Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


The vast, and I mean vast, majority of murders in the US are connected to the drug trade. For instance, in my middle-sized Midwestern city the murder rate is rather high (we had 70 murders last year in a population of 300,000 or so). Very few of those were not related to the drug trade. Most of these murders are in concentrated areas. Go outside of those concentrated areas, that is most other areas in the city, and violent crime is low.


I'm against it personally, but how does having the death penalty make a society uncivilized? BTW, not all states in the US have the death penalty something like 34 of them do, the federal government does not have a death penalty.


Again, you're talking about 24 states that have such laws, and most of them are administered loosely.


You got me on this one, I'm not aware of kids being incarcerated for profit with kickbacks to judges. There are private-run prison facilities, but they incarcerate about 5 to 6% of America's prisoners. Hardly enough to be considered representative.

Ishatu, I'm interested in knowing what you define as civilized--I don't mean this smugly, I'm genuinely curious.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


I don't think America has ever taught that guns are a necessity. What we have always been taught is that the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution guarantees us the right to bear arms. That's quite a large difference, pip.


The US Constitution was written about 200 years after Europeans began colonizing the North American continent. It was the Constitution that made it a right. And, it was made a right for several reasons, one being to arm the population to fend off any government strong-arming and another was the ability to protect and preserve individual life and property. Although I do not own a gun, I strongly believe that gun ownership is as valid today as it was for the colonists and revolutionaries.


I'm sure there are Poles who disagree.


Poland certainly is a civilized society. Are you inferring that the US isn't a civilized society, pip?