The right to bear arms / Do we really need a survey to tell us this?

[tsb247]

Hey Guys.

Today in my email I received this [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn17922] article.

For those who can't be bothered to read it, it's a New Scientist article about how the likelihood of being shot increases more than fourfold when you carry a gun than when you don't.

First of all, I think that this shows how stupid it is for normal people to get hold of a license to carry a weapon so easily in America, when all it does is increase levels of gun crime and related fatalities.


Secondly, I can't believe that we need a survey to tell us this. If I were a criminal, if someone counters my activities with a gun themselves, I will not be worried about shooting back at them. If no-one interrupts with a gun, no-one gets shot (hopefully). So the robbery still happens and someone has been shot, potentially fatally.
This is why American police have to carry guns, because all of the criminals carry guns and so they need to be able to properly defend themselves.



What are your thoughts?

I have a question - why are foreigners so interested in US policies and laws?

You don't live here, so your opinion really doesn't matter and I fail to see why this issue would be interesting to you.

There are tens of thousands responsible, gun-owning Americans in this country, I happen to be one of them. I've been around them my entire life and learned gun safety at an early age. I've used firearms on ranges for sport, hunted with them (yes, for actual food, not sport) and have trained/carried them for work. And quite frankly I am sick of seeing foreigners ***** on and on about American gun laws.

You never hear about the people who use weapons responsibly, only about those who don't - and for every person you hear about using a weapon irresponsibly there are many Americans who don't.

BTW, banning weapons hasn't worked for the major US cities that have tried it. Gun crime has nothing to do with the second amendment, which allows people to legally obtain firearms. Your local criminal isn't going to register a firearm, because it's going to be traced back to him. Illegal weapons is where the problem resides, not in the legally owned ones.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you!

I fall in the same boat, and I am getting sick of these threads. Don't non-Americans have anything better to complain about? It's not like our gun laws are of any concern to them, and they are certainly not affected by them in any way. The fact is that places in the U.S. with extremely strict restrictions on firearms (Chicago, D.C., and L.A.) have the highest rates of gun related violence in the country. Banning firearms would have no effect on whether or not criminnals acquire them. They will get them not matter what.

Guns only appear in the news when someone mis-uses one. For every one person who does something horrible with a gun, there are hundres of people who never have and never will.

 

[AssButt]

I feel like renting an air balloon and massacring people by dropping pennies from distant heights.

Then we should rid the U.S.A. of pennies, not because they are not needed, but because they are ruthless tools that can be used to kill. I think that penny use requires more training because this Percutio guy killed 60 people with pennies because PENNIES ARE EASY TO GET. It has nothing to do with the fact that if Percutio killed 60 people with pennies then chances are he was BATSHIT CRAZY. Still, I blame the pennies.

Uhuh - now replace the pennies with a weapon DESIGNED to kill people and you haven't killed 60, you've killed a thousand.

Don't be stupid.

The campus didn't have universal armament, it had universal disarmament. And 32 people were shot. This is exactly the kind of scenario pro-gun types claim will happen when you 'take away' their guns. It's exactly what they claim will happen, and it played out in exactly the way they say it will. I think this is making their case for them.

Because all those gun owners would NEVER have panicked under fire and thought one of their fellow defenders was the guy they needed to shoot? Noone would have heard shots, hidden in a room and shot the first person to walk in? Noone would have missed in a panic, sending bullets into fleeing innocents? It would have been perfect, the guy would have started shooting, but moments later, the heroic gun owners would have pulled out their weapons and ended the threat calmly before dialing 911 and going about their day? Right?

'Gun owners' are not soldiers. They are not trained to undergo firefights. As I said before, plenty of soldiers and innocents in Iraq have been fired upon BY THEIR OWN SIDE, and those people ARE trained for those situations.

Am I against law enforcement carrying weapons? No. Am I against off duty soldiers, ex FBI or other people who have the training/experience and the mentality required to be able to carry a firearm and be counted on to end a threat and defend themselves and others? No.

I am against the general population whom have no combat training carrying deadly weapons with no idea what to do in a situation like that and are likely to make things worse.

It's funny how you keep using Virginia Tech as an example when there was another school shooting at that same school back in January of 2002 which was stopped by students who retrieved guns from their cars.

