Talk:Right to keep and bear arms

Assize of Arms

The inclusion of the Assize of Arms Act appears to be original research, as there is no citation indicating the statute's relevance to the article. I'll remove mention of the statute from the lead, and from the article unless sources are provided. --tc2011 (talk) 00:16, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

There are dozens, if not more, of reliable sources that associate the Assize of Arms with the history of the right to bear arms. Here is but the first[1]. SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Good. Add that citation and we're set. --tc2011 (talk) 20:41, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

This is clearly nonsense. The Assize was the grant of arms to certain men in order to maintain the Feudal system then recently introduced into England. Nothing more and nothing less. Its not a special legal document. In the absence of a system of law to prevent it, every person in England was already free to arm themselves for protection. There is no sense in granting a general right to bear arms as there was no one who had previously taken away any right. --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Because all men had a right to bear arms at the time of the Assize of Arms in any case under common law, the reference to the Assize of Arms in the context of the Right to Bear and Keep Arms is complete nonsense. I have read the reference above given by SaltyBoatr and also the one given in this article and another given in the WP article on the Assize of Arms. In none of them do I get the sense that any legal scholar has demonstratred any connection to any grant of rights. I propose that we remove the reference to the Assize of Arms as WP:OR unsupported bt WP:RS.--Hauskalainen (talk) 00:57, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

There are dozens of reliable sources[2] that link the Assize of Arms with the origin of the Right to Bear arms.

Dozens of reliable sources SAYING WHAT precisely? Pray tell me where in the Assize of Arms is there is any mention of a grant of RIGHT to bear arms. Rather than being about the right to bear arms it mererly lays out the DUTIES of certain classes of persons in the then Feudal system operating in England to be armed to defend the realm. It layed down the standard or arming needed. There is no sense however that people did not have a right to carry a weapon before then. This is NOT a grant of a right to keep a weapon because the people had that right anyway. Rather it set out the beginings of a system of local militias. So yes, I would agree that there is a connection to militias and arms but not a RIGHT to bear arms at all, (because every freeman or villein could in theory carry a weapon to defend himself anyway). I cannot get the sense that there is any connection to a general right to bear arms being handed out BECAUSE EVERYONE HAD THOSE RIGHTS ANYWAY. The Assize of Arms main purpose was about forming militias. Not giving any rights to bear arms. Just about obligations to bear arms. If you wish to maintain that there is a link to a new right to bear arms, please give me a proper quote from a legal or historical source where it says that the Assize of Arms GRANTED a new RIGHT to bear arms that did not exist before. It is no good just a list of constitutional history books culled from a Google book search making a mention of the Assize of Arms and the Right to Vear Arms. There will indeed be many. But what they say has to relate to the claim made in this WP article and must relate somehow to the text of the Assize of Arms. Otherwise the source will be highly suspect. I have placed a similar call for proper references to these claims at the Assize of Arms artice also. All I am asking for is more precision. --Hauskalainen (talk) 02:33, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I gave this to you on January 3rd, see page 232 of the Hannis Tayler book[3]. He identifies "the roots of this Article (2nd Amendment RTKBA) strike down into the past until they reach the Assize of Arms" I am baffled at your failure to understand this. Is it that you do not recognize the meaning of the term "bear arms" meaning to "do military service", as in to serve the King in a militia? See also ISBN 9780253351593, Bodenhamer, page 80[4]. SaltyBoatr (talk) 03:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not the one needing tuition in my own language! I know perfectly well that "bear arms" means "carry a weapon and other means of defence". It most definitely does NOT mean "do military service" as you say it does (though doing military service will in the past have involved bearing arms and often still does today). The second amendment refers to an existing right of the states to form militias. The Assize of Arms is not really about the RIGHT to form militias either, because people throughout the ages have clubbed together for their common defence. From what I have read, the drafters of the constitution were most afraid of the new state (the United States) taking away the states' rights to arm themselves. This was the long established interpretation of the second amendment reference to the right to form militias. This is I think also what I read Hannis Tayler as saying. It is not clear WHY Tayler thinks the Assize of Arms is significant, unless we think that the king embodies the state and therefore that fealty to the king is synonomous with fealty to the modern state). Bodenhammer as I read it agrees with that reading. Its about the formation of militias. Not a persons individual right to bear arms. Let's come at this from another direction. If you think that a person DID NOT HAVE A RIGHT to bear arms prior to the Assize of Rights, then there must have been an earlier legal prohibition. Please let us all know what THAT law was!! I am sure you will have fun looking for one. --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:30, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Per reliable sourcing the term "bear arms" in modern language means something different that it meant 100, 220, 828 years ago. Read the etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary. Joyce Lee Malcolm, ISBN 9780674893061, agrees about the distinction of the duty to bear arms transforming gradually over time in phases into a right to bear arms. Never-the-less, per an overwhelming preponderance of reliable sourcing, the roots of the RTKBA can be traced back to the Assize of Arms. Your personal belief is obviously different than what the reliable sourcing says, but reliable sourcing trumps your personal belief. SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Answering your question about the RTKBA law prior to the Assize of Arms, you question is implicitly in context of the English judicial system. I understand that the origin of the English judicial system was the Magna Carta, and prior to that the English judicial system did not exist. SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:52, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

English Bill of Rights

As much as the Assize of Arms was NOT about granting RIGHTS, The English Bill of Rights was mostly about containing the powers of the King and protecting the people from interference by religious powers (hence the writing in of special protections for protestants to arm themselves against Catholics, seen then as a threat to Parliament). It's not really about GRANTING rights- Such rights that were written into the bill were there for reasons very specific to their times. The most important fact tpo bear in mind about English Law is that everything is possible unless the law forbids it. Hence in English Law there are very few laws that talk about rights. The principle of Habeus Corpus is somewhat exceptional but in the context, quite sensible. This is why the Human Rights Act was so controversial. The licensing of firearms in English law is thus a natural progression of the law which tends to curtail individual freedoms for the common good. Licensing is intended to protect the citizen (from the potentially harmful actions of people holding weapons for no good reason). --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

As you state, "The most important fact to bear in mind about English Law is that everything is possible unless the law forbids it." Exactly! Hence, the reason for the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution protecting for all time the so-called unenumerated rights that existed at English Common Law in the late 18th Century due to this quirk in English Law. Along with the rest of the US Bill of Rights, the then extant English Common Law was fixed in time in the US Constitution, to prevent parliamentary supremacy from ever extinguishing these rights. As for the claim, "Licensing is intended to protect the citizen (from the potentially harmful actions of people holding weapons for no good reason).", this is a very debatable point, as there is an alternative view regarding it as victim disarmament, exactly counter to this "intended purpose". The licensing of firearms in English Law is rather an example of parliamentary supremacy in action, to extinguish freedoms that previously existed amongst Englishmen everywhere (including, lest we forget, the Englishmen among the Plantations in America in the Commonwealth of Virginia, etc., who, during Colonial times, largely encapsulated the English Common Law rights then extant into the US Constitution :-) Yaf (talk) 18:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like WP:POV and WP:OR. Trying to fathom the WP article on the Ninth Amendment is for me an absolute object lesson in how people are left wondering how to interpret words laid down for a different time. I certainly don't have the same opinion about that as you! You are right about Parliamentary supremacy. It is a clear example of how parliament can act to reflect the will of the people and not be hide bound by a written constitution written for different time. I'm absolutely sure that most British people are quite glad that there is no longer any general freedom to keep and bear arms in modern Britain. If the people wanted it any other way they would elect parliamentarians who would change the law.--Hauskalainen (talk) 19:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Globalize title

The title of this global article is USA centric. The "keep and..." prefix comes from the bill of rights of the United States, but the United States constitutes less than 5% of the world's population. The title Right to bear arms is applicable to 100% of the world, not 5%. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

perhaps then there should be an article for "right to bear arms" and a separate article for "right to keep and bear arms", rather than an attempt to shoehorn globalizing views inappropriately. the pie chart is obnoxious by the way. just saying. Anastrophe (talk) 16:33, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The article used to be titled "Right to bear arms". Presently, this article covers the global rights to bear arms. The "Right to keep and bear arms" is a USA centric subset of the global topic, and it makes sense to be a subsection in this article I think. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

And, under "Right to bear arms", it was confused with heraldry, specifically The Right to bear arms, resulting in a lengthy discussion among editors that ended up with the article being where it is today, where it generates no confusion. There is still a differentiation page under Right to bear arms just to keep from confusing readers. There is also a POV push with using the "Right to bear arms" title for a title, being this phrasing is commonly used to push the anti-rights message that only select militias have a right to arms, never individuals. (And, the chart is obnoxious.) Being that the concept, too, is largely an Ango-American concept, anyway, with most of the rest of the world having no right to firearms at all, it doesn't appear to be a problem right where it is. Yaf (talk) 18:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the "right to keep and bear arms" is largely an Anglo-American concept. I disagree that the "right to bear arms" is the same. The "right to bear arms" has a long history in the proto-Islamic and Islamic society for instance, and measured by percentage of world population the Anglo-American definition is dwarfed. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the title as long as the introductory paragraph makes it clear that the right is a term used in the United States to describe a right that exists in the United States under its constitution. One could be forgiven by reading the article that the right is pretty much a global concept which clearly it is not. Most countries that derive their law from English Law long ago stopped giving people the general right to carry arms or use them in self defence. --Hauskalainen (talk) 11:41, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

deletion of William Weir passage by Yaf

Yaf just made this edit[5] with the edit summary given "corrections, smoothing text, adding cite". Yaf's edit summary is misleading in that he fails to note that he deleted the cited and verified passage by William Weir which describes a contrary view about Bliss. Yaf should explain the odd appearance of his edit which shifts the point of view while giving a the misleading edit summary. Adding POV tag during discussion, pending resolution. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

"Common Law right to bear arms"

I've started deleting references to "common law rights to bear arms" deriving from English law. No such right exists. The common law is that which has evolved from the decision of judges or other original arbiters of law (e.g. the king). English law, as I described in an earlier section, does not grant rights... rather it restricts rights of some to protect the rights of others. To be granted a right implies that the right had previously been restricted. The grant of rights in the Bill of Rights was not really a grant of rights to one group as much as an implied denial of rights to another. The Bill of Rights in English law is simply not the same as Bills of similar name in American law. I deleted one third party quote because they it was simply wrong. Not necessarily that the quote was made, but because it is not factually correct. The quote that said the Bill of Rights was interpreted as allowing catholics the right to bear personal weapons is a good example. The law was a blatant piece of anti catholicism and the simple fact is that is has quietly been forgotten. If we are to have references here about the law, then lets have them from proper legal sources or the original source (as with the reference I added about Blackstone), not from sources which seem to display POV.--Hauskalainen (talk) 09:52, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It is OR (Original Research) to claim that one reliable and verifiable source is wrong, remove that source and quote, and then to insert YOUR OWN interpretation of a primary source, in this case, Blackstone. That is not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia is not the place for Original Research based on any one editor's interpretation of primary sources. Yaf (talk) 09:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I put in place a better source for the UK law... i.e. The UK parliament reference, It was not Blackstone in this case. The source I deleted was in place to tell us about the rights set out in the Bill of Rights. The parliamentary source is an excellent commentary abut the act, its precedence and interpretation. The reference I deleted said"The qualifying clauses of the Bill that appear to limit arms ownership were, in fact, interpreted in a way that permitted Catholics to have personal weapons and allowed Protestants, regardless of their social and economic station, to own firearms". Well, Professor Malcolm may have said this, but I think we need to know how he comes to this interpretation. If you have the journal where he is alleged to have said this, please let us know. I do not regard the deletion as expressing OR because all I did was to replace one reference that is not readily accessible to the WP reader with another excellent one that is.--Hauskalainen (talk) 10:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I was right to delete the quote. It is totally out of context. Here, http://www.constitution.org/mil/maltrad.htm (see Note 50) , the learned professor refers catholics being allowed to keep personal weapons for their defense but this relates to a grant of Charles I in 1642 ... pre-dating the Bill of Rights by almost 50 years! Charles I was of course the one who married a catholic and was executed at the end of the English Civil War for trying to stand in the way of Parliament.--Hauskalainen (talk) 12:09, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The article (http://www.constitution.org/mil/maltrad.htm ) is a rather a good summary of the legal position as it developed, even though I disagree with the title (as there is no common law here, unless he means "common" in the normal way and not the legal way). What is true, however, (and Malcolm only lightly touches upon it) is that the Bill of Rights in English law was a document for its time and is no longer really regarded as relevent in the issue of firearm law in the UK. Even though the English Bill of Rights is still a key part of the English constitution, the fact is that we English (and I am an Englishman) can just forget about certain bits of it (like rights to arms for protestants and over catholics) even though these clauses were never repealed, because they just don't fit the times we live in today. Americans on the other hand tend to regard the words in their constitution as something totally dear to them that are to be dispensed with at their peril - which is why Americans are still arguing about the meaning of a few words written down by men hundreds of years ago for times that have long since changed out of all recognition. But that is just my POV ;) --Hauskalainen (talk) 12:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

unclear sentence

The article presently says

"Some federal district courts have allowed local jurisdictions in some states (e.g., New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey) to license and regulate arms for self defense, whereas in other districts/states, little to no regulation of arms for self defense has been permitted by the corresponding similar functioning courts."

