I've noticed that there seems to be an arms race between gun owners and the police in the US. Because private citizens own guns the police feel threatened and feel they have to own more powerful weaponry. The police know that the person they pull over during a routine traffic stop may be armed with an AK-47. Gun owners create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia in the US in which the police shoot first and ask questions later. In contrast, in England a lot less people get shot by the police and most police there don't even carry guns. So it seems that more guns leads to the government behaving more tyrannically towards the citizenry.
your post assumes that with more gun control the people the police fear wouldn't be armed. Of course that is silly because most of those the police fear are already trafficking in illegal narcotics. Stevens is senile and his writing on Heller is widely seen as one of the most pathetic dissents in the last 15 years. He pretends that the 2A doesn't support an individual right but that the expansion of the commerce clause was actually proper
Funny, you use an image from the Ferguson fiasco, which began the gigantic call to reformation of the tyrannical image that those police presented. I called our local cops into a "situation" that I discovered in the desert. The responding officer had me guide him to the location, close to a mile off of the road. When he got out of his car to look around, he did indeed notice my AK-47, laying in the seat next to me. He didn't say a word about that. He did say: "I'm gonna' go down there and look around". It's kind of a funny thing in our society, when there are people who gain the trust of a cop in a very short time. He "knew" that I had his back, and he didn't call an additional unit. On the other side, there are people in our society who cause the cop to draw his sidearm immediately, and subdue the guy who caused his alarm. It's ENTIRELY up to YOU, and each individual, whether you lead the cop to feel that he needs to impose a bit of tyranny, or trust his life to you.
Why do you think the U.S. constitution/bill of rights gives people the right to "bear arms"/"own guns"? Perhaps in today's age as most Americans view it and even when there is more intrusion on our rights and lives by the Federal Government(often abusing their Constitutional Power)'; it is hard to imagine we would ever need to protect ourselves from terrorists/foreign invasion or our own Federal government. But the day may come given the recent inability of our Federal Government to protect our borders from invasion from foreign people, attack by terrorists and vulnerabilities due to downsizing our forces, failure to keep the latest missile technology and space defense not to mention downsizing our navy and failing to keep up with ship and submarine technology; when we may find we the people need to raise arms in our defense such as much of the worlds population is currently required to do. Gun ownership is a right provided under the U.S. bill of rights. The right is there to provide us a means of protecting our property and life and to protect invasion and defense against those that attack our Country and against attack by unlawful factions within our Country. The right to bear arms never gave us the right to shoot our people who are not threatening out lives. Nor did it mean that those, such as the Government or Law Enforcement could shoot us without threat and without due process. To give up your right to bear arms/own a gun, is to give up one of your basic rights and defense AGAINST Tyranny.
Officials in law enforcement hold a differing viewpoint on the matter. http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/national-gang-threat-assessment-issued According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, eight out of every time crimes, such as murder, are attributed to members of criminal gangs, rather than legal firearm owners. - - - Updated - - - It does not. The bill of rights recognizes and acknowledges the existence of various rights. It did not create their existence.
The exact opposite argument can be made - well behaved cops who are accountable for their actions result in less fear in the population, and receive more co-operation from Citizens. The UK has well behaved cops, the population respects them, and they all get along well. Australia disproves your claim - they banned most guns in 1996 and crime immediately went up, violent crime up 33% by 2001. Cops had to deal with a lot more violence from a disarmed population then the previously armed one. And Switzerland and Israel - how are you going to explain those? You are really stretching to make your anti-gun rants, they cant even be called arguments any more.
“In 2013, British police officers fired their weapons all of three times. No one died.(*)According to The Economist, ‘British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans.(*)Between 2010 and 2014, the police force of one small American city — Albuquerque in New Mexico — shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.’ ” http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-18/how-many-times-british-cops-fired-guns-all-last-year-3 Wow, 100 times more likely to be shot by the police.... You gun owners live in a fantasy world if you think that guns make you safer from tyranny. Unfortunately, other Americans have to suffer because of your delusions.
And what do those cops in the picture think they are going to do? Camo - in the city? M-4's (I guess), optics, enough spare mags for a patrol in Afghanistan - do they think they will have to lay down suppressing fire while the guys in black recover into that Bearcat? Handguns in drop down holsters, maybe they need all those extra handgun mags so they have a backup when they exhaust their rifle mags? Maybe they need those knee pads because they are going to have to dive into cover while under fire? What a joke. They look like little boys trying to play SEAL.
How many people owned guns in Italy, or Spain, or Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union, or North Korea, or China, or Vietnam, or Laos, or Cambodia, or Venezuela? How did that work out? - - - Updated - - - Well if you feel so strongly please keep and take them from us.
Has anyone considered the possibility that the MIC think tanks have politically invested tn the strategy of increased gun ownership and the corresponding mindset with all it's paranoia in order to sell more guns on the front end, oppress subgroups to the point they will be baited baited into use of those guns such that justification for to escalate militarization and make martial law "necessary" and take over is a real possibility? Or, am I just imagining things?
Great point. Beat cops in the UK and Japan don't carry guns because they don't have to. The people aren't armed like in the US, so the police don't have this kind of worry.
Would it have worked out better if people had had guns in those countries? It didn't for the Iraqis while Sadam Hussein was in control. Sadam Hussein often had a double appear in public because he was afraid of being shot at, but Iraqi gun owners weren't able to overthrow his regime. They may have even made things worse. Some gun owners shot at Hussein while he was visiting Dujail. He retaliated by torturing many and murdering over 100 residents of the city. Only the US military was able to overthrow his regime.
