betwixthewires

You're going to need a source on the claim that most violent crime is in the furtherance of other profitable crime? You ever heard a phrase such as "if weed were legal then people wouldn't kill each other selling weed"? I thought this was settled science. Is it so outlandish an idea that most people who kill do it because it is profitable for them to do so that you want me to google it for you?

Alright, so let me ask you, what does "common sense" gun control look like?

I never unreasonably assumed he meant personal ownership. I just thought you know, since you can read a dead mans mind and know he was talking about the French revolution or something you must really, really know what you're talking about.

"Let them take arms" can be reasonably construed to mean "let them own guns". Saying "in no way" is categorically incorrect. Saying it might not mean that is not unreasonable, but saying it definitely doesn't is absolutely unreasonable, which is what you're saying.

What he meant, what was going on in his head, we can't know. Well, except for you apparently, because you really know what you're talking about. But the rest of us, all we can do is take his words at face value.

I've looked at those stats and I'm not really convinced.

Half of gun deaths are suicides. In those cases, a desire to die is the cause of death. Something is deeply wrong in our society if children want to kill themselves in epidemic numbers, and we need to figure out what that is and fix it.

Out of the rest, it's almost entirely violence from organized crime. That violence doesn't go away if you ban guns, at best other weapons get used, at worst criminals just don't obey the gun laws. When two rival groups are fighting over a crack dealing monopoly in a neighborhood, if you blame the result of that on the tools used you're ignoring another real problem. Why is America so addicted to drugs. Just like with suicide, I think we need to figure out what's driving that.

Something in our society is very very wrong, our society is sick and the symptoms are teen suicide (and veteran suicide and suicide as a result of divorce...) and widespread drug addiction. Guns show up in those dynamics simply because there are a lot of guns in America.

For the same reason prohibition of alcohol didn't work, for the same reason the drug war didn't work, for the same reason prescription requirements for medically useful narcotics doesn't work. It doesn't matter what the law is, people will make their own choices, and if the things are available, legally or not, people that want to use them will use them.

Look at the US. For all it's faults, it has handled smoking very very well. The younger generation basically doesn't smoke cigarettes. They're not banned from it for life, they just were informed about it and so they find it disgusting and don't really do it. You can't even really get a date anymore with someone if you smoke cigarettes and you're under like 40.

Projecting what?

We are discussing a Thomas Jefferson quote, not Ben Franklin, and in the quote we are discussing he literally says "let them take arms."

OK, well, maybe. if they're so harmless in the face of a standing army then why not let them have their guns?

I never said that, but you ascribing scenarios that a long dead man had in mind as opposed to taking their words at face value really tells me that you really, really know what you're talking about, a lot.