@lurker172602 wrote:
Joanie you keep telling us how your country and its culture would be destroyed if your guns were taken away. That makes it appear to me to be a pretty fragile society if that is all that is holding it together. I think you do your fellow Americans a disservice.
She does have some valid points if her emotive rhetoric didn't disqualify them.
The US do have a culture where they have a right to own a gun. The real issue is how to reverse that right without causing harm to the general population. As Jeanie says, reversing the right will take the guns away from law abiding citizens, but it is unlikely to make much of an affect on those who don't hold the law in the same esteem. They will still have guns and will have a greater opportunity to use them with immunity and without discrimination. This will have an effect on the stability, safety and personal freedom of society.
I do not believe in the ownership of guns for the reasons of self protection simply because it undermines another, more powerful right, that to be assumed innocent until proven guilty (in most cases, there are exceptions to this principle). The intent behind the US gun laws was for protection of society/country, not the individual, and they were made before the US had a purpose specific defence/police force charged with that purpose.
Its now that US citizens misinterpret that right to mean they can protect themselves as individuals. Only a select few members of society have permission to determine guilt or innocence and in the US, this is done through the process of a fair trial, so to have members of the general public making such decisions (ie for home invasions, self defence) is in breach of their personal human rights. (14(2) of the ICCPR I think)
Jamaica introduced some very strict gun laws with perilous results. It is an indication that instant reversal of the gun laws, in a land where posession has been/is seen to be a personal right (even though it is not) may not produce the most favourable outcome.
I think that this is the balancing act with which the US government is faced. Keeping in mind that as a constitutional right, the legislature cannot arbitrarily disarm its citizens, they need a referendum for that, just as we do in Australia when we want to ammend our Constitution. The government can however legislate for the protection of the individual, and remove the access to guns from some people. But as the general public misunderstand that their right to bear arms is for the protection of the country, and not themselves, it is unlikely that a referendum would be successful.
This is a link to what happened when Jamaica introduced gun restriction laws. Note that even without the general public having ready access to guns (or those that do requiring permits etc) their homicide rate still remains at 52.2 per 100,000, whereas the USA sits at only 4.8 in comparison.
Rate of Homicide by Country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_death_rate
Firearms Act (Jamaica) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_Act_%28Jamaica%29
Politics behind the gun laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Jamaica
The results on society following the reversal of the gun laws http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/jamaica.htm
ogQ!(U~$(KGrHgoOKjYEjlLmS1ctBJ1K-4Uyh!~~_7.JPG?set_id=81 "i-need-a-martini"){kind=avatar}
