Firearms

[Bob Phillips]

America is a unique country. There are big problems with how the founding fathers as it were have crafted the consitution and how it continues to be misinterpreted, especially with the second amendment.

Too many times those in our country who argue against legislation which appears to inhibit the freedoms laid out in the Bill of Rights, simply on the basis that the framers of the constitution intended it that way (in this case, that we should <snip...have the right to bear arms..>). The problem with arguments like that is context. Things were quite different back then. Perhaps everyone should have muskets, as this was the framer's intent?
At the time the Bill of Rights were crafted, the country was still technically at war trying to gain our independence. It was a hostile time, and in many many ways much less civilized (sic) than we are pre-supposed to be now.

Just as they make changes to other elements of the constitution, this is something that should probably change. Different gun laws don't work, the numbers don't lie. I agree with Bob here, the mass availability of guns is part of the problem. People who think that the Right to own was is the Need to own one are the same thing are part of the problem.

Society, and how our country embraces freedom is also part of the problem. Too many times, we take the freedom to <fill in blank> to the extreme.

I think that is an extremely valid point point, that the context in which the law was drafted is different to the context today, and laws should be reviewed in the light of the current context (one I wish I had artculated).

The almost evangelical fervour raised whenever it is suggested changing your constitution seems, to an outsider, to be both the strength and A weakness of your democracy. It is the strength, because the constitution cannot be changed without a thorough debate, and needs to very properly justified. It is a weakness because it allows lobby groups to override the wishes of the majority (e.g. stem cell research), and/or stops the government enacting changes that changing times would properly demand (e.g. gun control).

Herein of course lies the dilemma, the Catch-22. How do you square that circle? I have no idea, I just know that for a civilised country like the US of A to have such free access to guns is wrong, just plain wrong.

There is an interesting Wiki item on the 2nd Amendment for those who care to look.

BTW, how does your governement get away with the freedom curtailing laws they are introducing now? I know how ours does it, we don't have a written constitutiom to measure their actions against.

It is our society that has created the problem over the last 200 years. Our country has created a quarter million professional victims--and it is getting worse. So in typical fashion, our country would respond that it is not our fault that 32K homicides deaths vs 112 in similar sample population elsewhere. Arguing of course that the freedom to own the gun didn't cause the death, an individual did. But didn't society create that individual by giving him the gun?

It is people that pull the trigger, but it is the freedom to own a gun in the first place that creates situations where a gun becomes an option.

Exactly the point I was making when I said that gun-owning chnges the society.

The thing that worries me most of all is the number of reasonably intelligent people from your country that I hear defending the right to own guns. If they make that argument, the NRA has an easy job.

I would like to chime in more, but my daughter needs to explain to me the inner works of the Dora / Boots dychotomy regarding how to get to Big Mountain.

All of that went straight over me.