I am confused as to what this sentence is saying. When it talks of "local jurisdictions" I assume that this means State Law (and presumably dictricts refers to special districts like DC). If that interpretation is right, why is there reference to Federal district courts? Is it that the Federal district courts have been asked to rule on whether the second amendment gave a protective right to the people which the states or districts cannot take away? (Again I presume that it does, and that the Federal courts have rejected the notion that the second amendment GRANTED a right to the people and they chose to interpret it as just being restrictive on the powers of Congress). But if that interpretation is correct, then the next element of the sentence has no meaning. The ´bit that says "other districts/states, little to no regulation of arms for self defense has been permitted by the corresponding similar functioning courts". This seems to imply that other federal district courts HAVE blocked regulation concerning arms that have been laid down by state legislatures. If that is so can we have a reference for that? I quickly scanned other its of the article and could't see what it might have been referring to. Or if my interpretation is wrong perhaps the sentence needs to be reworded. I'd prefer that we discussed this here before deciding how it should be expressed in the article.--Hauskalainen (talk) 09:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Some federal district courts have blocked regulation for being contrary to the Second Amendment. Other federal district courts have allowed such regulation to stand, irregardless of the wording of the Second Amendment. "District" here does not refer to special districts such as the District of Columbia; rather, it deals with the partitioning of the federal appeal courts, in their districting. I will add some references, for example, on the 5th District court rulings (Emerson, et al.). The root cause of the differences is that for over 70 years, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) dodged all Second Amendment cases, causing a vast difference in rulings among the federal appeal courts that exist beneath the SCOTUS. Some districts have widely supported an interpretation that the Second Amendment protects common law rights codified in the Second Amendment; others have interpreted that no such rights exist. It is not a simple subject, unfortunately. Another fine point is that the US Constitution does not confer rights, rather, it only limits the powers of the federal government, while the powers and rights not otherwise identified in the Constitution are retained by the states or by the people, respectively, being codified in the first ten amendments, called the Bill of Rights, of the US Constitution. The Bill of Rights in the US is entirely different than the English Bill of Rights, despite the similarity of names. The US Bill of Rights codify common law rights of the people, at least among some of the federal district courts. Many people have migrated into the parts of the country that best fits their own interpretation of the US Constitution, while largely avoiding having anything to do with, or even traveling through, any of the areas that view the Constitution differently. Such nuances largely go un-noticed by those living outside the US. The concealed carry laws, CCW, are perhaps the most striking difference among the different areas. Some states (2) require no permit to carry a firearm concealed, holding to the original interpretation. Other states regulate the carry of concealed carry weapons, while nonetheless having to issue a permit to anyone qualified. Other states, or portions of such states, permit no one to carry a weapon concealed or, in some cases, even to possess a handgun. There are roughly 20,000 gun laws on the books in the US. Yet, in some states, there are no laws to speak of, while in others, there are thousands of laws. It is a very complex subject. Yaf (talk) 13:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Lots of personal opinion and synthesis. Zero sourcing. Also, 20,000 local gun laws? This is an interesting assertion, as other reliable counts have found closer to 300 state gun laws, (and city/county law is preempted by state law in virtually all cases)[6]. What is especially fascinating it that it appears likely that the origin of the 20,000 rhetoric could be the 1965 Congressional hearings, that I suspect are also the hearings that form the origin of Yaf's notorious and elusive 1967 Bliss 'violative' quote. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

20,000 is the count by the NRA of all gun related laws, whether state, city, county, parish, etc., for firearms as well as for the ammunition that goes in them. 300 is the count according to the Brady Campaign in state firearm laws, which make up but a small subset of the total. Only some states preempt all firearms legislation; in other states, local municipalities can and do have their own confusing and different laws, sometimes even depending on the population size and the state's permission for grandfathered municipalities or municipalities of at least a certain size for setting up local ordnances otherwise contrary to state law. Such as seen for waiting periods to take possession of a handgun, which vary widely even within a state, or even a single county, for cases where a large municipality exists within a county with which it has not merged, for some states. I strongly suspect that the actual number is much closer to 20,000 than to 300. (Also, sourcing is not required in comments on talk pages. To suggest otherwise is only silly. As for the rest of the insults, I simply choose WP:DFTT.) Yaf (talk)

The 300 number comes from a research paper[7] of Jon Vernick of Johns Hopkins University and Lisa Hepburn of Harvard University, in a paper published by the Brookings Institution. (Not the Brady Campaign as Yaf asserts.) Also, this is in context of your discussion WP:V justification for the sentence in the article "Some federal district courts have...", so indeed you do have an obligation to have sourcing standards. The NRA is an advocacy organization, and the 20,000 figure appears false and trumped up to serve political purposes. Therefore you are wrong to point to a false number to defend WP:V for the "Some federal district courts have..."sentence. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

20,000 is the NRA-ILA number, shown here. The Brady Campaign also quotes the 300 number from Vernick and Hepburn. I note that SaltyBoatr has deleted the pro-rights viewpoint, while adding a {{fact}} tagline to the false claim that the US Constitution is overarching. His anti-US bias never changes. Neither does his attempt to push an anti-rights POV incessantly into this article. Yaf (talk) 18:56, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

My particular issue was " ..this seems to imply that other federal district courts HAVE blocked regulation concerning arms that have been laid down by state legislatures." Emerson is not an example of this because, if I have read it correctly, it was about the USC (federal law) regulating on a matter which the second amendment clearly states that the federal government cannot regulate. We really need an en example supporting the claim that "little to no regulation of arms for self defense has been permitted by the corresponding similar functioning courts". Otherwise the text will have to be deleted from the article.--Hauskalainen (talk) 20:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Will add same. Just have to do some formatting for the cites. Yaf (talk) 23:39, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Am still doing the copy editing and formatting of cites, despite SaltyBoor having completely removed the entire sentence without showing good faith and adding a {{fact}} tagline. He has been around long enough to know about assuming good faith on Wikipedia, but chooses not to assume any. Yaf (talk) 18:56, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Common Law and Common Law Rights - POV in parts of the the article

This article is littered with incorrect usage of the terms "Common Law" and "Common Law Rights".

The common law represent all law that has not been laid down in legislatures AND where decisions in law have had to have been made by judges. It is not synonomous with rights but rather the restriction of rights.

As I pointed out earlier, law is mostly about the restriction of rights of some to protect the rights of others. Many restrictions are laid down today by legislatures. But there have been many restrictions that have become to be accepted because judges have had to interpret the various rights of some peoples over others without having reference to law laid down by legislatures or have had to interpet the intentions of legislators. This forms laws of precedent or the common law. Again, these are restrictions on rights.

Common Law Rights are by definition all rights that have not yet been restricted either by a judge in common law or by a legislature. There is a presumption that any such right can be restricted by the later exercise of common law processes (the decision of judges) or directly by legislatures, which have primacy over common law rights. In this context, the common law right to bear arms is no more significant than the right to pick one's own nose or the right (as it once existed) to buy and sell slaves.

When the U.S. came into being, the founding fathers declared some things to be inalienable rights, thus enshrining some rights into its very founding documents thus creating an over-arching set of rights. These are not common law rights but constitutional rights. The big argument about the second amendment is whether it was granting a constitutional right to bear arms or merely restricting the federal government's powers over the states in regard to this matter.

The problem with the article is that holds up common law rights to be somehow very noble (which intrinsically they are not) and in places does not reflect the real controversy over the interpretation of the consititutional wording. For example the article says

Through being codified in the United States Constitution, the common law right was continued and guaranteed for the People, and statutory law enacted subsequently by Congress cannot extinguish the pre-existing common law right to keep and bear arms.[32]

The sentence makes it sound like the drafters of the constitution were doing something noble. The use of the word guaranteed here is the key to that. It is highly POV because seems to make it sound as though common law rights are something noble (which they are not) and it does not reflect the other interpretation of the drafters intentions (which is that the drafters were worried not to create a body which could take away from the states the rights to defend theirselves).

A similar piece of subtle POV editing is in this piece.

Some have seen the Second Amendment as derivative of a common law right to keep and bear arms; Thomas B. McAffee & Michael J. Quinlan, writing in the North Carolina Law Review, March 1997, Page 781, have stated "... Madison did not invent the right to keep and bear arms when he drafted the Second Amendment—the right was pre-existing at both common law and in the early state constitutions

Here again the text of the drafter is implying that second amendment's purpose is about the right to bear arms (the wording implying that the second amendment is expressing a derived a right). The fact that Madison did not invent the right is neither here or there. This is POV because many lawyers do not interpret the second amendment as being about the granting of a general right.

And in the following piece, this piece, the "common law rights" are held up to be equivalent to "fundamental rights" and "priviliges and immunities" (which of course they are not).

Akhil Reed Amar similarly notes the basis of Common Law for the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, "following John Randolph Tucker's famous oral argument in the 1887 Chicago anarchist case, Spies v. Illinois":

Though originally the first ten Amendments were adopted as limitations on Federal power, yet insofar as they secure and recognize fundamental rights – common law rights – of the man, they make them privileges and immunities of the man as citizen of the United States...[33]

One must bear in mind that, in legal terms, the common law right to bear arms is no more or less significant than the common law right to pick one's own nose (a right which I think still exists), or the right to drive one's horse and trap on the left hand side of a public dirt track when passing another horse and trap (which I suspect was once legal in the U.S. and no longer is). Common law rights are not necessarily noble rights as this article often seems to imply they are.

Now I am not saying that such quotes should not be in the article, but they should be there in a context which expresses a balancing POV and does not accord common law rights an implied importance which they do not really have.--Hauskalainen (talk) 12:01, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Except that the common law rights do have an actual importance in many parts of the US, although in other parts of the US, the interpretation is much as you state. Common law rights are extremely noble among a goodly portion of the US population, primarily amongst those who "cling to their God and to their guns", to borrow a certain politician's wording, which is what this article presently includes. The right to keep and bear arms is codified in the US Constitution in the Second Amendment. The right to pick one's nose is also codified in the US Constitution, in the form of the Ninth Amendment. At least in some states :-) Undoubtedly, there are areas that have chosen to ban such behavior as being anti-social, primarily in the 9th District court's jurisdiction :-) Yaf (talk) 13:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

How can we know if your personal opinion is "true" based on reliable sourcing? I see in reliable sourcing that "the large majority (in the USA) has consistently supported stronger gun regulations". Presumably, regulation of this "nobel" common law right you speak of. Which is it? SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Yaf : Here you go again attaching a value judgement which is POV. "Common law rights are extremely noble".... The issue as I raised it are that they may be noble (the right to buy and sell personal property) or they may be ignoble (the right to buy and sell slaves as personal property) - some may be worth preserving and some are better being lost. There is nothing intrinsically valuable about common law rights. It is for the people to decide via their legislators how common law rights may be restricted. The Heller decision does seem confusing to me. The arguments are lengthy and I don't have time to absorb them all. I am struggling with the idea that it has seems to have ruled that authorities in DC could not take away the man's right to a weapon for self defence and it is not a connected to the militia but stands independent from it. But on the other hand it claims not to be overturning other earlier legal decisions made on the sale and licensing of weapons. If one has a constitutionally guaranteed right to hold a weapon, on what grounds can a third party restrict that right? I suppose in truth I find the US law confusing. It is illegal for a man to a carry a concealed weapon in some states but perfectly legal if he tucks it in his belt for all to see. Personally I'd rather not see it, and I'd rather he didn't have it in the first place - it would make me nervous! Also we Brits quite happily given up our rights to hold hand guns. Hardly any did anyway. I fail to see why gun control gets so many people up-tight in America. I suspect it has something to do with the innate suspicion of governments which goes right back to the early days of the early pioneers who left the old world for the new.--Hauskalainen (talk) 22:26, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

And, here you go again, once more attaching parliamentary supremacy practices and procedures to the United States, where it does not apply. Lets see if I can explain this better. Unlike in the UK, in the United States, the US Constitution codifies and protects the rights of the people, and the powers of the states, while limiting the powers of the federal government. It is not in the powers delegated to Congress, being but one of the 3 branches of the federal government, to remove rights that are protected in the US Constitution, no matter what Congress may want to do. Short of a constitutional convention, popularly known as a "con-con", or through obtaining the approval of the requisite number of states of any proposed amendment, the US Constitution cannot be amended. The rights of the people in the US are inviolate, bar these two possible events, from being usurped by Senators, Congressmen, or, to complete the analogy, by MPs, Lords, a Prime Minister, Kings, Queens, etc.. Parliamentary Supremacy does not exist in the United States. It is extremely POV to assume that the power to usurp the rights of the people is somehow superior to the rights of the people to make these decisions for themselves, collectively, as you seemingly profess. The difference is in the details, despite a common English Common Law basis. The US law is confusing only in that the ultimate authority rests with the people, not with the Government. Government serves at the permission of the citizens of the United States. US Citizens are not subjects, but are collectively the sovereign power. In the UK, and much of the rest of the English Common Law based jurisdictions, it is entirely possible for Parliament to extinguish any rights of the people at will, ceteris paribus. But, this is not possible in the United States of America. Common law rights are extremely noble. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was originally written as the right to life, liberty, and property, but the original phrasing was reworded from "property" to the "pursuit of happiness", as the outcome in a capitalistic society to obtaining property is not guaranteed. It is NOT for the people to decide via their legislators how common law rights may be restricted in the United States, unlike in the UK. Rather, it is for the people to decide for themselves, via a Republican form of government, how laws may be written, and whether or not the Constitution should or should not be amended, to curtail or restrain Common Law rights. Common Law rights enshrined in the US Bill of Rights cannot be removed by simple fiat, upon a word from a Sovereign, or even all of Congress saying so. It is entirely legal in some states (two to be exact) for anyone to carry a handgun concealed, no permit being required. These two states hold to the original interpretation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. In other states, it is entirely legal to carry a handgun concealed, upon filing for a concealed weapons permit and being granted same, while nonetheless remaining illegal for the same person with the same concealed weapons permit to carry a weapon openly. In other states, it is entirely legal to carry a handgun in a holster openly pretty much anywhere in the state except on Federal Property, no permit being required, but it is illegal to carry a handgun concealed without a permit. A multitude of gun laws exist in the United States, varying by state, as well as even by city, county, township, parish, and a whole host of other divisions, at least in some states. In other states, the state has declared pre-emption of all firearms laws in the state, thereby precluding any local municipality from imposing any restriction on the right to keep and bear arms. According to the National Rifle Association, there are 20,000+ gun laws in the United States. According to the Brady Campaign, there are only 300 gun laws nationwide. Based on the numbers of city, county, and state ordnances related to gun laws I have personally seen, the number is much closer to 20,000 than to 300. As for the exact number, I doubt that anyone knows. Gun control gets people uptight in the United States for the precise reason that it represents a loss of freedom, and a loss of the God-given right to self-defense, and a loss of a right to oppose governmental tyranny, such as was the case fighting against George III. Yes, the Brits, and the Aussies, too, have given up their gun rights -- rights that had existed as a Common Law right of Englishmen everywhere during the period of time that the US Constitution was written. The same US Constitution that enshrined in the Bill of Rights the protection of a set of Common Law rights that have largely failed to be eroded since. Is this system better or worse than the case in the UK? It really doesn't matter in the writing of this article. But, denigrating the Government of another country is not conducive to achieving NPOV in writing this article. We may have begun with a common set of laws and practices, but only the United States of America has largely stayed fixed with the old set. In the UK, Australia, Canada, and other former holdings of England, Great Britain, the UK, or any of a whole host of related names, depending upon precisely when one takes the measure, in all but the United States, the historical understanding of the God-given rights of every Englishman have changed. This is neither better or worse, only different, with respect to the writing of this article. We must recognize the differences amongst these different modern day countries if we are to be successful in writing this article on what is admittedly a largely Anglo-centric concept, the right to keep and bear arms. Agreed? Yaf (talk) 23:24, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

You wrongly attribute to me many things which I have not said. The article rightly says that the principle of parliamentary democracy does not apply in the U.S. I have not said otherwise. I added a piece to the article that pointed out the US constitution added constitutional rights that are overarching (which you kind of agree with above), but you deleted it from the article on the grounds that the powers rest with the people. The freedoms set out in the constitution rest with the people but the right to amend them rests with their elected representatives under due process. That's pretty much the same everywhere. I still don't accept that what I added in about over-arching constitutional rights was OR. I'd like you to say more about why you think it is.

