User blog comment:Catfishperson/American Politics Polls./@comment-26172435-20160302222357/@comment-26172435-20160309133854

Beauhunt: "The goal of my post was to say guns may/may not give people more control over their countries. Not to show fear of the government."

I understand. The government should be there to support the people, and therefore the people have a say in the goverment. The government organizes security forces to ensure the people's safety. That's why they establish police forces, spy agencies, a national guard and an army, among others. In a country where both government and people function properly, there is no need for the masses to own guns to take the right in their own hands and enforce their own security ... or abuse them for other purposes, like suicide or mass shootings ... causing avoidable deaths that will obviously not be prevented by arming every bystander ...

If a people fears their government fails, or would even turn against them ... as I feel is the case for many Americans ... the people may revert to take up arms and establish their own security forces, or even fight 'their' government. At the time of the first drafts of the US constitution, it would have mad sense to grant the people the right to do so ... yet, the constitution text may not have been written in the spirit of 'allow the people to fight their own government'. See Ithilion's plea to interpret the constution as to allow for establishment of the National Guard ... for which the drafting will effectively be applicable in times of danger, where both the people and its government are under threat.

Here are some stats that may interest you.

''Note that the total amount of registered crimes per capita is higher in many EU countries than in the US ... which is explained by the differences in factors like population density, logistical hotspots, urbanisation, registration behaviour, etcetera rather than significant differences in factual incidency of crime per capita based on comparable circumstances.''