Oh, such a flowery argument, you and your petty little pistol bravely maintaining the "balance of power" in this country. Get real! Do you truly think the people in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, any industrialized democracy where gun ownership rates are a fraction of what they are here, are any less free than us????? YES OR NO??? Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.It is not ridiculous. Our founders did not trust this arrangement. They specifically set up a decentralized military system with the express purpose of eliminating or at least countering federal military power. They feared that the government they set up might become a tyranny, and to insure against this possibility they wanted The People to have the means to resist.
Yes, the people of the countries you mention are free - at the whim of those who govern them. The question is not whether or not they are free, the question is what will they do in the eventuality that they are no longer free?
Our founders believed they were setting up a government to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for most of its people, and they largely succeeded. And yet they feared that this government could fall under corruption and tyranny. This is precisely why they intended for it to have no army or at least an army countered by The People.
Okay, when exactly was the last time you resisted by using a gun and how often does this occur?I am fortunate in that I have never had to defend myself using a firearm. A quick Google indicates that firearms are used defensively between 100,000 and 2.5 million times a year, depending on the study. Here is the first link returned when I Googled for "number of defensive uses of firearms annually":
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.htmlYou want balance, do you? In Japan, neither law-abiding or criminals have much access to guns, it's basically a gun-free society. Will you claim that the Japanese can for the most part successfully keep guns from murderous criminals but that Americans can't???I claim that I am not willing to disarm myself and other law-abiding folks in the name of trying to keep firearms out of the hands of the few who abuse the right. There are between 40 and 80 million firearm owners in the United States. Each year there are approximately 10,000 firearm homicides, and a total of some 800,000 firearm-related crimes committed in the United States. This accounts for less than 2% of all firearm owners being involved in firearm crime. I'm sure it's quite possible to get rid of all firearms - eventually. I'm just not willing to compromise the rights of 40-80 million firearm owners for the sake of some 800,000 of them. Nor am I willing to give up the insurance our founders intended us to have to secure our freedom for the sake of those 2%.
Don't flatter yourself, dude. What the gunlovers do with their pistols and rifles to get their jollies has no bearing on the lives of the gun-free, except when some of the gunlovers fail to keep their bullets to themselves.I'm not so certain. Having randomly armed people in the population most certainly is a worry to criminals and causes them to alter their targets, as prison interviews have indicated. Moreover, having 40-80 million firearm owners capable of standing up to oppression provides insurance against tyranny even for the rest of the citizens that choose not to own firearms.
Just as having most of the population immunized provides the ability for those selfish few who decide to forgo immunization to do so, so too having a large portion of the populace armed has positive ramifications for even the unarmed members of the society at large. Yes, there are negative consequences as well. I believe the trade-off is worthwhile.
This may well be true. Yet both the homicide rate and the gun homicide rate are substantially higher here than in England or Japan or Australia, etc. Net effect: rampant gun ownership -- bad.Our reward for such a burden is that we have the means to secure our liberties by force if necessary, just as our founders intended.
Do you truly think that the mind of any college student works in this fashion: "I'm off to my French class. Since we'll be studying the past perfect tense today, things could get quite ugly. Better take the Uzi."??? Sheesh - clearly you have no concept of concealed carry nor the mindset of those who do it. The mindset of most people who have made the commitment to the responsibility of concealed carry is that wherever they go in public, where they are permitted, they carry a concealable firearm on their person in the eventuality that they might need it. Moreover, concealed carry permit holders have been demonstrated to be among the most law-abiding citizens in the nation, being many times, sometimes hundreds of times less likely to be involved in crime than non-CCW permit holders. Thus I imagine that any college student who meets the legal requirements to have a concealed carry permit would share this mindset - competent and mindful of awesome responsibility.
Aside from the fact that an Uzi is not very concealable, they are also fully automatic weapons that require a good deal of paperwork and a $200 annual tax to own.
Your sarcasm indicates that you think it's absurd to think that things might get ugly during your studies at University, but 32-plus people at Virginia Tech and and 24 at the University of Illinois found out that that sort of thing in fact actually happens.
Here's how the people in a Virginia Tech French class weathered the shooting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virginia_Tech_massacre_Damiano_photo_from_Holden_Hall_modified2.jpgThings were ugly that day indeed.
Your sarcasm mocks a tragic reality.
WOULDN'T IT BE NICE IF CHO NEVER HAD A GUN IN THE FIRST PLACE???Not if it means that all of us must be rendered defenseless against oppression.
It would be nice if lots of bad things didn't happen in the world, but they do. I'd rather have the means to do something about it.
Well, just how much of a libertarian are you? Should people be permitted to own heroin? (They're not now). How about ricin (a tiny tiny amount of which can kill)? How about bombs? Anthrax? Switchblades can be used for self-defense, should we eliminate bans on switchblades? All these mostly banned items that I've mentioned in this paragraph kill ==> well so too do guns, and, unlike cars, have little utility outside of killing. So, what's the big deal about adding one more item to the banned items list?I tend to be in favor of the legalization of drugs, since prohibition is ineffective and costly. Further, it has been used to massively increase the police powers of the state and has resulted in the incarceration of millions of people who have committed no serious crime and are of little or no threat to society. I am in favor of control of weapons of mass destruction. I think bans on knives are silly.
The big deal about adding firearms to the banned items list is that firearms are the preeminent means of defense against oppression, and places oneself at the mercy of any who would oppress you, including your own government. This was the express fear of our founders and the fundamental reason behind the second amendment.
This is downright hilarious. You think you and your little pistol are going to defeat a government armed with tanks, airplanes, howitzers, machine guns, grenades, flamethrowers, etc.????This is a common argument that I have refuted here on this forum many times - the idea that an armed citizenry cannot oppose a modern armed force. And yet modern history is replete with examples where this has happened. The Vietnamese against the United States, the Afghans against the former Soviet Union, and, hopefully soon, the Iraqis against the United States.
It's also important to note that internal revolutions are extremely destructive well beyond military action. The effects on the economy are devastating and destroy the tax base. Couple this with the fact that large portions of the armed forces may be unwilling to engage in military action against the citizenry and it is not difficult to see how rebellions can gain traction even in the face of superior military power.
In any case in the eventuality of tyranny would you rather take your chances being armed or have to face it unarmed?
The Canadians didn't have our founders and they have a rate of gun ownership one-third of what it is here. Only 30 guns per 100 residents! You think the Canadians (or Australians, Swedes, French, Italians, etc.) wake up in the morning terrified that their government is going to oppress them???? DO YOU??????No, I'm certain that most of them, like most Americans, trust in their government completely and feel their governments have the best interest of their people at heart. Hopefully they will never find themselves in the situation our founders feared. Nonetheless, their freedom exists at the whim of those who govern them and they have little means at hand to do anything about it should that situation change.
Let me ask you this - what direction do you think our government is currently heading, and has been for the last 8 years? Do you think we are moving closer to totalitarianism or farther from it? Do you think we are seeing the erosion of civil liberties or the blossoming of them? Do you think we are seeing a government more or less able to be controlled by the election process? If we lose the coming general election, what is your outlook for the continuation of these trends?
It's NOT YOU who's paying this cost, it's those murdered or maimed by guns.No man is an island, and we are all diminished by such tragedies. Obviously, I was speaking collectively rather than personally. Surely those who pay with their lives pay more dearly than the rest of us.
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