The Constitution can and should be changed, guns are intolerable.
The United States Constitution is the very fabric of our law and our lives. It should not be lightly modified. If we make a case for the changing effect of time and culture, we open a can of worms that may be hard to close.…
Article comments
26 - Christopher Rose
Clavos, just because people are willing to supply guns to criminals has nothing to do with this category of crime. Maybe if you dropped your flip attitude you'd be able to follow the logic a bit better.
As someone who frequently objects to government expansion or control, how do you suggest that it focuses on identifying, helping and isolating people with mental health issues?
As I'm sure your smartarse attitude knows very well, there is no data to support either your point of view or mine. However, I know more Americans than any other nationality except my own and Spanish, and the vast majority are, in my experience, pretty straight and conventional.
For example, that is why Hollywood and US TV uses English people to say and do things that they can't or why Ricky Gervais, who is fairly mainstream and even a little boring in England, is seen as a controversial host of the Grammys.
Troll, surveys, schmurveys. What is a small arm anyway? Furthermore, there isn't a high saturation of legal firearms in Europe...
27 - troll
ok Chris - I'm sure that your intuitive take is more accurate than the survey data presented here by the Guardian (be sure to muddy the well) - see column 5 for the measure of what I called 'saturation with legal firearms'
28 - Dr Dreadful
troll, which definition of "saturation" are you using?
While there are high levels of gun ownership in places like Switzerland, Finland and Serbia, I'd hardly say these countries are filled to capacity with them. Not, at any rate, compared to the US, which has almost double the ownership rate of any of the three.
29 - troll
note that I left the US out of the comparison - it's England that is the outlier...see the rankings for France Germany Switzerland Austria...and on and on
then compare these to Central and South American countries
30 - Christopher Rose
troll, all I got from that survey is that the USA has somewhere between 100 times to double the number of guns of anywhere else, so I don't see how that is supporting your point...
31 - troll
oy Chris...your blinding obsession with the USA is touching - really - but has little to do with my point
it doesn't take a Nash to recognize the patterns I pointed to in the data...if they are not apparent to you and if you have any interest in the issue I raised in #24 then I suggest that you crunch the numbers for yourself...pretty straight forward descriptive stats
my take is that the data suggest that a country's saturation w/ legal guns isn't highly correlated w/ its homicide by firearm rate: Europe = high saturation w/ legal firearms and low homicide by firearms rate...Central and South America = low saturation w/ legal firearms and high homicide by firearms rate
personally I suspect other social forces/trends are at work so for example when Australia implemented its successful buy back it reinforced a trend that might well be missing elsewhere in the world
32 - troll
(...and if you must factor in the US then note that its extreme saturation and low firearms homicide rate - compared to Central and South American countries generally - further reinforces my point)
33 - Not the liberal actor
John, you say, "Today’s world is nothing like the time of our founding fathers,..." With regard specifically to weapons, I must agree with you. But the US Constittion was written to address human nature, not weapons. So, what does my line of thinking mean? Address human nature. Why does not a person who violates (in this instance, by shooting) another's rights forfiet any "rights" he/she has ( like the "right" to spend 20 years on death row at taxpayer expense)?
You also say, "No self respecting gang member would go weaponless." That, sir, is human nature! But it is much easier to call for gun-control than it is to address/confront human nature. It is much easier to call for gun-control than to call for swift justice. Besides, guns cannot protest or speak for themselves, but you can bet that any gang member (or some bleeding-heart liberal lawyer) will protest when the gang member's "rights" are "violated."
Besides, I was in the Army for 22 years, plus have had guns of all types all my life. Not once in all that time has any gun acted on its own.
34 - The constitution shouldn't be changed
Prohibition has never worked. Take guns away from the people using them as protection and those who obtain them illegally will run ramped. Lets all wait 25 minutes while trying to defend your family against multiple armed assailants with only our hand to hand weapons and our wit! Gun control is smart ownership and knowledge of the firearm; not making them illegal. If you see your family member is not stable or in a right frame of mind, lock your safe(which most firearm owners use) and seek medical attention. A man robbed a store with pepper spray, we should make it illegal!
35 - The constitution shouldn't be changed
I also support the banning of horror films for the desentsitizeing of our youth toward violent/torturous actions.
36 - Dr Dreadful
It's going to be difficult to find any common ground on this debate as long as the gun lobby keeps wheeling out the "they want to take away all our guns" straw man, as evidenced in comments 34 and 35, above.
