The US constitution and the right to "Bear Arms"

LegacyUser

Sparks wrote:

it's reprehensible to act on that 1.48% and ignore the 98.52% who still die. What about the 2,400 kids who die in car accidents? Why not start there, as it's the biggest killer of kids through accident?

What about the hidden statistics you don't mention, how many of the kids who were killed in car accidents or drowned etc etc were fleeing for their lives from a gunman ?

civdef

bananayoghurt wrote:

What about the hidden statistics you don't mention, how many of the kids who were killed in car accidents or drowned etc etc were fleeing for their lives from a gunman ?

You must be a lawyer.....

That's not a compliment either.

civdef

The gun-death statistics from the USA are frequently quoted. Some aspects get left out though. For example, many of the times you hear X numbers of children were killed by guns, they don't mention their definition of "child" can be up to the age of 21.

A fair chunk of the violent deaths due to handguns occur in deprived urban areas - coincidentally - many of these areas have stringent gun bans - New York City, Washington DC etc.

Sparks

bananayoghurt wrote:

What about the hidden statistics you don't mention, how many of the kids who were killed in car accidents or drowned etc etc were fleeing for their lives from a gunman ?

If that's a joke, it's actually rather funny

bonkey

civdef wrote:

A fair chunk of the violent deaths due to handguns occur in deprived urban areas - coincidentally - many of these areas have stringent gun bans - New York City, Washington DC etc.

Which leads nicely back to Sparks' point about the legality or otherwise not being a deterrant.

Are there any figures, incidentally, for comparing criminal use of legally-registered guns (by those who own them), criminal use of legally-registered guns (by those who got their hands on them without comitting a crime...such as Little Johnny picking up Dad's hunting rifle etc.), use of ilegal weapons (by default criminal), and so forth?

jc

arcadegame2004

Originally posted by Sparks
But thirdly, and this is the doozy, there's the small problem that gun control laws don't work. All they do is regulate the firearms owned by law-abiding people, not the ones owned by criminals; and the ones owned by criminals are the ones that cause the problems.

Look at it this way, okay? Illegal possession of a firearm carries a sentence of two or three years at most in most countries. Murder carries a sentence of between ten years and life imprisonment (or the death penalty). Now, if you're willing to risk the second penalty, why would the first one even give you pause for thought?

Sparks, I reject the idea that gun-control laws have no effect in curtailing guns in practice. That sort of argument is almost like saying that children should be allowed to carry guns into a school, because after all simply carrying guns is not harmful in itself! And look at what happened at Columbine!

Rights come with responsibilities. The NRA are even opposed to background-checks on those buying arms to ensure that criminals aren't buying them. When the Democrats last controlled the US Congress, they pushed through the The Brady Handgun Control Act (http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/bills/blbradyact.htm) , under which background-checks on those buying arms were imposed for those buying in gun-stores. However, these rules do not apply to guns sold at fairs, and the US Republicans have repeatedly blocked attempts to extend background-checks to include guns sold at fairs. In effect, they are helping Al Qaeda by allowing their members to come to the US, buy weapons, and go undetected. This is stupidity and irresponsibility on an almost criminally negligent scale in my opinion.

It only takes 1 madman to massacre scores of people with a handgun. If only 1 out of hundreds or even thousands fall into that category, then I feel that is 1 too many, and that the right to life of the rest of us should not be compromised by fulfilling a supposed right to bear arms. The origin of the "right to bear arms" part of the US constitution lies, along with the archaic Electoral College, in the 18th century mindset of the founders of the United States. They placed this into the Constitution because they feared that Britain or some other European imperial power might return and try to reconquer them. The time for that kind of worry is incredibly outdated now. I think that where you have opinions based on certain assumptions, that you are not being inconsistent in changing those opinions where the assumptions no longer hold true. It is manifest from Columbine and similar instances that the right to bear arms is not worth the risk it poses to the right of everyone to life.

