Comment on Theo Spark: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE (UK) GUARDIAN / OBSERVER NEW...

Theo Spark: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE (UK) GUARDIAN / OBSERVER NEW...: An American response to an editorial in the Guardian, Sept 21, 2013: "American gun use is out of control. Shouldn't the world inte...
(from "Sean Linnane")

Criminals should not have access to guns. See how easy it is when we all agree? Mr Porter thinks that denying access to firearms to law abiding people will keep the weapons from the criminals and that society will then be peaceful and safe. We have a natural experiment. In one location, Red State/county America, there is a large armed population with a low crime rate and a low death from firearms rate. In two other locations, Blue State/County America and the UK, we have strict rules against firearms ownership. In both places where guns are illegal there is a large uncontrolled criminal class running wild. While there are more deaths from firearms in Blue America than in the UK in neither are people safe.

All this is besides the real point of the Second Amendment and having an armed citizenry. The guns are not there to control crime but to control the government. In the UK people are not citizens but subjects of a government that allocates authority to a winner through an electoral ritual that does not alter the top down distribution of authority. In America the authority comes from the bottom with limited powers assigned to the federal government. The people do not have to engage in bloody revolution or resort to their firearms to restrain government on a regular basis. We hope that they never have to. The ability and right of the people to reject a tyrannical regime is however at the root of all the freedoms that the people form their government to protect.