But then the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising knew they could not hope to win...only that they wished to die fighting. Your willingness to not fight should not affect my access to guns so that I may.

@TheInterlooper: Fair enough; good points. My sci-fi-addled brain is conjuring up unimaginable scenarios involving men-that-stare-at-goats-meets-MIT-robotics-lab stuff like swarms of nanobots that carry paralytic nerve toxins or subsonic waves that cause intractable terror and pants-shitting...that kind of stuff... I'm not advicating for taking all the guns away, necessarily. I'm just thinking they probably wouldn't be as effective as we'd hope against whatever toys Uncle Sam's got in his basement these days...

You are exactly right, resistance against modern military is going to fail. For resistance fighters getting guns is the least of there problems.

thank you. I keep wondering how my gun (if I had one) would stand against all the armaments listed. If we have to fight our government that way we have already lost the battle.Better to flex our brains

Another forgotten fact from the gun nuts is that idea came to be when we were governed by a foreign government. I don't think the writers of the Constitution thought going to war with it's own citizens was something that should be promoted!!

@dahermit Your nonsensical example is terrible, and you can't even spell guerilla. Try again.

@dahermit That's a fair point. I never said anything about not fighting, or taking away your guns. Fight any way you want; die any way you want. If the US government of the 21st century turns against its citizens, I'm not going to cast aspersions against anyone doing whatever they feel like they need to do to survive, or cope, or die with dignity. I'm going to be too busy shitting my pants--sonic weapons or no.

@btroje & @HeathenFarmer: Exactly: if it comes to that, it's probably too late. And if not, it's more likely going to be a hacker with a well-crafted line of code that wins the day, rather than a crack-shot guerilla with a rifle. It's a different world we live in these days.

@wordywalt Show me where I used the word "guerilla".

Actually I have had that argument (minus the obvious sarcasm) put to me in all sincerity by gun lobbyists here (Oz) talking about both countries.

@TheInterlooper Typical tactic of a sloppy thinker: Ignore the main point and drum up a side issue. My main point was that your argument was terrible. The misspelling was just more sloppy work.

Who do you think makes and supplies those weapons to the government? I'll give you a hint, the government doesn't manufacture shit.

Or, maybe, just vote for the government most people want and think is most beneficial to everyone, instead of a tyrannical one, remembering that this is supposed to be a democracy?
Ah well, I have to admit though that the US has shown in the last presidential elections that quite obviously, that is not an option.

you've played knifey spooney before

We had kitchen knives used in a school stabbing incident - where my nephew attended High School. Worst text of my life: "Kevin is safe".... Me: "Why are you telling me Kevin is safe?" ...
"Because his High School is on TV".
[en.wikipedia.org]

It's not ONLY a gun problem.

It's not having schools safely guarded.

And our abysmal mental health system which has been experiencing funding cut backs for decades.(And people who are unhinged having access to rapid fire weapons). Weapons period.

In this case the kid carried the knives in his backpack - got off the bus and started stabbing right into the school. When school was being let in for the day. (I hope more don't figure that one out).

@RavenCT mental health is a global problem, I deal with it a few times a week, and it is a problem for me, I don't deal with it well, and they always single me out either for abuse, or to attach themselves to me, then start the abuse. We are a community organisation, many of our staff are mental health workers by training but none of them work in that role now. If someone turned up at work going nuts, (and they have) they would always go for me first (and they have). I can deal with lots of things but due to a family history, mental illness freaks me. I think mental illness is a social problem, I mean more than anxiety and depression I mean all the bi-polar schizo and other problems as well. I do not know if such occurred in pre-industrialised societies.Luckily fewer people here have ready access to guns.

@Rugglesby I entirely understand. I posted this to my page recently because this is a huge issue - the lack of funding in the Mental Health Field.

I worked for a Mobile Crisis team from 1988 - on into the late 90's. (We were the first one in Massachusetts). We were often called into schools for at risk teens. We worked in conjunction with the police and with a psychiatrist (available by phone) to get the person the help they needed. The cops took training in how to "Pink paper" (commit someone) and about the legalities surrounding it. (Sensitivity and Mental Health training too). We've lost so much ground in the Mental Health field.

