2nd Amendment

[CusworthRovers]

Tell me why!,
I don't like Mondays

Guns don't kill people rappers do


Is it the gun or is it the person?. Surely our laws are far better than our friends over the water. I know over here one can get what they wants illegally, but the ease at which you can have a killing machine in your hands is frightening.

How many more of these incidents are we going to have (and I know we've had Hungerford and Cumbria).

[Sandy Lane]

I can't really tell you why Cussie, only that the Second Amendment was created when we were a new, young country, and the reason for it now has totally outlived its usefulness, and is ridiculous that it still stands. As you're probably aware a large portion of America is still rural and people like to hunt, my family is not one of them, but I know many who do.  But semi automatic assault weapons even for hunting surely negate any 'sportsmanship' in hunting for game.

Another question is why we always cut our mental health budget first when we are in fiscal straits, as the two together as we have seen are lethal.

The other and probably more important reason is that the gun lobby in my country is so very strong, and many legislators are afraid of going up against them for fear they will lash out at their electorate to prevent them getting elected or re-elected. Again, most states have large rural areas and need their support (and donations). But how many more killings will happen before something gets done?  And it took 27 people, mostly children, getting shot before they will seriously look at it. But I think the most they will do is ban semi automatic weapons, although the laws vary by state.  The Constitution needs to be changed to eliminate that amendment so individual states are not left to fight the gun lobby, and I can't ever see it happening, sadly.

[CusworthRovers]

It's like you say Sandy, what gets me is how easy it is to get weapons that are highly advanced military killing machines and should only be used in warfare. It's the type laddo had to kill all those kids. These are not surely hunting guns as you say. Not that I agree with it, but I get hunting, I get shooting clubs, I get Farmers for killing animals or vermin.

You'll know better, but there seems a lot of power/influence given to the gun folks. Usually it's Financial reasons ie Companies influencing Government like Coca Cola, Nike, Macdonalds, or media groups influencing, but I cannot see the power or money behind guns and how they can influence government.

It seems the Right to Bear Arms is deeply engraved and rooted in everyone. It's like they have to be armed. It seems to me as an outsider looking in, that Culture makes Americans scared of the mythical 'Boogey Man', whatever they deem the boogey man to be at that time. They have the citizens believe that the Commi's are coming and these days it's the Terrorists that are coming.

All very messy and as you say it seems like the individuality of many states will make this a very difficult amendment to reform.

It would take a very brave President to take out this 2nd Amendment, but he would also be a very wise one     

[BobG]

Didn't Bill Clinton try to change things? And got done over - or at least shown how he would be done over - for his pains?

BobG

[RedJ]

If you've seen Bowling for Columbine, you'll know just how ridiculously easy it is to get hold of ammo and weapons over there (I know it's hard to generalise but, well, I'd wager it's pretty similar all over).

[jucyberry]

It seems to me that the most vocal about guns and the second amendment are the rabid bible belters. From people I have spoken to over the years on line and the sites I have been on that are predominately frequented by Americans (and i know this will be seen as a sweeping generalisation) the people in the northern states are more sophisticated and sensible . Like Sandy they don't worship the gun. it seems to me that the further south you go, the more the gun is seen as an extention of the owner.. they would rather give up their spouse than their weapons.

One (in her own words Redneck woman) today actually stated that she would rather herself and her family were killed by a gun than in a fire.. more than that, when questioned they come out with the same old 'without our guns you would all be speaking German' crap that is their ritual response to any Brit that expresses a lack of understanding for their love affair with a lethal killing machine.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bloke from the NRA was on Radio4 yesterday. Said the root of the problem in Newtown was not the free and easy access to guns but the fact that the kid Adam Lanza was a criminal who stole the gun. From his mother.

For once, words fail me.

[Glyn_Wigley]

I'm not sure but doesn't the US Constitution only talk about the right to bear arms? Why do people think that gives them a right to bear FIREarms? You can still be armed with a baseball bat...

