Allowing citizens to have weapons cuts crime

The Sun News ^ | Aug. 29, 2006 | Rick Daniel

[Jeff Head]

An armed society is a polite society.

Molon Labe!

[dirtboy]

Allowing citizens to have weapons cuts crime

I would make one change here:

Halting Improper Government Restrictions on the Right to Have Weapons cuts crime.

We gotta change the mindset that government allows us to carry weapons. That's half the battle.

[relictele]

If South Carolina smalltown newspapers (and I include Myrtle Beach's the Sun News) are anything like ours, stories about gun ownership lowering crime will almost never get published.

These papers aren't elitist liberals like the Northeasterners, but they are a breed of all-government-is-good sheep that view DARE elementary school graduation as a headline story, because a) it happened at a public/government school, b) it involved police doing something other than law enforcement and c) it is worthless feelgoodism.

Gun ownership scares the people who are scared of guns strictly because of ignorance but it also dismays the newspapers because it lessens the need for the Nanny State and does nothing to expand government in all its guises.

[HawaiianGecko]

An armed society is a polite society.

Now I'm an advocate of the second amendment, but just exactly how does that square with Iraq where all citizens are armed?

[spikeytx86]

An Armed SANE society is a polite society.

[JamesP81]

Now I'm an advocate of the second amendment, but just exactly how does that square with Iraq where all citizens are armed?

Perhaps Franklin meant the quote in the context of a civilized Western nation. Emphasis on the 'civilized' part.

[HawaiianGecko]

An Armed SANE society is a polite society.

LOL okay, but how does that square with America?  :-)

[Jeff Head]

All citizens are not armed in Iraq.

[Boston Blackie]

[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
---James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

[Eastbound]

"As a whole, street thugs and other criminal opportunists are cowards. They fear an armed populace."

As do many legislators in this country. I wonder why that is? Surely they don't fit in the same category as cowardly street thugs and criminal opportunists, do they?

(An old man living in a cave once said, if a question is worded properly it contained the answer.) ;>

[Billthedrill]

Dang it. I want my bloodbath and I want it now!

[HawaiianGecko]

[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
---James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

You're not telling me anything new. Gunsmiths in my family date to the early 19th century and many of us keep dealership licenses current. A couple of shooting ranges bear my family name and are owned by family. I'm a proponent of gun ownership.  That said, how does your post above square with Iraq, or for that matter a gun infested barrio in East LA?

The second amendment does not prohibit felons or certified lunatics from gun ownership. Therefore, it seems sensible that certain prohibitions or fine tuning may be a wise thing.

[spikeytx86]

Yeah mainly the dead ones.

[Still Thinking]

Halting Improper Government Restrictions on the Right to Have Weapons cuts crime. We gotta change the mindset that government allows us to carry weapons. That's half the battle.

I was going to post objecting to the same thing, but I thing you did a better job.

[monkfan]

I guess criminals don't like getting shot either. Who knew?

[2ndClassCitizen]

Iraq is a work in progress. It is terrorism and the struggle for control at work there.

[AdAstraPerArdua]

Perhaps it should read 'Arming citizens in the US reduces US crime' as there are many countries in the world that have unarmed citizens and far lower crime levels than ours.

[Still Thinking]

Perhaps it should read 'Arming citizens in the US reduces US crime' as there are many countries in the world that have unarmed citizens and far lower crime levels than ours.

There may be a cultural element to it, granted, but it's far from a US-only phenomenon. In many countries where the citizens' gun rights have been infringed, crime in that country rose and also became more blatant/aggressive than it had been in the same country when the governments rightly respected the citizens as their employers, rather than serfs.

[Freedom4US]

Goood point. Here you probably getting into something I can't spell or pronounce. Political systems, religion and sheer tradition can coalesce into ? The framers often and prodigiously noted that their form of republican-democracy was illy suited towards a lawless group of citezenry, who had no morals (of any sort) outside their own self-interest.

It's akin to when politicians talk about a "stable Iraq"; let's be clear - Iraq *was* stable under Saddam, but that's another matter whether the rest of the world winks and nods about how it is, that this area was "stable". Here's where the conspiracy nutjobs go into gear. They would claim, I'm certain, that it is in the decadent, imperialist West that the goal is instability in the region, etc., etc., & the long arm of Castro is involved.

People really CAN be trusted with the reins of government, self-rule and determination. But it's got to be the real deal, not a fait accompli by hucksters.