Yeah, that’s recent propaganda, since America has had gun rights since 1787, and it was the Northern states that were pushing for a Bill or Rights.
I used to have a CCW, and I felt safer, especially in certain areas, and after getting those death threats due to my duties.
Actually, his statements are backed by historical fact.
Up until recently, a American could buy the same rifle that was issue to rifle companies- the Musket, the harpers rifle, the Springfield, the Garand.
But gun control changed that, and for no good reason. Submachineguns are very ineffective, and certainly can’t take out a “rifle company” single handledly. :rolleyes: In fact no one issues a submachinegun as their main battle weapon, they are only issued for special purposes, like undercover raids, and such.
The rise in Mass shootings is caused by media attention, not gun availability. Guns have always been available.
As Stanislaus has noted, your conclusions here are completely wrong. And no, in fact, you do not have a “duty to retreat” in your own home under Canadian law. The operative principle is one of proportional force, and the UK precedents mentioned in the previously-cited link are virtually the same in Canada: “It is both good law and good sense that a man who is attacked may defend himself. It is both good law and good sense that he may do, but only do, what is reasonably necessary” and “A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large”. See, in particular, the sections on “The Law and Evidential Sufficiency” and “Reasonable Force”.
There’s a reason that the castle doctrine as implemented in many US states has been referred to as the “make my day” law, because in distinct contrast to the principle of proportional force, it encourages a reckless cowboy mentality. There is evidence that castle doctrine and “stand your ground” laws escalate violence and homicides without deterring crime.
And that mentality is intricately linked to the gun culture and promoted by the NRA:
Much of [the spread of “stand your ground” laws] was part of a deliberate lobbying effort, particularly by the National Rifle Association (NRA). At its core, the NRA supports the idea that people should be able to use deadly force to defend themselves from dangerous threats, with little government intervention getting in the way. Hence not just the legal ability to purchase and own a gun, but the legal ability to use it even when safely retreating may be possible.
So the NRA and its conservative partners, like the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have lobbied state lawmakers to pass “stand your ground” laws. This was part of a deliberate nationwide plan: When Florida became the first state to pass a “stand your ground” law in 2005, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called it the “first step of a multi-state strategy.”
… The effect of this, advocates argue, is a safer society overall.
The research, however, doesn’t support this. Instead, studies support the big argument against “stand your ground” laws: that they legally empower people to use force even when it’s not necessary, and that could lead to more unnecessary violence.
A 2016 review of the research, published in Epidemiologic Reviews, found that most big studies looking at “stand your ground” and similar “castle doctrine” laws — which only remove the duty to retreat in your home — found that they actually correlated with increases in homicides.
How so? Indian raids were fairly common.
The statement being responded to was that early colonists “faced serious threats from the local Indians”. I suppose they did, in the same way that a home invader might “face a serious threat” from the homeowner. Maybe the Indians were just exercising their own version of a “castle doctrine”.
The native Americans were doing fine until the “early colonists” came and started claiming their land. It’s not like the colonists were living here for centuries minding their own business when all of a sudden these Indians immigrated and started attacking them.
Guns are a symbol of freedom, but freedom as defined by a land-owning, white male patriarch. Emphasis on white, emphasis on land-owning. You cannot ignore the issue of race when talking about guns in America.
That’s a lovely sentiment. I wish more of us shared it in our own countries.
Do you think if the murder rate in Spain went up by 1,000% and stayed there for 30 years, people would start to have a different attitude about strangers in their house and the efficacy of using guns for self defense?
Doesn’t follow: most Northern states in 1787 still permitted slavery, and even most of the few that had enacted anti-slavery laws implemented them gradually, so there were still legally owned slaves even though acquiring new slaves was forbidden. Also, many Northerners benefited from the slave trade even if they didn’t own slaves themselves.
However, I’m happy to accept the emendation that early white American gun-rights culture was also due in large part to racist oppression of Native Americans as well as of black people.
The Northern states were anti-slavery from the start. wiki:* Five of the Northern self-declared states adopted policies to at least gradually abolish slavery: Pennsylvania in 1780, New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1783, and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. Vermont had abolished slavery in 1777,…By 1804 (including New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804)), all of the northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually abolish it.[2][4]*
But you know, playing the "racist’ card every time someone doesnt like something gets that card all greasy and worn out.
Gun rights and the current worship of guns are two very-different things. Many other countries have “gun rights”, but very few have a large amount of people who treat guns as measure and symbol of a person’s independence and worth.
That is pretty rare in America too, maybe 5% of the populations.
You’re not very familiar with our history, are you? We didn’t collect statistics back then, but we’ve had periods (about, oh, 150 years between the War of Independence to that of '36) where when there wasn’t a civil war there was an uprising, and in between police brutality that makes current American cops look nice, polite and mild-mannered; we’ve had militias armed by bishops fighting those armed by the unions in the streets of our towns.
More recently, my whole family from the youngest baby to the oldest spinster has been in the Death Lists. For years, my father refused the police escort he was offered, on account of “if I change how I live, they have won”. My regional government is likely to go to the second-most-voted party thanks to a different party, led by a murderer who’s never repented.
Part of the reason we treat guns with respect is because we know bloody well what they do. Because we don’t want to go back to those bloody times. Because too many of us have seen our fathers, our neighbors, our friends, shot before our eyes. And history tells us that the solution to guns is not more guns.
Nothing you posted in any way contradicts what I said, including the fact that most of the Northern states had not abolished slavery by the time that gun rights were enshrined in the Constitution.
:rolleyes: If you are trying to claim that early American society, even in the Northern states, was not fundamentally influenced by white racism, you are absolutely deluding yourself. It’s not “playing the ‘racist’ card” to honestly acknowledge the historical role of racism in America.
I think this studymight interest you, although it is a bit long.
I find it interesting viewing this debate from the other side of the Atlantic that you US-Americans compare yourselves naturally with Canada, Swizzerland, the UK, even with Brazil, Chile and Argentina, when the most evident comparison concerning gun culture would be for me with Mexico and the countries south of Mexico down to Colombia and Venezuela. And Mexico sure has a gun culture. It seems it is not doing them much good. In this regard, they are not an example for others and I think neither are you. Fortunately, this is not the general direction the world is moving.
BTW: I wouldnot call it gun culture.
See post 25: if you’re complying with the federal law, your shotgun will be locked up or have a trigger lock on it, and unloaded.
This is a completely foreign concept to me.
Guns don’t kill people, the media does?