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 insaniak wrote:
You seem to be assuming that people complaining about gun-related violence, in a thread discussing gun-related violence, are somehow blind to any other danger to people's health. The more likely possibility is that in a thread related to gun-related violence, people are discussing gun-related violence.

OK, that's a fair answer to my earlier question (though not directed at me).

Honestly, one thing that needs to be dealt with before you can start talking about policy changes is who those 10,000 people are. Yeah, human life is human life, but I think we can all see a pretty clear difference between a gang member shooting another gang member over a drug deal gone bad and someone shooting an innocent victim. Does anyone have any statistics on what percentage of shooting victims were also associated with violent crime and what percentage were law-abiding citizens?

Relapse wrote:
How ever you want to color it, far more people die from alcohol than guns, and to put Sebster's point in, far more people die of heart disease than both of the first two. Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though. Just seems funny to me, especially in light of people throwing around that 10, 000 killed yearly number and minimizing the far larger number of other kinds of deaths that are largely preventable.

It seems funny to you because you continue to completely fail to understand how people think. And I'm now pretty certain you're doing that on purpose, because it ends with you getting a conclusion you like.

Anyhow, most people drink. They enjoy it. Whether it's a glass of wine with dinner or a shooters until dawn, drinking is across society. When people hear about the dangers of drinking, they weight those warnings against the pleasure they get out of drinking. Maybe they modify their drinking on those warnings, maybe they support more stringent laws against drinking, or maybe they don't.

A little over a third of households in the US own a gun. And of those households, only a minority regularly shoot. The number of people who fire daily or weekly is utterly dwarfed by the number of people who drink daily or weekly.

That's the basic arithmetic of alcohol vs guns. A thing that is used daily or weekly by most people, against a thing that is used far more sparingly by a minority. Do you still honestly struggle to understand why people treat the negative consequences of each quite differently.


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Relapse wrote:
Now we get closer to the heart of the matter. People find relaxation and pleasure in shooting guns, yet find themselves under attack in the media and here on Dakka because they like guns.

The only thing that's been close to an attack has been people who put up some extremely dubious arguments getting called on those arguments. That isn't an attack on gun owners, it's an attack on bad arguments. Some anti-gun people put up some fairly average arguments in this thread and other gun threads, and they've been just as 'attacked'.

To let you know, I don't own guns and never felt the need to have one in the house with my kids. Happily in this country, that is my own decision and not something forced on me.

And to let you know, I've had a great time shooting guns in the past, and if I ever get in a place where I've got the time and the money, I'd love to take up shooting as a hobby. And I don't think the

But none of that means people on any side of the debate get to make bad arguments.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Honestly, one thing that needs to be dealt with before you can start talking about policy changes is who those 10,000 people are. Yeah, human life is human life, but I think we can all see a pretty clear difference between a gang member shooting another gang member over a drug deal gone bad and someone shooting an innocent victim. Does anyone have any statistics on what percentage of shooting victims were also associated with violent crime and what percentage were law-abiding citizens?

Heh, we did seem to get a long way in to this thread without me posting this.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2012.xls

It's a big old list of every murder in the US, by the relationship between the attacker and victim for 2012. There were 871 gangland killings (juvenile and adult). Which can be compred to the 1,339 times that people killed member of their direct family (wife, husband, son, daughter, mother, father, brother or sister). Or the 662 times people killed their boyfriends or girlfriends.

Here's another table showing the weapons used;
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_11_murder_circumstances_by_weapon_2012.xls

It doesn't give a breakdown on how often guns were used in each of the above relationships, but it is interesting to show how common guns are in each murder motive.

 sebster wrote:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2012.xls

That's good data, but for the sake of clarity I'd like to point out that it includes ALL murders in the US, not just murders committed with guns. The different tables for 2012 disagree slightly on the total number of murders, but about 8,900 of the 12,900 murders were committed with guns. And I suspect the distribution of murder weapons isn't even across all relationships. For example, the murders with poison and arson almost certainly were not cases involving random strangers. How much that matters, I don't know.

