Why Some Americans Will Never Give Up Their Guns

America is a relatively new country with few of the buried skeletons of older cultures, but if you spend much time overseas, there are still a few aspects that are tough to get across to the host country. One is race; another is guns.

On the last day of January, a toddler staying with his parents and sister in an Albuquerque, N.M. motel room reached into his mother’s purse, pulled out a loaded gun, and with one shot hit both his father and pregnant mother. At the tail end of 2014, a two-year-old boy shot his mother in a northern Idaho Walmart while shopping with his cousins to spend their Christmas money. Back in August of 2014, a nine-year-old girl accidentally shot the instructor who handed her an Uzi at a shooting range near Las Vegas.

These incidents are hard to explain to foreigners not only for how they happened, but for how they changed nothing.

In 1996, a deranged man with a gun killed 16 schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland. The reaction was public revulsion followed by further tightening of already strict laws on gun ownership in Britain.

The same year, a massacre by a man in Tasmania using multiple semi-automatic weapons killed 35 people. Australia reacted by banning several categories of weapons, a legislative feat which required concerted action by all its states as well as a one-time national program to buy back guns, funded by a temporary tax, which spent $AUS 350 million to purchase 643,000 firearms.

Whether the legal response in Britain and Australia lowered their annual toll of gun-related deaths is still debated, but theirs were already fractions of ours: According to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for 2012, Britain suffered 0.07 gunshot homicides per 100,000 and Australia 0.14, where the United States had 2.97. When you add in deaths by suicide and accident, the U.S. rate of death rises to 10 in 100,000 each year, yet the UK to only 0.25.

Citizens from countries with low rates of death involving firearms have a hard time understanding America’s acceptance of an annual toll of around 32,000, of which 11,000 are homicides and the rest suicides or accidents (and police shootings, for which accurate statistics are not compiled). Our public response to each disaster – Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Fort Hood, the Washington Navy Yard, Sandy Hook and so on – follows the same pattern: There is a wave of public revulsion, sympathy and anger.

Those in favor of some restrictions attempt to use the momentum to pass laws requiring background checks or limits on magazine size or the sale of assault weapons. Those who believe gun ownership should not be limited, while condemning the criminal act and sympathizing with the victims, keep quiet and wait out the wave of public anger, which each time dissipates without legislative result. There does not seem to be an act so egregious that it breaks this pattern — if the murder of 20 elementary schoolchildren in Sandy Hook didn’t, nothing will.

What foreigners should understand is that this is part of our culture, not a lack of progress toward some world norm. Americans own 88 guns per 100 people, but that doesn’t mean ownership is evenly spread. For many, especially in rural parts of the country, owning and using guns is just a completely integrated part of life, like using household appliances.

Unlike rural Afghans or Chechens, for whom weapons are also an important cultural accessory, here the family is included, with guns designed to appeal to female customers and even children (like the “My First Rifle” by Crickett that a 5-year-old boy used to shoot his cousin in April 2013). This is easily caricatured as a rednecks vs. urban elites ideological divide, but the truth is that for a significant percentage of intelligent, vocal and politically active Americans, guns are part of a lifestyle worth defending at high cost, and the positives of guns simply outweigh the risks.

For Veronica Rutledge, the mother in the Walmart shooting, one has to assume the pleasure of owning and carrying her handgun and the protection she felt it afforded against harassment, rape or other crime was worth the low, mitigated risk of it being used by the wrong person — in this case her own toddler.

This is a facet of America that visitors should be well aware of, along with the risk of occasional tragic results: On Oct. 17, 1992, Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student was looking for a Halloween party, knocked on the wrong door in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was fatally shot by the owner, Rodney Peairs, who was acquitted of murder. In April 2014, German exchange student Diren Dede was shot dead by a homeowner in Missoula, Montana. This time, the homeowner was convicted of deliberate homicide, as he had apparently been lying in wait with intent. On Feb. 13, he was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

To those with strong beliefs in Second Amendment gun rights, the annual accidental deaths and homicides are tragic but not sufficient reason to change existing laws: They are caused by people and thus the solution lies in people, not hardware. The American gun divide is almost religious in nature; it is nearly impossible to convert someone from one side to another, and probably pointless to try. What we must do is find a way to live with two radically different philosophies side by side in the same country.

At this point, gun rights advocates have won the campaign over who can be armed and what with, so where people carry is the focus of debate: Should states and towns be allowed to determine whether citizens can be openly armed in Starbucks or the grocery aisle? Does the 10th Amendment ever trump the Second? The constitutionality of efforts to limit public gun-carrying in Washington, D.C., are currently before federal court. The issue is whether requiring a permit, for which a special need related to employment or protection must be shown, infringes the Second Amendment.

So far, the city has lost. The Virginia legislature is debating whether people should be allowed to drive around the state with loaded shotguns in the trunk. (Delegates might want to Google “road rage in South Africa” as background research.) They’ll probably approve the measure. As this issue plays out in each state and town, the only certainty is that there will continue to be thousands of shootings, mass or individual, accidental or on purpose, each year.

The one thing Europeans should not expect as a result of the New Mexico, Idaho or any American gun tragedy is that it will bridge this cultural divide and lead to legislative change.

Are you equivalencing elections in Nazi Germany & Communist Cuba with US elections?

No, I was merely demonstrating the untruth of your statement "dictators are NEVER elected".

