Should the 2nd amendment (Right to Bear Arms) be Abolished?

[Leocomix]

It doesn't have to be abolished.

But 1) arms should be limited to what arms meant at the time (i.e. one shot)
2) people possessing arms should be part of a militia like the amendment says.

[Deviates]

It's not. It happens but what's missed out is how the NHS has suffered due to the increasing privatisation (over the last 15 years especially) of key services, so basic surgery is often outsourced to companies (mainly American and French) who frankly don't have a fucking clue what they're doing.

Well it is partially nonsense, waiting times for necessary surgery have been relatively low recently, and although you are right about privatisation the NHS still does a sterling job. My personal feelings towards the NHS are of supreme gratitude, with my mum recently being diagnosed with cancer the speed with which they have acted has been reassuring to say the least. This doesn't bring in my professional opinions, as I worked for a non-profit organisation that brought patients, health professionals and politicians together to try and improve health provisions with those suffering from chronic illnesses, though if I were my opinion would be much the same.

[o1pickleboy]

*snicker* Yeah, I'm sure the government is terrified of your guns when all they have is more people, more guns, better armor, tanks, jets, missiles, smart bombs, napalm, killer drones, nukes....

This just means we have to restructure our military break it down to 50 smaller units that can unite for defense and mission overseas but separate so we can take them down if need be.

[Addams]

This just means we have to restructure our military break it down to 50 smaller units that can unite for defense and mission overseas but separate so we can take them down if need be.

Why in hell the government would do something who diminish its own authority and would even allow states to threaten the very existence of the federal state ?

[o1pickleboy]

Why in hell the government would do something who diminish its own authority and would even allow states to threaten the very existence of the federal state ?

To make the gun nuts fantasies possible?

[Addams]

To make the gun nuts fantasies possible?

I can imagine that such a decision would please quite a lot of those guntards.

(is that an offensive name ?)

[dupersuper]

3. Mm-hmm.

Excellent counter-point.

Indeed. I cannot fathom why anyone wouldn't try to stop looters with as lethal force as deemed necessary! But alas... some people just don't care. And that's just weird.

If not killing some one over a broken window and stolen TV is weird, normal sucks hard.

It's a matter of principle, but I don't expect you to get that.

I get that children are dead because of an outdated principle.

I reiterated the part he didn't read (he tends to skip blocks of text, you see). Obviously, you didn't read it, either.

Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they're not reading.

Well it is partially nonsense, waiting times for necessary surgery have been relatively low recently, and although you are right about privatisation the NHS still does a sterling job. My personal feelings towards the NHS are of supreme gratitude, with my mum recently being diagnosed with cancer the speed with which they have acted has been reassuring to say the least. This doesn't bring in my professional opinions, as I worked for a non-profit organisation that brought patients, health professionals and politicians together to try and improve health provisions with those suffering from chronic illnesses, though if I were my opinion would be much the same.

Also, systems that cover every one do occasionally take longer for less critical procedures because there are just more people in the system, but I'll take my system that covers every one over the mess in the States any day.

[Matt Algren]

I have not read for years either, but Obama fits perfectly into the machiavelian vision of politcs:

Electorate = Pawns

Endgoal = Power

Which is quite frankly accurate but there are some increibly positive trends hapening.

I see we're starting the year with inane, reductive nonsense.

[Charles RB]

Interesting summary of some research http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research...use/index.html.

People really are claiming "millions" of shootings and gun draws are in self-defence? Never mind Harvard, common sense should tell us that's balls: everyone in America would personally know somebody who'd done it! People outside of America who know Americans would all know somebody who'd done it! Not unless it always happens to the same few million.

We can only take their word[s] for it. They said they got kids out of there. I don't know. I wasn't there.

You posted a link to an event summary on the other thread which mentions one guard who didn't get any kids out of there, and you know he didn't because you read the article. You also know, or I'd hope, that "we" meant the police and paramedics as well as him, and the police and paramedics did get kids out of there.

Statistics show that in the United States, states with the strictest gun regulations also have highest overall crime rates, higher violent crime rates, and higher rates of homicides, including murders committed with firearms. This shows that strict gun regulations are failing. Internationally, I find the UK's higher rate of violent crime further proof that banning guns does not reduce violent crime.

