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It's interesting to see the availability of firearms to citizens presented as a violation of human rights. >Firearms-related crimes posed serious threat to the

It's interesting to see the availability of firearms to citizens presented as a violation of human rights. >Firearms-related crimes posed serious threat to the lives and personal security of citizens in the U.S. Some shootings left astonishing casualties, such as the school shooting in Oakland, the Century 16 theater shooting in Colorado and the school shooting in Connecticut. Also, please be aware that this is a translation, which explains for the awkward and sometimes grammatically incorrect wording of this article.

dcc1 13y ago
Imagine trying to keep 1.2 billion people under a what amounts to a fascist/statist control if they were are as heavily armed as USasians
- brazzy 13y ago
  Nothing easier than that. Guns were very widely available in Germany after World War 1. http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcnazimyth.html http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcnazimyth.html Please realize that gun ownership as a constitutional right is an almost exclusively American idea and considered absolutely ludicrous by almost everyone else.
  - adventured 13y ago
    Speaking for seven billion people are you? The first thing fascist or communist countries do is strictly control who has access to guns. Supporters of the regime, in the case of Nazi Germany, were allowed to keep their guns, but other people were stripped of their weapons.
    - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      Liberal democracies also strictly control who has access to guns, and they go right on being liberal democracies, albeit with much lower rates of death by firearms. What's your point?
      - adventured 13y ago
        The point is you're wrong in the conclusion you're drawing. Switzerland is a liberal democracy, and every person has a gun basically. Meanwhile they have effectively zero gun crime. Britain has strict gun laws, and that has not dented their violent crime rate. Mexico has strict gun laws, and their gun homicide rate is higher than in the US. Why? The drug trade + poverty. America has a poverty + drug law problem. That's easy to prove by looking at the gun homicide rate from the 19th century, before alcohol prohibition invented organized crime, and before the modern drug wave + prohibition drug laws. Americans were heavily armed in the 19th century, without the rampant homicides by gun we see today in poor urban areas.
        RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        Some important points about Switzerland: * Switzerland constitutes an organized state militia in which the government obligates its citizens to undergo military weapons training with annual reserve training until age 30. * Citizens in the militia are required to possess and maintain weapons, but the use and storage of those weapons - and particularly their ammunition - is very tightly regulated (e.g. ammunition sold at a shooting range must be used there). * Citizens who decide to keep their weapons after their reserve obligations are complete must have a licence. * Citizens who want to purchase a gun must get a permit to do so. To get a permit, you must have a clean criminal record and pass a psychological screening. (Single shot rifles do not require a permit.) * The sale of automatic and selective-fire weapons is forbidden. (It is possible to buy one with a special permit from the police.) In short, Swiss gun laws are based on the idea that citizens may be called on to defend the country from attack; whereas American gun laws are based on the idea that citizens may have to defend themselves from their own government. The rules that govern responsible gun ownership and use in Switzerland would never be accepted in the United States by 2nd Amendment maximalists or the politicians they have intimidated. One more thing: despite the stricture of Swiss gun laws, Switzerland still has a firearms-related death rate - 3.84 per 100,000 - that is on the high end of liberal democracies; one-third the American rate and almost double the Canadian rate.
        13y ago
    - brazzy 13y ago
      > Speaking for seven billion people are you? 6.7 billion, give or take a few dozen million, yes. > The first thing fascist or communist countries do is strictly control who has access to guns. Nonsense. > Supporters of the regime, in the case of Nazi Germany, were allowed to keep their guns, but other people were stripped of their weapons. I'd be the first to consider it a huge warning sign when people are stripped of anything selectively depending on race, religion or political affiliation. That's the important part, not that it was about guns.
      - adventured 13y ago
