Poll: Research on the Police has shown....

[cdstephens]

As for the Second Amendment itself, the reason it was implemented had a lot to do with English influence since they had a similar law. Also, it had more purposes than it does now, including maintaining a militia, suppressing insurrection, helping to carry out the law, repelling invasion, and the like. The only way the Second Amendment is used today is either to a) make preparation for breaking a law, or b) self defense.

The problem with restricting guns is that criminals could have other sources for their weapons, as mentioned before. At the same time, people with access to these weapons would most likely use them to say, rob a bank, rather than hold up a McDonalds. So theoretically strict gun control on guns specifically meant to kill people (police exempted of course) could reduce crime in this manner. A knife is much less threatening than a gun.

At the same time, the application of such a hypothetical law would be....troublesome at best. Even if somehow the Amendment was repealed and they passed a gun control law, there would be massive resistance. And the people resisting are the ones who have guns. Obviously not the best situation, since it'd be like the restriction of alcohol, but with guns.

 

[GryffinDarkBreed]

Yes, yes, disarm the people. Be like Britain, the country with one of the HIGHEST rates of violent crime, robberies and burglaries of occupied homes.

Criminals don't get guns by legal means. Making guns illegal wouldn't stop them.

 

[drmigit2]

my point is that with the new law, police could immediately seize guns without a warrent as long as they arent a musket or something historical. This would put a serious damper on the gun trafficking and once we get a tight grip on things, we could restrict the importation and ban the manufacturing of guns outside of various factories, the general populace does not need to be able to easily kill one another and it is insane to think otherwise.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

We have the highest gun crime. Not the highest violent crime. Or the highest total crime. my answer still stands.

Violent crime is difficult to compare because of differences in how each country reports and classifies 'violent crime'. Same with 'total crime'.
However, all these systems agree that America is right up there in the upper range. For example, total crime:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri-crime-total-crimes

A better way to measure is perhaps using particular types of crime for the comparison.
Such as rapes, assaults or murders: (seen as what classifies as 'murder', or 'rape' has less room for interpretation than 'violent crime' or 'total crime')

Murders per 1000 people, from highest to lowest:
Russia: o.201534
South Africa: 0.0562789
America: 0.042802
India: 0.0344083
France: 0.0173272
Canada: 0.0149063
Britain: 0.0140633
Denmark: 0.0106775
Japan: 0.00499933

It might not be top of the world, but its certainly close. (though it's assumed these stats only include the developed nations, not third world nations due to their lack of accurate statistic tracking). Still:

"Nobody disputes one phenomenon disclosed by the crime statistics - the exceptionally high level of violent crime that occurs in the United States as compared with other industrialized countries, including Britain (though not compared with some third world countries). There are more reported murders each year in Detroit, with a population of just over one-and-a-half million, than in the whole of the United Kingdom, which has a population of just over fifty-eight million people. Viewed in this context, the United States is a culture in which crimes of violence flourish. Why should this be? The answer is sometimes given as the widespread availability of hand-guns and other firearms. This is surely relevant, but cannot on its own be the full answer. Switzerland has very low rates of violent crime, yet firearms are easily accessible. (All males keep weapons, including rifles, revolvers, automatic weapons, plus ammunition).?

-"Sociology" by Anthony Giddens (1997)23

"The United States has the world's highest rape rate of the countries that publish such statistics - 13 times higher than England and more than 20 times higher than Japan. [Senate Judiciary Committee, 1990. Facts about Violence Against Women.]?

-University of Alabama Women's Center24

Statistics such as these appear in the Fact Sheet on Gender Violence, published by the United Nations Non-Governmental Agency, UNIFEM, and available in the Sexual Assault Education Office (USA).

"WASHINGTON -- The United States is "the most violent and self-destructive nation on earth," a congressional report said Tuesday.

..."In 1990, the United States led the world with its murder, rape and robbery rates," the report said. "When viewed from the national perspective, these crime rates are sobering. When viewed from the international perspective, they are truly embarrassing."

The report noted that the murder rate in the United States was more than twice that of Northern Ireland, which is torn by civil war; four times that of Italy; nine times England's and 11 times Japan's. Violence against women in America was even more pervasive, the committee said. The rape rate in the United States was eight times higher than in France, 15 times higher than in England, 23 times higher than in Italy and 26 times higher than in Japan...

