MY view, as a vet raised in Hunting culture.

IF you are armed
You're either a farmer, hunter, or a person like myself who ENJOYS wilderness.
OR
You're "In the Life" and have some "Need" of such weaponry.
OR
You're a delusioned citizen living in fear who is strapped.(and yet still a target for a madman lying in AMBUSH; like in Vegas.)
OR
You're a citizen collecting "Ambush/Assault" style weapons", to what end exactly?

Are we to just "Trust" that ALL people are collecting "Ambush/Assault" style weapons" in the feeble hope they SURVIVE being ambushed?
Are we to actually believe that all those owners of assault weapons actually do not understand what an AMBUSH is?
That all these "Mass Shootings", are exactly that, and that there is no real defense against an Ambush?

When the 2nd was written ARMS were Swords and Muskets, the "Right" THEY enshrined was our right to "Keep and Bear" those in a "well maintained Milita" (that is our national guard).

They never imagined a world with cyclic fire rates of modern weaponry.
Guns do not protect you, that is not possible, they do not stop bullets. That is the function of armor.

IF you are fully Locked and Loaded and dressed in Kevlar, and I ambush you, you fdie, you don't get to return fire unless I miss.

A weapon makes you feel empowered, because it allows you to return fire, to return death. It is a fucking illusion to think it protects your ass from death.

Weapons ought to be treated as autos; testing, liscences, inspections and INSURANCE. With such provisions involved these problems would largely self regulate.

I feel that the Right's obsession with the 2nd amendment has become a form of entitlement for them. It is no longer a right vaguely given by the Constitution, but rather something Americans are entitled to. As a former history teacher, I do not believe the 2A was meant to be extended to all Americans, but rather those tasked with defending a nation which was opposed to having a standing army in the late 1700s.

When the 2nd Amendment was written they did not have weapons that were mass killing machines and I am sure they never even envisioned them. We need to get rid of any and all mass killing machines. Military, Police and First Responders should be the only people that can legally own these. We need a National Gun Registry that can keep contract of what and how many weapons an individual is buying. We need a 3-5 day screening period and the age limit should be 21.

Actually, you are mistaken about the way our rights work. They aren't codified into law. All of our rights are written in such a way that their existence is a given. They aren't composed in a way that suggests they're extended to us by government, but rather, in a way that restricts the government's authority to interfere with them. This will no doubt ruffle some feathers, but this is a language expert's evaluation of the 2nd amendment :

"My well-being is not negatively affected and is (in my opinion) indeed positively affected by not having the “right” to bear arms." Ask your WWII home guard about that. Your country begged and whined about not having enough arms for their home guard in WWII. Private American citizens collected and sent shotguns, rifles, and handguns for the purpose of saving (for the second time), the U.K. from eventual Nazi invasion....American civilian arms were not viewed as so evil by the Brits then, it seems. After the war, the U.K. government, instead of returning the arms, put them on a barge and sank them at sea. As an American, I have run out of patience with the U.K. and its lack of responsibility in making foolish treaties that drag you (and us) into war and then expecting American citizens to bail you out with American lives and resources.

I have a few questions. (1) What is the purpose of your post...is it a Master's Thesis? (2) What do you expect to accomplish with your post? (3) You say you are from the U.K. How do we know you are actually a U.K. citizen and not perhaps a Russian citizen...they have a history, after all of attempting (and perhaps succeeding), to influence American politics? (4) Why would you go through so much trouble authoring your extensive post for a foreign venue...a venue that is usually used for shorter posts of a social (media) nature? Your post strikes me as suspicious from a supposedly disinterested party.

I never give my opinion concerning British politics. British politics are none of my business and I would not presume to stick my nose into them. I did not offer an opinion on Britan joining the European Union, I did not offer an opinion when they decided to leave...IT WAS NONE OF MY BUSINESS. Have the good graces (manners) to mind your business.

Don't expect much to happen during current government as it is.

First of all, the bill of rights grants nothing, it expresses the natural rights of human beings by limiting governmental power. Second of all if it weren't for my ancestors kicking your ancestors asses you might have a right to talk about the rights of another nations population. Personally I'd rather fight anyone than give up my rights. Third the fact is that gun violence in the us is catagoricaly higher in liberally lead large cities, like Chicago and Washington D.C.. Fourth guns account for only 1.3% of all murders in the US. Fifth, car accidents and vehicular man slaughter far out weigh gun violence as cause of death in the US. Sixth, the most popular gun of choice for gun violence is the hand gun and the 2008 Heller ruling of the supreme court up held citizens rights to carry hand guns. Seventh almost all mass murders in the US happen in gun free zones. Finally gun violence has been decreasing steadily since 1992 in every modern industrialized nation, including Mexico, which has the highest crime rate in the West. I got these stats from politifacts, a liberally biased outlet. Your position is dead wrong, and you don't have any right to infringe on American freedom being a foreigner. What's your steak in this debate? As far as I can tell it's your feelings as even your sources tend to disprove your gun control arguments.