        And speaking for 6.7 billion people doesn't strike you as arrogant eh? Saying something is non-sense, doesn't make it so, fortunately. Both the Bolsheviks and the Stalin led Communists attempted to remove guns from the lower classes in Russia. Indeed, Stalin instituted extreme gun restrictions, and then proceeded to terrorize the people of course. About the only thing you could get away with in Stalinist Russia was a hunting rifle in rural areas. Even when the Communists first took over Russia, they quickly passed laws as part of the criminal code stipulating that unauthorized ownership of a gun would result in hard labor, so they moved to strictly control all ownership by dictate and fear. Hitler's Nazi party initially attempted gun restrictions by performing house to house searches of their opponents to confiscate guns. The Weimar Government before him had already previously ordered the surrender of all firearms. All the Nazis had to do was selectively enforce the Weimar Government's already strict gun laws. But that wasn't enough, so in March 1938 the Nazis wrote their own strict gun control laws. But let's just read from history on how it worked in practice... "On November 9, 1938 and into the next morning, the Nazis unleashed a nationwide race riot. Mobs inspired by the government attacked Jews in their homes, looted Jewish businesses, and burned synagogues, with no interference from the police. The riot became known as "Kristallnacht" ("night of broken glass"). On November 11, Hitler issued a decree forbidding Jews to possess firearms, knives, or truncheons under any circumstances, and to surrender them immediately." It's obviously not that the fascists needed to disarm everybody, just their opponents. That's a critical point. One of the things the Nazis of Germany and the Communists of Russia have in common, is they immediately looked to control guns, so as to restrict opposition. It's common sense that that is exactly what a violent regime would do.
- rmc 13y ago
  It's probably be as easy as keeping all the black people as slaves or second class citizens.
Loic 13y ago
I suppose you can consider that the high number of deaths due to firearms in the US goes against the right to "life[1], liberty and security of person". From a European point of view, the US right to carry/own a weapon is so used and out of control that it affects this basic right to life. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_life
- wyqueshocec 13y ago
  If you deprive someone of their life with your weapon, that's a crime called murder. There is no right in the US to actually shoot anyone; you do realize that?
  - antman 13y ago
    It is not about if you have the right to shoot, it is about if you have the right not to get shot
TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
Well, I think some people see it as a recklessly irresponsible thing to do for citizens' safety.
Kurtz79 13y ago
"It's interesting to see the availability of firearms to citizens presented as a violation of human rights." It's a view a good majority of citizen in modern Democracies, excluding the US, would agree wholeheartedly with. Although I would define it more as "government wilfully endangering the lives of its citizens" rather than "violation of human rights".
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
> It's interesting to see the availability of firearms to citizens presented as a violation of human rights. The U.S. is an outlier among liberal democracies in its constitutional insistence that access to firearms is a human right. It's also, significantly, an outlier in its rate of firearm-related deaths, with a rate of over 10 per 100,000, similar to Panama and the Philippines and three times higher than the next highest liberal democracy. Canada, which has roughly the same culture and economy as the United States and shares the same continent, has a firearm death rate only one-fifth of the United States. Australia, which also has a similar culture, has a firearm death rate one-tenth of the United States. The United Kingdom's firearm death rate is one-fortieth that of the United States. I get that many Americans believe their 2nd Amendment is what restrains the government from tyranny, but the evidence across all the stable liberal democracies manifestly discredits this hypothesis. What keeps a government from tyranny is not the threat of armed revolt but ongoing broad civic engagement in a dense, complex and mutually reinforcing fabric of democratic institutions, traditions, practices and civic values exercised in open, transparent and accountable ways at every level of resolution from the federal government to municipal affairs. I would go so far as to argue that America's cultural hostility to the idea of government - the deep-seated belief that governments can never be trusted and will only behave (barely) under the constant threat of armed rebellion - is actually a major obstacle keeping the U.S. from becoming more functional and more accountable to its citizens. It's a failed 18th century idea that is holding America back from joining the rest of the industrialized world's norms of civility, and it helps to explain why the U.S. is an outlier in so many varied measures of life, health and wellbeing.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  It's also, significantly, an outlier in its rate of firearm-related deaths, The US is also an outlier in it's rate of bludgeoning and stabbing, at 1.7/100,000. By contrast, the murder rate (all weapons) in western europe is 1.0/100,000, southern europe is 1.4/100,000, and northern europe is 1.5/100,000. I suppose bill of rights causes stabbings and beatings also? http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

