# Americans and their guns. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2008, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354 "2008-11-12T15:34:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2008, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/101 "2008-11-14T23:33:38Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > So then you wind up with the sort of society where only the military, police, secret service, and FBI have guns. Oh, and criminals. That’s not the sort of society I want to live in. That’s how it is in Britain, Japan, etc., and they’re countries as free as the U.S., and safer, too. Remember, if guns are outlawed – outlaws can be arrested just for **having** guns. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2008, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/102 "2008-11-14T23:36:10Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That’s how it is in Britain, Japan, etc., and they’re countries as free as the U.S., and safer, too. Remember, if guns are outlawed – outlaws can be arrested just for **having** guns. So can any felon in the US, but that doesn’t stop them from having them, and using them to commit crimes. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/103 "2008-11-15T00:01:56Z")
See, Brain Glutton, freedom works in both directions. You are free to not own guns. I am free to own guns. What makes you think you are entitled to make the decision for both of us? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/104 "2008-11-15T00:28:49Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > See, Brain Glutton, freedom works in both directions. You are free to not own guns. I am free to own guns. What makes you think you are entitled to make the decision for both of us? I am entitled, or should be entitled, to participate in the political process on that question, on an equal footing with you (and with no Constitutional protections involved, as argued above), to neither a greater nor lesser degree than WRT anything else you might own in which society has some sort of interest, e.g., cocaine, or automobiles, or hazardous chemicals. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/105 "2008-11-15T00:54:04Z")
This whole “Americans and their guns” thing amuses me. Really. I believe in personal freedom. The government shouldn’t be telling me whether I can own a gun anymore than they should tell me whether I can own a chainsaw, buy beer on Sunday, or read the subversive literature of my choice. As someone said upthread, why do people whose countries don’t even border the U.S. care whether we own pistols? My government(s) declared me a full-blown adult quite a few years ago. I can drink, smoke, buy dirty magazines, join the Marines, watch the movie of my choice, vote, run for office, buy a llama, have children, eat sushi, invest in Canadian alfalfa, drive a car, pilot a plane, or build a personal submarine. I can own knives, chainsaws, axes, swords, dynamite, harpoons, copies of _High Times_ magazine, ice picks, spears, chain mail, and Miley Cyrus records. Why the heck shouldn’t I be able to own a gun? > [@Cisco](#): > > You’re assuming social conservatives are the only people with guns. In my experience, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and even liberals - yes, liberals - own guns in similar proportions as the Jerry Falwell types. > > **In my own limited experience** it has only been the vocal minority “elitist” San Francisco / Cape Cod / Manhattan liberals who are strongly opposed to guns. I don’t really feel that the gun issue is Republican vs. Democrat or liberal vs. conservative. It’s where you live. If I lived in a poor, inner-city area where gunfire was a common sound and armed robbery happened regularly, I’d want to take the guns away from those thugs, too. If I lived in a high-rise apartment in a wealthy area of a big city, and I’d never actually seen a gun in the wild and didn’t know anyone who owned one, I’d wonder why people wanted guns. But instead, I live in an area where many people wouldn’t have meat in their freezers if they couldn’t go shoot it themselves; where running outside to chase the predators from your sheep happens every day; where running into a grizzly bear on a casual mountain hike isn’t rare; where you can shoot targets or tin cans darned near everywhere. Of _course_ people here have guns, whether they’re afraid of robbers or not. > [@vison](#): > > Yeah, I get a bit fed up with the big US dumping heaps of scorn on the Canadian military. Hopefully, this is just confirmation bias. I don’t think the majority of Americans feel that way. Certainly I don’t. Canada (and it’s military) is no better or worse than the U.S. I think we’re pretty darned good neighbors, overall. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/106 "2008-11-15T01:46:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :rolleyes: False. That’s like saying those who sought to repeal the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) were against the Constitution and those who sought to preserve it were defending the Constitution. No, repealing the 18th Amendment required the 21st Amendment. That’s how it’s supposed to work- gain the supermajority needed to make a fundamental change to the supreme law of the land. The repealers didn’t argue that the 18th Amendment somehow didn’t really mean what it said, or that it could simply be ignored because it didn’t fit the circumstances anymore. That’s why defending the 2nd against anything **short of a constitutional amendment** is defending the Constitution. Even the most rabid gun nut could hardly argue if a private right to keep arms was explicitly removed by amendment; very unhappy yes, but only the “sovereign” asshats could argue at that point. