What gun possession implies

the responsible gun owners carry loaded guns on their person or kept in a handy spot close by where kids can't get at them. If they go out without taking the gun with them, RESPONSIBLE gun owners unload them and lock them up - most will take them out with them. It's untrained and irresponsible gun owners who leave loaded guns lying around where the kids can get at them.

In short, the issue is people, not guns.

It used to be the case that the Israelis and Swiss had freely available guns because of the way their military service worked. That hasn't been the case for some years. The way it works, now, is the way it works in most countries; ownership of guns is controlled. These days, you don't have a right to own a gun, you need a reason to own a gun. And you need to rejustify that reason or get rid of the gun.

The Swiss have always restricted the storage of guns and mandated the separation of guns and ammunition - to the point that, now, ammunition is generally held in depots. The Swiss homicide rate, by gun, is still low but the suicide rate by gun is quite high. Make of that what you will.

1. For millennium the majority of households have had weapons in them and readily available to occupants for their defence.

2. We have a special word for when people go crazy and kill people, it's been around for thousands of years too; berserker.

3. Since the beginning of time people have murdered and killed other people. I differentiate as murder is usually a one on one crime for personal crime, while killing can be in self defence or as part of warfare or as part of enforcing the law.

4. Guns have been around for only a few hundred years, but for most of the eighteenth century the majority of households in Europe had one or more rifles, shotguns, or handguns in them. The Europeans living outside Europe had an even higher rate of guns in their households, almost one hundred percent in many countries. Many households had multiple guns

The guns improved and the rate of guns in houses went up in the nineteenth century. This was the case for the first three quarters of the twentieth century, with the exceptions of efforts to disarm populations by invading forces during wars.

5. Today we have a group of the population who want to disarm the general population. We also have a group of the population who wish to keep the general population armed.

5a. Whatever happens in regards to the discussions and laws arising from the point above the criminals are going to continue to go armed when they want to and people wanting to get guns for criminal purposes will continue to get them.

............

All the above are facts and easily proven via the history books and newspapers etc.

The misuse of guns by a percentage of the population has been a problem since guns have been available. However, in general the population as a whole has always had a good understanding of the proper care and usage of guns, until the last quarter of the twentieth century. Prior to that parents taught their children about the safe care and use of guns. But for some reason this behaviour slowed and down a great deal towards the end of the twentieth century. I suspect a part of this was the negative media influence being pushed on gun ownership, but can't prove that.

What is known is that where most young people growing up prior to the 1970s were taught how to safely use and care for guns by their parents, since the early 1970s this has very rarely happened. Thus we have generations who haven't had good training in the care and use and storage of guns the way their ancestors did.

Now the bit in the paragraph above shouldn't be that important, yet it seems to be very important as we now have what appears to be a growing number of people going berserker and some are using guns when they do. We do NOT have any reasonable statistics on if the percentage rate of berserker behaviour is rising or if the raw figures are just rising due to increased population numbers. I suspect we do have an increase in the per 1,000 head of population rate of berserker behaviour, and I think this is due to a societal and mental version of over population.

People are fairly well spread out as best as they can be today, but are also in higher population densities than they used to be. We also under a lot of pressure via the media and communications systems, it's to the point where it's almost impossible to get away from it. Pressures from excessive and intrusive laws add to the problem too. Thus even when the people are physically apart, they are not as separated from each other in regards to communications wise as they used to be or should be at times.

I believe the issue that needs addressing is NOT the one of having guns in houses, but what's causing the people to go berserker now. This is an issue of how the society is operating, or not operating, not an issue of what tools the individuals have available to them. Having said that, I do also think there is an issue to do with the proper training on the care, usage, and storage of guns that also needs addressing.

Insinuating that a person would not consider the deaths of innocent children as needless deaths just because they own guns or advocate gun ownership really shows your ignorance.

I would venture to say that everyone in the world considers these deaths to be needless.

The argument here is how to stop this type of event in the future. You want to ban the tool. I want to stop the evil person committing the deed. Here you had a very sick person who was known to have mental issues for years and a very stupid individual who left dangerous weapons around for him to access, even though she knew he was violent. It's not the gun's fault. It's the stupid people who won't take the proper precautions and get the proper care when dealing with mentally disturbed individuals.

But go ahead and keep blaming the tool and ignoring the real cause(s). I look forward to your rants about banning forks to solve the growing health care issues caused by obesity.