 

[Mathurin]

I may or may not write and Edit after I read the whole thread. And that study was an excellent example of what not to do in a scientific study.

Glad that, even though you tend to oppose firearms, you can admit that study was another piece of the crap generated in this debate by _both_ sides

The 2nd Amendment was written to allow America to better organize a militia in the event of an invasion. The whole "protecting my property" was for expelling invading soldiers.

Yes and no, in the original days there was no real police force, it was the militia that enforced the law, you also need to understand that the 2nd didnt come from a vacuum, it was created in 1790, in response to the creation of the Constitution creating a new powerful central authority, the people had thrown out a powerful central authority 10 years earlier and went "LOL WUT?"
In order to get the consitution ratified they had to add the ammendments to protect the rights of the people, it is notable that the people considered the right to bear arms as second only to the right to information flow (free speech, churches, assembly, all information flows of the day, all used during the revolution)

At this point it generally devolves into "Us military would pwn j00" and "no u" which I try not to get involved with, I just say that, win or lose, any even moderate attempt at a revolution would significantly damage the nation in multiple ways, enough that the threat of it is still a viable deterrent to bad politicians.

A gun would only help you if you have the element of surprise, in a self-defense situation.

I can see how you would think that, and personally I wouldnt draw without some kind of surprise, but criminals tend to be cowards, they want your money, if you get robbed the cops will look, but probably not find the perp, if you get killed then chances are good the cops will find the guilty party and send them to jail.

I saw a video on college humor where a frat boy thought it was a fellow frat boy pranking him, he walked straight up to a gun wielding robber, knocked the gun out of his hand and proceeded to beat him up.

This would only happen in your own home, assuming that you walk around packing heat in your own home. I also don't agree with people who say, when commenting on a crime "If s/he was carrying a gun...." If everyone carried a gun, a criminal would just shoot you, or stab you, and take your money before you had a chance to attack. Gangs would resort to using automatics or silencers exclusively, and so would the cops.

no, escalation of force is only possible when space and concealment are not factors, the average criminal still carries a small inexpensive firearm, they would not move to silenced automatics because they are significantly larger weapons.
Concealed carry license holders also tend to carry small lower powered pistols as well, though significantly more expensive ones, they want quality.

Cops have no reason to use silencers, everything they do is/should be clear and transparent.

Another thing people tend to say is, "If the cops can be armed, why can't I?" They're cops, law-enforces have to have some sort of advantage over citizens in order to enforce the law. If we carried flintlocks, they'd carry revolvers. If we have revolvers, they have semiautomatics. If we have semiautos, they'd have M-16s. Police brutality is an unfortunate side-effect, but anarchy would be worse.

The advantage they have is numbers, if they dont have the numerical advantage then its probably not a democracy....
The police already carry M-16s in many places

Why do you see a significant difference between law enforcement officers and citizens, citizens also have the power to arrest individuals, as a nation we need to stop placing artificial distinctions, police are merely citizens hired by the state to enforce the law, they are given certain exemptions from personal liability but no more power to arrest. From there there has been built a us vs them situation, where any non-police officer is a suspected criminal.

The colonists arrived to a somewhat anarchist place when they got here, the only laws that existed were the ones they chose. They intentionally did that to flee an abusive and corrupt monarchy, they would disagree.
I am not a proponent of anarchy, however, alittle more citizen empowerment is definitly needed here, this is our nation, "let the police handle it" just makes it worse, they cannot do it alone.

 

[matumba]

It's simple, we need the second amendment in case the English ever come back and force towns to garrison their troops.

http://www.harkavagrant.com/historynonsense/washingtonfinal.png

RAD!

 

[Nova5]

Meh, there's a difference between carrying and owning. I own several rifles, but only shoot for sport - most of the guys at the local gun club do. Then again, I'm in California, where it's virtually impossible to get a license to carry, so... Yeah, I don't think we really have this problem. It's all the illegally imported street weapons we get to worry about here. You know, like Uzi's and all that wonderful stuff banned (labeled rightfully as 'assault weapons').

 

[Mathurin]

I feel like renting an air balloon and massacring people by dropping pennies from distant heights.

