PlasticTree said:
I don't totally get it. Carrying a firearm is legal in the US, but carrying a firearm in City Hall can get you in jail for multiple years?...
...As someone living outside the US I've always found it a mystery why Europe differs so drastically from the US when it comes to firearms.
I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota but I live mostly in Europe (currently Russia but I've been all over). I spent the nine years I lived in Minneapolis working for one of the local police departments (as a civilian security supervisor, I'm not entirely comfortable with the modern police's focus on law enforcement rather than safety and the move from "protect and serve" to "arrest and convict." Also, since I refused to cut my hair, I had little chance of getting hired as an officer). The MPD have a rep for being worse than LAPD, even among other departments, so this episode doesn't surprise me. As an earlier poster said, it's not because he broke the law (he didn't), he made MPD look bad and now they're going after him.
When it comes to guns, I am a supporter of a citizen's right to arm themselves in self-defense. There is no country in the world where it is the duty of the police to defend you and your family, they're there to respond to crime and to catch and prosecute the criminals once they've done something. I've never owned a gun myself but I think the right to ownership is a fundamental western value (not just American). In the history of western culture the distinction between a serf/slave and a citizen was the right to own weapons for both hunting and self-defense. For most of western history, even slaves were legally allowed to arm themselves (and were often given weapons by their owners) even though they had no guaranteed right to do so. Just because we live in safer, more civilized times doesn't mean we should accept legal restrictions which move us closer to feudalism and further from democracy.
All that said, I'm not a member of the NRA, however. I view the matter more as a historian than a politician. Originally the NRA was a solid organization but it seems like they've gone over the brink into irrationality in recent years even if they still do a lot of good on a local level. There are many good members who are not far-right extremists (Russ Pitts and Michael Moore are both NRA members).
In my experience following weapons-related news, most western countries have very similar per-capita weapons ownership (I've seen reports over the years from Gemany, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Russia, Canada, the US, etc). The only difference is the ratio of legal vs. illegal. The US has relatively lax restrictions and high legal ownership. Germany has tight restrictions and high illegal ownership. The US doesn't actually have a significant problem with gun violence itself, our driving habits, eating habits, and medical practices are actually more dangerous than our guns. What we do have is a deeper social problem related to issues of wage disparity and a lack of social welfare infrastructure. Our politicians love debating guns and other "hot button" issues because it lets them ignore important issues like education, healthcare, and jobs.
(My internet connection is so slow today that I can barely use my RSS reader and even Google is timing out so I can't provide much in terms of links. So feel free to distrust everything I say and hit Google to read things for yourself.)
