IslandTractor
Super Star Member
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2005
- Messages
- 16,647
- Location
- Prudence Island, RI
- Tractor
- 2007 Kioti DK40se HST, Woods BH
We discussed the European policy at great length and I came to some conclusions, as follows...
Europeans aren't granted the right to bear arms under the Constitution because they have no Constitution, unlike the United States. Consequently, owning firearms and/or carrying a firearm is completely foreign to them and has been for generations. It's not a normal thing (like it is here) so why desire something that's not even considered in the normal course of living and society.
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Beacuse no European country is a democracy and the central government (of each country dictates what the citizens can or cannot do (and has for decades), the very idea of gun ownership is alien to the general populus.
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In the case of Australia, it was government mandate brought about by the people that removed weapons from the hands of citizens. Interestingly however, the criminal segment never turned in their guns so now crime perpetrated with firearms in Australia is against unarmed citizens, a sad affair.
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I try to stay out of the the gun nut discussions
You are flat out wrong to publish (and I note without any disagreement from fellow posters:confused2
For the record, virtually EVERY country in Europe is both a democracy AND has a constitution. I'm using democracy here in the casual sense that we use it to describe ourselves (elected representative government) as the US is not technically a Democracy either (I believe we are technically a democratic republic or constitutional republic). Many of the European constitutions are modeled after ours and ours is based in large part on the English Magna Carta which is part of the development of the series of laws and acts that serve as the UK "constitution". The constitutions are different than ours and sometimes called "basic laws" or in the case of the UK are a series of acts modified over the centuries (as ours has been) but be sure that we are not unique in having a constitution. We might be the only country that specifically addresses a right to bear arms but rest assured we are not the only country with a constitution or democratic form of government.
History lesson over. You can all now go back to your anecdodal arguments in favor of arming the population. I will note however that there are more gun related deaths per capita in the USA than in almost any other non warring nation on earth. The only countries with higher rates of gun related deaths are South Africa, Guatemala, Thailand, and Colombia. Great company. I guess all those hand guns are working very effectively to make us more secure.