More Americans Have Died From U.S. Shootings Than During Five Decades Of War

The topic of gun control never fully cools down in the United States, but President Obama brought the discussion to even greater heights with his gun control executive order, which he announced after breaking down in tears at a January press conference. In response, the National Rifle Association was predictably ticked off, and Obama slammed the idea that he’s taking guns away as “a conspiracy.”

So, the gun control debate will never go away, not even if the U.S. were to completely switch gears and adopt Australian gun laws (which will never happen). The effects of Obama’s plan will take years to measure, but the Virginia Center for Public Safety recently made a sobering claim:

“Since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, more Americans have died by gunfire within our own country than American servicemen and women who were killed in all our wars.” To be clear, the claim involves all military conflicts that have seen United States participation, both on and off soil, going back to our country’s inception. In response to this enormous assertion, Politifact put on its research gloves and found that these claims were completely true. Even including the Civil War (which racked up the greatest loss of lives of any U.S. conflict), the total number of lives lost in U.S. wars is 1.4 million. Whereas the total number of lives lost through gunfire is 1.5 million.

Actually, the number is probably greater than 1.5 million, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only started keeping mortality rate figures for U.S. gunfire deaths in 1968, so there’s a full four unaccounted years at work. Politifact believes the number is closer to 1.6 million U.S. deaths by gunfire. That’s an all-too sobering truth.

http://uproxx.com/news/us-shootings-kill-more-wars/

So as president, why hasn't Obama got guns banned then?
Who is above him to say that they stay?

eddie wrote:So as president, why hasn't Obama got guns banned then?
Who is above him to say that they stay?

The people.

It's frustrating...that's democracy! Sometimes you'd like to say: Do this! Do that! And it all gets done. But democracy doesn't work that way...and sometimes it doesn't even work at all. Look at Donald Trump.

Perhaps democracy is not always a good call then, particularly on some issues.

What's the point of having a president (or PM) if the people get to decide anyway?

eddie wrote:Perhaps democracy is not always a good call then, particularly on some issues.

What's the point of having a president (or PM) if the people get to decide anyway?

You make a great point.  In 1834 Alexis de Toqueville came to America to study what democracy has done to change people, society and politics.  He wrote his findings in a book, Democracy in America.

In his book there was a chapter in which he wrote his findings about the persona of Americans.  Coming out of an aristocratic France, he found that America had invented a new tyrant...the people.  The chapter was called The Tyranny of the Majority.  

When the people get to create opinion, he argued, they more-or-less flock to the common or conservative opinion.  We recognize this tendency today in, like, advertising, where people will flock to brand recognition and always buy (overwhelmingly) the most popular brand (take for example, the highly recognizable Donald Trump).  See, Marcuse, Herbert, et al, A Critique of Pure Tolerance.

People who are trying to introduce innovative ideas often complain about how difficult it is to overturn the conservative, prevailing tide of opinion.  Guns present such a problem.  Americans have been raised with guns, and most males, at least, have a .22 in the closet.  European attitudes on gun control are a hard, hard sell in America.  It's the Tyranny of the Majority.

The majority elects politicians. The majority elects a Republican Congress (senators and congressmen). The Republican Congress opposes the Democratic President...and you've got governmental grid lock.

I'd say that's a fairly accurate description of "the public"

People are sheeple.

eddie wrote:I'd say that's a fairly accurate description of "the public"

People are sheeple.

Xactly!

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:I'd say that's a fairly accurate description of "the public"

People are sheeple.

Xactly!

Does always amaze me though, how Hitler managed to convince so many people of his plans and then get them carried out, on such a huge scale.
Was he that charismatic or were (are) people that easily manipulated??

It's actually quite worrying!

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Xactly!

Does always amaze me though, how Hitler managed to convince so many people of his plans and then get them carried out, on such a huge scale.
Was he that charismatic or were (are) people that easily manipulated??

It's actually quite worrying!

Remember, it was hard times. Inflation, reparations...even UK was leaning heavily on the Weimar Republic. There was little government, and contenders with paramilitaries in the wings. And remember, Hitler took power by emergency powers, following the Reichstag fire.

In hard times, it's easier for a maniac to sway people.

On point with Quill Here



Democracy Requires Minority Rights
Yet majority rule can not be the only expression of "supreme power" in a democracy. If so, as Tocqueville notes above, the majority would too easily tyrannize the minority. Thus, while it is clear that democracy must guarantee the expression of the popular will through majority rule, it is equally clear that it must guarantee that the majority will not abuse use its power to violate the basic and inalienable rights of the minority. For one, a defining characteristic of democracy must be the people's right to change the majority through elections. This right is the people's "supreme authority." The minority, therefore, must have the right to seek to become the majority and possess all the rights necessary to compete fairly in elections—speech, assembly, association, petition—since otherwise the majority would make itself permanent and become a dictatorship. For the majority, ensuring the minority's rights becomes a matter of self-interest, since it must utilize the same rights when it is in minority to seek to become a majority again. This holds equally true in a multiparty parliamentary democracy, where no party has a majority, since a government must still be formed in coalition by a majority of parliament members.
The Constant Threat
The American founders—Anti-Federalists and Federalists alike—considered rule by majority a troubling conundrum. In theory, majority rule was necessary for expressing the popular will and the basis for establishing the republic. The alternative—consensus or rule by everyone's agreement—cannot be imposed upon a free people. And minority rule is antithetical to democracy. But the founders worried that the majority could abuse its powers to oppress a minority just as easily as a king. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both warn in their letters about the dangers of the tyranny of the legislature and of the executive. Madison, alluding to slavery, went further, writing, "It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part."
A half century after the United States was established, Alexis de Tocqueville saw the majority's tyranny over political and social minorities as "a constant threat" to American democracy in his pre–Civil War travels. While visiting the state of Pennsylvania, when he asked why no free blacks had come to vote in a local election he was observing, he was told that "while free blacks had the legal right to vote, they feared the consequences of exercising it." Thus, he wrote, "the majority not only makes the laws, but can break them as well."

Minority Rights I: Individual Rights vs. Majority Tyranny
Democracy therefore requires minority rights equally as it does majority rule. Indeed, as democracy is conceived today, the minority's rights must be protected no matter how singular or alienated that minority is from the majority society; otherwise, the majority's rights lose their meaning. In the United States, basic individual liberties are protected through the Bill of Rights, which were drafted by James Madison and adopted in the form of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. These enumerate the rights that may not be violated by the government, safeguarding—in theory, at least—the rights of any minority against majority tyranny. Today, these rights are considered the essential element of any liberal democracy.
The British political philosopher John Stuart Mill took this principle further. In his essay On Liberty he wrote, "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others." Mill's "no harm principle" aims to prevent government from becoming a vehicle for the "tyranny of the majority," which he viewed as not just a political but also a social tyranny that stifled minority voices and imposed a regimentation of thought and values. Mill's views became the basis for much of liberal political philosophy since, whether it is free market or economic liberalism or social liberalism.

http://democracyweb.org/node/36

What needs to be remembered here is that Obama can't defy the constitution (he's sworn to defend it, actually). The constitution is interpreted by the Supreme Court, and in the 2008 case District of Columbia vs. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd amendment enumerates the right of U.S. citizens to own guns for personal defense.

I personally would be terrified to live in a country where the head of state could make such sweeping changes to important laws on his own.

Interesting....