You say "It is extremely POV to assume that the power to usurp the rights of the people is somehow superior to the rights of the people to make these decisions for themselves, collectively, as you seemingly profess". You are putting words into my mouth. Where do I say this? I don't want to be using Wikipedia to debate with you. All I said was "It is for the people to decide via their legislators how common law rights may be restricted", and in the US that is a due process of law undertaken by the legislatures (congress and the state legislatures jointly)- according to Article 5 of the United States constitution in the case of consitutional rights.

I just want to get to a point where we can agree how the article should be improved. Yet again you have referred to "protection of common law rights". That is adding a value judgement about common law rights. My point is simply that the things you refer to as "common law rights" should more properly be referred to as CONSTITUTIONAL rights. They are not common law rights because common law rights cover things which have not been legislated for and may be good or not so good depending on your point of view.

I would like to think of you as a serious editor but it is hard to do so when you say "The US law is confusing only in that the ultimate authority rests with the people, not with the Government". I don't know any country under the English law tradition where ultimate authority rests with the government. Ultimate authority rests with the people in their democratically elected legisltures. That is the same in the U.S. and the other countries deriving their laws from the English tradition (as well most others that do not). The key difference between English law and American law is that the U.S. system has set up certain rights to be constitutional and therefore have to pass a different hurdle for amendment (the vote ratio has to 75:25 and not 51:49). The long rant you make after your comment (about US law being confusing) is just a total distraction. Lets focus instead on the article. --Hauskalainen (talk) 12:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Supremacy of the constitution - OR?

OK Wikipedia cannot be used as a primary source, but I have not dreamt up the idea that the constitution over is arching. See Supremacy Clause which says that "The Constitution is the highest form of law in the American legal system. State judges are required to uphold it, even if state laws or constitutions conflict with it". Surely this was also reflected in Emerson where the judges (by 5 to 4 majority), having determined that the second amendment gave a constitutional right to carry a handgun for self-defence, then ruled that the regulations made in D.C. infringed a right in the constitution AND THEN FOUND FOR THE PETITIONER. They would not have done that if the constitution did not have primacy. --Hauskalainen (talk) 14:02, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

But, that is not what you said. Specifically, in your edit,[8] you said the US Constitution was "over-arching" (sic) (by the way, there is no hyphen in this word), overarching meaning something that is "dominating or embracing all else" by Webster. The US Constitution specifically does not dominate or embrace all else; rather, it is a document that carefully limits the powers of the Federal Government, while retaining the ultimate rights with the people. In the US Constitutional form of Government, there is no one sovereign, not even a figurehead sovereign. We ended that form of government in a war back in the 1700's with George III. But, I digress. The concept of a Supremacy Clause does not say that the US Constitution dominates all else. Rather, it says that the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land. This is a whole different concept than saying the US Constitution is overarching. Again, you are confusing the concept of Parliamentary supremacy, in which there are no such limits on what the government can do, under which a government can be overarching, in the sense that Parliament can usurp the rights of the people for convenience, progressivism, modernism, the "public good", taxation, or whatever reason, or no reason, without the people having any recourse other than to elect new MPs. Meanwhile, the rights of the people have been diminished; e.g., the common law right of Englishmen everywhere in the 1700's to self defense having subsequently been removed from the UK. In the US Constitution, the common law right to keep and bear arms for self defense or for opposing government tyranny, etc., is specifically codified in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and is thereby prevented from being usurped without an amendment to the US Constitution from occurring. The parliamentary form of government results in a totally different form of government than what the US Constitution achieves. The US Constitutional form of Government is specifically not overarching by design, being designed to prevent the collection of limited government powers even within any one branch of Government, breaking out the limited powers among three separate parts of Government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It is extreme Original Research to make the false claim that the US Constitution is overarching. It is also extremely offensive for you to keep repeating the tired rhetoric implying that the parliamentary form of government is somehow better, in that the restrictions of common law rights by legislators, such as in imposing taxes for the public good or whatever, is a better method of government. It is likewise offensive to exhibit hoplophobia, being guns are just another tool that often are needed by citizens. Lets just recognize the differences in governments, modify article content appropriately, take a more global point of view than just a British point of view, and move on, OK? Yaf (talk) 17:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

You are going off at a tangent again and spurting all sorts of things about which I said nothing. Especially about parliamentary supremacy. You seem more concerned about the word overarching. All I am intending to say is that if state law conflicts with the constitution, the constitution takes precedence. Are you disputing this? You seem to agree with it when you say the "US Constitution is the supreme law of the land". I can rephrase the sentence to avoid using the word overarching, I could say "constitutional law is supreme and takes precedence over state or federal law" if that makes you happier and make reference to the decision in Emerson if you like. You are again spouting on about common law rights when the right to bear arms in the US is these days a constitutional right as per the supreme court ruling in Emerson. That was key factor in Emerson. I would have thought you would be happy about that! As a constitutional right it can only be overturned by a constitutional change requiring 3/4 of the states to approve it. If the right to bear arms were merely a common law right, then the legislators in D.C. could have restricted it, the same as any other common law right. The supreme court decided it was not just a common law right but a constitutional right.

--Hauskalainen (talk) 20:23, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

No tangential drift at all. You are not seeing the intricacies, but are oversimplifying. You state, "All I am intending to say is that if state law conflicts with the constitution, the constitution takes precedence. Are you disputing this?" Actually, I am disputing exactly this oversimplification. The US Constitution is not all encompassing. If state law conflicts with an interpretation of the US Constitution, it depends on the precise topic as to which takes precedence. It is not an automatic foregone conclusion that the federal US Constitution automatically always takes precedence on each and every law topic. The US Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land. But, it often does not speak one way or the other on any specific topic. State and local law may be the only governing law on any specific topic. The US Constitution limits the scope and the powers of the federal government. Only in those areas in which powers are specifically granted to the federal government does federal law take precedence over local or even state law. Otherwise, state and local law take precedence, unless the US Supreme Court rules that the state and local law in question somehow violates a portion of the US Constitution that has been incorporated, or that the state and local law fall within the purview of a portion of the US Constitution that is focused directly at the local or state jurisdiction as identified within the US Constitution. The US Constitution does not automatically take precedence over all state and federal law, except for those precise powers that are granted within the US Constitution. You fail to understand the intricacies of the US Constitution, specifically, those intricacies involving state powers and citizen rights. As stated previously, some see the US Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments of the US Constitution) as encapsulating and codifying common law rights. The Ninth Amendment specifically is germane, as it specifically incorporates unenumerated common law rights. The right to keep and bear arms is a common law right that was also enumerated in the US Constitution, being protected against infringement by Congress in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. The Second Amendment has not been incorporated against the states or local jurisdictions. This means that local areas can and do regulate guns differently in different parts of the country within states and local jurisdictions. Hence, the 20,000 gun laws previously discussed. Nonetheless, there are federal gun laws, empowered by the commerce clause, governing such things as guns in a school zone, as well as federal gun laws based on other criteria, such as governing machine guns. However, there are no federal gun laws directed specifically at concealed carry laws by private citizens among the states, that being left to state (and, in some cases, to additional municipality and additional county and additional township laws). There is also a federal law against having concealed carry guns in post offices, and on other federal properties, even when such properties are within states where otherwise concealed carry would be legal. Likewise, there is a federal law giving active and retired police officers the right to carry concealed firearms nationwide. Your proposed statements for inclusion in the article need to be both accurate and factual, while recognizing the intricacies of US law. But, again, you state, "If the right to bear arms were merely a common law right, then the legislators in D.C. could have restricted it, the same as any other common law right. The supreme court decided it was not just a common law right but a constitutional right.", which again fails to recognize the codification of common law rights within the US Constitution in the Bill of Rights, protected against infringement except through Constitutional amendment. Under parliamentary supremacy, such common law rights are easily extinguished. Under the US Constitution, they cannot be usurped. Yaf (talk) 21:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I amended the sentence to make it more neutral. I may have got mixed up between Heller and Emerson in the edit summary, but anyway the issue of the meaning of the second amendment has I think been put to bed. This is discussed at length in the US section. The intention of my more neutral statement about the difference between the US and other English legislatures IS the enshrinment of rights in the constitution which means that special procedures are needed to amend them. I hope that this is OK to Yaf.

With regard to my other edit which Yaf removed and I have put back, the issue of gun crime is germain to the issue of the restriction of the right to bear arms in the UK. Dunblane and the controls that came after is a clear example of that. The comparison beween the US and UK is also relevant because I have seen very misleading statistics that claim that things are very bad in the UK, but the situation is quite the reverse. One has to ask oneself not just why the US has a 4 times greater murder rate, but also why the murder rate with a firearm is 40 times greater. The availabilty of firearms in the U.S. has to be the most probable factor. The UK has as serious drug problem as the U.S. and is more urbanized than the U.S. so that cannot be the reason.--Hauskalainen (talk) 19:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Its not about the availability of guns, or other arms. In Wyoming, 33% of all private homes have unlocked and loaded firearms in them. Yet, the homicide rate there is on par with the UK at 1.7/100,000 vs. 1.4/100,000 in the UK (and 2.12/100,000 in Scotland). Stop pushing anti-rights rhetoric and hoplophobia advocacy. Yaf (talk) 23:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

You are comparing chalk with cheese. Wyoming is not like the rest of the US and certainlty not like England and Wales. Wyoming is the second least densely populated area in the U.S. whereas England and Wales are more like the most densely populated states in the U.S. And you are comparing homicides not GUN homicides. Only 7 % of homicides in the UK are caused by a firearm. In the US is almost 70%. What percentage of homicides in Wyoming are with a gun? What is the gun homicide rate in Wyoming? In England and Wales its less than 1 per million. My guess for Wyoming without checking is that its going to be about 10 or 12 per million.--Hauskalainen (talk) 05:44, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

The homicide rate in Wyoming for homicides is 1.7/100,000, not 10.0/100,000 or 12.0/100,000 as you speculate, of which roughly 60-65% are with firearms. You are falsely inflating the risk of dying in a state where 33% of all private homes have unlocked and loaded firearms available in them. The homicide rate is very comparable to the homicide rate of 1.4/100,000 seen in the UK, where presumably far fewer than 33% of homes have loaded and unlocked firearms present, or even sharp knives if I understand you correctly. Pardon me, but your hoplophobia is showing. Yaf (talk) 22:35, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Comparative Data - Comparing England & Wales to WYOMING?????

I had added data that compared the homicide rates in England in Wales (population density 914 people per square mile) with that of the entire United States (population density 80 people per sqaure mile). Yaf has subsequently come along and wishes to compare England and Wales to Wyoming (population density less than 6 people per square mile). And he has focussed on homicide rates and not gun crime which is the more pertinent to the issue of gun control and therefore the issue of the right to keep and bear arms.

Well if you think gun crime is an urban phonemenon (as Yaf seems to do by his previous edits, and I would probably agree with him), perhaps a fairer comparison would be with the two US states that sit on either side of the England and Wales population in terms of population density. According to List of U.S. states by population density, these would be the 2nd and 3rd largest states of the Union, being Rhode Island (1003 per sq mile) and Massachusetts (809 per sq mile). Neither sound to me like states that are crime hot beds and I have no idea of the level of gun control in those states or gun ownership. Nevertheless I think it would make a fairer comparison than Wyoming which is the 49th least densely populated state in the union!

In case anyone was wondering why I included both all homicides and gun homicides in the stats, the reason is simple. If a person is intent on murdering someone, the issue will be how to do it. Only 7 per cent of murders in England and Wales are done with a gun. Its 79 per cent in the US. The 4 fold higher level of homicides in the US cannot per se explain the 49 times higher rate of gun homicides. The sheer availability of guns in the U.S. and the ease with which they can kill someone probably accounts for the very high difference in the propensity to use a firearm to kill. And it may well explain the very high number of homicides overall. The simple fact is that its much easier to kill someone with a gun and a lot harder with a knife (which is the main method of homicide in the UK). --Hauskalainen (talk) 21:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, homicide rates clearly involve the use of arms in most cases, being that karate (meaning empty hand, incidentally) is not nearly as prevalent in Scotland as knives, broadswords, pikes, and, yes, even guns, all of which are arms. I would even debate the POV that it's much easier to kill someone with a gun, especially for someone with no experience with firearms, than with an arm with which one is trained. At distances beyond 25 yards, the stats indicate there is less than a 4% chance of being hit by the average criminal with a gun. At distances less than 10 yards, it really doesn't matter much what type of arm one uses, as long as one is trained with the use of the arm. The so-called 4x higher rate for homicides in the US is primarily a result of the mix of drug traffic operations, gangs, and minority unrest in relatively few urban areas, mixing with homicide rate statistics for the rest of the country that are not appreciably different than for the UK. Picking RI and MA, two notorious gun control states, incidentally, with notorious high rates of homicides in their urban areas, is not exactly a fair comparison from which then to assume must also exist across all of America. You obviously haven't been to any of the urban areas in these 2 states :-) The reason I chose WY is rather simple. It has the highest rates in the US for the number of unlocked and loaded firearms that are kept in private homes, at 33%. If your assumption is that the numbers of guns equate to violence and crime, then this clearly puts this false assumption into its place. The number of guns actually equates to a lowering of crime, relative to crime stats in heavily legislated areas where guns for defense are banned. The issue is not about the number of guns per capita, nor even if the guns are unlocked and loaded in homes, for quick ready use if needed. Its not really about the population density, either, for a rather wide range of population densities. Rather, its about crime, and minorities preying on minorities, and the drug trade, and home invasions, and what not. Its also about single parent homes, where no male influence is present to keep young males under control. Your basic assumption of 41 times more likelihood to die in the US from a gun than in the UK is patently false for probably 99.9% of the land mass of the US. That said, there are neighborhoods in nearly every urban area where you wouldn't last more than about 5 minutes if set out on the street, and your risk of death would be on par with being a soldier in Iraq, except without an M-16. It all depends. Stop spouting POV drivel into the article with nearly every edit that seems perpetually to be saying "guns bad, gun control good" in writing this article. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is not really about guns or gun control. Yaf (talk) 22:53, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me address your points one at a time.