[MachoMadness]

Most of the opposition I hear to gun control over there is along the lines of "we need guns to defend ourselves from everyone else who carries guns!" It's this bizarre circular logic that means any measures taken to help restrict access to guns will be a token gesture at best.

[Filo]

I had some distant relative that`s a Yank (never met and only knew of each other through geneolgy forums) that was a friend on facebook until this week, she appears to be one of those that feels the need to arm herself with firearms, she posted something along the lines of the Chinese sticking their noses in where it`s not wanted, over the gun laws in America. I wrote that the Yanks have been doing that for years, sticking their noses into everyones business, Iraq, Afganistan etc. She promptly deleted me as a friend

And that is the problem with the Yanks, they don`t like hearing the truth, they`re all just self centered maniacs!

[The L J Monk]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYFRzf2Xww" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYFRzf2Xww</a>

[Sandy Lane]

It's like you say Sandy, what gets me is how easy it is to get weapons that are highly advanced military killing machines and should only be used in warfare. It's the type laddo had to kill all those kids. These are not surely hunting guns as you say. Not that I agree with it, but I get hunting, I get shooting clubs, I get Farmers for killing animals or vermin.

You'll know better, but there seems a lot of power/influence given to the gun folks. Usually it's Financial reasons ie Companies influencing Government like Coca Cola, Nike, Macdonalds, or media groups influencing, but I cannot see the power or money behind guns and how they can influence government.

It seems the Right to Bear Arms is deeply engraved and rooted in everyone. It's like they have to be armed. It seems to me as an outsider looking in, that Culture makes Americans scared of the mythical 'Boogey Man', whatever they deem the boogey man to be at that time. They have the citizens believe that the Commi's are coming and these days it's the Terrorists that are coming.

All very messy and as you say it seems like the individuality of many states will make this a very difficult amendment to reform.

It would take a very brave President to take out this 2nd Amendment, but he would also be a very wise one     

I really don't know why the gun lobby is so powerful, but it seems to be.  Most likely it goes back to us being founded for our personal freedoms, but some take it to the nth degree.  As for the South Jucy, I can't speak to that area of the country as I wasn't born and raised there so am unfamiliar with the way they think. But It's a huge issue nationwide and one which should be dealt with sooner rather than later.

Cussy, I never got the sense that guns owners wanted to get others before they got them, but only that they wanted the freedom to possess guns for hunting, perhaps for target practice, and lastly for self defense.  But I could be wrong because I'm not of that mindset.  NYC Mayor Bloomberg was on the news shows this past weekend, and if you google it may find a link, but he discussed a lot of these issues and it was refreshing to hear someone speak so forthrightly about the gun lobby, personal freedoms, mental illness and how things need to change.

And no Filo, we're not all self centered maniacs.  Sometimes words fail me as well.

[BillyStubbsTears]

There's a very primeval idea that if you have a weapon, you control your own destiny.

In the run-up to Eire being given independence, back in the early 20th century, there was a thought that Ulster would be included in the independent state. The Protestant Unionists in Ulster under Edward Carson openly boasted that they had 1,000,000 illegal firearms and would use them if they were coerced into a Catholic state. "Ulster Will Fight!" was Carson's cry. And the UK Govt backed down.

I suspect the same issue, sub-consciously, underpins America's obsession with guns. There is a deeply corrosive idea in American culture that THEY are out to get you. Whether it's the commies, the fags, the niggers or the liberal Govt (the last one was what led that raving f**king nutcase Timothy McVeigh to detonate 2tonnes of ANFO outside a govt building in Oklahoma, and what convinces millions that the CIA put thermite into the columns of the World Trade Centre when it was built.)

I wonder if that obsession with THEM (cheating, immoral bas**rds) being out to get US (normal, honest, hardworking pillars of the community) is what drives the obsession with gun-as-guarantee-of-independence?

