I think you are absolutely right both in regards to the founding father's rational in forming the 2nd Amendment, as well as any current legal curtailment of arms possession by individuals as they pertain to the 2nd Amendment. The idea that a private citizen of the United States, would not have access to a long-range, inter-continental, ballistic missile system, armed with a high yield thermonuclear, hydrogen bomb if they so had the means, would have been anathema to them, let alone such sillines as suppressor, grenade, or machine gun bans. How else would one arm the militia? Of course, they also thought income tax was intolerable to a free man nor that all men should be. An archaic way of thinkin; but at least they gave us a love of the "Rule of Law".
That being said, I think that the only legal way to curtail the possession of types of arms is via Constitutional Convention. The mechanism by which one can change the law is a essentially a quorum of all citizenry. Sounds like a party. There should be libations. Of which I am indulging.
Alternatively the "Well regulated" clause can be exploited to vette "who", rather than "what". I'm all for it in fact. The people who represented their country folk in the foundation of this nation were not fools; quite the contrary.
When CA outlawed bullet-button ARs in 2016, they missed out on a opportunity. If they had allowed people to register their ARs and remove the bullet buttons, so that fully-vetted, and trusted citizens were allowed to have their cake and shoot it too, they would have had near 100% compliance. Allowing people to legally transfer their property to family upon their deaths, instead of destroying it as is the law, and we probably would have had 100%. Instead most chose "featureless". I think 4% or so, 96% non-compliance. That is a recipe for disaster. Americans are an obstinate people. More to the point, by demanding registrations and vetting I think they would have been within their Constitutional authority, whereas banning they have overstepped their authority and "infringed". What do I know though, I am not a lawyer.
I do believe and have at least some evidence to back that belief up, that the vast majority gun owners, as well as Americans in general, support universal back ground checks for firearm sales and transfers. The most gun owners want to follow just laws that are Constitutional and don't infringe on their rights. There is a school of thought that believes curtailing who can get guns, as opposed to what they can get, would be highly effective in curtailing firearm violence.
I do think that George Washington would have loved the AR in it's simplicity, interchangability, accuracy, and uniformity and probably would have advocated that the Federal government should supply one free of charge to every white American between the ages of 17-45. In case of the Red Coats, Hessians, and the Indians, hwat hwat, I has wooden teeths. Twouldn'tve been a fan of standing army though.
Copy pasta
The ACTUAL facts about gun violence in America
There are about 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, this number is not disputed. (1)
U.S. population 328 million as of January 2018. (2)
Do the math: 0.00915% of the population dies from gun related actions each year.
Statistically speaking, this is insignificant. It's not even a rounding error.
What is not insignificant, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths:
• 22,938 (76%) are by suicide which can't be prevented by gun laws (3)
• 987 (3%) are by law enforcement, thus not relevant to Gun Control discussion. (4)
• 489 (2%) are accidental (5)
So no, "gun violence" isn't 30,000 annually, but rather 5,577... 0.0017% of the population.
Still too many? Let's look at location:
298 (5%) - St Louis, MO (6)
327 (6%) - Detroit, MI (6)
328 (6%) - Baltimore, MD (6)
764 (14%) - Chicago, IL (6)
That's over 30% of all gun crime. In just 4 cities.
This leaves 3,856 for for everywhere else in America... about 77 deaths per state. Obviously some States have higher rates than others
Yes, 5,577 is absolutely horrific, but let's think for a minute...
But what about other deaths each year?
70,000+ die from a drug overdose (7)
49,000 people die per year from the flu (8)
37,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities (9)
Now it gets interesting:
250,000+ people die each year from preventable medical errors. (10) You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!
610,000 people die per year from heart disease (11) Even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save about twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.).
A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides.
Simple, easily preventable, 10% reductions!
We don't have a gun problem... We have a political agenda and media sensationalism problem.
Here are some statistics about defensive gun use in the U.S. as well.
Read chapter Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence: In 2010, more than 105,000 people were injured or killed in the Uni...
www.nap.edu
Page 15:
Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010).
That's a minimum 500,000 incidents/assaults deterred, if you were to play devil's advocate and say that only 10% of that low end number is accurate, then that is still more than the number of deaths, even including the suicides.
Older study, 1995:
Page 164
The most technically sound estimates presented in Table 2 are those based on the shorter one-year recall period that rely on Rs' first-hand accounts of their own experiences (person-based estimates). These estimates appear in the first two columns. They indicate that each year in the U.S. there are about 2.2 to 2.5 million DGUs of all types by civilians against humans, with about 1.5 to 1.9 million of the incidents involving use of handguns.
r/dgu is a great sub to pay attention to, when you want to know whether or not someone is defensively using a gun
——sources——
A country music festival in Las Vegas: 58 dead.
www.latimes.com
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/11/13/cities-with-the-most-gun-violence/ (stats halved as reported statistics cover 2 years, single year statistics not found)
The U.S. government does not track death rates for every drug. However, the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does collect information on many of the more commonly used drugs. The CDC also has a searchable database, called CDC Wonder.
www.drugabuse.gov
Links to key resources on the burden of influenza - CDC
www.cdc.gov
