So you hate gun violence. But you feel differently about machete violence? Fist violence? Nuclear violence? And if not how, exactly, do you propose to outlaw violence...or enforce laws which do?

I'm so sorry Mercedes. I know Toronto well, and have watched as some pretty nasty guns got smuggled in & began to rip up parts of the city - once they were allied to gangs & drugs.

Vlad, I grew up in your usual 22 kids on a farm, 16 boys, most of them 6' 6" plus. We played every (violent) sport imaginable, we brawled all day everyday, and hunting was standard practice. I understand physical violence intimately, and have no expectations - or even great desire - to see it eliminated. Plus, I expect we agree that the way most modern urban people talk about "violence" is pretty nutbar. But in my life and travels after leaving the farm, I saw one hell of a lot of violence, in SE Asia, South Africa & the big urban cities of the West. And guns came more and more into the picture. Which changed things, fast.

So I take no position on how, constitutionally etc., the gun stuff is handled. And nope, violence is not gonna be eliminated, nor - as I say, do I even totally think it should. (When I played hockey in university, I was the "goon" - wouldn't wanna see my friends put out of jobs.) But certain kinds of guns.... once they're in the hands of poor kids in urban centers.... and I've seen this with black, white, Asian, Native and Latino kids.... are bad wicked beasts. That "normal" teenage-and-young-male thing, blood pumping, hot-headed, angry, sensitive, whatever - has for thousands of years been tough for societies to handle. Add to that drugs and big money, and it's a bad bad mix. Even out here on the flat calm ole prairies, teenage Aboriginal kids with gangs and guns are turning things into a bloodbath.

So, nope, I have no thought that violence can be outlawed. But I do think something - some things - need to be done. Because in all the fights and tough/chaotic situations I was in, things were a hell of a lot calmer - more easy to contain and control - when it was just fists, feet, even knives. Guns are built for a reason - they act fast, they put out a shitload of hurt, and they provide distance from the target. The problem is that with kids, above all, the brains flare up fast. Too fast.

So... targeted measures maybe. Things that don't threaten hunting and sports, I donno. Maybe you've got some ideas.

But a request to all that write in this thread. Please, go a bit gently in your positions. When people lose people, it's a sad, bad time. Go well, Oliver and Dylan, and Mercedes.

I used to be more anti gun than I am, but if Bush sends his military christianist zombies to disappear me I would like to not go quietly.

I'm sorry for your loss Mercedes.

I agree completely that guns are for killing and only rarely save lives. Carrying a gun for self-defense generally makes no sense at all because the risk of an accident with the gun far outweighs any reduction in the risk of harm as a result of having a gun to fend off an attacker.

That said, I think the right to keep and bear arms is an important one that must be respected and preserved in the same way that trial by jury must be respected and preserved even if it means some dangerous terrorists might occasionally go free. The second amendment was designed to protect liberties in three ways:

First, it puts arms in the hands of the people so the government doesn't have a monopoly in arms which it could use to oppress the people. An armed populace is much more difficult to repress than an unarmed one.

Second, it recognizes the right of the people to rebel against an oppressive government just as our founders did against King George. Rebellion takes weapons and we have the right to hold on to those weapons in case we ever need them.

Third, the second amendment envisions a system in which military power (arms) rests in the hands of the people and their militias. For the nation to go to war, the people and their militias must be called into action. The federal government--at least the way the founders envisioned things--would have only a limited military power of its own (no large standing armies). To pursue war, the government would therefore have to call up the people with their arms to fight. This system (had it been maintained) would have prevented the government from oppressing us (since we the people would be the government's primary army) and would also have prevented the government from pursuing unpopular wars, since it could only go to war if the people were willing to fight. Unfortunately, we've replaced this "people's army" with a standing professional army controlled increasingly by one man--the President. Nothing is more dangerous to our liberties.

As a hunter and target shooter, I enjoy guns for sport. Despite that, however, I find the NRA's position on gun control offensive. While I believe in a right to keep and bear arms, I find no problem with the government passing laws to restrict carrying arms in public places. Keeping a hand gun--or even a machine gun--locked up at home is one thing. Carrying it around on the street is quite another. I don't believe we should have restrictions on owning weapons. Restrictions on carrying and using weapons, however, don't bother me and seem every bit as sensible and harmless as regulations on driving cars. Guns like cars are quite dangerous and need to be used responsibly and safely. Regulations that require safe and responsible use of guns should be encouraged. But abolishing the second amendment and prohibiting ownership of guns seems increasingly disturbing in a nation where large standing armies exist and the President seems to believe he has an unbounded power to use force as he sees fit.

