why won't the US government ban gun ownership by private citizens?

Question

i understand that it is in the constitution that every man has the right to bare arms,but, surely the american people can see the connection between this and the fact that they have one of the highest murder rates in the world. and surely they should distinguish between a (semi) automatic machine gun and a single shot hunting rifle.

BOOMAN...................

i gaurantee that if fewer people owned guns then fewer people would be able to kill their fellow citizens!!

Answer 1

Because it is written in our Constitution and its our right to bare arms. 80 million gun owners are not going to give that right up.

There has been no proof that gun control helps fight violent crime, and those who use stats to prove otherwise are just manipulating the figures. I can look up the exact time frame that England banned firearms (in whatever manner) and the distinct rise of violent crime afterward. Problems with knife crime I believe (correct if i am wrong) Maybe less murders but definitely not significant enough to feel safer at the end of a blade.

Everyone has a right to their views but politicians learned by passing laws in the past that go, that our vote will be heard if it gets to restrictive.

Wanted to add this article just written by London Times: Sorry it makes the reply that much longer:

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British attitudes are supercilious and misguided

Richard Munday

Despite the recent spate of shootings on our streets, we pride ourselves on our strict gun laws. Every time an American gunman goes on a killing spree, we shake our heads in righteous disbelief at our poor benighted colonial cousins. Why is it, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, that Americans still resist calls for more gun controls?

The short answer is that “gun controls” do not work: they are indeed generally perverse in their effects. Virginia Tech, where 32 students were shot in April, had a strict gun ban policy and only last year successfully resisted a legal challenge that would have allowed the carrying of licensed defensive weapons on campus. It is with a measure of bitter irony that we recall Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, recording the words of Cesare Beccaria: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

One might contrast the Virginia Tech massacre with the assault on Virginia’s Appalachian Law School in 2002, where three lives were lost before a student fetched a pistol from his car and apprehended the gunman.

Virginia Tech reinforced the lesson that gun controls are obeyed only by the law-abiding. New York has “banned” pistols since 1911, and its fellow murder capitals, Washington DC and Chicago, have similar bans. One can draw a map of the US, showing the inverse relationship of the strictness of its gun laws, and levels of violence: all the way down to Vermont, with no gun laws at all, and the lowest level of armed violence (one thirteenth that of Britain).

America’s disenchantment with “gun control” is based on experience: whereas in the 1960s and 1970s armed crime rose in the face of more restrictive gun laws (in much of the US, it was illegal to possess a firearm away from the home or workplace), over the past 20 years all violent crime has dropped dramatically, in lockstep with the spread of laws allowing the carrying of concealed weapons by law-abiding citizens. Florida set this trend in 1987, and within five years the states that had followed its example showed an 8 per cent reduction in murders, 7 per cent reduction in aggravated assaults, and 5 per cent reduction in rapes. Today 40 states have such laws, and by 2004 the US Bureau of Justice reported that “firearms-related crime has plummeted”.

In Britain, however, the image of violent America remains unassailably entrenched. Never mind the findings of the International Crime Victims Survey (published by the Home Office in 2003), indicating that we now suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United States; never mind the doubling of handgun crime in Britain over the past decade, since we banned pistols outright and confiscated all the legal ones.

We are so self-congratulatory about our officially disarmed society, and so dismissive of colonial rednecks, that we have forgotten that within living memory British citizens could buy any gun – rifle, pistol, or machinegun – without any licence. When Dr Watson walked the streets of London with a revolver in his pocket, he was a perfectly ordinary Victorian or Edwardian. Charlotte Bronte recalled that her curate father fastened his watch and pocketed his pistol every morning when he got dressed; Beatrix Potter remarked on a Yorkshire country hotel where only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver; in 1909, policemen in Tottenham borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by (and were joined by other armed citizens) when they set off in pursuit of two anarchists unwise enough to attempt an armed robbery. We now are shocked that so many ordinary people should have been carrying guns in the street; the Edwardians were shocked rather by the idea of an armed robbery.

If armed crime in London in the years before the First World War amounted to less than 2 per cent of that we suffer today, it was not simply because society then was more stable. Edwardian Britain was rocked by a series of massive strikes in which lives were lost and troops deployed, and suffragette incendiaries, anarchist bombers, Fenians, and the spectre of a revolutionary general strike made Britain then arguably a much more turbulent place than it is today. In that unstable society the impact of the widespread carrying of arms was not inflammatory, it was deterrent of violence.

As late as 1951, self-defence was the justification of three quarters of all applications for pistol licences. And in the years 1946-51 armed robbery, the most significant measure of gun crime, ran at less than two dozen incidents a year in London; today, in our disarmed society, we suffer as many every week.

Gun controls disarm only the law-abiding, and leave predators with a freer hand. Nearly two and a half million people now fall victim to crimes of violence in Britain every year, more than four every minute: crimes that may devastate lives. It is perhaps a privilege of those who have never had to confront violence to disparage the power to resist.

