[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by blueash

That is an insidiously wrong statement pushed by some of those of the Christian faith. This country was founded by a bunch of nearly agnostic men who wanted financial and political control over this territory. They had absolutely no disagreement with England over theological concerns and in fact were far LESS religious than the monarchy which claimed to derive its legitimacy from Jesus et al.

Jefferson removed all Jesus is God references from his Bible, actually cut those passages out with a knife. Our Constitution has exactly two references to religion and both strongly state that religious affiliation has no place in our governance.

The ethic of the founders was not rigid evangelical Christianity is was instead based on liberal ideology of natural rights as proposed by Locke and others. The founders were so against religious dogma determining United States governance that they made sure the Post Office, one of the few functions of the Federal Government at the time, operated on Sunday, you know the Christian day of rest and prayer on which you shall refrain from work and keep it holy, the Post Office functioned on Sunday the same as any other day of the week.

" In 1828, the Kentucky Senator Richard M. Johnson, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads and a devout Baptist, declared any federal attempt to give preference to the Christian Sabbath to be unconstitutional. The line between church and state when it came to Sunday mail delivery, he argued, "cannot be too strongly drawn." "

No, what has happened is that once again the real history of the US is being subverted by many who wish to believe that what they now hold true was held true in the 18th century.
Thomas Paine called Christianity a fable. Many were simply Deists, a religious belief that a God does exist but that he [or she] is not actively involved in our day to day life and that "human experience and rationality—rather than religious dogma and mystery—determine the validity of human beliefs."

That was overwhelmingly the ethic of our founders and where it overlapped with the liberal Protestantism of the day, that was ok. Real history. You can look it up.

It is pretty well accepted among academics that our system of government is based on the English system of common law, which itself is based in large part on the Judeo-Christian ethic.

[Sarah_W]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

Social tensions are MUCH greater today and also other tensions. Many people have reacted to this by stockpiling many rifles and pistols designed for WAR and to kill people ( you don't buy a 30-round clip to go deer hunting). This made the people feel safer, but mainly it made the Gun Manufacturers more PROFIT and wealth. So they put out propaganda advertisements in Gun magazines and the NRA journal to induce these people to buy MORE guns. In the last 2 years, civilian gun ownership went from a high of 300 million guns to a new high of 400 million guns.
.........More readily available guns equate to MORE gun deaths and crime. To understand how big and BAD the US situation has become - you just need to look at a chart comparison showing gun deaths per 100,000 citizens for ALL the world's countries. Ry far, the US has the MOST !

I don't think anyone makes a 30 round clip. Frankly, I don't know if any modern rifles even utilize a clip.

Ironically, when Democrats start chanting about gun control the demand for guns and ammo rises dramatically. Introduce a pandemic and force people to stay home for lockdowns created the huge surge in ammo sales along with millions of first time gun buyers entering the market.

[MartinSE]

I would like to posit another point on guns. Why are illegal guns so available? Why are so many poor teens buying guns? I suggest our wonderful failure - WAR ON DRUGS. A young poor kid (not this one) looking at a life of poverty or flipping burgers and comparing that to a life with fast cars and women and all they have to do is sell drugs on street corners and get rich. The life may be short, but it will be fun!

Selling drugs provides the funds to buy these no so inexpensive guns. How many poor teens could drop out of school and buy a Luger or AR15 and ammunition? It is the street sales of illegal drugs that funds it. And the guns are simply a tool needed in that line of business.

That is the seed (root cause in my humble opinion). That then leads to all the evils we hear about is large cities - you never hear about a gang doing drive by battings.

Legalizing all drugs will eventually eliminate that entire source of funding for purchasing and using guns by teens and all the crime and deaths caused by them. And it would eliminate all the Billions of dollars we spend on the endless useless Drug War. It would eliminate a large source of income for Drug cartels.

The only down side would be addicts, and the crime, medical and other costs related to that. And other countries have shown that those costs are more than offset by taxing the drug sales.

I propose that one step in stopping gun violence would be to legalize and tax all drugs. Not perfect, it won't stop all gun violence, but I think it is pretty obvious that it would eliminate most.

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

Social tensions are MUCH greater today and also other tensions. Many people have reacted to this by stockpiling many rifles and pistols designed for WAR and to kill people ( you don't buy a 30-round clip to go deer hunting). This made the people feel safer, but mainly it made the Gun Manufacturers more PROFIT and wealth. So they put out propaganda advertisements in Gun magazines and the NRA journal to induce these people to buy MORE guns. In the last 2 years, civilian gun ownership went from a high of 300 million guns to a new high of 400 million guns.
.........More readily available guns equate to MORE gun deaths and crime. To understand how big and BAD the US situation has become - you just need to look at a chart comparison showing gun deaths per 100,000 citizens for ALL the world's countries. Ry far, the US has the MOST !

Actually that would be Honduras, with a per-capita gun death rate of 60 per 100,000. The US rate per capita is 12.21 gun deaths per 100,000--barely 20% of that of Honduras. (World Population Review website, "Gun Deaths by Country 2022").

