Gun laws do they work

Dick7 is correct. Some of our UK friends might not be intimately familiar with our viewpoints on this subject, so forgive me for being a bit pedantic here.

Immediately after the end of what we call the "Revolutionary War" the 2nd Amendment (right to bear arms) didn't exist as such. In the Continental Congress, negotiations over the ratification of the USA Constitution started to break down because of the rampant fear of in effect replacing one tyrant with another. The solution was what we in the USA call the "Bill of Rights" - the first 10 amendments to the USA Constitution. The general idea was to find the "hot button" items of the time and enumerate in greater detail some explicit protections and/or requirements that would give "Joe Average Citizen" some leverage in a court when facing off against the government. With these amendments tacked on to the US Constitution, the whole package became palatable as a decent compromise balancing rights at federal, state, local, and personal levels.

Of course, any government could renounce its laws at any time. The point was that with the Bill of Rights in black-and-white, large print, etc. there would be highly visible grounds to repudiate the government and replace it if the seated government got out of hand. You have to understand that in the 1700s, England ruled distantly and didn't have rapid communications with its colonies (but then, who did?). If a really bad governor took office and acted egregiously, the King of England had no immediate oversight and there was no way to effectively correct the problems by appeal to the king. There were many cases on record of aristocratic governors treading heavily on commoner's rights, forgetting that in the colonies, everyone was pretty much a commoner. The aristocrats were out of touch with their subjects.

The theory that formed the Bill of Rights was that by having local courts, local jurisdictions, and Freedom of the Press (to report egregious behavior of government officials), the bad guys would get weeded out quickly by court action without having to use the only other method available at the time - assassination. The 2nd amendment's place in this was that if the government started to get out of hand and ignored the decrees of the courts, they had to remember that they couldn't block the actions of an armed populace to oust them forcefully. I.e., the theory was that the government would have to remember its own laws and abide by them or find itself on the wrong end of the gun.

The movie "V for Vendetta" had a phrase that is relevant to this discussion, and in fact should be true at some level for ALL governments. "People should not fear their government; a government should fear its people." OK, not paranoid fear... but modern governments must remember that ultimately they are in power through the tolerance of their citizens. Look at how many nations have fallen apart in the last 50 years, number one on that list being the dissolution of the USSR; essentially the opposite of Balkanization. Several of the Middle East countries have suffered overthrows of such violent nature as to no longer be the same kind of government. I'm not talking about when Parliament gets a vote of "No Confidence" and has to rebuild its coalition. I'm thinking about some of the Middle East countries that were monarchies before but are religious oligarchies now. If that can happen, nations SHOULD fear their people. But the answer can't be more suppression - overthrows occur because there was already too much suppression.

I have to say that conditions in the USA have changed somewhat since the time of the formulation of the Bill of Rights. The press still reports egregious behavior, though often the courts don't act because nobody knows how to press charges for some of it.

It's a digression, but for example, how would you press charges against Hilary Clinton for her violations of the National Secrets Act - due to her use of a private server for secret e-mail communications relating to Unitect States official policies - and the Federal Records Management Act - for erasure of documents related to federal business? Who has legal standing to do that?

In the modern era, we still are somewhat likely to need guns, but not necessarily for the original reasons. With active domestic terrorists, we still have the right to defend ourselves, so I am still in favor of having guns in public hands - but I'm not insane. I don't want whack-a-doodles with guns around every corner. Like Rabbie says, some type of background checks, testing, and/or training wouldn't be a bad thing. I still want to have my gun, but it doesn't break my heart to have to prove I know how to use it first.
 
The_Doc_Man said:
In the modern era, we still are somewhat likely to need guns, but not necessarily for the original reasons. With active domestic terrorists, we still have the right to defend ourselves, so I am still in favor of having guns in public hands - but I'm not insane. I don't want whack-a-doodles with guns around every corner. Like Rabbie says, some type of background checks, testing, and/or training wouldn't be a bad thing. I still want to have my gun, but it doesn't break my heart to have to prove I know how to use it first.
Click to expand...

While there are certain parts in his post I could quibble about - mostly minor, a couple toward the end more political - in the interest of staying on-topic, I must chime in that the quoted part above is really all most (not all, just most) of the gun control activists want. (And yet, even that little bit was enough for Blade and other right-wingers to repeatedly rage about my determination to take everyone's guns away!)

Of course, that's honestly just a drop in the bucket when it comes to gun homicides. About 75% of the firearm homicides in the US use legally-obtained weapons, including the majority of the mass shootings you always hear about. The real problem, I'm afraid, is our culture and acceptance of violence. Our TV shows often feature some amazingly hyper-violent entertainment, and the movies are worse. You don't dare show a bit of underboob unless you want your station to be fined a million bucks, but nobody blinks an eye if tonight's movie starts out with a gunfight that results in thousands of rounds fired and 18 people killed and climaxes with the complete destruction of lower Manhattan. The way I saw it put once was that the US is a core state with a frontier state mentality, and until we can move away from the mindset that we need to be ready to defend ourselves with lethal force at a moment's notice, this is going to remain a problem.