[Sandy Lane]

Billy, what I'm gleaning from this 'get them before they get us' discussion is that this is something many of you feel is behind our gun obsession, and that greatly surprises me.  I'll ask around to see if others here in the US think that this is the reason, but I think they will be surprised by this as well. Or perhaps this is the 'man' type hunter and gatherer answer, rather than the wider view.  What I've always thought was that here people feel they have 'the right' to have a gun and have a 'no one is going to take that right away', attitude, more so than the boogey man scenario. However, I have to say that sometimes you lot do get the wrong end of the stick about us, but other times I learn more about us from you, than from living here. So it'll be interesting to hear the answers.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Most of the opposition I hear to gun control over there is along the lines of "we need guns to defend ourselves from everyone else who carries guns!" It's this bizarre circular logic that means any measures taken to help restrict access to guns will be a token gesture at best.

Yet I've never heard of any rampaging gunman being stopped by a private person with a private weapon....makes you wonder what they want the guns for if they're not going to use them..!

It's also the argument that almost says the kids should have been armed to protect themselves!

[BillyStubbsTears]

Billy, what I'm gleaning from this 'get them before they get us' discussion is that this is something many of you feel is behind our gun obsession, and that greatly surprises me.  I'll ask around to see if others here in the US think that this is the reason, but I think they will be surprised by this as well. Or perhaps this is the 'man' type hunter and gatherer answer, rather than the wider view.  What I've always thought was that here people feel they have 'the right' to have a gun and have a 'no one is going to take that right away', attitude, more so than the boogey man scenario. However, I have to say that sometimes you lot do get the wrong end of the stick about us, but other times I learn more about us from you, than from living here. So it'll be interesting to hear the answers.

Sandy

I'm not saying it's a conscious reason. I'm saying that possession of a gun, subconsciously gives a person a feeling of control over their destiny. They can look after themselves, their family and their possessions. And the American culture, far more than over here, believes in the importance of the freedom of the individual to control their own destiny. Give a man a gun and in extremis, no nigger, commie or Government is going to take his things from him.

[The L J Monk]

Give a man a gun and in extremis, no nigger, commie or Government is going to take his things from him.

However, give a woman a gun, and her son can quite easily take it from her.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sandy.

I guess the crux of the question is, aside from a few hunters and sports shooters (and let's be honest, it is a VERY few in the big scheme of things) why would ANYONE need a gun unless they have a conscious or unconscious need to protect themselves from a bogeyman?

And the NRA actively play on this "they're out to get you" theme. Their spokesman on the NRA.org website has a "news" blog entitled "What they didn't tell you today." The "they" clearly being the liberal establishment that is lying through its teeth to you honest, god-fearing, gun-totin' Americans and wanting to take your God-given guns away from you. In a recent article on that blog, a list of criminals in Florida is given. EVERY ONE of them is either black or Hispanic. It's not even remotely subtle.

[BobG]

If it's the hunting and the practising that folk in the US want to preserve, why don't they do what almost everyone else does then? There's hundreds of gun clubs round where I live for example. everything from revolvers thriugh shot guns to rifles. The difference is that they can't carry them on the street, they have to have mega secure storage (with ammo stored entirely separately from gun), they shoot either in licensed premises or in country locations miles away from passers by, and, most importantly of all, before you get near any gun at all, you and your storage facilities have to be checked, assessed, reported on and approved. And you have to be re-approved regularly too.

It's not difficult. I know loads of folk who shoot. I was even taken out shooting by a neighbour not so long ago. It was illegal, but we did. Even Alex, when we recently visited a school not so far away, spent half an hour with some teacher banging away at clay pigeons with a shot gun.

The NRA are a special interest group. And the US seem, from this distance, to have always allowed a sectional interest to dictate the national agenda as far as firearms are concerned. And that, to me, is a dreadful example of just how far American politics has failed and continues to fail its electorate.

BobG

[auckleyflyer]

Give our little brother a break!! their only a few hundred yrs old, i liken them to a teenager full of wind and spunk!The day they regulate! (not ban) guns, get rid of the death sentance and forn something like our NHS than i'll consider them a developed nation, until their no better the the countries the profess to police?
Much like our other offspring India, although id feel safer and receive better health care there

[Sandy Lane]

Sandy.

