One question keeps recurring on these discussions:
How many innocent young and old people have to die before these doughwhackers come to their senses? Is there a magic number that will make them think, or does their ridiculous “god given right to bear arms and play cowboys” over ride all common sense?
All the terrorist organisations around the world, will never be as successful at killing Americans as are Americans playing with guns.

How long have you spent in the US?

Dick Act. hahahahaha

Usually to be found inside a snapper 😉

Hi Rick.

Interesting about the Dick Report. Part of it intrigues me but it is not the gun control part. Just out of interest can you tell me how this works?

Regards,

kev35

They *upgrade* the weekend warriors to active duty, I think that’s how they get around it. You get to find out you’re off to some place exciting/unpleasant when they ask for your Reserve ID card (red) & issue an Active Duty ID card (green).

As for the “26 times more likely to be shot”.. like I said: remove the gang shootings & let me know that figure 😉

& in related news, someone dug this up:

The Dick Act of 1902

The Dick Act of 1902 also known as the Efficiency of Militia Bill H.R. 11654, of June 28, 1902 invalidates all so-called gun-control laws. It also divides the militia into three distinct and separate entities.

The three classes H.R. 11654 provides for are the organized militia, henceforth known as the National Guard of the State, Territory and District of Columbia, the unorganized militia and the regular army. The militia encompasses every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 45. All members of the unorganized militia have the absolute personal right and 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms of any type, and as many as they can afford to buy.

The Dick Act of 1902 cannot be repealed; to do so would violate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws which would be yet another gross violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President of the United States has zero authority without violating the Constitution to call the National Guard to serve outside of their State borders.

The National Guard Militia can only be required by the National Government for limited purposes specified in the Constitution (to uphold the laws of the Union; to suppress insurrection and repel invasion). These are the only purposes for which the General Government can call upon the National Guard.

Attorney General Wickersham advised President Taft, “the Organized Militia (the National Guard) can not be employed for offensive warfare outside the limits of the United States.”

The Honorable William Gordon, in a speech to the House on Thursday, October 4, 1917, proved that the action of President Wilson in ordering the Organized Militia (the National Guard) to fight a war in Europe was so blatantly unconstitutional that he felt Wilson ought to have been impeached.

During the war with England an attempt was made by Congress to pass a bill authorizing the president to draft 100,000 men between the ages of 18 and 45 to invade enemy territory, Canada. The bill was defeated in the House by Daniel Webster on the precise point that Congress had no such power over the militia as to authorize it to empower the President to draft them into the regular army and send them out of the country.

The fact is that the President has no constitutional right, under any circumstances, to draft men from the militia to fight outside the borders of the USA, and not even beyond the borders of their respective states. Today, we have a constitutional LAW which still stands in waiting for the legislators to obey the Constitution which they swore an oath to uphold.

Charles Hughes of the American Bar Association (ABA) made a speech which is contained in the Appendix to Congressional Record, House, September 10, 1917, pages 6836-6840 which states: “The militia, within the meaning of these provisions of the Constitution is distinct from the Army of the United States.” In these pages we also find a statement made by Daniel Webster, “that the great principle of the Constitution on that subject is that the militia is the militia of the States and of the General Government; and thus being the militia of the States, there is no part of the Constitution worded with greater care and with more scrupulous jealousy than that which grants and limits the power of Congress over it.”

“This limitation upon the power to raise and support armies clearly establishes the intent and purpose of the framers of the Constitution to limit the power to raise and maintain a standing army to voluntary enlistment, because if the unlimited power to draft and conscript was intended to be conferred, it would have been a useless and puerile thing to limit the use of money for that purpose. Conscripted armies can be paid, but they are not required to be, and if it had been intended to confer the extraordinary power to draft the bodies of citizens and send them out of the country in direct conflict with the limitation upon the use of the militia imposed by the same section and article, certainly some restriction or limitation would have been imposed to restrain the unlimited use of such power.”

The Honorable William Gordon
Congressional Record, House, Page 640 – 1917

That invalidates ALL US gun control laws. It’s going to be a bit inconvenient for some politicians, including Obumble.

I think Rick, you have just proved a point, you know of no one who has been shot in the States, but know 4 or 5 folks in the U,K, who have.

Surely this makes the statement that death by firearms in the USA is so acceptable, that hardly any mention is made of them, whereas in the U.K. even a single shooting makes the headlines.mostly.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

WTF are you talking about? Are you deliberately twisting my words to support your position? Is this how you treat statements given in evidence??
One more time:
I lived in the UK from birth to age 30, I’ve lived in the US for the past 22 years.
In all the time I lived in the UK, 4 or 5 people, personally known to me were shot. In the past 22 years in the US not one person personally known to me has been shot. Got it? It’s got sweet FA to do with *headlines*

“There is mountains of evidence on the amount of crimes prevented or stopped by legal gun owners. Even the most conservative put the figures in the hundreds of thousands.”

I’ve shown you my figures, how about showing me yours, rather than just making a seeping generalisation than the one above?

Regards,

kev35

the link is several pages back.

That photo of the Hurricane came out well 🙂

Rick, those Officers died in the course of their duties, don’t try and demean them just to score a point.

Not demeaning anyone, stop reading motives where none are present.

I’ve done this before and I’ll try it once again. I’ll give you some figures and then at the end I’ll ask a couple of very simple questions. The figures have come from the US CDC and the UK’s ONS. The UK population is just over 56 million whilst that of the US is just under 312 million. I think we can agree the US population is roughly five times that of the UK. Maybe, as developed Countries, we might expect the crime rates to be broadly similar?

Fot the year 2010/200, the US had 16,799 recorded cases of murder whereas the UK had 648 cases. That gives the US a murder rate which is a staggering 26 times that of the UK’s.

Of those 16,799 murders committed in the US, some 11,493 died from gunshot wounds. In the UK 60 of those murdered died from gunshot wounds. This reveals that just under 68.5% of all US murders for that year were carried out by people using firearms. In the UK the figure is just over 9.25%

So lack of guns in the UK just means more people are stabbed or beaten to death?

Now for the questions.

Why do you think there is such a huge discrepancy in the figures?

Do you think that the preponderance of firearm ownership in the US is contributory to these statistics?

Preponderance of gang in cities, what are the figure for *non-gang* related shooting?

Is there any empirical evidence to suggest that the ownership of firearms by private citizens makes any contribution to the reduction (if any) in gun crime?
There is mountains of evidence on the amount of crimes prevented or stopped by legal gun owners. Even the most conservative put the figures in the hundreds of thousands.

Do you accept that the US is a far more violent society than that of the UK? (For all our problems and God knows we have enough.)

Not at all, the UK rate for overall violent crime is higher than the US & the highest in Europe, like I said, I feel safer here than in the UK

Do you think it possible that the reason for the much lower figures for the UK is the simple fact that gun control actually works?

You own figures show you are more likely to get stabbed etc than shot, hows that ban on knives in public working out for ya?

Regards,

kev35

hth 🙂

Incidently, I don’t personally know anyone who has been shot in the US (that I can think of right now), I knew 4 or 5 people in the UK who have been shot.