals with fire arms.

Further on carry laws, I must say that I'm a bit surprised, that the deterrent effect of hand guns is comparable to that of MAD during the Cold War (international relations being a field where my knowledge is greater than that of law). Not that it doesn't make sense a priori, but just a thought that had never crossed my mind.

In spite of this I still like to maintain that in any given society the less weapons, the less violence or at least lesser concequences of violence. A more or less philosophical notion, but nonetheless.

[Raineman]

I'll provide a link (if I can figure it out) anyway. From my favorite website:

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=126

Hope it worked.

[Hrafn]

It worked fine but I prefer links to sites not as partisan. NRA is hardly the source for balanced reports on whether or not the right to carry fire arms is good for society.

[Raineman]

Fair enough--I'll post 'em as I find 'em.

http://www.sacsconsulting.com/ccw_RightToCarry.htm

[Raineman]

Here is one from the LA Times:

http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OpEds/More_Permits_Means_Less_Crime.htm

Shall I continue?

[Hrafn]

No need to put in any effort, I'm fairly skilled at googling myself, and have already read quite a bit on it.

A link I found very useful (http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Cramer/shall-issue.html), also by Kopel.

And wasn't clear enough in my fairly long response, I meant to say that it probably is a reason good enough for me to not question the American way of things in this regard.

[Mista T]

Many people have guns in the US - murder rates are very high.

Hrafn: that's a sweeping generalization. You have to dig deeper. The murder rates are significantly higher in major cities, and/or in the South, and/or close to the Mexican border, and/or among urban poor blacks, and/or where there is drug use, etc. There are many reasons, which are not really pertinent to this discussion.

I am willing to bet you that the murder rate in the town where I live - where we are pretty well-armed - is as low or lower than the murder rates in Copenhagen or Stockholm.

:mrt:

[Hrafn]

It is somewhat a sweeping generalization, but statistics show that there is a markedly higher murder rate in the US.

75:13 per 1M people overall (US:SWE) and an even bigger difference when looking at murders with guns. 44:2 per 1M people (from a 1993 UN report (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=726110))

This would support the idea that gun ownership leads to more murders by way of firearms. Which is also supported by this report (http://www.sentencingproject.org/june/usccr-incarceration.pdf#search=%22murder%20rate%20comparative%22) from the US commission on civil rights from 2003 p. 6


We can also note in this regard the role of firearms as a contributing factor to the high murder rate in the U.S. As the only industrialized nation without strong gun control policies, guns clearly contribute to the disparity in murder rates.
A 1988 comparison of the U.S. with England/Wales found that U.S. homicides rates were 5.6 times greater, but by excluding homicides with firearms, the differential dropped to 2.4.
Guns are not the only cause of violence in the U.S., but they do contribute to higher rates of homicide -- essentially, it is far easier to kill someone with a gun than with a knife, fists, or other objects.



And as far as comparison between larger and minor cities goes, it is hard to do since we don't really have any major cities here. Under 2M both of them (Stockholm and Copenhagen). But I can say that they don't differ statistically from the rest of their respective countries.

[Greg]

If you accept this idea - criminals will do what is necessary to have the upper hand if voilence ensues. Banning weapons would decrease the magnitude of violence requiered for the criminals and thus probably lowering the amount of damage inflicted. This combined with the fact that it is very much harder to kill or injure someone with a knife than a gun, or at least is combined with greater risk for the assailant.
This works okay if all crime were muggings, but when you have rape and murder a weaker person, particularly a female, needs something more than her hands to protect herself.

As for our murder rate, the availability of guns has little to do with it. In Dodge City 150 years ago EVERYBODY carried a gun and there was maybe one marshall in the town. So with everybody packing and very little law enforcement and almost no court system the murder was...VERY LOW. If I use the same logic you did in comparing Sweden and American murder rates I could conclude that an expansive court system or more police led to higher murder rates. In fact, they are in response to them, as is the propensity to own a weapon (in regard to law abiding citizens).

Drugs are illegal in this country. The very people who are problems with fire arms (drug dealers and gang members) are the same people who can get all the illegal drugs they need. Outlawing guns will not effect them at all, and if anything just give them something else to market.

The problem is cultural, our underclass here does not value life as much as those in Europe do, that is the real problem. Our society for all of its positives has created a huge underclass that has no respect for life, including often their own.

