Clayton Cramer has a lot of links to scanned colonial laws that show that every colony required most white males to own a gun upon pain of substantial fine. In 1636/7 Massachusetts even required people to bring their guns to church.
Apparently these laws didn't cause mass shootings, so why restrict gun ownership now? It's almost as if the anti-gunites think the results would be different since it wouldn't just be white males anymore.... Personally, I trust members of all races of either gender to carry weapons, until a given individual proves otherwise.
Why is someone inherently trustworthy to carry a gun? Are they just as trustworthy to carry, say, a bazooka? How about hand grenades? Land mines? Sticks of dynamite?
Worry about the character of the person, not the weapon they are carrying. Which is more dangerous? The convicted murderer carrying a Swiss Army knife, or a law-abiding adult carrying a handgun?
If you can tell me how to use a stick of dynamite as a defensive weapon, I might take your argument more seriously.
A gun is not a defensive weapon, it's an offensive weapon. A gun cannot stop a bullet. The presence of a gun can possibly deter someone from firing that bullet, but it can't stop it once it's been fired.
And Michael's point seemed to be that everyone can be trusted to carry a gun, unless proven otherwise. My contention is that you don't have to be a proven convicted murderer to be dangerous. You don't have to have a demonstrable spot on your character to be denied the right to carry a weapon.
One can smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain.
I feel that guns could be a very good deterent. For example, if one shoots someone else in the presence of an entire crowd of people who are not carrying guns, a panic ensues and the person could contiune to fire shots into the crowd undettered. But if the entire crowd is carrying guns, a single shot would cause bullits to fly from everywhere, efficiently killing everyone. Thus no sane person would dare shoot anyone else. The Nuclear Powers of the world use this same priciple today. It's called the MAD theory (Mutual Assured Destruction); it states that if any one power uses nuclear weapons on any other side, the result is everyone fires their respective nuclear weapons in essence destroying the planet. No one wants that to happen thus no one uses their weapons. If we apply the MAD theory to the crowd, the safest crowd is in theory the one with the most weapons. It's a paradox, "to prepare for peace, you must prepare for war" but it exists in our world today on a much larger scale, so why couldn't it work on an individual level? Food for thought.
Carl
Again, a gun is a deterrent, not a defense per se. Bullet-proof vests are a defense. And it's only a deterrent on an individual basis - here's why:
To look at your analogy - you said it yourself, "Thus no sane person would dare shoot anyone else." You assume everyone carrying a weapon is sane? Rational? In control of their moral and ethical qualms against inflicting pain on others? MAD couldn't possibly apply when talking about individuals, because the very act of firing a gun into a crowd is by definition an irrational act.
(I don't think MAD works exactly the way you describe either - I don't think it applies to every country involved, only the two at war. If the US and Russia emptied their arsenals at each other, barring NATO treaties and such, it doesn't mean Pakistan or India or N. Korea's going to suddenly choose up sides and start wailing away. They might, but it doesn't have to happen.)
The crowd scenario you describe is exactly what I fear would happen if everyone were allowed to carry, under the assumption that if you haven't demonstrated yourself capable of gun violence, you won't. Or can't. And that's foolish.
Barry: Lots of states and municipalities have easy concealed-carry laws. The situation you fear has never happened.
Even aside from that, I don't think it matters.
Barry: Reading your posts, it seems as if you think the right to bear arms is subject to permissions of some sort. While that may be the perception of a good many others also, the US Constitution clearly states that "...the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed..."
"shall not be infringed" is pretty direct. There's not much gray area there.
A free society requires everyone to be responsible in order for that freedom to work. Sometimes people are not. That is the reality of life. Sometimes a few bad apples try to ruin the whole bag.
Freedom isn't free, guys. Sometimes it costs. The minute we want to exchange our God given rights for government mandates and safety, we doom ourselves to tyranny all over again.
There's nothing wrong with your arguments Barry. They are as valid as the next person's. The thing is, I have no more right to force someone else to follow my ideas, than they do to force me to follow theirs.
In the end, a free society requires the individual to be responsible for himself. If the nation as a whole would return to that, and pull their collective heads out of their butts, this issue, and many others like it, would be a non-issue.
Oh really? Well, enlighten us as to what thoughtcrime makes one dangerous before they ever take an action. Last time I checked, I thought that we judged a person in a free country by what they did, not what they thought.
Then it isn't a right. Rights aren't privliges. You must take an active part in voiding and waiving that right in order to be denied it, or it wasn't a right in the first place. I hope you are young. That would be the only excuse I can think of for such sloppy reasoning.
Well Barry, I don't think that everyone who carries a gun is sane, in fact I believe most of the people who have access to weapons in this country are not the most sane people. I also believe Fear is an emotion that with the strongest influence on human behavior. People will or won't do things based on fear in an effort to achieve a basic instictive goal: self-preservation. For whatever reason, we all want to spend as long as we can on this little rock we know as Earth. Fear is a stonger power than sanity, therefore I'd say that it would take care of the insane gunslingers of the crowd. Not that we'll ever see guns in everyone's hands. We'll just have to go on, ignorantly blissful and never knowing exactly which maniacs we see on the street have the power in their pocket to kill us. Ignorance is truly bliss, isn't it?
Carl