Mariena said:
Shucks. What would happen if America was to ban all firearms, meaning you'd have to have a license to own firearms?
Some say that there will be 'mass robberies' and all that, because civilians will no longer have a gun to protect themselves against armed robbers. Other the other hand, I'm of the opinion that this is a load of bullwhacky because criminals will get their guns anyway.
In The Netherlands, for instance, it's illegal to carry firearms. It's illegal to own firearms, unless you have a license. And even that's checked regularly and you'd have to pass certain regulations and bla bla bla legal stuff.
We don't have guns, and we don't seem to have mass murders by psycho kids that took their dad's shotgun. But we also don't seem to have a stupid amount of armed robberies. We don't seem to have a stupid amount of criminals breaking into people houses with their guns, because the civilians living in those houses don't have a gun.
There are obviously still criminals with firearms. They'll always get their weapons through other means. So, if you ask me.. Get rid of that second Amendment.
Everywhere American cities and states have passed private concealed-carry permit laws, the violent crime rate has gone down because criminals now have to weigh the probability that their victim may be armed and within his rights to shoot and consider if the crime is worth that risk of death that comes from not knowing who's packing.
On the flip side of that coin, the laws in Britain are such that if someone invades your home you might as well pour them a cup of tea and ask them would they please kindly not steal from you because if you shoot them you're the one guilty of murder in the first.
It may be some inherent cultural superiority in the Netherlands (or Scandinavian countries, which have the same strictures against gun violence and the same low rates of personal and property crime) or it may just be that continental Europe has cameras everywhere in the cities so criminals know anything they do may be caught on tape. In America, where that level of surveillance is (for now) considered to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment (and possibly the Fifth), we need a...shall we say, more direct way of dealing with the problem.
American gun ownership and rights of self-defense is rooted in this country's individualistic culture and outlook, something continental Europe rather famously doesn't abide by---as P.J. O'Rourke said of Sweden in
Eat the Rich, "Sweden has created this wonderful system for achieving economic equality, but it only works on Swedes."