[Hrafn]

To argue that the wild west was a safe place to be in is hardly a way to sway me. The fact that there was close to no law enforcement or even judicial system is the only reason I can see behind your belief that few people got killed out west. Since no statistics are available and historic sources are a bit unreliable - no need to argue that point further.

I agree, as you can probably see in my other posts that it is hard to compare countries and the very fact that the US is overflowed by guns make it very hard to change the policy to a stricter (European style) one.

Indeed the socioeconomic factors are the greatest when it comes to crime rates in general and is a concequence of the political system, low welfare combined with a racist history with large groups alienated from society.

Problems of this sort is on the rising in Europe as well. No one is able to beat us when it comes to racism, but we've been at it for so long that we've had more or less homogenous nations since the nationalistic ideas were invented in the 18th century. In Sweden and Denmark, recessions in the 80s and 90s and a growing number of immigrants that have a hard time getting jobs and live in poor neighborhoods with very high unemployment rates.

Hence social segregation is a growing problem and it is based on racism, that was only gone for as long as the economy was growing and there was an immidiate need for foreign labor.

It is still too early to tell whether or not the same problems with high crime and murder rates will appear here too when the situation worsens, but it is very much harder to aquire a weapon here than in the US, so there is at least still hope that it will not go as far.


If I use the same logic you did in comparing Sweden and American murder rates I could conclude that an expansive court system or more police led to higher murder rates. In fact, they are in response to them, as is the propensity to own a weapon (in regard to law abiding citizens).

True drawing conclusions from covariables in statistics is always a liability, and outcome of carry laws or shall issue, or whatever you want to call it, speaks against there being a causality.

A priori however there seems to be a higher probability for gun availability to cause high murder rates than big police forces or an expansive judicial system. As these are matters where it is hard to find hard data, common sense is needed to evaluate arguments. As is always pratcised when there is not enough data to conclude what covariable causes the other or that they are caused by a third variable (as socieconomics in this case is probably a good suggestion).

I guess that "common sense" is what makes us see things differently in this matter as my common sense is from a culture where the state has a monopoly on use of force. The US common sense is based on US culture where owning a gun is as natural as it is unnatural to me.

[12thRaven]

History has demonstrated time and time again one consistency about brutal dictatorships - they have ALL started with The Government effectively disarming its citizens by bullshitting them into believing that they are better off without weapons. Hitler, Castro, Lenin/Stalin, Mao... and so forth.

Is violent crime a problem in the U.S.? You betcha. But guns and weapons, no matter how sophisticated, don't cause the crimes, folks. It's the people who use them. There was once a day in this nation where people who committed brutal crimes were put to death swiftly - none of this 20 years on death row crap and listening to how tough the monster had it as a kid.

The general question seems to be where to draw the line with the 2nd Amendment. My place to draw it would be where the weapons themselves become dangerous. The example of chemical weapons was given. No, I should not be allowed to possess chemical weapons because those weapons in and of themselves are a danger to my neighbors - i.e. they have the potential to harm them without any action on the part of any person.

[Hrafn]

As I've already stated, what I've read about the carry laws has made me rethink my position a bit at least.

But your argument that brutal dictatorships starts off with disarming the people doesn't hold water.

The Weimar republic was disarmed by the victors of the Great War, not Hitler.

Mao took over after a civil war against the nationalists, disarming them of course.

In Russia, the coup d'etat (I refuse to call it a revolution) was followed by war as well. With following disarmament of opposition.

Of cuban history, I don't know enough. But the other three should suffice.

[RavenMad2099]

Banning weapons would decrease the magnitude of violence requiered for the criminals and thus probably lowering the amount of damage inflicted.
On the other hand, a would-be victim of crime could avoid being injured at all by merely shooting his or her attacker.

The vast majority of criminals in the United States carry illegal firearms. Whether we're talking about street gangs, drug runners, or the Mafia, none of these criminals use registered weapons. Outlawing the possession of firearms would hurt no one but law-abiding citizens. While we're at it, most of these criminals are also well-versed in using other methods of attack to maim and kill, such as golf clubs and baseball bats. Should we outlaw those, as well?