I guess the crux of the question is, aside from a few hunters and sports shooters (and let's be honest, it is a VERY few in the big scheme of things) why would ANYONE need a gun unless they have a conscious or unconscious need to protect themselves from a bogeyman?

And the NRA actively play on this "they're out to get you" theme. Their spokesman on the NRA.org website has a "news" blog entitled "What they didn't tell you today." The "they" clearly being the liberal establishment that is lying through its teeth to you honest, god-fearing, gun-totin' Americans and wanting to take your God-given guns away from you. In a recent article on that blog, a list of criminals in Florida is given. EVERY ONE of them is either black or Hispanic. It's not even remotely subtle.

Billy, I did ask around, and as I suspected the answer was a resounding no. People don't have, either a conscious or unconscious,  an 'us against them mentality' against an unnamed bogeyman.  The reasons were the culture of our developing nation to own guns and that the majority who do own guns for hunting or target shooting like it for sport - full stop.  Therein lies the problem with understanding this issue within our country.  I suspect you think I'm being naive or so entrenched within our culture that I don't see the forest for the trees, but it's not true.  I personally don't like guns and would like it if all guns were banned.  This is the reason why most of the world doesn't understand - because we're considered an aggressive nation, so that automatically equates to an 'us against them' mentality in all things.  I know I could try to explain more eloquently or fully about this, but I'm sure most would never believe it. 

The only example I can think of is that I know you like to target shoot, but did I automatically think you subliminally do it to protect your family? No, I thought you enjoyed the sport and skill of it, and a lot of people here are just like you.  Of course there are those who most likely do have that mentality, but I firmly disagree with the bottom line thinking that it's ultimately for protection against the bogeyman.

Overall, I think we'll have to agree to disagree about this, but it really is a multi-layered issue here.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sandy

I hear the hunting argument. But that barely scratches the surface of your gun issue.

A prominent pro-gun lobby has been arguing that there are maybe 13-15 million hunters in the US. But you have 270,000,000 guns!

So if every hunter has 5 guns, you still have about 60 guns per 100 people among the general population- twice as high a rate as any other advanced country and 10 times the rate in the UK.

I simply do not understand what drives this general ownership, unless it is the feeling that gun ownership confers security against something.

The history argument doesn't work. You used to think it was ok to keep blacks as slaves. You used not to have a Federal Bank to manage the currency. Your foreign policy used to be confined to the Americas, keeping out of global conflicts. Societies change their approach as the circumstances change. Civilisation is the process of overcoming your historical baggage and moving on. The devotion to the gun in America is preventing this process in this area

[mjdgreg]

When half of all the guns in the world are in the hands of only 5% of the world's population, then it is obvious to anyone with half a brain that anything Obama says is posturing at best.

The problem is far too big to be sorted out quickly. It's going to take centuries to get a change of mind-set. All you history buffs should have realised this fact.

[BobG]

Auckley - I've always thought of the USA in Shakespearean terms. Lol. Richard 11. Can't be arsed to look up the act and scene, but you'll know the speech well enough. John of Gaunt remarking on the fitness of an individual. if you substitute the USA for Richard 11, then the words "Some people are born great. Some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them" resonate.

The US is a very lucky country. Always has been. And it's that luck that has thrust greatness upon it.  Think of mind bogglingly vast natural resources, the mind bogglingly vast distance from any potential aggressor - and the safety and freedom from military spending that that gave for several generations -  and the mind bogglingly vast number of cheap as chips immigrants to work all those mind bogglingly vast resources, the mind bogglingly vast internal market with which to generate the cash to enable world economic domination, and you can easily see why I, I'm afraid, think that the US has had greatness thrust upon it. It's just a shame that they they rarely know how to use it. US politics and the US political system has been and continues to be simply unable to manage its responsibilities and its opportunities. It is entirely money focused. Bush No 2 is one helluva good example of the consequences of that. Bizarrely, in terms of world politics and behaviours, I tend to think that the best in my lifetime was actually Richard Milhouse Nixon. And that says it all really doesn't it?

Sandy: if you ever get bored,may I recommend a book by Paul Kennedy? 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers'. It's a cracking good read. And the thoughts it provokes are things Americans everywhere really ought to be considering these days.  although I've lent my copy to somebody I've looked up its ISBN.