The world is not the same as it was 200 years, 100 years, 50 years or even 5 years ago. What was valid in the past is not always valid in the wold of today. Weapons, especially high rate of fire military style people slaughtering weapons, there is no logical reason for these to be readily available in any so called civilized society, as they have no purpose that is beneficial to a proper functioning society.

So why the obsession with these weapons, there is no logical reason that can be given for being so readily available to one's citizens as they have no legal or practicable use.

You can throw in any statistics you may wish to drag up but none of them can support a valid reason for allowing society to have freely available such a dangerous and unnecessary thing as assault weapons for all that want them.

There will always be some who can't cope, will go crazy, so why have a tool totally unneeded, that will enable them to cause mayhem and pain readily available, just because there are still other ways for determined obsessed people to carry out their crazy plans, is not good reason to work towards removing one tool from easy access.

1. gang and organised crime related murders;

2. those killed by during crimes or resisting capture by police;

3. individual murders for personal gain or revenge;

4. accidental while shooting;

5. accidental while handling a gun;

6. terrorist related incidents;

7. crazed gunman attacks;

8. miscellaneous.

You can do BOTH.

Fool.

The Second Amendment was created because of your country so I can see why you would advocate it's revocation:

Sir William Keith advised the British Parliament to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

Our President is a joke and our Congress has an approval rating in the single digits. Do you really think we should give up ANY right to these fools?

George Mason explained that "We The People" are the militia who bear arms to keep from being enslaved by the federal government AND to protect ourselves from the tyranny of OUR REPRESENTATIVES, whose dereliction leads us to suffer the same fate of foreign nations.

The Second amendment isn't about arming ourselves against rapists and burglars as you have claimed, it's about preventing our Government from taking complete control of all of our rights.

I prefer to protect my rights from the liberal morons in Washington. Since you're from a foreign country, I seriously doubt if you could ever understand the principle.

there are far fewer killing sprees that we know of!

What with all the road rage etc that goes on now, it's hard to tell what was a rage attack and an accident in many cases.

both are areas of concern but you will find that a small percentage of deaths at the wheel are caused by road rage.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American Automobile Association, most automobile related deaths are caused by inexperience, distraction, and impairment. None of those causes have anything to do with an intent to kill.
The American Automobile Association reported that between 1990 and 1996 there were 12,828 police-reported incidents of aggressive driving which resulted in injury or death. [b](not just death)[/b]
Interestingly, in approximately 44% of violent traffic altercations, the perpetrator used a weapon such as a [u]firearm[/u], knife, club, or tire iron. In 23% the aggressive driver used the vehicle as a weapon, and in 12% a vehicle and a standard weapon were used.
I couldn't find any statistics on road rage mass killing sprees in the U.S.; probably because there aren't any.
I still say it is a useless comparison.

"The Second Amendment was created because of your country so I can see why you would advocate it's revocation.". No, you can't see your nose in front of your face. You have made that obvious!

Anyway, that was then and I wasn't born. This is now and I live now. Sir William Keith died in 1749, This is about to be 2013. Whatever.

To an outsider like me, the Second Amendment is just another religious text. A little bit more recent than the Bible and a little less recent than the Book of Mormon. Like them, it's regarded as the infallible word of the Creator - in this case, the Founding Fathers - yet, like them, it is picked over and interpreted and argued over. There are innumerable definitions as to what it was intended to achieve back then and what it means, now, in a society that is far beyond the knowledge of the (rich, white) men who penned it.

Don't you think you should agree on what you think it means? Better get on it because the demographic of your country is shifting. Your precious, infallible Constitution had to be amended so that blacks could sit in the front of the bus (although it took a little longer for it to actually happen). How do the Blacks and Hispanics feel about all of this - mainly white - gun stuff? Well, the NRA is mostly made up of white men so I leave you to suss that one out for yourself.

Merry Christmas. I'm gone.

however, here's a a bit of info from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_shootings

In NSW weapons like and SKS were never lawful for private ownership - military standard and pistols have always been under tight control. The 1996 changes made just about anything unlawful across Australia. You can look up the details yourself. Mind you, one was by a tourist, one was a gang shooting, a few committed suicide, and of the few who did go prison some had to wait until they'd had enough psychiatric treatment to be judged fit enough to try. However, that's not all the shootings that have occurred in this time. Gangs like the Rebels, Commacheros, Banditos, and others have been shooting at each other for forty years, mostly in small groups - at the moment there are two related shooting deaths under investigation in Sydney. Hardly any two months go by without another news report of a shooting in Sydney, usually between the major gangs taking shots at individuals or small groups of other gangs.