Yes homicide does involve arms mostly. In the UK it is mostly knife crime (though even the carrying of knives is prohibited in the UK for self defence purposes so it is pertinant to the issue of the freedom to bear arms when comparing one country with another. You open an interesting avenue I had not covered so perhaps we should expand the statistics on gun crime to include knife crime)

On the issue of distance, I guess it rather depends on how close assailants are to the their victims but even if you are really close with a knife the victim is more likely to be able to defend himself and avoid a fatal outcome than might be the case with a gun. But this is rather academic. What matters is the rate at which fatal (and serious non-fatal) injuries occur. We are probably stuck for stats on serious non-fatal incidents (as its quite judgemental and so data is not collected) so we will probably have to stick with fatal incidents.

Drugs and gangs and minority unrest is, I assure you, not limited to the U.S.! But whether a victim is associated with such drugs or gangs or minority unrest is not an issue. The victims of crime are still victims, whoever perpertrates it. I did not pick RI and MA for any other reason than they most closely match the population density in the UK. England has very large cities that I am sure are similar in many respects to those that I guess are found in those states. I have made no assumptions about gun equalling violence and crime. I have been to MA and it does not seem very different to the UK. It has one very big city and lots of smaller towns and rural communities. I didn't feel unsafe in Boston for example, but I probably was not in the worst areas. Overall, MA seems very similar to the UK to me. I have not been to Rhode Island. I have not been to WY but I expect that I would not find the same levels of street crime there (drugs, gangs etc.) as one might find in say Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool or London. Comparing England and Wales to WY really is an unfair comparison. And trying to tie the stats in WY to the UK per gun was a nice try! But hardly a fair one. If I get threatened by a person with a gun it gives me no comfort to think that there are lots of guns elsewhere safely locked up!

As for minorities praying on other minoritities, single parenthood and male influence, that rather smacks of an irrelevance. As a citizen I am worried about the safely of all citizens. I am not wrong. You are 41 times more likely to die from a gun in the US than in the UK. It doesn't take much working it out. 50 gun homicides in England and Wales with population of a little more than 50 million. Ergo less than one death per million. 17,034 homicides in the US of which 67.9% were caused by a firearm. That makes 11,566 gun homicides in a country of 299.4 miilion which is 38.6 gun deaths per million. When you do the calculation accurately the rate of gun homicides in the US is indeed 41 times than in the UK. Much of the US land mass is uninhabited, but then most people are not worried about their risk of getting gunned down in the wilds of Alaska, the desert in the south west or indeed on the rolling plains of Wyoming. They worry about it happening where they live.

I am not spounting "POV drivel". The statistics I use speak for themselves and do not have to be twisted with devices like "deaths per gun in the household" or "99.9% of the land mass" which are frankly much more POV than anything I have said.

Please tell me why the UK section is POV (i.e. not representing all the views of the UK arms restrictions). I will add something on the control of knives as that is something that is not yet covered. --Hauskalainen (talk) 00:16, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I will try. Although one is 41 times as likely to die from a gun in the US than in the UK, by your numbers, the opposite argument could also be made that one is probably about 60 times more likely to die from a knife in the UK than in the US. The comparison, though, is largely meaningless, for dead is dead. The only fair comparison to make is to compare total homicide rates, which almost invariably involve an arm of some sort (be it a sword, knife, gun, skillet, motor vehicle, golf club, chain saw, or whatever), rather than break out an unfair comparison by categorizing the arm of choice being somehow important only if it is a !!!GUN!!!, which injects an anti-gun and anti-US biased POV into the UK section. This article is about the right to keep and bear arms, not the right to keep and bear just firearms. You are conflating firearms with being a special kind of arm, the only one of which is somehow worth scaring readers about. As stated previously, dead is dead, and it really doesn't matter if the killing was done with a firearm (just one kind of tool, really) versus any other kind of tool (knife or whatever.) As a responsible citizen, I am concerned about the deaths of all innocent victims. However, this is not to say a victim is anyone who dies from the use of an arm. Rather, if one is committing a crime and is killed during the process of committing a crime, such a killing is not a murder, but is a justifiable homicide, at least it is in the US. (By English Common Law, it previously was justifiable in the UK, as well, but I digress.) The rate of homicide is not related to the mere presence of guns or firearms. To say so is to say that every women must be a prostitute, since every woman has the body parts necessary to be a prostitute. Likewise, it would be the same to say that the rate of obesity must be related to the presence of forks and spoons, which is likewise a fallacy. For people that grow up using firearms (even handguns) like any other tool, a handgun is not appreciably different than a lawn mower or a chain saw, all of which could also be used as a dangerous arm. Yet, for people that have never handled a firearm of any kind, a handgun is somehow transformed into a killing machine that somehow has a will of its own. We should not inject such POV bias into this article. These are some of the POV biases that make the UK section POV. There are more. To start fixing this problem, per the discussions listed elsewhere on this talk page, I have removed the duplicated US content from the UK section, and additionally provided homicide rates per 100,000, which is the usual metric in making unbiased comparisons amongst comparing various areas. This goes a long way to fixing the POV problem with the UK section. Yaf (talk) 19:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I've opened a new section on knife homicides because Yaf is quite right on the issue of incomplete comparison and the fact the mention of that one comparison on gun homicides is only partially on topic. We should include all main recorded use of arms. His estimate of gun crime in the UK is wrong in just about every respect though - see next section. On the issue of justifiable homicide in the commission of a crime that is interesting. Does this apply to ANY crime (a child stealing candy for instance?). I suspect it has to be proportionate to the risk. In the UK, using lethal force with intent to kill would only be a vaid defence if one was trying to prevent a death of oneself or another. It would be interesting to know how many homicides fall into the category of justifiable homicide and also what proportion of those homicides are actually commited by police officers. With very few exceptions the police in the UK are NOT armed with lethal weapons. The exceptions are those on protection duty, for example at international airports and close to the embassies of foreign nations. Otherwise, a gun is only taken into use when an incident happens where it could become necessary. For example when there is a perceived threat of a serious nature. There have been several recent cases where police have shot an innocent person and as far as I am aware, neither the police nor the public want the police to carry lethal weapons at all times as is common in many countries. I guess the idea of nearly all police being unarmed sounds very strange, but it does seem to work. The UK statistics for England and Wales show, in the category "killed when resisting arrest" the deaths of 2 persons in 1985/86. The category includes police deaths but we don't know whether any of these were in fact police officers or what the instrument causing the death was. The statistic does not include the death of innocent people killed in the course of arrest, which, conveniently for the police no doubt, are recorded as "other homicides". --Hauskalainen (talk) 00:09, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Controls on the carrying of kives & comparative data UK and US

In the previous section Yaf's comments at 19:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC) mentions that the comparison of homicide staticstics UK versus U.S. might not be fair because it ignores other forms of homicide, which will also be carried out with some form of arms. He is right in one sense because there may be a substitution effect). And the comparison could be unfair because it focuses on gun deaths and not for instance stabbings and other knife/sharp instrument homicides. He is quite right in the sense that this article is not just about firearms. We should at least compare the statistics for knives and killing by knives and sharp instrument. He says "the opposite argument could also be made that one is probably about 60 times more likely to die from a knife in the UK than in the U.S. The comparison, though, is largely meaningless, for dead is dead". But his estimate is not only wide of the mark, its actually in the wrong direction. From the sources already given in the article you can easily calculate the homicides with a sharp instrument. In the U.S. 12% of the 17 034 homicides in the year given were done with a knife (2 944) a rate of 0,98 knife deaths per 100 000). In the UK there were 31 male victims and 23 females (killed with a sharp instrument), a rate of 0.10 stabbings per 100 000. So your estimate of 60 times more likely to die in the UK than ín the US is not just wrong, its wrong in the direction of difference and overall out by 700%. You are 10 times MORE likely to die of a stabbing in the U.S. than in the UK DESPITE the fact that the overwhelming number of murders in the U.S. are committed with guns. So there is not much evidence of weapon substitution as you seem to suggest.

Given that the carrying of knives in the UK is also controlled we should include this fact and the statistics for stabbing. That should allay your concerns that this is somehow "anti-gun". I am no expert but I do know that the carrying of certain types of knife in the UK is also illegal (unless you have good reason to have a knife on your person - for example if you are fishing and you have your fishing tackle with you). If you are found by the police to be carrying a knife in a city with a blade over a certain length you could well be commiting a criminal offence. The police are still concerned about knife crime because an alarming number of young people are found to carry knives. I have no idea what the rate is and what it is in the U.S. but the effect on deaths is a concern but maybe not as bad as in the U.S.) I shall do some investigation and find out the rules for carrying knives in the UK and include the stabbing and knife offence data comparisons too.--Hauskalainen (talk) 23:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

There are "lies, damn lies, and statistics", as one wag once put it. The number of non-firearm deaths in the US is around 5,468 annually. This equates to a rate of 5468/299.4^6 = 1.8/100,000 deaths due to non-firearms. In the UK, the rate is (766-50)/55.39^6 = 1.25/100,000. So, the risk of dying is not 10 times greater in the US than in the UK due to being killed by a non-firearm, but is instead very comparable at 1.25/100,000 vs. 1.8/100,000. Insisting on making comparisons between ever small numbers, as you so wont to do, is rather like the medieval arguments of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It only pushes a biased POV into the article. And, it really doesn't matter. The goal for Wikipedia is for articles to be written in Neutral Point of View. Twisting ratios of ever smaller numbers to create IMPRESSIVE ratios of ever smaller numbers, just to push an anti-US POV, is entirely contrary to achieving a Neutral Point of View. The fact remains that the odds of dying in the US and in the UK from non-firearms is approximately the same. However, if one ratios the probabilities of dying from firearms vs. non-firearms in the US, against non-firearms vs. guns in the UK, one arrives at a similar case that 11,566/17,034 = 0.679 of dying with a firearm in the US if one is killed (conditional probility) vs. a probability of 716/766 = 0.934 of dying with a non-firearm in the UK if killed, implying that one is roughly 1.5 times more likely to die from a non-firearm in the UK than in the US, if one is killed. Wow, 150% more likely to die in the UK from a knife than in the US. I don't want to visit the UK! Again, it is the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" absurd arguments that are going on here. This stuff has no place in achieving Neutral Points of View for articles. Kind of reminds me of the argument I heard once of whether it was better to be cut with a dull knife or a sharp knife. A sharp knife damages less tissue, and heals faster and better. But a sharp knife cuts deeper. Take your pick, it really doesn't matter. I don't want to be cut by any knife, or killed by any arm. Dead is dead. None of this kind of absurd argumentative statistics, or anti-US POV drivel, ad nauseum, belongs in the article. Yaf (talk) 06:04, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Its a bit rich to have you accusing me of twisting things! I did not say "the risk of dying" and even more precisely I did not say "the risk of dying in a homicide that was not commited with a gun" I said the "risk of dying in a stabbing is ten times greater in the U.S. than the UK". Which it is. And not one 1.5 times greater in the UK as your false use of statistics claims.I guess that you know that that is false. But you so seem to be accusing me of lying or misusing statistics which I find offensive. I would like to think that this was just a slip up on your part, misreading what I actually said. I would ask you to look again and then withdraw the implicit allegation of POV pushing and misusing statistics. Do this or else I will make a formal complaint about you. If you want me to give the references for all the original sources that forces the conclusion that the risk of homicide by stabbing with a knife or sharp instrument is 10 times greater in the U.S. than the UK I will gladly do so.--Hauskalainen (talk) 06:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Yaf: I have asked you to look again and withdraw the implicit allegation made against me of POV pushing and misusing statistics. You have made several edits but are silent on this issue. I will ask you again. Please consider this again and withdraw the allegation.--Hauskalainen (talk) 04:36, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing incorrect in the statistical calculations, computing the conditional probabilities assuming that one is killed in either the US or the UK. For someone that is killed, there is a higher likelihood of dying from a knife wound in the UK if one is killed there than in the US, where one is more likely to be killed with a firearm. Conditional probabilities are quite valid in statistics and are commonly used. The conditional probability is 150% higher in the UK of being killed with a knife than in the US, if one is killed in the UK. Very scary stuff, that sharp knives are so popular in the UK for killing people. No withdrawal is needed. The statistical rate of homicides in the US at 4.71/100,000 is not ten times the rate of homicides that is seen in the UK, which is around 1.4/100,000. Claiming that the homicide rate is 10x higher in the US means you are falsely claiming the rate in the US is 14.0/100,000 and this is completely false. Your use of statistics to foster an anti-US bias to this article needs to stop. Yaf (talk) 13:51, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

This is so funny! I would be worried about a statistic that says that I am 41 times more likely to killed by a gun in the US than I am in the UK (a true statistic). I would be worried also that I am 4 times more likely to be killed by a knife in the US than I am in the UK (another true statistic), or about 3.5 times higher chance of being killed in the US than the UK by whatever method (another true statistic). I sure as hell would not be worried by the fact that having been killed in the UK there was a higher chance that it would have been with a knife than had I been killed in the US (the true statistic you offer)!! My soul would be looking forward to greater things. I am heading upwards. I don't know about you.--Hauskalainen (talk) 23:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality tag in UK section