@RavenCT Wow, I had not really heard much re mental health back in 88, as in not about problems to this extent. Unstable people make me uncomfortable yet I love working with people with intellectual disabilities. Because Johnny Public does not register a difference people assume I have a mental health background. Wrong.

It is so very stressful, I have had to deal with so many kids who consider suicide, sadly some have succeeded. My daughter has lost a couple of her closest friends to it. I just want to get to the bottom of it. What is lacking in our way of life that causes these issues? Alienation I believe is a big part of it, as well as pressure to conform, succeed and so many other things, then we get into drug issues.

@Rugglesby I was fresh out of college and darn lucky that a person being trained failed the program - so I got slotted in. I really enjoyed that work. Burnout though is a huge issue.

I am terrible with intellectual disabilities - and we had crossover - as I'm sure you know. But I grew up having an Uncle with Int. Disabilities and he was a terror to my Dad and his siblings so see? It happens in reverse too!

There's always been Mentally Ill in the world - but I think the way Society is handling some of it just isn't working anymore.

We went from being ashamed of locked long term hospitals and there are the rare patients who just can't be safe elsewhere. We need to make that type of locked unit not horrible.

And gees when someone is reported as a risk it needs to be handled. (Check and if there is an issue - treatment - locked unit if needed).

Are you well funded there or do you struggle with getting enough funds to keep services going?

@RavenCT We are totally and absolutely unfunded where I work. We had money for the first 10 years to help us establish, now we have been on our own for 2 full years thus far. However we do have access to first class support for mental health, legal and other issues, and they are funded. We have had to call in the mental health people on a couple of occasions as we felt the people were at risk. My sister has severe intellectual disabilities, and she is as gentle as, a younger brother has tried to kill us a few times, often when I was asleep as a teen, hence my fears.I can understand you situation with your uncle.

@Rugglesby Well your lack of funding doesn't surprise me.

I guess the US doesn't corner the market on not taking care of people.

Yes we are the opposite in which population we deal with well - for almost the same reasons. Fortunately not in my household.

Hang in there doing the good work!

I have big knives too. As an Apache descendent I was raised to appreciate and respect a good knife. As an American I have also been raised to respect and value weapons of all kinds. Your knife vs my custom built M-40 A2 is no contest. I can hit a 3x5 index card at 1000 yards with that gun. I shoot depalma matches. No knife has that range. You call that a weapon? No, thats a weapon. pulls out a pistol

@jayneonacobb I think we should respect all weapons and potential weapons. A firearm is simply a tool, it is the person who makes it a weapon. Back in our early days, most people had guns, mostly for hunting food, sadly also for fighting the original inhabitants. We don't have lions or bears, our dangerous land animals are tiny. We do have a lot of mentally ill people here, both in and out of politics and I prefer it is not easy for them to get their hands on firearms that they can use against innocent people safely from a distance.

@Rugglesby we have a series of laws here which exclude the insane from owning firearms. Unfortunately they are not enforced most of the time. That's a problem, I agree.

I've been saying that for sometime, my only difference is you could actually own the gun, stored at shooting facility.

I had a gun for my job at a young age, I was trained to use it and had to attend regular practice. I was under age and would not have been able to own a gun, but licensed to use guns by my employer due to some unusual conflicting laws. I enjoyed it, loved practice every Wednesday afternoon. Then a co-worker, my supervisor almost killed fellow staff on 2 occasions when I was not present and a client on another occasion when I was, so I removed his bullets and locked them away. I surrendered mine as soon as we were not legally required to have them. Just the risk of someone over powering us and taking them was too great.

Absolutely; and I would add cowardice. I have a sign next to my driveway that says this is a gun free zone. NRA members not welcomed. All my neighbors have praised me for this. Some of us believe one must be ready to die for what one believes. The paranoid gun people feel they are ready to kill for their beliefs.

Absolutely correct!

@atheist Excessive power in the hands of special interests, and political corruption of politics and politicians by the money from those special interests.