...based on raw FBI data and preliminary statistics for last year, based its comparisons on Justice Department statistics for industrialized nations. Crime reporting standards vary in those countries, and crime rates for less-developed Third World nations generally are either unavailable or unreliable. But the report made clear that violence in the United States has no equal among the world's developed nations. Nor did 1990 have a modern equal for violence in America.?

-Tim Weiner in San Jose Mercury News (1991)25
Source [http://www.vexen.co.uk/USA/hateamerica.html]

My country doesn't even make it into those lists, yours is in the top range above nearly all developed nations, as declared by your own congress. XD

But really that's probably a problem with your society more than anything else. I don't think adding more guns or even taking them a away would really help you guys(unfortunately).

Anyway, I'm out of here. We all know how these threads go and once you've seen* one, you've seen* them all.

*(or participated in)

 

[funguy2121]

I'll keep it short because people don't like to be destoryed by walls of text.

I've noticed in the last few years that gamers are a very very fickle former subculture. That is why I actually would like to have their opinion on this matter.

I just got done doing a little research for a speech class, and in the process I discovered something I had only ever heard in rumors or passing but never took the time to personally look into. As it turns out, via local courts and the United States Supreme Court, the Police in the United States are not legally nor do they have a "Consitutional Duty" to protect the people.

Simple google searches can provide dozens of case info pages so I won't ramble, but it does force the hand of that other discussion which is so popular here which is Gun Control. I've noticed that a lot of people from other countries have an even stronger negative opinion about Gun Control and the rampart problem in the US than liberals here do.

What I wonder via everyones thoughts is whether or not the problem is too few trained armed citizens (which is a constitutional right here and strongly supported and dictated by the founding fathers) or the absence of police obligated by law and review to do a proper job (or in general) of protecting the public.

Any thoughts?

Yes, please please source. This has my attention.

Armed citizens in this day in age don't make me feel secure the way they would have if it were 1776 and we'd just won our freedom from a tyrant who'd try to take it back in another 40 years. We absolutely need police.

 

[infinity_turtles]

Sigh. Look here.

Spoiler

Notice how all of the countries down at the bottom have strict gun control laws, and the countries up top do not.

Also, 'Joe Average' with a gun he may or may not know how to use properly verses a criminal, armed with a gun, with killing intent? Joe Average is a goner either way.

Notice how that's only a chart on gun deaths, not deaths in general? You may realize this skews things rather largely, as it's pretty obvious that more guns means crimes that would otherwise be done without them are more likely to swap tools, right?

Murder rate per 100,000 year 2010

United States: 5.1
Western and Central Europe: 1.2

You were saying?

And yet Switzerland has one of the most armed civilian populations in the world and has a lower murder rate then most of Europe, a noticeable portion of which comes from foreigners and tourists. There are other things that contribute to murder rate then gun ownership. Switzerland is ranked as one of the happiest/richest places in the world and has very little cultural diversity for instance. The US has a huge amount of cultural diversity, and culture clash is a major cause of violence. Not debating that the US doesn't see more violence, but that graph suggests a trend of increased violence/murder in countries with more legal gun ownership, which doesn't hold-up very well if you change it to non-gun crimes, as the two countries right behind the US on that graph actually have a lower murder-rate then is average for Europe. And let's not forget most of the countries with lots of violence have very strict gun laws, but aren't included in that graph. That would make that graphs inaccuracies pretty obvious, because it's going of the percent of households with legal firearms, which would lead to dots around the same place as England on the x-axis, but shooting way above the US in intentional gun murders.

So, I was saying that graph is heavily biased and isn't a fair account of how gun laws affect crime rates.

 

[David VanDusen]

Snip

Yes, please please source. This has my attention.

Armed citizens in this day in age don't make me feel secure the way they would have if it were 1776 and we'd just won our freedom from a tyrant who'd try to take it back in another 40 years. We absolutely need police.

I posted several links in other posts already sir/madam.

I find it interesting that there are several things that seem to consistantly either get over looked or ignored despite being brought up.

As the poster a few above me and a few others have pointed out (I think others), the Swiss have very very interesting statistics and numbers to look at.

