One of my favorite discredited gun control arguments

we should compare resumes.

 

Rare is there a conversation about gun safety; if so, there is no better organization to refer to than the NRA.

When discussing limitations on rights, it is impossible to not include the constitutional protections for those rights/
There need not be any argument other than "the constitution won't let you" to oppose those limitations.

What you want to does not lead to progress.

Good luck.

We do not give a rats ass what you think.

... you know cannot defend your point of view.
We know.

 

I am only responding not because I have any delusions of being able to change your mind on deeply held beliefs but to try to understand your hostility toward the 2nd Amendment as it is commonly interpreted.

Re:

I don't know who "we" is but I swore under oath to protect and defend the the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

If the Constitution (i.e. the law of the land) "...prevents most of the things we'd want to do", then the things "we'd" like to do are both criminal and counterproductive.

It's simple. There are over 60 countries around with higher homicide rates than the US (1) and the same sort of gun bans that gun control advocates dream of but "we" seem unable to grasp to simple reality that determined killers and violent criminals don't obey laws, existing ones or new ones.

Re:

I'm not one of those people who claim that: "More guns means less crime" because more of anything means it's likely to be misused. more chainsaws mean more chain saw injuries. More cars on the road increases the likelihood of auto fatalities and so forth.

I believe you mentioned something about firearms wearing out.
I've got two semi automatic pistols that are over 100 years old and they function as flawlessly, today, as the day they were made. Therefore, in 100 years, we are more likely to have even more guns than today. Therefore, waiting 100 years for guns to become inoperable also seems like a flawed approach to address our homicide rate.

The only ways America is going to significantly lower its homicide rate and accidents with firearms is to significantly upgrade its mental health care system to detect and treat violent people before they become killers.

Additionally, the best way to lower the number of gun related accidents is through experience and / or training with a competent instructor.
Since some first time gun owners may be reluctant to volunteer for training, I would suggest financial incentives to seek competent training such as ammunition discounts for those who can prove that they've been trained.

Unlike proven failures like more cheap and easy gun control laws / bans, upgrading America's mental health care system and offering financial incentives for those who seek firearm training will be neither cheap nor easy but if we want fewer homicides like those "developed" countries to which the US is so frequently compared, we'll have to have a "developed" mental health care system.

What concerns me is that once we start eviscerating our Bill of Rights for the promise of cheap and easy security we start to descend down that slippery slope to totalitarianism.

Thanks,

 

That view puts US in bad company because all the nations with higher rates are 3rd world, and 19 of which are tiny Caribbean islands (some of which are US territory). So that leaves US with the worst rate in the group of developed countries. It leaves us with the obvious question: Why are other developed nations able to ensure domestic tranquility, while we cannot?

Yes, that would be a step in the right direction.

Also true

 

how many of the deaths or injuries are accidental? how much of that drives the democrat jihad against gun ownership. I agree that good training can decrease accidents BTW

 

You're right in that some of the 60+ countries that have higher homicide rates than the US (1) are unusually violent but yet some of those 60+ countries are as much like the US as any of the so called "developed" countries.

To begin with, the list of "developed" countries to which America is most frequently compared is really not like the US.(2)

Russia, which is, demographically, more like the US than Japan or Norway has some of the strictest gun laws in the world but still has a higher homicide rate than the US.
Greenland, Brazil, and Peru also have much stricter gun laws than the US but they also have higher homicide rates than the US.

Briefly put, if stricter gun laws worked at all they would work in every country but because criminals, by definition, do not obey laws, additional gun laws will be ignored just as readily as existing ones.
Therefore, additional attempts to alter human behavior by manipulating inanimate objects are bound to fail in the future as they have in the past such as Prohibition, the "War on Drugs" etc.

Thanks,





(1) "Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) - Country Ranking"
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5/rankings


(2). "The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries"
https://mises.org/wire/mistake-only...political thinking,with fewer guns per capita.

EXCERPT " Note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are ethnically non-diverse today, they are frequently very small countries (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million) with very locally based democracies (again, unlike the US with an immense population and far fewer representatives in government per voter). Politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with Europe or Japan.

The US has the highest murder rate in the "developed world" — presumably because of its lax guns laws —we are told again and again.