Incredibly well structured examination and analysis, thank you. It's gratifying to have an "outsider's" perspective that is so thorough and properly researched.

Continued From Above:

This happens in the production of every single item of manufactured good in the Western World. We regulate for and work towards quality standards of goods produced in or for modern society such that the health and safety of our citizens is a main concern.

We appear to be in a scenario whereby the sporting and leisure enjoyment of some people, the perceived right to have a gun (what, to counter the US military?) is seen as more important than the lives of tens of thousands of people.

I see no problem in saying if X causes society harm, society should do something about X. X, however, is a complex causal scenario where death is dealt out to people by the use of guns. Both the people involved and guns need to be addressed. Ignoring a large part of the causal process is inadequate. We don’t do that in any other scenario – drugs, other weapons, fireproofing on buildings, mining, whatever. Why not regulate guns if they are shown to play a part on so very many deaths?

Drawing the Line

Unless you are an utterly evangelical libertarian who believes in no regulation whatsoever, then (other than being slightly unhinged) you would surely have to abide by some sort of chaotic anarchy or agree with advantage of people being taken by any number of unscrupulous and unfettered corporate (or other) entities.

I would rather a different approach. I have already written how regulation should not be a dirty word as it is a form of moral imperative.

My intuition is that gun advocates often have double standards. They are happy to be made safer in terms of any number of things in society, but not guns.

So where do we draw the regulatory line? From no regulation up to the central government regulation of every breath you take, where is the most reasonable place to draw the line?

Of course, we get to a sort of arbitrary line once again where we say “this should not be regulated here, but this thing, one step on, should be.” Yes, there might have to be some application of “common sense”, but in the real knowledge that the exact location of the line is somewhat arbitrary.

The thing with guns is that they are instruments of death designed to harm others. Now, we have regulated knife and sword use. We disallow RPGs, missiles and nuclear warheads, grenades and Gatling guns.

For some reason, though, AR-15s, assault weapons for which you can buy bump stocks to increase their firing capacity, are still A-Okay. If easy access to guns, as it certainly appears to me, are one of the main causal reasons why gun violence (including suicide deaths) is so high in the US, them regulating guns is an obvious course of action. In no other area would there be nearly this much pushback. Man, why did they have to amend it in the Constitution? And for muskets!

And what about suicide?

Differences in overall suicide rates across cities, states and regions in the United States are best explained not by differences in mental health, suicide ideation, or even suicide attempts, but by availability of firearms. Many suicides are impulsive, and the urge to die fades away. Firearms are a swift and lethal method of suicide with a high case-fatality rate.[13]

Suicides in the US have a very close relationship to guns and access to guns:

Firearms are the most popular method of suicide due to the lethality of the weapon. 90% of all suicides attempted using a firearm result in a fatality, as opposed to less than 3% of suicide attempts involving cutting or drug-use.[71] The risk of someone attempting suicide is also 4.8 times greater if they are exposed to a firearm on a regular basis; for example, in the home.[72]

In the United States, access to firearms is associated with an increased risk of completed suicide.[60] A 1992 case-control study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed an association between estimated household firearm ownership and suicide rates, finding that individuals living in a home where firearms are present are more likely to commit suicide than those individuals who do not own firearms, by a factor of 3 or 4.[1][61] A 2006 study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found a significant association between changes in estimated household gun ownership rates and suicide rates in the United States among men, women, and children.[62] A 2007 study by the same research team found that in the United States, estimated household gun ownership rates were strongly associated with overall suicide rates and gun suicide rates, but not with non-gun suicide rates.[63] A 2013 study reproduced this finding, even after controlling for different underlying rates of suicidal behavior by states.[64] A 2015 study also found a strong association between estimated gun ownership rates in American cities and rates of both overall and gun suicide, but not with non-gun suicide.[65]

The US needs to draw a new line because the old one is inadequate to protect so many citizens. But that’s easier said than done.

Read more at [patheos.com]

Continued From Above:

Guns as Identity

The challenge for those advocates of gun control is dealing with the fact that gun ownership and SA advocacy is wrapped so closely with political identity – identity politics. There is no surprise that the NRA overwhelmingly fund Republicans over Democrats, and fund campaigns against Democrats, explicitly.

An attack on guns is an attack on the personality and politics and very being of the gun advocate. It is the way with in-group/out-group psychology. Attacking the idea becomes attacking the person and everything associated with that person, as they see it. This appears very much to be the case with the gun debate. And the more and more polarised that the US electorate becomes, the greater the challenge for those seeking change. Change might take place, but it will simply get undone as the country switches party leadership. As we can see from things like abortion, there are hot-button topics that represent the core differences between the two parties and their followers. These are the political footballs punted one end to the other.

