Should America have gun rights in this day and age? Why? Why not?

As someone who lives in a country that doesn't have gun rights (Finland), seeing everything that happens over in USA is kinda disheartening to be honest. All of those school shootings and other incidents have really made me convinced that the 2nd is a relic that should never have a place in this day and age. I know USA has other problems of it's own too but fortunately nothing lasts forever and there's always a chance that USA can in fact change from the within as long as there's the will for it.

The 2nd was a product of it's time. Rifles were necessary for food and for defense. The founding fathers didn't trust armies so they didn't want to rely on one. The men in town all were part of the militia for their territory and did drill. That's why the well-regulated militia is part of the 2nd. With the US military today there is no need for regular citizens to worry about the need to defend the country. And TBH if they ever had to confront our military, one such excuse I see for those wanting the weapons, they wouldn't stand a chance anyway.

I'm not anti gun per se but the US has a major problem and it needs resolved. The NRA is the main point. Any legislation to make guns safer and they scream about it. Take money out of politics and we'd get some sensible legislation.

I'm a gun owner with a carry permit, and I don't think they should be taken away, but more regulated. All my firearms where purchased in a store and I walked out within 15 minutes with a firearm. background check completed, no questions asked, and that's not including the grey area sales at gun shows that don't require anything to purchase one. You need to have required training courses to have the skill to safely own a firearm. Mass Shootings are a major problem in the US, and getting much worse as poverty, racism, tribalism, and overall lack of education takes a bigger hold on America society. I've followed arguments on both sides, and both have valid arguments that statistically hold weight.

-Are mass shootings much more frequent because of easy accessibility to guns? YES, even kids are getting their hands on them.

-Will taking away guns stop violent crimes from illegal gun holders? NO, Illegal gun sales would simply grow as the demand increases.

-Is the 2nd Amendment right to a well regulated Militia still Viable? Hell NO, If we had to face a tyrannical military government, they could just cut off/overcharge ammo supplies (like they are now) and drone bomb the hell out of a militia with a laptop from 50 miles away.

-Are Pro gun organizations an issue with regulation because of lobbying? YES, the NRA spends millions upon millions every year to buy government official votes, which is an entirely different (and bigger) issue the US needs to tackle, but ignores.

-Are Anti-gun organizations completely ignorant of how guns work and have no idea what they're talking about? YES, just look at the bump stock fiasco and the new TSA regulations on appropriate guns. It's Dunning Kruger to a "T".

It's a super grey area that requires unbiased, non profit or politically motivated regulation to get on the right track, and that's not happening, your either black or white, no grey allowed. It requires intelligent processes and trained skills navigate this issue, which aren't currently present. I know I've had not one, but TWO occurrences in the last 5 years that put me in an unsafe situation, completely out of my control, where being armed was enough a deterrent to keep me safe. The sad truth is that a lot of places in America aren't safe anymore due to the above mentioned issues, and being armed is in your best interest to stay alive and safe.

this is far too reasonable a stance to take.

i don't see it going over well here :P

Ahem... It's no point listening to this communist

Did I do it right? :P

You do realize shootings and mass murder events happen in other countries as well, and their bans on firearms have done nothing to reduce those events? It's specious to believe banning something stops people from using it, and foolish to believe it's the only, the best, or even the deadliest option for someone wanting to maximize harm to others.

Secondly, there is less than 300 homicides per year that even include a rifle of any kind. And only a very small portion of those fit the category of an "assault rifle." So you would have to make an attempt to ban every type of firearm, and put forth measures to confiscate and destroy them all, and that just isn't happening. You'd end up in a situation where only those willing to break the law would be armed. It would also open a black market to the importation of firearms across our borders, and a bigger black market.

Secondly, the 2A has many uses, self defense being one of them. Can you honestly tell me a woman is going to stop herself from being gang raped by four men, each twice her size with a whistle, or some pepper spray? No, but guaranteed neither of those men will volunteer to be the first one to take a bullet. This is why crimes like sexual assaults have gone up in Europe and the same is true for home defense. Do you think a burglar honestly fears an 80 year old woman with a broom? But an 80 year old woman with a Glock is a different story. Certainly you do not want to make the elderly unable to defend themselves in home invasions, or women be easier victims to rapists, because of your misplaced fear in a tool villified by far left propaganda.

Lastly, the people who try to talk about "gun violence" statistics intentionally mislead you on the numbers in order to create the illusion of having more problems than we actually do. For example, people who have a political agenda against them will include non homicides in with their statistics. This means suicides, justifiable shootings in self defense, or police get lumped in in order to inflate the numbers. The dishonesty behind that should tell you their intentions are not altruistic, but political in nature. Do you think people who actually know the truth about, and use firearms on a regular basis are going to come to your side of the argument based on falsified information, and deceptively inflated statistics clearly pushed to drive a political wedge issue? Of course not.