Few people who repeat this mantra have any standard in their heads of what exactly is the "developed" world. They just repeat the phrase because they have learned to do so."CONTINUED

 

Law enforcement exists so people can't ignore laws so easily. Nothing works if laws are not enforced and corruption is rampant, which is the problem in the 59 countries who have worse homicide rates than US. I asked earlier why other developed nation are able to keep things under control, and we are not. What is the difference between us and Spain, for example (US homicide rate is 10 times higher)? No one answers that question. Number of guns IS one difference, but are there other differences that might explain it? FYI Spain immigrant population is higher than US, which is why I picked it for comparison.

Why is it offensive to categorize US, the wealthiest nation on earth, as a developed country? You insist on comparing US to dirt poor African countries, because its the only way to defend your "criminals ignore laws" argument. Criminals ignore laws in such places because there is no law enforcement, and cops can be bought for pennies.

 

Re:

If you would please look a little more closely at the list of 60+ countries with higher homicide rates than the US, you will see that none of the countries I've listed are "dirt poor African countries".

Some of them are Russia, Greenland, Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines and Peru to name a very few countries with higher homicide rates than the US and much stricter gun laws. All of them have law enforcement capabilities to enforce their stricter gun laws but it's irrefutable proof that stricter gun laws are not effective in reducing homicides.

Additionally, not all countries calculate their homicides the same way. For example:

"5 Tricks Gun-Control Advocates Play"
https://mises.org/wire/5-tricks-gun-control-advocates-play

EXCERPT "And finally, there is the problem of the fact that not all countries count homicides in quite the same way. In the US, killings committed in self defense are included as homicides, as are unsolved homicides. Things are done differently in the UK, for example, as noted in this April 2000 report from Parliament:

Figures for crimes labelled as homicide in various countries are simply not comparable. Since 1967, homicide figures for England and Wales have been adjusted to exclude any cases which do not result in conviction, or where the person is not prosecuted on grounds of self defence or otherwise. This reduces the apparent number of homicides by between 13 per cent and 15 per cent. "CONTINUED


Back to comparisons, Russia, the "other superpower", is more like the US than those much less populous, much smaller, wealthy European countries with more extensive mental health care than the US.
Additionally, I don't think that Russia has ever had an inability to enforce its stricter gun laws but, still, its homicide rate is still higher than that of the US.
Why?

Finally, I have repeatedly written that the only effective way to reduce America's homicide rate is to upgrade our dismal mental health care system in order to detect and treat violent people before they become killers.

Thanks,

 

14 are in Africa, and it doesn't matter if they are in Africa or some other corrupt crap-hole where law enforcement in non-existent.

Greenland is not even a country. See my comment above.

It has literally nothing to do with it when laws are not enforced and corruption is off the charts like it is on those countries which you want to compare to the US

Corruption index (low = bad)
Russia = 28
Mexico = 31
Peru = 36
Brazil = 38
Argentina = 38

Spain = 60
US = 69
Finland = 87 (mention because its one of the least corrupt in the world)

See, it goes hand-in-hand with the issue. As you say criminals ignore laws, but they are ALLOWED to ignore it in places where LE is minimal and corruption is high. Gun laws, or laws in general, or crime rates mean nothing when you compare to nations with proper LE and no corruption. So, its inane to argue "look, Mexico has strict gun laws, and yet so many murders". Without law enforcement, laws mean nothing.

So, going back to Spain, which compares with US fairly well, why is our homicide rate 10 times higher than theirs.

Because they are even more corrupt than Mexico, and more corrupt than many African countries, and that not easy to do. And no, they do NOT compare with US in any way, shape of form. Its a NASTY place. You can kill a person and toss a cop a pack of Marlboros and the issue is settled. Its a cradle of organized crime and corruption at every level. This actually proves my point very well.

It would certainly be a big step in the right direction.

 

when I see "a step in the right direction" in a gun control discussion, It almost always means that more gun control is required.

 

Well, in this case its not. Read the comment.