In other words, as with all strongly held beliefs, the case is not of changing minds based on rational evidence, because these beliefs are primarily psychological in nature and cause. This presents quite a Herculean task.

Here, the Daily Show references this idea in terms of representing freedom (you’ll need access to facebook videos):

Rational Evidence

Unsurprisingly, I am a huge advocate of evidence-based policymaking. But there are some things that really get in the way of this in the context of gun policy:

Lobbying. As with the health industry departments in the US, fair decision making by policy-makers is entirely compromised as long as virtually unfettered lobbying is allowed to take place. That virtually every Republican politician is in the hands of the NRA through legal bribery, you can never get politicians in the US voting properly on principle. Evidence takes a backseat when so obviously trumped by a paycheck to the tune of, often, millions of dollars.

The NRA induced a funding stoppage to the CDC into gun violence. How can the government have decent evidence at their fingertips if this is the case? See Notes below for more detail on this.

With just these two problems, you can see the issues surrounding the seeming pipedream of achieving evidence-based policymaking in this area.
Prohibition

Although this is often claimed as being the desire of the anti-gun lobby by those arguing against gun control, prohibition is generally not what most realistic gun control proponents seek. This is because, realistically, with so many guns in circulation and so much desire amongst the many fans of guns, prohibition would be impossible. You only have to look at the Prohibition (of alcohol) in the 1930s. Baby steps. Curtailing the quicker firing guns is a start.

Read more at [patheos.com]

Continued from Above:

What is the Way Forward?

This is the difficult part. Firstly, the CDC needs to be freely able to collect good data. Background checks need to be meaningful, consistent and have teeth. Mental health needs funding. The age for being able to buy guns needs to go up. There should be regulation around assault weapons (and a clearer definition concerning these weapons). Ammunition regulation needs to be brought in as it is essentially non-existent. Guns without ammo are useless, after all.

Whatever is decided upon must have good rational evidence to back it up, of course. But something must be done. And I’m not at all convinced that arming more citizens is a good idea. Because not every good guy is always and consistently good.

This graphic can cast some much-needed light on the matter, and is well worth poring over:

NOTES

More information on the CDC funding issues with regard to gun violence:

The CDC had not touched firearm research since 1996 — when the NRA accused the agency of promoting gun control and Congress threatened to strip the agency’s funding. The CDC’s self-imposed ban dried up a powerful funding source and had a chilling effect felt far beyond the agency: Almost no one wanted to pay for gun violence studies, researchers say. Young academics were warned that joining the field was a good way to kill their careers. And the odd gun study that got published went through linguistic gymnastics to hide any connection to firearms.
The long stalemate continued until shortly after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., when Obama announced several gun-control proposals, including reversing the CDC research ban. His higher-profile proposals – tightening firearm background checks, reinstating the assault weapons ban – were viewed as impossible to pass into law. Congress wouldn’t bite. But ending the CDC research ban? Done by executive order, it appeared to have the best shot, along with broad support from a scientific community upset that gun violence as a public health problem was being ignored.

“A lot of people thought it would make a big difference,” recalled Jeffrey Swanson, a Duke University psychiatry professor who studies gun violence and mental health.

But today the CDC still avoids gun-violence research, demonstrating what many see as the depth of its fear about returning to one of the country’s most divisive debates. The agency recently was asked by The Washington Post why it was still sitting on the sidelines of firearms studies. It declined to make an official available for an interview but responded with a statement noting it had commissioned an agenda of possible research goals but still lacked the dedicated funding to pursue it.

“It is possible for us to conduct firearm-related research within the context of our efforts to address youth violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and suicide,” CDC spokeswoman Courtney Lenard wrote, “but our resources are very limited.”

Congress has continued to block dedicated funding. Obama requested $10 million for the CDC’s gun violence research in his last two budgets. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced bills supporting the funding. Both times the Republican-controlled House of Representatives said no. Maloney recently said she planned to reintroduce her bill this year, but she wasn’t hopeful.

So, the CDC is no closer to initiating gun-violence studies.

The roots of the research ban go back to 1996, when the NRA accused the public health agency of lobbying for gun control. That year, a Republican congressman stripped $2.6 million from the CDC budget, the exact amount spent on gun research the previous year. Soon the funding was restored, but designated elsewhere, and wording was inserted into the CDC’s appropriations bill that, “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

The CDC interpreted this to mean it should avoid studying guns in any fashion.

“It basically was a shot across the bow by Congress on the part of the NRA,” said Mark Rosenberg, who was director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention when the ban went into effect. “All federally funded research was shut down.”

CDC funding for firearm injury prevention fell 96 percent, down to $100,000, from 1996 to 2013, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the advocacy group founded by Michael Bloomberg.

Read more at [patheos.com]