Of the last five shootings listed three involved the use of unlawful firearms.

Away from guns.
I will no longer follow you down your rabbit hole.

this split off as a discussion of the causes as to why people go nuts with guns, and I simply pointed out there are other ways to kill people in numbers if you want to, but few look into why that's happening or the causes behind any of the rage attacks.

When someone walks into theatre and starts shooting people the media scream "nutter with a gun, let's ban guns." When someone flips for the same reason and drives their car at high speed into a bus load of people killing many passengers and them self the media say "man loses control of car and kills twelve in accident." In the first case it's clear the person was a nutter acting out of rage, in the second it's not clear and totally ignored as a rage attack unless they left a note saying something.

In any case where someone goes crazy with rage there has to be some reason why, and we (as a society) need to find out what that is and what's causing it so we can treat the illness and no just one observable symptom.

Sure, a car can help you get around, but mobility is not freedom.
Moment you sit behind the wheel, you're clapping a neck-iron and iron shackles on yourself. All of a sudden you're obliged to do a lot of things you don't need to worry about without the car.
Guns are worse, just owning one (as evidenced with all too great frequency) obliges a person to make sure nobody else gets to it.
That's not freedom except where the threat of violent subjugation is even greater.
And even then, getting the fluck out of there would be a much easier and safer way to achieve the same freedom increase, or greater.

With guns, the ones who survive are the ones who don't get seen.
So, you fielding such a ridiculous comparison seems to rather work against the side you're defending.

just not issued to those not stable enough to use and store properly.

I have a soccer mom mini van (because it suits my needs)
I have a trailer in a trailer court (yep, I'm trailer trash)
I wish I had expensive jewelery (my simple diamond engagement ring and my simple wedding band to show my commitment to Darryl)
and I need a computer to do my job (as Darryl requires it for his) otherwise, we don't make a living
but I don't need a gun, you may (for whatever reason suits you) outside of living in a questionable neighbor, I don't see the need for a semi automatic weapon. If for some reason in the future that changes, I will re-evaluate that if and when the time comes

then there's obssesive...and once again, you're not reading what i post, but hey, what else is new with you.

and if you have paid attention at all, i'm a she...a mother with a strong opinion, if you can't take it, too bad for you

edit to add: most folks are aware that Darryl and I are a couple, max hadn't realized that?

So there's never been racism in Great Britain?

"Racism in one form or another was widespread in Britain before the twentieth century, and during the 1900s particularly towards Jewish groups and immigrants from Eastern Europe. The British establishment even considered Irish people a separate and degenerate race until well into the 20th century.

Since World War I, public expressions of racism have been limited to far-right political parties such as the British National Front in the 1970s, whilst most mainstream politicians have publicly condemned all forms of racism. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that racism remains widespread, and many politicians and public figures have been accused of excusing or pandering to racist attitudes in the media, particularly with regard to immigration. There have been growing concerns in recent years about institutional racism in public and private bodies, and the tacit support this gives to crimes resulting from racism.

The Race Relations Act 1965 outlawed public discrimination, and established the Race Relations Board. Further Acts in 1968 and 1976 outlawed discrimination in employment, housing and social services, and replaced the Race Relations Board with Commission for Racial Equality.

The Human Rights Act 1998 made organisations in Britain, including public authorities, subject to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Race Relations Act 2000 extends existing legislation for the public sector to the police force, and requires public authorities to promote equality."

Although various anti-discrimination legislation do exist, according to some sources most employers in the UK remain institutionally racist including public bodies such as the police and particularly the legal profession. It is also nearly impossible for persons subject to such institutional racism (who are normally economically disadvantaged) to seek legal redress, as in the UK public funding (legal aid) is not available at employment tribunals. The situation with the implementation of Human Rights law is similar. The Terrorism Acts, which came into law in 2000 and 2006, have caused a marked increase in racial profiling and have also been the basis to justify existent trends in discrimination against persons of Muslim origin (or resembling such) by the British police."

I guess your country must be run by those same evil rich white men that you despise so much. Why don't you get your own country in order before commenting on ways to change mine?

Neil,

I mean considering the population in any of these states and the millions of guns we have, murders committed using guns is very low.