__

Even the guy above claiming to be a gun owner with a carry permit just pushed dishonest, inaccurate information. People selling at gun shows require a background check or have to have the firearm transferred to the buyer via FFL who performs a background check. The "gun show loophole" doesn't exist, and it's an effort to go after private sales and make it illegal for example, to transfer a gun that has been in your family for generations to your child without having that firearm recorded, documented, and both your names tied to it. It's a thinly veiled attempt at a backdoor registration.

Secondly, his attempt to say mass shootings occur more frequently with guns is a captain obvious moment. It's like stating that most car accidents involve a motor vehicle of some sort. Well DUH!. However, that doesn't mean the absence of firearms reduces mass murders at all. As you'll find in Europe, other objects are used instead of equal to even deadlier results. Vehicle attacks, bombings. Bombs themselves being significantly easier to acquire than guns, and far deadlier, able to kill hundreds in a split second. So to pretend removing guns from the equation is going to stop or deter a single person intent on harming others is specious at best, if not completely ridiculous.

Whether or not anybody BELIEVES an arm populace can fight off the government is irrelevant. Just because someone doesn't think there is a chance, doesn't mean there isn't. After all, the US military has had all that superior weaponry in Vietnam and Afghanistan as well.

His claims about gun organizations is also false. The NRA has actually supported, if not assisted in the authoring of several major pieces of gun control. The National Firearms Act of 1934 which has no legal grounds to exist anymore in 2021 as the parameters in which SCOTUS ruled in its favor in 1939 are no longer relevant today. The NRA also supported the 68 Gun Control Act, '86 FOPA, and attempt to derail DC V Heller which reaffirmed that yes, the individual has the right as outlined in the constitution and reaffirmed by SEVERAL papers and publications by the founders which confirmed that fact.

I've posted these quotes ad nauseum to confirm beyond any shadow of a doubt about the meaning of the 2A, but every time someone comes up with another one of these silly, misguided threads, they seem to have forgotten them and you'll find a few try to claim it applies to the National Guard or some other similarly dumb comment.

Furthermore, the rate of gun ownership in the US has been skyrocketing, and the homicide rate has been in decline. There's no correlation between homicide rate and gun ownership.

@rmiller365:

It's nice to see a moderate stance for once; I share similar opinions and I often get attacked for being "an extreme liberal" despite supporting one's right to own a firearm.

yes, exactly!

"Socialist" and "pinko commie" would also be acceptable.

Right on cue!

Even managed to deride the moderate gun owner. "Even the guy above claiming to be a gun owner..."

lol claiming. I can see the eye roll, your suspicion-laden doubt. You have to be a fanatic to be a gun owner these days? Anyone else is a liar?

SMH no room for a middle ground I guess.

@mrbojangles25: Yeah, it's almost as if he doesn't know gun laws can very from state to state and just throws shade to fit his own rhetoric. Just for fun, I'll provide sources rather than shade.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.keranews.org/news/2019-02-06/what-the-so-called-gun-show-loophole-really-looks-like%3f_amp=true

https://www.statista.com/statistics/249398/lobbying-expenditures-of-the-national-rifle-associaction-in-the-united-states/

Well this is a welcoming sight of a previously banned user. And a hastily goodbye as well. Bye bye!

gun sales have skyrocketed, overall gun ownership as a % of households has been relatively steady over the past 30 years.

so what is happening here? the same people are buying multiple guns and having kids ( new households ) who also are buying multiple guns.

as a % of the population, gun ownership levels remain fairly stagnant.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/

My right to love whoever, my right to my body, and my right to bear arms.

No. You dont need one, it was a product of its time and today it just causes a security risk.

Shall not be infringed, gun owners won't give up their arms no matter what laws you try to pass anyway. Its not even an argument imo, it's our 2nd amendment.

The 2nd amendment is to keep the government in check. Those saying it's for hunting are ignorant or lying because they want to grab power by disarming the citizens.

Actually if we want to go all founders view of the 2nd amendment it was because they didn't trust standing armies so the people had to be the defense. They drilled as well. But don't let facts get in the way.

There is also no way you beat a real army with your guns.

@LJS9502_basic: Agreed. As the military has shown that they've gone woke they've proven they don't have the people's or the constitution's backs. Any actual armed push back from the citizens against America's corrupt government would surely end in a blood bath and many Swiss Cheesed citizen corpses.

@Telekill: true but even if that's the case, why would we ever WANT to be disarmed.

