Sandusky Register Editor Matt Westerhold should expand his search. I bet he could learn a lot by walking around certain places in Cleveland and demanding the citizens tell him if they have a gun. I bet in some places they would be happy to show it to him also.

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Checked the Sandusky Register today. They seem to have pulled the list off their front page and off their original article.

The original article now has:

How many residents are licensed to carry concealed handguns?
(By county)
Erie — 1,071
Huron — 367
Sandusky — 329
Ottawa — 644
Seneca — 270

In place of links to the lists themselves.

That's all fine and dandy, but what I find to be the most interesting statistic in places where Draconian gun-ownership restrictions have been enacted: the number one fastest rising crime in places like GB, Austrailia and Canada is that of home invasions. In and of itself pretty ho hum, right? Well, not so fast, the particular statistic cited is especially noteworthy considering the overwhelming majority of cases are when the occupants of the home are actually present.

You watch, they'll next enact laws prohibiting actually possessing stuff. The logic being, well, if you didn't have anything worth taking they'd not bust into your home to rob you at gunpoint.

OK that puts things into perspective, but I think that if a cop tried to the best of his abilities to prevent a crime and it still happened, it wouldn't be in anyones interest, that this cop might get sued. So I guess to rule that possibility out, they had to make sure no cop, whether he did his job to the best of his abilities or not, doesn't get sued. I guess if internal affairs see's something wrong with a cops response to an emergency call or something he'll be discharged pretty soon, I imagine.

Home invasion is also a major problem in the Bay Area in California. Perpetrated by these very violent Asian gangs. Paritculary down on the Peninsula south of San Francisco, where the folks are pretty rich. :-?

I think the legislation was probably enacted to prevent frivilous lawsuits, but I can see the concern that wastegate has.

It's sort of like eminent domain which can really screw over the average citizen.

I had a friend who fell down through an open manhole cover while drunk. He had little luck suing until it was discovered that the City Worker had been written up several times for......forgetting to put the manhole covers back on. :lol:

I can see that concern too, but I guess that's a price you have to pay in a sue-happy society. :-?

White Man's Burden, eh? We have to protect them from themselves?

Sorry, but punishing a group for the actions of individuals within that group is unacceptable, especially when it comes to something as serious as this.

In Germany, we have a difference between "Waffenschein" (weapons license, 2 classes) and "Waffenbesitzkarte" (permission card to possess weapons, 3 classes). German weapon laws are said to be amongst the tightest in Europe.

Excluding professionals like police, and talking of private persons in the following:

A main/full Waffenschein you only get as a private man when you can prove that your life and health is seriously threateend, for which the general risk everybody is accepting to become a victim of random crime is not suffient. Sport shooters do not need nor get it. So, usually it is impossible for normal citizens to get a Waffenschein. You need this type of license to carry (concealed or unconcealed) an action-ready (loaded) weapon outside your house and/or private property. You need to pass a (tough) theory exam, a clean record with the police, and some more. This license is valid for three years, after that it needs to be confirmed every year. If the strong private interest (threat for life etc) is no longer proved, the license expires.

A small Waffenschein was introduced 2002. It regulates the sale of gas- and blank guns, which are rated as a rsik due to their often stunning visual similiarity to real weapons. We had quite some crimes being commited by use of fake guns.

A green Waffenbesitzkarte (WBK) you use to have when you are doing shooting as a sport, or are a registered hunter (hunters need a hunting license to buy and own rifles, too). This type of license allows you to transport an unloaded, not action-ready weapon, from your home to your sport club, or after having bought it from a trader for example, and to store a weapon at home, which means you need to lock it in a safe, and the ammunition separately from it in a locked place. You are not allowed to carry your weapons in public, for fun or a subjectively perceived threat to you, outside private property. Usually you are allowed to buy two pistols/revolvers, and eventually a third one if you prove the need (using several different callibres in registred sport training). Concealed carrying of even unloaded weapons also if not allowed.
The exam (Sachkundeprüfung) is tough, and needs you to really sit down and learn books about kjoules, callibres, distances, effects of ammunitions. My father has this kind of license, and I saw how much work he had to invest to get competent in the theory. It is meant to scare away Sunday shooters and only half-heartedly interested people. Additionally you need to log one year of regular (weekly) club shooting to get a third weapon, and you need to log quite some time with regular shooting in a club with using weapons that are constantly stored there to get your green card at all.
The vast majority of people in Germany who have firearms have this kind of license, theys use to be sport shooters, or hunters.

A yellow WBK affects the possession of certain types of single-bolt rifles and rifles with certain specifics I cannot translate into English. It is meant for sport shooters using according types of rifles, since the green card exclude many types of rifles, if not all.

The red WBK is interesting only for people collecting certain types of historical firearms.

Carrying weapons during public assemblies is always forbidden, no matter if you have a full Waffenschein or not.

Possession or carrying of military weapons like machine guns, submachine guns, assault rifles, is never, never allowed, under no conditions. Which makes very much sense. If this kind of weapons is allowed for pirvate possession, than in principle it cannot be prohibited to possess a priovate B-52 with full ordanance as well. Military weapons are for the military, not for the private man. Private interest has to step back here.

We do well with these regulations. You can do sport shooting in germany and own a weapon, or two or three, but it is a must that you spend time and effort into it (and prove it) in order to get a green WBK-type of license.

I heared that in Switzerland the public pressure is raising that the 14% of households, were reservists store their military rifles at home, are no longer allowed (required) to do so anymore. If it makes sense with their type of army is something different, but it illustrates the widespread European perception that having heavy weaponry available to considerable parts of society is not needed, nor wishable.