For example, in NJ there are about 8.8 million people and 269 gun murders. Considering the size of the population and the fact that many people own guns here, murder by guns is pretty rare, though even one murder is one too many. I'm sure most of those murders is gang-related violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

AV

Slayer - But are guns the real problems
Maxwell - People in the USA don't care what the root cause(s) is (are)
PurpleSkys - I don't blame guns
highlander - Guns don't kill
me - so does a car - they kill more people than guns do each year, let's
(admittedly I was being very sarcastic in the way I wrote it)
then you respond about there being few mass car killings and I responded about not knowing if it was a rage attack and we had a few exchanges on that and causes.

My point was that the risk associated with driving is in no way comparable to [u]INTENTIONAL[/u] mass killing sprees with a firearm.
Any attempt to bring it up in a firearms discussion is merely there to change the subject.

that broken home may be a factor in mass killings but it was not evident in the Columbine incident. Both Harris and Klebold came from two parent homes. Harris even wrote about the fact that his family were the only ones who did not pick on him.
Deadly seems to have hit the nail on the head that bullying plays a factor. At least it did in this instance. Harris and Klebold were both bullied relentlessly in their school - often while the teachers watched and did nothing.
I'm not excusing their behavior but just pointing out that the lack of a father's presence was not a factor.

of an incident where the driver dies as well is a true accident or an intentional action of some sort - our automatic action is to assume and accident. The recent case in Queensland where a bus went over the edge of a mountain and the driver died is being investigated as an accident, it probably was, but if the driver had flipped and wanted to kill or harm his passengers as well (all tourists from Asia) we'd have no way of knowing. The same applies to any number of cases where people have been driving on a crazy manner while behind the wheel of a car and caused harm to others.

I admit I may be a lot more aware of this sort of odd rage behaviour than some, having been a significant witness in an event where a fellow in a rage deliberately rode his motorcycle into a crowd at a bus stop at speed in Queanbeyan back in the late 1980s. The only reason it was investigated as murder and not an accident while fleeing police custody was a I, and a couple of others, were able to testify about his rageroid riding half an hour before the police pursuit began. The police were all set to see it as an accident until the earlier behaviour was brought to their attention. It was on when confronted about the earlier sightings that he admitted his rage over his girlfriend dropping him a bit earlier that day.

Teen on a motorbike killed on girl and put a dozen others into hospital because he rode into the pack of thirty people at 80 plus kph. If he had a car it would have been dozens dead.

his going crazy and hurting people has an underlying cause that relates to people going crazy with guns, which is the point of the sub-sub-thread that guns are a tool and only a tool that other tools can be just as harmful if the causes aren't researched and treated.

Any Tool will do when someone goes Nuts?

Though I have to admit that people with Firearms going nuts do worry me more than people with cars unless of course the person with the car is unlicensed and been prevented from driving.

Even then it's generally speaking their car and they have to pay the bills for the repair of loss of the vehicle where in this country at least we tend to need Motor Vehicles.

We have long distances where there is little to no human occupation and large areas where you can live off the land but with considerable difficulty. Lack of water being the biggest issue in AU.

However by the same token it's not that difficult to get a Fire Arm License here I could in all likelihood get one early next year if I was so inclined without too much trouble. I don't have a Criminal Record or am subject of an AVO and other than working with computers are relatively sane so I really shouldn't have any issues in getting a Long Arm License. I most likely could even get a Pistol License if I so desired but that's highly unlikely as I just don't see any need for one though going by my Uncle I must be doing a lot of Practice as when he dragged me to do some Target Shooting I just placed a big hole in the target with 9 rounds instead of little holes all over the target.

But even you have to admit that the Laws in NSW are changing in a day or 2 and as of March next year Amateur Shooters can access National Parks and shoot the crap out of whatever it is that they want to aim at. I've seen way too many Armature Shooters seeming to believe that 2,000 rounds to kill an animal is perfectly OK and that if you only take the 1 shot and do the same job it's no where near as much fun.

I'll admit that people like that scare me and having them let loose in National Parks isn't a place I would be visiting any time soon. What way too many people forget or never knew in the first place is the range of those Rifles that they use and think that a couple of hundred yards is all you have to watch out for. YEA Right give me a break and stay in the Hole you dug till they pass.

Add in some drinking at night while they argue/boast about the One That Got Away and you have a Recipe for Disaster no matter what the Shooters Association says is something you need to avoid.

