US citizens, carry weapons and own basically what we want (yes, even machine guns provided you pay the TRANSFER TAX, and you are not a felon!!!) because our history has shown us that we remain free that way. Most of the countries on the European continent have been occupied at one time or another in the recent past and the citizens (if they really even retain that title) have been slaves and prisoners in their own countries.
The second amendment to our Constitution gives us the right to carry a firearm…it certainly doesn’t say for hunting, or for self defense, or target shooting, or to put it in a collection! Something that I think is important to note - there are 250,000 odd machine guns owned privately in the US, there has not been a crime committed with any legitimately owned machine gun. (these are the ATF’s statistics, not mine. That says two things, one, machine guns have legitimate purposes in the hands of private individuals in the US; and two, not everyone with a gun shoots people with it.
If there are people in other Countrys that think that everyone should be disarmed GOOD then stay where your at and if there are people in the US who think the same then I invite them to live the lessons of the past IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. Perhaps they will be so lucky as to avoid criminal acts in their new country with strict firearms control or outlawing. Please let all of us know which countries those are that have disarmed the criminals in their midst so that all violent crime is takes place only with knives, baseball bats or hand-to-hand combat?!
If the people of Austrailia are content in their culture to have only bolt actions, and single shots, that is fine with me, every people have the right to be as they wish to be. (thats the american thought, ) But please do not tell us we should be as any other country or people are, we like our ways just fine. As was pointed out by R.S. the basis of our system of government is built on specific guarantees, rights that form the very fabric of our society.To attempt to lessen any of them is to lessen all of them, an eventuallity we as a Nation will not accept, or permit.
Rather a selective reading of history that. When we invaded and burned down the White House, it wasn’t armed citizens who stopped us - they generally legged it at the first opportunity - but regular US military forces. Nor does an armed populace necessarily help - the various native American tribes were all armed, and they all lost badly when they came up against a regular military force.
As for the occupied parts of the European continent - the US has only ever once faced a similar thread, during the Revolutionary War. In that case, the armed citizenry were of little use - it was the trained army created by Washington and the French Army and Navy who won that war. Not even during the war of 1812 did it face a similar level of threat.
Oh, and while I think about it an armed populace didn’t help France much in 1870 (whack Francs-Tireurs into google and take a look).
Agreed. If people want to ban or restrict firearms in the US, they need to get a constitutional amendment.
If there are people in other Countrys that think that everyone should be disarmed GOOD then stay where your
We’re quite happy to, but unfortunately we get bombarded with ceaseless amounts of propaganda from the US about how we’re all “sheeple”, and somehow “not free”. Dare I suggest you follow your own advice in this matter and tone it down a bit?
Good one Chevan,I’m sure you and your Mig will be safe as chicken on Sunday, although if you get too close to Cuba, they may shoot some missiles at you.:shock:
One thing I can never understand about an attitude of many Americans, which comes out strongly in the gun debate, is how they’re solidy confident about the freedoms granted by their constitution and that their government is of the people etc, and yet fearful that their government might turn on them and that they’ll need to be armed to defend themselves against their government.
I can’t think of a nation whose history makes that less likely to happen, or of a nation which has the same level of fear about it happening.
Conversely, I think America might have the modern long term record for some of the people getting rid of presidents by assassination, which suggests that the government ought to be more worried about the people turning on it than the other way around.
It might all be seen as a consequence of a nation being born by a war of independence, but France and other nations underwent similar or greater upheavals around the same time and subsequently, but the same attitudes don’t exist there, about guns or the fear of the government.
So, what is unique about America’s history that produces the current attitudes?
Guess the paranoia comes from the fact that at least for the first century or so many of the migrants were actually politically persecuted by governments in other countries. That’s my personal theory. The whole “defend against our government” argument is anyway stupid to bone if you really think about it. If a ruler has the backing and control of the military (which is part of the population last time I checked) he’s in charge, no matter how many guns the population owns.
So I guess everyone thinks the government can control guns as well as it controls drugs.
edited to add. here are 3 quotes from 3 posters from just 1 thread talking about their government and the faith they have in it.
“assuming governments don’t screw things up. Anyone reckon they’ll manage not to screw things up a treat?”
“Hrhr, never, they will screw up, of that I’m sure.”
“They screw up everthing a treat, even screwing things up. Like this:”
I’d like to point out that there is no direct connection between free possession of firearms and crime-rates. For instance crime-rates in gun-allowed Canada and Norway per 100000 inhabitants are significantly lower than in totally gun-banned Ukraine or Russia.
