High gun ownership does equal high gun violence -UN Report

[Kulindahr]

I'm not sure as to whether or not the argument has been made by anyone else, but I would like to point out that Switzerland does not have the same crime issues as the USA does and it is loaded with assault riffels in private homes..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland#Number_of_guns_in_circulation

THat demonstrates that it is not guns which are the problem, but the culture.

It has, and the answer to that is that unlike the ignorant armed to the teeth masses in the US, Switzerland has mandatory military training.

The US could have the same, if Congress decided to exercise its Article I authority over the militia. I'd start that training in the early school years, teaching safety and respect first.

 

[Kulindahr]

Everyone's quick to point out that Lanza's mother was incompetent for not having properly secured her guns but what reason do we even have to believe she would have known how to do so? No training or certification is required in the U.S. in order to get some firearms.

If you can get a driver's license, you're competent to know how to properly secure your guns.

And again, that proper security is something Congress could mandate under its Article I authority over the militia, because properly securing unattended weapons is part of "discipline" as the Framers understood it.

I'd be delighted to see a new Militia Act attached to the next defense appropriations bill or Homeland Security bill, specifying minimum security requirements for the storage of weapons not in use at the time as instruments of self-defense (along with other provisions). Unfortunately, our advocates for disarmament aren't interested in applying the Second Amendment, only in destroying it. There's a lot of room for improving the sloppy storage and such of firearms within the Second Amendment because of Article I Section 8, thanks to the authority given to Congress over the militia (as limited as it may be). (One of those restrictions could be to make illegal any 'militia' organization that is not registered with the state government and subject to the governor's call in cases of emergency.)

We need a big dose of Ron Paul on this issue: the first step should be to examine what authority the Constitution explicitly grants, and then put forth ways to apply that authority to the current situation. Here the first key word is "discipline", and the COngress' authority to provide that for the militia -- and since the militia is all of us, those restrictions would apply universally.

Would that "solve" the problem of mass shootings? Of course not (especially since psychologists and sociologists as far back as the '50s predicted that the more densely populated, more complex, and more regulated a society would be come, the more certain it would be that society would produce lunatics who don't value their own lives and therefore have no regard for anyone else either), but we can tighten the parameters of the situation.

But instead we look at idiocy like banning certain kinds of guns that look scary.

 

[Kulindahr]

Actually, you are incorrect. What people are saying is that EASY ACCESSIBILITY of guns = higher murder rates. Be it guns that are given away at gun shows with no background checks, or weapons insecurely stored and stolen. The number of guns - while also relevant - isn't the major factor in this problem.

And why is it that guns get sold at gun shows with no background checks? Because the gun-haters are so blind in their hatred that the NRA-backed proposal to open the NICS to anyone at all selling a firearm has been slapped down over and over. Talking to people at gun shows, I've found over and over that private sellers would love to be able to access the NICS, but because of liberal hate for the NRA they've been forbidden to do so. Instead, gun sellers and manufacturers have come to the rescue by allowing those private sellers to make the checks under their FFL auspices (the sleight-of-hand involved being technically selling the firearm to the dealer or manufacturer booth operator, and they then technically do the sale to the buyer). Despite the slander against manufacturers and dealers, they've been the ones -- in response to individual gun owners -- leading the way by actually doing something instead of just arguing in legislatures.

And at present I despise both those knuckle-dragging legislators and the NRA "leadership"*, the former because while the NRA was supporting a solution they opposed it, and the latter because now that the "bad guys" are trying to do something very similar, they're opposing it.



* a note on that "leadership": yes, the leadership is supposedly elected, but the process is as if for elections to Congress, Congress itself made the nominations, and the newly-elected Congress then hired a President and Cabinet.

 

[Kulindahr]

[

Its easy to get a gun if you are a citizen there are even huge shooting festivals, even youth competitions as a result Swiss are excellent marksmen. Bullets are subsidized by the government in switzerland (they are very cheap) and there is a very strong gun culture and has been this way since guns were invented. Switzerland is famous for its citizen militia in fact the swiss militia system inspired the US 2nd amendment.

Kaiser Wilhelm once asked 'what can a quarter million swiss militia do to a half million german soldiers?" when he planned to invade switzerland, to which a swiss man replied 'shoot twice and go home'.

An interesting thing is that crime in Switzerland is very low so more guns= less crime?

Close to half the people here are descended from Swiss immigrants. A family patriarch from the old country came visiting once, and chastised his dairy-farming nephew that he was neglecting his kids' upbringing by not training them to sharpshooter ability by age fourteen -- this from a man who could put a .22 mag round through a rabbit's eye at a hundred yards. One of the kids protested that they were shooting deer, not rabbits, and the patriarch countered, "And the deer are having so much huger eyes, are they?"