Then we should rid the U.S.A. of pennies, not because they are not needed, but because they are ruthless tools that can be used to kill. I think that penny use requires more training because this Percutio guy killed 60 people with pennies because PENNIES ARE EASY TO GET. It has nothing to do with the fact that if Percutio killed 60 people with pennies then chances are he was BATSHIT CRAZY. Still, I blame the pennies.

Uhuh - now replace the pennies with a weapon DESIGNED to kill people and you haven't killed 60, you've killed a thousand.

Don't be stupid.

Design is a funny thing, since Yo Yos were designed as weapons in the begining should we ban them.

The vast majority of modern firearms are designed for hunting and target shooting

The campus didn't have universal armament, it had universal disarmament. And 32 people were shot. This is exactly the kind of scenario pro-gun types claim will happen when you 'take away' their guns. It's exactly what they claim will happen, and it played out in exactly the way they say it will. I think this is making their case for them.

Because all those gun owners would NEVER have panicked under fire and thought one of their fellow defenders was the guy they needed to shoot? Noone would have heard shots, hidden in a room and shot the first person to walk in? Noone would have missed in a panic, sending bullets into fleeing innocents? It would have been perfect, the guy would have started shooting, but moments later, the heroic gun owners would have pulled out their weapons and ended the threat calmly before dialing 911 and going about their day? Right?

'Gun owners' are not soldiers. They are not trained to undergo firefights. As I said before, plenty of soldiers and innocents in Iraq have been fired upon BY THEIR OWN SIDE, and those people ARE trained for those situations.

Am I against law enforcement carrying weapons? No. Am I against off duty soldiers, ex FBI or other people who have the training/experience and the mentality required to be able to carry a firearm and be counted on to end a threat and defend themselves and others? No.

I am against the general population whom have no combat training carrying deadly weapons with no idea what to do in a situation like that and are likely to make things worse.

Gun owners are fully aware of how limited the right of self defense is, so here is the scenario.

Shots fired, screaming is heard, and a man with a gun is loose.

you have a firearm, and another individual with a firearm has just come into the room, what do you do?

N00b answer: SHOOT HEEEM!!! (go to jail for a few years for manslaughter)

Gun owner answer: order him to stop and lower his firearm, if he doesnt you have reasonable belief he intends to kill you.


situation 2
shots fired, screams, etc, you, being an idiot, run around looking for the shooter, you run into a room and someone orders you to drop your gun or he/she will fire

what do you do?

N00b answer: shoot him/her quickdraw style....and die

Gun owner answer: obey, if he/she was the shooter he/she would have shot you already, has nothing to gain by announcing his/her presence.



Concealed carry license holders go through a class to give them the basics on when they can/cant shoot, they must qualify with their firearm as well. These are not twitchy FPS fans, they know the serious impact of what they are carrying.

 

[Kubanator]

Ok. I'm tired of the expression "If you make guns illegal, only criminals will have guns", as it's circular logic. The possession of a gun defines you as a criminal, therefore a gun owner = a criminal. The entire statement is redundant.

And on topic. No mugger would kill if he felt entirely secure. Muggers don't want to kill someone and end up with a lifetime in prison. They want 20$ to live for another day. But if you give everyone guns, guess what? Every mugger is simply not going to risk asking, and just blow your head off, kind of like whats happening in South Africa.

The idea that more guns = safety, is essentially the MAD argument, where both sides pose equal threats towards each other, prevent either from making a move. But the flaw in MAD, is if one party (mugger) gets first strike (Pulls his gun first), then there's no reason for him not to shoot, because the threat of your gun doesn't exist yet, and if he waits, it will.

As for disarming the gun, good luck. You literally need to be a Bruce Lee to move your hands to his gun, and point it away, before he tenses his finger. I've trained martial arts for over 6 years, and we are trained not to risk anything, unless he really does have the intent to kill. It's simply because even with the amount of training, it's still too big a risk to take.

-snip-

You're hear an announcement come on. "Gunman in the school". You hear screams down the hall. He hear bullets flying through the hallways. Blood splatters on the window of your class. More gun shots. You're pissing your pants. You've never fired at a person, you've never seen someone get shot, except in movies. A man bursts in the room. You jump up, intending to point the gun at him. You're shaking. You're finger slips. An innocent man dies.

 

[narmeian]

The actual wording - ?A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.?

