861–870 of 1001 posts
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Not sure why you're being downvoted. These are facts about France vs. the U.S. Maybe "developing" is a /little/ strong for Mexico, but I take your point to be more about Central America generally.
Because it's nonsense. Until the 60's, Algeria was literally part of France. It's an extremely diverse country.
The entire police force can do nothing for you on the phone. I think it is the reductions in police that are convincing more women to purchase.
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Citing several small countries with many significant differences from the U.S. isn’t solid logic. All of those countries are much smaller, much less diverse, and enjoy the geopolitical shelter of the U.S.
Are you suggesting that a country needs to take away press freedom as its population increases or it becomes more diverse? Otherwise I don't see your point. I can concede that economic freedom might become more complex for larger countries, but why shouldn't press freedom scale? We rank in the 30s and 40s on those press freedom indexes. If you want to eliminate smaller countries, why can't we keep up with a country l…
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> the tragedy isn't the gun, but the necessity for one, and it's a tragedy inherent in our mortal existence. Well, they're sure not necessary here in Australia. I don't think I've ever met someone who owns one, certainly no-one has ever mentioned owning a gun to me. It's just not a thing. Seems to be just "a tragedy inherent" in the USA. I was watching every day, and supporting, the George Floyd protests, and after a…
I think Australia is a great example of what happens when guns are given up. You have a government that’s going on witch hunts for covid cases and exerting extreme authoritarian pressure for remarkably low covid rates. Some would say it’s them testing the limits of their populace. What are they gonna do? Protest? That’s illegal when in lockdown.
Maybe the remarkable low covid rates are there because of the authoritarian pressure? Authoritarian is never a good word but if people simply won't listen when it comes to matters of public health (that affect everyone - an overflowing ICU is never a good thing) and thus endanger the health of others then they have to live with the consequences. It's not a matter of politic, opinion or ideology.
The suggestion that this should be responded to with guns is just the most perfect own goal.
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>The whole point is that the government Can Not take away guns, not that they "would not". Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. In fact, the government is supposed to exist to safe guard them. The National Firearms Act would like to have a word it is unconstitutional on it's face despite what the Supreme Court says. 'Shall not be infringed' hasn't been the law of the land since the 1930'…
Genuine legal interpretation question: Why does everyone quote "Shall not be infringed" but ignore "Well-regulated"? If the goal is a "well regulated militia", and therefore gun rights "shall not be infringed", why do we interpret that as "everybody should have largely unfettered access to weapons" rather than "If part of a well-regulated armed force, access to weapons should be allowed during militia activities"? or…
Today, we use "militia" to mean any unofficial group of armed people, but the common law militia was and is (it is still part of the laws of the USA, see 10 USC § 246) something more specific. The idea is that every potential lawful combatant -- every free man neither too old nor too young to fight -- could be summoned and they would supply their own weapon, clothing, and other supplies. The authorities did not expect to have to supply these things; people were supposed to have them already; and these people were not professional soldiers, with security clearances, government jobs or something like that. They were just regular citizens.
Now, what if they tried to make some kind of law like, only people officially registered in the militia can have guns? This creates a tremendous enforcement burden and does not serve much purpose, because militia membership is supposed to be something that's extremely widespread and so guns would be all over the place. Such a rule would have run-up against another factor, which is that many people who might have been technically too old or too young, or even not eligible at any age because they were women, would still have other reasons that were perfectly reasonable for using guns -- like hunting and shooting pests around the farm. If you see a non-eligible person with a gun, it does not necessarily mean anything; maybe the gun is their dad's or their husband's or their son's; hard to say. It's not really sensible that someone in the same house, and sort of the same legal person due to coveture (the merging of a woman's legal personhood with that of her husband), could not use or put hands on the gun. Enforcing any provision like this would have been extremely tedious and involved, given that the militia relied on people storing and maintaining weapons in their homes. It would, I think, result in something that everyone familiar with the Anglo-American legal tradition, in those times and in ours, would recognize as government overreach.
In fact, the situation was that people had arms for many purposes in England and the colonies, not just for militia purposes, and this was a social institution that went back to at least the 900s in England. The militia as an institution relied on the institution of private weapon ownership, but private weapons ownership was independent of the militia, and people treated weapons like any other article of private property -- they were free to modify them, sell them, and assign them in their wills.
That's why we interpret the amendment the way that we do: in order to have a functioning militia, people need to have weapons and be familiar with them. The militia relied on a prevalent social institution of private weapon ownership: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". The 2nd Amendment says, more or less, that obstructing private ownership of, commerce in and training with weapons would undermine the militia, and so such obstruction is prohibited.
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The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. From your link we see Brazil at 27, Mexico at 29, Argentina at 5, Uruguay at 12, Greenland at 5, Panama at 9, and Costa Rica at 11. Canada is the biggest outlier, but the US still has less homicide than even relatively nice New World countries. If you’re going to tout France’s low homicide rate of 1.2, I’d invite you to observe that Japan’s homicide rate i…
I don't think it's bad in general considering the size of the country and especially considering the fact that we have hundreds of millions of civilian owned guns (23 million sold last year, and even more sold this year already). When you compare guns to other stuff like drunk driving it shows how blown out of proportion the problem is. - CDC stats (2018) - US Firearm Homicides: 14,414 US deaths caused by drunk drive…
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>terrorist attack on January 6th Are you seriously comparing what happened on January 6th to 9/11? How about the Oklahoma City bombing? Lockerbie bombing? Get some perspective dude.
Yes, whenever people storm the Capital, calling for the VP's head - that's totally not a big deal. Maybe in the 3rd world that's just another Wednesday, but in the U.S. it was a very big fucking deal.
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As has been replied to this exactly fallacious point multiple places in this thread, 75,000 men in Afghanistan just defeated the US military.
They didn't defeat the us military lol , there was just no political will to continue a war on the other side of the world with no real value to the American establishment. But in your scenario where the American establishment goes rogue and decides to launch a punitive campaign against its own population that won't be a problem
The US fought a war of attrition for 20 years and finally withdrew, their enemy being in a better position than before the invasion. You wouldn't call that a defeat?
Why exactly do you think that a better armed and much larger force, one that is the economic backing of the military they'd be facing, would stand less of a chance?
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> murder is merely a small fraction of gun deaths. You must mean the others are suicides. Why not say so? > The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1]. Ah, because by not saying so you can make up this 12X figure, by comparing firearm suicides in Europe where in many cases there is marginal civilian gun ownership with fire…
The swiss are not an outlier. Czech republic is shall issue, and almost everyone has concealed carry permits. Homicide rate is 0.9.
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You are comparing the USA, a developed country, purely to developing countries. I mean, ya, the USA does better than much poorer countries, but can’t compare to any other developed ones. And just because all developed countries don’t have a unified homogenous homicide rate doesn’t really provide any excuse why America does so much more poorly.
> You are comparing the USA, a developed country, purely to developing countries. I mean, ya, the USA does better than much poorer countries, but can’t compare to any other developed ones. Almost every country in the world is much poorer than the USA. Most European countries have a smaller per-capita GDP than Mississippi, the poorest US state.