Gun Control -- As usual discussed only after a massacre.

I've also seen this floating around:

Quote:

Too many people have accepted the normality of mass slaughter as a necessary sacrifice to an amendment written when guns held 1 bullet.

1835 - the first Colt revolver was manufactured. http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/

Quote: Dalex64

1835 - the first Colt revolver was manufactured. http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/

At the time of the Second amendment, c. 1787, guns not only fired just one bullet, but took about a minute to reload. Or longer. I'm not sure cartridges were in use then.

Quote: Wizard

For what it's worth, if we could snap our fingers and make every privately owned gun disappear, I'd favor it.
.

That's what dictators do, take away a
citizens right to defend himself with
the snap of their fingers. I don't think
you've thought this through, and why
we have the right to carry a gun in the
first place.

Quote: Nareed

You kind of contradict yourself there.

The vast amount of existing guns makes the problem difficult, but not impossible to solve. Not by a finger snap, but with buy back programs and, in some cases, outright confiscation.

But at the very least, remove the prohibition for the CDC to research the effect of guns as regards accidents, injuries and deaths.

If we had a confiscation program, everybody would say their gun broke and they threw it away, meanwhile hiding it fully functional. A buyback program would be enormously expensive. According to Congressional research, there are 300 million guns in the United States. I think prices of about $1,000 each would be needed to be a sufficient incentive to turn them in. So we're talking about 300 billion dollars. Of course, the people you really don't want to have guns still wouldn't turn them in.

According to the New York Times article somebody quoted, there were 8,124 deaths by guns in the US in 2016. Compare that to the 480,000 deaths caused by tobacco (source). That is 59 times as many.

Quote: Nareed

At the time of the Second amendment, c. 1787, guns not only fired just one bullet, but took about a minute to reload. Or longer. I'm not sure cartridges were in use then.

And only wealthy white men could vote.

It isn't the exact circumstance of the time, but the overarching concept that transcends time:

"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."

It's pretty straightforward. An armed populace ensures the security of a free State. Time to re-watch "Red Dawn".

Quote: Nareed

At the time of the Second amendment, c. 1787, guns not only fired just one bullet, but took about a minute to reload. Or longer. I'm not sure cartridges were in use then.

However the purpose of the second amendment was to assure that the general population was armed on par with the army. The founding fathers were wary of the potential threat to liberty of a national standing army. Here is Hamilton on the right to bear arms in Federalist Paper #29

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This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.

Of course in order to establish that balance now, the citizens would need a few RPGs at the very least to defend against tanks and helicopters.

Quote: JimRockford

However the purpose of the second amendment was to assure that the general population was armed on par with the army. The founding fathers were wary of the potential threat to liberty of a national standing army. Here is Hamilton on the right to bear arms in Federalist Paper #29

You can add the modern police here. People say, "Do you want cops to have to worry for their safety when they serve a warrant?" To which I say, "Yes!" The more they worry, the less chance they crash thru my door on weak reasons.

Anti-gun nuts don't realize how fast a police state can form.

Quote: Wizard

According to the New York Times article somebody quoted, there were 8,124 deaths by guns in the US in 2016.

2014 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-death-rates-the-us-is-in-a-different-world.html

While you're there, compare the murders per million in the US and other first-world countries.

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Compare that to the 480,000 deaths caused by tobacco

No one has yet set out to murder anyone with a cigarette, let alone 59 at a time.

Quote: JimRockford

However the purpose of the second amendment was to assure that the general population was armed on par with the army. The founding fathers were wary of the potential threat to liberty of a national standing army. Here is Hamilton on the right to bear arms in Federalist Paper #29

You know, aside from when a bunch of treacherous slave-holders decided they didn't care for the results of an election, I can't think of a single time when the US government thought to fight its own citizens.

Quote:

Of course in order to establish that balance now, the citizens would need a few RPGs at the very least to defend against tanks and helicopters.

Actually the citizens would need plutonium, uranium, centrifuges, machine tools, tritium and high explosives to maintain that balance.


Also, perhaps no one has bothered to bring this up ever, but the Constitution can be amended.

Quote: Nareed

You know, aside from when a bunch of treacherous slave-holders decided they didn't care for the results of an election, I can't think of a single time when the US government thought to fight its own citizens.

See what a deterrent it is? ;.)