Personally, I'm for more underboob and fewer simulated corpses. :D

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to watching Band of Brothers.
 
Frothingslosh said:
1) It's the Second Amendment, actually. The First guarantees freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the Press.
2) It's even more simple than what Scott pointed out. Let me just ask you this: Just how much money do you think gun, ammunition, and gun accessory manufacturers make every year? Remember, in US politics, it's the money that makes the decisions.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the correction.

IMO it is a sad reflection on a civilised country that money is more important than the lives of its citizens
 
Rabbie said:
Thank you for the correction.

IMO it is a sad reflection on a civilised country that money is more important than the lives of its citizens
Click to expand...

Come on Rabbie,
In every single society from the beginning of time, the slogan of the day is:
"FOLLOW THE MONEY"
 
You know Rabbie, after giving it more thought, your right, it is sad. Unfortunately as in my previous post it is every where, in every country, in every city and town, and always will be this side of Heaven. Not just with guns, in many other areas.
 
Virginia TV shooting, the story so far: Vester Flanagan a.k.a Bryce Williams got miffed, went out and bought a gun, and blew the reporters away.

Hurray for the right to buy a gun. Or something ...
 
I think it was a reaganite who defined the sanctity of human life as beginning at conception and ending at birth. That is a view very consistent with that of the gun lobby. Not much of that Christian thing of turning the other cheek, is there?
 
Dick7Access said:
Does anybody out there real believe this woman did not have the right legally and morally to kill this thug?
http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/10/woman-kills-home-invader/
Click to expand...

How do you know he was a thug, there is no information to say he was. Maybe he was just a starving unfortunate looking for food, did she warn him? This is why if I were a criminal in the US I would go armed and shoot on sight which of course escalates the violence. The gun lobby are too thick to see that.

Brian
 
Brianwarnock said:
How do you know he was a thug, there is no information to say he was. Maybe he was just a starving unfortunate looking for food, did she warn him? This is why if I were a criminal in the US I would go armed and shoot on sight which of course escalates the violence. The gun lobby are too thick to see that.

Brian
Click to expand...

We do not know the whole story, the "Thug" may have displayed threatening behavior prompting the shooting, only he and the shooter will know, and only one of them is capable of talking about it.

Certainly in the UK, if this was to happen the Police would have arrested the Shooter, and would probably have charged him with Murder..

I believe that if you are committing a crime, such as burglary, and you enter somebodies home with the intent to steal from them, then you lose all your Human Rights, and what happens to you is your own fault and should not have any repercussions for anybody else.
 
@scott-atkinson

Inspector Javert did not live (at least in the book) in vain.
 
As a rule, there is what's called a 'Castle Doctrine' in the US, which sums up as the resident having the legal right to defend their home with lethal force in case of a home invasion. Some states require there to be an actual threat, but many, if not most, simply allow you to shoot someone if they're in your home as the result of, say, a B&E. The idea behind it is that the very act of invading your home is a direct threat against the safety of you and your family.

Personally and right off the cuff, my feeling on this case is that if he was threatening her (even if he didn't have a gun, she wouldn't know he was unarmed), then it was justified. She is under no obligation to wait for him to try to kill her first, as he's already engaged in a crime that often ends violently for the victims if they're home.

If she ambushed him, I'm torn pretty much down the middle - it would bother me that she didn't give him a chance to surrender, but then again, only an idiot GIVES someone the chance to kill them, and there are too many cases where burglars have hurt or killed the residents, either out of fear or because they didn't want to be described to police.

If he was non-threatening (surrendered, hands up, whatever), then it was murder. If that was the case, then she could have easily called the cops and held him there at gunpoint.

Also, for your British types, my understanding is that handguns are illegal in Britain, so of COURSE your cops would arrest her for shooting the guy. :-P
 
Brianwarnock said:
How do you know he was a thug, there is no information to say he was. Maybe he was just a starving unfortunate looking for food, did she warn him? This is why if I were a criminal in the US I would go armed and shoot on sight which of course escalates the violence. The gun lobby are too thick to see that.

Brian
Click to expand...
If you knock on my door and say your hungry you are a starving unfortunate looking for food, and I will feed you and have done more times than I can count. If you come thru my window you are a thug.

Gun lobby is not a person. Gun Lobby is made up of ordinary people that have a problem with people coming through there window.
 
I'm sure Brian knows the gun lobby is not one person (as his usage of "are" also implies). But to clarify, his stated contention is that that group consists of individuals thick in some respects, and we are not speaking of girth.
 
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