"Right to bear arms" should mean ...

by Simon 616 Replies latest members politics

• 

  RubaDub

  I can't understand why they don't allow guns into football stadiums.

  I know I would fell a lot safer if everybody in the stadium was carrying a gun.

  Rub a Dub
• 

  jgnat

  What does the US have in common with Finland, Portugal, Latvia, Libya, Belarus, Suriname and India? They all have a similar homicide rate.

  Country	HDI	Gun Own. per 100
  US	.910	88.8
  Finland	.882	32
  Portugal	.809	8.5
  Latvia	.805	19
  Libya	.760	15.5
  Belarus	.756	7.3
  Suriname	.680	13.4
  India	.547	4.2

  I compared Human Development Index (HDI) to show that for such a wealthy, healthy country, that's a pretty darn high intentional homicide rate (2-5 per 100,000).

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics
• 

  moshe

  They set people on fire in India-a lot of brides are killed over dowry disputes and girl babies are killed, because male children bring wealth to the family, girls require expensive dowrys amd will keep you poor, neither will they be around after marriage to take care of you in your old age. Nice culture they have in India-
• 

  jgnat

  About 2% of all deaths in India can be attributed to fire. There is a 3:1 ratio of women over men.

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19250664

  Surely the US can improve on its violent homicide rate.
• 

  Berengaria

  3 in 24 years - it is interesting, compared to the 3 the USA has had in the last 24 months.

  24 months? More like 24 weeks, or even 24 days depending on what constitutes "mass".
• 

  whathehadas

  Reading all these posts.....America is in deep DOO DOO. Moshe made some good suggestions. I think limiting this violence would equate to destroying opportunites by having a better Response system by Law enforcement and citizens. The problem I see in all of this is.........the MONEY....MONEY....that of which the Government hasn't done a good job in managing. Budget's are cut in the wrong places and MONEY is spent on things that haven't benefited it's citizens. Unless.....people started working together and for FREE/Volunteering to protect each other.

  P.S Surprisingly, All this talk of Gun Control has spiked the Gun sales over the last few days, in fear of stricter Gun laws. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/18/gun-sales-surge-newtown-crackdown
• 

  Mary

  Sixth grader Isabel Rios said that it was during morning recess at West Kearns Elementary outside of Salt Lake City that the boy placed the unloaded gun to her and her friend's head. Its ammunition was found in his backpack. I told him I was going to tell, but he said, "If you tell, I'm going to kill you,"' Isabel told KSL.

  So here you have a case of 'more guns' being added to a school environment in response to a mass shooting at another school in order for a student to 'protect himself'. And within a couple of hours, he puts a gun to a girls' head and threatens to kill her if she tells.

  Ya. Great idea. The parents should be charged for sheer stupidity.
• 

  sammielee24

  Published on Tuesday, December 18, 2012 by Flagler Live

  The Soft-Core Terrorism of America's Gun Worship

  Gun laws in Florida and throughout the country, and the apologists who defend them, are the source of unspeakable violence

  by Pierre Tristam

  For some reason Adam Putnam, Florida’s agriculture commissioner and governor wannabe, felt compelled to hold a press conference last week to boast about the number of concealed-carry weapons license holders in the state. That number will top 1 million this week, doubling in just five years.

  The millionth permit will be handed out the same week that we will witness the memorial service for the 27 victims, 20 of them children no older than 7, of the Newtown school massacre, one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in this country’s history. The act was perpetrated with America’s most common, most worshipped and most protected weapon of mass destruction: the firearm.

  Putnam just showed us how common and protected it is, and to what lengths politicians go to enable the arsenal of terrorism. This is one of the ways you make a name for yourself as a politician in Florida: you brandish your gun fetishism and praise its disciples. It is also what lays bare this state’s—this country’s—infantile attitude about guns, whose prevalence (300 million firearms in circulation in the United States) is inversely proportionate to mockeries that pass for gun regulation.

  The epidemic of gun violence in the United States "would not be sustainable without the social and political accomplices of a violent, weapons-solve-all mentality."

  Floridians, Putnam wanted us to know in triumphalist language as he described what he called the “success” of the program, are pulling these permits at the fastest pace in the nation. He brought a chart with him showing the graph line of permits zooming up. I’m glad the line was drawn in red, though I doubt Putnam got the irony, particularly in light of the language he used. “Only” 7,244 licenses have been revoked in the 25-year history of Florida’s concealed-carry program, he said. Only7,244 licenses were awarded people who abused them or shouldn’t have had them.

  Here’s a less triumphal look behind that “only.” Florida has the 15 th -highest homicide rate in the nation, with guns accounting for the overwhelming majority of the killings. Duval County alone, which will end the year with more than 100 homicides, has more murders by firearm in a year than in all of Britain, a nation of 63 million. Florida also has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, thanks to firearms, which accounted for 64 percent of the carnage in 2011 (according to Florida’s Vital Statistics Annual Report).