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I am entitled, or should be entitled, to participate in the political process on that question, on an equal footing with you (and with no Constitutional protections involved, as argued above), to neither a greater nor lesser degree than WRT anything else you might own in which society has some sort of interest, e.g., cocaine, or automobiles, or hazardous chemicals. Mere ownership of guns as belongings isn’t the issue. At bottom, the question is “do private citizens have a right to use deadly force, and to keep the instruments of same?”\*. The idea is anathema to modern thinkers, who hold the very purpose of government is to maintain a monopoly on violence. But if there is any truth to the notion that government is the servant of the people and not the other way around, then the right to use deadly force started as a personal and individual right which was only later largely ceded to governments. And the letter of the Constitution is that the people have not completely and irrevokably signed away to the government all right to force. They have by and large _in practice_ preferred to rely on professional peace officers instead of deputized citizens and a state-mustered militia for safety and order. But there was never any fomal, _de jure_ surrender of that right. \*And in the _Heller_ case, at least for personal self-defense the SC said Yes. ---
**Author:** ![oliversarmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/eb8c5e/32.png) [@oliversarmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oliversarmy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/107 "2008-11-15T02:39:56Z")
I think **The Tao’s Revenge** may have misunderstood the point of my post. I’m actually one of those “pry my cold dead fingers”-type of guys. I was trying to clarify for our overseas friends that the Constitution can be amended and, if enough states were inclined, then the Second Amendment could be repealed, as well as the First and Third and any of the others. As others have said, the Constitution is very highly revered here in the USA. It pretty much defines who and what we are. Making changes to it are not to be done lightly. I know that some people in other countries don’t understand that our “love affair” with guns has something to do with that. Look, a lot of people in the U.S. don’t like guns and believe they should not be in the hands of the citizenry. That’s their right and, believe me, they have been very successful in restricting gun ownership for both good and bad. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/108 "2008-11-15T02:50:18Z")
**BrainGlutton** I think you’re making a bad comparison. Iraqi politics are vastly different then American politics. We have an established democratic culture. Iraq not so much. They’re still at a wild west stage. Once western concepts of law and order, fair trial, fair punishment, peaceful civil conflict, ect. have a chance to take root (if they do) then we can compare them. Japan has that free democratic government because the Allies established it after WW2. The Japanese have done a very good job with it, and the credit for their modern success goes entirely to them, but their democratic government comes from an outside source. It’d be like the Constitution being imposed on us by a French invasion force instead of us writing it for ourselves. The UK is a good comparison so I’ll give you that. What about the counter comparison of Norway? They have a high rate of gun ownership and a low level of gun crime. A progressive/liberal government and a strong economy. Why is the US different then Norway? For that matter why is Norway different then Iraq? I think it’s the desperation level of it’s citizens. Iraqis have a lot of strife to deal with that makes them more desperate. They have no social safety net, war, crime, and a centuries old religious blood feud. That makes crime, including gun crime, alot more appealing. America doesn’t have nearly the problems Iraq does, but it does lack a social safety net and have a good chunk of it’s population living below the poverty level. Where do most gun crimes happen in America? The suburbs or the ghettos? The reason the US has most of it’s gun crime is because we have generations of Americans growing up in poverty and not being taught how to do better. Look at Norway. They have a strong economy and a strong social safety net. In Norway you can get work and if need help you have it. You don’t have to beg, you don’t have to knock over a 7/11, you get help. You get the tools you need to get your life going again, or start it off with hope. Guns aren’t the disease, but gun crime is a symptom. It’s a symptom of desperation. You want to make the streets safer? Give people the tools and knowledge to have a better life so prison with it’s 3 squares a day actually sounds like a punishment. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/109 "2008-11-15T15:41:06Z")
> [@Mellivora\_capensis](#): > > It’s not just America’s gun policies that interest me, it’s the world’s. > > South Africa has tightened up it’s gun laws with strict but understandable requirements and prohibitions. The South African Firearms Control Act recognises our rights as citizens to “security of the person”, but it also accepts the argument that “the increased availibility and abuse of firearms and ammunition has contributed significantly to the high levels of violent crime in our society”. > > This particular Act gives ordinary citizens the right to own and carry for self defence, with restrictions (such as one handgun or shotgun only). It then goes further to allow for various other categories of ownership, such as restricted self defence, occasional hunting and sports shooting, dedicated hunting and sports shooting etc etc. For each firearm one requires a licence, but more importantly, one needs a “Competency Certificate” before one can obtain any category of licence. > > And more to my point, the Act requires the State appointed Registrar of Firearms to, amongst many other things, “conduct research into firearms policies”. Ostensibly this would include existing policies in other countries. And it’s for this reason I’m curious. Thanks for replying. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/110 "2008-11-15T17:23:03Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Mere ownership of guns as belongings isn’t the issue. At bottom, the question is “do private citizens have a right to use deadly force, and to keep the instruments of same?”\*. Yes, “mere ownership of guns as belongings” is PRECISELY the issue. The 2nd amendment does nothing to guarantee (or even define) the right to use deadly force. It “merely” says we’re allowed to own guns–not that we’re allowed to shoot people with them. The “instruments of deadly force” argument holds little water with me. A gun is a tool just like a knife, baseball bat, crowbar, or nail gun. Any of those can be used to kill a person. But I should no more require a specific Constitutional amendment allowing me to own a gun than I should require one to collect butterflies. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/111 "2008-11-15T20:01:52Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Yes, “mere ownership of guns as belongings” is PRECISELY the issue. The 2nd amendment does nothing to guarantee (or even define) the right to use deadly force. It “merely” says we’re allowed to own guns–not that we’re allowed to shoot people with them. > > The “instruments of deadly force” argument holds little water with me. A gun is a tool just like a knife, baseball bat, crowbar, or nail gun. Any of those can be used to kill a person. But I should no more require a specific Constitutional amendment allowing me to own a gun than I should require one to collect butterflies. I can appreciate your stance of “the government shouldn’t be telling people what to do”. The problem is that government tells people lots of things they can’t do. You should be able to buy a toilet tank as large as you want to pay the water bill for, yet it’s illegal now to sell a new toilet tank above a certain volume. And short of expanding the nebulous “right to privacy” into a general recognition of libertarianism (which I would **support** , incidentally), government restrictions and regulations are going to part of our lives for the foreseeable future. So the whole point **is** to put guns in a special category because of their use. Otherwise you get exactly what the situation was in Washington DC: you could own some pieces of machined metal provided that you never assembled them into a working gun. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/112 "2008-11-15T21:56:06Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > America doesn’t have nearly the problems Iraq does, but it does lack a social safety net and have a good chunk of it’s population living below the poverty level. Where do most gun crimes happen in America? The suburbs or the ghettos? > > The reason the US has most of it’s gun crime is because we have generations of Americans growing up in poverty and not being taught how to do better. > > Look at Norway. They have a strong economy and a strong social safety net. In Norway you can get work and if need help you have it. You don’t have to beg, you don’t have to knock over a 7/11, you get help. You get the tools you need to get your life going again, or start it off with hope. > Guns aren’t the disease, but gun crime is a symptom. It’s a symptom of desperation. You want to make the streets safer? Give people the tools and knowledge to have a better life so prison with it’s 3 squares a day actually sounds like a punishment. All that is perfectly true – and in no way incompatible with the idea that some gun control could make the ghettos (and everywhere else) safer. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/113 "2008-11-15T22:07:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > All that is perfectly true – and in no way incompatible with the idea that some gun control could make the ghettos (and everywhere else) safer. And the gun control we have now is…? This just yanks my drawers, this insinuation that our current state of affairs is somehow unregulated anarchy, and that if we only had “_some_ gun control,” the clouds would part, the heavenly choir would sing hosannas, criminals would instantly reform, and all the World would be at peace. Look, I’m not saying there isn’t room for carefully worded and very deliberately thought out improvement in the system. It _might_ even have some negligible impact on gun crime, but I doubt it; one recent federal study from the DCD supports the notion that gun control has had no measureable effect on gun crime. But with a patchwork of 20,000+ municipal, state, and federal gun control laws, we _have_ plenty of gun control. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2008, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354/114 "2008-11-15T23:04:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > All that is perfectly true – and in no way incompatible with the idea that some gun control could make the ghettos (and everywhere else) safer. So instead of focusing on fixing the mess our poor have to deal, and improving their lives, and the health and happiness of the country as whole, you’d rather focus on gun laws? Would more gun control make Norway safer? Instead of focusing on punishment and stripping of rights maybe it’s better to focus on the health and well being of our population. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-and-their-guns/472354.md?page=5)