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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
While facing down a tyrannical government is the point people always mention, in fact the Founders considered private ownership of arms to be an inherent right, just like the right to free speech. The main concept behind the bill of rights was that all rights belong to the people, and none to the government. There are, and have to be, limitations to every right, but the first thing to be acknowledged is that governments have no rights. Once you get past that the rest is easy. Well, easy to understand as a concept. The direct impact on everyone's lives is never easy.
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It makes sense in a way, I think once upon a time we had a similar sort of system in the UK, but it was more geared towards raising a strong army in times of national conflict. Edward III put it thus:
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"Whereas the people of our realm, rich and poor alike, were accustomed formerly in their games to practise archery – whence by God's help, it is well known that high honour and profit came to our realm, and no small advantage to ourselves in our warlike enterprises... that every man in the same country, if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows... and so learn and practise archery."
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Obviously this meant that most young men had access to a bow and arrow or knew someone who did, there was limited control over it, and I think the only real limiting factor for weaponry and personal protection was how much money you had.
The attitude is much different these days. Yet this is not something that concerns most Europeans, even in areas which have not long ago been fairly badly hit by either conflict or civil unrest (I'm looking at Russia and Slovenia, of which I know we have had commentors in this thread).
I think, perhaps, it's the...I'm not sure what is quite the correct terminology to use here, indifference perhaps, to the lethality of the gun in culture which perhaps causes the problems. The sort of thing that makes someone shoot another person because of a disagreement over a parking space, or some fence posts or some such trivial matter. The gun, just like the bow for that matter, is not something you can stop once it's started. Once the trigger is pulled or string let loose, you can't stop the following result. So quite why people are so eager to pull that trigger is something that eludes me...fear that the other person might pull theirs first perhaps? I really don't know, but the amount of non-crime related gun deaths is surely something that any American wants to lower, I don't think anyone could possibly disagree with this.
The biggest hot topic is how to do that. In a manner similar to the way that drink-driving numbers are trying to be lowered? No-one seems keen on that idea, and yet trying to educate an unwilling public might not be feasible either.
Honestly, I wish I could put forward ideas that might help America, from an outside perspective, because although admittedly the amount of gun related injuries in America has dramatically increased the medical knowledge and treatment of gun related injuries, the pain it must cause the families of those involved. I mean, this two year old boy will grow up and learn that he killed his own mother, how the heck do you deal with that? His siblings, all younger than eleven years old, will have to deal with witnessing that.
How do you deal with that? At such a young age?