ISBN 0-394-54674-1

Published in 1987. You'll feel at home with Paul. Although he's English he's worked for years at Yale.

BobG

PS Sandy: I'm not having a dig. England has equally horrible problems. It's just ours are different. Corruption, rampant nepotism and cronyism, really scary short termism and a totally deluded view of our place in the world being amongst them.

[Sandy Lane]

Thank you Bob, and I will take a look at that book.

It is very hard to be the only American on this forum and tbh it's the reason why I don't log on often, though I read it every day. I cringe whenever anything happens as I know it will be discussed, and Cussy was very nice about it which is why I replied to the thread. But then invariably we hear sweeping generalizations which can be rude and generally wrong, and if I push back, even a bit, then everyone closes ranks, so It's why I generally don't engage in these type of discussions.

I don't know the reason for our gun obsession, and don't want to end up defending or explaining something that is indefensible, and people don't want to believe it anyway, 

[Donnywolf]

... and by pure coincidence I am reading the Book "Second Amendment" which was free on my Kindle Fire

It is of course a work of fiction but as the Title suggests is already examining the issue closely and I am enjoying it. Thankfully the author is explaining the "situation" from all viewpoints but whether it makes sense in " the real world" is quite another story

Have you read it because I would be interested on your take on it, By another massive coincidence (though I worked for  an American Company) my only Americal friends live in Littleton Co. home of course to the infamous Columbine High

[Filo]

This just about sums up the mindset of a lot of Americans

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/sandy-hook-massacre-americans-emptying-stores-of-assault-rifles-ahead-of-potential-new-federal-ban-16253265.html?r=RSS&google_editors_picks=true

As Newtown continued to mourn its dead yesterday and a Presidential task force convened to consider how to tackle America’s firearms addiction, much of the rest of the country was busy stripping gun-shop shelves bare of any items that might be prohibited by a new federal ban.

Independent gun-shop owners such as Austin Cook of Hoover Tactical Firearms in Alabama reported a stampede of customers anxious to buy assault rifles like the one used by Adam Lanza to kill 26 people, including 20 young children, at a Newtown primary school. Lanza also killed his mother and himself. “I can’t keep them in the store,” Mr Cook said of the weapons.

It is a sad tradition in America that each mass shooting is followed by a surge in gun sales, in part because people calculate they need more firepower to protect themselves. That explains why the days since last Friday have also seen a surge in sales of special backpacks for school children lined with bullet-proof material. Their manufacturers allege they work well as shields in classroom firefights.

Now, however, there is the added fear among gun enthusiasts that new restrictions are around the corner and they had better get the weapons they covet before it’s too late.

President Barack Obama endorsed the reintroduction of an assault weapons ban on Wednesday that expired nine years ago and created a task force to look at other ways to make sure massacres such as last Friday’s don’t happen again. Since then, sales have soared further.

“A lot of people have been coming in looking to purchase semi-automatic rifles,” confirmed Aaron Byrd, of Shooting Sports in North Carolina, which has sold out of the type of rifle Lanza carried as well as the magazines and the bullets that go with them. “They’re worried that the government’s going to ban semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, so they’ve been coming in looking for those”.

Stocks of so-called “sporting rifles” are meanwhile exhausted at Wal-Mart locations in parts of the country, Bloomberg News reported. The company removed the advertising specifically for the Bushmaster type of rifle that Lanza used to kill his victims from its web pages this week while Dick’s Sporting Goods, with 500 outlets nationwide, has for now stopped selling sporting rifles altogether.

On eBay’s US auction website late on Wednesday, the bidding for four Glock handgun magazines – ammunition for one of the guns used at the Sandy Hook shooting – had reached $118.37, compared with another sale on the day before the shooting which only reached $45, Bloomberg reported.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, the director of online sales at the Hyatt Gun Shop said the store had already surpassed $1m in sales on Tuesday – the best single-day performance since the store opened in 1959 – as customers anticipated Mr Obama’s announcement.