I've never understood the argument that the government could just drone and bomb us. Even if so, I'd want something to protect myself from tyrannical over reach. Even if it is bottom of the barrel. Vietcong and the Taliban did pretty well. Our military on paper should have destroyed them.

It's not the first time the American people were told they'd stand no chance against the worlds largest military. But this hard-on the left has for authoritarianism, and the idea of the government using military against people they disagree with is certainly concerning behavior. You can tell those on the left would be absolutely gleeful for a dictatorship if they thought it was on their side.

It's certainly not a good behavior if they ever want to convince the 100 million or so gun owners that their intentions are actually altruistic. The more they go after the 2A, the more people realize just how important it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

Not the brightest post I've seen here.

The right is the party of authoritarianism which is why trump is still relevant to them.

Speaking truth about some citizens trying to take on a large, well equipped military doesn't mean one agrees with the action but the reality of the logistics of said folly. It's delusional to think a few people with some guns is beating the the US military with tanks, drones, bombs etc.

But keep living in the pretense I guess.

I don't understand why the left seem to like, even love, the idea of having our rights stripped from us? It's a disgusting thing to be honest.

I don't understand why the left seem to like, even love, the idea of having our rights stripped from us? It's a disgusting thing to be honest.

So I guess you are really mad that the right is chipping away at voting rights because thus far that the only right being attacked.

@horgen: why are you linking me this? Yeah china government killed their protestors.

@LJS9502_basic: If they were I'd be upset about it, but like usual you're clueless.

You're ignoring what they are saying and doing so looks like you're clueless.

Spoken by the same guy who also thinks all wars are started by Republicans. I doubt you could even tell which direction was up at this point.

Last wars we've been in were started by Republicans. Fact.

That isn't what you said at all though, and you know it. Now you back track and shift goal posts and people are supposed to take you seriously in a discussion when you won't even back what you said a few days ago?

I know what I said. I said Republicans start more wars. They do.

@LJS9502_basic: Until Trump, that was their foreign policy schtick. "Democrats are wimps, we bring the boom. Yeehaw!"

Government has in the past killed their own citizens. With drones, the human interaction in doing so is placed further from the battlefield. Making the choice (shoot or not, not about the order itself) about following the order easier.

Except, that isn't what you said. You specifically said "Republicans get us into wars" and then later claimed that the only Democrats to start wars was Truman, which again was factually incorrect. You cannot claim you back up your statements and then intentionally lie about what your statements were and expect to be taken as credible.

So why should anyone think your opinion on gun ownership is any more valid? You speak from a place if dishonesty.

I deal in facts. You don't. I'm not interested in your poorly researched opinions.

i don't disagree with this, I don't think I was talking about this

this does not make me want to give up my 2A rights, if anything it emboldens my personal view

Amazing how they switched gears on their ideology in service to trump.

Not trying to give you a hard time, but what is your Mini-14 or SKS or bolt-action hunting rifle or whatever going to do against a drone?

Likewise, I wonder what the 2A and government says about GPS scramblers and drone disablers, as those would be far more effective at stopping a JDAM from blowing you up or a drone from finding you.

Die drones! Die!

It's such a stupid argument. So the government has nukes and drones. Big fucking deal. Does that mean going forward every citizen in every country should bend a knee to tyrants and dictators? That nobody should ever desire a form of government in which the balance of power ultimately lies with the citizens? It's the talking points of authoritarian apologists.

@mrbojangles25 said:

@sargentd said:

@horgen said:

@sargentd said:

@horgen: why are you linking me this? Yeah china government killed their protestors.

Government has in the past killed their own citizens. With drones, the human interaction in doing so is placed further from the battlefield. Making the choice (shoot or not, not about the order itself) about following the order easier.

i don't disagree with this, I don't think I was talking about this

this does not make me want to give up my 2A rights, if anything it emboldens my personal view

Not trying to give you a hard time, but what is your Mini-14 or SKS or bolt-action hunting rifle or whatever going to do against a drone?

Likewise, I wonder what the 2A and government says about GPS scramblers and drone disablers, as those would be far more effective at stopping a JDAM from blowing you up or a drone from finding you.

Die drones! Die!

I just don't get the argument, yeah the government could drone us, airstrikes, or just nuke us all.

so what? why would that make me want to give up my 2A rights?

Its like saying if a guy was coming to your house with 20 machine guns and 100 people decked out in body armor with 50 cal snipers watching from the hills... and you have the option of being able to have a gun or not having a gun... why would you not want the gun??

Again I'm not making the claim civilians with guns are more powerful than our military's weaponry... of coarse its not.

but for shit and giggles,

Hypothetically speaking if the government was going to go full on tyrannical against its citizens. wouldn't it most likely be with boots on the ground coming into peoples towns, cities, and homes and not just mass bombing everything?

