Largest militia in the world

Originally posted by whodey
Just looking at the US, Chicago has one of the most regulated gun laws in the country. You cannot carry a concealed fire arm and in most areas not even one that is not concealed. Looking at FBI statistics it would seem that Chicago has a murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 in 2010 compared to 4.8 murders per 100,000 for the rest of the country.

Considering that Chicago is a large urban area that rate seems very low.

Originally posted by whodey
Just looking at the US, Chicago has one of the most regulated gun laws in the country. You cannot carry a concealed fire arm and in most areas not even one that is not concealed. Looking at FBI statistics it would seem that Chicago has a murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 in 2010 compared to 4.8 murders per 100,000 for the rest of the country.

How does it compare to other big cities in the US? Big cities generally have more crime than rural areas, so the comparison with "the rest of the US" is meaningless.

I see too that you've chosen to ignore Hugo Rifkind's article about the enormous difference between rates of gun crime in the US, with its generally liberal gun laws, and the UK, with its restrictive ones. Looks like UK laws, if applied in the US, would save you about 30,000 lives a year.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Considering that Chicago is a large urban area that rate seems very low.

Ah - you beat me to it!

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
No magazines with more than 30 bullets comes to mind.

Yeh, but their 30 round magazines are attached to real assault weapons, not AR15s.

And as I offered in a different thread quality 30 round magazines don't jam the weapon.

Originally posted by vistesd
The word “Militia” is, mentioned in the following sections of the U.S. Constitution—


[b]Article I - The Legislative Branch
Section 8 - Powers of Congress

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and ...[text shortened]... simply wanted to suggest a parallel. I think we need to know more about the Swiss than I do...[/b]

The opening phrase of the 2nd offers a reason for the clause to follow but doesn't modify it.

"..The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." grammatically stands alone and isn't delimited or modified by the rationale of A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.

It may logically be presumed that the militia rationale was top of the list of reasons, but hardly makes all other reasons non existent.

There is plenty of context and history to determine what the militia was, and should yet be.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Considering that Chicago is a large urban area that rate seems very low.

It is, but it's still way above that of smaller cities and rural areas. Detroit, Baltimore, Washington DC, LA, and many other cities dwarf Chicago's murder rates, but all major urban areas are at the top of the list and most have stringent gun laws.

Originally posted by Teinosuke
Here's Hugo Rifkind in the Times on gun ownership in the US and elsewhere. Can't paste the link as it's subscribers only, but it was page 21 of Tuesday's issue:

Sometimes guns are ace. I'll tell you what else is ace, though: British gun law. Many British people will never even have seen a gun, save in the hands of soldiers or airport policemen. Pisto ...[text shortened]... Certainly you can kill people with a shot gun, but only a couple at a time.

I suspect that if someone is motivated to kill lots of victims there are methods far more advanced and effective than shooting them one at a time. A bomb on a bus, which we saw recently in the UK is effective.

Nerve gas in a subway was used in Japan a few years ago. Men with box cutters allegedly took over planes and flew them into buildings killing thousands.

A year of two ago in Detroit, a guy was tossed out of a dance club, and returned setting fire with a Molotov cocktail to the main exit, killing about 50 people.

Another Brit here at RHP seems to think that the almost total elimination of privately owned guns did little one way or the other. There really wasn't a big problem, and he claims things remained fairly static afterwards. Sometimes other statistics have to be looked at, and studied knowing that correlation isn't causation. I've heard that home invasions have dramatically increased with guns totally eliminated for homes. It seems rational that rowdies would have less fear of an unarmed and elderly homeowner.

Originally posted by whodey
Right. Come back when you blow up a building or two, kinda like the first Twin Towers attack. 🙂

My point here is that explosives are illegal. So what? They are easy to make. Personally I would prefer dodging bullets than being blown to bits. At least I would feel like I had a chance to evade my attacker.

Whodey and Neo from the 'Matrix' separated at birth.

Originally posted by Teinosuke
How does it compare to other big cities in the US? Big cities generally have more crime than rural areas, so the comparison with "the rest of the US" is meaningless.

I see too that you've chosen to ignore Hugo Rifkind's article about the enormous difference between rates of gun crime in the US, with its generally liberal gun laws, and the UK, wit ...[text shortened]... ve ones. Looks like UK laws, if applied in the US, would save you about 30,000 lives a year.

Comparisons across oceans and of different cultures tend to be misleading at best.

Bloody genocides in places like Rwanda, and to some extent in Sudan happen without firearms or with minimal effective use of them. The Rwanda massacres were almost exclusively done with machetes. The militias in Sudan are often armed, but tend to use machetes as well preferring the up-close
violence.