An editor has placed a neutrality tag on the UK section claiming this neutrality of this section is disputed. Please discuss the reasons for placing this tag in the space below.--Hauskalainen (talk) 23:21, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Being that this section was about the UK, it was improper to make a false claim of a 41 fold increased risk of murder in the US than in the UK due to guns. Besides, the article is about arms, not guns. With the removal of the false claim, and the removal of the unnecessary biased comparison, I have removed the neutrality tag. In parallel, I have also removed a similar statement comparing the homicide rate in Iraq with Detroit from the subsequent US section. Neutrality Problems seem solved. Have removed tagline. Yaf (talk) 23:35, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

It was not a false claim. It is verifiable. The risk of being killed in a homicide by a gun is about 41 times higher for the average U.S. citizen compared to his counterpart in England & Wales, or indeed Scotland. See my answer to your earlier point above. You should not try to hide the fact from WP readers and the more times you do try to obscure it or hide it, the more blatant your POV pushing becomes. Therefore I added the comparison back. It is perfectly reasonable to determine whether the level of gun availability in a country correlates the gun crime rate. I have added a new section on the subject which uses a wider range of international comparative data. It's less POV than picking on Wyoming, but as I point out above the gun crime homicide rate in Wyoming is likely to be much higher than that in the UK. I am more than happy to extend the comparatives to knives where I am sure the UK and US will be much more closely matched. --Hauskalainen (talk) 06:11, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

what do these statistics have to do with this article? who - other than you - is making the connection between homicide statistics and the right to keep and bear arms? if you can't identify a reliable source that's making this connection, then it means quite simply that you're performing original research in making this connection. Anastrophe (talk) 18:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Who other? Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger[9], for one, makes a connection between homicide and RTKBA. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:56, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

And it seems that five other Justices of the Supreme court do not. I agree with Anastrophe, why is this comparison important? If the subsection is about the UK, then leave America out of it. I don't know what the facts are, but those about the US are irrelevant to the section on the UK.Prussian725 (talk) 02:12, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

After just reading the section, I find the comparison of homicide rates to be in no way relevant to the section. The section is about the UK, so state the UK's homicide rate, PERIOD. I also find absolutely no relevance in the reference to the personnel visiting with George Bush. Why is that in there???Prussian725 (talk) 02:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Your opinion is just your opinion. Warren Burger is a most reliable and important source, who disagreed with you. He has been dead for nearly 12 years, so which "five other" justices are you thinking of? SaltyBoatr (talk) 04:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The relevance in the Bush visit is that the UK government is prepared to break the law to accommodate one person's needs. That is pretty much exceptional and worthy of comment. As to the comparison data, its relevant because of the extreme difference between the very restrictive gun controls in the UK (relative to the USA at the other extreme) and its very low rate of gun deaths (relative to the USA at the other extreme). But I agree that just giving two countries data is highly selective. We could perhaps add more data along the lines of the table further down and let the reader decide for themselves if there is or is not any relation. That could go into the special section discussing the link or otherwise between gun ownership and gun deaths if you think its too one sided to just compare UK the and US.--Hauskalainen (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

warren burger is also a single source, and if we are to maintain NPOV based upon the balance of published opinion, his single opinion - tendered after his retirement from the court, rendering it an opinion carrying no special weight beyond a personal opinion - is not adequate sourcing for the contention. say, got a minute? could you respond to my inquiry below? you know, where you claimed i wasn't editing collaboratively, tag bombed my user page, and since then have remained completely silent (and non-collaborative) on these matters? thanks! Anastrophe (talk) 04:50, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Patience please, why the rush? The published commentary by Warren Burger solidly meets Wikipedia policy guidelines. What is the question: That homicide and the RTKBA have WP:V association? There are many WP:V sources that this is true. Halbrook discusses it in his book ISBN 9780313265396. And, many many more. SaltyBoatr (talk) 21:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Just answer this simple question: why is it important to compare the UK and US gun ownership/deaths? Why can't the UK section be about the UK and the UK only and leave the US out of it? You may say I am biased, picking a fight, trolling...whatever, but this comparision stinks of anti-US politics because whoever wrote the "UK" section felt the need to compare the UK to the US when the section is about only one of those two nations. I close with a request for an answer to my above question.Prussian725 (talk) 21:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I added the comparison because the US has very high levels of gun ownership and the UK has very low levels of gun ownership. The US has high levels of gun homicides and the UK very low levels. The suicide levels are interesting too. As I say, we can move the data into another section in which we show many countries and do not pick on one country to compare with another. I have seen several tables like this published on the internet. They are not hard to find. Its easy to get valid and consistent international data. We can get quite a large table with reliable sources for data quite easily. I don't think you are picking a fight or trolling. Its a reasonable question. I am not sure what "anti-US politics means". I happened across this file http://www.ippnw.org/Resources/MGS/V7N1Cukier.pdf and saw Figure 2. As you can see, the two countries are pretty much at polar ends. I have not been avoiding your question. In fact I think if you read further back you will see that I already answered you once before. --Hauskalainen (talk) 00:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not doubt that the rates are accurate. I just do not think it is appropriate, at least not for this subsection, to compare the two countries when the subsection is specifically about gun policies in the UK. Does anybody else agree?Prussian725 (talk) 13:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

It is not appropriate. It simply pushes an anti-US bias into the article. The reason this is obvious is that there is no mention of the legitimate use of guns for self defense in the US, some say 2.5 million uses a year. There is likewise no mention of legitimate self defense in which the criminal is shot and killed, i.e., justifiable homicide. There is likewise no mention that self defense is no longer a valid reason to use a gun in the UK. NPOV is not being followed in the article. Rather, all of this one-sidedness points to an anti-US bias. The inappropriate content should be removed, and the facts should be allowed to speak for themselves. Yaf (talk) 13:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

IMO the UK section is for the UK and the US section is for the US. If someone wishes to compare the gun statistics in these two countries, feel free to do so. However, we should not we should not make a newspaper ad out of that comparison. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 14:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone object to revising the subsection to remove any references to the US?Prussian725 (talk) 20:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Being no objections were noted, I have fixed this problem. Yaf (talk) 19:37, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It can go into the international comparison section.--Hauskalainen (talk) 00:18, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths

This section does not belong in the article at all. It includes no reliable sourcing that the right to keep and bear arms is even related to gun deaths. This kind of stuff might belong in the gun politics or gun politics in the US articles, but not this one. --Hamitr (talk) 07:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. The reason for campaigns and legislatures acting to restrict or try to restrict the keeping and bearing of arms is because they believe it will reduce gun related crimes and especially gun related deaths. That alone is sufficient reason to include comparisons. And there is a demonstrated relationship between gun ownership and gun deaths in international comparisons. I gave at least one reference for that. There may be people who dispute a connection between the two but I am sure that many others believe otherwise. WP has to reflect all main views. So we SHOULD have something about this in the article. It is highly relevant to the subject. The fact the a US citizen has about 40 times as much chance of being the victim of a gun homicide than a UK citizen cannot be explained simply by the higher prevalence of homicide in the US beause the rate of homicides in the US is only 4 times greater than in the UK. We should not speculate about the reasons for this, but neither should we hide the basic fact from the reader.--Hauskalainen (talk) 22:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

i agree with hamitr. you've provided your personal opinion as to why it's relevant; your duty is to provide third party reliable sources that explain why it's relevant. your one citation makes no reference to the right to keep and bear arms - no relevance is shown. yes, there is a demonstrated relationship between gun ownership and gun deaths - but how does that relationship cleave to the right to keep and bear arms, which is the ostensible subject of this article? i'm not asking for your opinion of how it relates to this article, i'm asking for reliable sources that make that connection. "WP has to reflect all main views" - correct. where is your reliable source that reflects the view that gun homicide statistics are related to the right to keep and bear arms? simply believing there is a relationship is fine for discussion on the talk page; it is not adequate for adding that belief to article space. provide reliable sources making this connection, and you're good to go. soapboxing here why you believe the connection exists is meaningless. Anastrophe (talk) 22:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The citation from the United Nations publication regarding gun death statistics of course makes no reference to the right to keep and bear arms because its subject was the relationship between gun ownership levels and gun homicides and suicides. But the relationship between gun ownership and gun crime IS an argument used by campaigns in the UK and in the US to LIMIT the right to keep and bear arms which IS germain to this topic. So there is a connection which is of direct relevance to the topic. I am surprised that you even seem to want to argue this point. It seems rather POV to me for you both to want to keep it out. There will be plenty of WP:RS for this. As I say, I have no wish to present a one sided argument. There are people such as campaigners, politicians, and the criminologist at the University of Zurich Prof. Dr Martin Killias (who wrote the chapter of the book I cited) who believe thet there IS a link between the level of gun ownership and the level of gun crime. Others no doubt will think they have got it all wrong. The point is that we have to reflect all major views. I hope that I have not expressed personal opinion here. By all means point it out if I have. (I did for example not put back the reference I made to the public shock following the [Dumblane massacre] in spite of there being a very similar reference in the article on the attacks on 9/11. Neither have I made reference to similar public outrage in Finland regarding two school shootings here in the past few years nor to similar outrages in the US such as at Jonesbro. I could get WP:RS references and add them in if you like, but I'll not labor the point). --Hauskalainen (talk) 23:39, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

i'm baffled as to what is unclear here. where in the article are your reliable sources making this connection? there are none. the link between gun ownership and gun crime is not a settled matter internationally, e.g. switzerland has extremely high gun ownership and extremely low gun crime. that advocacy groups claim that X is a reason they want to eliminate Y does not mean that their position of advocacy bears relevance to a neutral discussion of The right to keep and bear arms. Their positions may be relevant to Gun Politics etc, but you've failed to provide an actual citation from a reliable source that shows relevance of homicide statistics to this article. absent reliable sourcing the material does not belong. Anastrophe (talk) 00:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Swizerland's rate of gun homicide is low compared to the US and lower than some European countries that have fewer guns. But although the Swiss have admirable restraint in killing other people with a gun (only four times higher than the UK) their propensity to kill themselves with a gun shows less reserve. Switzerland rather fits into the same category as Wyoming.. a lot of guns located in sparsely populated areas. The following data comes from the reference I gave which I cited and you can read it for yourself at http://www.unicri.it/wwk/publications/books/series/understanding/19_GUN_OWNERSHIP.pdf

See especially the Figure 3 on page 300. That figure does not include the US because it is completely off the scale. I've summarised the data in the table below (the data being from 1992) for the UK (which has very strict gun control and which has been tightened even further since the data was collected) and with the US- I also include Switzerland as you mention it. The relationship between gun ownership and gun homicides and suicides is pretty clear.

Country	Firearms (% homes with)	Firearm homicides per million	Firearm suicides per million
England & Wales	4.7	0.8	3.8
Scotland	4,7	1.1	6.9
Switzerland	27.2	4.0	57.4
USA	48.0	44.6	72.8

WP does not call for a neutral view. It calls for a balanced view representing all major views. The views of gun lobbyists, the actions of parliaments in the wake of mass murders, and the opinions of professors of criminology writing for a multinational organization such as the U.N. are all major views and must be represented. We should present the data and the arguments and let the reader decide who to believe.--Hauskalainen (talk) 01:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

WP most assuredly calls for a neutral point of view, see WP:NPOV. the problem is, you have not provided any reliable source that makes the connection between RKBA and gun homicide/suicide rates. we emphatically do not present raw data without a demonstrated connection to the ostensible subject matter, in the hopes that readers will synthesize an opinion of the subject matter; that's contrary to NPOV. you've shown a correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide/suicide rates, you have not shown a correlation between the subject of the right to keep and bear arms and homicide/suicide rates. the data you presented immediately above is sixteen years out of date, hardly useful, considering US homicide rates are a fraction today of what they were then. also, switzerland is hardly 'sparsley populated', it has a population density for the whole country of 480/sq mile, compared with wyoming with 5.4/sq mile. switzerland's population density is between that of maryland and delaware - the fifth and sixth most densely populated states in the US, respectively! you wrote "The relationship between gun ownership and gun homicides and suicides is pretty clear.". indeed. what is your reliable source showing a relationship between the right to keep and bear arms, and gun homicides and suicides? if you are conflating the one with the other, you're engaging in synthesis, within article space. that's contrary to WP policy. Anastrophe (talk) 02:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

What I meant is that we cannot write from a neutral view (as for example the BBC attempts to do when writing news stories), but we do have to reflect all shades of opinion. You are right about the population density of Switzerland - I allowed my memory of the Sound of Music to overcome me ;) Sorry. I am not sure that the date of data collection is very significiant. Where is your evidence that US homicides are now a fraction of what they were then? Is that a fraction of 1/4 or 9/8? We need to be clear. The data does not look much different to the data I presented earlier (from 2006 if memory servs me right). You keep harping on about my not demonstrating a clear link between gun homicides/suicides and RKBA when I have already told you that the link is clear in the demands of groups currently calling for tighter arms controls (as in the U.S. after numerous schoolm and college shootings and currently in Finland after similar shootings for example) and previously in UK (after Dunblane and before that even with the Hungerford massacre. It is not hard to demonstrate that. Those campaigners use the statistics about gun ownership and gun deaths to make their case. I could VERY EASILY get these links but somehow I think that you are clinging to the silly notion that I have to produce a statistic linking gun deaths to a particular "right" which is not an absolute thing and is regulated to various degreees in different countries.--Hauskalainen (talk) 04:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

homicide rate, US, 1992: 9.3/100,000 (100K is the standard metric). homicide rate, US, 2007, 5.9. it dipped to 5.5 in 2000 and 2004, levels not seen since the early 1960's, yet there are far more guns in the US now than back then. [10]. but these statistics are not germane to this article. you wrote "You keep harping on about my not demonstrating a clear link between gun homicides/suicides and RKBA when I have already told you that the link is clear in the demands of groups currently calling for tighter arms controls". am i - and wikipedia readers - to take your word for it? are we to turn this article into a forum for advocacy groups? your statistics are relevant, interesting, and germane....to articles such as Gun politics in the United States, not to this article. you continue to synthesize. who - other than you - is making this connection? i see no citation in the article to support the section even existing. it is weasel-worded as it is. no, the whole section needs to go, it is not relevant to this article. Anastrophe (talk) 04:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The section has been removed. If reliable sourcing can be found that demonstrates its relevance to the Right to keep and bear arms, then we can certainly add it back. --Hamitr (talk) 05:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hauskalainen, if you can "VERY EASILY get the links" that show the relevance of this section, then by all means, find them and add the section back--properly sourced, of course. If you want the content included, then you have the burden of proof. Thanks. --Hamitr (talk) 05:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