The entire question of whether guns should be legal or illegal is moot, anyway...at least in America. The Second Amendment guarantees our right to bear arms. It's just as important as our right to free speech, freedom of religion, ability to petition the government, etc. There are no degrees of rights with one being more important than the other...one being more easily infringable than the other - they are all co-equal.

We have them to protect ourselves. The right to bear arms is an extension of the right to go on living. We protect ourselves from that great infringer of human liberty called the government, from criminals, and from anyone else who would take our lives or our property from us by force.

Contrary to popular belief, the Founders did not create the courts as arbiter over what the government can or can't do. At the end of the day, that question is up to the states and the people. Take away their arms, and they lie exposed to tyranny without recourse...and the history of man gave the Founders good reason to suspect that might happen. It's the nature of government to accumulate power. It looks after its own interests and no one else's.

As far as nukes and chemical weapons go, the Founders obviously didn't foresee the advent of WMDs, some of which can be produced relatively inexpensively. That goes far beyond the original intent of being able to protect your person and your property. Even in those days, we had militia for the protection of a community. That being the case, I see no problem with a state having access to weapons such as these. If the feds have no intention of trampling state and individual rights, they shouldn't have an issue with it, either.

[Hrafn]

The vast majority of criminals in the United States carry illegal firearms. Whether we're talking about street gangs, drug runners, or the Mafia, none of these criminals use registered weapons. Outlawing the possession of firearms would hurt no one but law-abiding citizens.

True, as I stated in posts after the one you quoted.



The right to bear arms is an extension of the right to go on living. We protect ourselves from that great infringer of human liberty called the government [...] It's the nature of government to accumulate power. It looks after its own interests and no one else's.

Government being a great infringer on human liberty and a self serving institution is a unnuanced statement. Sure, government can be an infringer on liberty, as seen on many occasions throughout history. But government is also the lone protector of human liberty. Since without any form of government violence would rule, as violence or force is the ultimate mean of power and power is what regulates society. E.g. pre-state civilizations and collapsed modern states.

Government is formed to ensure human liberty, but is also can also be an instrument to opress. The institution for balance between security and freedom.

[RavenMad2099]

Government is not the lone protector of human liberty. It protects human liberty isofar as it is subject to the people it governs. The only way to ensure that is through the people (and the states) being armed. If not that, then what are we to rely on? The good will of the government itself? The courts, which are extensions of that self-same government? No, thanks.

How many sham democracies have we seen throughout history? I can think of several that exist today. Iran comes to mind just off the top of my head. Even the 20th century dictators of Europe rose to power through democratic means. Our own American government has expanded its powers beyond the scope of the Constitution, in many cases despite specific constitutional bans against doing so. The court (that great protector of American liberty) often abbrogates its responsibilities by rubber stamping these new powers, but that my no means makes it right. It by no means makes it constitutional.

So, unnuanced or not, the proposition that government is the antithesis of human liberty is the very foundation upon which our government was built. It was the foundation of the Enlightenment political philosophies of John Locke, Thomas Paine, and Jefferson. It is true that humankind needs organization to protect itself from anarchy and the violence that proceed from internal and external threats...but it needs a very limited government for that. Anything else is a power grab.

[Hrafn]

Then we agree. Although I prefer a larger body of government than that for other reasons than human liberty. I'm a bigger fan of Rawls than of Locke, to give you a hint.

[RavenMad2099]

What reason could there possibly be for large government? By definition, government power comes at the expense of the rights of the governed.

To give you a hint at where I'm coming from, I consider property rights part and parcel of civil rights. One is indispensible from the other. From a political perspective, any kind of "fairness" in human affairs (which is what I assume you are referring to with your citation of Rawls) derives from an equal respect for individual civil rights, not from a civil interest in equality of outcome.

[Hrafn]

True, fairness derives from the respect of of individual rights, but from my point of view, again of European tradition, government is there to ensure that people do respect these rights. From my point of view people, rather than government strive for power. A power hungry government is an expression of power hungry individuals.

[12thRaven]

But your argument that brutal dictatorships starts off with disarming the people doesn't hold water.

The Weimar republic was disarmed by the victors of the Great War, not Hitler.

Mao took over after a civil war against the nationalists, disarming them of course.

In Russia, the coup d'etat (I refuse to call it a revolution) was followed by war as well. With following disarmament of opposition.

Of cuban history, I don't know enough. But the other three should suffice.

