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.
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.