The Latest American Gun Thing

American culture is American.

I'm getting sick of the xenophobic assholery in this thread. I am a pretty easygoing person and I can accept a fair bit, but stop.

America has a population half the size of Europe, and each of the 50 states has different laws and people.

Switzerland, the nation that does gun control right, has less people than New York.
California, a state that does gun control wrong, has around as many people as Poland.

Please either take that into consideration when you're making stupid generalizations, or keep them to yourselves.

EDIT: Countries confused, my apologies.

Don't forget my favorite European country.

And I have a question for the statists, since they think police protection is a right.

What do you think of President Obama, or any other politician for that matter having an entourage of bodyguards? His whole family is shielded by armed people that follow them around. Even his children have armed bodyguards in school (which are usually gun-free zones! *Gasp*).

Are his bodyguards a privilege or a right? If you think it's a right, why does he comparatively have more rights than my family? Not many people in America have the police on them all the time.

If you say it's a privilege, then why the hell do you think police protection is some kind of right? Incumbents are elected by the people, they do not have any more rights than the citizenry. If Obama's bodyguard protection is a right, then I want some of that too.

If you are in danger, you are put under police protection. If there was a murderer after you, you would be allowed police escorts if you had to leave the house(although that would probably be taken care of by somebody else). Most likely you'd be confined to your home because it's easier, but being a president is a 4 year stretch and they have a job to do.

Important political officials are essentially always in danger, as are their families.

I hope you realize being a president kinda paints a big "please shoot me" sign on your head.
The average person doesn't have that and if there really are death threats against you then you can in fact have the police protect you, as Arseface said.

I've already discussed how the police have no obligation to offer special services a few pages back. It's not a right.

As far as I see it every citizen has the right to be protected by the police. That is the sole purpose of their existence.

The police do have an obligation to respond to threats. If they get a call, they need to respond. It doesn't have anything to do with your rights, it has to do with their jobs.

And you can hire a private bodyguard. Armed guards aren't allowed in certain areas without express permission, and state officials get that permission in privately owned areas. Public spaces are essentially owned by their organiztion, so permission is implied.

If your police force isn't protecting you, SOMETHING IS VERY VERY VERY WRONG.

Trust me, I have done research on this. In one state, a woman asked for the police to protect her against a rabid boyfriend. The police gave her the cold shoulder and she got hurt. She ironically ended up marrying her attacker but hey. I couldn't find the story about it, but here's a similar one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

And some food for thought:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybe...-the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/

P.S Good luck about something that came from the supreme court. I know some of you will still try to shoot this down, so give me your best shot.

You have a serious issue with reliability of your police it seems

No, I have a serious issue with bigoted arguments.

You're police is supposed to protect you, if they don't do that something is wrong with your police. Dunno what you mean with bigoted. What do you even have police for if not to protect citizens?

How can you be content with a force that won't even take liability for failing to protect you? Why has protecting yourself fallen out of a person's responsibility?

There's a term called the bootlicker. It applies here.

It got thrown out on the grounds that neither children or their well-being is property.

Although, in that context, you don't have a right to protect your own well-being either. So the gun argument would also fall apart due to that ruling unless other more specific rulings have been made.

Without a more specific case, both arguments fall apart with this one. It can't be used as evidence for either case because this amounts to "well-being isn't property and no laws relating to property apply to it".

Countless states have thrown out police liability. I'm not going to argue about this because this is set in stone by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms

If you nitpick this hard, the 1st Amendment would be in shambles by now. Yes, the 2nd Amendment allows you to use said arms too.

You're certainly responsible to be careful yourself.
But the world you are drawing is based on anarchy where everyone has to hold a gun in their hands to defend themselves. That's not how a civilized community works. In any kind of community the individual has to give up on certain rights to profit from the advantages of the being part of the community. So you as an individual "agree" to follow the laws of your community and in return everyone can live in a somewhat ordered and secure structure that ensures the well being of everyone.
The community I live in has thought me that I do not have to protect myself all alone from criminals, but instead the police is there help me. That's a good thing, allies that protect me, yey. In return I have given up the right to hold deadly weapons that are now not useful to me anymore, since the police handles that for me.

I guess there are some american laws that currently enforce you to play rambo and defend yourself all alone. Doesn't change my arguments.

You are skirting around the argument by giving an anecdote about how you live in a 100% safe neighborhood protected by police that have never done any wrongdoing, justifying your disarmament with an argument that's about as stupid as saying you don't need fire extinguishers with the fire department on call. I can't help you, you're stuck in Utopia apparently.

Last I checked the second amendment specifically uses the words "well regulated."

That is a constitutional duty to do something. They can still have a contractual obligation, and local laws can still find them accountable.

On the national scale you are right, but that's because a number of those sorts of rulings are generally delegated to state or local governments.

As an American I'd expect you to understand that a vast majority of laws aren't federal.