From my point of view, this referring to the ARMY, not regular every day people. It's been twisted.

 

[Mathurin]

Meh, there's a difference between carrying and owning. I own several rifles, but only shoot for sport - most of the guys at the local gun club do. Then again, I'm in California, where it's virtually impossible to get a license to carry, so... Yeah, I don't think we really have this problem. It's all the illegally imported street weapons we get to worry about here. You know, like Uzi's and all that wonderful stuff banned (labeled rightfully as 'assault weapons').

How is that ban working?
I mean, if its banned then it must never be used in crime, right.......right?

Oh well, I guess if people _feel_ safer thats all that matters.




Damn, this is a fun thread but I should really sleep someday

 

[Simalacrum]

What? B

my response is "well duh?" to the article. Honestly, the best way to solve gun crime is to BAN GUNS. Learn from Britain, America, not even the police wear guns here! Instead we have knife crime... lots, and lots of knifing.

Ban guns? Don't be an idiot. If we ban guns, that only keeps them out of the hands of honest people.

opposite way round! banning guns makes it harder for dishonest people to acquire them, since stores and whatnot don't sell them to the public in the first place.

Which is exactly why gun deaths are nonexistent in countries which ban them.............
And why no guns which are currently illegal in the US are ever found inside the US borders.....

Oh, wait

We share 2 giant unsecured borders, one with a very poor nation with easy links to former soviet supported nations (an excellent source for USSR weaponry) and one with massive wilderness borders to the sea. Smuggling things into the US is not that tough, if you make guns illegal, guns will be smuggled in in the same way drugs are currently smuggled in.

You cannot un-invent something, especially in a day and age when a hobbyist machinist can make a full auto SMG

well, no, not really...

For one thing, although it is true that guns will still be smuggled into a country, the fact remains that if they are made illegal, then that limits a lot of people who might misuse a gun from getting one, since not everyone has connections or knowledge about the black market.

Furthermore, you can't deny the fact that Britain has MUCH fewer cases of gun crime in comparison to America (and not just cause of the smaller population)

edit: oh also, not many people know how to make an SMG... there may be more people than before that know, but still, the proportion of people who know how is incredibly small.

 

[Kubanator]

The actual wording - ?A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.?

From my point of view, this referring to the ARMY, not regular every day people. It's been twisted.

Militia = People with guns who make an impromptu army for defense. This is very outdated however, as we live in a time where the difference between the US military and a civilian army is massive, and it was really put in place so the British didn't come invade and take all of the rights away. Good luck maintaining freedom when 3 tank battalions roll through your army. Or helicopters. Or missiles from space.

 

[Mathurin]

The actual wording - ?A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.?

From my point of view, this referring to the ARMY, not regular every day people. It's been twisted.

thats only because the american education system (assuming you live in the US) is so horrible that you have confused the word "militia" being a group of ordinary individuals pressed into military service by government or necessity. with the word "army" a group of professional soldiers, individuals who make their living fighting, or preparing for fighting.

A standing army is paid, equipped and trained by the nation, in peacetime and in war, a militia is not generally paid, definitely not in peacetime, they are not supplied in any regular fashion by the nation during peacetime, and they pretty much train themselves.

At the time the distinction was very clear, and the original intention was that the government have no standing army, and that all wars would be fought by the militia, they pretty much underestimated the laziness that would come to america, or were naive.
Regardless, wisdom of the time said that a standing army was a bad thing, and was something an oppressive nation needed to keep the people down. Hence, the militia was given its place in the 2nd ammendment, because no matter how much the militia might suck compared to a professional soldier, militias of a nation will always outnumber the soldiers of a nation.

You have failed.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

The campus didn't have universal armament, it had universal disarmament. And 32 people were shot. This is exactly the kind of scenario pro-gun types claim will happen when you 'take away' their guns. It's exactly what they claim will happen, and it played out in exactly the way they say it will. I think this is making their case for them.

Because all those gun owners would NEVER have panicked under fire and thought one of their fellow defenders was the guy they needed to shoot? Noone would have heard shots, hidden in a room and shot the first person to walk in? Noone would have missed in a panic, sending bullets into fleeing innocents? It would have been perfect, the guy would have started shooting, but moments later, the heroic gun owners would have pulled out their weapons and ended the threat calmly before dialing 911 and going about their day? Right?