There were 871 gangland killings (juvenile and adult).

Well, somewhat more than that if you consider criminal activity in general, not just "killed a rival gang member for no other reason". For example, I bet that a lot of the ~360 murders associated with felony drug charges probably involved a victim that was also involved in crime. And who knows how the "other argument" category breaks down.

But still, it seems like a definite minority of murders involve "no sympathy for you" cases of violent criminals meeting violent ends.

 Peregrine wrote:
That's good data, but for the sake of clarity I'd like to point out that it includes ALL murders in the US, not just murders committed with guns.

Sure, that's why you can use the two tables in combination to get a pretty good idea of how many murders were committed with guns. It'd be nice if there was breakdown by category, but that's the breaks.

And I suspect the distribution of murder weapons isn't even across all relationships. For example, the murders with poison and arson almost certainly were not cases involving random strangers. How much that matters, I don't know.

While I agree with your point, I'm not sure either of your examples work. If you're setting fire to a building or throwing poison in some food, I'd say there's a much greater chance of killing a stranger. Attacking someone with a bat, not so much.

But that's just me being pedantic, you point is sound, and it's likely that plenty of weapons and crimes won't spread evenly across the relationships.

I guess the thing is that guns are so overwhelmingly used in murder, I think it's likely that it would be the most common weapon in almost all categories.

Well, somewhat more than that if you consider criminal activity in general, not just "killed a rival gang member for no other reason". For example, I bet that a lot of the ~360 murders associated with felony drug charges probably involved a victim that was also involved in crime. And who knows how the "other argument" category breaks down.

Yeah, and there's a pretty good chance a lot of the unknown & relationship unknown killings were probably gang and crime related.

But still, it seems like a definite minority of murders involve "no sympathy for you" cases of violent criminals meeting violent ends.

I think that's the overall conclusion that has to be drawn, yeah.

 sebster wrote:
While I agree with your point, I'm not sure either of your examples work. If you're setting fire to a building or throwing poison in some food, I'd say there's a much greater chance of killing a stranger. Attacking someone with a bat, not so much.

What comes to mind there is something like burning down your own house with your family inside because you want out of your bad marriage. With something that requires so much preparation you have to either know the person and really want them dead (preferably in a way that lets you collect an insurance check for the "accidental" fire), or be the rare sociopath murderer who kills people just for fun. If, on the other hand, you have something like a case of road rage any murder that happens is probably going to happen immediately with whatever weapons are available. There probably aren't many cases of holding a grudge against the person who cut you off in traffic and burning their house down.

But, as we agree, the numbers are still probably small enough that they don't skew the data enough to significantly impact the overall point. It's just worth noting IMO that there's some ambiguity in the exact numbers when you narrow the focus down to gun control instead of murder prevention in general.

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.
In my mind, it all comes down to a mistaken perception of power.

I think this is a great example of: lies < damned lies < statistics. You are also more likely, I believe, to die putting your socks on, than to be killed by a shark, but that doesn't mean socks are more dangerous than sharks, it just means that hundreds of millions of people put on socks every day, while sharks have the unique advantage of not being where people are ~100% of the time.

You are comparing vastly different things, that are extremely complicated, and you're oversimplifying it to get the result you want. To give you just one example of how the dangers are different: no one recommends wearing safety goggles whilst drinking. If you wanted to honestly compare the 1:1 danger presented by drink driving and guns, you would be better off looking at them when they are being used in a similar context. How dangerous is an out of control driver compared to an out of control shooter? One of the worst DUI incidents I can think of recently, was when Rashad Charjuan Owens drove a stolen car through a crowd of festival goes, killing 4, and injuring more than 20. It was a horrific incident, but it doesn't compare to an incident like Sandy Hook, where 28 people died. To get those kind of numbers from a DUI incident, you have to go all the way back to May 1988, Carrollton, Kentucky. The worst such incident in US history, when Larry Wayne Mahoney, collided with a school bus killing 27 (It's worth noting that fire safety problems aboard the bus played a very significant roll in those deaths). Still not as deadly as the Vagina Tech Massacre: 33.