SaltyBoatr added "cites" that were unrelated to the right to keep and bear arms relative to gun violence. Have removed the section, for lack of reliable sourcing. It appears that this section is intended only to push an anti-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms POV by conflating gun violence with the right, but without any sourcing claiming a connection exists with the right to keep and bear arms. Cites must at least be related to the topic; it is poor synthesis to just add any old cite and claim, "SEE IT IS RELATED" when there is, in fact, no content in the cites that makes the case. Lets stick to what the cites say, OK? Yaf (talk) 06:31, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I object to the personal attack which is uncivil and false. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The connection is strong, see for instance chapter 5 of Saul Cornells book A WELL-REGULATED MILITIA ISBN 978-0-19-514786-5 for discussion of the evolution of the "individual rights" theory, pointedly including the Kentucky case Bliss v. Commonwealth, which was in response to gun violence legislation. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

passive-aggressive warnings on user talk pages

user saltyboatr apparently disliked my reversion of another editor's unsourced prose added to the article. the edit was the only reversion of material by that editor that i've ever performed on this page. in response, sb - rather than discussing the matter here on the article talk page, decided to do a drive-by tag bombing of my user talk page:

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Right to keep and bear arms. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:49, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

this is annoying, hostile, passive-aggressive, and i'm sick of it. this was not an edit war. my ONE EDIT does not by ANY measure of 3RR constitute grounds to warn another editor. yes, i'm quite totally aware that 3RR can apply to a single edit - but the circumstances here do NOT qualify.

cease and desist with the tag bombing. it's passive-aggressive, annoying, and as it stands, your warning is incivil, and does not assume good faith. stop.

now you have an opportunity to explain - here in the proper forum - what the issue is you perceive. please do so. here. not on my talk page. Anastrophe (talk) 06:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Your series of reverts on Feb15 had an appearance of risk of edit war, and a warning seemed fair and prudent. Sorry if you found this warning annoying. An alternative, less disruptive, strategy instead of wholesale reverts is to insert a ((fact}} tag to allow the editor to provide ref sourcing. Also, please review WP:NOOB guidelines. SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"your series of reverts". prove it. there was no series of reverts. furthermore, you know that wikipedia doesn't work the way you're suggesting - editors do not have free rein to insert unsourced prose into articles, expecting other editors to hopefully add fact tagging to their then inserted text. not on contentious articles such as this. lastly, please explain who the new wikipedia user is whom i bit. there is none. you're throwing out red-herrings and WP:SOUP left and right here. you had no business tag bombing my user page with a warning. none at all. all you accomplished was pissing off a fellow editor, rather than encouraging collaboration. it was a hostile action. 22:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, sorry. SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

for all editor's edification, here's the timeline:

07:30, 14 February 2009 hauskalainen inserts long prose section going into great detail about how the constitution is amended, many details of which are incorrect and misleading, and including speculation and OR.

10:38, 14 February 2009 i revert it with edit summary "With the exception of a single citation, this is all unsourced prose, and appears to be OR. please identify who you are quoting or referencing before adding again.."

12:48, 14 February 2009 saltyboatr reverts me, and tagbombs my user page warning that i might be blocked for 3RR for my single edit.

that's it. that's the entire timeline. who in their right mind interprets that as a revert war, deserving of slapping a warning on the user's talk page? its absurd, offensive, and hostile, and the rationale you make above is based on falsehoods. Anastrophe (talk) 22:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

note that in the interest of moving on, that's the last from me on this matter. i wanted the record to be clear before disengaging however. Anastrophe (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding your 10:38 14Feb edit. It is inappropriate to use the Edit Summary in that way. Avoid using edit summaries to carry on debates or negotiation over the content or to express opinions of the other users involved. This creates an atmosphere where the only way to carry on discussion is to revert other editors! Instead, place such comments, if required, on the talk page. And, this edit war with Hauskalainen appeared to me at the time to involve two editors, Yaf and Anastrophe. I warned both. SaltyBoatr (talk) 23:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

more falsehoods. my edit summary did not carry on any debate or negotiation over the content, or express opinions of other users involved. you're throwing out more soup here. my edit summary explained why i removed the material, that's what edit summaries are for. your claim of tag teaming is bad faith. you have no basis to connect yaf and myself. this falls into the realm of paranoia. there was no revert war, and your warning after SINGLE EDITS was inappropriate. again, your actions appear to have been designed not to encourage collaboration, but to hassle other editors needlessly. it seems you would have preferred to have unsourced prose, stating incorrectly how our constitution works, inserted into the article. your preference is noted, but that's not how wikipedia works, and you would have removed the same material under different circumstances. please stop playing these games. tag me again with a warning for potentially violating 3RR after a single edit, and i'll be forced to file for sanctions against you for these disruptive tactics. Anastrophe (talk) 23:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I object to the false accusation of bad faith. This is a direct personal attack. SaltyBoatr (talk) 01:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

certainly, it is not. apparently you have not read WP:TAGTEAM. for your benefit, and the benefit of other readers, i quote from the opening paragraph:

"Wikipedia encourages and depends on cooperative editing to improve articles, and most editors who work together are not a tag team. Assume good faith, and keep in mind that in almost all cases it is better to address other editors' reasoning than it is to accuse them of being on a team.

Accusations of tag teaming are likely to be viewed as uncivil. Care should be made to frame assertions in an appropriate way, and to cite evidence."

you have assumed bad faith, and acted incivily by accusing yaf and myself of being in cahoots, for which you have no evidence (considering i've never exchanged a solitary word with yaf on his talk page or off wikipedia, your claim is laughable). no, the direct personal attack levied was by you. perhaps you might consider not digging your hole any deeper here. Anastrophe (talk) 02:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I did not make an accusation, and your accusation of incivility is not based in fact. I did make an assumption, based on weighing the pattern of appearances. I hear your denial. SaltyBoatr (talk) 02:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

so you believe that saying there's an appearance of collusion doesn't constitute an accusation. in other words, it's the letter of the law that matters, not the spirit. ignoring that making the suggestion in and of itself accomplishes the task of publicly calling into question (with other editors) whether collusion occurred, without having to offer any evidence. in that case, i have to say, there's the appearance that you're wikilawyering for uncivil and hostile purposes. Anastrophe (talk) 17:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Once again, I am sorry and I apologize that you perceived this a hostile act. Sorry, that was not my intention. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

i wasn't fishing for an apology, but fair enough. onward. Anastrophe (talk) 05:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Legal differences in U.S. affecting right to bear arms compared to other English law jurisdictions

There was an attempt by me to expand the section about the differences between the United States legal framework governing the right to bear arms and those in other countries. In particular it is quite important to understand why the situation regarding the legal position regarding arms control domestically is so is so different in the U.S. compared to other countries that follow English law. I attempted to summarize the main differences but I see that some editors have become a little upset about the edit and have deleted it. In my opinion that is the wrong reaction. Not withstanding that, I would like to open a discussion here about whether these differences need to be explained properly. If not, then why not. If yes, then we need to agree what those key differences are and then agree how to explain it in the article.

The main differences as I see them are that (1) the US allows an elected president right of veto over legislation (2) that it has a supreme court which can override the legislature and (3) that some law is written into a constitution that can only be changed with a supermajority. Of these three differences I think clearly (3) has been the most critical in the history of the right to keep and bear arms in the US. The issue of rights between the states and the federal government is not unique to the US. Canada and Australia have Federal and Provincial/Territorial law making bodies, and the UK now has regional parliaments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and laws which are different in different regions. So that element is not a key difference between the US and these other countries.

If you think the differences I have outlined are wrong, then I need to understand why they are wrong. If they are incomplete, then we need to agree what else needs to be addded.

I am completely baffled by Yaf's comment that the the U.S. Congress is not a parliament. Its main function is to make law and hold the government to account. I cannot see any difference. It is a parliament in all but name. But I will wait for her/him to explain why I am wrong.--Hauskalainen (talk) 17:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

your personal opinion that the US congress is a parliament in all but name is interesting. if you can provide a reliable source that backs up that claim, then it may go in the article (good luck though, as the differences between parliament and congress are significant. i really enjoy the congress's weekly "questions for the president" session. oh, wait, there isn't one!) many of your claims of the workings of the US congress are incorrect and misinformed however. that's why your largely unsourced, prose addition to the article was reverted. for example, you make no mention that the congress can override a presidential veto. small detail; huge implications. were you aware of that fact? i'd suggest that it would be better to rely upon reliable sources for material you add to the article, rather than synthesizing unsourced prose to add to the article which is certain to be reverted, as that's not how wikipedia works. wikipedia article space is not a platform for personal synthesis and opinion. source your claims properly, and they'll stand. Anastrophe (talk) 18:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Try looking at Websters on-line dictionary. Congress and Parliament are both described as legislatures (parliament for many countries and congress just for the United States). The rituals and process may differ one to the other but they fundamentally have the same function. Changing the constitution or overriding a veto both require supermajorities in the ration 75:25. I see no reason why you have removed reference to the supermajority clauses in the US constitition. I had to dig hard (and be additionally informed about presidential veto - thank you!) to understand that. I think it would be useful to have that in the article instead of having to dig for it. The supermajority clauses in the US constitution are a key factor affecting the ability of the people via their elected representatives in congress or parliament to modify the right to keep and bear arms and therefore a key difference between the US and other countries that follow English law. T therefore propose that we should at the very least add back reference to the supermajority clauses. If the presidential veto has never been used to block legislation regarding the right to bear arms I would be OK about dropping reference to this technical possibility. But the presence of a supreme court which can nullify the actions of the legislature is a key difference and I would argue it should go back. --Hauskalainen (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

why is it necessary to explain the specific procedural details? those details pertain to all amendments to the US constitution, not just the right to keep and bear arms. is it not entirely adequate to note that - unlike in the UK - it is extremely difficult to change the constitution, and that this is by design? Linking directly to US constitution allows the reader to learn for themselves why this is so, rather than imposing these procedural details into this article. it's a digression that is simply not needed. Anastrophe (talk) 22:25, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

We don't have to go into specifics but the supermajority ratio of 75:25 is interesting and not difficult to incorporate into the article. I was surprised to find that restricting the right to own a gun in the U.S. was governed by a law which requires 3/4 of both legislatures to change it. As a non-US citizen I would not be expected to know that and I should not have to dig into the U.S. constitution article to find it out. The fact that it applies to things other than the RTKBA is not really relevant. That it does apply is.--Hauskalainen (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

but once again, you're still mistaken about how it works. the specifics are not meaningful to understanding that the US government powers are limited differently than in the UK - it merely suffices to note that they are. it requires yet far more than simply a 75:25 supermajority of the legislatures to modify the constitution. since your understanding of how our form of government works is still at a deficit after having investigated it at length (please, please note that i am not intending a personal affront with that observation), it suggests that the intricacies are surely best left out of this article, since this article is not about how the US government works. see Article Five of the United States Constitution for specifics on how the constitution may be amended or an amendment repealed. you wrote "I was surprised to find that restricting the right to own a gun in the U.S. was governed by a law which requires 3/4 of both legislatures to change it." - but that's not even correct. two-thirds of either house of the federal congress is required to propose an amendment (or repeal of an amendment), or if two-thirds of the legislatures of the states request it, a convention must be called. once one of those two paths is satisfied, then in order to actually amend the constitution, three-fourths of the state legislatures or state conventions must ratify it. so, thirty-eight state legislatures must vote in favor of ratification - not merely a 3/4th vote of both houses of the federal congress. do such details really need to be in this article? no. merely noting that it is extremely difficult to modify the constitution, and that that is by design, is certainly adequate. Anastrophe (talk) 00:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I'd just like to interject something here. While I personally think that some need to re-read Article V of the U.S. Constitution to get a better idea how it works, I'm at least very encouraged that instead of edit warring, everyone is working here to resolve the content disputes and differences. Keep it up, good on ya!

This user supports the right to arm bears.

Edit Centric (talk) 20:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

a bit of trivia for user Hauskalainen, this may be of interest - see Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution. It was ratified in 1992 - more than 202 years after it was submitted as one of the original amendments in the bill of rights. had it been ratified when proposed, it would have been the second amendment (the existing second was actually the fourth). Anastrophe (talk) 02:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Hauska: I have to join in Anastrophe. The "novel trivia" you're concerned with here is not properly phrased. The U.S. has lots of laws that cannot be changed, even with a supermajority. They come from the Constitution (even though not all of them are actually spelled out in the Constitution) - we call them "fundamental rights." There has been a long debate in the 20th century about whether, when our Constitution says that there is an inviolable "right of the citizens to keep and bear arms," it meant that states could not make laws totally banning gun ownership (which some governmental units, such as the District of Columbia had done), and possibly whether other forms of "gun control" are illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court recently clarified that it does mean that - at least for now. In U.S. law, constitutional rights are superior to all other acts of legislature. This means that no matter how popular, a majority of voters or legislators cannot take those rights away except under very special circumstances - for example, the right to private property, or the right to free speech. However, in this regard, the right in question is no different from any other right expressly protected by the U.S. Constitution. The way you're putting the issue seems biased because it makes it singles out one "fundamental right" and implicitly divides it from the others. I don't expect you to know all this, if you're not familiar with our legal system -- but if you aren't, perhaps you should avoid commenting on it.

As for the other issue - whether the U.S. Congress is a "parliament" - the distinction is unimportant, and not worth fighting over. In the U.S., our generic word for a governmental body with primary lawmaking authority is neither a "congress" nor a "parliament" but a "LEGISLATURE." From reading political science books in other countries, I believe this term is used for that purpose internationally in academic literature, provided everyone uses the same translation.