I personally would not feel safe walking down a street in a country where arms are easy to come by.

civdef

Not sure about that Bonkey. I suspect that the legal guns are used far less often in crime than the illegal ones, going on pattterns seen elsewhere in the world, including Ireland.

The USA has some impressively strict firearms laws - e.g. anyone convicted of a felony is banned from ever possessing a firearm again.

civdef

arcadegame2004 wrote:

In effect, they are helping Al Qaeda by allowing their members to come to the US, buy weapons, and go undetected.

Al Queda seem to prefer stanley knives. The IRA did most of their atrocities with fertiliser and diesel.

If only 1 out of hundreds or even thousands fall into that category, then I feel that is 1 too many, and that the right to life of the rest of us should not be compromised by fulfilling a supposed right to bear arms.

Apply this arguent consistently and you'll restrict use of cars to people on essential business, who have had extensive training etc etc.

It's also been pointed out that doctors kill many more people annualy in the US through malpractice than guns do, shall we ban them too?

arcadegame2004

Originally posted by civdefNot sure about that Bonkey. I suspect that the legal guns are used far less often in crime than the illegal ones, going on patterns seen elsewhere in the world, including Ireland.

The Dunblane massacre in 1996 was carried out with a legally-held firearm. It only takes one person to use a legally-held firearm to kill people. Only the law-enforcement authorities should be allowed to hold arms in this country. I fail to see why people in the US need machine guns to defend themselves when each state has a national guard and they are protected by the world's best armed-forces.

The idea that because something was originally in the first Constitution of a country that it must remain there forever is nonsense. Had we taken such an attitude in this country, divorce, contraception, and homosexuality would still be illegal. I agree with whoever said on this thread that the US should come out of the 18th century.

Apply this arguent consistently and you'll restrict use of cars to people on essential business, who have had extensive training etc etc.

Cars are not for the purposes of killing! Guns are. Big difference.

civdef

arcadegame2004 wrote:

The Dunblane massacre in 1996 was carried out with a legally-held firearm. It only takes one person to use a legally-held firearm to kill people.

In that case he shouldn't have had the licence, if the regulations had been properly administered.

I fail to see why people in the US need machine guns to defend themselves when each state has a national guard and they are protected by the world's best armed-forces.

They aren't allowed machine guns for self defence. On the second bit, how does having the world's best armed forces defend you against a rapist or a violent burglar in your home?

Cars are not for the purposes of killing! Guns are. Big difference.

The families of the hundreds of people killed by cars in Ireland alone every year might beg to differ.

the_syco

omnicorp wrote:

I think it's time for the US to grow up and realise that Indians aren't going to ambush them, they've got no morte slaves to control, no more Britain to fight... They are SAFE!

Aye, except for Anit-Aircraft missiles. You never know when a plane may miss the runway, and hit a tall building :rolleyes:

Also, they need to keep pistols, and a few semi's. Get rid of the full auto's of the streets. All the law-abiding people may hnad in their guns, but the criminals won't. You can hold up a shop here with a knife. Unless you know that the guy behind the counter doesn't have a gun under the counter in the states, you ain't gonna try to ro him. Oh, and before you say "he won't need a gun, if all guns are banned", see my above statement about the criminals keeping their guns. Most gun nuts will agree with taking all of the full auto's out of the streets, as there's no need for them.

=====

The ONLY way to make people feel safe is to a Canda job. Lots of trigger happy cops, everywhere. It has fairly low crime, I'm told.

civdef

the_syco wrote:

Get rid of the full auto's of the streets.

That was achieved in the USA with the Gun Control Act of 1934, well for the law abiding at least. As you point out, criminals don't worry too much about these laws.

LegacyUser

Sparks wrote:

If that's a joke, it's actually rather funny

Sparks

arcadegame2004 wrote:

Sparks, I reject the idea that gun-control laws have no effect in curtailing guns in practice.

