You are supposed to laugh at jokes?? :smack:
I get that feeling when my dog comes to bed and lays beside me. If the wife makes it a threesome, I get very near melting from warm & fuzzy. 
Gun ownership is not and cannot be a right, nor does the Constitution ever say it is. What the Constitution talks about is bearing of arms, not of guns specifically. In this day and age, in this country, for private individuals, guns are the most relevant form of arms, but change any of those qualifiers and they’re not. The Constitution provides equal protection to a Smith and Wesson, an Uzi, and a neutron bomb.
This is hilariously false. Why would anyone employ bodyguards if this were the case? Police do not catch most criminals and the ones they do catch are almost always after the fact. Police write reports and gather evidence. They are not and have never been in the defense business. They are law enforcement, not bodyguards. Everyone is individually responsible for defending themselves and those around them.
And yet the court system has consistently disagreed with you.
What’s up with that?
so what you’re saying is that we could launch a squadron of planes and ISIS would be defeated.
Here’s something to consider, we can’t stop revelers from trashing a city after a sporting event. Now we could certainly nuke the town and who doesn’t enjoy a good nuking. But that doesn’t help real estate prices.
If you think a government could withstand even a poorly armed group of unhappy voters then you’re confusing the ability to destroy everything with the ability to govern.
Tough call between fundamental right and it not being binary. Since I accept some limited restrictions on other fundamental rights I decided against the binary logic option.
I find it humorous that there’s significant debate when Lumpy approached the thread as assessing values that aren’t logically debatable.
All of it? You don’t pay tax, there is no tax system and further more there is no police force?
Do you employ bodyguards? Who does? Phenomenally famous people, or the ultra-powerful - who might have a reasonable expectation of being specifically targeted. The rest pay tax that pays for police.
I understand the police assume everyone is a criminal, so by that measure perhaps they don’t catch ‘most’ of them. But ours certainly have a reasonable success rate - perhaps what’s needed is more tax and more training. How many criminals have your guns caught?
As for “after the fact”…well, you can’t actually catch a criminal before the act. Because it’s the act of crime that makes someone a criminal. I suppose if you were allowed to spy on your neighbours (in the interests of a well-regulated militia, or however it goes) as well as shoot them you might catch one or two conspiring or plotting in such a way that you can prevent the crime they plan. But only if that conspiring or plotting is itself criminal. So that would also be “after the fact”.
How do you propose to detect and lawfully detain ‘criminals’ before they committ a crime??
Police write reports, gather evidence, eat doughnuts…and defend their communities. It’s how suicide by cop works - the cops defend you from some nutjob with a dangerous weapon (perhaps a gun…)
I’ve managed to individually defend myself and those around me for decades, without a gun. Or a tank, or an anti-aircraft missile system, or nerve agents. All I had was a police force, whose doughnut-eating must have somehow coincidentally defended me.
“[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large”
But you can’t sue the police (after the fact) if they fail you personally. What guns have to do with this, I don’t know. Was there some other part of the article you wanted cherry-picked?
As a Canadian I vote no.
Your gun society is fucked up.
You seem to have not understood anything I said.
Yes, speech and assembly are more restricted in other countries. But they still have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Democracy fundamentally needs them to exist. That’s what makes them fundamental.
I did not once say anything about changing gun laws in the U.S. I pointed out that democracy can exist without gun rights, which means they aren’t fundamental.
I don’t know why you took that as me trying to take away your guns or trying to change the Constitution. I explicitly went out of my way to avoid such arguments. Partly because of the OP, and partly because I don’t know where I stand on guns, really. I just know they aren’t a fundamental right to a democracy.
What point do you think you are making here? Why would you compare Mexico and Switzerland? Mexico has more guns than Switzerland, poorer controls and a huge crime problem. The firearm death rate is much higher. Sort of what one would expect.
Here’s an article on Switzerland gun ownership and crime.
Compared to the rest of Europe, Switzerland has a lot of guns and the highest gun deaths, again, probably what one would expect.
A right to own, alongside knives, chain saws, flamethrowers & Speedos? You bet.
A right to go outside and use them on people? Not so much.
I believe the point was that it’s nearly impossible to legally own a gun in Mexico, but that apparently has little effect on the number of firearms there. This would tend to refute Budget Player Cadet’s and scr4’s assertions that gun laws will necessarily reduce the availability of guns. My w.a.g. would be that the success of laws restricting guns in Europe is the result, and not the cause, of a generally peaceful society where the rule of law prevails.
As for the “more guns equal more gun deaths” argument, I would point out that of course if someone wants to commit murder and guns are available, then they may well use a gun. Would some of those murders not happen if there were no guns? Almost certainly. Would those murders not happen at all if there were no guns? Almost certainly not.
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I find it humorous that there’s significant debate when Lumpy approached the thread as assessing values that aren’t logically debatable.
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Agreed. Let’s try not to go down the rabbit hole again.
I’d argue that a heavily destabilized country which has basically been in the throes of a decade-long civil war is not the fairest comparison when talking about gun laws and gun deaths.
The more vocal advocates (both pro- and anti-gun) seem to be foreseeing that future and arguing that their way is the correct one if we are to either (a) avoid or (b) survive that future, so I think it’s worth mentioning.