I seconde RS*'s last comment.
@ Mike(I think): If you have a problem with blackmarket runners, build a wall. Isn’t that what America is going to do to keep illegal Mexicans out? Because I think I heard that somewhere… Might be wrong, just stating an idea I thought I heard…
By the way…I was talking about a more “global” thing not particulary in the case of the US 2nd amendement, even that is a good example.
However the needs of firearms are more or less the same in every country of the world : self-protection, sport shooting, hunting and for the armed forces ( in a wider aspect obviously).
To deny the armed right of self protection to a citizen is a particulary grevious and sinister action, and it happen not in a far middleaged dictatorship but in more modern western societies.
Good point Churchill, I would love to build that wall, if you can sneak a body through…its gotta be easy to sneak weapons and drugs through… some here in this country are fighting this idea of a wall for keeping the illegal’s out too.
Yeah, it’s like the Africans in France. They won’t stop coming, and we can’t build a wall in France… 
interesting debate.
speaking for germany, one fact might be the most important:
we have a very strict gun-law, but the rate of deaths by gun-shootings are higher (compared to the mass of inhabitants) than in countries like switzerland (where guns can be aquired very easily and nearly every household has an assault-rifle due to the military structure there), austria (easy to get guns, you can even carry them) etc.
only about 2% of all crimes with guns here are commited from people who own these guns legally, all the rest is from illegal guns.
so what would a stricter law or a total gun-ban bring? exactly: nothing.
the problem here are the illegal guns, it is estimated, that germany holds up to 30 million illegal guns (!). so policy has to start here.
jens
Even if that is so (which I doubt as there’d be no need for laws if the people subject to them were as good as they’d need to be to obey the laws) I’d say that equally the laws are only as good as the people appointed to enforce them.
So far as drug crime is concerned here, corrrupt police helped it flourish, as demonstrated by those former members of our state drug squad currently in gaol, and their links to gun murders.
Not to mention drug affected police shooting people.
If that’s correct, and if existing laws on guns and drugs serve no purpose, then why not repeal them all?
And surrender in the ‘War on Drugs’, which has been something less than a stunning success so far.
Perhaps we would, if some Americans (not you TG) didn’t keep telling us how we are poor downtrodden fools with no spine who let our rights be stolen from us by politicians determined to disarm us.
When, hard though it is for some Americans to grasp, our firearm laws are the product of our democracy in action.
Worse, some paranoid pro-gun Americans see us exercising our democratic rights in our own country as part of some giant international conspiracy by the ‘enemies of freedom’ intent on destroying Americans’ right to bear arms and shoot as many of their countrymen as they wish, when if fact while we are dismayed by the high murder rate in America we are quite prepared to allow Americans the right to kill each other as they wish with whatever weapons the exercise of their constitutional rights allows them.
What pisses us off mightily is some Americans presenting us as ‘enemies of freedom’ because we choose to exercise our own freedoms in ways with which they don’t agree and which produce results they don’t like, and then they accuse us of trying to undermine America and its people’s constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms (as if that is practically or legally possible, but paranoia and hysteria know no bounds in this modern version of ‘commies under the bed’ bullshit). As in this impassioned bullshit from an NRA offcer.
For whichever of the many choices a person makes to belong to NRA, the enemies of freedom – especially the national media elitists – have their own excuse to snuff out each of your reasons – one by one.
If the Brady Campaign or The Violence Policy Center or that phony outfit calling itself “Americans for Gun Safety” ever get their way, they would destroy the right to keep and bear arms by smothering the practice of that right – one “insidious” step at a time.
No matter what peaceable avenue of gun ownership you personally pursue – you as an individual – who only wishes to exercise a God-given right – you and I are their target.
It happened in England, and it is happening in Australia. Last year, in London, when Wayne LaPierre debated Rebecca Peters, the Australian gun banner who is now the United Nations Gun Ban Queen, she answered a question from a British citizen sneering: “Pistol shooting used to be a sport that was allowed in the U.K., and it is no longer.” “I’m sad for you,” she said. “I suppose if you miss your sport, take up another sport.”
Did you hear what she said? “Used to be a sport?” … “Take up another sport?” That’s what the enemies of freedom would like to say here in America.
http://www.nra.org/Speech.aspx?id=6027
Or this bullshit corruption by the NRA President of our crime rates and the exercise of our democratic rights by the whole nation to control guns in response to appalling mass murders by nuts with guns.
The enemies of gun rights are the same all over the world. Your Wendy Cukier is just another version of Rebecca Peters, who was instrumental in passage of the gun bans in England and Australia, countries whose violent crime rates have skyrocketed since law abiding citizens were forced to give up their guns. Rebecca Peters’ response to gun owners who objected that they should not have to give up their firearms, was “Find another sport.”
http://para-usa.com/new/news_releases.php
Does that woman really believe that Rebecca Peters, whoever she is, really swayed my nation to control guns? If so, she is spectacularly ill informed. If not, she is intentionally deceptive, as is so much of the bullshit from the gun lobbies outside my country about what really happened here.