A few years ago I visited a sheep property in Northern NSW which boarded onto a National Park and not only did you not shoot in the National Park but you didn't shoot over it either from outside it no matter what was going on. If there was something that you had to shoot it was fair game on the farm but the moment it went over the fence it was perfectly safe. The main reason for that was you never knew if there where any people just over the river/creek that boarded the National Park and it was a common thing to find Gill Nets in that creek that the Farm Owner reported to the National Park Authorities so there was always a fair chance that there where either National park Rangers or Poachers very close by and you acted accordingly. That place had feral pigs and they where really nasty little beasts so moving around more than a couple of hundred yards from the Homestead without a rifle wasn't an option. Well at least not if you liked walking and not experiencing severe pain and suffering not to mention a slow painful death.

Skippy's where a nuisance because they competed with the sheep for food but the pigs where a completely different story, you had to be careful. Of course the Exchange Students he had there where thinking of little pink piglets and saying just how cute and harmless they where till they ran into one of them, who took a very dim view of them getting too close to her offspring. They didn't believe that anything would attack a car which was the only thing that saved them as if they had of been walking they would have been in a world of hurt. :D

Col

including cars, guns, etc over the years. Most of it has been due to no, bad, or poor training in their use. I agree that guns can be a hazard in the hands of a nutter, we've seen that. But those who really want to get them can, regardless of the laws, as has been proven. From the records here in Australia, and also overseas, most rage case nutters end up getting killed or killing themselves - as best as we can tell they start their rage attack with the intent of dying at the end of it.

In this sub-thread I've been trying to get across three significant points:

1. It matter not the tool used by the nutter, they can and will kill people unless some one can stop them very early in their rage.

2. We need to identify and deal with the causes of their rage so they don't go off.

The way people are focussing on the guns and ignoring the underlying cause, and usually do in these cases, is a major concern as it seems they don't mind the person going nuts, just object to them doing it with a gun.

3. When some one dies and kills others in a motor vehicle incident we ALWAYS assume it's an accident. Yet we have no evidence that is the case. It could be a case of rage and they decided to use a car instead of a gun. The fact they're dead means we can't ask them.

In a recent incident a person was involved in a case of road rage, drove off, and smashed into someone else. Not so long back a fellow used his car to attack another several times in a case of road rage, if he'd managed to kill them both it would have been called an accident; because the other got away it's a road rage incident.

If I wanted to take out a lot of innocent people as a matter of rage, I'd not worry about a gun as it's too limiting. Just wait until near lunchtime in any fair sized city, drive down the road until the pedestrians start crossing, plant the accelerator and plough through ten to fifty (depends on the city) then race off to the next crossing, keep up until stopped. Or I could just drive around running people into roadside obstructions, killing and hurting many, then go head on with a police car - - if I have an open bottle of whisky in the car and the place reeks of it, they'll call it all accidents due to a drunk driver. The point here is the natural assumption is NEVER rage being involved, yet we do NOT KNOW.

Like what? People shopping at Walmart even though it means cutting themselves out of a job?

Or maybe you mean gay marriage? Or divorce? Or any of the other things the US has in common with the rest of the first world, with widely varying degrees of violence to follow.

You know, those established in the Constitution itself and by all those other amendments (particularly the 9 that make up the remainder of the Bill of Rights)? Does the right to bear arms supersede those?

Throughout American history, the right to bear arms has been based on the militia clause. (Why else would Congress pass a law specifying that all those not in the organized militia were part of the unorganized militia?) The [u]individual[/u] right to bear arms was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court's 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision.

And it's been sold well. But until DC v. Heller, that individual right was, as far as legal precedent was concerned, nonexistent. That's why Congress passed the law making all Americans part of the "unorganized" militia.

http://www.newyorker .com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html

very explicit

"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"

The constitution overrides and underpins the laws and the legislature. That wording says outright the people have a right to keep and bear arms.

What has happened in recent years is people have worked very hard to twist and change the meaning and intent of the words used by the original writers of the US Constitution, Amendments, and laws in general; that's happening a lot all over the place. That has resulted in matters being put to the courts for clarification, and that's what's happened in 2008 and 2010 - the courts have attempted to make a clarification of the intended wording, not give it a force of law as it already had that. Once that was done some legislatures tried to force it in a direction they wanted and passed more laws.

A classic case of how the US Constitution and Amendments have been warped in recent decades is the way the First Amendment aspect on religion are now applied. The wording is clear:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The government can't make laws about religion, one way or another, and they must allow the free exercise of religion. Some court cases have upheld the government may not support a religion in any way as well. Yet we've seen a rash of cases of people stopping people from exercising their religious freedom because they were in a government facility. In the last few years there have been cases in the news about students being suspended from public schools in the US because they stopped to give a blessing on their food before lunch - - seem the bureaucrats read the First Amendment as being a Freedom FROM any and all religious practices. In another case in the news a student selected to give a speech at the graduation ceremony was reprimanded for closing her speech with thanks to God. Others were refused the right to mention God in their speeches.