'Gun owners' are not soldiers. They are not trained to undergo firefights. As I said before, plenty of soldiers and innocents in Iraq have been fired upon BY THEIR OWN SIDE, and those people ARE trained for those situations.

Am I against law enforcement carrying weapons? No. Am I against off duty soldiers, ex FBI or other people who have the training/experience and the mentality required to be able to carry a firearm and be counted on to end a threat and defend themselves and others? No.

I am against the general population whom have no combat training carrying deadly weapons with no idea what to do in a situation like that and are likely to make things worse.

I think you are exaggerating the utility of unarmed self defense and downplaying the utility of firearms to the point of absurdity. You don't need to be a soldier to use a gun responsibly. Combat scenarios are not analogous to typical self defense scenarios, or even mass shootings such as the Virginia Tech massacre. Any of those things could have happened, but I don't find your implication that they necessarily would have happened to be very convincing. And considering the consequences of what actually occurred- I'll take my chances.

On the other hand, not even a soldier can defend himself in the way you are suggesting granny should be able to do. I find it likely that the same violence carried out at a school for ninjas would have resulted in a similar death toll. And if even one jackass had been carrying that day, we might be discussing a double homicide right now. I find both of these assertions more likely than your pandemonium scenario. Even if I allow that this jackass would have taken down five innocents in the process, we are still far better off, and I find it much more likely no one else would be harmed. A firefight is hardly ideal, but it's certainly better than a one sided massacre.

And this does not take into account that there may have been no violence whatever if not for the shooter's knowledge that the weapon ban practically guaranteed his success.

If you want to argue that only trained individuals should be permitted to maintain arms, you can do that without downplaying their obvious utility.

 

[lenin_117]

People here seem to be missing the point of the right to bear arms, and the reason it was included in the constitution in the first place.

 

[Kubanator]

At the time the distinction was very clear, and the original intention was that the government have no standing army, and that all wars would be fought by the militia, they pretty much underestimated the laziness that would come to america, or were naive.
Regardless, wisdom of the time said that a standing army was a bad thing, and was something an oppressive nation needed to keep the people down. Hence, the militia was given its place in the 2nd ammendment, because no matter how much the militia might suck compared to a professional soldier, militias of a nation will always outnumber the soldiers of a nation.

You have failed.

So you take an army of people who shoot in their spare time, who never engage in combat, and are using sub par weapons against an army who trains every day, is combat ready, and is using the top of weapons technology? Not to mention they have access to an amazing communications grid, smart targeted weapon systems, tanks, fighter jets, battleships, and generally a lot of weapons that a civilian weapon will never harm?

People here seem to be missing the point of the right to bear arms, and the reason it was included in the constitution in the first place.

To stop Britain from invading. It wasn't to act a pseudo police force. And read the above post and explain how an militia army would be effective against the US army.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

The actual wording - ?A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.?

From my point of view, this referring to the ARMY, not regular every day people. It's been twisted.

We really don't have to guess about the meaning. We have access to the writings of its authors, and they had a lot to say. It means what it says. Not that I really care about that.

 

[Mathurin]

What? B

my response is "well duh?" to the article. Honestly, the best way to solve gun crime is to BAN GUNS. Learn from Britain, America, not even the police wear guns here! Instead we have knife crime... lots, and lots of knifing.

Ban guns? Don't be an idiot. If we ban guns, that only keeps them out of the hands of honest people.

opposite way round! banning guns makes it harder for dishonest people to acquire them, since stores and whatnot don't sell them to the public in the first place.

Which is exactly why gun deaths are nonexistent in countries which ban them.............
And why no guns which are currently illegal in the US are ever found inside the US borders.....

Oh, wait

We share 2 giant unsecured borders, one with a very poor nation with easy links to former soviet supported nations (an excellent source for USSR weaponry) and one with massive wilderness borders to the sea. Smuggling things into the US is not that tough, if you make guns illegal, guns will be smuggled in in the same way drugs are currently smuggled in.

You cannot un-invent something, especially in a day and age when a hobbyist machinist can make a full auto SMG

well, no, not really...

For one thing, although it is true that guns will still be smuggled into a country, the fact remains that if they are made illegal, then that limits a lot of people who might misuse a gun from getting one, since not everyone has connections or knowledge about the black market.

srsly, go buy some pot, ill wait........
thats how easy it is to make a black market contact.