Do some Americans really think that we’re so stupid and docile that we can be so easily duped?
Apparently, because we are forever portrayed by the gun lobbies, and notably the NRA, as dumb sheep who meekly followed some international masters of anti-gun conspiracies intent on destroying the fabric of gun-toting American society and the constitution upon which it is founded.
The difference is that while we care about the high rate of murders by guns in America we allow Americans the right to kill themselves as they wish and to have as many guns as they wish. We do, however, resent some Americans accusing us of being enemies of freedom and trying to destroy the foundations of American society by us daring to exercise the very democratic freedoms in our own country that the NRA seems to think can be preserved in America only by arming the country to the teeth.
So, if they’re treading on our dicks, I think we’re entitled to return the favour.
This goes for Germany also:
Since hunting is not my cup of tea and german law does not allow me to blast some junkie or other burglar trying to break and enter my house there is no use to own a weapon except for shooting as a sport maybe.
flamethrowerguy: in general, you are right. but do not forget that we have the “notwehrparagraph”. the right of self defence to repell an immediate attack against your life, health and other “goods”. in this case, it does not matter if you use a gun or a knife or whatever. sure, it would cause “some” trouble if you blast an apple-thief from your tree with a 12/76, but I think you know what I mean. commensurability is the key-word here.
Paragraph 32 StGB - Notwehr
1.Wer eine Tat begeht, die durch Notwehr geboten ist, handelt nicht rechtswidrig.
2.Notwehr ist die Verteidigung, die erforderlich ist um einen gegenwärtigen
rechtswidrigen Angriff von sich oder einem anderen abzuwenden.
guess you already know this.
if the case is ever given that my family or I will be in such a situation (f.e. 3 or 4 armed burglars attacking) and I have the chance to wake up fast enough, I would not hesitate to use my gun. luckily, the chance that this will happen, is quite small. but in the end, it is not just a theoretical threat.
jens
Here we wouldn’t be able to buy a firearm for self-defence, but if we bought one for sporting use and happened to use it for self-defence in justifiable circumstances it would be legally acceptable.
‘Justifiable circumstances’ depends on the facts of each case, but essentially it will be justifiable if the use of the weapon was proportionate to the harm offered by the offender. So, for example, it would usually be alright to shoot someone armed with a knife who was advancing on you and getting within striking distance (our police have done it often enough and always been exonerated), but not to shoot an unarmed man trying to open your bedroom window from outside the house.
In any case one should make sure that the scumbag is dead, if he survives and has a clever advocate you are possibly screwed yourself. Look article 34 StGB, know some real-life examples.
I just read an article in the newspaper saying that teachers at a quite isolated little school (110 students) in Texas (at the border to Oklahoma) are actually allowed to bear arms during lessons by now. According to the statement of the supervisory school authority this would be the only possibility to guarantee security since the next police department is a 30 minute car-ride away. A sad trend…
I’m not sure about that.
If I was a teacher, I reckon I’d have good class discipline if the little bastards I was teaching knew I was armed.
It is interesting that even teachers are armed here. But keep in mind that it is a limited number of teachers that had to be vetted and trained to use pistols to defend their students, and that not any teacher is allowed to bring his or her gun to school at these districts.
Well, if I was a teacher member of the NRA (or even just an Alaskan governor with a room full of moose guns to defend my pro-life support of the death penalty :rolleyes:) , I’d be seriously pissed off that my school board was infringing my right to bear arms!
Where does the Second Amendment say that anyone has to be vetted and trained to use firearms?
Okay, there’s something there about a well regulated militia, but nobody in favour of unregulated gun ownership ever pays any attention to that. So, if they’re not going to insist on the citizenry bearing arms to support a well regulated militia, it’s a bit rough to insist on civilians being well regulated. Or regulated at all, which is the NRA’s ideal position.
Surely, equal rights under the Constitution means that EVERYBODY can lug an assault rifle, grenade, mortar, howitzer or ICBM (a bit of overkill, admittedly, but it’d get their attention) into their classroom, whether teacher, student, parent or janitor?
Imagine being the relief teacher in a bad school and walking into the classroom with an M60 and belts around your torso like Rambo. It’d be a quiet day. 
Oh, there was no mention of ‘keep’ in the thread title.
This must be what he means:
The obvious has already been stated… gun laws do not deter crime. GUN OWNERSHIP does.
Why would a criminal break the law and steal/rape/kill… yet magically obey gun laws? Someone please 'splain that to me.
Then why do burglars often target gun owner’s homes to steal their firearms?
Because this wasnt parked in the driveway,
It was, but the burglars stole it.