 

[xbuzzerx]

In Christian terms, you fall in with Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson: you refuse to read language as it was meant to be read, and insist on pretending it was written only by idiots for idiots.

Actually, that's a precise description of your previous statement that the document is only intended to be rigidly understood as its precise meaning within its 1776 context. Don't insult me or compare me to religious fundamentalists because I take you at face value and your "flexibility" on the interpretation of the Bill of Rights changes to suit your position.

And I take the Constitution exactly as it was intended: that its meaning should continue as it was written until the mechansim for changing it is implemented, namely amendation.

 

[Kulindahr]

So then what you're saying in essence is that it it's our culture that's at fault and not guns at all, since we both have that in common. The only outlying variable is culture?

By the way, that wasn't a wiki quote. And i will refute that wikipedia isn't most accurate. Most of wikipedia has heavily secured sources.

"Culture" includes a LOT of variables -- a piece by a colleague of John Lott listed fourteen items of culture that were related to the impact of firearms on society, and noted that the list was just the basic elements.

Numbers of guns and who owns them are just two variables about firearms, so I suspect that to really get a good picture we need at least twenty variables (education, income, home stability, etc. for starters).

WRT Wiki, it's been found multiple times to actually be more reliable than Britannica, except where individual articles are undergoing battles. I'm just one of millions who, reading an article, see a weakness or something insufficiently documented, who then proceed to spend a couple of hours improving one tiny detail in a subject we know. So unless an article is locked because an editing war broke out, Wiki is about as good as it gets.

 

[tigerfan482]

Clearly wrong. The Constitution delegates specific powers to the Federal government. But , Amendment X provides: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively , or to the people." No power to govern abortion is delegated to the Federal government. The Supreme Court cannot declare a statute unconstitutional unless the law is contrary to something in the Constitution. That was my challenge.

How can you miss the Supremacy Clause? If the Federal Government passes a law banning something, then that law trumps any state law passed. That is why regardless of what states have done with marijuana statutes, marijuana is still an illegal drug.

And please read what I said about the Supreme Court, because I definitely did mention they can rule state laws unconstitutional, like they did with abortion (they ruled it violated the 14th amendment's guarantee of privacy under the due process clause.)

Please read what you are commenting on before commenting on it.

 

[Rolyo85]

Benvolio, how do you feel about the fact that some southern states still ban interracial marriage in their constitutions? Or is that somehow magically different?

 

[Kulindahr]

Please go back and read. Try to comprehend. You mentioned people and countries getting arms from their militaries way before I said anything about them. You are either being purposefully ignorant because you know you're wrong or you are failing to read and comprehend what I am talking about.

I mentioned the military because the assertion was that these other countries get their arms from private sources in the US. Getting them from the military is an entirely different issue, and if they're getting them from they're own militaries, they're not getting them from the US. As a comparison, if I go downtown and buy something, I don't come home and say"Look what I bought fropm CHina today", I say "Look what I got at Walgreens".

I believe that the Founding Fathers did not realize the extent to which weapons would be commercialized and made available. I do not think they realized the lethality to which we could develop firearms. I do not believe they envisioned automatic weapons capable of emptying over-sized magazines in seconds. I group this along the same process as me not seeing them ever predicting a personal computer or handheld cellular phone. You can foresee advances, but you can't foresee the scope of such. I would bet the Founding Fathers never envisioned the United States extending beyond the 13 colonies, much less getting up to the 50 states it has today.

Try reading this document called the U.S. Constitution.

As for the efficacy of firearms, their stated intent was that the citizen militia be as well-armed as the official militia or standing army, so as to be able to exercise the right of insurrection.

Of course they didn't confuse the two, because they never set up a standing army. However, with the introduction of the standing army (a power that was relegated to Congress), the need for militias was eliminated. Also, the Militia Act of 1902 provided dual status for all militia personnel, ensuring that their ultimate reporting authority, whether called into federal service or not, was to the President of the United States. I would say this pretty much federalized the local militias and created them as the National Guard.

If that were so, we wouldn't have the US Code specifying that the Army is not the militia and that when called to federal service, neither is the National Guard. The US COde and state laws both recognize that the militia is all the people capable of bearing arms.

I would challenge them viewing the standing army as a form of tyranny, since they made no attempt to eliminate the formation of one. I think instead what they did was, given the state of transportation, geographical layout, and challenges facing the colonies at the time, set up the ability of each state to have it's own standing group of trained and armed individuals to provide local level protection as a primary function and to provide national level protection when called into action. As police forces and the standing military of the nation developed, as well as the changes in societal provisions, such as rapid transportation between states, the need for local militias became obsolete. Either way, the Second Amendment, if taken very literally, still only provides for the possession of firearms for the application in a well-regulated militia in defense of a free state. It mentions nothing of being available for personal protection.