In general, banning guns makes certain that the only people who have them are those most likely to misuse them.

Furthermore, you can't deny the fact that Britain has MUCH fewer cases of gun crime in comparison to America (and not just cause of the smaller population)

Britain also never had the crime problems the US had, there is a different culture there, as well as much looser police powers.

Britain also has much more secure borders, you dont have land borders with 3rd world nations.

When you look into it, america doesnt have a gun problem, it has a gang problem, a gang problem which is difficult to tackle because the gang members tend to be poor minorities and anyone attacking them is generally called a racist.

edit: oh also, not many people know how to make an SMG... there may be more people than before that know, but still, the proportion of people who know how is incredibly small.

stens are incredibly easy to make, just realize that high tech firearms building of 60 years ago is now hobbyist level work, its something you can teach yourself, but more importantly its something that many already know they can do if they wish, machining is a very common skill amongst the mechanically inclined, it only needs alittle refinement to make basic firearms.
Even if its only %1 who know it now, thats alot of people, and more can learn.

hmm, in WWII the danish resistance manufactured sten guns under the nose of the germans
http://www.stengun.dk/UK/uk-filialen.html
The only part they counldnt make was the barrel, I presume because they didnt have a lathe or something.

You might also look into some of the firearms hand built by chechen rebels

 

[RelexCryo]

Hey Guys.

Today in my email I received this [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn17922] article.

For those who can't be bothered to read it, it's a New Scientist article about how the likelihood of being shot increases more than fourfold when you carry a gun than when you don't.

First of all, I think that this shows how stupid it is for normal people to get hold of a license to carry a weapon so easily in America, when all it does is increase levels of gun crime and related fatalities.


Secondly, I can't believe that we need a survey to tell us this. If I were a criminal, if someone counters my activities with a gun themselves, I will not be worried about shooting back at them. If no-one interrupts with a gun, no-one gets shot (hopefully). So the robbery still happens and someone has been shot, potentially fatally.
This is why American police have to carry guns, because all of the criminals carry guns and so they need to be able to properly defend themselves.



What are your thoughts?

Well, statistically speaking, The actual amount of murders, rapes, and robberies decreases when citizens in America are allowed to own guns. Just as an example:

in 2000, when the Recession hit, Michigan allowed citizens to carry guns. The crime rate immediately dropped by 5%. It has stayed slightly smaller ever since. Yeah, that is small decrease, I admit. However, during that same time period, the crime rates or New York,
California, and Illinois sky rocketed.

Starting in the 1980's, well before the recession, as Canada, Australia, and Britian pursued more gun conrol, all crime, including murders, increased, (Except in Australia. Manslaughter, robbery, and so forth increased, but murder apprently decreased by 3%.)

By contrast, America's crime rate fell as we gave citizens more freedom.( although it skyrocketed agqain in the recession, laregly due to the fact that the above mentioned states passsed even tighter gun control.)

People say Britain has a low crime rate because of all it's gun control. In reality, Britain HAD a very low crime rate, banned guns, and now has more robberies per capita than America does. (Although America still has more Murders/Rapes, largely due to shitty social conditions.) http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/21/205139.shtml

Roughly 90% of all gun crime in America comes from areas where civilians aren't allowed to carry guns.

http://www.learnaboutguns.com/

Actually, just google "British Crime Rates"

Ultimately, Japan banned civilian owernship of firearms, and has a very low crime rate. Switzerland lets just about any male 18-35 own a submachine gun. Switzerland ALSO has a low crime rate. What does this prove? That social conditions matter more than anything else- you don't need guns or gun bans if you have perfect social conditions. But based on what I have seen, if you have bad social conditions, letting law abiding, sane adults own firearms, results in less crime. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Kubanator]

Also, the founding fathers made their decisions over 2 centuries ago. To say that advice from back then should be used without regards to the changes in technology is to say that creationism should be considered true, without regarding evolution.

 

[RelexCryo]

Also, the founding fathers made their decisions over 2 centuries ago. To say that advice from back then should be used without regards to the changes in technology is to say that creationism should be considered true, without regarding evolution.

Try considering the statistics of the above sites.