Hey offensivetoyou. Go to:

http://www.doc.state.al.us/inmresults.asp?AIS=&FirstName=john&LastName=cooper

And see the status of the last gun nut that made exactly the same argument to me that you just made on this list before he killed one of my kids.

I think that it's possible to have a debate without being inconsiderate. I should correct the earlier post and state that I meant that by every indication Ms. Montagne has not posted here on gun violence before. Not until now. She may take a more nuanced position on the right to bear arms after her grief has subsided. She may not, but this not just a podium, it's also a community, and there's every reason to expect people to show a moment of compassion no matter how much they may disagree with a position. That's all I'm saying.

Regarding your "rights", from the point of view of constitutional law, I could argue quite successfully that the constitution does not give you, as an individual, the right to bear arms outside of a civil militia. That's the case that the District of Columbia is making and quite frankly, we could debate that point endlesslessly and I don't think you'd win it. The ammendment that gives citizens the right to bear arms does so directly in connection with raising a militia. It says nothing about holding off a felon at your home with a rifle, or owning a sawed-off automatic weapon to protect your wife and kids. There is no such protection under the constitution.

So, no, I don't accept that she's trying to take away your rights when the case is still before the Supreme Court as to whether you have such rights in the first place. But more importantly, our offensive friend could at least say, I understand your pain, but you know, these things are complicated; there is a reason why people make the case for possessing arms.

Btw, there are several advanced societies where the right to bear personal arms is not protected and people have not all been shot in their living rooms by desperate felons. The UK is a good example. Even the police in the UK are not allowed to bear arms except under special circumstances. There is some gun violence in the cities, of course, there is everywhere, but the millions of UK citizens who do not own personal arms have not all been shot dead in the middle of the night by felons.

And as drg42 points out, there is a limit to the use of offensivetoyou's argument about self-protection.

I have never been a fan of "limiting rights for your own protection". To me that is the whole rationale El Presidente is using in his "war" on terror. I oppose Bush infringing on our 4th amendment rights, limiting our 1st amendment rights and I also oppose the D's trying to limit our 2nd amendment rights (and I am not a gun owner either).

Freedom is a messy proposition. People sometimes get hurt and killed because of its permissiveness. But all the alternatives to freedom are unacceptable.

My condolences Ms. Montagnes on the senseless killings of your friends but I will never be able to support any effort limiting our rights.

Ms. Montagnes:
My condolences. What you have experienced is devastating.

I hesitate to write this, but TPM did give this thread more exposure than most, so here goes, and my apologies if there is anything insensitive in what I am about to write.

For every tragedy that can be blamed on guns, a greater number of tragedies can be blamed on alcohol. Now I think beer, wine, and single malt scotch are much more enjoyable than shooting a gun, but that is my preference. I believe that I can drink responsibly and that the irresponsible behavior of those who abuse alcohol, and who abuse, maim, and kill others while drunk are not sufficient grounds for someone to take away my ability to drink. I confess that I was rather embarrassed when I realized that this is exactly the same argument used by those who wish to own guns. If I want to keep my ability to drink alcohol, despite the great violence that alcohol causes, then I wonder how I can take away the ability of others to own guns, despite the great violence that guns can cause.

Peace.

Nothing will ever be done at the national level to control guns. We must rely on local control. A city which completely outlaws ALL guns and implements very strict punishment to offenders will be an attractive place for people to move to. That seems the only way. Were such a city GREEN then it would also attract a certain kind of person. If such a city promoted GREEN business that would be another attraction. If such a city outlawed CARS except for parking spaces at the edge of the city it would be safer too. These ideas should be thought about by people of the same mindset and especially people with some flexibility in locating to a new place.
That would include young people and retirees. An influx of a large group of such people could move a small city rather quickly to a more sane way of living. It's been suggested before but needs repeating.

You are, of course, right about guns---particularly handguns which are not hunting weapons, unless you hunt human beings. There is no question at all whether or not the founders believed in the right to bear arms as a corporate right for purposes of a "well regulated militia". It is indisputable. Never would any of the framers have lined up on the side of those who claim unfettered ownership of guns to be an individual and inviolable right of private citizens. Anyone who makes such a claim with any knowledge of the contemporary discussion of the issue when debating the Bill of Rights is a willful liar.

One thing you wrote, however, is not accurate. You wrote:

"The views of the men who drafted our constitution seems disgustingly irrelevant. They were after all men who owned slaves and their wives."