So I would argue that guns when misused are at least as deadly, if not significantly more deadly than the misuse of vehicles and alcohol combined. However, vehicles and alcohol are used far more frequently, which is why they kill more people. So I will agree with you, it's a more frequent problem, but that doesn't mean it is a more serious problem, or that guns are less deadly, anymore than that means sharks are less deadly than socks.

If anything I think it highlights exactly why we wouldn't want to live in a world where gun incidents are as frequent as DUIs. > >

 SilverMK2 wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.

Yay! I was waiting for you to trot this one out again!

People talk about guns because many people see it as a big issue. People don't talk about alcohol, or swimming pool covers, or cars, or medicine bottles, or any of the other red herrings people like to bring up because they don't see them as big issues; and they are all areas where, regardless of how you feel about them, work is being done to make these already statistically (for amount and duration of contact) things safer.

And NO work is being done to make gun ownership safer?

The fact is, there are a ton of gun safety programs,geared towards adults and youths. In many states getting a basic hunting license requires a gun safety course (or at least passing a gun safety test). As much as folks vilify the NRA, they offer several gun safety programs. So do many other groups. And accidental gun deaths have ben decreasing even as gun ownership increases.

 insaniak wrote:
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

Whereas the US has this as a right

 insaniak wrote:
However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.

To quote Rachel Maddow on the topic of rights;


We have other rights that it could be argued "cause issues for the rest of the community", to borrow your low standard to justify interference. The right not to self incriminate by someone suspected of a crime can cause issues in that someone who committed a crime may escape punishment. Protesters exercising their right to peaceably assemble and inconveniencing others with traffic delays, etc. could also be said to "cause issues". Free speech, the ability to practice your religion, etc. all would suffer under this "don't cause issues for the rest of the community test".


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 insaniak wrote:
'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'

I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.

You're really going to appeal to emotion on this?

You mean the things that were often decided upon by a committee vote aren't meant to be voted on?

I guess we should take away every right that was implemented by a vote then since rights aren't meant to be voted on, which I'm almost 100% sure includes your gun rights (and also includes her right to gay marriage).

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

Whereas the US has this as a right

Trust me, the rest of the world is well aware of that fact. My comment was in response to a specific statement about my rights.

To quote Rachel Maddow on the topic of rights;

That's patently absurd. You have those rights because a bunch of people voted and agreed that you should have them. They're not hardcoded into the bedrock of the universe, and they change as society adapts and grows.

I'd see your Rachel Maddow, and raise you a Thomas Jefferson.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

Whereas the US has this as a right

Actually the law allowing something is what a right is. The fact that guns are a protected right in the US, doesn't make them any more of a right than they were in Aus, it just makes them legally more difficult to legislate for.

 Smacks wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

Whereas the US has this as a right

Actually the law allowing something is what a right is. The fact that guns are a protected right in the US, doesn't make them any more of a right than they were in Aus, it just makes them legally more difficult to legislate for.

You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.

Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers. I won't argue that a gov't can abuse power and take away rights. It unfortunately happens.

 CptJake wrote:
You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.

Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.

That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!

Prestor Jon wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Because 10000 people is a fairly large number of people, regardless of how large a percentage it is of the total?

No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country. There are tens of millions of gun owners and hundreds of millions of guns in the country and only a few thousandths of one percent of the country are killed by guns annually. Five times as many people will dies of cancer this year in the state of California alone then will be murdered by guns in the entire country.

10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.

We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.

A much smaller population got murdered with planned and we got the Patriot Act and 14 years of war because of it. Somebody forgot to tell Bush it wasn't that many people and to just relax.

 insaniak wrote:
Trust me, the rest of the world is well aware of that fact. My comment was in response to a specific statement about my rights.