With funeral services and wakes being held each day this week for the victims of the massacre, some Newtown residents have formed a group dedicated to making sure hat this time something actually happens in Washington to make gun laws tighter.

“The most important thing is to build a movement here, to build a network,” Chris Murphy, who is soon to become Connecticut’s junior US Senator, told the group.

The Attorney General, Eric Holder, was to travel to Newtown last night to meet lead investigators of the shooting, while in Washington, Vice-President Joe Biden opened the first meeting of the task force announced by Mr Obama.

The plan is to nail down a set of measures, likely to include a new assault weapons ban, for Mr Obama to unveil in his State of the Union address at the end of January.

All eyes this morning, meanwhile, will be on a press conference by the powerful National Rifle Association which so far has issued only a brief statement saying it would contribute to the debate on how to ensure massacres like last Friday’s don’t happen again. While a number of moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill have rushed to endorse a tightening of gun laws, Republicans have largely remained silent on the topic

[mjdgreg]

It is very hard to be the only American on this forum and tbh it's the reason why I don't log on often, though I read it every day. I cringe whenever anything happens as I know it will be discussed, and Cussy was very nice about it which is why I replied to the thread.

But then invariably we hear sweeping generalizations which can be rude and generally wrong, and if I push back, even a bit, then everyone closes ranks,

 so It's why I generally don't engage in these type of discussions.

I don't know the reason for our gun obsession, and don't want to end up defending or explaining something that is indefensible, and people don't want to believe it anyway, 

Unfortunately you are dealing in the main with simpletons that love nothing better than a bit of USA bashing. I for one think the USA is great. What would these simpletons prefer? Russia or China being the dominant world force?

 I have a lot of sympathy for how you feel. As the only right-winger on the site I also get the 'closed ranks syndrome'. Unless you are a leftie on this forum then you are a fish totally out of water.

[The L J Monk]

Whilst the scale of the problem remains incredible, the numbers do suggest that gun crime in America is falling.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sandy.

Apologies if you've felt picked on. That wasn't the intention. I am actually very fond of a lot about America - I just like to take on the patrician role that the British Establishment appropriated to itself after WWII. We saw that we had lost our position of world dominance and passed on the baton to you lot. We reckoned it was identical to the situation 2000 years ago when the cultured, sophisticated Greeks lost their position to the aggressive and dynamic young upstarts from Rome. And we saw that our role was to play the experienced older Greek heads, giving advice and criticism to Rome whilst making sure that we stayed on their side so they didn;t come over and forcibly put us in line.

Hey ho.

Any road, on that topic, an outside observer looking in can often see things that are not clear to someone closer to the scene. I fully accept that there is a flourishing gun culture within hunting, and that is relatively harmless. And I also fully accept that there is a big historical attraction to guns. When you were a farmer 20 miles from the next homestead, you had to rely on yourself for protection - no police force was going to come and save you if a grizzly bear or a grizzly thief came calling. I wonder if your problem has been not addressing the necessary change in approach when you developed as a country from a a bunch of rural, isolated individuals, to living cheek-by-jowl in some of the biggest and most densely populated metropolises on earth. Having a culture and history that has glorified the One Strong Man fighting for his independence, his family and property against the massed forces of the Government and everyone else who is a devious criminal (and THAT is still what so many Hollywood movies portray even today) was grand when you really DID have to be an independent strong man to survive. But it is bound to lead to trouble when you are living in a metropolis of 20million other folks who also think that they are that One Strong Man. And everybody has a gun.

That kind of gets to the heart of the difference between American and European culture. We have resolved our differences more formally by massacring tens of millions of our fellow citizens in organised wars. But we don't tend to sort out individual barnies through guns. We have a more communitarian approach where we compromise and accept that there are limits on our individual freedom that mean that collectively we have a better standard of life.

It's interesting and probably not irrelevant that the major Western European country that has probably the most American approach to the balance between communal compromise and individual freedom, Switzerland, also has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe and the highest rate of gun-related deaths (although it's nowhere near as big as America's on either score).