No, the Second Amendment, taken very literally, means that the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be touched by any law or regulation whatsoever -- that's the meaning of the term "infringe", which means to leave alone not merely the substance of something, but anything peripheral to it as well.

Ahhh, the good ole' association fallacy. You're definitely good at breaking out the fallacies, but they do nothing to support your position. So you admit they have never spoken or taken action in favor of full disarmament, but that just because you say so, they are all aiming for that goal? Your argument is severely flawed. So much so that you have failed to prove any premise you have presented. Thus, I can only conclude that your argument is flawed and unsubstantiated.

When politicians embrace organizations and say they share the same goals, it's no mere association. Twisting my words don't strengthen your case.

The Supreme Court has actually not provided any of that. In fact, while their recent decisions have said outright gun bans aren't Constitutional, their sale and possession can be well regulated. Washington, DC and Chicago have some of the most onerous regulations on purchasing and possessing firearms in the country. While their possession bans wer struck down, their control measures have been upheld.

SCOTUS has on more than a dozen occasions described the Second Amendment as pertaining to individuals exactly in the same way that the First and Fourth and Fifth and the rest do. In Miller, it plainly set forth that the Second protects the right of all citizens to keep and bear any arm with a military use.

I also have no doubt that George Washington may have understood what was meant by the term militia. I also have no doubt George Washington had no idea that our country would be what it is today militarily, socially, technologically, geographically, or economically. I also have no doubt that George Washington would make no attempt today to impose his ideas of a militia from 240+ years ago to the composition of our country and its military forces today. It's funny how people today attempt to defend their unwavering stance by pointing to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, yet ignore the fact that the same wisdom they attempt to take comfort in would actually play out against them in the fact that the Founding Fathers would (and did) understand that change happens and thus the applications and interpretations of the Constitution would change from how they saw it almost 250 years ago.

You mean the Founding Fathers would think it's fine to engage in word games to make plain language say something other than what they meant it to? Read biographies of such as Adams or Franklin, and see how they viewed such deception! The point, which you seem determined to avoid, is that the words they set down mean what they set them down to say, not whatever someone later on might decide to twist them to mean.

Nor do the changes circumstances make any difference at all, because they rights they decided to enumerate for protection depend not on any level of technology, but on the nature of human beings. That nature has not changed in the least.

 

[Kulindahr]

The key phrase here is "we Americans". I do believe in those rights. But I am not blind enough to think they are something come from above. If the US was to lose its military dominance and China was to conquer it, the people living here would have vastly different rights, whatever the Constitution says, and whatever "we Americans" think.

This can only be justified by holding that human beings are the property of the system. If it's true, then to rebel against tyrants, to pull down despots, is immoral.

 

[bankside]

Yes, you were the one with the barbecue -- standing there suspicious and terrified, by your own account.

BTW, if you think you have "harmless neighbors", I have to wonder which cemetery you live in.

Last here, I like the way you constantly change the question to try to stir emotion than use reason.

I asserted that my inherent default perception is that I had nothing to fear from my neighbours and particularly nothing to fear in the way of gun violence. I'm not sure I made it explicit enough as to why. First, it is their disposition: they are not gun nuts. They are not people who feel that violence is a legitimate way to resolve a dispute. Second, it is rather more difficult to come by guns in Canada, so even if they were gun nuts, they'd not have the same ready access that gun nuts do in the states.

I contrasted this with my image (okay, caricature) of you, hiding behind your fence in a trench or something, ready to lob a grenade in self defence at the first person who threatened the Sovereign Land of Kulindarhria with armed invasion. This image follows from your assertion that personal weapons are not just a gun nut's fantasy, but a rational, realistic necessity given the likelihood of attack you would experience in your lifetime.

Remember, I understand the utility of a gun for self-defence. But I also understand the utility of a canoe made of refractory ceramics, to protect me from the day that Yellowstone explodes and I need to paddle through the lava sweeping across the prairies. What this is in my mind is a question of probabilities: you see a real risk that justifies the bother of having to learn to shoot, whereas I don't see it as any more necessary than a lava canoe or a bunker to protect against falling moon rocks. You are obviously afraid of something that would impel you to want to own a gun - apparently your neighbours. i.e. the people you are likely to come across in your daily life. Is it well-grounded fear?

