On 10/7/2013 4:14 PM, LizR wrote:
Yes of course it's mostly handguns, just as most deaths aren't due to mass shootings.
Handguns are more common (cheaper, and easier to conceal if you intend to commit a
crime). Firearms cause around 30,000 deaths/year in the US,
Of which 2/3 were suicides. I don't think the government has a right to
prevent suicides.
apparently (plus about 70,000 injuries) - about the same number as car accidents - yet
the budget for research into preventing gun deaths is, guess what, only one 20th of the
budget for preventing car accidents.
That would depend a lot on the accounting. You could say that all police budgets are for
preventing gun deaths due to homicide. And exactly what would you expect such research to
do; conclude that guns that wouldn't fire would prevent gun deaths. It's kinda the point
of guns that they can kill things. With cars it's an accident. And car accidents kill
six times as many people as guns, 18 times as many if you discount suicides.
It's almost as though there's a conspiracy ... oh, wait, there is!
Apparently there are 315 million people living in the US, who between them own 300
million guns, and 260 million cars.
And about two billion pairs of shoes and 250 million TV sets. So what? Is there some
prescribed, right number for these things?
Brent
On 8 October 2013 11:25, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
On 10/7/2013 3:01 PM, LizR wrote:
One thing wrong with the US constitution is that the "right to bear
arms" meant
muskets and flintlock pistols at the time, but has been extended to, for
example, semi-automatic weapons. The people who wrote it were only
aware of
single-shot weapons, even the colt revolver hadn't been invented! If
they're so
keen to extend the original meaning to what are in effect weapons of
mass
destruction, why not, say, let citizens build nuclear bombs if they
want to?
The second amendment was adopted by people who had just fought as rebels
against the
army of an oppressive government. So their intent was plainly to ensure
that any
new central government could be overthrown as well should it become
oppressive. So
the arms an individual should have a right to bear would be the same as
those issued
to individual soldiers in the military, i.e. assault rifles (which are
issued to
everyone in Switzerland). Because of the media coverage of rare multiple
shootings
and because assault rifles look scarier, most people don't realize that 97%
of gun
deaths in the U.S. involve handguns. The Supreme Court could easily uphold
a ban on
handguns and still support the intent of the 2nd amendment and not
interfere with
hunting; but no state has tried such a ban.
I think that the examples of Poland, South Africa, the USSR, India, and
Egypt
indicate that overthrow of oppressive governments can be done by unarmed
citizens,
and if so that's the better way. But it's clearly not the example the
authors of
the U.S. constitution had before them.
Brent
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