Can you show us these stats? Because I have never before seen any stats saying we've got a higher rate of violent crime than the US, except when googling stats just now and the Daily Mail claiming we had a higher rate back in 2009 (and it's the Mail so they're probably getting it wrong, they'd bad with accuracy). Here's the recent crime stats for England & Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland are done seperately) and violent crime has gone down overall, and is counted as in the thousands; around the same time, US violent crime is reported as going up for the first time in years, and the numbers given there look higher than the ones given for England & Wales. The homicides are higher too.

I've seen stats saying we have higher rates than continental Europe (with the exception, IIRC, of Finland which has more gun proliferation) but that doesn't help the US's case much. There are stats with even less guns than us, like Norway, which have very low violent crime rates (Breivik was an abberation).

As a health care provider, I'm not confident that socialized health care means better health care. I know people from the UK who've had to wait and fight years for surgeries they've needed.

What surgery did they have to wait years for?

Why do you think every secular muslim state gets smashed/overthrown?

I haven't seen any overthrow in Turkey recently.

I've seen the full of several autocratic dictators and their violent regimes who claimed to be secular, in Egypt's case while still shitting on Coptics.

[Charles RB]

Well it is partially nonsense, waiting times for necessary surgery have been relatively low recently

Which is why I'd like to know what "surgery they needed" means.

[carabas]

It's not. It happens but what's missed out is how the NHS has suffered due to the increasing privatisation (over the last 15 years especially) of key services, so basic surgery is often outsourced to companies (mainly American and French) who frankly don't have a fucking clue what they're doing.

That's... really too bad.

[Valerie]

You argue it's a 'right' for you to own guns and at the same time dismiss the right of everyone in your country to have access to a decent level of healthcare. That's got your priorities all the wrong way round.

The act may well be 'evil' but it doesn't mean the person is. You want better mental health care for people, then you've got to stop call people with mental illness 'evil'.

Note that I never posted or said anything dismissing the right of people to have the health care they need when they need it, a right I might add I have seen violated in both the US and UK. Note also the phrase "of sound mind," when I inquired what you'd call it when someone of sound mind commits murder, rape, etc.,. That is the opposite of calling someone with mental illness evil. It is reserving that description for someone who is mentally healthy and just wants to do violence to others.

As for the correleation between gun bans in the US and violent crime, this article is well worth reading. Also worth note is that Washington DC has the highest per capita crime rate in the US, and it got worse after implementing a near total ban on privately owned firearms. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/we...anted=all&_r=0

[NamorSuperStrong]

yes and no. with me being the color of skin that i am A cop could shoot me for being black and for no other reason but that, and he'd most likely get away with it. But then again theres cold hearted criminals...some people are sick in the head and start going on a killing spree.

[7thangel]

Note that I never posted or said anything dismissing the right of people to have the health care they need when they need it, a right I might add I have seen violated in both the US and UK. Note also the phrase "of sound mind," when I inquired what you'd call it when someone of sound mind commits murder, rape, etc.,. That is the opposite of calling someone with mental illness evil. It is reserving that description for someone who is mentally healthy and just wants to do violence to others.

As for the correleation between gun bans in the US and violent crime, this article is well worth reading. Also worth note is that Washington DC has the highest per capita crime rate in the US, and it got worse after implementing a near total ban on privately owned firearms. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/we...anted=all&_r=0

did you actually read the article you linked to?

[Charles RB]

As for the correleation between gun bans in the US and violent crime

Ian disproved that a page or two ago, looking at murder rate stats.

Also, the article you link to says re DC

Those statistics by themselves prove nothing, of course. Factors aside from the gun ban, like demographics, economics and the drug trade, were almost certainly in play. “As students of elementary logic know,” Justice Breyer wrote, “after it does not mean because of it.”

and that researchers are arguing about Washington DC. One of the defenders also claims

A brief defending the Washington law filed by the American Public Health Association and other groups said there were other collateral positive effects, including reductions in suicides and accidents, that gun control opponents overlook or underestimate. More generally, the brief said, “banning handguns in Washington, D.C., appears to have reduced suicide and homicide rates.” It cited the New England Journal study and statistics showing that Washington has an exceptionally low suicide rate. Asked what sorts of gun control laws seem to work, Professor Kleck mentioned two.

“Background checks in general at the state level did show lower homicide rates,” he said, adding: “I’d improve the enforcement of laws against unlicensed carrying of guns in public places.”

Also it says the US murder rate is higher than European states, the ones with more guns and the ones with less guns.