And who supports the lax gun laws that make it easy for gang members to obtain guns? Why are a lot fewer criminals in England armed with guns?
At least I can come up with my own arguments instead of mindlessly chanting cherry picked facts from pro-gun sources. "Conclusions: Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides." http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365.full So do you really think that the Australian police were in more danger after 1996? I doubt it. I also doubt that American gun owners would want to adopt the Swiss system. Many privately owned firearms there are subject to strict control by the Swiss military. Such firearms must be unloaded and kept locked up. An officer can enter your home and verify that you are in compliance with these regulations. This does not sound like the typical gun nut fantasy in which there are no restrictions on guns and every conflict is solved by shootouts between the good guys and bad guys. As for the claim about the Israeli government being non-tyrannical, why don't you ask the Palestinians how they feel about that?
Why do the antis insist on abandoning their sensibilities in making what they think are "arguments"? Come on now. No-one promotes solving conflicts with a shoot-out. Why even put that out there, unless you need to make sure that everyone knows your whole premise is just plain stupid? We go 'round and 'round in the gun debate. The bottom line is that no other Nation has a demographic that is similar to the US. No other Citizenry in the history of mankind has been so profoundly empowered as we who live under the US Constitution. This may be difficult for some to grasp. I, and the overwhelming majority of law abiding gun owners take responsibility for that empowerment. The fact remains that 99.7% of American gun owners do not commit crimes.
Here is why we go round and round anti gunners start complaining about crime rates a) they say crime with guns is so bad that restrictions on law abiding citizens are needed so as to dry up "trickle down" gun supply to criminals b) but at the same time say we citizens don't need defensive firearms because the chance of needing such weapons is so small as to not outweigh the risk of our weapons being stolen or lost to criminals c) and they spend most of their time attacking the NRA and lawful gun owners 2) pro gun owners point out that none of the "solutions" do anything about criminals but are designed to harass the NRA and its members and other gun owners who are not causing crime 3) the anti gunners won't address that since HARASSING lawful gun ownership for political reasons is their main motivation all along gun control as a modern feature of USA politics was adopted by the Democrat party to pretend that they weren't SOFT on criminals since the foundation of the movement was fraudulent, anyone who expects we will resolve this dispute over discussions about crime statistics is silly
The anti-gun position of the Dems/Progs is all about smoke and mirrors. Divert public attention to this fabricated controversy, while our Southern border remains wide open; illegals who were detained are set free in our midst, and all of the resources that would rightfully be directed at controlling the problem are instead diverted to empowering the Illegals. That's only one of the ways in which the Progs strive to debilitate this Country, and attack the basis of everything that once made it great.
300 million guns are in circulation in this country.... 300 million. Gangs getting guns are no problem and have nothing to do with Lax gun laws. Some of the cities with the most restrictive gun laws have the worst gang crime. All states require FBI background checks to buy new guns. It is illegal to carry a gun without a license in most states. It is against the law to murder someone... does that stop gangs from killing each other? Gangs ignore laws. New laws won't do any more good than the current laws.
Generally police officers in other countries are not subject to the same types of controversy that plague police officers in the united states. When was the last time a police officer for the nation of Japan was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor? Or killing a family pet? Or raiding the wrong residence when executing a search warrant? It is a general rule that a united states police officer would be incapable of being a police officer in any other country, as they would be held to much higher standards of personal conduct. Police officers in other countries are generally subject to better respect by the public, because they are not as prone to abusing their authority for no reason.
Pray tell which lax firearm laws you are referring to. It is already a crime for felons to possess firearms. It is a crime to provide felons with firearms. It is a crime to lie on background check forms when purchasing firearms for felons. Why were a lot fewer criminals in England armed with guns before they were heavily restricted? Regardless of your best attempts to make claims, there is one fact you cannot get beyond. And that fact is that all other nations have always held comparatively low crime rates.
The matter pertaining to suicides has been debunked, as countless others have pointed out that the drop in firearm-related suicides coincided with an increase of suicide through other measures. http://www.theguardian.com/society/...-climbs-as-experts-declare-a-national-tragedy The firearm-related crime rates for the nation of Australia had been dropping prior to the Port Arthur incident. And in the nation of Australia, much like the united states, mass shootings are exceedingly rare. Preventing exceedingly rare events, while failing to stop common events, is not a measure of success. With no system in place to prevent a swiss militia member from taking their issued rifle, loading it, and going on a killing spree. The only reason this does not occur with regularity is because there are so few people who are motivated to go on killing sprees. Cite any and all articles where it has been advocated that firearms should be used for settling every conflict and dispute that arises.
Your quote is the typical "cherry picked" quote of the gun banner. It focuses only on firearm deaths - of course firearm deaths declined when the guns were removed from the population. But what about total violent crime in Australia? A decreasing crime rate was turned into a crime wave. It increased 33% above the 1995 pre-gun ban rate by 2001, even murder was up 16%. Assault with serious bodily injury was up 44%. That's from the Australain Bureau of Statistics Crime Reports. And suicide by firearm decreased, but suicide by other methods (particularly hanging) increased for a net change of zero. All the gun ban in AUS did was make their society more violent. See the chart below (note the Australia crime curve compared to the USA crime curve). They have fewer gun crimes, and the already very rare mass shooting became even rarer (it did not go to zero, they have had mass killings since the gun such as the Monash University killings) but I'm sure that is poor consolation to all the additional 1,000's of women who were raped, people beaten and put in the hospital, or people murdered due to the crime wave triggered by the gun ban. Also, I use data from the countries official crime reports, not second hand data as you use. View attachment 34874
