Or is it not a matter of sheer numbers, but who gets killed? (For instance: what if some moron decided to go after a convention of one of the two large parties?)
Assuming you can just introduce "gun control laws" and solve "the gun problem" is a very European centric way of thinking. It will not translate well into actual US policy.
But I don't get how can a FBI suspect, or with a histoy of mental issues, can just simply walk to a weapon store and buy an assault riffle?! Just like that!
USA scares the shit out of me.
EDIT: to make things clear: histoy of mental issues=medical records of mentall illness.
And regarding the idea that the laws are by men and I have to protect myself from the abuse of the law: have you heard of democracy? Next time you vote, choose the ones that can revert/improve that law. I much prefer to oblige the law , bad or good, than to be "protected" by random shooters.
People who just want to take rights away from the sick because they demonize them are literally going to make things worse.
And for the latter, the sibling answered it very well - a subclass of people, and where do you draw the line at "enough" mental issues?
I don't think anyone has been arrested for writing in 'unpopular opinion'. They've been arrested for writing highly racist content or directing abuse at others.
Citation? Is there actually a law that says this? Or is it hyperbole?
Even if all you've got are anecdotal court rulings, I would be interested in reading about it.
While legally not criminal, in practice you will find your right to free speech severely challenged.
I think all such "hate speech" laws are deliberately vague opinion policing and unrightfully limits freedom of speech. They all need to go.
For example, two Spanish cartoonists were fined for depicting the Spanish king having sex with his wife captioned with the "unpopular opinion" that getting his wife pregnant was "the closest thing [the king has] done to work in [his] whole life": http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7092866.stm
Here is the original cover: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mNFvFt4lGqU/U5JJpeCCkmI/AAAAAAAAF6...
My understanding is that the cartoonists filed an appeal, which was unsuccessful: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/375143/0/ESPANA/ELJUEVES/
But that's a relatively recent phenomenon, though. The US has had a strong military history, but the 'citizens need guns to fend off our government' thing has only been frothy for the past little while.
It's not going to go away either, until the US kicks the societal idea that problems are best solved by men with guns. It's going to take a long time for that to ebb away, even if public opinion were going in that direction.
Gun control laws won't work even if they're brought in, because handguns will never be a part of them, and it's handguns that do three-quarters of the firearm murders in the US. So there'll be some pissweak restrictions eventually brought in about really fringe longarms, and they'll do nothing to solve the problem.
That idea seemed pretty popular as far back as April 17th, 1775...
It's one of fundamental rights of an American. It's one of the power granted to the people by the Constitution.
Asking the people to give up this power is as idiotic as asking Congress to give up its power.
Also of note, the Constitution specifically DENIED the government the power to outright ban guns. The government can regulate it, but the government can not outright ban it.
>A well regulated militia...
Meaning the government can regulate arms.
>...arms shall not be infringed.
Meaning the government can not outright ban arms.
edit: I see you've discussed this below. Interesting though that gun owners rising up to protect themselves from the government wouldn't be constitutional (it would be done under the authority of the gun, not under the authority of the Constitution).
It would be done under the authority of "the People" - the same authority through which the US Constitution was enacted (or so the logic goes)
Note that the Constitution does not "grant" a right to arms, but recognizes a pre-existing right. Take away the Constitution, and the right remains.
The point is that threatening to take up arms against the government is an ironic companion to constitutional fervor.
Obviously actually engaging in insurrection against a constitutional government would not be constitutional. Anyone taking arms against the government would presumably believe that that government was not operating within the confines the Constitution provides; the act of insurrection would be seen by them as a remedy to an unconstitutional government and therefore neither party would be subject to it.
-Police officers no longer carrying firearms
-Violent crime rates lowering drastically to match those of the better EU countries or Japan
then I would be fine with strict gun control.