It's not my assertion arcade, it's documented fact, as well as being common-sense. Look at the UK handgun ban and tell me it prevented Danielle being shot!

That sort of argument is almost like saying that children should be allowed to carry guns into a school, because after all simply carrying guns is not harmful in itself! And look at what happened at Columbine!

It certainly is not.
It's exactly like saying that a line written on a piece of paper will not stop a criminal from committing a crime. You stop crime through law enforcement, not writing new laws. It's already illegal to murder someone; should we have different laws covering each and every method that can be used to commit murder, or should we enforce the existing laws saying it's illegal?

In effect, they are helping Al Qaeda by allowing their members to come to the US, buy weapons, and go undetected. This is stupidity and irresponsibility on an almost criminally negligent scale in my opinion.

So al quaeda are buying AK-47s in the US (which is illegal without a licence, by the way) for $700 a pop or more, instead of buying them in Kabul for about $7 a pop?
I find that rather unlikely. And if I wanted to buy a firearm to kill humans with, I wouldn't be buying an AK-47 anyway, I'd be buying things like US army sniper rifles (perfectly legal), handguns (perfectly legal), or illegal firearms on the black market (Mac-10s, Uzis, fully-auto AKs, etc, etc.).
None of these are affected by legislation.

If only 1 out of hundreds or even thousands fall into that category, then I feel that is 1 too many, and that the right to life of the rest of us should not be compromised by fulfilling a supposed right to bear arms.

First, it's not a supposed right in the US, it's a fundamental part of their constitution and it is a right there.

Second, how long ago was it that one man drove a car down a pedestrian street (Henry street if memory serves) in dublin and injured dozens of people? Shouldn't we ban cars on that basis since 1 out of hundreds or thousands of drivers might be mentally unstable? (Remember, 1 in 4 drivers in the US commits an act of violence in their lifetime compared to 1 in 10,000 firearms owners).
Give you an Irish statistic to chew on; the last target shooting-related injury in Ireland happened in 1801. That's 203 years without someone getting shot because of target shooting (I'm looking at target shooting here, hunting is somewhat more risky because it's not on a formal range and so on). Last year alone saw 367 people killed on our roads because of car accidents and several thousand injured, according to the NRA (no, not that one ).
If you ask me, there's a better case to ban cars than there is to ban guns...

They placed this into the Constitution because they feared that Britain or some other European imperial power might return and try to reconquer them.

The counter-argument (and really, we're running through a set-piece here, this has been debated for literally decades in the US) is that they were more worried about their own government becoming like the UK or other european powers of the day.

It is manifest from Columbine and similar instances that the right to bear arms is not worth the risk it poses to the right of everyone to life.

Of course, the argument with those kind of things is that legally held firearms save lives. There was a school shooting at a law school a few years after columbine where a teacher went to his car, took a legally-held handgun from the safe in the boot, went back into the school and stopped a mentally unbalanced student who was shooting other students. He didn't even have to shoot him.
So how do you reconcile those incidents?

I personally would not feel safe walking down a street in a country where arms are easy to come by.

I'm sitting within ten feet of two rifles in a gun safe. There are 40,000+ other such rifles in the country, and 160,000+ shotguns, all legally held. I wouldn't say they were easy to come by, but they're certainly not hard to get:
How to get a firearms certificate.

Sparks

arcadegame2004 wrote:

The Dunblane massacre in 1996 was carried out with a legally-held firearm.

Obtained by someone who had lied on his firearms certificate application form. He also had a firearm on the certificate which was illegal. He also had several reported incidents prior to Dunblane of having broken the firearms acts in the UK, including one where he pointed a firearm at a woman who had complained to the police when Hamilton had brought his firearms to her home to show off to her son (Hamilton was suspected at the time of being a paedophile).

It only takes one person to use a legally-held firearm to kill people.