They were not "all" men who owned slave and they did not "all" own their wives in the sense you mean it. Their generation had it's faults, but they were a great deal more diverse in their beliefs and practices than you give them credit for. Your generalization is far too broad.

Additionally, their views are of paramount importance to those of us who understand the Constitution at no time has provided for an individual unfettered right to owning firearms. The founders would never be on the side of the gun nuts and would certainly stictly limit ownership of weapons, especially handguns, in this day and age.

You've walked into a subject where everyone has a strident assertion of being right, having a right to act violently on the basis of paranoia, believing that losing one's oh-so-precious own life is the worst thing that can happen, and all kinds of notions of the worst sides of human behavior- many of them based in vanity.

The prècis of US history is that it has been substantially more violent than Canadian history, with more subjugated classes of people and the mix of selfserving triumphalist and paranoid doctrines of conduct that leads to. Learning violence as a doctrine of conduct has some difficulty; unlearning it is almost impossible. For many people it becomes an occultism, a way to control or believe they control their environment, and the gun is the the quasi-magical implement that ensures control.

The US Supreme Court is going issue verdict- well, a majority opinion anyway- in a few days or weeks about gun rights. You've started to talk about the themes as people are feeling pretty antsy. The Court has ducked the matter for about 70 years. Basically, whatever the majority opinion says will be the basis of a national argument that lasts about a year. Yet another round of Culture War, really.

It's practically a given that the Court will expand individual right to guns. It will probably also open the door to restrictions, precisely by defining individual right. My expectation of the political fallout is that there will be a couple of months of victories for the 'pro-gun' side, and then a broad backlash that results in net stronger and far more uniform regulation.

So far we've had a diffuse, incoherent, patchwork and pattern-devoid set of laws about guns. This served all sides reasonably well as long as they were willing to accept the long term trend of slight tightening of laws and deviolentization and people who use and own guns slowly dying away (and their kids stowing the things away in the attic to rust). Well, the 'pro-gun' side has decided not to accept this status quo anymore and has a Supreme Court it thought most favorable. I think 'pro-gun' people are badly mistaken that getting more uniformity is going to work in their favor in the middle or long run. Long story short, the country is slowly getting more civilized. Which isn't compatible with a culture of paranoid people wielding guns.

Anecdotal arguments, not facts, tend to come from the NRA. Like their oft repeated accidental death rate "due" to doctors (ha, ha) compared to the accidental death rate from guns. Conveniently leaving aside all the gun owners who murder and kill compared to the doctors who...what?

Cars don't kill people, drivers, inatttentive pedestrians and, sometimes, plain bad luck can kill people. But we test and license drivers and vehicles, requiring them to carry insurance for any damage that might result. Anybody can own a car, you just don't get to appear in public with it unless you meet some modest societal norms for the privilige.

So it's not the guns you have to worry about, it's the society and behavior within it.

The US is notable in that it deals with the problems of gun crime, murder and accidents by doing precisely nothing.

A number of years ago, when there was a mass murder by gunfire on Tasmania, the Australians redrew all their gun laws. When a Swiss reservist used his military SLR (that thousands of them keep at home) to murder, they reinspected their controls and safety. The UK, who have always had strict gun laws are now facing the problems of open borders and weaponry from Eastern Europe, and a surge in knife crime alongside, again saying more about societal problems, that Brits seem aware of.

The idea of always carrying a side-arm was only ever common at all in a portion of the US and even there could be banned by city promulgation. For a while it pretty much went the same way as the "gentleman's" sword for the same reason. We already limit what sort of weapons individuals can own and it would seem obvious that we would not want the mentally imbalanced to get their hands on any guns.

Yet that is not uncommon and exactly what happened with Reagan's would-be assassin in 1981, and just lately with the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007. Anything changed? Not likely. Oh, no. Gun ownership is far too precious. How many was it at VTech? 30 plus dead and more wounded who would have suffered no trauma if gun ownership required any effective tests and review.

Yet absolutely nothing gets done because some people think their inalienable rights so inviolably precious, and deaths don't matter stacked against them.

We're not talking anecdotes. Annually we're talking over 30,000 people dead by gunshot -- murder, suicide and accidents -- and another 70,000 and more wounded, 2/3 by violent crime. Take out the suicides and we're still talking every year 3 times the deaths and two, nearer three times the wounded of US military in 5 years of Iraq war and occupation!

As this is multiply higher than any other comparable western society, it says more about us and our choices than any insuperable problem.