Seriously, the whole 'guns protect our rights from the government' argument is nonsense. There's been all sorts of assaults on the Bill of Rights in the past couple of decades, and there's been next to zero organised, armed resistance against the government. And those who do engage in armed resistance against the government get nowhere with it. You can keep government agents at bay for a short while with your weapon, but they're going to win.
Imagine if instead of "we need our guns to protect us from the government", there was as much passion in "we need to engage ourselves in our communities, to engage ourselves in politics". You'd have stronger community bonds, less fear, and more traction. The government would stop being seen as "those people over there", and start being seen as "that thing that we are part of".
Because of that, these western democracies do not value the importance of arms the way Americans value it.
Arms of the American people is the basis for which democracy in America was built on.
>The small-minded fears of a minority of this country are inflicting greater fear and damage on the rest of us.
The same thing could be said about anti-gun people. These people fear guns, and because of that irrational fear, they're trying to infringe other people's fundemental right to self-defense.
You don't want a gun. Cool. But I want a gun. I am not forcing you to own a gun, so why are you forcing me to not own a gun?
How about we let each person decides what he wants to do instead? You don't buy a gun. And I buy a gun. It's call Freedom.
Sure we do. We just have an actual system for managing this, making sure weapons that are actually useful for defense are quickly available to those actually trained to use them in resistance fighting.
Compared to the American system of wild-west-style anarchy, where people with little to no training in resistance tacticts buy a wide variety of weapons more or less suitable for resistance fighting and with a huge variety of mutually-incompatible ammo, who do you think is better prepared?
Here in Norway, for instance, people who serve a year in the National Guard get issued a service weapon (currently HK416, used to be AG3) and a decent amount of ammo when they are finished. In the olden days, these were stored at home, but today we have many decentralised storage facilities around the country which spring into action if the Russians come.
When I saw on Twitter today someone saying that (paraphrase mine) "it's acceptable for some people to lose their constitutional rights if we can prevent gun-related deaths", it's not hard to see how it might be a tough pill to swallow for the more right-leaning demographic, regardless of their stance on gun control.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
[2] https://www.change.org/p/quicken-loans-arena-allow-open-carr...
[3] http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2016/2016-06-14-gu...
In the UK, it was the Dunblane incident that triggered this (you can google it). In the 1990s, some madman with gun just strode inside a high-school at Dunblane in Scotland and started indiscriminate firing. Many teachers and students were killed and after this event, the UK government just outlawed the guns in the hands of civilians.
Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet, so they have not banned guns yet.
--edit--
Corrected period.
Dunblane was 1996. 20 years ago.
> Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet.
It resulted in 18 deaths, which ranks it close to Columbine (15). Since Columbine there have been countless mass shootings with a higher death toll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...
Really? Columbine, Orlando, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Virginia Tech.
You know this is the same exact tactic the FBI is playing to advance their goal of warantless access to web history, right?
But it's different, one may say. One scenario uses the swelling of strong emotion after a news event to try and pass a law curbing constitutional rights. And the other scenario ___________________.
The thing is, guns are tied to American identity, you need to disentangle them, which is a HARD thing to do.
How many people had to die from tobacco before even our currently very modest restrictions were put on its use and sale? Cigarettes can't be used as defense against wildlife, they can't be used for hunting, they can't be used in guerrilla defense during an invasion. But they're addictive and so even though they've played a part in killing millions and have been estimated to kill over 40,000 non-smokers a year, it's extremely difficult and time consuming to regulate them. And they aren't protected in the Bill of Rights, either.
We're probably going to see very slow change for gun control in the US, and with increasingly sharply divided opinions among voters.
http://www.livescience.com/23562-secondhand-smoke-kills-nons...
You are confusing the last 50 years with the last 5000 years.
I merely meant to make the more general point that death tolls often don't provoke much of a policy response.
A majority already does but they don't really care, whereas the NRA has a relatively small numbers of highly motivated people to push against gun control bills (I believe John Oliver made that exact point recently).
The US have already got bigger massacres than the already mentioned Dunblane (18 deaths 15 injured, 1996), or Port Arthur (35 deaths 25 injured, 1996) which resulted in significant gun control increase in the UK[0] and Australia[1] respectively.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre#Gun_c...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...
http://www.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/187511/america...
Republican convention. NRA meeting. Gun shows.
Maybe even a different order... The argument that good people with guns stop bad people with guns would fall pretty quickly after the first real shooting at a gun show. (especially if it results in accidental deaths if someone reacts too quickly and there's loads of people with guns around)
Do you mean gun banning laws? Because if you're talking about gun banning, that's never going to happen. The American citizens will not give them up without a bloody civil war. It is one of the fundamental rights of an American. It is at the core of American values, the root American identity.
1. A majority doesn't matter. We don't have a direct democracy, and for all the bad special interests do to corrupt democracy, sometimes there are special interest groups that understand narrow issues better than the average voter, and should have disproportionate influence on legislation.
2. What gun control law? [1]
3. Between the 2nd and 4th amendments, there's not much room for an enforceable gun control law that will prohibit would-be (but not-yet) jihadists and crazy people from obtaining guns.
The good news is that the majority of domestic gun violence (excepting suicides) is related to gangs and the drug war, so a lot could be done—if anyone wanted to do something about that rather than use gun crime rates as political ammunition—without bringing up gun control.
[1] Charles Cooke on Morning Joe, late 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfcWNFPSGVA
And even if it gets through Congress, there will be a bloody civil war afterward. Remember, the goal of banning guns is to prevent American deaths. If you ban guns, it will cause a bloody civil war that will result in the death of 50% of Americans. Congratuatlions, you have just failed in your original goal.
That some segment of the US population is willing to commit murder over that shouldn't really be relevant to the debate - such people aren't acting in defense of the Constitution, they're just asking like thugs and vigilantes.
But gun owners are not a minority. And more importantly, they will never agree to give up their guns.
So banning guns is never going to happen. This issue of mass shootings will have to be tackle in other ways. You can call gun owners thugs all you want, but that doesn't solve the issue.
Where are you getting your numbers? Mine say ~26% of Americans own at least one gun. The trend in the US seems to be towards fewer gun owners, but more guns per owner, which would seem to put gun owners in a minority (albeit a heavily armed minority.)
Also, you seem to be implying that all gun owners would necessarily be willing to start a war to keep their guns, and that's not an assertion supported by evidence.
> You can call gun owners thugs all you want, but that doesn't solve the issue.
I'm not calling gun owners thugs, I'm calling gun owners willing to threaten violence over even legitimate political processes thugs. This is supposed to be a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Everything is theoretically negotiable given enough support, even the Second Amendment and the Constitution itself. That's meant to be a feature, not a bug.
Giving women the right to vote is giving a group a new right. Banning guns is taking away a right from a group.
Arms is one of the power granted to the people by the Constitution.
Asking the people to give up this power is as idiotic as asking Congress to give up its power. Just because some people prefer not to exercise this right (arms) does not mean they can take it away from those who prefer to exercise it. Just like you can not take men's right to vote without a civil war. Just because some men does not want to vote does not mean you can take away other men's right to vote. All men must agree first, or there will be civil war, because you're infringing on another men's right.
Also of note, the Constitution specifically DENIED the government the power to outright ban guns. The government can regulate it, but the government can not outright ban it.
>A well regulated militia...
Meaning the government can regulate arms.
>...arms shall not be infringed.
Meaning the government can not outright ban arms.
So again, can guns be banned? Yea, but only if everyone 99% of the population agrees. Which is never going to happen, because we all know the gun owners will never agree. And if the gun owners disagree, then the government and those who agrees are infringing on gun owner's rights. At which point, they will exercise their 2nd Amendment right and there will be civil war.
Again, guns will never be banned because guns owner will never agree to give up their fundamental rights.
said the British about the American Revolution