Just a few examples of how people are seeking to warp the meanings and intents of the originators and their words.

The precedent has long been set that government can limit what arms the people are entitled to bear. As the article I linked points out, the prefatory clause in the Second Amendment was implemented as requiring militia members to provide their own weapons. It's historical fact that the Founder regulated guns heavily, [u]requiring[/u] militia members to purchase weapons of the right type [b]and[/b] maintain their quality to meet the militia's needs. The National Firearms Act of 1934 taxed machine gun and automatic weapon sales, with the intent of greatly reducing their availability. That law was challenged in court and the tax provisions found constitutional.

But until DC vs. Heller in 2008, an explicit individual right to bear arms did not exist in American jurisprudence or case law.

the Constitution was amended in 1789 with enacted in 1791 with -

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

Summarised as two things joined - We need a militia to keep the state free. To do that the people have the right to bear arms and we won't infringe that right.

Because it was part of the constitution it did NOT need and jurisprudence or case law to support as the legislation and laws draw their authority from the constitution, as does the congress. Although many in the congress and the judiciary toady are trying to turn that around and say they can overrule the constitution.

Then in mid 1792 during controversy over a standing army the congress passed a law establishing a uniformed militia and requiring all white male citizens 18 to 45 to be enrolled (with a few exceptions) and they had to supply their own musket, bayonet, etc - in short outfit themselves for the militia. Later laws were passed setting out what the domestic arms companies had to make as an appropriate musket, but the laws did not state what men had to buy and they varied a lot. The system was soon proved to be totally inadequate.

During the 20th century argument arose about the meaning of the amendment and some claimed it only applied to the right of the state to arm militia, while others said it gave individuals the right to be armed. And that's what those to court cases you mention did - they reaffirmed the rights applied to individuals and not states. In short, they shot down and attempt to amend the meaning of the constitution.

Under the constitution people have the right to bear arms - end of story. However, that does NOT mean the federal or state government can not regulate them a bit. Thus the laws on concealed carry are constitutional. I'd even go so far as to say that the federal and state governments could constitutionally limit the arms to only those that can be easily carried and operated by an individual - thus squad and two person weapons are ruled out as they are not individual arms. Beyond that you get in the grey areas the lawyers make big money out of.

I would support restrictions on full auto weapons and the use or arms registers. However, I'm not a US citizen, so what I support don't matter.

A strong antipathy to the idea of a standing army. It was believed a militia would suffice for national defense.

More information on how the US gun "controversy" got to where it is today: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

But I did some searches on google and found numbers between 800 and 3000. And most assume it was higher.

A search for "number of gun deaths per year in America" shows numbers much higher every year for America, one site said over 32,000.

Maybe that means the Chinese army was less murderous than the American public.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, eh?
*knowwhatImean?knowwhatImean?*nudge*nudge*wink*wink*

by the general public. This has been the case in the United States since the Firearms Act of 1934 was passed.

An assault weapon [u]must[/u], by definition, be capable of select fire. That is, the shooter can select either semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull) or full automatic (one pull spews multiple rounds). The weapons Walmart and other retailers sell are assault-[u]style[/u] weapons. They resemble the military weapons they are based on, but they [b]are not[/b] capable of fully automatic operation, nor can they be easily converted to fully automatic operation.

....That makes no difference as someone still bought a assault-like weapon from Walmart and went and shot children in an elementary school.

Also, I heard someone recently shot up a police station this time. Maybe it's time America called back its armies and dealt with the terrorism happening with in its own borders.

"Why don't you get your own country in order before commenting on ways to change mine? "

Again, I can do BOTH.

Fool.

to fund and maintain many criminals - although if people didn't buy the drugs they'd make no money. But it was the 1920s prohibition of alcohol laws that created a lot of the current organised crime in the US by allowing the small existing groups an opportunity to make quick big profits and expand into other fields.

Anyway, how to properly deal with drugs is another issue and needs it's own thread.

I mean, I am against legalizing drugs, but it would cut some avenues of major profits for drug gangs.
Not all however, we still have problems with illegal cigarettes being sold cheap, so some drugs may follow.