I recently watched a movie based on a true story of an American who armed a small village and assisted in its defence in Sudan. Arming these Black peasant farmers is the only way to save them from already armed Islamic militias.

Historically, weapons have often been blames for increased killing. Shaka, the Zulu chief, was both an inventive warrior and a tactical genius. The Zulu tribes had warred between each other mostly ineffectively with not too many even getting hurt. Their weapon of choice was the spear, thrown long distance with poor velocity and accuracy. Up close it wasn't much more effective. Shaka improvised a short machete like sword, which could slash and thrust at close range. He combined this with phalanx formations and flanking attacks. He very quickly defeated the other chiefs and even the mighty Brits. Early on, a lot more people died in those battles, but once in power, the regular struggles among the Zulus no longer happened for some time, saving lives and bring prosperity.

Cultures tend to evolve slowly, and surely. Changes made without such deliberation are almost always doomed to failure, not because the motives of the changers are bad, but because they fail to grasp the unseen as well as the seen (Bastiate).

Gun laws became very restrictive in the city of Detroit in the '20s, a time when there was a huge Black middle class in the city. A Black physician's home was surrounded by a mob, and the doctor shot a couple of them. This precipitated gun laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of the public, particularly the Black public. The principle lobbying group to pass those laws was the KKK.

Over the years, Detroit has repeatedly earned the title of "Murder Capital of the US" despite harsh prohibitions on firearms ownership, ballistic fingerprinting, and registration. Since Statewide shall issue CCW law, gun crime and even gun murders are down considerably, although still way too high.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
This thread is about mass shootings...

I think the thread title is about militia, not mass shootings.

Originally posted by whodey
So the question begs, why are there no mass shootings in Switzerland it seems?

BUMP for norm

Originally posted by whodey
Does anyone know which country has the largest militia in the world? It is Switzerland. That's right, Switzerland has no standing army. Instead, they train their citizens to use weapons and require them to keep them at home in case of attack.

So the question begs, why are there no mass shootings in Switzerland it seems?

"Mass shootings" are isolated events. Gun crime in general is low in Switzerland because crime in general is low, and that is mainly because there is little poverty.

Originally posted by normbenign

Comparisons across oceans and of different cultures tend to be misleading at best. Bloody genocides in places like Rwanda, and to some extent in Sudan happen without firearms or with minimal effective use of them.

Hugo Rifkind was not talking about comparisons between such radically different countries as the US (a prosperous, developed society) and Rwanda / Sudan (poor developing countries with entrenched tribal and / or religious divisions). He was comparing two developed countries, the US and Britain, that share a language and have an overlapping, though obviously not identical, cultural heritage and legal traditions.

Cultures tend to evolve slowly, and surely. Changes made without such deliberation are almost always doomed to failure, not because the motives of the changers are bad, but because they fail to grasp the unseen as well as the seen (Bastiate).

So, towards what end do you assume the culture of the United States is "slowly and surely evolving"? And can you supply examples of how the implementation of stricter gun control laws in other developed countries has resulted in failure?

Gun laws became very restrictive in the city of Detroit in the '20s, a time when there was a huge Black middle class in the city. A Black physician's home was surrounded by a mob, and the doctor shot a couple of them. This precipitated gun laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of the public, particularly the Black public. The principle lobbying group to pass those laws was the KKK.

This is an argument of the "My cat has four legs; my dog has four legs; therefore my cat is a dog" type. The fact that one gun control law may have had racist motives tells us nothing about the wisdom of gun control per se.

Originally posted by normbenign
It is, but it's still way above that of smaller cities and rural areas. Detroit, Baltimore, Washington DC, LA, and many other cities dwarf Chicago's murder rates, but all major urban areas are at the top of the list and most have stringent gun laws.

If the argument is that stringent gun laws cause higher murder and/or crime rates, the empirical evidence is unpersuasive. Much of the evidence is to the contrary.

That does not mean that stringent gun laws, which impede the Natural Right to self-defense, are desirable. It just means that there are costs associated with freedom. To use an example a professor of mine did many years ago, if you have a policemen with a machine gun on every street corner it would almost certainly decrease crime. That does mean that the costs associated with such a practice would be bearable.

Originally posted by normbenign
It is, but it's still way above that of smaller cities and rural areas. Detroit, Baltimore, Washington DC, LA, and many other cities dwarf Chicago's murder rates, but all major urban areas are at the top of the list and most have stringent gun laws.

Houston, TX doesn't have "stringent gun laws" AFAIK, but their murder rate is much higher than Chicago's: According to the FBI, 358 people were murdered in the Houston area (Harris County) in 2010 making the murder rate in the Houston area 8.75 murders per 100,000 people.


http://www.policymap.com/city-crime-rates/houston-crime-statistics/index.html