Its been little reported but the US is actually going through one of its periodic, but ineffectual attempts at gun control.
The bear in the woods is the US constitution (as well as the various US state constitutions, where 44 states have constitutional provisions that protect the right to individual gun ownership), which gun owners claim, supports their right to own guns. The Second Amendment which was added in 1791, states: "
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Now to a European, or an non jurist US citizen, this appears to be simply a law to ensure that US states can set up armed militia's i.e. Armies, and not a call to allow individuals to own semi automatic rifles etc. However US lawyers soon ensured that this is exactly what this amendment has come to mean, and this has remained the case ever since.
Now this has been much debated in the world at large, but oddly not in the US, where the Second Amendment has in fact not been debated in the US Supreme Court since since 1939 (and did not directly address whether the amendment protects individual as opposed to collective rights). There is a case, District of
Columbia vs Heller, which is due to come to the Supreme Court this year, in which the meaning of the Second Amendment may be determined again.
Now if the DC ban on hand guns is overturned, then there will be no change in the reality of the current situation, (except, black murder rates in Washington may go up a few dozen), but if the Supreme Court upholds the gun ban in DC as not being against the 2nd Amendment, then the way is open for a larger challenge to the individuals rights to bear arms, except as part of a state organised militia.
Only in the US would this ever have arisen, as its quite obvious what the 2nd Amendment is intended to allow, but in such a litigious country, the commas and fullstops of someone in 1791, when English grammar was still not fully made fast (The Samuel Johnson
Dictionary of the English Language & Grammar was published in 1755), have been pored over by jurists ever since, and what was plain language, has been distorted to the point, where this sentence has come to support a raft of legislation.
It will be interesting to see if the US love affair with private weapons has weakened even slightly.
Just for the record surveys suggest that there are now 90 guns for every 100 citizens in the US, making it
the most heavily-armed nation in the world and according to reports India is the second with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law-enforcement agencies and the military (at four guns per 100 people) and China third, with 40 million privately held guns, (at 3 firearms per 100 people).
On a purely per capita basis, Yemen has the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46 (all males are part of the army), Iraq with 39, and Serbia with at 38 are also high figures.
With 30 guns per 100, France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany are next. Pakistan has 12 per 100 people and Afghanistan is estimated to be about 40 per 100, but Nigeria, which is perceived as a violent country, officially has just one gun per 100 people.
The world is a strange place.
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