@atheist follow the $$$

How's Chicago doing?

must be much worse with a religious nut with guns

I have a question: If mental illness is a reason to deny gun ownership what about those troops who are receiving benefits for PTSD? Don't they qualify for not being allowed to have guns?

@LeighShelton for some, the guns themselves are a religion, with gods having nothing to do with their fervor !

@JackPedigo It seems that's determined on a case by case - not sure if there's a general ruling for all presently...

@JackPedigo the term mental illness is a bit vague.There are some diagnoses that would have a correlation to poor impulse control or violence and others less so.I wish so many of these mass killings didnt end up with the perpetrator;s death so we could get a better idea of what they were thinking instead of studying their life with a retrospectoscope.

@btroje I would think war induced PTSD would be a good reason to deny weapons. My question was to show how conservatives could push loopholes against mental health denials of owning guns.

oh yes, I see that and it's my reasoning for my last lot of blocked idiots @evergreen. I mean a combination of both

@JackPedigo agreed

@JackPedigo a young guy moved near me about 6 months back, he was in the same unit in Afghanistan as some young friends of mine, I went and saw them off at the base. So when he moved here he came and introduced himself.
He is suffering badly from PTSD and has come to my work place a few times. He was a sniper, he is not permitted to own firearms now. He is peeved about it. But I agree with the ban, so many of his unit have committed suicide since returning, yet they lost none over there.

So it is being applied, good.

My sister was married briefly to a guy who served in Nam. He had a baseball bat next to the bed and would sometimes wake up screaming and swinging the bat. Scary.

@Rugglesby

Substantial and rational improvements.

Hell yes!!

You don't understand the bill of rights.

@jayneonacobb yeah, okay, thanx

I feel like I should also give some credit to the gun industry, which has enough money and power to buy our government, and last, but certainly not least...religions and politicians that help us hate each other.

@Akfishlady and even in dangerous situations it is still possible to flex your brain and come out ok.If people werent so out of control I would be fine with the responsible gun ownership concept but then you have to consider all the accidental deaths etc that are in the background to all the more newsy mass killings

@btroje I see the possession of a gun an easy way to deal with a situation; shoot first and ask questions later. It is the simpletons and cowards way of dealing with touchy situations. A report said that women cops are better at handling bad situations then their male counterparts. The women talk and the males go in with guns drawn. Maybe it's a hormonal thing.

@JackPedigo & @Akfishlady I am reading "Women After All" by anthropologist and physician Melvin Konner which explores the biological bases for gender and the kind of behavioral phenomenon to which you alluded. Dr. K's bald faced assertion is that women are superior to men, the reasons for this are rooted in biology, and the world will be much better off when it is run by women. Fascinating book. Just started it, but 10/10 would recommend.

@stinkeye_a I remember a German book I read years ago written by a woman who had and idea about what if women ruled the world. It was pretty much as today but with a twist. Women were in the military and fought whereas men held supporting roles. If a woman raped a man and got pregnant he would be responsible for raising the child. Women didn't have to wear bras but men had to wear jock straps and on and on. It was pretty interesting.

@Akfishlady I think it's not how much they say but what they say that is important. Women seem to be better at convincing talk then men. My late partner was a prime example. She could and did say anything to anyone and they would listen.

@JackPedigo I was assaulted once, convinced the guy I liked and asked for his name and phone number since " I had never experienced anything like that before". He gave it to me and served time

Damn. I knew it would be our fault!

@Uncorrugated I'm not saying there aren't women who haven't contributed to this, because there are.

I can not understand the idea of "self/home/property protection" unless i look at it from the point of an over armed society seems like a feedback loop to me. I own 7 guns and I am appalled by the very idea that I would shoot someone over property or even for self protection. I might be able to shoot a person if that person shoot at me first but, I live in Canada those kind of things have an almost zero chance of happening, hell I don't even lock my door.

Another possibility is it's a holdover from the antebellum South, where white people were always in fear of a slave uprising. Southern states tend to be the most gun-friendly, and many gun nuts are paranoid about the federal government - i.e. the folks who made integrated public schools among other offenses to "states rights."

