But would you go so far as to argue that there shouldn’t be any restrictions on the sale, distribution and use of explosives? Quite frankly I don’t see that going well.
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I would think of trading in 2A if the cops also disarmed, SWAT went the way of the Dodo and we got universal healthcare and public servants who were held to a higher standard (not a lower one) - I think people are just going about “gun control” the wrong way… Why not offer up something people want in exchange for their right to bear arms instead of just taking that right away and leaving the people with nothing to show for it?
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I was under the impression that the 2nd amendment was incorporated, although I will readily admit that I am a little unclear about the implications of that because they are clearly not what it seems to say on the tin.
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I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that. I’ll look it up.
About Switzerland:
Some interesting stats, from a sortable list which includes the US, Switzerland, and many others:
- United States: 10.3 gun deaths per 100,000 / 101.053 firearms per 100 people
- …
- Switzerland: 3.84 gun deaths per 100,000 / 45.7 firearms per 100 people
- …[no other western european country until]…
- France: 3.01 gun deaths per 100,000 / 31.2 firearms per 100 people
- …
- Austria: 2.95 gun deaths per 100,000 / 30.4 firearms per 100 people
- Etc.
So it looks like the extent of the Swiss exception is:
- Although they have 46% more guns than the next western european country, they “only” have 28% more deaths per 100,000.
- Compared to the US which has 342% more guns, and 325% more deaths per 100,000.
That is not super convincing…
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The thing is, gun control laws rarely interfere with legitimate fun uses of firearms. I’m an American, but I lived a number of years in Canada and I assumed prior to going that all guns were illegal there. Not so. Hunting is quite a common hobby there as well. They just don’t tolerate guns whose entire purpose is killing humans. Seems reasonable enough for anyone.
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I fundamentally disagree on two counts:
1). The second amendement is clearly about guns that are intended to kill others.
2). Gun control, post-Defense Distributed, is a moot point because anyone with a 3D printer can produce their own gun, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it short of complete inspection of all electronic communications and censorship of the files that would produce guns. I’d rather have guns available to everyone than the government censoring the internet.
All good data to take into account, but one valid way to interpret those those statistics would be “it’s possible for a society to have a dramatically lower rate of gun deaths than the U.S. even when the vast majority of households have firearms.”
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It’s a frustrating conundrum. The 2nd Amendment, when you think about the time and spirit in which the Constitution was written, is perhaps the most radically egalitarian statement in the document. They had just successfully revolted against their home country, one where a peasant owning a sword was a death sentence. Why? Because it threatened the wealthy (landed gentry/nobility) minority.
There’s a reason all the early revolts were torches and pitchforks, because that’s as close to weapons as the rabble were allowed to have. In writing the 2nd Amendment, they posed a radical new classless society in strict contrast to what they had just left.
Now it’s unfortunately used by a splinter minority of weirdos to argue that there should be no restrictions at all on personal hand-cannon ownership. The vast majority of gun owners are sane people and the paranoid fringe tars them all with the “gun nut” brush in the public’s eye, like the guy that went to the airport the other day with a rifle slung over his back, and his 12-year-old son packing a pistol. That guy is an asshole.
It’s a big country–or as the article argues, 11 countries–and what seems like a sane gun policy here in SF isn’t one hunters in UP Michigan, or shooting-range guys in Kansas (or Texas, or Oregon), or paranoid militia guys (found wearing camo in the snack aisle at Wal-Mart). Or those secessionist counties in Colorado. Whatever.
It seems to me that maybe a good start would be to regulate guns and their owners as much as we regulate cars and their drivers–show basic competency in operation, register them once a year, and carry insurance in case of an accident. And if one registered to you is used to commit a crime, you’d best have an explanation for it.
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I cant believe I found a coherent and comprehensive argument in a forum topic about guns.
It´s a nice change. 
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I highly recommend the book. Looking at the specific historical and cultural foundations of different regions can explain a lot about voting patterns, cultural and political views that simplistic North/South or Urban/Rural views gloss over. In other news, one of Woodard’s previous books - “The Republic of Pirates”- is soon to be an NBC series with John Malkovitch as Blackbeard.
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Well, I did some investigation on Wikipedia, and this is what I found:
I think that this excerpt, from the “Decision” section, means that yes, states and municipalities can still put forth certain restrictions on firearms:
“The plurality decision also reaffirmed that certain firearms restrictions mentioned in District of Columbia v. Heller are assumed permissible and not directly dealt with in this case.”
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I blame the F-350 Lobby
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See also: the nine nations of North America.
Are you sure? Wikipedia’s articles on the 2nd Amendment and on the Bill of Rights 1689 suggest that the weapons laws in England were fairly liberal, and that the 2nd Amendment was following the example of those, not reacting against them.
Well, the supreme court has been ducking the issue for a long time, and the NRA did not want to press the issue, only recently did non NRA groups get to a point where they felt up to mounting a serious legal challenge. Previously, the court had mentioned the 4th amendment 4 times, once as a use of “the people”, one other trivial use, Cruckshank (nasty pre 14th amendment incorporation ruling), and Miller, where the defendants ran out of funds, and did not file a brief with the court on their appeal, and of course, they lost. So that’s why it was unsettled law, and much of the pro control rulings were basically made up by lower courts (and that is not the only place or subject, money talks).
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Fortunately the 2nd amendment has provided us with an endless supply of stories where upstanding citizens stand up to crooked cops and – by the might of their private arsenal! – win.
I put it to you that well regulated Swiss may be, well, more regular than my much-loved Cousins given the same framework… 
As someone who spent a happy childhood constructing IEDs from ingredients procured from the local chemists, I am intrigued by this ‘Dynamite Lobby’ of yours. Interests, relevancy, newsletter, and so forth…
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I think you’re confusing England with feudal Japan. England had “sturdy yeomen” rather than peasants, serfs or villains (although the distinction certainly wasn’t as great as the British would like to think it was). And after the plagues of the 14th century they also had a large merchant class, with nearly as much power as the nobility. A farmer would get in more trouble for owning a hand mill than for owning a sword.
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