The statement you quoted was;

 insaniak wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,

Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

It was more than just about the right to bear arms. We had also discussed the 4th Amendment and how proposals in this thread would erode it.

 insaniak wrote:
That's patently absurd. You have those rights because a bunch of people voted and agreed that you should have them. They're not hardcoded into the bedrock of the universe, and they change as society adapts and grows.

I take it you are familiar with the notion of inalienable rights?

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
You mean the things that were often decided upon by a committee vote aren't meant to be voted on?

I guess we should take away every right that was implemented by a vote then since rights aren't meant to be voted on, which I'm almost 100% sure includes your gun rights (and also includes her right to gay marriage).

Non sequitur

 Ouze wrote:
I'd see your Rachel Maddow, and raise you a Thomas Jefferson.

And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

Whereas the US has this as a right....

So do Australians and British. It was established by the Bill of Rights 1689. It's just that US legal restrictions on weapon ownership are looser.

Repost from my locked thread:

Seriously guys, haven't you had enough of these incidents?

http://news.sky.com/story/1566644/one-killed-and-three-hurt-in-college-shooting

One person has been killed and three others wounded after a shooting at a university in northern Arizona.

Northern Arizona University announced on its Twitter page that a gunman had opened fire on its Flagstaff campus on Friday.

The shooting took place in a car park near Mountain View Hall, a building which houses the university's fraternities and sororities.

The suspect has been arrested, public relations director Cindy Brown said.

She said the first police calls of gunfire were reported at 1.20am. Details of what caused the shooting or the conditions of the injured people have not been released.

The college campus, which has around 25,000 students, was not placed on lockdown.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I'd see your Rachel Maddow, and raise you a Thomas Jefferson.

And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?

If you're talking about the 2nd amendment. I'm pretty sure it starts of with the premise: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". And follows with the conclusion that bearing arms should not be infringed. While the conclusion is still law, I would argue the premise is no longer true. What developed free state in 2015 is kept secure by an armed militia? The US seems to have plenty of armed militias these days, but they're mainly just waring with each other over "turf".

Logic 101: if the premise is no longer true, then the conclusion is no longer supported.

And that is still the right to keep arms for the purpose of national security. How that got transposed into the right to shoot burglars, is unclear to me. Switzerland also had people keep guns for national security, but the idea that you would use your gun outside of wartime was deeply frowned upon. The American attitude that guns should be kept to shoot burglars and such, does not come from the 2nd amendment. It seems to be a cultural idea in America, that shooting people for personal transgressions is acceptable.

That might explain a little, where this kid got the idea that shooting his neighbor for not letting him see her puppy, was the right thing to do.

 Smacks wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.

Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.

That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!

You're being obtuse.

Our federal gov't was set up to be limited. It was not set up to give a majority tyranny over the individual. The Individuals' rights are not something the majority should be able to use the federal gov't to infringe upon. You can argue semantics all you want, but there IS a difference in intent and in function. We didn't create a gov't to grant us rights. Those rights were (and are) assumed. So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away. Same with free speech. In Germany for example that right has been trampled all to hell when you can't even get historically correct decals for a model WW2 fighter plane...

 CptJake wrote:
gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.

This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.

 CptJake wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.

Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.

That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!

You're being obtuse.

Our federal gov't was set up to be limited. It was not set up to give a majority tyranny over the individual. The Individuals' rights are not something the majority should be able to use the federal gov't to infringe upon. You can argue semantics all you want, but there IS a difference in intent and in function. We didn't create a gov't to grant us rights. Those rights were (and are) assumed. So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away. Same with free speech. In Germany for example that right has been trampled all to hell when you can't even get historically correct decals for a model WW2 fighter plane...

That's all very well but at the end of the day, it is the decency and moral feelings of the majority that determine what happens to minority rights.

Viz: slavery, women's suffrage, gay marriage, etc.

If ever the time comes that enough people in the USA want serious gun control, it will happen.

 CptJake wrote:
So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.

If the overwhelming majority votes 'yes' to establishing a dictatorship, what is the correctly democratical thing to do as the government in that situation?

 Smacks wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.

This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.