I remember reading at one point that the Home Office wanted to ban kitchen knives for being too sharp!!

Although the joke of banning "pointy sticks" is well used here in the states, it isn't considered a joke anymore after most of us heard that statement from the HO.

Good for you. That will never work in the United States, however, for several different reasons:

1. A very large percentage of the population interprets the Second Amendment of the US Constitution as protecting the right of an individual to keep and bear arms with little or no interference from the government.

2. As Americans, we tend to be more distrustful of authority, and less likely to follow the law if we think it is ineffectual, malicious, or stupid.

3. We have an enormous number of guns in the United States already. If the guns were distributed evenly, fully 3/4ths of the total population would be armed.

4. There are a significant number of people in the United States who make firearms as a hobby. Mostly, they tend to be antique type weapons, like this one (made for me by my father):
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/6...niflint4pm.jpg
Switching to the manufacturing of more modern weapons would be relatively easy. Since there would be a market for guns, you would drive the manufacture of handguns from a handful of manufacturers each making tens of thousands of guns a year to tens of thousands of manufacturers each making a handful of guns a year.

5. You couldn't impliment something like that in the United States without violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, which provide protections against unreasonable search and seizures, and against self-incrimination.

6. Any administration and congress foolish enough to attempt such a system would quickly find itself facing a large number of very upset armed people. The very people the government would consider to be a danger to itself are the ones who in practice will be the hardest to disarm.

7. Given #6, there would be some serious incidences of violence targeted at those who voted for the law, and those tasked to enforce it. Whether you agree with the actions or not, there is little doubt that heavy-handed enforcement of gun laws at Ruby Ridge, ID and Waco, TX, combined with the Brady Law and the now defunct Assault Weapons Ban, lead to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. The paradigm has changed, however, from the 'Turner Diaries' style of bombing government buildings, to the 'Unintended Consequences*' style of selected assassination of those directly responsible.

This is why gun laws like those in Europe are neither practical nor adviseable in the United States. We have a history of shooting at those who try to take our guns away.

*Unintended Consequences by John Ross is a very popular novel among the American Gun Culture. It describes a leaderless, distributed 'rebellion' that targets the ATF and anti-gun politicians.

Constitutions and amandements can be changed - they must not be seen to be valid until the end of time. Also, it might help to remember that they were written in a certain time and world, both of which were different and were defined by very different kind of situational realities that are no longer valid. There is no more threat that the english troops will try to retake their colonies, and no more Indians sneaking around your house. I would not assume that the authors back then would write the consitution and/or the amandements in the same way they did back then: the world has chnaged, so changes the way to adress it, and intentions.

This is just meant as a direct reply, not as an attempt to tell you what you should do in your country.

I really should have been more careful the way I phrased that, but I was really just hoping to avoid a discussion of the socio-economic causes of crime.

In most respects I agree with your arguments, and being from Vermont, the state with almost no gun control, am well aware with the standard talking points.

But I believe the 2nd Ammendment only gives folks the right to protect themselves against a despotic government, not to protect themselves from each other. I think that is anarchy or vigilantism.

And although I tend not to be a pragmatist, living in the neighborhood in SF with the most murders, and across the Bay from Oakland, I have to respect the opinion of the folks in these neighborhoods who say they want these cheap guns off the street.

The gang violence in these areas is not condusive to being able to protect yourself with a gun. What you end up with is a lot of innocent people caught in the crossfire from driveby's.

And again, as to the topic of this thread, I am totally against what this guy did in printing the names in the paper.

Well, that *IS* at the heart of the discussion. Being from where you are from, you should know that.
PM where, if you care to. I live not far from Southern Vermont, and in fact used to live in a town just across the border.

There is more justification for the personal self defense than there is for defense against a despotic government. You are more likely, given that you live in the United States, to be a victim of crime than the victim of government violence.

And self defense is *NOT* vigilantism. Vigilantism is the dispensing of frontier justice with out due process. A vigilante is someone who takes the enforcement of law into their own hands. Self defense doesn't count: You aren't dispensing 'justice', you are saving your own life.

As for it being anarchy, I'm sorry I just don't see that. Given that self defense almost always happens at times when law enforcement isn't around, how can you reasonably expect them to be there? Society doesn't fall apart when you defend yourself, in fact it is strengthened by either removing or discouraging future anarchic acts (ie., crime).

Do you know why they want more gun control? It puzzled me to, I questioned why people in high crime areas would want more, until I read this:
http://www.john-ross.net/race&rtc.htm
The important part is in the last half of the essay.

Well, you have that anyway. So why not allow people to defend themselves? Just doesn't make sense. That is like saying it is foolish to allow (not require, allow) teachers to have guns in schools, because more kids will be killed in the crossfire. Which is patently obsurd, because as it stands now the assailants can kill at their leisure, taking time to aim. That is what allowed Mr. Cho to be so effective at VT: It is much easier to kill methodically when no one is shooting back at you.
Agreed.

You are correct, Amendments to the Constitution can be changed. It's happened before. Yet no one ever seriously proposes to repeal the Second Amendment.

I wonder why?

After all, if it's a dead letter, just make it official. Surely, if the people agree, it won't be hard to get a 2/3rds majority in both the House and the Senate, and to have it ratified by 3/4ths of the state legislatures.

Of course, many people view that possibility as a 'tripwire' to start shooting at the people who voted for it, but hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?

What many people forget is that the founding document of the United States is not the Constitution, it is the Declaration of Independence, which justifies the use of force to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Calvin Coolidge observed that the Declaration of Independence unleashed not only a revolution against Britain, but also a revolution in human affairs.