Okay... so you've made my point for me through your own interpretation of history. You use the government to disarm the people for the sole purpose of controlling them. You folks over in Europe enjoy having the government take care of you - so it's less of a biggie that they ask for your firearms in return. Here in the States, most of us have a problem with it. Most don't want The Government to be our nanny. The biggest struggle that our nation faces right now is whether to keep heading down the European nanny state path, or to revert to our roots and take care of our own. It's a very big deal here - we fought a civil war over it in the 19th century, and may very well be presently sowing the seeds of another one.

[RavensInBrazil]

I look forward to the day where gun control will be a moot point...

I believe that for every lady that escapes rape because she has a gun, there's a 6-year-old who finds daddy's .38 and harms someone with it. I believe one should be allowed to own a firearm, so long as it's guaranteed he can only use it in extreme cases or in controlled environments for recreation

Guns per se aren't the cause of criminality, it's a question of mentality and education, so it's hard to argue against the freedom of owning a gun, provided no harm can come to others

[12thRaven]

There are people who are irresponsible and own guns. It would seem that there are many 6 year-olds that find daddy's .38 and tragedy follows. Thank you, Big Media. It's Big News when a tragedy like that happens, but ho-hum when someone prevents a crime by showing heat. Big Media is not interested in such stories.

[Greg]

The court (that great protector of American liberty) often abbrogates its responsibilities by rubber stamping these new powers, ...
In many cases the courts themselves increase and create government powers.


I believe that for every lady that escapes rape because she has a gun, there's a 6-year-old who finds daddy's .38 and harms someone with it.
What you believe is completely wrong. There are AT LEAST between 600,000 and 1,000,000 annual events in America where a person uses a fire arm to defend themselves. In most cases this is done without a shot being fired. THIS DOES NOT COUNT THE NUMBER OF INSTANCES WHERE THE CRIMINAL WAS DETERRED FROM EVEN ATTEMPTING A CRIME BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OR EXISTANCE OF A FIRE ARM!

You are going off what you think and feel, here are numbers from a study from the University of FL. http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/noframedex.html

Millions of self-defense uses since 1/1/2005.

http://www.justfacts.com/gun_control.htm

There are your numbers for accidents and murder. What people think and feel is immaterial when the facts scream otherwise. The problem is the liberal media doesn't tell us these numbers, they just play up the horrors of the relatively few incidents of like Columbine.

[Hrafn]

I think I have come away from this thread more knowledgable than I was before. In Europe, there is little or no understandning of the 2nd amendment. It is easy for lobbysists to claim what I tried to claim in the beginning of this thread, that guns breed violence and crime.

The reports on the effects of carry laws is the first really solid evidence for positives of the right to own a gun. This far outweighs any argument or evidence the gun control lobbyists have.

This doesn't mean that I'm now an advocate of rights to own a gun over here. The negatives associated with being armed is very deeply rooted in me, and it will probably take a while for me to fully accept the contrary position.

[RavensInBrazil]

I'm not really I can believe that there were 7 million+ crime attempts thwarted by guns in the US last year alone, but I can believe that the number can far exceed the number of accidents. I don't exactly have access to much except for the "liberal media"

Still, according to the site there's a little less than an accident involving persons under 14 per day, and that figure is way too high if you ask me. There should be a greater effort in the education of citizens regarding guns, IMHO

[Gabrosin]

Wow... what a contrast to the other Politics forum. Things have remained civil, people have held their ground without being nasty, and a few people even seemed to be enlightened.

One thing I would mention, Hrafn, is that while the murder rate is typically lower in countries with strict gun control (Britain and Australia come to mind), the rate of "hot" crimes is higher. By "hot" crimes I mean crimes like burglary and carjacking where the owner of the property is present and put in jeopardy. The studies I have seen tend to indicate that criminals are bolder about their targets when there is little to no chance of the victim holding a superior weapon... which, I hope you agree, makes sense. I wish I still had links to the studies I'm referencing, but it's been a few years since I studied this topic. In any case, it's not a huge leap of faith to make, given the reasoning.

Another reason that violent crime is so high in the United States is the drug trade, which has already been mentioned. Personally, I'm convinced that legalizing most of the "common" illegal drugs is what our society needs to flush out that violent element. Take away the profit of the gangs and the cartels, and they will cease to flourish. But that's just me, and whoever I can convince in this lifetime.