@TXLarry That's definitely a factor. I completely agree. The West is just as guilty of that mindset as well. Only with Indians, and Mexicans, and Chinese, etc, etc.

@atheist reality can still be recognized by an optimist without dumping the glass.

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you already have most of those in place now to some degree?

And that still doesn't answer why you support the right to own a killing machine.

@Uncorrugated I should let the person who protected his son's life to answer your question. He shot the dude who broke into his home.carrying a big revolver. Too bad that sharp shooter passed few years ago....my brother is still alive.

@Uncorrugated The gun laws are State by State. Which is very crazy. You may cross a State line going to a shooting range and suddenly not be legal.

I recently watched a show where a girl tuned 18 in Texas and was brought to the gun shop to pick out a gun. She wanted "The Pink one". Didn't know the difference between guns - had no training -nothing, It's an open carry state.

Not so here in CT. You have to take a licensing course - and get a license from the Police in your area (and fingerprinted). Pretty certain they do a criminal records check.

My largest issue is no mental health check. And the age. Below age 25? No - just no. We now know the brain isn't mature until that age. (Maybe for hunting as there are people who really supplement this way). But I'd say with an adult present who is responsible for that person.

And yes it's very confusing. As a women living alone I became licensed after 9/11. (I waited a full year to see if I would feel the same way). And women to my knowledge aren't usually shooters in mass shootings.

Also part of it is being such a young country. Especially as divided as we are right now by the religious politicians.

Good starts. I would add that civilians do not need any semiautomatic weapons.

@wafflestomp did u read my suggestions about how the laws should be modify? U r welcome to add yours.

@RavenCT The guns laws should be federal.

Thanks for the considered reply.
If you take away the "inalienable right" bit of your reply - which really is irrelevant to the questions I posed. Who decided that this 'right' was in fact a right and that it could never be change - sounds so much like the bible pushers argument to me - my initial question was how do you balance this right with the number of gun deaths in your country.

Who makes weapons has no bearing on who can own them and certainly has no correlation to intellectual property - that goes with the patent holder. Nukes are also made by private citizens as is heroin and DDT.

TV isn't reality - you've been shot, stabbed and prevented 4 robberies - that looks pretty much like TV to me. No such excitement here in the UK for me.

80x more crimes are stopped than happen by having guns - shit, the states is even more lawless than I thought.

False sense of security? Yoy have no sense of security and absolutely no idea what it is to feel safe in your own home. I can walk around unarmed at night without the fear of being attacked. So can my friends and nieghbours. I feel sad that you live in such a paranoid society and I am glad that I have a 'false sense' of security and can get on with my life peacefully.

Now answer the question - how do you propose to reduce the number of gun deaths whilst keeping your rapid shot guns, rifles and hand guns without just restating that it is your right to keep them?

@Uncorrugated first of all, don't make demands of me. Second of all, those weapons designs are the IP of the person who holds the patent. For example I am the only one in the world who can cut a certain crown. That is my intilectual property. I'm the US the person who owns the company that produces the product is the property of the company and as such those products are owned by the owner of that company. If a private citizen can't own something, they can not make it as they own the product before it is sold.

The founding fathers decided that it was "The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." If it can not be infringed upon, it is inalinable and unabridgable. It is relevant for you to know that as this negates your plan to abridge the right to keep and bear arms.

You have no way to defend your self against an armed attacker. You may feel safe, but so did the folks of Charlie Hebdo, London, Paris, etc.. That means you have a false sense of security.

It is my right to keep and bear arms. That is the answer to your question. Nothing can legally be done about gun ownership here because it is a right. It is a problem with our mental health and judical systems, not inanimate objects. The laws are not being enforced. The kid that shot up the school in Florida had been known to have engaged in behavior that is often indicative of that of a serial killer. He was known to the school as a potential danger and as such should have been admitted to a psychiatric facility and given an evaluation. They failed to do their duty and he was not treated for his mental illness. My solution is to enforce the laws and policies we already have regarding mental health and guns. If they were we could have avoided many of these tragidies.

I really am trying to get some sense out of your replies.

