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Steve Gubin Subscriber Current POW Recipient, Oct 01, 2013; 03:45 p.m.
The nice thing about this thread so far is that it hasn’t descended into the ugliness and personal attacks that caused the closing of other firearms related threads in the past.
What often gets lost at the extremes of the gun control debate is that not every American who chooses to exercise their currently legal right to bear firearms is a right wing kook or an unwitting tool of the NRA. (There is actually an organization known at The Liberal Gun Club.)
What gets lost is that some Americans do not believe that the police can protect them in every possible instance, from every possible circumstance.
What gets lost is that there are documented instances of private citizens in the US successfully defending themselves against criminals. But it is hard to provide statistics on such events because the outcome is not always definitive (i.e, death or capture of the criminal). Point to a newspaper article about such an occurrence and it is dismissed by some here on PN as an “anecdote”. Apparently only the articles about Trayvon Martin or tragedies like the Aurora shooting count as fact. They are certainly the stories that get the big coverage. If someone successfully chases off a burglar, it may not be reported on at all, let alone be given headline coverage on the nightly news. So there is little point in trying to make a case for self-defense with a firearm to those who have already closed their minds to the possibility of such a thing actually occurring.
"Talking to American friends, I always sense a kind of despair that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge and that nothing will ever change. The same resignation was evident in President Obama's rather lifeless reaction to the Washington shooting last week. There is absolutely nothing he can do, which underscores the fact that America is in a jam and that international pressure may be one way of reducing the slaughter over the next generation. This has reached the point where it has ceased to be a domestic issue."
To those, like Anders, who want to tell the United States to “grow up”, or to the author of the article quoted above, or to anyone who wants the private ownership of firearms to be banned outright in this country: you will need to accomplish that through the US court system. I have heard the “2nd Amendment is archaic” argument before. I do not believe that it is, but I am not going to waste my time trying to convince those who believe otherwise. If you don’t like it, change it. Or work toward getting a future Supreme Court that will overrule what the past and current Supreme Court has already ruled. And what they have ruled in Heller and McDonald is that American citizens have the right to bear firearms. Period. End of story.
Spinning statistics, stirring up international outrage, railing against the gun lobby, portraying everyone who owns a firearm as a right wing nut or as an immature and irresponsible anachronism of a bygone era – none of that will do you any good if your aim is to end private firearms ownership in the United States.
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Originally Posted by Mach
