Sauce: i hate it here
This is where Finland and Sweden excel. Because they have mandatory military service, everyone with a gun has been trained in all aspects of it’s use/care. Finland is one of the top 10 countries with the most firearms per civilian, and yet their rate of firearm deaths is minuscule in comparison to the U.S..
At this rate though, I don’t see how any meaningful gun regulation can be passed. The nra stopped universal background checks from being passed after Sandy Hook. I lost faith in republicans since then. They’re bad faith actors, that when faced with the prisoners dilemma, choose suicide.
For the lazy US has 3.5x more guns than Finland and 35x more firearm homicides (which, not to nitpick, is not necessarily the same as a firearm death). If us has a 10x reduction in firearm homicides to be more in line with their gun ownership they would go from being ranked 23rd (as of 2019) to 42nd or so, going below countries like Canada (although Canada’s gun crime is strongly linked with the us), new Zealand * and Sweden.
I’ll also point out though that Finland has stricter gun laws than the states, relavent to this post they have a minimum age of 20 to buy firearms. They need licenses and a justification to carry them around, and there are fairly strict storage rules.
* I realized that 2019 was the Christchurch mass shooting, which brought the rate from 0.2 in 2018 to 1.2 in 2019, so probably not very representative of NZ gun crime.
This is where Finland and Sweden excel. Because they have mandatory military service, everyone with a gun has been trained in all aspects of it’s use/care.
Article I Section 8 parts 15 and 16 empower Congress to require such training every member of the militia, and they have indicated that the militia is comprised of every able bodied male citizen, aged 17 to 45. (10 USC 246)
Congress can require training on safe handling. They can require training on the laws governing use of force in self defense and defense of others. They don’t need to mandate additional military or militia service to achieve this.
except for the bonkers idea that the 2a’s first 13 words for some reason don’t count.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” and today’s non-regulated militia endangering the security of the free state are pretty fucking contrasting situations.
fuck all the gun nuts who love their fetish more than their country.
What is the militia?
That isn’t a flippant question. I’d like a serious answer.
I’d like to know both the constitutional definition of “militia”, as used in Article I Section 8 and 2nd Amendment, as well as the legislative definition, as codified in 10 USC 246.
The answers I have learned are that the militia is “the whole body of the people” (constitutional meaning) and “every able bodied male citizen, aged 17 to 45”. (Legislative, paraphrased)
When you algebraically substitute either of those answers back into the 2nd amendment, you arrive at the only reasonable perspective: The whole body of the people, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
“But what about the well regulated part? Isn’t the militia unregulated?”
The militia is regulated under the powers granted to Congress under Article I Section 8 parts 15 and 16. Congress does have some regulations governing the militia. They have enacted legislation defining what part of the militia they intend to call forth, and how they intend to do that. They have enacted legislation obligating every male to register with selective service. They can enact many, many more regulations on the whole of the militia. If you feel YOU are not adequately regulated, I suggest you notify your congressional representatives, as they are the only ones currently empowered to adjust regulation of the militia.
You’ll have my support; I specifically called for such regulation in my last post.
TL;DR: You don’t get to complain about a lack of regulation when I’m specifically asking for more regulation.
While I believe in common sense gun control I think that one thing people might miss when comparing America to Finland or Sweden is just how brutal America can be.
America is an interesting country, if you can stay on the gainful employment ladder you can have a lot of creature comforts and for a few people they get to go up the ladder and have a really nice life.
That ladder though is dangling over the mouth of a volcano and there are more ways to fall off then anyone wants to admit. There’s also a ton of people just barely hanging on.
Easy access to guns is a problem, but the fact that so many Americans are so crushed by the system we live under that violence and deadly violence are things people routinely turn to is also a massive problem. For a lot of working poor the system can feel a lot like running on a perpetual treadmill stuck at full speed. We retooled our economy towards service and knowledge jobs, a lot of people in that service industry make just enough money to scrape by.
There is not a single state in the nation where minimum wage affords a 2 bedroom apartment
So you have a large number of people that spend the vast majority of their time working difficult jobs rife with customer abuse. They earn just enough money to afford a place to stay and food (and a cellphone so people can sneer at them and say, oh you have a cellphone so you can’t be struggling). Mix that with a big pile of guns and violence is bound to happen.
We can take away the guns but I suspect Americans have the ingenuity to find other ways to do violence against each other.