[jonboy79]

Wow... what a contrast to the other Politics forum. Things have remained civil, people have held their ground without being nasty, and a few people even seemed to be enlightened.

Agreed, I like it. The football threads seem to have the same kind of feel as well. Intelligent, level headed discussion, what a concept.




Personally, I'm convinced that legalizing most of the "common" illegal drugs is what our society needs to flush out that violent element. Take away the profit of the gangs and the cartels, and they will cease to flourish. But that's just me, and whoever I can convince in this lifetime.

Can't agree more there either. Even if it is simply Marijuana. Thousands of "criminals" would be released(tax savings), Law enforcement would be seriously less burdened(tax savings), as well of course your point of diminished violence, which leads to a snowball effect of the others. Even before taxation of the product there is HUGE financial imrovements. Add to that The MONSTROUS sin tax they could get away with, as well as the fact that it should be grown where unprofitable products currently grow(Subsidies decrease) abd this snowballs into a highly profitable and positive move for the goverment.

How Tobacco and Alcohol are legal yet Marijuana is not is beyond me. It is a travesty. I suppose the only remaining legitimate roadblock is the lack of an roadside test for influence level, but then again, that shouldn't be particularly worrisome.

[Hrafn]

How Tobacco and Alcohol are legal yet Marijuana is not is beyond me. It is a travesty. I suppose the only remaining legitimate roadblock is the lack of an roadside test for influence level, but then again, that shouldn't be particularly worrisome.

I'd think the only reason that alcohol and tobacco are legal because of tradition, it is much harder to put in new laws and enforce them than banning not so widespread substances.

It certainly isn't because they are less harmful than marijuana.

[Hrafn]

Wow... what a contrast to the other Politics forum. Things have remained civil, people have held their ground without being nasty, and a few people even seemed to be enlightened.

I for one am overjoyed of this fact as discussing politics with people from a society very different from mine is very stimulating. Making me consider the presumptions my view of the world is based upon.

[Greg]

I apologize, I actually got the most heated or appear to have in this thread.


Still, according to the site there's a little less than an accident involving persons under 14 per day, and that figure is way too high if you ask me.
You think so? Compare that to auto accidents and how many under 14 are killed in those. Then consider how many women successfully defend themselves from rape. The accidents are terrible but with anything you will have accidents.

[RavensInBrazil]

Just because there are lots people who die in car accidents doesn't mean that something can't be done to help prevent them. Just like there are classes to teach you how to drive safely, I believe there should be some sort of way to educate the masses on how to handle their guns with more safety. Of course, I don't really know what it's like in the US, but the impression I get is that someone can simply walk into a store and buy a guy and leave it at that. In Switzerland for example they have mandatory shooting lessons

[12thRaven]

Many states have mandatory background checks that require a 24 to 72 hour waiting period. Glaring loopholes exist though for guns not sold at traditional places of business - like gun shows. And, of course, this doesn't include the illegal gun trade - which is huge.

We could dump hundreds of millions of dollars into mandatory "gun safety" and "proper shooting" classes, but that would do little to nothing in curbing the gun violence that Big Media blasts the U.S. for being plagued with. Why no difference? Because the people who commit the crimes will continue to have illegal weapons and therefore not be attending these "information" sessions to begin with. Simply put, it's not the ignorance of the use of and lethality of guns that's the problem - it's the criminal intent of some of the users that's the problem.

[Admin Steve]

Just because there are lots people who die in car accidents doesn't mean that something can't be done to help prevent them. Just like there are classes to teach you how to drive safely, I believe there should be some sort of way to educate the masses on how to handle their guns with more safety. Of course, I don't really know what it's like in the US, but the impression I get is that someone can simply walk into a store and buy a guy and leave it at that. In Switzerland for example they have mandatory shooting lessons

It is not a simple matter of walking into a store. As previously stated, it takes 2-3 days.

The overwhelming percentage of gun deaths in the US are by criminals with illegal guns.

In 2000, there were 174 accidental deaths of children by firearms http://www.childdeathreview.org/causesAF.htm That is in a country of almost 300,000,000. 174 is still 174 too many but (and I can't find the link now) it needs to be put into perspective by comparing with accidental drowning, suffocation, vehicle death etc. I'm all for training but it will do little or nothing to reduce murder by firearms in the US.

Baltimore has about 300 murders a year, most by guns and presumable intentional. There were over 16,000 murders in the US in 2004, not to mention 1.3M violent crimes. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

As discussed here, in the US it is a combination of the wide availibilty of (illegal) guns and an underclass of poverty where crime is prevalent and the value of a life means little. In addition, the undercurrent of a 'thug mentality' where succeeding in school is discouraged and gang-like behavior is seen as 'cool' does nothing to help the problem.

[Johnny_Storm]

AN armed society is a polite society.

[gooselovechild]

But your argument that brutal dictatorships starts off with disarming the people doesn't hold water.

The Weimar republic was disarmed by the victors of the Great War, not Hitler.

I see the point you're trying to make, but you are a little shaky historically on this point.

The Weimar Republic was the interwar government, and was only disarmed by the Allies in the sense that the standing military force could only be a set number. Private citizens were not disarmed by the Allied powers at Versailles.

It was this loophole in the armistice that Hitler used to re-arm Germany in the 1930s. Military men were discharged...with their weapons...and a new batch of recruits were brought in to replace them.

Also, Hitler used the Enabling Act after the Reichstag Fire in 1933 to give himself dictatorial powers, and then proceeded to make all political parties illegal, with the exception of the Nazis. Once that was accomplished, it was easy to disarm those opposed to his agendas, which he did, to take a strangle hold of German politics. That's why, despite the fact that the Nazis never achieved a majority in any election, they maintained power, and coerced millions of non-Nazified Germans into going along with Nazi programs without the smallest hint of an armed uprising.

[Art-Florida]

Wow, great thread, and compliments to all the posters...with the exception of the one from that bastion of "diversity" - Brazil.

This message and the War and Peace one to follow is primarily directed to Hrafn, who calmly and rationally states the northern european viewpoint on this multifaceted issue.

Hrafn, put yourself into this hypothetical scenario:

You are an unscrupulous criminal who walks a dark street seeking prey. There are a dozen other people in view. Each has at their side, a .45 calibre Colt automatic. You have no idea if any of them are marks men or not. Do you take a chance on their skill?

On another night, you walk down another dimly lighted street, and you see a similar group of folks, that you know for a fact are unarmed. Easy pickings? Probably. No need to spell out in detail the results of each scenario.

At one time, another Colt was called, "The great equalizer"

[Art-Florida]

AS AMERICAN AS GUNS Part One
by J. Neil Schulman


Advocates of the right to keep and bear arms in the United States
usually base their arguments on the Second Amendment: "A well-regulated
Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of
the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

But what if the Second Amendment were repealed? Would the right to
keep and bear arms disappear?

If we do not have a basic understanding of the nature and source of
rights in general, as did the Framers of the Constitution, then it is
near-impossible to defend the right to keep and bear arms as a right
that exists independent of its enshrinement in the Constitution, and a
right that would still exist even if the Constitution were amended to
repeal the Second Amendment.

The concept of liberty is that of a society organized on the basis
of universal individual rights -- rights which are equally held by every
individual in that society.

What do we mean by a "right"? Here's a working definition: a right
is the moral authority to do something without needing prior permission
from another to do it.

In Biblical times, it was assumed that only God has rights, and that
He grants them only to a specific chosen few. He liberated the nation
of Israel from bondage to the Egyptians by a series of plagues imposed
upon the Egyptians. Was God violating the Egyptians' rights? Not
according to the Biblical writers, who viewed the Egyptians as merely
God's property, to do with as He will.

Later, God ordered the Israelites, under the command of Joshua, to
evict everyone from Canaan, killing every man, woman, and child among
them and take the land for themselves, as His exclusively authorized
tenants.

The Biblical writers assumed that God had the rights of a landlord
to do so, and the Canaanites had no rights to live there: only the
nation of Israel, to whom God granted an exclusive, long-term lease.

Still later in Biblical accounts, the nation of Israel petitioned
God to have a king, so they could be like other nations. Reluctantly,
God agreed, and thus was born the concept of the divine right of kings.
The King appointed by God had an exclusive moral authority to take
actions in that society, answerable only to God Himself. Everyone else
was under the King's authority and had no rights of their own -- no
rights to their own lives, property, or freedom of action. All these
were owned by the king, who dispensed them to his favored few.

