Scotus rules 2nd amendment is an individual right

How weird. When due to business I walk around downtown Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, the 4th, 6th, and 8th largest cities in the US, each one full of over a million supposedly crazy Texans, I am surprised by how friendly and accommodating almost all people are in such urban centers.Is Saint Louis a hellhole or are you wandering around at 3 am?

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

Sheesh NJ, you are already lecturing me on the error of my ways before I even stated any position.You obviously don't know me very well. I grew up with guns and had that little medal that said expert when I was in the army. I still have guns in the house, two pistols and a rifle.I was avoiding this argument because I think each side has an excellent point that does not translate across the Atlantic. The UK ways work great, for the UK. The US ways are the way things are and I can't see any realistic possibility for change.I believe that the relatively, and immensely higher, rate of violent crime in the US is largely, but not exclusively, due to the philosophy of hate and fear of the other and the different. As best I can tell this stance is considered paranoid in much of Europe but in the US is even by some considered gospel above and beyond all else in either the OT or NT. Otherwise why wouldn't the Swiss be blowing each other away with those government issued machine guns that go to every male twixt 18 and 45 last I heard?IMO Michael Moore (aka the AntiChrist to conservatives) made some excellent points concerning gun ownership in the US in the documentary Bowling for Columbine Namely that the availability of firearms is not a predictor of violence.Now as to why the crime rate is so high in the US, perhaps the answer is not just poverty, guns, racism, or even the philosophy of fear and hate preached by politicians, religious leaders, and the media. Rather I think it is the complex interaction of all these factors that are responsible.But that is what the US is, something neither good nor bad but so complex that there are no intellectually simplistic solutions to the problems it faces. Perhaps it would help if political power was in the hands of the much feared 'intellectuals' rather than the beloved 'bumpkin act' that Americans so insist on voting into office due to their own lack of self-esteem.Edited by anglagard, : to correct the fact that US voters choose not bumpkins (most are actually cold, calculating, vicious bastards) but rather those who successfully act like bumpkins for the audience.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

Actually I found it more humorous than insulting that you seem to automatically think I oppose everything you believe in. I take no offense and am glad to see that you are willing to admit it should you make a mistake (which is a lot more than I can say for some people around here). Thanks, I figured someone needed to say that just because the US and UK are different does not make one or the other 'better' or that solutions that may work quite well for one nation would automatically work as well for the other./snip/ I think that was part of the message but not the whole message. Notice how, as usual, Moore compares the US to Canada. Here he shows that Canadians, even in large cities like Toronto, don't lock their doors. That class-cutting Canadian 'delinquents' don't think of automatically resorting to firearms in a dispute. Yet Canadians appear to have nearly as much access to firearms as any American citizen.Notice also how the argument that the US is an inherently violent society due to its past is punctured rather neatly by showing pictures from the Nazi era in Germany.I think Moore showed that it didn't seem to matter if guns were accessible or not, if their youth were obedient or dyed their hair pink, even if a given nation had a rather murderous past, all other industrialized nations have a much lower gun violence rate as in less than 10 percent of the US rate per capita at most. (However, notice the glaring omission of China or Russia, I am NOT arguing that Moore is above selective editing to favor a particular point.)I think the main point of Bowling for Columbine is not that access to guns, or even a nation's history, is a predictor of gun violence but rather in the case of the US there are several factors, including an atmosphere that promotes fear and hate of anyone different. Well, if it is of any consolation, IIRC the rate of violent death due to firearms in the US is half of what it was 20 years ago. Perhaps we are getting less callous, dejected, angry, cynical, and therefore less violent over time.Then again, there are twice as many people who declare no religious affiliation in the US as there were 20 years ago. But that would be the topic for another thread.Edited by anglagard, : clarity

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza