You’re completely missing the point, and you’re comparing apples to oranges. It’s really really hard to hurt someone with a television, even on purpose - what are you going to do, throw your plasma TV at someone? Even my grandma is mobile enough to maneuver around a flying television. But it’s stupidly easy to hurt someone with a gun, on purpose or otherwise. People use televisions, and people use guns. Which results in more dead people?
:rolleyes: OK, fine. So you think that having guns in the house have no impact on how safe you are in the house. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that you’re correct, and guns have zero impact on how safe you are in the home.
Well, actually you’re incorrect. The total number of firearm deaths in the US is about 30,000, give or take. The total number of motor vehicle homicides in the US is about 45,000. Then, let’s think about how often guns are actually in use - meaning, the gun is loaded and in someone’s hand. How long is that? I have no idea, but would it be what, a grand total of a couple of hours a year? Then think about how many hours cars are in use each day - I don’t drive much but am in my car on average about an hour a day.
And that’s before we think about the benefits of car transportation (police, fire fighting, etc).
Because it’s legal, I’m exercising my rights, and it affords me the means to protect my family. It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than this.
I said firearm accidents, not overall fatalities. Compare the number of people who die in firearm accidents to the number of people who die in automobile accidents.
How many cars are driven in, say, a year? How many shots are fired at people in, say, a year? That is the comparison to make when comparing vehicular deaths vs. death by lead poisoning.
Except sodomy is still illegal in places (or at the very least has been), and heroine has been illegal for a long, long time.
Aside from that nonsense, you know what’s wrong with the “recreational” argument for guns is that’s not why it’s in the 2nd Amendment. It wasn’t about “hey guns are a fun pastime great for target shooting.” Guns are in the 2nd amendment as “armament,” as a weapon.
If the purpose of guns is to be sport, they don’t deserve any more or any less constitutional protection as golf clubs or hunting bows. That they protect your house is a side benefit, the way a baseball bat is also a handy weapon–one that doesn’t get constitutional mention.
The 2nd Amendment is neither about personal sport, nor personal protection. It was about an armed citizenship prepared for war.
Now you’re both playing fast and loose with the “accident” part of the description. There are way more cases of car “accidents” vs gun “accidents” but then there are WAAAAAY more cases of gun homicides vs vehicular homicides.
We aren’t comparing crime rates, because that wasn’t part of the discussion at hand, you’re conflating another issue, separate from what we are discussing.
I missed the part where I was making the constitutional argument. Could you point it out to me?
Are there way more accidents per cars driven than there are firearm accidents per shots fired? Maybe so, maybe not. But that’s the proper comparison to make.
That is not precisely true. The Constitution itself does not make the distinction that you are trying to make in that it says “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. There are no listed exceptions.
Clearly the constitutions of a majority of states disagree with you, as do the courts. In fact, the entire government disagrees with you. In 1968 the Gun Control Act banned (and still bans) importation of weapons that had, by criteria later established, “no sporting purpose”.
It’s interesting to me that gun-control advocates would use that as a criteria to ban weapons and then repudiate that aspect of it when it suits them. The military aspect of the 2nd Amendment and sporting use go hand in hand, complete with government approbation.
As for the personal defense aspect, most of the states (48 of them) allow some measure of concealed carry, and all permit firearms in the home for protection. Some states are very explicit, such as Pennsylvania’s constitutional provision: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”
Breaking into a home while no one is present is burglary. If someone is present, that changes the classification to robbery, and if a weapon is used or even threatened, it becomes armed robbery (or aggravated robbery).
The Second Amendment is a marvel of ambiguity, it firmly and unreservedly states two utterly divergent principles, leaving both sides of this argument to flounder. Myself, I find it “interesting” that so many “pro-gun” (for want of a better term) seem to feel that the premise of a need for a “well-regulated militia” seems to have dropped into the Amendment more or less at random. Perhaps one of the framers spilled a bowl of alphabet soup, and it spelled out those words. Or something. Or maybe they were just fucking around.
But enough. I am willing to accept that the Supremes have ruled, and that is that. We of the “Fuck it! Just Keep The Goddam Things If They Mean That Much To You, Christ Jesus, I’m Sick of Talking About This!” Party accept that the core issue in our nation is a culture of violence and fear that infests our people. No amount of legislation, however well intended, will dent that culture. It must be done the hard way, the slow way, and it will take damned near forever. So be it. What cannot be fixed must be endured and worn away by the well-intended.
If you read the notes and papers of the founding fathers, esp the notes about their debates, they all agreed that The Right to Bear Arms, was for all of those reasons.
First and foremost, was to fend off foreign invasion and to fight the United States Army in the event of the federal government out of control.
Secondarily, they all agreed that guns are good sport, guns are needed to kill game, to defend against criminals, and guns are needed to shoot hostile indians. Jefferson and Washington both mentioned carrying handguns is a wise thing to do when walking city streets. Jefferson talked about shooting guns as being the best sport that any American can do.
Their biggest concern was to have a Right to Bear Arms so that the people would always be at least as well armed as the regular U.S. Army. The single greatest reason, the one that all the founding fathers agreed, was for the Right to Bear Arms to be used against our own army.
Generally speaking, for most of our history, private citizens were better armed than ordinary soldiers in the USArmy - I know my own family had repeating pistols and rifles long before they became standard issue for the US Army. Until 1934, any American citizen could legally buy and own any weapon in the world.
For the past 50 years, they have been saying over and over that there is 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 guns in the United States.
I would think somebody has bought a few more new guns in the last half century?
My guess is that we have LOTS!!! more than 300,000,000 guns in America that keeps getting quoted in the last 50 years, there now is probably MORE than 600,000,000 guns in America.
2 guns for every person in America is a much better guess.
Why let facts get in the way of making stuff up? This is not a difficult thing to Google. While the total number cannot be known (as mentioned below) the likely number is a lot less than you are guessing.
If we take the 2 million/year and add ten years to that to bring it current we are around 280,000,000 guns in the US today (counting smuggling and such 300 million might be a good ballpark number).