Answer 2

The question you asked is why the US government will not ban gun ownership. It isn't a question of an outright ban. That isn't going to happen as long as it is seen as a constitutional right. The more reasonable question is what are the proper limits. The anti-gun lobby recognizes that the floodgates are opened and even an outright ban would only eliminate guns from the hands of basically law-abiding people, not those who intend to use them to do ill. Still, reducing access has to be a good thing, they believe. The pro-gun camp says they NEED the guns to protect themselves from said elements who intend to do wrong.
I think the reasonable solution is on limiting automatic, semi-automatics, huge clips, and so on. Few who hunt use hand-grenades and Howitzers to do it, and most recognize that having hand-grenades unprotected in a home with children is foolish and inviting disaster.
The bottom line is that the "US government" can not do anything that the US people will not do for themselves. Government of the people and by the people, after all.

Answer 3

Actually, if you look at per-capita murder rates, you will find them higher in US cities with very restrictive gun control (such as Washington, D.C.) than they are in places that allow concealed-carry permits (such as Florida).

It's a little hard to understand for people with an irrational fear of guns. You have to grasp the fact that guns are merely tools, like any other tool. Nail guns don't make a person a carpenter, and a pistol doesn't make a person a killer. They are both tools, and do what they are made to do. If a person wants to be a carpenter, he doesn't need a nail gun, he'll find a way to build a house without one. If a person wants to kill, he'll find a way without a gun, too.

What guns WILL do is enable someone to protect themselves. If a violent person armed with a knife attacks a peaceful citizen with a gun, the result is obvious. If the violent person also has a gun, at least the citizen can return fire (unlike the students in Virginia, who were disarmed by law, if not by choice). The disarmed citizen is at the mercy of anyone physically larger than themself, even if both are totally unarmed.

Now, what you REALLY don't get is the real purpose of the Second Amendment. It's not about murderers. It's about retaining the means to throw off an oppressive government.

Answer 4

ok pansies.....first off guns dont kill people....people kill people using guns. can we put knives on the list too and baseball bats and etc: The problem is people will always find a way if they want to. at least with a gun there is no suffering. frankly the law was made for ''smart'' people to use it for hunting and protection and responsibility. without these three factors it will always be a problem. I think the guns are ok, why not just stop selling the bullets and materials to make bullets is a better way around the constitution. nothing in the constitution says we cant ban the sale of bullets in the U.S. Am I a Genius or what? to bad the polititions dont listen to me when i send them a letter......

Unfortunately not to dismay you...more people are killed by drinking and driving then guns...Why not stop that too?

Answer 5

What I see is the illogical conclusion between murder and Guns guns don't kill people People kill people with knives cars hammers lamps Bats etc etc etc But the fact that Law abiding citizen have the right to own firearms keeps crime down in areas that don't have restrictive laws but the best answer is look at England and Australia the Government took their firearms and now crime is rampant with only the criminals having guns so if they want my Guns they will have to come get them in the meantime I will sleep good knowing that if someone wants to break I will have the means to protect my Family

Answer 6

where did you get your info in Germany well change that just read some of Hitlers speeches and you'll know why we as a people should be able to have firearms also did you know that in Texas one county has an actual law that all homeowners must own a handgun the crime in that county is under 1%.
not to mention check the statistics in all the other countries that did away with guns the crime rate skyrocketed.
(remember if we make guns illegal only the criminals will have them)
yes its true if you don't believe me think about drugs they are illegal yet a lot of people have them.
Also how many people who have the licence for fully automatic weapons commit crimes let me tell you (none)
the automatics used in crime are stolen from cops-military or imported which even with laws against them would happen anyway.
And ammo clips well it just takes one shot to kill someone.
I'm not going to take the time to do all the work for you look it up if you call me a liar and don't look it up well then look up fool in the websters dictionary

Answer 7

I do agree there is a difference between a semi-auto and a hunting rifle, but as someone who reaps the benefits of hunting, HELL NO. There are so many Alaskan families - even city dwellers - who wouldn't make it through the winter without a moose or a caribou. The vast majority of our communities are not on the road system - they already pay close to $8 a gallon for milk - there is no way they could afford to have beef flown in.

Answer 8

Yes, there are some who seek to disarm the citizens under the misguided notion that doing so will make crime disappear. The 2nd Amendment doesn't allow citizens to keep and bear arms, it prohibits the government from taking away that right.

Answer 9

Rather than banning legal gun ownership, we should focus more on preventing & prosecuting illegal gun ownership.

I would like for it to be harder to legally obtain a gun, however. There would be nothing wrong with requiring owners to take a basic course on gun ownership... Lesson 1: Don't leave your loaded gun, with the safety off, in your toddler's playpen.

The government can't (and shouldn't) know of every single thing a person does in the privacy of their home, but requiring a course could lower the number of accidents that occur.

Answer 10

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Answer 11

There's probably little point.
In the UK gun ownership was legal if you had a license, it was properly stored, the police would regularly come round to inspect etc etc.
Then one guy went mental and murdered a load of innocent people in the street- the Hungerford Massacre.
As a reaction the government made gun ownership illegal and all of the law abiding citizens handed in their firearms.

Now the only people with guns are gangs and drug pushers. Gun crime and death has soared massively in the UK since all firearms were made illegal.