dcc1 13y ago

Imagine trying to keep 1.2 billion people under a what amounts to a fascist/statist control if they were are as heavily armed as USasians

brazzy 13y ago
Nothing easier than that. Guns were very widely available in Germany after World War 1. http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcnazimyth.html http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcnazimyth.html Please realize that gun ownership as a constitutional right is an almost exclusively American idea and considered absolutely ludicrous by almost everyone else.
- adventured 13y ago
  Speaking for seven billion people are you? The first thing fascist or communist countries do is strictly control who has access to guns. Supporters of the regime, in the case of Nazi Germany, were allowed to keep their guns, but other people were stripped of their weapons.
  - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
    Liberal democracies also strictly control who has access to guns, and they go right on being liberal democracies, albeit with much lower rates of death by firearms. What's your point?
    - adventured 13y ago
      The point is you're wrong in the conclusion you're drawing. Switzerland is a liberal democracy, and every person has a gun basically. Meanwhile they have effectively zero gun crime. Britain has strict gun laws, and that has not dented their violent crime rate. Mexico has strict gun laws, and their gun homicide rate is higher than in the US. Why? The drug trade + poverty. America has a poverty + drug law problem. That's easy to prove by looking at the gun homicide rate from the 19th century, before alcohol prohibition invented organized crime, and before the modern drug wave + prohibition drug laws. Americans were heavily armed in the 19th century, without the rampant homicides by gun we see today in poor urban areas.
      - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        Some important points about Switzerland: * Switzerland constitutes an organized state militia in which the government obligates its citizens to undergo military weapons training with annual reserve training until age 30. * Citizens in the militia are required to possess and maintain weapons, but the use and storage of those weapons - and particularly their ammunition - is very tightly regulated (e.g. ammunition sold at a shooting range must be used there). * Citizens who decide to keep their weapons after their reserve obligations are complete must have a licence. * Citizens who want to purchase a gun must get a permit to do so. To get a permit, you must have a clean criminal record and pass a psychological screening. (Single shot rifles do not require a permit.) * The sale of automatic and selective-fire weapons is forbidden. (It is possible to buy one with a special permit from the police.) In short, Swiss gun laws are based on the idea that citizens may be called on to defend the country from attack; whereas American gun laws are based on the idea that citizens may have to defend themselves from their own government. The rules that govern responsible gun ownership and use in Switzerland would never be accepted in the United States by 2nd Amendment maximalists or the politicians they have intimidated. One more thing: despite the stricture of Swiss gun laws, Switzerland still has a firearms-related death rate - 3.84 per 100,000 - that is on the high end of liberal democracies; one-third the American rate and almost double the Canadian rate.
        13y ago
  - brazzy 13y ago
    > Speaking for seven billion people are you? 6.7 billion, give or take a few dozen million, yes. > The first thing fascist or communist countries do is strictly control who has access to guns. Nonsense. > Supporters of the regime, in the case of Nazi Germany, were allowed to keep their guns, but other people were stripped of their weapons. I'd be the first to consider it a huge warning sign when people are stripped of anything selectively depending on race, religion or political affiliation. That's the important part, not that it was about guns.
    - adventured 13y ago
      And speaking for 6.7 billion people doesn't strike you as arrogant eh? Saying something is non-sense, doesn't make it so, fortunately. Both the Bolsheviks and the Stalin led Communists attempted to remove guns from the lower classes in Russia. Indeed, Stalin instituted extreme gun restrictions, and then proceeded to terrorize the people of course. About the only thing you could get away with in Stalinist Russia was a hunting rifle in rural areas. Even when the Communists first took over Russia, they quickly passed laws as part of the criminal code stipulating that unauthorized ownership of a gun would result in hard labor, so they moved to strictly control all ownership by dictate and fear. Hitler's Nazi party initially attempted gun restrictions by performing house to house searches of their opponents to confiscate guns. The Weimar Government before him had already previously ordered the surrender of all firearms. All the Nazis had to do was selectively enforce the Weimar Government's already strict gun laws. But that wasn't enough, so in March 1938 the Nazis wrote their own strict gun control laws. But let's just read from history on how it worked in practice... "On November 9, 1938 and into the next morning, the Nazis unleashed a nationwide race riot. Mobs inspired by the government attacked Jews in their homes, looted Jewish businesses, and burned synagogues, with no interference from the police. The riot became known as "Kristallnacht" ("night of broken glass"). On November 11, Hitler issued a decree forbidding Jews to possess firearms, knives, or truncheons under any circumstances, and to surrender them immediately." It's obviously not that the fascists needed to disarm everybody, just their opponents. That's a critical point. One of the things the Nazis of Germany and the Communists of Russia have in common, is they immediately looked to control guns, so as to restrict opposition. It's common sense that that is exactly what a violent regime would do.
rmc 13y ago
It's probably be as easy as keeping all the black people as slaves or second class citizens.