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Sarah_W

I don't think anyone makes a 30 round clip. Frankly, I don't know if any modern rifles even utilize a clip.

Ironically, when Democrats start chanting about gun control the demand for guns and ammo rises dramatically. Introduce a pandemic and force people to stay home for lockdowns created the huge surge in ammo sales along with millions of first time gun buyers entering the market.

Very true, when Obama was elected sales skyrocketed. And his "coming for your guns" never happened.

I will not address the "Dems" part, because, I would prefer to not take another vacation too soon. Let's just say that as a liberal democratic socialist, Dems are embarrassing to me. They say the stupidest things.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

Actually that would be Honduras, with a per-capita gun death rate of 60 per 100,000. The US rate per capita is 12.21 gun deaths per 100,000--barely 20% of that of Honduras. (World Population Review website, "Gun Deaths by Country 2022").

True, "gun violence" is not our forte - well, it is sort of among 1st world countries (peers), but not worldwide.

However, we do excel at murdering our children while they learn to read.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Worldseries27

i suggested in previous posts that the duty of protecting our children should belong to each of the 50 states national guardsmen as outlined in the second amendment to the bill of rights.
They are already on the payroll and are fully trained in the weaponry they use. 2 guardsmen per school using metal detectors and one centralized entrance should suffice and succeed.
No supreme court battles to fight. No us vs. Them. Let's put the children first because if we don't then were putting them last.

I agree with "hardening" the schools. That would help. But, a determined mass murderer with their weapon of choice a generic AR-15 semi-auto will just switch to a church or a gathering of old people at a square for music and dancing. So, now all three of those locations (and others) should be hardened. They could also shoot up a school bus full of kids.
........It will be impossible to "harden" everything.
........so the solution comes back to the GUN........how to make only a SLOWER rate of fire weapon available in the US to CIVILIANS. Stop selling semi-auto rifles and pistols to civilians. At a minimum, make NO clips that hold more than 5 rounds. Buy them back and melt them down. Civilians should get only bolt actions - Australia and New Zealand did it. The US needs to get over its "frontier mentality" about GUNS!

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

It is pretty well accepted among academics that our system of government is based on the English system of common law, which itself is based in large part on the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Uh, nope, actually, the main difference between English and U.S. safeguards is that English protections rest on statute or case law and may be changed by ordinary statute, whereas U.S. safeguards are constitutional and cannot be relaxed unless the Supreme Court later reverses its interpretation or the Constitution is amended. In addition, our law is judged based on precedent and English law is based on case law. Judges in England have virtually no latitude in judgements, they must rule based on common law, here judges have a lot of latitude and arguments are mostly based on precedent of "similar" cases to determine how to apply the law. Very different.

The claim by many experts that English common law is based on Christianity is rooted in Christianity is a result of the "Church of England" (based on Catholic - without the pope) and is a major reason many people came to the US to get away from a state sponsored religion. I recommend the Patriot Papers for more details.

And I could point out many other religions that also propose "morals" and "ethics" and "laws". As has been posted, some where is religion referenced in the constitution except the prescription of the government endorsing it. In the western world Christianity has had a very dominate affect on morality and ethics. But, it is not along, and the Constitution is very clear the founders did not want religion playing a role in government.

I have NO problem with people practicing their religion, I have a lot of problem with anyone wanting ME to practice their religion.

That includes my older brother who has multiple doctorates, with his first as Doctor of Theology, and has been on multiple Presidents ethics/morality advisory counsels, including President Bush, and worked as a Southern Baptist Minister in rather large churches around the country his entire life. He KNOWS better than to "encourage" me to go to church! And he adamantly opposes any infiltration of religion into the government and will not hesitate to let you know why if you ask... LOL!

[Taltarzac725]

Second Amendment | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute

It looks like the interpretation put on The Second Amendment by the Supreme Court has changed a lot over time.

[Sarah_W]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

My wife and I obtained our permits-to-carry in Minnesota some 15 years ago now. My wife hadn't fired a handgun much; maybe four or five times before we took the training. Training in Minnesota at the time was one day of classroom work, followed by a half-day at the range the following day. My wife's handgun was a .38 Special Taurus with a 1 7/8" barrel. Each student was required to fire a total of 50 rounds from various ranges.

She sort of stole the show. All the macho guy types with their Glock 17s and whatever else were often wildly inaccurate, while my wife calmly put bullet after bullet into the color, many of them inside the 10 ring. I recall our instructor took a look at her target, shook his head and said "I sure as hell don't want to be standing in front of HER".

That's awesome! I hear a lot of men tell me how well their wives shoot. I read an NRA article discussing who is the better shooter. They interviewed a military instructor, police academy instructor and a private instructor and they were unanimous that women make the better shooter and for all of the same reasons.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Sarah_W

That's awesome! I hear a lot of men tell me how well their wives shoot. I read an NRA article discussing who is the better shooter. They interviewed a military instructor, police academy instructor and a private instructor and they were unanimous that women make the better shooter and for all of the same reasons.