The issue might be that while nearly every country has a legislature, one country's legislature may not be like another's. For example the U.K. Parliament is VERY different in terms of what powers it has, from the U.S. Congress. So maybe calling the U.S. Congress a "parliament" is disturbing to others, even if you thought you were translating. This should not be a contentious matter. Non Curat Lex (talk) 09:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I took a look at the article fundamental rights and immediately proposed it for merger. The rights you claim to be fundamental are essentially rights under constitutional law if they are in the constitution and the supermajority rules will apply to the. The fundamental issue is that the U.S. (and some other countries too) puts a supermajority (or in some cases a delaying rule) into constitutional changes. This is harldy suprising as it helps to stop a body coming into power on a simple majority and then postponing or preventing further elections. Whether things such as the right to bear arms belong in that category will of course be a matter of dispute. OK, I accept Anastrophe's point that I shoulf not have tried to define the supermajority rules (because they are complex) but the fact that amending the right to bear arms in the U.S. would need a supermajority should be in the article. --Hauskalainen (talk) 21:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

once more, with feeling: you claim that it 'would need a supermajority' understates how difficult it is to change the constitution. so, no - it should not be in the article, since it's incorrect. as i said before: merely noting that it is extremely difficult to modify the constitution, and that that is by design, is certainly adequate. Anastrophe (talk) 04:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

How can it be changed WITHOUT a supermajority in one form or another? Surely its the supermajority issues that make it difficult. I don't need a run down on all the ways the constitution can be changed,. An example where the supermajority does not apply will suffice.--Hauskalainen (talk) 07:06, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

which supermajority are you referring to? have you read the article referenced previous concerning article five of the US constitution? at this point, this is becoming needless bickering and badgering. supermajority is only one aspect of the process of amending the constitution, and and it's an oversimplification to say it's the only thing that makes it difficult. rather than misleading the reader about what makes the constitution hard to amend, and considering that this article is not about how the constitution is amended, it is - i'll say it one more time - entirely adequate to simply make note that it is extremely difficult to do so. Anastrophe (talk) 07:46, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

piste minulle! (point to me!) It seems to me that you do not want anyone to point out the fact that the process means you can have a minority running over the wishes of the majority, or from another angle, as Jefferson kind of put it, (and I forget the quote exactly), "that dead shall have tyranny over the living". --Hauskalainen (talk) 09:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me for joining the discussion uninvited, but I have to say that this issue you point out affects all amendments of the U.S. Constitution and that IMO mentioning it in this article would probably not be the best choice, let alone mentioning your interpretation. There are very good reasons why "the dead have tyranny over the living" (what would happen if one would repeal the First Amendment?) Admiral Norton ^(talk) 15:50, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Admiral Norton is basically correct. Majority rule is not a good rule of law. The U.S. Government was not meant to be a pure democracy. Democracies that aren't bound by higher principles run the risk of majorities eliminating the rights of isolated minorities. To ensure that minorities can rely on the rule of law, the framers set aside some important rights that are insulated from the political process. The only way to change them is (a) constitutional amendment or (b) a successful revolution. I'm not here to defend my system or criticize anyone else's, but by the same token, you should not be here editorializing about our system.

In addition, a lot of your editorializing is based on improper assumptions. This whole discussion seems to be continuing needlessly because of things you do not know, and of which you could educate yourself before continuing it, as well as some poor logical reasoning. For example: Someone said that a super majority alone cannot change the constitution. You replied: "how can it be changed without one?" The answer is, of course, it cannot, but that means it is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition. If you want to know more about how to amend the U.S. constitution, please go to the appropriate article. Another example: you do not really understand the Jefferson philosophy you are quoting. Before you go down that road you need to get a better understanding of where he was coming from, and what he did, and did not want to have happen.

I don't want to sound mean here - I'd be happy to answer any questions you have, but this talk page discussion is really a mindless waste of time, and this is not the right forum for it. Talk pages are not here for educational colloquy. Non Curat Lex (talk) 19:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Definitions section

I am puzzled why this is the first section. The discussion seems to be purely in the context of the meaning in the second amendment of the U.S. constitution. I would suggest we merge this text into the section on the United States. --Hauskalainen (talk) 20:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

This deletion http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms&diff=271292525&oldid=271203117 has not been properly discussed

User:Yaf has deleted a whole block of text with the following edit summary

"cites fail to identify "right to keep and bear arms" as being related to "gun violence"; rm uncited and unrelated commentary that is only pushing a POV rather than providing relevant content"

The whole purpose of imposing restrictions on the right to bear arms is concerned with the desire to reduce the level and potential effect of violence within society. I not only think we should keep the section (perhaps retitled to something we can all agree on) and expand it to include not just guns, but knives also. Many countries control the right to access guns and some also control the right to carry a knife. There are other categories of weapon that are also restricted in the UK. For example Tasers. We surely have to explain WHY some countries restrict the right to bear arms and compare whether that those that do have succeeded in meeting their aims.

Perhaps Yaf can tell us

• why it is POV pushing
• why he thinks the "right to keep and bear arms" is unaffected by laws which restrict seek to restrict the right to bear arms (I don't see it myeslf).
• which particular pieces he wants cites for and
• which particular piece of text is "unrelated commentary" and why it is unrelated in his opinion.--Hauskalainen (talk) 06:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hauskalainen, please remember to sign your contributions. it's disconcerting reading a newly added section with no attribution.

To your comments, you state "the whole purpose of imposing restrictions on the right to bear arm is[...]". your opinion is noted, but historically it is not the only or whole purpose for restrictions have been imposed. furthermore, it can be argued that laws - which implicitly are only followed by those who are law-abiding - restricting the rights of to keep and bear arms are little effective upon those who are not law-abiding. malum in se laws have throughout history been the only effective laws, malum prohibitum laws tend to be quite a bit less so. but i digress. this article is about "the right to keep and bear arms". the right - and this article - have nothing to do with statistics about the relationship of gun violence to gun ownership. those who commit lawless violence with arms are not participating in their right to keep and bear arms.Anastrophe (talk) 08:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the signing. I've added it now. Maybe you should add yours too!

Why are you responding to this issue? I addressed the question very clearly to User:Yaf. These are issues for him to answer.

I see no reason why you cannot add other valid reasons for laws restricting the right to bear arms. Your diversion into latin and its associated argument is just that. A diversion. If countries took that fatalistic attitude there would be no point passing any laws.

Of course the issue is about gun violence! Its one side of the "balance of rights" that gets discussed whenever changes to the law are contemplated. Every time there is a mass shooting the gun laws get discussed. Every law that I know about that aims to control the right to bear arms is there in an effort to maintain public order and reduce the risk of death or serious injury from weapons. All laws are a balance of rights. Not everyone in the US has a right to own a gun. Its restricted. Its restricted in every country, but in each to different degrees. It meaningful to examine the level of right in each country if we are to have a balanced article. I am new to this whole field but clearly one has to have access to a gun in order to use it whether for harm or no harm. There are many guns in Finland and Switzerland (way higher than the rest of Europe but below that of the U.S.) and these three countries have relatively high rates of gun death. The UK and many other countries have relatively low levels of gun ownership and relatively low level of gun crime. There are exceptions of course, but the exceptions are just that (and the reasons for them are well understood). Do you wish to hide that fact from the reader? It surely seems like it to me.--Hauskalainen (talk) 06:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

yes, apparently it was sufficient to point out that another editor failed to sign, to induce me to fail to sign. sigh.

this is not a private communication medium. i am not constrained from commenting on any discussion that may obtain, nor are you, regardless of who you may address it to.

this article is about the right to keep and bear arms. it is not about the criminal use of arms. simply stating that "of course the issue is about gun violence!" doesn't make a convincing argument. historically, despotic regimes have "restricted" the right to keep and bear arms in order to keep the people from rising up against them. this isn't just theory or arcana, it's real, and it specifically bears upon this article. "reducing gun violence" is one rationale proposed for restricting the right to keep and bear arms, it is not the only rationale - but you are presenting it as such.

you are proposing a confusing mix of gun ownership, gun law, and gun crime statistics and commentary. the whole section is a synthesis based upon these four things, without third party reliable sources making the connections. stringing together multiple separate ideas (cited or not) with the claim that they are connected isn't acceptable per WP:OR. Anastrophe (talk) 08:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The right to keep and bar arms is as regulated by law. It cannot be clearer. That countries mostly regulate the ownership should not be a surprise and that they mostly do so to restrict access on public safely grounds should not be either. I think the reduction in gun violence is the aim of legislators. What other reason is there? (unless you are a conspiracy theorist). Focusing in on statistics is what the pro and anti gun lobbies in the US seem to do all the time. So again it would be wrong NOT to mention them.

I restored the section. If Yaf, or other editors have problems, lets discuss it here. SaltyBoatr (talk) 15:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The cites make the case of "gun rights" being in opposition to controlling violence committed with guns. The cites do not make the case that the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" is in opposition, or even related, to controlling violence committed with guns. It is Original Research with WP:SYN issues to equate "gun rights" to the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" without a cite. Have removed this uncited POV from the article. Yaf (talk) 04:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yaf, you have again deleted this and I have had to restore it. The need for a link of the kind is irrelevant. There are clearly people who think that the level of right to own guns does lead to gun violence otherwise gun control in the U.S. would not be such a big issue. And ownership of guns is a part of the right to bear arms. The right to bear arms is regulated everywhere. If you dispute individual statements in the text place a citation request there. If you want to discuss the text of the section with other editors in order that we can agree the most neutral or fair way to present the data then great. Don't just try to delete something that you personally don't believe in. We have to represent all views in an article of this nature.--Hauskalainen (talk) 04:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yaf- I made a mistake in warning you about 3RR in my last reversion of your destructive deletion. You are already in breach of 3RR

first http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms&diff=271292525&oldid=271203117

second http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms&diff=272414608&oldid=272414034

third http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms&diff=272416582&oldid=272415199

I will not make a formal complaint at this juncture but will do so if you this again (or indeed if one of your co-editors) does so. I posed questions to you when you made that first delete. Please enter into the spirit of co-operation and answer the point I have put to you instead of simply deleting what you disagree with. Or we can take the matter to some form of arbitration if you really feel that strongly about it.--Hauskalainen (talk) 04:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I have deleted it because it is Original Research, conflating "gun rights" with violence committed with guns. The cites claim that "gun rights" is at opposition to containing violence committed with guns. The cites do not equate the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" with these "gun rights", nor do they make the case for "Right to keep and bear arms" as being the root cause in opposition to containing violence committed with guns. It is a problem with synthesis as to why I removed the OR content, being it was contrary to WP:SYN. It really doesn't matter that you state the need for a cite is irrelevant. It is Wikipedia policy not to publish Original Research. It is also Wikipedia policy to cite all statements for which someone calls a need, to prevent publishing original research. Uncited statements can and should be removed at any time they are found, per policy by Jimbo Wales, himself. Synthesizing that ownership of guns is equivalent to the right to bear arms is clearly synthesis. Synthesizing that either equates to more violence committed with guns without cites is likewise Original Research. The article is about the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, not the "Right to Bear Arms". It has nothing to do with my personal position on the topic, as it really doesn't matter. What matters is that all Original Research is excised and only material that is cited by reliable and verifiable sources should be permitted to be in Wikipedia articles. All editors are duty bound to remove any uncited Original Research. Cite the point you are trying to make with appropriate cites that make the case, and there is no issue. Reverting the removal of uncited POV drivel, as you have been doing, has no place on Wikipedia and is grounds for Administrative sanctions if it continues. Yaf (talk) 05:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

It would help if you were more consistent. Your original delete for reason (1) failure to identify a link between "right to keep and bear arms" and "gun violence", (2) that there was uncited and unrelated commentary, and (3) that this was POV pushing. Now you are claiming that it breaches rules on (4) Original Research, and (5) Synthesis. Quite some claims!

My reply

The issue of (1) is clearly given in the very first reference. People campaigning for restrictions on the right to bear arms do so on the basis that it would reduce gun violence. They may be right or wrong about that claim, but it is a claim made. That is the linkage and the text clearly states this. It does not state that gun violence IS related to gun ownership. That is the link and why its relevent to the article. It is therefore disingenuous to claim that the editor who contributed the text to has failed to establish a link that his text is not trying to make.

The issue of (2) is up to you to insert a citation or relevancy marker and for the editor to respond to that or have it removed. You should not remove text without identifiying which bits you think need citations or clarification as to evidence.

The issue of (3) still has not been explained.