There were historical variations, of course. Often kings found that
they needed to share power with military men in order to keep their turf
-- thus the birth of aristocracy. The ancient Greeks vested much
authority into military leaders, and experimented with popular
government without much success. Ancient Rome experimented with a
republican form of government, in which certain classes of people had
greater rights than others, ranging from the Patricians, to the
plebeians, to slaves -- even women had certain rights. Later, when Rome
became an empire, we find one of the oddest reversals of rights being
that of the Roman Emperor's right not only to rule on earth with
absolute authority over all that he conquered, but to create new gods as
well.

In any event, as history progresses, there is a tendency to disperse
rights among larger and larger groups of people. There were a number of
forces at work to produce this. One of them was the Reformation.
Another was the greater importance of merchants and trade. Still
another was the necessity of kings requiring wide dispersal of arms to
as many of their subjects as could handle them, to discourage other
kings from invading.

Eventually, you get to the 18th century, when a curious idea started
gaining popularity among certain Englishmen, particularly those living
in America: that rights are not invested by God in a single King, but in
every single individual.

In Europe, however, the dispersal of rights took a different road,
particularly in the French revolution. Instead of rights being seized
from the king and given to the individual, it was given to new
collectives of revolutionaries. Thus the idea of revolutionary
communism and revolutionary socialism was born. The moral authority to
act without permission was shifted from the king to the governing
council or party. Because this idea granted the people a moral sense
that it was proper to kill the old kings and aristocracies and grab
their lands and property, it became popular -- popular until it became
evident to everyone that all that had happened was the transfer of power
from an old aristocracy to a new one called by a different name. The
new aristocracy was just as hard to overthrow as the old ones, and it is
only well into the 20th century that there has been any success at it.

This history lesson has a point. No matter what the institutions
are of a given society, or what names they are called, the fundamental
question is whether rights in that society are universally held by all
the people, or whether they are reserved to those with the political
power to get their own way.

"Getting your own way" can take a number of forms.

One of them is institutional politics. This can take the form of a
political party, or a political lobby, or a class of people who are
well-organized enough to require those in power to take their desires
into account. It can be the ability to convince politicians to grant
favors -- sometimes by cash payoffs, sometimes merely by a promise that
you will support their next campaign for office. Sometimes it can be
something as silly as being a popular actor or TV personality whom
people are willing to pay attention to.

But underneath all this civilized horse-trading is the question of,
when push comes to shove, who has the raw force to win the day?

Historically, the king's rights meant nothing if his soldiers
wouldn't act on his orders, or if others could overthrow him by force of
arms.

What is true for the rights of kings is just as true for the rights
of the people. Rights are only as secure as the ability to wield
sufficient force to defend them.

[Art-Florida]

As American as guns Part Two


What is true for the rights of kings is just as true for the rights
of the people. Rights are only as secure as the ability to wield
sufficient force to defend them.

In a free society which recognizes the moral authority of
individuals to act for their own good -- to make decisions about their
lives, lifestyles, and property without prior permission from a king,
political party, or even their neighbors -- individuals are the
sovereign, the kings. Whatever compacts such sovereigns make with one
another to keep from violating each other's boundaries only have the
moral authority which is first held by the individuals themselves.

America is a culture historically different from any other in the
history of the human race, and still largely different from any other
elsewhere on this world. What has distinguished American civilization
from all others is the doctrine of universal individual sovereign
rights. This unique difference made the American civilization superior
to any previous or foreign civilization in the known universe.

I carefully said "made" in the previous sentence rather than
"makes." Reactionary forces for the last century have been working hard
at eliminating those qualities that made the American civilization
unique, and America is a long way on the road back into the quicksand of
European and Asian barbarism from which it once freed itself.

In every previous civilization, the individual was finally the
servant of the polity, whether that polity was the tribe, the religious
order, or embodied in the person of a king or emperor. Even in such
decentralized polities as existed in ancient Ireland or Iceland, an
individual pledged fealty to a king above himself, regardless of his
ability to change his mind and switch kings.

The American civilization, which was born on July 4th, 1776, utterly
rejected this doctrine for the first time in human history, in its
founding document, the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness."