Interesting

Another interesting tidbit I have heard, and I don't know if it is true is that all mass shooting by a single shooter has been males. Maybe we should only allow females to own guns -

[Taltarzac725]

District of Columbia v. Heller - Wikipedia

This might be of interest. I like the dissents in the case.

. The dissent concludes, "The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.... I could not possibly conclude that the Framers made such a choice."

[MDLNB]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

Sorry this is also a myth.

Many of the "founding fathers" were atheists. And the theists were often (mostly?) Puritans (Calvinist's and was based on the Holiness movement) that would never consider what we consider Christians to be Christians today. Women were little more than possessions, etc. Maybe you would like to start "testing" women charged with witch craft? They came here specifically to escape the Church of Englands persecution, and they could persecute anyone not toeing the line to their beliefs.

And if you want Christian beliefs in government, lets start with feeding the poor, giving housing to the homeless, forgiving those that transgress against us, not killing our enemies. You know all those pesky things Jesus told us to do, but evangelicals don't want to do, and instead refer back to the old testament and repeatedly quote the "thous shall nots" and not Jesus saying "thou shalt.

And another point, would you clarifying which Bible you want to make law, and which interpretation of it? Since there are over 200 Christian denominations in the US alone, and over 45,000 in the world.

And does the Pope get a seat in the Christian White House? After all, there are 1.5 billion Catholics and only maybe a 1/2 million Protestants (divided up between 45,000 different interpretations.)

So, I am just. curious, is it YOUR religion you want made law?

Now, could we get back to guns being used to kill children in class rooms for the past 20 years?

"Christians" make up in total about 20% of the worlds population. Yet, some how the other 80% of the world's population are not murdering their children regularly in schools. There are always the occasional wacko dictator, or rebels, or whatever that kills children or others. But, Only in America do we appear to endorse muting children in schools regularly. I say appear, since we have had 20 years to do something about it, and so far we can't agree on anything. 20 years...

"Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Christians (54 out of 56). Twenty-seven (27) of them held theology degrees." They based the Declaration upon a greater foundational belief that God, or as written in the Declaration “Creator,” was the source for men’s irrevocable rights.


John Quincy Adams, the 6th president of the United States: “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”

I can dig up many other examples of our country being founded on Judeo-Christian values.

This has nothing to do with the subject, but I felt compelled to respond to an opinion that was not quite factual. It's only been within the last ten years or so that the Judeo-Christian majority in America dropped below 90% of the population (according to ABC/WAPO polls.



If you wish to use Christianity as a cause of killings, why not compare it to the very large Muslim population of the world and how many they kill. You can start in some of the African nations, as an example. Let's not base reasoning and rationalization of murder upon the population of one group.



Like I said before and reiterate, guns don't kill, people kill.



The idea that guns are the reason or blame for killing is ludicrous. Millions of people own guns and have never used them against another human, let alone even pointed them at anyone. You are not going to eliminate murder, period. You can ban guns, knives, glass bottles, hammers, screw drivers, bats, axes, etc. but you will not eliminate murder. Murder comes from irrational people. People with mental defects. Until you address that, then you will always have murder.

We have had murder since the beginning of time. Live with it, but just protect yourself from being the victim.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Taltarzac725

District of Columbia v. Heller - Wikipedia

This might be of interest. I like the dissents in the case.

Uh, yeah, considering there had just been a successful insurrection, uh, revolution, and a lot of people that were "loyalists" and if they had the ability would certainly have caused trouble for the newbies starting the new country.

There is also significant evidence that the 2nd amendment was put in to get states supporting slavery to sign on, since they wanted guns to control the slaves, and the slaves, not being humans, were not allowed to own guns, so did not benefit from the 2nd.

I expect it is HARD to KNOW what all went into the politics of forming a new country and a new form of government (sort of). I am certain there was a lot of closed door meetings and margining going on.

But, it is there, it is the law. So, since there is not a snowballs chance in hell of repealing the 2nd, we live with it.

[MDLNB]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

It is the use of extremes to prove a point. That fact that is relevant is that there are close to 400 Million guns in circulation. Less that 50 percent of the population owns a gun. About 5% of the population owns about 50% of those 400 million. So, 5% of the population (15 million people) own 200 million guns - or 15 million people own at least 15 guns each.

If you continue to refine the search, a very small percentage own hundreds of guns. And an even smaller percentage own thousands. But, they exist.

When I search for how many times have large caches of guns been found, there were 80 million hits. I didn't check all of them, I assume MOST are not relevant, most of them are duplicates, etc. But, it is NOT an isolated incident in this country.

And how many of that 400 million guns have been used to kill other citizens? Should we ban all guns because a few were used in a commission of a crime? How many times were they used to save a life? That is an interesting point, because I think there have been more cases of guns saving lives than taking them in a crime. ALMOST every study conducted in America says that guns save lives in millions of incidents, vs lives lost by guns in the thousands. SO, if a hundred lives are saved compared to one life lost in gun related crimes, then the whole debate is moot.