  Florida, whose enabling laws go as far as concealing the identity of conceal-carry permit holders, is part of the South’s lethal romance for guns, where trigger-happy gun laws concentrate the nation’s gun violence. But it’s a national disease amplified by a national obsession that doesn’t hesitate to lock and load the words “gun” and “hobby” in the same chamber while vilifying those who’d imply a connection with the consequences: Ten times as many Americans die of firearms, each year, as did on 9/11.

  We have a number of gun epidemics in this country. Mass murder is merely the worst of them. Those mass murders—the movie theater massacre in Aurora, the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the factory in Minneapolis, the mall in Oregon, just this year—do not happen except with guns. And it’s the guns—the guns, not the men wielding them—that make massacres on that scale possible, refuting one of the most cynically idiotic one-liners of the gun fetishist: that people, not guns, kill.

  Another miserable one-liner seeks to segregate the problem to law-breaking nut-cases while absolving all law-abiding gun owners, though most killings, including Newtown, are enabled by legally obtained guns. And even as guns claim a life every 20 minutes in this country, state and federal governments continue to let National Rifle Association propaganda derail sensible discussions about guns, let alone sensible gun regulations. As Putnam’s spectacle illustrated so mindlessly, no other civilized country has the variety of laws that treat guns as entitlements.

  Or the variety of alternately vile, absurd or survivalist arguments debilitating most discussions about guns. I still sympathize with Edward Abbey’s argument that “the tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship,” but not that “the rifle is the weapon of democracy.” He’s right to be suspicious of any government that would deny guns to its citizens. But that’s never been the issue here, not even down the imaginary slippery slopes of NRA fantasist. The issue is strict regulation in proportion to the lethality of the objects in question. Firearms have one function, and one function only: to kill. You can dress it up all you like as hunting or target practice or testosterone therapy. It doesn’t change a firearm’s purpose. As Nicholas Kristof notes, ladders, which kill 300 people a year, are more regulated than firearms, while it’s harder to adopt a pet than buy a gun.

  On the absurdist side, there’s the invented claim that liberals who’d never tolerate limits on the First Amendment would dance on the grave of the Second. Put aside the fact that slander and libel laws, speech codes, regulations and corporate controls would actually be an excellent model for the way to treat the Second: the fact remains that a word has never killed. Ever. In all of recorded history. And never will. A gun will kill sometime in the minutes before and after you read this piece. The First Amendment is overregulated. The Second is the one dancing on the graves of its victims.

  And on the vile side, there’s the insult to humanity we hear after every school massacre: that such things wouldn’t happen if prayer hadn’t been taken out of schools. It is of course an outright lie that prayer has been taken out of school: no child, no individual, is ever denied the right to pray or worship in school. Yet the suggestion that prayer can in any way affect these outcomes is deranged. Perhaps the victims of Hiroshima, Rwanda, 9/11 and Auschwitz should have prayed a little harder, too? If that’s the case—and if anyone can still say that after learning of the manner in which Adam Lanza executed the 6- and 7-year-old children at Sandy Hook Elementary, shooting some of them up to 11 times at point-blank range in his little holocaust—then for god’s own sake, I hope he doesn’t exist, because if it takes praying to such a god to avert these tragedies, it is god himself who deserves the first bullet.

  But an epidemic depends on a rich and resilient virus to live on, and gun worship is among the best of them, tallying up a death count in the United States at twice the rate of AIDS. It would make a graphic addition to Putnam’s little chart. That epidemic would not be sustainable without the social and political accomplices of a violent, weapons-solve-all mentality. Nor would it be sustainable without the weapons-worshiping apologists who hide behind Second Amendment dogmas while America’s soft-core terrorism, as apple pie as the munitions next door, kills on.
• 

  Paralipomenon

  There are some guns that don't make sense for indiviual use.

  Semi-automatic are one.

  I think a sensible law would be to restrict rapid fire/high yeild clip weapons to shooting ranges.

  People own guns, go to fire them and do target practice, but must be stored onsite at a registered legal range.

  Hunting rifles and slow reload handguns could be used for protection. Naturally criminals will stll get other weapons. but urban gangs can also get armor piercing ammo which is supposed to be restricted as well.

  Citizens still have the right to own guns, but the most deadly are restricted and kept out of the hands of people interested in a spree shooting.

  Pipe dream, I know, but I think it would hit a compromise on both sides.
• 

  EntirelyPossible

  There are some guns that don't make sense for indiviual use.

  Semi-automatic are one.

  Why?

  I think a sensible law would be to restrict rapid fire/high yeild clip weapons to shooting ranges.

  What is rapid fire and high yield?

  Hunting rifles and slow reload handguns could be used for protection

  Define hunting rifle and slow reload, please.

  Citizens still have the right to own guns, but the most deadly are restricted and kept out of the hands of people interested in a spree shooting.

  You just said criminals can get whatever they want. Why would law abiding citizens need to be denied?

  Pipe dream, I know, but I think it would hit a compromise on both sides.

  Please show me the compromise.