“Defend against our government” argument is quite sensible. Any potential dictator even with backing and control of the military will likely face resistance and high possibility of civil war in armed society. And if you mean a country with ban on firearms, such a person with backing and control of the military won’t face any complications in seizing the power and thus he is more likely to dare to usurp power.
Forming militia from the owners of firearms for “Defend against our government” purpose or in case of some foreign threat have mainly advantages. Actually there are enough cases when militia defeated regular professional troops and gained victories in the conflicts or played imprtant role in doing so.
This guy hits the nail right on the head
why the gun is civilization.
http://munchkinwrangler.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-gun-is-civilization.html
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
They can control guns a lot better here, because hardly anyone wants illegal firearms while a very large slab of the population, particularly those under 25 to 30, want drugs.
There’s a world of difference between having an incompetent government and having a government that oppresses its citizens to the extent that the citizens need arms to protect themselves.
Down here we preserve our freedom by electing incompetent idiots who can’t run the country properly, let alone oppress us to the extent we need to take up arms. It’s not something we do intentionally, it’s just the way things work out because of the poor quality of human being who goes into politics. They’re not worth a bullet. 
Well said! you may be quoted far and wide, no one can say it better, and that applies to most any governing body, anywhere. Here, Here!
PDF writes: “If people want to ban or restrict firearms in the US, they need to get a constitutional amendment.”
We cant vote our rights away, we may add to them, but not delete any of the bill of rights. We are not a Democracy, but a Republic.the only way to have no guns in the U.S. is if no one wants to own one, we could all just scrap our guns, no law against that, but that would never happen.
Someone please tell me a Country that enacted Laws requiring the general population to be disarmed that disarmed the criminals first. I await your response.
LOL Mike, nice racism.
I mean, do you have anything to support this, or is this some Klan shit you picked up on?
Seriously…
And if you hate “kalifornia” so much, then why stay there and make your money off the tax payers?
Dude, weren’t you just bitching that “liberal numbnuts” were trying to take your guns?
As for the rest of your post:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/04/21/weekinreview/20070422_MARSH_GRAPHIC.html
Which countries have passed laws disarming the general population?
None of the English speaking ones.
Well just got back from the range today… Shot my Beretta 92FS at some falling plate, blasted some water bottles with my Type 56 and G1 rifles and got to shoot another members’ M1 Garand.
Now its time to lock them away, burn some meat on the BBQ and have a beer enjoying the last hours of sunshine with my wife and son.
It’s good to live in a country where men haven’t been neutered (yet).
While the self defence against criminals argument is routinely made against gun control, it isn’t supported by practical experience as a common reason for using a gun.
For all of the promises made on behalf of the self-defense handgun, using a handgun to kill in self-defense is a rare event.5 Looking at both men and women, over the past 20 years, on average only two percent of the homicides committed with handguns in the United States were deemed justifiable or self-defense homicides by civilians.6 To put it in perspective, more people are struck by lightning each year than use handguns to kill in self-defense.7
- FBI Supplementary Homicide Report data, 1978-1998. In 1998,there were 191 civilian justifiable homicides in the United States according to the FBI SHR. Of these, 145 involved a handgun.
Only 0.65% of the 30,000 gun deaths annually in the US involve self defence.
About 40% of gun deaths in the US are murders, so around 11,500 people are murdered by guns each year http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm . Americans are about 60 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than to shoot someone in self defence.
Having once bailed up an unarmed intruder with a gun in circumstances where I could easily have shot him by accident (because of the circumstances where I had to go into a blind corner where he was hiding in the dark and he could reach me once I went in) and then in the struggle that developed later if I hadn’t unloaded the weapon in between, I’m bloody glad I didn’t shoot him because I probably would have gone to gaol for manslaughter. I didn’t need the gun to control the situation. I haven’t been in any situation where I needed a gun to resolve it. I don’t know anybody who has.
Even if such situations occur, you still have to get to your gun, which often won’t be possible. Guns are useless in such situations unless they’re loaded and ready to go, which means you have to keep a loaded weapon accessible at all times. Which is why I got rid of my guns when the first kid came along, because it was much more likely that I’d lose a kid to an accident with a weapon kept for self-defence than ever have to use it in self-defence. I haven’t needed a gun in that time, and neither of my kids, or anybody else’s kids who came to my house, has been at risk of being hurt with my guns.
I’m not disputing that in circumstances where someone can use a gun in self defence to avert harm to themselves or others it’s great to have a gun, but I took the view that on balance there was more risk to my kids by having guns in the house than by not having them.
American figures (can’t find Australian ones) bear out my decision.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Center to Prevent Hand Gun Violence figures: Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense. http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_firearms
Why is shooting inanimate, or animate, objects linked with masculinity?