Having made this rash and unthinking statement you are backpedalling and trying to put more conditions on it than you started with. You didn't have these conditions up front, and you might admit that there is a generous amount of observer bias in deciding what is a "good" election vs. a "bad" election.

As an American I certainly want to believe that our elections are "good", although I need only look at the fraud in many elections and I can find lots of reasons why US elections might not be the gold standard we think they are. Go back 50 years and Kennedy's victory over Nixon in 1960 was almost certainly fraudulent with Chicago producing as many Dem votes as necessary for Kennedy to win. The Gore people tried hard to steal the 2000 election.

Go back to Nazi Germany, and as much as you might not want to agree, it is obvious that a majority of voters ended up supporting Hitler. This was a German election. As much as the rest of the world didn't like the result, it was a German decision to make.

Same with Castro in Cuba. At least at the beginning, more ordinary people wanted him than wanted his predecessor.

Lastly, you need to read a good civics book. The US is not a democracy, despite what the evening news says. We are a Republic, that pesky old Constitution says so, and it is true.

Fraud was certainly a factor in 2012, 2008. And it will be again in 2016.

I blame the GOP for having done nothing when they had troika power in 2003-2005.

An excellent example of elections is India.
It is the world’s largest democracy, with 4 times as many voters as United States. Their recent election ousted the entrenched congress party, which was in power for about 63 years, total out of a total of 68 years since India became a democracy. How did they do it? By nominating a charismatic nominee who had a demonstrable record of successful capitalistic policies in his state where he was chief minister for 10 years. If you think there was no fraud or errors in India’s election, can we share some of the stuff you are smoking? But it was a LEGAL election.

And yes, I know the difference between a pure democracy and a republic. Almost all democratic countries on earth today are some form of democracy. In a pure democracy, the mob rules. In a republic the elected representatives rule. When I said democratic election, of course I was talking about the republics. Any political junkie will understand that.

So, again, there is a huge difference between elections in Saddam’s Iraq, Stalin’s USSR, Castro’s Cuba and elections in democracies such as India and USA. If you fail to see the difference you are throwing out subterfuge.

Getting to the final point, Obama was elected LEGALLY since you failed to prove in a court of law about election fraud. Which simply means he is legally not a dictator. If Obama is acting like a dictator, I can agree. So whose fault is that? The congress and the judiciary for letting him get away with usurpation of executive power.

Lost in the gun rights debate, much to the detriment of American freedom, is the fact that the Second Amendment is in fact an “AMENDMENT”. No “Articles in Amendment” to the Constitution, more commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights, stand alone and each can only be properly understood with reference to what it is that each Article in Amendment amended in the body of the original Constitution. It should not be new knowledge to any American the Constitution was first submitted to Congress on September 17, 1787 WITHOUT ANY AMENDMENTS. After much debate, it was determined that the States would not adopt the Constitution as originally submitted until “further declamatory and restrictive clauses should be added” “in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its (the Constitutions) powers”. (This quote is from the Preamble to the Amendments, which was adopted along with the Amendments but is mysteriously missing from nearly all modern copies.) The first ten Amendments were not ratified and added to the Constitution until December 15, 1791.

In this Light:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” What provisions of the original Constitution is it that the Second Amendment is designed to “amended”?

THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS AMENDING THE PROVISIONS IN THE ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION APPLYING TO THE “MILITIA”. The States were not satisfied with the powers granted to the “militia” as defined in the original Constitution and required an amendment to “prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers. “(Again quoting from the Preamble to the Amendments.)

What was it about the original Constitutional provisions concerning the “Militia” that was so offensive to the States?

First understand that the word “militia” was used with more than one meaning at the time of the penning of the Constitution. One popular definition used then was one often quoted today, that the “Militia” was every able bodied man owning a gun. As true as this definition is, it only confuses the meaning of the word “militia” as used in the original Constitution that required the Second Amendment to correct. The only definition of “Militia” that had any meaning to the States demanding Amendments is the definition used in the original Constitution. What offended the States then should offend “People” today:

“Militia” in the original Constitution as amended by the Second Amendment is first found in Article 1, Section 8, clause 15, where Congress is granted the power:

“To provide for the calling forth the MILITIA to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrection and repel Invasions.” Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16 further empowers Congress:

“To provide for the organizing, arming, and disciplining, the MILITIA, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;” Any “patriot” out there still want to be called a member of the “MILITIA” as defined by the original Constitution?

Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 empowers: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the MILITIA of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;” The only way the States would accept the “MILITIA” as defined in the original Constitution was that the Federal “MILITIA” be “WELL REGULATED”. The States realized that “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE” required that the “MILITIA” as originally created in the Constitution be “WELL REGULATED” by a “restrictive clause.” How did the States decide to insure that the Constitutional “MILITIA” be “WELL REGULATED”? By demanding that “restrictive clause two” better know as the “Second Amendment” be added to the original Constitution providing:

“THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.” The States knew that “PEOPLE” with “ARMS” would “WELL REGULATE” the Federal “MILITIA”!

Now read for the first time with the full brightness of the Light of truth:

“A WELL REGULATED MILITIA, BEING NECESSARY TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

For those still overcome by propaganda:

The Second Amendment declares by implication that if the “MILITIA” is not “WELL REGULATED” by “PEOPLE” keeping and bearing arms, the “MILITIA” becomes a threat to the “SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.”

The “MILITIA” has no “RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” in the Second Amendment, rather it is only “THE RIGHT OF THE “”PEOPLE”” TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS (that) SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

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