My own fearless assessment is either naive and I'm in more danger than I realise in my obliviousness to my neighbours (in which case I did invite you to enlighten me) or it is accurate. If my own assessment is accurate, then you either live amongst some truly monstrous neighbours, or your perception of needing a gun is based on needless fear.

But either way, I think the barbecue at my place sounds like more fun.

 

[Kulindahr]

No, and no.Republicans have been objecting to the Courts invention of new Rights for decades. Roe v Wade was sheer invention.

There's no such thing as a "new" right. Rights arise from the observable fact of self-ownership, and so are either there or not. The only thing that changes is whether the system has been forced to recognize those rights and stop penalizing them, thus allowing "the free exercise thereof", or whether people are being sheep and believing the lie that their self-ownership is meaningless.

Republicans who object to courts "inventing new rights" don't understand liberty or the Constitution.

 

[Kulindahr]

Actually, that's a precise description of your previous statement that the document is only intended to be rigidly understood as its precise meaning within its 1776 context. Don't insult me or compare me to religious fundamentalists because I take you at face value and your "flexibility" on the interpretation of the Bill of Rights changes to suit your position.

No, it isn't. The anti-gun argument here is based on the proposition that words don't mean what the speakers or writers intended, but only what the reader or listener would like them to. The correct position is that the words mean exactly what their authors understood them to mean, no more and no less. That's what I stick to, regardless of how others here want to twist and mangle things.

The "it means what I want it to mean" school you follow rests upon the notion that there really is no meaning, only positions and the power available to enforce one over another.

 

[Kulindahr]

I asserted that my inherent default perception is that I had nothing to fear from my neighbours and particularly nothing to fear in the way of gun violence. I'm not sure I made it explicit enough as to why. First, it is their disposition: they are not gun nuts. They are not people who feel that violence is a legitimate way to resolve a dispute. Second, it is rather more difficult to come by guns in Canada, so even if they were gun nuts, they'd not have the same ready access that gun nuts do in the states.

I contrasted this with my image (okay, caricature) of you, hiding behind your fence in a trench or something, ready to lob a grenade in self defence at the first person who threatened the Sovereign Land of Kulindarhria with armed invasion. This image follows from your assertion that personal weapons are not just a gun nut's fantasy, but a rational, realistic necessity given the likelihood of attack you would experience in your lifetime.

Remember, I understand the utility of a gun for self-defence. But I also understand the utility of a canoe made of refractory ceramics, to protect me from the day that Yellowstone explodes and I need to paddle through the lava sweeping across the prairies. What this is in my mind is a question of probabilities: you see a real risk that justifies the bother of having to learn to shoot, whereas I don't see it as any more necessary than a lava canoe or a bunker to protect against falling moon rocks. You are obviously afraid of something that would impel you to want to own a gun - apparently your neighbours. i.e. the people you are likely to come across in your daily life. Is it well-grounded fear?

My own fearless assessment is either naive and I'm in more danger than I realise in my obliviousness to my neighbours (in which case I did invite you to enlighten me) or it is accurate. If my own assessment is accurate, then you either live amongst some truly monstrous neighbours, or your perception of needing a gun is based on needless fear.

But either way, I think the barbecue at my place sounds like more fun.

All one has to do to see why a sidearm is a good idea is to watch and read the daily news.

The "fun" of your barbecue involves the notion that if your neighbors had guns, they'd somehow magically transform into a danger to you -- despite the fact that gun owners are more law-abiding than the general population.

 

[xbuzzerx]

No, it isn't. The anti-gun argument here is based on the proposition that words don't mean what the speakers or writers intended, but only what the reader or listener would like them to. The correct position is that the words mean exactly what their authors understood them to mean, no more and no less. That's what I stick to, regardless of how others here want to twist and mangle things.

The "it means what I want it to mean" school you follow rests upon the notion that there really is no meaning, only positions and the power available to enforce one over another.

You are in a heap of denial about how much you are guilty of the things you accuse everyone who differs from you by any degree in your interpretation of the applications of the 2nd Amendment of.

When the notion of minutemen with a firearm at home who can grab them and form up militias is an anachronistic picture of the sort of military force needed to ensure the protection of the free state from government tyranny, what does the 2nd Amendment mean? That's ultimately what we're wrangling about, you insist your interpretation is the only one and that's baloney. You then spend the rest of the discussion responding to almost everyone in it saying that they're perpetuating falsehoods. That's poor form from you. And this Ayn Rand inspired self ownership crap doesn't even belong in the discussion at all.