It only takes one person to use a legally-owned car to kill people.
It only takes one person to use a legally-owned knife to kill people.
It only takes one person to use a legally-owned hurley to kill people.
It only takes one person to use a legally-owned baseball bat to kill people.
It only takes one person to use a legally-owned brick to kill people.
It only takes one person to use a legally-owned bag of fertiliser to kill people.

Which shall we ban first?

Only the law-enforcement authorities should be allowed to hold
arms in this country. I fail to see why people in the US need machine guns to defend themselves when each state has a national guard and they are protected by the world's best armed-forces.

Very few people actually own machine guns in the US.
And the fact that there's one firearm for every man, woman and child there paradoxically means that you need a firearm for self-defence!

The idea that because something was originally in the first Constitution of a country that it must remain there forever is nonsense.

Indeed, and no-one's ever argued otherwise. However, you need the votes of the majority to change the constitution in most countries, no?

Cars are not for the purposes of killing! Guns are. Big difference.

No difference at all. Last year's death tolls here were 367 for cars, 0 for legally-held firearms. Now you can argue about what each was designed for till you're blue in the face - the numbers won't change, the dead won't come back to life because they were killed by something that wasn't designed to kill them. (And you'll still be wrong - most guns aren't designed to kill humans).

I just don't get the thinking here arcade - you have a proven threat to life, acknowleged by the government; but you want to ban something that the Minister for Justice himself has defended in the Dail?

omnicorp

I actualy think that car possesion should be more restricted.
Humans survived tens of thousands of years without cars, it's likely that they'll contribute to global warming which could, in turn, pose serious implications for life on Earth.

Moriarty

There's a different angle that people haven't brought up yet..

If, say, Europe and the US both banned civilians from having firearms, how much harder would it be for criminals - which, after all, are more often than not used as a justification for the status-quo - to lay their hands on one? A fair bit. If it was expanded worldwide, even harder.

Banning firearms in countrys that already allow their citizens to own them at a national level is indeed an exercise in futility. However, banning them internationally would have a massive effect on gun crime. That won't happen any time soon though because a fair proportion of the planet enjoy their love affair with the gun.

Sparks

Sorry Moriarty, but you're wrong; as the UK and Australia have shown, you can ban a class of firearm, collect all of them and destroy them, and within a few years you'll have an even bigger gun crime problem.

Thing is, you see, criminals don't buy firearms from registered firearms dealers. They smuggle in illegal weapons so they're not easily tracable. Gun laws only affect those who follow them, don't forget.

omnicorp

but what if, for instance, a burglar with no weapon sneaks into a house, the owner tries to stop him using a gun but the burglar wrestles the gun off the owner and shoots him?

sovtek

Sparks wrote:

Neither are many firearms - and most of those designed to kill are designed to kill animals, not humans (though they'll do a nasty job on humans). There are relatively few firearms designed for use on humans in combat.

Are you saying that most guns aren't designed to kill something?

Yes, but that's more due to Texans rather than due to firearms!

And I believe the thread title is the "US Consitution.....right to bare arms"
Texas is a state in which country?

And likewise, safety is important in firearms also - better materials, better construction, all designed so the firearms doesn't go off in the user's face, safety devices so the firearm has to be held properly and deliberately fired, and so on. But, just like cars, you can't build in a safety feature that prevents people pointing them at other people.

Then you would be arguing for better public transport and less reliance on cars. However, gun control is another subject IMHO.

There are, however, whole government departments with a duty to prosecute and convict any people who do so!

But there isn't comparable legislation and strict gun control laws in the US. On gun makers...it's virtually nil.

Not my favorite rifle, I have to say. I've got a personal dislike of firearms designed to kill humans. Me, I'll stick to my single-shot bolt-action, designed-for-the-Olympic-games .22 caliber rifle, thanks
(And maybe an olympic air pistol in a few months).

Great. But your gun isn't the major problem in the US.

sovtek

Sparks wrote:

No difference at all. Last year's death tolls here were 367 for cars, 0 for legally-held firearms.