A true tyrannical government would most likely want to control the populace not completely level it.

I truly don't get the argument.. government is more powerful anyway so give up your 2A rights?? lol

That's not the argument. Maybe read without bias.

@sargentd: to answer your question: our government has a policy of not killing unarmed civilians, at least not in direct combat (bomb strikes and other "collateral damage" obviously still incur civilian deaths).

So if this doomsday scenario occurred, my odds of survival would be higher if I were unarmed than armed. The second I pick up a gun is the second I'm a target.

So to answer your question: no, I'd rather not be armed.

Honestly out of all the doomsday, end of the world scenarios, the only time I'd want to be armed is during a zombie/robot/alien apocalypse.

I think the argument is more along the lines of this: the reason you have guns is pointless, and actually doing more harm against the society you think you need to protect from the government than the government will ever do.

Not saying I believe that, as I am a big believer in deterrents (necessary evil, and a few million armed citizens is a deterrent), but it the argument has its merits.

Government has always lead a military that in most cases has more strength, weapons, and funding than its people. That's never changed. Nor has the need for the balance of power to remain in the hands of the people, and not in the hands of an oligarchy, or aristocracy. I'm not sure why the idea of people who do not wish to be ruled by tyrants having any means to defend themselves from such is so unpalatable to them. They pretend to be against the elites, and big corporations, and the 1%, yet at every turn tell us we shouldn't even resist their claims to power in any fashion.

They are hypocrites through and through.

Except that assertion isn't based in fact, but emotions and opinions. To say they do society more harm than good when all the statistics from the US, and other western countries that have had large scale gun control measures passed shows no correlation between any kind of increase in crime or homicide to the rate of gun ownership. It's why people who argue against the right have to sensationalize rare events in order to tug on the emotional aspect of it, because they cannot get their point through on fact.

And studies actually done have shown firearms to be used an overwhelmingly greater amount in defense than to offend another. Burglaries, rapes, car jackings, muggings, etc. Guns are used at much greater rates by the victim to protect themselves than by the would be assailants.

So, the fact is, you'd be doing more harm than good, and the people who have fed you the disinformation you just repeated do not care about that. They have ulterior motives, like creating a political wedge issue they can capitalize on during election years.

As long as the government is staffed by people, for the people, and not the oligarchs and aristocracy, I think things are for the most part fine. The military is staffed by regular folks, they won't turn their guns on their own people simple because some rich asshole says they should. Generals and military leaders voiced dissent during Trump's tenure; these people are not mindless drones. They're intelligent, free-thinking patriots who defend the people, arguably before they would defend the government in many cases.

You look at history, a lot of these folks you are afraid of are groomed to be psychopaths. Hitler's SS had to be hand-picked and even then there were serious problems because a lot of those guys would suffer PTSD and many even killed themselves after committing acts of genocide.

Killing other people is not a normal thing, it's not the default nature of humans; the daily struggle of humanity is not "Man I want to kill some people, but I can't. AHHH this is so tough". We are social, communal creatures and it's more natural to want to get along with other people than to want to kill them.

People that are under the impression that it's simply a matter of time and/or a simple order until their military (at least in the Western world) turns around and starts shooting their own people don't really have a solid understanding of human nature IMO.

Obviously it's easier to do this in shitty parts of the world; you take some people that have nothing, give them everything, and say "all you gotta do is kill who I want you to kill", then that's a little easier. But in the Western world where standards of living are relatively high, not such a big concern.

Mate, your first sentence is bullshit and the US still leads by far the gun related murders in the western world which you still seem to ignore cobber.

I do feel I'm lucky for being born in a country that doesn't have a gun culture. But for the USA, honestly it makes as much sense talking about restricting guns as asking a religious fundamentalist to not base his life on what someone wrote on a piece of paper. It's irrational, based on fear and indoctrinated from a young age. It's part of the culture.

There's a mass shooting every day in America, and America's excess of guns are smuggled to other countries, resulting in violent crime going up in those places.

Really psychotic mindset that you claim to live in the world's greatest country, yet you feel the need to have an arsenal of weapons because a random stranger may kill you at the supermarket.

There's a reason why other countries don't have mass shootings all the time, and it's because they have pragmatic gun laws. When there is a mass shooting, all these country's immediate reaction is to look over and modify their gun laws to prevent another mass shooting. Sure beats America's reaction, which is doing nothing. Oh, and these countries (Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, etc.) are not dictatorships.

Also really batshit insane that the same people who are pro-gun are also pro-military and cop, despite the fact that the reason they why they bought a shitload of guns to begin with is the fear that the military or police may become too powerful and take over.