Gun Control

[IATIA]

---

When the 2nd amendment was written, it was some 230 years ago.  They said they wanted a well regulated militia because it proved the best way to defeat an enemy.  Guess what we have a well armed militia and we spend billions on them every year.  If you are so afraid of the government, why do you elect right wing nut jobs that give this much fucking money to our militia?  It makes no sense.  You drive around with the mercian flag and talk about pride in merica but you are afraid of the government?

We need to take the amendment in context of the time they were written.  The next amendment or commonly known as the 3rd amendment is the one that gives you the right to not let soldiers occupy your home.  We really don't have a problem with that, just like we don't have a problem with a well armed militia.  I know it is hard, but we have to understand that the constitution and the amendments were written by men, not "gawd" so there is a chance albeit a slim one that we need to think critically about the time that these documents were written and apply the meaning in todays term.

The funny thing about this argument is that people have been saying that from pretty much a generation after the constitution was written. Does free speech not matter because it was concieved hundreds of years ago? Or Freedom of the press, or rights against search and seizure? You could use that argument as a blanket argument to strip us of all our rights. Also I think that the thing about the soldiers is actually an important right. It's a protection of the citizens against the military, the same as the second amendment. Of course we don't have a problem with it, because we made a law against it.

---

Was not the 'Bill of Rights' written during the fight to extricate themselves from the government rule present at the time?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I wonder how many gun-rights supporters on this board have ever been present when a fellow human being was shot to death.

Boru

I wasn't present at the time, but I lost a friend to gunfire ... he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I've seen death, both violent and gentle, though.

---

---

The funny thing about this argument is that people have been saying that from pretty much a generation after the constitution was written. Does free speech not matter because it was concieved hundreds of years ago? Or Freedom of the press, or rights against search and seizure? You could use that argument as a blanket argument to strip us of all our rights. Also I think that the thing about the soldiers is actually an important right. It's a protection of the citizens against the military, the same as the second amendment. Of course we don't have a problem with it, because we made a law against it.

---

Was not the 'Bill of Rights' written during the fight to extricate themselves from the government rule present at the time?

It was written after the Revolutionary War ended.

However, the contextual argument concerning the Bill of Rights is pretty slippery. For instance, freedom of the speech and press mentions two modes of freedom of expression, but ignores stuff like computers, telegraph, etc; this fact is never mentioned when folks argue that the 2A was written with muskets in mind, not semi-auto pistols.

[abaris]

But the moment he dies I suggest someone pry them out of his hands and get them off the street.

I'm not against gun ownership per se, I'm against a system that makes it easier to obtain a gun than a driving license. Here in Austria, we have nearly as liberal gun laws as the states. You fill in a simple psychological form, wait a few days and go get your piece. And if you happen to fail at the test, you can repeat it at your leisure. That ensures that every nutjob can lay his hands on a deadly weapon. And accordingly, deaths by gun are fairly common, although it's rather suicide than homicide. Although it happens a couple of times a year that some three year old greets auntie with two barrels of lead to the face because the responsible owner left his gun loaded and lying around.

[The Grand Nudger]

Suicide is the biggest gun problem we have here, in the US, as well (biggest only by relation to numbers of deaths- far be it from me to determine the relative gravity of any particular gun related scenario against any other for everyone else).  Here - if you go to a store...you do a federal background check (takes 10-15 minutes usually..sometimes a day or two..all depends).  Some states require more....like waiting periods etc. You can buy person to person /w none of that...pretty much the same as any other item sold person to person.  

[nihilistcat]

I think that the general consensus is that we don;t have to choose between solving any single one of those problems - we could make an effort at all of them...however, I agree with you..that we seem to devote inordinate amounts of attention to some problems and mystifyingly little to others.  I don;t think that doing so actually promotes an environment in which we can make that good faith attempt at all of our problems.  I think it provides an angst dump, and a ready made opportunity to stump to your constituency - and nothing more.  

Look at the last big attempt to reduce gun violence/crime.  Such an impressive failure that the DOJ..not traditionally an organization in the habit of relinquishing power or authority once granted....was not interested in it's renewal.  I can't help but suspect that it's failure was due to a flaw in how we approach the problem, personally.

I would consider myself a left winger, but not in the traditional sense. I'm generally distrustful of state power, and I think people have been too willing to delegate problem solving to the state, a state which in my mind is only preoccupied with sustaining and expanding its own power (and democrats are no better than republicans in this regard). 

Something like gun violence is an example of a problem that communities can solve themselves (through grassroots, democratic structures built from below), while problems like cancer really do require money and resources. It's even more perplexing to see members of communities that have been the most victimized by the state, call for more state intervention, more state violence (e.g. black communities, where its young males are disproportionately incarcerated by the state, abused and killed by its police, victimized by institutional racism which has been perpetuated by the state, etc., chanting for more gun control, which will almost certainly victimize its young males even further, while those white red necks they think they're reigning in, are laughing all the way to the gun store). 

Trade deals that sell out American workers have been pushed by democrats even more aggressively than republicans (Clinton NAFTA, Obama TPP, etc.). Deregulation that has sold out the average American (like the repeal of Glass Steagall) were pushed through by both dems and repubs. Even our regulatory agencies, which at one time did so much good work, have been coopted by business interests (and have become clearinghouses of crony capitalism). Mass incarceration, mass surveillance, etc., are the logical conclusion of a people who have become lazy, narcissistic, trivial, and stupid. While private prisons are lobbying congress for more business (i.e. more bodies to put in their cages), here we are bickering about "what they" want us to bicker about? 

The DNC of FDR or JFK no longer exists folks. Wake up and smell the coffee.

[KUSA]