You are probably right. I guess I was going by the NRA rule that if everybody owned a gun there would be no more violence.I don't know if that's completely fair. I don't think Dan wants EVERYONE to own a gun.
I think you are right Mori. If you banned guns, criminals would still get them and if you banned abortions women would still get them. Guns would be harder to come by and not all criminals would be able to get them and not all pregnant woman wanting an abortion would get them. It would make an impact. What kind of impact is part of the argument. Less abortions. More dangerous abortions.
I was going to say people would just get guns or abortions from Mexico like they do everything else and decided to check out Mexico's gun laws.
They have a lot stricter gun laws in Mexico than in the US and I stumbled across something that made me think. First, why do we own guns? For several reasons, mostly protection right? People hunt and collect guns as a hobby, but I think most just want a gun just in case somebody tries to do them harm. Another buried deep reason I believe is that many fear a tyrannical government taking over and stripping us of our rights and freedoms along with all our guns first. They believed an armed populace is a deterrent from that happening. Some would say as I have in the past that our military could easily deal with small arms, so really it isn't that much of a deterrent. Yes the military could deal with that, but it would take the military. Our police force would be overmatched in numbers. A military firing on their populace is a bad sign for a country and is the ultimate sign of weakness to other countries that might see a divided US as an opportunity. Either way at that point it is all bad.
Thats where I finally come to a point with Mexico's laws. Their Constitution guaranteed the right to have arms, but in the 60's they decided that only the police, military and body guards can carry weapons outside the home(Not that that stopped the Cartel). They also limited the guns the populace can own to just small caliber weapons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Mexico
By the 1960s, fear of the growing anti-government sentiment and the growing number of citizens arming themselves, prompted the government to modify Article 10 of the Constitution and to enact the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives. And so begun a systematic disarmament of the population by limiting gun ownership to small-caliber handguns, heavily restricting the right to carry outside the home, and ending a cultural attachment to firearms by shutting down gun stores, outlawing the private sale of firearms, closing down public shooting facilities, and putting in control the federal government of all firearm-related matters.
This swift change resulting in sweeping powers over gun control were the result of the strong presidentialism that has traditionally marked Mexican politics, giving the sitting president control and cooperation of Congress to change present laws or enact new laws. The government defended the constitutional reform and new federal law by expressing that there was a time where the government could not guarantee the security of its subjects and therefore citizens were allowed to arm themselves to look after their own safety but given that the government was now able to deliver justice, it was time that the use of force be reserved to the government in order to preserve due process and the rule of law.
In addition, the government has conducted gun-exchange programs from time-to-time, where citizens are encouraged to exchange any firearm (registered, unregistered, legal or illegal) for either a cash incentive or groceries, without fear of civil or criminal prosecution.
Good thing, bad thing? I don't know. Just throwing it out there.