I suppose in the interest of all involved I should declare a few things. I don't own a firearm. I will however own several by the end of next year. I currently live in Illinois which is the only state now in the US to not allow a CCW. (Concealed Carry) I live in a dominate college town which is one of the several home to a Campus shooting. It has also had 4 student related shootings that I know of this year. I do not feel safe here. I do not feel that it is safe for my wife to go out by herself at night and thus we don't. I'm not one of the many Americans who are delusional and think that the fear of the police or prison is enough to discourage a criminal. I'm also not delusional enough to believe that removing guns does anything than lower a few gun deaths. It will not remove the criminal element that is already alive and well in this country nor will it do anything but aid in the determination of the criminal element to strike more.

The United States is a social and economical nightmare. I cannot speak from first hand knowledge or extreme study, but I have to wonder if the UK or Canada really has as much of a poverty and low-encome issue rampant across their entire countries which create violence in every area? (to the extent levels of the US)

I've lived in IL, CA, AL, MN, and TX in various areas, towns, and cities. I can tell you without a doubt, every place I've lived in this country, every one of those locations either has it's own "Don't go there at night" or a town/city close by which harbours the same social stigma. There has yet to be somewhere I've been in which the poverty line does not rest on a close by boarder and fails to yield the source of the dominate criminal element.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

That has some interesting but misleading numbers. If you go by population alone, it doesn't make sense. However, if you look up the social and economical issues along with the cities, it starts to become more clear.

 

[funguy2121]

Snip

Yes, please please source. This has my attention.

Armed citizens in this day in age don't make me feel secure the way they would have if it were 1776 and we'd just won our freedom from a tyrant who'd try to take it back in another 40 years. We absolutely need police.

I posted several links in other posts already sir/madam.

I find it interesting that there are several things that seem to consistantly either get over looked or ignored despite being brought up.

As the poster a few above me and a few others have pointed out (I think others), the Swiss have very very interesting statistics and numbers to look at.

I suppose in the interest of all involved I should declare a few things. I don't own a firearm. I will however own several by the end of next year. I currently live in Illinois which is the only state now in the US to not allow a CCW. (Concealed Carry) I live in a dominate college town which is one of the several home to a Campus shooting. It has also had 4 student related shootings that I know of this year. I do not feel safe here. I do not feel that it is safe for my wife to go out by herself at night and thus we don't. I'm not one of the many Americans who are delusional and think that the fear of the police or prison is enough to discourage a criminal. I'm also not delusional enough to believe that removing guns does anything than lower a few gun deaths. It will not remove the criminal element that is already alive and well in this country nor will it do anything but aid in the determination of the criminal element to strike more.

The United States is a social and economical nightmare. I cannot speak from first hand knowledge or extreme study, but I have to wonder if the UK or Canada really has as much of a poverty and low-encome issue rampant across their entire countries which create violence in every area? (to the extent levels of the US)

I've lived in IL, CA, AL, MN, and TX in various areas, towns, and cities. I can tell you without a doubt, every place I've lived in this country, every one of those locations either has it's own "Don't go there at night" or a town/city close by which harbours the same social stigma. There has yet to be somewhere I've been in which the poverty line does not rest on a close by boarder and fails to yield the source of the dominate criminal element.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

That has some interesting but misleading numbers. If you go by population alone, it doesn't make sense. However, if you look up the social and economical issues along with the cities, it starts to become more clear.

Wow. Britain's society is literally crumbling right now because of "The Cuts," (which is where we're heading), as their economy collapses. You didn't know that? There's been riots all over Britain in the past year. Every city in the world has a "don't go there" part of town, because every city in the world has desperate, forsaken people and opportunistic roaches who dwell in such places.

I'm sorry, I was under the impression that you had the clarity of thought to understand what I was saying in plain English: please source your claim that the police are unconstitutional, not crime rates.

 

[funguy2121]

It's simple really. The more people who are armed, the less crime there is due to criminals knowing that their victims have guns.

So that's why the murder rate in Detroit is about 500x higher than Windsor,ON right across the river? *rolls eyes*

This, totally this. Personally, I don't want a population that is armed, paranoid and hateful. That turns to bloodthirsty/murderous way too fast.

Oh, and another thing, gun owners: if you haven't served at least one tour of combat, YOU ARE NOT JOHN RAMBO. You aren't John McClane, or Dirty Harry, or James Bond, or Jason Bourne, and I can guarantee you aren't the badass you think you're gonna be when you brandish your weapon. What gun nuts don't want to tell you is that they won't wait for a possible criminal to pull out their own weapon (which they may not even have) to shoot; they will pull out their penile compensator and wave it around just in case. This is when innocent people, including the lily-dicked revolver owner, get shot. It doesn't turn into a scene from The Usual Suspects.

We're supposed to stop playing cowboys and indians and cops and robbers when we hit puberty, boys.

 

[David VanDusen]

Snip

Wow. Britain's society is literally crumbling right now because of "The Cuts," (which is where we're heading), as their economy collapses. You didn't know that? There's been riots all over Britain in the past year. Every city in the world has a "don't go there" part of town, because every city in the world has desperate, forsaken people and opportunistic roaches who dwell in such places.

I'm sorry, I was under the impression that you had the clarity of thought to understand what I was saying in plain English: please source your claim that the police are unconstitutional, not crime rates.

I appologize. I am aware of the current issues going on in the UK and with the Euro currently, and I didn't mean to give the impression that you didn't have current issues. However, I was trying to stress a point verse the US and most of the European countries in which feel we are so "Gun Crazed" for no reason.

I still don't understand your seeming hostility about me posting sources. Again, I already did that a few times in this thread. I posted the news report with regards to the 2005 verdict by the Supreme Court. I could easily, and I commented on this in the first post, go down a list from a simple google search and link them. However, if someone is that interested in the information, they too could do that and read the main events of similar decisions.

I will say this about England over the US. You guys have balls and I envy you for that. I remember the riots last year ( I believe it was ) after the tuition rates being jacked up. I was proud to see you guys taking to the streets for that. The sad thing is, my country is too ignorant and lazy to do as such. Even given the OWS movement, we heard little to nothing about it on our news if it wasn't to completely slander the individuals taking part in it. There has been little to no coverage about the huge SEC scandel that was busted wide-open this year either.

So, in short, I'm sorry if I didn't seem like I paid any attention to other countries current events. However, I would say in my defense that the concept I was trying to illustrate was one of a constant poverty issue rather than a collapse in just the last two or three years.

And not to sound racist because it always gets thrown at me, but the US does have a problem with illegals from lots of countries, even as far as Russia and China. We don't talk about it much but we do have illegal immagrants running gangs here from all over the world. So not meaning to sound like a jerk, but if someone from the UK can talk about their growing problem with groups like MS13, I would love to hear the comparison.

 

[funguy2121]

Christ, man, I'm a Texan! You make a Helluvah lot of assumptions.

Snip

Wow. Britain's society is literally crumbling right now because of "The Cuts," (which is where we're heading), as their economy collapses. You didn't know that? There's been riots all over Britain in the past year. Every city in the world has a "don't go there" part of town, because every city in the world has desperate, forsaken people and opportunistic roaches who dwell in such places.

I'm sorry, I was under the impression that you had the clarity of thought to understand what I was saying in plain English: please source your claim that the police are unconstitutional, not crime rates.

I appologize. I am aware of the current issues going on in the UK and with the Euro currently, and I didn't mean to give the impression that you didn't have current issues. However, I was trying to stress a point verse the US and most of the European countries in which feel we are so "Gun Crazed" for no reason.

(1)I still don't understand your seeming hostility about me posting sources. Again, I already did that a few times in this thread. I posted the news report with regards to the 2005 verdict by the Supreme Court. I could easily, and I commented on this in the first post, go down a list from a simple google search and link them. However, if someone is that interested in the information, they too could do that and read the main events of similar decisions.

(2) I will say this about England over the US. You guys have balls and I envy you for that. I remember the riots last year ( I believe it was ) after the tuition rates being jacked up. I was proud to see you guys taking to the streets for that. The sad thing is, my country is too ignorant and lazy to do as such. Even given the OWS movement, we heard little to nothing about it on our news if it wasn't to completely slander the individuals taking part in it. There has been little to no coverage about the huge SEC scandel that was busted wide-open this year either.

