So long as you understand – submit or be crushed! (but later, you can have guns! – the survivors, I mean)
We can already have guns. It’s just not a constitutionally protected right, is all. Plus you have to pass a safety course and fill out some forms. All very oppressive. 
I expect it’s another example of the “principle” that it’s OK to force other countries to do things the American way, but not OK for other countries to force America to do things their way. Americans typically only believe in one national sovereignty; theirs.
During the invasion, we’ll be taking your guns, but we’ll give them back later. We promise.
Following the shooting death of Yoshihiro Hattori in Louisiana, the people of Japan presented our ambassador with a petition containing 1.6 million signatures in support of greater gun control in the United States.
I’m just curious. Are there actually any Dopers living outside the United States at all worried about the U.S. making their govt. accept a 2nd Amendment style addition to their laws? Probably not.
or jawbones. I think I saw that in 2001, A Space Odyssey, so you may be on to something.
At least it’s nice to know that Newt thinks that all those people in Guantanamo were wrongfully kept from their rights as World Citizens under the US Bill of Rights!
Mexico has a right to bear arms in it’s constitution- a right that has been all but completely interpreted out of existence, to a degree that makes the USA look like a libertarian paradise where guns are concerned. There’s a nascent movement in Mexico to liberalize the gun laws but according to one proponent, anyone who wants a gun in Mexico can already get one, just not legally.
Being pro-liberty myself I’m sympathetic with the broad principle Gingrich was trying to get across. I’ve wondered if things might be different for all those women and children and old people who get slaughtered by guerilla forces with disheartening frequency, if the civilians were even minimally armed, say with five-shot revolvers. but Newt stuck his foot in his mouth suggesting there’s anything we can or ought to try to do about it.
Well, that’s okay then!
Whcih raises the question as to why the President of the United States would propose a U.N. motion that the rest of the world would laugh at.
If Newt were president, they would already be laughing.
To be “fair” to Newt…which pains me greatly this is probably in response to the UN Institute for Disarmament Research
His approach is wrong and his logic is wrong in my mind.
However there is a concern that there should be a way for citizens to have a revolution and to prevent some of the latest developments in the Arab spring from happening in the future.
I will not try to justify anything he said but there is a nugget that is a real issue.
Now I am off to take a shower to clean off the dirty feeling.
With due respect to our American brethren, the idea that ordinary citizens can engage in a full scale revolution with ordinary personal firearms is fricking preposterous today, and the Arab Spring events demonstrate that. The overthrow of the Mubarak regime was possible not because the people of Egypt had guns, but because the Egyptian army decided to go that way. The Syrian uprising is a disaster because the army didn’t. The Libyan uprising succeeded after a bloody war because both sides were equipped with, or supported by, an actual military.
For that matter, hell, the American War of Independence wasn’t won by people bringing thier personal weapons to the field of battle. It never could have been. It was successful because the revolutionaries were supported by a foreign army and because the Continental Congress actually financed and fielded an honest-to-God army and a surprisingly effective little navy to boot.
If there is an example of a revolution where “the people” rose up against a government and defeated the government’s army - not by swaying the army to join them but thhrough actual force of arms - I am not aware of it. It certainly has to be exceptionally unusual.
You can ignore the battle of Athens,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,793138,00.html
As for the US revolution the help from France was key but that “real army” was regular joes with their own firearms.
In Guatemala the EGP, ORPA, FAR and PGT would argue with you.
Ha! Even the current UK govt wouldn’t be mad enough to go for that.
But of course he got cheers in that specific audience. He’d probably have got cheers for reading a phone book.
Well this is a guy who claimed that atheists would cause the US government to be controlled by Muslim extremists.
Or that schools should basically get rid of janitors because the students can clean up the buildings.
I’m a gun owner and gun rights guy, but I oppose Newt’s idea on federalism grounds. I believe that the best government is typically the smallest one that’s closest to me. What works in the US – gun ownership, in this case – won’t necessarily work for other States. As long as the people are actually deciding the issue, I think other groups of people should decide for themselves whether they want a right to bear arms, or they want to restrict gun ownership.
Of course, I’m sure Newt (and the NRA) would argue that the only way to be sure the government is responding to the actual will of the people is to arm the people, thereby giving some muscle to their autonomy and authority. I just don’t think that’s necessarily true.
I’m glad we’ve got a right to bear arms in the US. I’m sure other countries are glad they don’t. I’m fine with that.
Newt’s assertion is moronic from the get-go. Rights aren’t given to us by some creator, they are agreed upon by our society. Different societies have different ideas.
Go to the jungle and ask a puma if you have an inherent right to life.