 

yeah I know, you are talking about mental health

 

Gun control is not what most think it is. It is about the control of the population, not the control of firearms.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EKbcwfahlng

 

the 2nd was written in response to the fear and expense of a standing army vs militia, never intended to be distorted for personal use, because in their time a weapon was just viewed as a nature extension in defense of animals and such, only in out modern time do we get politically motivated ramblings about personal protection

 

bullshit. the founders never ever gave the new government that they created ANY power to interfere in any way with what firearms private citizens could keep and bear while acting in a private capacity. since the federal government was never given any power in that area, people could do whatever they wanted as to firearms and the federal government had no say.

as to the second, which is really not needed IF the tenth amendment was actually enforced, the founders clearly distinguished between the people and the several states (read the TENTH amendment). the right was guaranteed for the people, not the states (which have no rights but powers). so when the founders said THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE, the only interpretation that is both honest and is consistent with the entire document is that the second recognized an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT that individual CITIZENS could assert

 

Nonsense.
No one has the right to serve in the militia, so the right to keep and bear arms -must- include the personal use of arms outside that service.

 

no mainstream legal scholar at any of the top 30 law schools even bother with that "militia rights" or "state's rights" garbage anymore and it only came about to justify racist judges in post reconstruction areas rulings designed to keep blacks disarmed or to support FDR's pandering due to the government created gang violence from prohibition

 

I wish you had posted a link to the source you have found that rated countries according to the degree to which they are corrupt because I don't see how it could be done objectively and / or accurately.

The degree to which a country is allegedly corrupt or ethical has nothing to do with the fact that a determined killer will find a way to kill and no amount of additional cheap and easy gun laws will stop him.

New York's strict gun laws didn't keep keep Mr. González from killing his ex girlfriend and 86 other innocent people. If he had gotten a gun, he probably would have killed one person instead of 87.
One of my arguments for significantly upgrading America's mental health system over wasting more time with additional gun laws is that detecting and treating killers before they kill is preferable to locking them up after they kill.

An additional point I wanted to make is that if determined killers are forced to use crude WMDs, there will be more "collateral damage" as was the case at the "Happy Land Fire" and the Michigan school bombing I cited earlier.

I think that it is noteworthy that in both tragic incidents more people died from these crude WMDs than with any "assault weapon" that some are so eager to ban.

Re:

I worked as a Psychiatric Case Worker for about 10 years.
The first few years were on an Emergency Psychiatric Unit where we had to take the people who were too wild, delusional and dangerous for the private hospitals. I was only stabbed once.
My last few years before I burned out were working in the Juvenile Justice system with emotionally disturbed juvenile offenders and their severely dysfunctional families.
What impressed me most in both areas was how so much more could have been done with the sort of support that exists in the countries with fewer homicides.

Thanks,

 

Google them, because there are many sources

Here is one
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-index

Sure, Professional assassin can always find a way, but they contribute only a tiny percentage to the data

Who?

I think vast majority of people agree that laws don't mean much if they are not enforced, which is why the 3rd world countries are in such bad shape.

We have out share of homeless crazies here in Florida. You have to step over them, and their feces, if you visit downtown Ft Lauderdale or many areas in Miami. As a matter if fact I played golf with a Miami cop and he said the homeless are their biggest headache because of all the other issues they bring with them and all the time it consumes to deal with them. Gangs, however, account for most of the killings.

 

at the time of the 2nd firearms were seen as a tool for survival and the right to have one was never codified one way or another any more that the right to use a knife and fork, personally i have never had a use for a weapon, and this whole debate is very charged with emotion, im glad i feel safe without being armed

 

you just don't understand the concept of a limited government that could not act in areas where it was not given any powers. Guns are like parachutes, You might not ever need one but if you do, and you do not have one, chances are you will never ever need anything again

 

We don't have to. We can Amend the Constitution to say anything popular enough to pass 2/3rds of the House and Senate (separately) and 38 States. The problem on this topic is what you want to do is nowhere near popular enough, and even if say the Dems do GREAT in 2024 and have a 2/3rds majority, which is unlikely as hell, but getting 38 States to delete the 2A is, in my not so humble opinion, an absolute impossibility.

Oh, sure, you'll get NY, NJ, CA, and IL, but even hardcore OR and WA are too big with hunters who will revolt if their Legislature votes for that, so I simply do not see it happening.

 

the woke Bambists in Oregon came close to banning hunting.

 

If you don't even know which Amendment you're talking about, maybe a refresher course on US Civics.

 

At least the Founding Fathers were real. Moses was a myth.