How does restricting people's right to bear arms not conflict with the second amendment's inalienable right to bear arms. Where in the constitution does it say that right can be infringed for particular groups of people? There seems to be significant discourse in the US about if and how guns can be regulated. You can't seem to agree on what guns are ok to own. Young gang members are not mentally ill. Nor is a felon that has completed their prison term and is back out in society. Where does it say in the constitution that the right to bear arms can be infringed for particular groups of people?

That said, the statistics I could find do seem to indicate that those states with the strictest gun laws appear to have the least deaths and injuries.

Who decides which people have the right to bear arms? And notwithstanding this right to bear arms, how can deaths by shooting be reduced - bear in mind that 61% of deaths by gun in the States are suicides and the figures do not include non-fatal gun injuries.

As for your "self-defence" argument and false sense of security, there were 26 fatal shootings in the UK in 2016 (equivalent to 130 in the US if we adjust for population difference) in a population of 64 million. I have more chance of winning the lottery. Actually, I don't because I don't do the lottery.

I appreciate that there is no easy answer - gun culture is so ingrained in the US that any change will have to be incremental. But consider this, are the 33.000 deaths and 130,000
injuries from guns each year, acceptable collateral damage for the right to bear arms? Or is there another way?

@Uncorrugated first off the government has the ability to revoke certain rights of persons who are severely mentally ill or are in some phase of the justice system for obvious reasons. Those are good laws. I support them because when enforced they are effective. Once a person is deemed a danger to society they are no longer a full citizen. That's how all prisons and mental health facilities work.

The founding fathers recognized the right of the people to keep and bear arms, no one decided it was a right. Note the use of the word "recognized" in my response.

26 is a high number of homicides committed in a country that has far fewer people and guns. Not to mention strict gun control laws. That negates your argument, hell, even one homicide proves that your gun control doesn't work.

Consider the fact that guns stop crimes more often than they are used to commit them by a factor of 80 in the US. That's 80 times more, not a percentage.

It is not acceptable, but that doesn't mean that taking away the rights of the American people is acceptable either. If we enforced the legal gun control we do have we would not have these problems to the degree that we do now. Chicago is a prime example of strict gun laws failing to protect anyone. Criminals don't respect the law, that is what all criminals have in common.

Guns are legal in Brazil and can be bought and owned if you are over 25 and hold a gun licence.

@Uncorrugated [pt.wikipedia.org]

Second paragraph: "The government had a referendum in 2005 for the population to give their agreement to article 35 of the law, which dealt about the prohibition on firearms and ammo sales across the whole national territory. The article was rejected by 63.94% of the population". -- but the law passed anyway.

Fourth paragraph: "The law prohibits the possession of firearms by civilians, except in cases where need is demonstrated; in such cases, a probation period will be set in which the person must demonstrate the need to carry the firearm, register the gun and carry with the Federal Police or Army and pay heavy taxes."

So no, guns are not legal in Brazil. I could never ever own a gun. At least get minimally informed before saying baloney.

Edit: even the Wikipedia entry in English contains the least information you should know. Goddamn Wikipedia! And I'm not even in the "2nd amendment" crowd. Here: [en.wikipedia.org]
Next time you want to argue about laws with a native, at least research a bit.

I stand corrected. Although it is technically possible to own a gun, it is practically almost impossible.

The difficulty is, that like the USA, prior to 2005, gun ownership was common and the homicide rate astronomical. There is still a very high homicide rate - approx 60k a year - 2/3 of which were shootings. Brazilians, it would appear, just like killing each other.

Citing an exception to the norm still does not answer how the pro-gun lobby plan to reduce gun related deaths.

"In Brazil, all firearms are required to be registered with the minimum age for gun ownership being 25.[1] It is generally illegal to carry a gun outside a residence, and a special permit granting the right to do so is granted to certain groups, such as law enforcement officers.[2] To legally own a gun, an owner must hold a gun license, which costs BRL R$1000,[2] and pay a fee every three years to register the gun, currently at BRL R$85.[3] Registration can be done online or in person with the Federal Police.[4] Until 2008, unregistered guns could be legalized for free.[5]" From the Wiki page you referenced by the way - so you can see how easy it is to be misinformed. @hlfsousa