The Declaration of Independence implemented a view of individual
rights originating in John Locke's 1690 "Two Treatises on Government."
In an historical instant, all previous conception of the relationship
between the individual and the polity was reversed. From then on, each
individual held sovereignty as a birthright: not a king's claim to rule
others and sit in judgment on them, but a free man's sovereignty to
determine his own destiny, rule his own life, and dispose of his own
property as he saw fit. For the first time in human history, a polity
declared itself a nation -- a single people -- by an act of will rather
than by an accident of geography or history or religion or language.

It is true that the structural implementation of this doctrine of
universal individual sovereignty was decidedly flawed. At the outset,
the implementation excluded women, Africans, and native tribes, and
it favored landed property owners. In practice, rights were held only by
white Protestant male property owners. These were hangovers from the
Old World way of doing things. But the rhetoric was universalist. The
power of this rhetoric of universal rights acted as a moral goad, in the
United States, first to rebellion against the King, then later to wider
and wider dispersal of rights, until chattel slavery of Africans was
abolished and full legal rights accorded to them; property
qualifications for franchise were eliminated; and full citizenship
rights were granted to women as well.

While the principles propelled the culture to progress toward closer
and closer approximations of extending universal rights, reactionary
forces were working to destroy the concept of sovereign rights entirely.
In the twentieth century we have seen the doctrine of universalism
triumph while the doctrine of individual powers is nearly extinguished.

The Constitution of the United States in 1787 was the first attempt
in human history to forge a government of individual sovereigns. The
Articles of Confederation before it was not: it was merely a
confederation of states with varying degrees of individual versus state
sovereignty. From the perspective allowed by 205 years of observation,
it is clearly an imperfect attempt in that it provided no reliable
institutional mechanism, short of revolution, to enforce punishment upon
magistrates, legislators, and executives who usurped the people's rights
and powers.

But it did preserve the option of revolution as a final means of
enforcement of the people's rights and powers, and it did that in the
Second Amendment to the Constitution's Bill of Rights, the Preamble of
which declared the Bill of Rights' purpose: "The conventions of a number
of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution,
expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its
powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added
..."

The "militia" referred to in the Second Amendment -- supported by
debates at the time and enabling legislation -- was the people as a
whole. It was the expectation of the Constitution's Framers that the
people would train to arms and be available both for defense against
foreign enemies and as a posse comitatus (Latin for "power of the
county") against domestic enemies. The constitutional debates now known
as the Federalist Papers, largely written by Madison and Hamilton,
clearly distinguished the militia from both a standing army and "select"
militias. The revolutionaries had had experience with both, courtesy of
the British, and wanted the people armed and ready as a protection
against them.

Today, 201 years after the Second Amendment was made part of the
Constitution, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is under
attack as the final barrier to the triumph of statism's conquest of
America, but two centuries of that right's existence has left us a
living legacy from its authors. In spite of an extreme hostility toward
civilian arms from every powerful organized institution in this country,
half the homes in this country still maintain a private arsenal, and
two-thirds of Americans have said to Louis Harris pollsters that they
have no intent of surrendering their arms, even if they are both bribed
and threatened by the law.

Gun control, so-called, is a fraud perpetrated by those who are
fundamentally opposed to the doctrine of universal individual
sovereignty: individual liberty. Its proponents are either
philosophical pacifists or statists, or both. Its stated purpose of
reducing crime and violence has never succeeded in doing either, no
matter how thoroughly it has been tried; as good a case can be made that
it disarms only the innocent and increases violent crime overall.
While the purposes for which it is proposed are dubious, its function is
clearly to deinstitutionalize, once and for all, the doctrine of
universal individual sovereignty in this country by depriving the people
of their final means of resisting incursions upon their lives, property,
and liberty: armed force.

Arms are the power of the sovereign, whether that sovereign is one
man or a billion.

If the doctrine of universal individual sovereignty is to triumph on
this planet, the last, best hope of mankind -- the United States of
America -- must preserve the power of its people to defend the rights of
its people.

ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
J. Neil Schulman is a Los Angeles-based novelist and screenwriter. Two
of his novels have won Prometheus Awards for promoting the concepts of
liberty, and he wrote the Twilight Zone episode in which a future
historian prevents the JFK assassination.

[Raineman]

:patriot:

FloridaArt Rocks!

[Raineman]

Here is an update on this subject. A new article from South Carolina.



http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/15386395.htm