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[The Second Amendment] - What the Hell IS a militia!?
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I think this is only correlation though as richer states have more gun control because they're liberal, and rich areas are safer than poor areas, which are usually conservative.
What this all comes down to for me is whether you think the Constitution is open to interpretation. The 2nd Amendment is a product of the time it was written in, specifically when America didn't have a standing army for the defense of the nation. Our circumstances as a country are so radically different now that to argue that owning an assault rifle is a right directly from the founding fathers seems downright silly to me. We've modified bits of the Constitution to fit changing societal circumstances, I don't see why we can't define gun ownership a bit more clearly and set out some guidelines for it now.
In any event, the 2nd Amendment isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The recent Supreme Court decisions have strengthened it, if anything.
Rigorous Scholarship
The law also requires you to show up, so everyone you know is actually A-WAL, and that's leaving off the whole "well regulated" part. In reality, that act was simply signing everyone up for the draft.
That's a bit broad. Rich old fuckers often love guns and don't want laws against them, ditto with rich suburbs and those areas are conservative. Where as dirt poor uneducated inner city areas are full of liberals and want gun control laws, they also have much higher crime rates.
Take the gun ban in DC. Rich, educated, conservative areas in DC didn't want the gun ban really. That came from all the poor liberal areas where they were killing themselves left and right.
i don't really understand something being an "individual right" necessarily precludes some level of regulation.
Actually, we're THE most heavily armed, bar none. Look at the list of countries by gun ownership per hundred residents, nobody else comes close.
1 United States 90.0
2 Yemen 61.0
3 Switzerland 46.0
4 Iraq 39.0
Unfortunately, DC is right next to Virginia, the main source for illegal guns for the whole east coast.
Rigorous Scholarship
Take that Yemen, bunch of liberal tree huggers
I don't see it as an expiration date, I just see it as being based on conditions that are no longer true.
But I agree that it's not going anywhere. The NRA is way, way too powerful for anything to happen to it.
the rich areas in DC aren't conservative
the gun ban was passed in DC because there were huge amounts of gun violence in the poor black areas and it spilled over to the more affluent professional areas (since living in a city means not having the option of a gated suburb)
support for the gun ban was overwhelmingly positive among people who actually lived in the city.
Isn't Canada supposed to have a similar per-capita gun ownership ratio to the US?
Also, less gun crime?
i believe that it's a similar level of legal ownership but a much lower number of guns per capita.
also a lot higher percentage of long guns IIRC
Is that true? I thought most thugs got their guns initially from someone they knew.
I'm personally more interested in the crime the state has, rather than the gun crime. I don't consider lowering gun crime at the cost of increasing other crimes so we're in the same state a worthwhile endeavor. I made a graph on my old computer with FBI statistics, and found that there was a slight decrease in overall crime rates the less restricted gun ownership was by state. I unfortunately lost it when the computer crashed though...
In any case, I think our high crime rate is due to our violent culture rather than the availability of weapons. Unfortunately that's something that's harder to test for.
We seem to be running in circles here. My whole point about requiring classes on gun ownership and safety to be able to buy one is analogous to requiring education on voting. The status quo is on the individual to pursue those on their own, it is not a requirement to exercise their right.
The stance that safety and operations classes should be a requirement is a statement of opinion, not fact. Just like I have the opinion that our voters should be more educated is a statement of opinion. I think adding additional requirements for people to exercise their rights is a dangerous thing that is much easier to add than to take away.
I remember hearing that in "bowling for columbine" but it's actually down there with 31.5 guns/hundred. They also have a lot less people in poverty than the US.
I mean if you make me emperor I'm banning handguns (except for collectors, and keeping them legal at registered gun ranges and the like), offering a flat cash reward for unregistered firearms (which get destroyed) nation wide, not touching long gun laws since crimes are rarely committed with them and its much harder to accidentally shoot yourself with a shotgun
Actually very few crimes are committed with registered firearms at all, but we have millions of unregistered guns floating around
one person can't mow down a crowd of people with their vote.
your vote can't get lost or stolen and end up in a murderers hands.
It probably depends on area. In the south, guns are a dime a dozen, making one easy to obtain. In the north, traffickers are required to get the guns out of the south. Also, Mexico is pissed at us because Texas is the Columbia of guns except the US isn't doing shit about the problem.
Yes. That's what the word 'should' means.
If you tried to clamp down on guns in Texas you'd end up with many shot police officers and more shot civilians.
Sticky situation, really
There's really no good system of tracking guns at all. some states don't care about registering guns. others don't submit their registries anywhere outside their state. It is very easy for a gun to get lost in the system with straw purchasing and guns being moved from one state to another.
like I've said many times before the line between legal and illegal criminal firearm often just involves driving down the highway. Most illegal guns were legal at some point.
I know Fox News would have a special report about GUVMENT COMING TO STEAL YOUR GUNS AND RAPE YOUR CHILDREN the next day, but fuck it seems like something that would have a tangible impact on crime in the long run.
USA gun ownership rate: 25%
Canada gun ownership rate: 22%
USA murder rate: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
Canada murder rate: 0.0149063 per 1,000 people
If only we had an example of something that was heavily regulated or banned, and turned out to be a bad idea...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-first_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
It'd be like the immigration status database. The Feds can make it but there's really no way to compel sates to take part without some major legislation.
And, of course, the NRA has pushed through legislation making it impossible for the police to figure out what states and dealerships guns used in crimes came from.
That also was outright banning, not heavy regulation. A better comparison would be the modern regulation of cars.
Stats like this are why I think the problem isn't guns, it's us.
Though I do wonder what, specifically, is causing the US' higher murder rate. Is it our increased level of poverty? Our general culture?
Both?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Plenty of poorer countries that should have decent reporting rates are lower than us.
What, like marijuana? Cocaine? Heroin?
Here are some statistics from MADD (completely biased, I know):
-This year, 10,839 people will die in drunk-driving crashes - one every 50 minutes.
-High school students who use alcohol or other substances are five times more likely to drop out of school or believe good grades are not important.
-An average drunk driver has driven drunk 87 times before first arrest.
-Drunk driving costs each adult in this country almost $500 per year.
-One in three people will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime.
-One in three 8th graders drinks alcohol.
-One in three will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime.
-Every minute, one person is injured from an alcohol-related crash.
-50 to 75% of convicted drunk drivers continue to drive on a suspended license.
-One in five teens binge drink. Only 1 in 100 parents believes his or her teen binge drinks.
-Teen alcohol use kills about 6000 people each year, more than all illegal drugs combined.
-Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens and one out of three of those is alcohol related.
Alcohol is special because it is a potentially deadly substance that kills many individuals a year, results in millions in court costs, can destroy families, and ruin lives. We tried banning it, it didn't work, and despite all of the binge drinking deaths, drunk driving deaths, liver damage, and alcoholism I don't hear any calls to ban it again.
Yeah, I agree. Even though I support stronger gun regulations, I don't really think that they're the root problem here. I think the root problem is our high poverty rate, and a terrible health care system, especially mental health care. I also think that our culture just has this sexual attraction to guns, like they're a proof of manhood or something.
I find this statement suspect. I can look at, for instance, the wiki on gun homicides per state but I don't see a clear pattern. California is close to the top, while Dakotas are close to the bottom, for instance. I'd do a basic regression line, but I couldn't imagine how to quantify 'restricted gun ownership.'