My position is that the sort of firepower you may keep at home under current understanding of the 2nd Amendment is not, and will likely never be again in the future, sufficient to fight or overthrow the U.S. government (assuming that is what a given situation required) and so this insistence that we must allow guns to be absolutely no more regulated than they already are "because of the 2nd Amendment" is a flawed premise. I would say even as we speak the current implementation of the 2nd Amendment as far as private gun ownership is too big of a gap between what would be required to ensure our own protection from a 'potential' threat from our own government. The only result of lax private firearm dogma today is a lot of murder.

 

[bankside]

All one has to do to see why a sidearm is a good idea is to watch and read the daily news.

The "fun" of your barbecue involves the notion that if your neighbors had guns, they'd somehow magically transform into a danger to you -- despite the fact that gun owners are more law-abiding than the general population.

All one has to do to see why a private weapon is a bad idea is to watch and read the daily news.

What section are you looking at??

 

[tigerfan482]

I mentioned the military because the assertion was that these other countries get their arms from private sources in the US. Getting them from the military is an entirely different issue, and if they're getting them from they're own militaries, they're not getting them from the US. As a comparison, if I go downtown and buy something, I don't come home and say"Look what I bought fropm CHina today", I say "Look what I got at Walgreens".

That doesn't change the fact what you bought at Walgreens was made in China. The fact that the US is both the largest private and government exporter of weapons means that regardless of where you got the weapons, they most likely came from the US. So it doesn't matter whether you bought your weapon by mail from a US distributor or got it from a military stockpile that was sold to that country by the US, the US was still the source of those weapons.

Try reading this document called the U.S. Constitution.

As for the efficacy of firearms, their stated intent was that the citizen militia be as well-armed as the official militia or standing army, so as to be able to exercise the right of insurrection.

So I'm done reading the Constitution and not only did I not see where they envisioned a huge nation of 50 states, I'm not seeing this stated intent of citizens militias being as well armed as the official militia or standing army or the right to insurrection.

If that were so, we wouldn't have the US Code specifying that the Army is not the militia and that when called to federal service, neither is the National Guard. The US COde and state laws both recognize that the militia is all the people capable of bearing arms.

Familiarize yourself with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives the US Congress the power to organize, regulate, and arm the militia. The powers reserved to the states was the appointment of officers and training the militia per the regulations of Congress. But again, I wasn't arguing the definition of militia. I was arguing the necessity of one with the standing army, which we have seen isn't necessary anymore.

No, the Second Amendment, taken very literally, means that the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be touched by any law or regulation whatsoever -- that's the meaning of the term "infringe", which means to leave alone not merely the substance of something, but anything peripheral to it as well.

Funny you mention that since the Second Amendment itself has the term "well regulated" in it. I would say taken very literally, it means that it is perfectly OK to pass laws and regulations on the ownership and use of firearms.

When politicians embrace organizations and say they share the same goals, it's no mere association. Twisting my words don't strengthen your case.

making up words that politicians have said does nothing for your case either. You can associate with a group that is in favor of more gun regulations without accepting their view of eliminating firearms ownership altogether. Since I have seen no politician or any legislation advocating for the complete removal of firearms from the public domain, then you have nothing to base your argument on other than a slippery slope or association fallacy. Either way, they are both fallacious.

SCOTUS has on more than a dozen occasions described the Second Amendment as pertaining to individuals exactly in the same way that the First and Fourth and Fifth and the rest do. In Miller, it plainly set forth that the Second protects the right of all citizens to keep and bear any arm with a military use.

False. Miller set forth a precedent that citizens can keep and bear arms that are in common use at the time. Miller itself denied that a person had a Second Amendment right to own and carry a 12 gauge shotgun with a barrel length less than 18 inches. In Heller, the Supreme Court further clarified that prohibiting the ownership or carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons" was completely Constitutional, and it even gave a rebuttal of the argument that citizens should be allowed to carry what today's military carries.

You mean the Founding Fathers would think it's fine to engage in word games to make plain language say something other than what they meant it to? Read biographies of such as Adams or Franklin, and see how they viewed such deception! The point, which you seem determined to avoid, is that the words they set down mean what they set them down to say, not whatever someone later on might decide to twist them to mean.

Nor do the changes circumstances make any difference at all, because they rights they decided to enumerate for protection depend not on any level of technology, but on the nature of human beings. That nature has not changed in the least.

Actually, the Supreme Court was created around the idea that the meaning of the words they used in the Constitution and their intent may change over time. The SCOTUS is singularly granted the ability to interpret the Constitution and apply that interpretation to the holding or dismissal of laws passed throughout the country. They understood that everything about this country could change and they made provisions for that. So while they were intelligent individuals, they realized they didn't have all of the answers and so they gave the power to the people to change it (via Congress) and the power to the courts to interpret it (the SCOTUS.)