So lets go with this. Yes, our constitution has a mechanism in place to change it. So why is that not the offered solution? It is hard, but if folks truly believe the 2nd amendment (and I assume the 4th) are out of date and out of touch, then addressing it by repealing/changing those amendments would be the right way to go about it.

But they don't.

Instead they want folks to just give up their rights. They want POTUS to use executive actions to go around congress. They want congress to pass laws that are not going to hold up to constitutional review. They erode the right slowly with pleas for 'common sense' solutions to problems that frankly don't need more solutions.

No one in this topic has yet to propose ANY new law that would prevent incidents like the one in the OP or the recent shooting in Oregon. Some have advocated for mass bannings and even suggested confiscations would be good. Some have advocated for a Federal license to own a gun, and that the license holder must submit to searches of his property in order to maintain that license. And even if you could enact all of these, you would likely find (as has much of Europe) that gun crime may go down, but violent crime where other than guns are used, does not (or at least does not go down any more than current trends suggest it would with no drastic gun control measures.)

So, maybe it is dogmatic to believe Americans don't derive their rights from government. I guess that makes the founders dogmatic too. I do know that if you expect me to quietly give up my basic rights, especially when you cannot point to any real benefit to me or my family, you are going to be disappointed. And even when you can imply some marginal to some magnificent benefit (which to date no one has done) don't be surprised if I choose to forgo that benefit and retain my rights.



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 Ashiraya wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.

If the overwhelming majority votes 'yes' to establishing a dictatorship, what is the correctly democratical thing to do as the government in that situation?

Honestly? There would be no 'democratical thing' to do.

Civil war is what you would get.

 Smacks wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I'd see your Rachel Maddow, and raise you a Thomas Jefferson.

And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?

If you're talking about the 2nd amendment. I'm pretty sure it starts of with the premise: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". And follows with the conclusion that bearing arms should not be infringed. While the conclusion is still law, I would argue the premise is no longer true. What developed free state in 2015 is kept secure by an armed militia? The US seems to have plenty of armed militias these days, but they're mainly just waring with each other over "turf".

Logic 101: if the premise is no longer true, then the conclusion is no longer supported.

And that is still the right to keep arms for the purpose of national security. How that got transposed into the right to shoot burglars, is unclear to me. Switzerland also had people keep guns for national security, but the idea that you would use your gun outside of wartime was deeply frowned upon. The American attitude that guns should be kept to shoot burglars and such, does not come from the 2nd amendment. It seems to be a cultural idea in America, that shooting people for personal transgressions is acceptable.

That might explain a little, where this kid got the idea that shooting his neighbor for not letting him see her puppy, was the right thing to do.

Well, no. The part you highlighted is the dependent clause of the 2nd. It's entirely dependent on "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed."

Your "reading" of it also doesn't include what militia meant contextually (the people) or the actual purpose of the 2nd (to guarantee a citizenry that can protect itself from a potentially tyrannical government.)

SCOTUS currently agrees as well.

Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I'd see your Rachel Maddow, and raise you a Thomas Jefferson.

And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?

You mean, when they wrote a document that was predicated on being able to change it, and then said that you should change it when it was no longer in line with current cultural mores?

You mean the thing they put that was actually a change to the original document?

Obviously they meant that once they put that in there it should never change ever, that is the conclusion that I assume you're pushing for.

Sigh

 Ouze wrote:
I'd see your Rachel Maddow, and raise you a Thomas Jefferson.

This really is a great quote from Jefferson.

I'd love to hear our founding fathers' opinion on the size of the current guv'ment.

 CptJake wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.

This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.

So lets go with this. Yes, our constitution has a mechanism in place to change it. So why is that not the offered solution? It is hard, but if folks truly believe the 2nd amendment (and I assume the 4th) are out of date and out of touch, then addressing it by repealing/changing those amendments would be the right way to go about it.

But they don't.

...
....

I have suggested it, only to be shot down by Frazzled on the grounds that the constitution is holy writ.