37 - Maurice
Have to take exception with comments about the Founding Fathers. Unlike us they were well educated. They understood exactly what they were doing. That is why our government was founded as a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy. They were well versed in different styles of government and made their choice. They also knew we would need to periodically "freshen the tree of liberty".
38 - Igor
Of course the Founders didn't invent the Republic they took the idea whole from Plato, who wrote "The Republic". Still worth reading today. It was Jefferson who mentioned "refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants", a lurid image, not taken up by anyone else in his own time. I can't see what use that statement is now, except as a debating stunt.
The Founders were not fond of guns, preferring to settle differences in courts and legislatures, rather than on the dueling fields as was common in Europe. In fact we have no writings from the Founders lauding guns, nor do guns appear in any of the many paintings of those worthies.
Perhaps they used guns for hunting game birds and varmints, as country gentlemen do even today.
In the 1790s the US government found it necessary to REQUIRE a gun and some ammunition of every fit male so as to be prepared to be called into an impromptu militia. They required the guns and ammo to be registered so the government could make sure they were prepared.
39 - Dr Dreadful
Wasn't Plato's central idea that the person who most desired to run the republic was the last person who should be allowed to do so?
America went astray pretty early on there...
40 - troll
@ #38 - I can't see what use that statement is now, except as a debating stunt.
What is the implication here Igor? Is it that tyranny is so unlikely as to be no problem or is it that we've arrived at a place where 'resistance is futile'?
41 - Igor
@40-troll: surely you don't think that we should go around killing our political enemies, do you? Or, do you?
I'm sure that every political assassin in US history has had words like this ringing in his ears. John Wilkes Booth made it pretty clear when he jumped to the stage of the Ford theater.
Don't you think that the assassins of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, etc. imagined themselves as slayers of tyrants?
Jefferson himself was no god and was in fact a wily politician who knew how to use hyperbole. It's unfortunate that some people are so innocent as to take careless political diatribes as serious thought. This should serve as a warning to you: the easily gulled WILL be gulled, often to horrendous purpose. Skillful liars will note the identities of the easily deceived and address them specifically. Nothing makes a person more susceptible to lies than his own idolatry.
One may appreciate a clever aphorism for it's artistic flourish without having to think it has intrinsic worth.
And I will repeat again, the Founders were acolytes of The Enlightenment and thought that differences should be settled by discussion and organization (i.e., politics), not with blazing guns.
42 - troll
@ #41 - if you are asking me personally :
I am ambivalent concerning how to treat a tyrant and hold no leader to be immune from the syndrome - (gurus must die) - intoning those so called greats assassinated by fanatics doesn't get me all sentimental though I understand what you're saying and what appears to be your fear of crazies
while I personally choose an aggressive pacifism as my 'axiom' and want little more looking forward than to live out the rest of my days without killing anyone (while effecting a more peaceful [and just] world society of course) I understand those who challenge politicians' claim to a monopoly when it come to the control and use of
(physical) force which they deal out on behalf questionable interests worldwide and find the risks of vigilantism acceptable under the circumstances
the status quo is unacceptable and - combined with the clear limits of Enlightenment - volatile
43 - Maurice
Posted a comment earlier that has not made it in yet. Not sure why. It was the last 2 paragraphs from the Federalist #46. Madison argues that all citizens need to be armed so that State rights would prevail over the Federal government.
Have to echo the personal feelings of troll #42 in that I too have a personal goal to go to my grave and never kill anyone.
44 - Maurice
Now just posting the pertinent paragraph and hoping it will be permitted.
The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.
45 - Richard
I was about to read the Gun Control Blog, when I happened to notice your advertisement:
"DUI's Can Be Beat"
And I don't think I can take you seriously if you allow that sort of content on your "richous" Gun Control post...
You ARE responsible for your ADs, aren't you? And you promote getting out of DUIs?
And we believe Legal Gun Owners are a problem...
Seriously?
46 - Zingzing
"You ARE responsible for your ADs, aren't you?"
Authors aren't responsible for ads. Although if this website is using google Adsense or a similar service, your search history might be responsible for whatever ads you are seeing.
And what is this "richous" word?
47 - Igor
I'm guessing that 'richous' means "righteous".
48 - Dr Dreadful
And that Richard can't spell words with letters he can't hear.