And what are the stats for the US..which is the relevant topic here.

omnicorp

I think it's around 11,000

sovtek

Sparks wrote:

But the NRA's not a gun club, they're a national governing body and lobby group; and having them run safety courses is a lot less dangerous than (say) letting any tom, dick or harry run driving courses in Ireland...

OK a national governing body and lobby group that lobbies against the very legislation they would be tasked with enforcing.

monument

omnicorp wrote:

but what if, for instance, a burglar with no weapon sneaks into a house, the owner tries to stop him using a gun but the burglar wrestles the gun off the owner and shoots him?

But what if a burglar with no weapon sneaks into a house, the owner tries to stop him using a stick, but the burgar wrestles the stick off the owner and hits him with it untill he is dead? Ban sticks?

What if the burglar was to use his hands? Ban hands?

sovtek

Sparks wrote:

Yes sovtek. Not, mind you, without some degree of training. But don't forget - pistol shooting makes up a full third of the Olympic target shooting events. And it's the cheapest entry path into the sport. I know that you might be thinking of this:

The majority of the handguns in the US are like this....


And not like this....

But you have to remember, that these are pistols too:

And I haven't argued for their banning either.

MadsL

arcadegame2004 wrote:

I personally would not feel safe walking down a street in a country where arms are easy to come by.

As we know you don't get out much....

Sparks

omnicorp wrote:

but what if, for instance, a burglar with no weapon sneaks into a house, the owner tries to stop him using a gun but the burglar wrestles the gun off the owner and shoots him?

It's rather unlikely omni. I mean, seriously. If you have a gun pointed at someone, the odds of them being able to disarm you are quite slim. Unless, of course, you're in Hollywood...

Sparks

sovtek wrote:

Are you saying that most guns aren't designed to kill something?

No, most are designed to kill animals of some kind. But remember, that doesn't mean they're designed to kill humans. Believe it or not, there are actually design choices you have to make to produce a weapon that will effectively kill a human. For example, the most popular rifle in the world is chambered for .22lr (the same cartridge in my olympic target rifle). Thing is, as I explained before, that could kill you, but it couldn't really be thought of as a weapon.

And I believe the thread title is the "US Consitution.....right to bare arms"

Well, it is quite warm over there, so T-shirts are really important.

Texas is a state in which country?

Depending on who you ask, the confederacy; the US of A; son, there ain't no place outside of Texas worth talking about.

It's rather like setting the rules according to what the patients in the asylum believe is reality...

Great. But your gun isn't the major problem in the US.

But Omni's not talking about banning "all guns bar mine", he's talking about banning all guns as though they were inherently evil or something. And so is IANSA, the UN's NGO on firearms control (the head of IANSA, Dr. Rebecca Peters, went on the record last month in Kings College stating that even the Olympics is not a good reason to own a firearm).

Plus, the line between target shooting and other types of shooting is blurry at best. My rifle and an M-16 are far apart, but the line between the AR-15 and the M-16 isn't so easy to see; and the AR-15 league (targetshooting with AR-15s) is enormous in the US. The colt 1911 .45 semiauto pistol was the standard US military issue sidearm for decades; it's also the most popular targetshooting pistol in the US for bullseye pistol (you wind up rebuilding the guns substantially in both cases, to the point where they're not even the same gun in reality, but they look the same, more or less).

Sparks

sovtek wrote:

OK a national governing body and lobby group that lobbies against the very legislation they would be tasked with enforcing.

Actually, the NRA lobbies for firearms laws as well as against them - it's just that they're lobbying for things like laws that prohibit felons from ever owning firearms again, or for the strict enforcement of existing firearms laws and so on.

LightofDarkness

It would be pointless to create new laws. As many have said in the US, Ireland or the UK, if someone wanted a a firearm, they could get one quite easily. And not just hunting rifles. Unless every gun manufacturer on earth was shut down, bar those making sporting rifles, ANYONE, ANYWHERE can get a gun very easily.