Of course, the individual states can enact restrictions on guns. It's possible that the more let's say 'cosmopolitan' states might enact stronger restrictions than Montana, etc. This is already the case in New York, for example.

Once enough states had passed such laws, it would create the scenario that an amendment could be added to the constitution.

I think the other issues I have mentioned previously, such as gay marriage, are proof that public opinion can gradually swing and once it passes a certain level, the law gets changed somehow.

IDK how public opinion has changed regarding guns.

 sebster wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country.

Were you posting arguments like that when 3,000 people died in the Twin Towers?

If you could drag your murder rate down to something closer the rest of the developed world, so the total deaths would be about 6,000 or 7,000 less than they are now, would you say 'nah, not worth it, 10,000 is a tiny number'.

10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.

And here you're falling for the same basic logic fail as Relapse. Look at the number, decide it is small by some vague standard, and then just declare that nothing must be done. You just completely missed the step where you figure out what might be done, and what that would achieve and cost.

Now, it is possible to decide that the possible solutions might cost too much and acheive too little, that's where I'm at personally. But whatever your conclusions, at least you'd have the beginnings of an argument that made sense.

We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.

I don't think you've got any idea how political change works.

Just think about it this way - 50 years ago not even the NRA thought the 2nd Amendment applied to private ownership. But political opinions change, and as they do

I wasn't posting much of anything back in September of 2001, my internet access was very limited in Abu Dhabi where I was at the time. 3,000 people is an insignigicant number of people nationally. That is as true today as it was on 9/11. I wasn't one of the people demanding that we invade Iraq if that's what you're trying to ask and I was then and still am vehemently opposed to the Patriot Act in all of its iterations. Taking rights away from citizens doesn't make us safer, that is true with both guns and terrorism.

If reducing the rate of gun deaths to a number somewhat closer to the rest of the developed world comes at the cost of removing rights and violating the constitution then no it's not worth it. Freedom isn't free.

There tens of millions of gun owners in the US in possession of hundreds of millions of guns and a mathmatically insignifcant percentage of them use their firearms for ciminal purposes. There is no reason to restrict the 2A rights being exercised in a safe and legal by over a third of the country just because a tiny fraction of our population chooses to commit murders or exhibits negligence to a lethal degree.

There is a token security presence at my children's school that is unlikely to stop a determined homicidal attacker and if my kids were to be murdered in a school shooting I wouldn't start going around my neighborhood, banging on my neighbors' doors demanding that they give up their guns. The two are wholly unrelated. My grief is certainly not justification for restricting the rights of citizens who have done nothing wrong. Forcing law abiding citizens to jump through more bureaucratic hoops in order to own guns doesn't make them more law abiding or less likely to commit gun crimes than they already were. The vast majority of people who legally purchase guns are still going to use them safely and legally so there is no reason to infringe upon their rights excessively in a misguided attempt to assuage other people's feelings of fear, anger and sadness.

The individual is the smallest and most important minority and that is why our constitutions specifically protects individual rights from government infringement.

The statements of an NRA president 50 years ago regarding the meaning of the 2nd amendment hold no more significance than any other individual's personal opinion.

SCOTUS has repeatedly and consistently identified the 2nd Amendment as protecting the right of an individual US citizen to own firearms. That's an undediable fact.

Dredd Scott v Sandford in 1857, US v Cruikshank in 1875, Presser v Illinois in 1886, US v Miller in 1939, Duncan v Louisiana 1968, Lewis v US in 1980, US v Verdugo-Urquidez in 1990, DC v Heller in 2008 and McDonald v Chicago in 2010. In all of those cases SCOTUS issued decisions or made statements that the 2nd Amendment confers a right to own firearms to individual US citizens.

The individual right to own firearms is further supported on the state level. 45 of the 50 states have the right of individual state residents to keep and bear arms in their state constitutions and most have clarified and expanded that right over the years. US citizens have had a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms for the entirety of our nation's history. There is no evidence that suggests that an individual right to own firearms is new concept unique to modern times.