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Right to own a gun

  
  

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A Haus of Minions
(prev. Jenna Elfman's Hollywood Haus)
18:42 / 11.10.04
280,000,000+ people were killed by their own governments in the last century. Germany, China, and the USSR all have disarmed their own populations prior to committing genocide upon their own citizens. This is an often neglected fact when history is taught. Those populations would have not gone queitly into that dark night had they been armed and capable of defending themselves. It's sad and yet funny to watch people forget this fact... history repeats itself, etc.

Actually, of course, the mass militarisation of, say, the German and Russian people meant that there were a spectacularly large number of people running around with guns, very few of whom decided to revolt and stop the Holocaust or the Purges, which incidentally I am *really* bored of seeing yanked in as a justification for gun-lovers' hard-ons for carrying their guns through the white suburbs.

I believe we addressed the meaning of the second amendment earlier. As for the (anecdotal) reduction in crime, could you explain why there seem to be so many firearms deaths in the US? Inept cleaning? Gang areas, where concealed firearms are pretty much de rigeur, should presumably be pretty much crime-free, yes?
 
 
MJ-12
20:04 / 11.10.04
Doing the numbers, and recalling how the US originally became it's own country - guerilla warfare

That's mythology.
 
 
Rev. Orr
09:28 / 13.10.04
Nice to see a new face in the debate as it were. Apologies if this comes across as disjointed, but it's easier and clearer to respond to specific points.

If only the police and the state have guns, then isn't that a Police State?
Not really. I'm assuming that by 'the state' you mean the military, rather than some shadowy force of men in black and there is no divide meant between central authority and the police force. The police in any country have the use of authority, technology and legal dispensations unavailable to the general public. Guns are but a small fraction of this. It is the nature of a policing authority that they are set apart from the populace - try pulling a driver over for speeding the next time you're out if you don't believe me. This does not make a society a police state, merely a state with police.

The US has such a hard-on about weapons because it's right in the freakin' constitution.
Really? And there I was thinking that it was an ammendment to the constitution. The second of many. As Haus mentioned, there is some debate on this issue upthread so I won't cover all the old ground, but I would be interested to hear why a clause which specifically limits itself to 'an armed militia' is interpreted as a mandate for unrestricted gun ownership. Indeed, claiming that it operates on an individual level to permit being able to defend yourself from aggressors is a particularly novel reading.

Having your own gun as a deterrance does work, period.
Possessing a firearm is a 'leveling factor'.
Again, and not to belabour the point, this has attracted considerable debate prior to this stage. Statistical evidence would be interesting at this juncture as all logic, prior evidence and anecdotal testimony points in the other direction. Incidentally, merely pointing us towards a book written by a professional member of right-wing think tanks, deeply linked to the last Presidential election in Florida and a lobbyist for arming cabin crews, is perhaps not regarded as providing unbiased statistical proof.
 
  

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