Loic 13y ago

I suppose you can consider that the high number of deaths due to firearms in the US goes against the right to "life[1], liberty and security of person". From a European point of view, the US right to carry/own a weapon is so used and out of control that it affects this basic right to life. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_life

wyqueshocec 13y ago
If you deprive someone of their life with your weapon, that's a crime called murder. There is no right in the US to actually shoot anyone; you do realize that?
- antman 13y ago
  It is not about if you have the right to shoot, it is about if you have the right not to get shot

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago

Well, I think some people see it as a recklessly irresponsible thing to do for citizens' safety.

Kurtz79 13y ago

"It's interesting to see the availability of firearms to citizens presented as a violation of human rights." It's a view a good majority of citizen in modern Democracies, excluding the US, would agree wholeheartedly with. Although I would define it more as "government wilfully endangering the lives of its citizens" rather than "violation of human rights".

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

> It's interesting to see the availability of firearms to citizens presented as a violation of human rights. The U.S. is an outlier among liberal democracies in its constitutional insistence that access to firearms is a human right. It's also, significantly, an outlier in its rate of firearm-related deaths, with a rate of over 10 per 100,000, similar to Panama and the Philippines and three times higher than the next highest liberal democracy. Canada, which has roughly the same culture and economy as the United States and shares the same continent, has a firearm death rate only one-fifth of the United States. Australia, which also has a similar culture, has a firearm death rate one-tenth of the United States. The United Kingdom's firearm death rate is one-fortieth that of the United States. I get that many Americans believe their 2nd Amendment is what restrains the government from tyranny, but the evidence across all the stable liberal democracies manifestly discredits this hypothesis. What keeps a government from tyranny is not the threat of armed revolt but ongoing broad civic engagement in a dense, complex and mutually reinforcing fabric of democratic institutions, traditions, practices and civic values exercised in open, transparent and accountable ways at every level of resolution from the federal government to municipal affairs. I would go so far as to argue that America's cultural hostility to the idea of government - the deep-seated belief that governments can never be trusted and will only behave (barely) under the constant threat of armed rebellion - is actually a major obstacle keeping the U.S. from becoming more functional and more accountable to its citizens. It's a failed 18th century idea that is holding America back from joining the rest of the industrialized world's norms of civility, and it helps to explain why the U.S. is an outlier in so many varied measures of life, health and wellbeing.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
It's also, significantly, an outlier in its rate of firearm-related deaths, The US is also an outlier in it's rate of bludgeoning and stabbing, at 1.7/100,000. By contrast, the murder rate (all weapons) in western europe is 1.0/100,000, southern europe is 1.4/100,000, and northern europe is 1.5/100,000. I suppose bill of rights causes stabbings and beatings also? http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...