So, in short, I'm sorry if I didn't seem like I paid any attention to other countries current events. However, I would say in my defense that the concept I was trying to illustrate was one of a constant poverty issue rather than a collapse in just the last two or three years.

(3)And not to sound racist because it always gets thrown at me, but the US does have a problem with illegals from lots of countries, even as far as Russia and China. We don't talk about it much but we do have illegal immagrants running gangs here from all over the world. So not meaning to sound like a jerk, but if someone from the UK can talk about their growing problem with groups like MS13, I would love to hear the comparison.

(1) I asked for a legitimate source and you provided me with a wikipedia page showing crime rates in US cities, which has nothing to do with the constitutionality of a police force. I looked through 2 pages and didn't see any sources on your claims in the OP.

(2) Your country is my country, and yes we are.

(3) Again, keep up. I've never stepped foot in the UK and I know that they have a lot of issues with immigrants - probably at least as much as we do. Also, we have legal immigrants and American citizens running gangs here. Race and cultural background have nothing to do, whatsoever, with gang membership.

 

[David VanDusen]

Christ, man, I'm a Texan! You make a Helluvah lot of assumptions.

Snip

(1) I asked for a legitimate source and you provided me with a wikipedia page showing crime rates in US cities, which has nothing to do with the constitutionality of a police force. I looked through 2 pages and didn't see any sources on your claims in the OP.

(2) Your country is my country, and yes we are.

(3) Again, keep up. I've never stepped foot in the UK and I know that they have a lot of issues with immigrants - probably at least as much as we do. Also, we have legal immigrants and American citizens running gangs here. Race and cultural background have nothing to do, whatsoever, with gang membership.

Here is some reading...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kasler-protection.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
http://publicsafetyproject.org/fei_immunity.html
http://libertyfight.0catch.com/outlawslegal.html

I did post the wrong wiki in a previous post. What I meant to post was...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
( The point being that while we are high on the list, we also DOMINATE population for the other countries we are usually paired against. We rank in populace some 230-260 Million more people than England, Canada, or Germany. )

Extremely good quotes with regards to the meaning of the 2nd Amendment and its purpose.

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." (James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 [June 8, 1789])

"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms." (Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169)

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, The Federalist Papers #46 at 243-244)

More located here... http://www.uhuh.com/guns/2ndquotes.htm

Now there could be an entire discussion on this. There is room for the conversation about how a country such as Germany has censorship, or how there are extremely invasive speech laws in most of Europe. It comes down, no matter how most would like to divide it, to the concept of Rights. Our Constitution is not invalid due to age. The ideals listed are there for very common sense reason. What is worse is that we as a country have lost our ideals and in it our ability to hold a voice. (And no I'm not talking about religion here.)

 

[David VanDusen]

While not trying to sound as if I'm attempted to envoke anarchy, I'd like to take one moment to add, in general, a conceptual message or question with regards to this.

We all, everyone reading these forms, currently live in a world and system in which the majority have little to no power. There are a few goverments out there who have yet to completely ruin the power intrusted to them by their people. However, if you look towards the Euro market, the US, an a few others, you will see a trend of Goverment running wild with little to no responsibility to their people. This, despite how some would like to agree, is a concept and struggle the founders of the US came to understand.

It is clear by their wording that the right to own physical power by the people was there because of a long history of what happens when the people do not have such power. What has seemingly been lost in the last hundred years or so in the US is that the people have time and time again handed over civil liberties and freedoms in the false assumption that "Government knows best." We, on a global scale, have come to bear witness to the colapse of that imagination.

I do not question the unanswerable of those questions which can not be answered but instead focus on what should be addressed and what is known. The removal of the ability to protect ones self, property, country, and rights, is one that can be divided into many sections. While I wish that there were no need for guns or war in the world, I will not delude myself into believing that somehow, the last 100 years of technology have somehow unwritten thousands of years of human behavior and history. People, at their core, are evil self serving creatures when pushed, and until the time comes in which the needs of all people are addressed to the point where the desire for more or better is quelled, the risk to the general people to be victims will always remain. And as long as that threat remains, I will always advocate for people to not depend on others to save you but to first take every step possible to protect yourselves.