The issue of (4) and (5) is again ingenuous. The edit has clearly laid out that a researcher - an academic criminologist no less - has investigated the correlation between the levels of gun ownership and the levels of gun violence. The edit does not say A causes B, merely that A correlates with B. One can edit around that and discuss why that relation is strong in some circumstances and weak in others,(as the researcher did) and what various parties close to the issue of the right to bear arms say about this. But the text itself is clearly not OR or SYN.--Hauskalainen (talk) 06:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

"The need for a link of the kind is irrelevant.". this is contrary to wikipedia policy. any material that is challenged must either provide a citation, or be removed. period. it's non-negotiable. you are acting contrary to wikipedia policy. Anastrophe (talk) 05:07, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Please do not twist what I am saying. I am not saying that WP does not call for citations. The edit that was deleted had rather a lot of citations and was not trying to claim what the citation requestor claimed it was trying to say. The citations do support the text, which is what they are supposed to do. --Hauskalainen (talk) 06:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

your point (1) above clearly falls within your points (4) and (5). you're synthesizing a meaning from disconnected citations. having a "lot of citations" isn't adequate - they must be from reliable sources, and they must be relevant - supporting what the text contends. as it stands currently, they do not support the text. the presentment of statistics on gun ownership rates compared with gun homicide and suicide rates is not shown to be connected to The right to keep and bear arms by the mere presence of two sets of unconnected citations. once again, when someone commits a homicide or suicide using a gun or other arm, they are not engaging in their right to keep and bear arms - they are excluded by law from that protected class. so why are statistics about persons excluded from the right to keep and bear arms relevant - unless the section specifically addresses that it is describing those who are not protected by this right?

furthermore, sections 1.1.1.5 and 1.1.2.5 of the article present bare statistics with no presentment of their direct relevance to this article - they need to go, unless some reason for their being there is presented in the article (justifications here are welcome, but meaningless, what is required is text with citations in the article that somehow supports their inclusion) Anastrophe (talk) 06:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

At no point does the text sythesize and say for instance that A is related to B and B is related to C and therefore there is a connection A to C. It says that some claim that A is related to B (which can be contested) and research has shown that B is related to C (which may also be contested). The issue clearly is that campaigners on one side see a connection here and assume a causal relationship, and presumably some on the other side will dispute that. We have to be neutral and present the evidence and the claims on all side. We can also put the statistics on gun homicides and suicides and gun ownership levels (and I would suggest also knife homicides) in a table. The numbers may well be available for several nations. As the relation between these numbers has been referred to by criminologists and campaigners against the right to bear arms, the numbers are appropriate to the article. If you cannot agree on this I would suggest htat we go to arbitration on the matter. We should allow time for editors to assemble the arguments and then present it for independent review. The independent reviewers will then be able to pass judgment on whether the allegations of SYN, POV, relevance, and OR stand up to scrutiny. --Hauskalainen (talk) 07:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

i believe the first step is to gather neutral party opinion, not arbitration. if it's not resolved by neutral party, then mediation. then arbitration. but i'm fine with neutral party to start. Anastrophe (talk) 20:09, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Be honest. This cite[11] was one of many reverted. Why? WP:SYN? Really? Explain in detail. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yaf: I am still awaiting a PRECISE reply to the issues I put to you.

• what part of the text was POV pushing?
• Why is the "right to keep and bear arms" unaffected by laws which restrict seek to restrict the right to bear arms?
• which particular pieces of the text you deleted did you wants cites for?
• which particular piece of text you deleted was "unrelated commentary"?
• why it is unrelated?

--Hauskalainen (talk) 20:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

long list of weapon laws to be reverted.

this article is about the right to keep and bear arms. this is not the Gun Politics article, or any other article about lists of laws. this is an encyclopedia article. the list is completely out of place. it might be appropriate in Weapon Laws of the UK or some such. this is not that article.

removing sourced material from this article that has to do with the actual topic of rights and replacing it with unsourced prose (repeatedly littered with typos - very careless and unencyclopaedic) and lists of weapon laws, is nonsensical. Anastrophe (talk) 05:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I removed two references to acts or charters where there is no reference to gun possession rights (so they are off topic) and I merged a section on the Bill of Rights becuase it had been discussed in the previous section. That is not unreasonable. I added a section on things other than guns (like KNIVES because I have been accused of making some sections gun centric, which I agreed they should not be). The only right that I can see that has ever been written in to English law was in the Bill of Rights (which was peculiar to its time that bit of the bill is not very relevant today in English law. The Bill if Rights stands out as an exceptionally bad piece of law and it rightly is not given much credit even though some parts of it are considered part of the English constitution. It certainly is not to be taken as similar to the US constitution (as amended) even though it copies parts of it. Any reference to the similarities and differences belongs in the US section which is later both in sequence in the article and historically. I was going to move that bit there but I have been diverted into replying to this and other issues. Again, if there is unsourced prose ASK FOR A SCOURCE. Don't delete it. The weapon laws help to define the extent of the controls of weapons and the powers of enforcement. Given the extremely high volume of space given over to US law matters, the space take is not too great. I do not accept the validity of your delete of my edits. I will reinstate them. Please discuss do the courtesy of dicussing here before deleting them again. I have no desire to edit war with you.--Hauskalainen (talk) 07:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

do you not see the grave inconsistency in your comments above? i'll repeat them, juxtaposed:

"I removed two references to acts or charters where there is no reference to gun possession rights (so they are off topic)"
"I added a section on things other than guns (like KNIVES because I have been accused of making some sections gun centric, which I agreed they should not be)."

do you see the problem? paraphrased: 'i removed material that didn't reference guns - because it was therefore off-topic. i added material that didn't reference guns - because it was therefore on-topic'. this makes no sense whatsoever.

"is not very relevant today in English law." this is not an article about "today's UK laws". it is about the right to keep and bear arms, and the section title is "Historical sources, protections, and extinguishments of the right". it may indeed not be relevant today in english law, but that's a meaningless contention in the context of this article. what reliable source, other than you, makes this contention?

"The Bill if Rights stands out as an exceptionally bad piece of law". according to what reliable source, other than you?

i will certainly delete unsourced prose, particularly when rife with typos, without requesting sources. on contentious articles such as this, it simply does not work to have editors add unverifiable information to the article then hope that someone comes along and adds sources. all claims that "X means Y" must be sourced. it is wikipedia policy that unsourced material must be culled from articles.

the list of laws is wholey inappropriate to this article. this article is not Gun Politics in the United Kingdom. your list might be appropriate there. this article is an exampination of the right to keep and bear arms. it is an encyclopedia entry.

the excessive use of boldface type is not in agreement with the wikipedia manual of style.

Anastrophe (talk) 08:26, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not the least bit inconsistent. The edit that I removed basically said "laws A and B do not mention this right". Why would they? The law is already settled because parliament has changed it. The English just do not see this as a fundamental right. It is very dubious whether the Bill of Rights had any great meaning because Protestants already had the right to bear arms anyway. There was a presumed right in law. The only change was that parliament declared it permanent and that element is regarded as unconstitutional and has simply been ignored. My comment about it being bad law is personal and reading it from today's perspective. Just read it! It would be an embarrassment to have to follow it! But have not put my opinion in the article, so no harm done. But I stand by assertion of a direct connection that the right as it exists is as modified by law. The right is not absolute in the US and is not absolute in the UK. It will differ. It is qualified by law and we therefore need to understand this.

consensus?

This recent revert[12] included the edit summary ": rm UK stats from US section; this has been discussed on the talk page; please do not add it back without reaching consensus)".

The practice of reverting, with the argument given in the "edit summary" is considered bad practice. The edit summary is intended for a brief description of the change, not for debate or negotiation, see Edit_summary#Use_of_edit_summaries_in_disputes.

Again, what is the justification for deletion of this passage? I think it obvious the global right to bear arms is the topic of this article, and therefore it makes sense to tolerate editors which seek to compare the right as it exists globally between countries. The deletion should be based on WP:Policy, and the deletion by Hamitr has no apparent basis in WP:Policy, therefore I see no consensus and I object. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

comparing homicide statistics between countries is not "comparing the right". period. it's synthesis to suggest otherwise, particularly since no editor has yet provided a reliable cite that shows that homicide statistics are relevant to an encyclopedia article about the right to keep and bear arms. such statistics are relevant to Gun politics and the many 'Gun politics in xyz country' articles; they're relevant to articles about crime, homicide, etc.. they aren't relevant to this article.

when someone commits murder, they immediately cease to be in any protected class that is exercising their right. detail on the mechanics of that dynamic bears greater emphasis in the article, not synthetic conflations that give undue weight to those excluded from the class this article describes. Anastrophe (talk) 18:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Please move discussion of personal opinion elsewhere. The passage discussed the implications of homicide on the politics of arms. What is the WP:Policy reasoning for the deleted passage? SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:22, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

knock off badgering please - my commentary was no more 'personal opinion' than was your suggestion that "I think it obvious the global right to bear arms is the topic of this article, and therefore it makes sense to tolerate editors which seek to compare the right as it exists globally between countries.". the material does not, in any way shape or form, "compare the right" - your assertion is false and misleading. it's pure synthesis. it does not discuss the 'implications' of homicide on the politics of arms, it's merely a disconnected litany of statistics. notwithstanding that this is not The Politics of Arms article to begin with. editors are attempting to inject material without a showing in WP:RS that it is relevant to Right to keep and bear arms.Anastrophe (talk) 23:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) First, there was nothing wrong with the edit summary. It is actually very similar to the model edit summary given at Edit_summary#Use_of_edit_summaries_in_disputes. I accurately and succinctly summarized the nature of the edit ("rm UK stats from US section"), and I also pointed to the talk page ("this has been discussed on the talk page"). So let's not head down the wikilawyering road again.

Secondly, the specific issue of adding comparisons of statistics between countries has been discussed above (in particular, see the last 6 messages). It pushes one particular POV when editors make such ad-hoc comparisons rather than presenting comparisons made in reliable sources.
--Hamitr (talk) 15:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I have said already (and I repeat again) that the comparison of countries is valid for reason that the right to bear arms varies between countries and this has clear effects on the levels of the ownership of certain arms, and especially guns. Actions by governments to control or restrict the right of access to guns, for example, are usually (but perhaps not always) connected to incidents of gun violence or a desire to reduce gun violence by restricting the right of access to guns. Similarly with knives. Anastrophe is being disingenuous when he says that no one has provided a reliable cite showing homicide stats are relevent to an encylopedia article about the right to bear arms. Thats merely because the connection is one that many believe is there via several steps . . . wider rights > wider ownership of guns > many guns > many guns being availiable for suicide or criminal activity > more gun mortality. It would be wrong to claim that this is a natural truth. It is one of many POVs and we have to represent them all. So we should lay out the evidence. And there is academic research on the matter so we cannot ignore that. For instance do countries that have more guns have more gun violence? Do countries that very fewer guns have lower gun violence? How does the level of gun ownership vary with ALL crime (not just gun crime... i.e. are guns just a substitute for knives?). These are key issues and there has been academic research on the subject. It would be wrong to pretend otherwise. Its also wrong to pretend that this issue is disconnected from the right to bear arms. The right to bear arms is not an absolute right in most countries. We don't let children have weapons, or the insane, or usually, convicted criminals. The right is restricted in law. The level of that restriction varies´from place to place. Let's just agree that the statistics on gun ownership and gun violence are factors in decisions about the level or right in a particular jurisdiction to bear arms and if we compare statistics, let's do it in the section devoted to the comparative relationship between arms, arms controls, and arms deaths. That way we can avoid national politics getting in the way or claims of favoring some comparisons over others (as we have had before .. e.g. England and Wales versus United States, or England versus Wyoming) If there are reliable data, arms injuries would also be useful. Putting this into one section does not make it judgemental about one country versus another. We should merely present the data and the WP:RS claims about the interpretation of that data. It is not our job to say that the right to bear arms is a good thing or a bad thing or that it does or does not lead to more deaths or injuries from the use of them. Let the reader see reliable data and hear the arguments made by reliable sources and then our readers can decide for themselves.--Hauskalainen (talk) 02:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

it is also not one editor's job or privilege to restore material and claim that a citation that actually makes the connection you are synthesizing above "is not needed on that issue". sorry, wikipedia doesn't work that way. you can jabber on all you want as above, but until you provide actual reliable sources that make the specific connections you claim above, then you're just attempting to force your original research and synthesis into the article. that's expressly forbidden by wikipedia policy. you're on thin ice here hauskalainen. provide a reliable source that makes the argument "wider rights > wider ownership of guns > many guns > many guns being availiable for suicide or criminal activity > more gun mortality.". your contention that one isn't needed is untenable. let me quote Jimbo Wales here:

"I really want to encourage a much stronger culture which says: it is better to have no information, than to have information like this, with no sources. Any editor who removes such things, and refuses to allow it back without an actual and appropriate source, should be the recipient of a barnstar."

--Jimbo, July 19, 2006

provide your source for your contention that they are connected in the manner you claim. fail to do so, and the material will continue to be removed, as it's verboten by policy. Anastrophe (talk) 04:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I already have provided, did you forget? The connection between murder rates and the RTKBA exists in reliable sourcing, just one example is the essay by Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger published in many places, here is but one[13]. Additionally, this is discussed in many other reliable sources, see[14], see[15], and many more. Bear in mind, I am not arguing that the connection between murder rate and RTKBA is valid, I am only observing that the connection is found in reliable sourcing and therefore meets WP:V policy for inclusion in this article. Therefore, your insistence to delete this content from the article appears not based in policy. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

we have two sets of disconnected citations. one set, in the opening paragraph, makes one contention. the second set nowhere matches the contention - it's merely a section of statistics and conjecture from a single source, pertaining to gun ownership and its relationship to gun homicide and suicide, and does not even mention RTKBA - it doesn't even mention the word "right". it should not require pointing out that "gun ownership" != "right to keep and bear arms". this is pure synthesis between these two unconnected sources. Anastrophe (talk) 20:33, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Then the solution is to fix the deficiencies, not to wholesale revert. SaltyBoatr (talk) 04:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

no, synthesis should never be allowed to stand in article space. the material should be pulled until after it's fixed. Anastrophe (talk) 05:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that Anastrophe has misunderstood the rule. WP:SYN says "Synthesis occurs when an editor puts together multiple sources to reach a conclusion that is not in any of the sources (my emphasis). It goes on "If the sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion, or if the sources cited are not directly related to the article subject, then the editor is engaged in original research. Summarizing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis; it is good editing. " I think therefore that the researchers who have investigated the issue in relation to aspects of criminology and the groups who call for controls on arms have made this connection. The connection may be disputed (and I am sure that Anastrophe belongs in this group). But the edit is not synthesis by an editor. It is in fact, as policy calls it "good editing".--Hauskalainen (talk) 12:33, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

No, Anastrophe has not misunderstood the WP:SYN rule. He is precisely correct. After waiting for over 24 hours for this to be fixed, and it wasn't, I have removed the content that violates WP:SYN. It should not be restored unless and until there are references that precisely connect the "Right to keep and bear arms" with gun violence, not "gun rights", not "right to bear arms", but the "Right to keep and bear arms" with gun violence, being that is what this article is titled and is about. Conflating differing rights with gun rights and then with gun violence is clearly synthesis, being that there is no direct connection cited in the sources that are cited. A slight correlation is just that, a slight correlation, not a verifiable claim that makes the proper case. One could as easily state that there is no direct causal effect, and be equally correct, mathematically speaking. Yaf (talk) 13:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yaf. Which content removal are you referring to. The deletion in the US section by Hamitr (the subject of this thread) or the deletion of the whole section entitled "Gun violence and the politics of the right to bear arms"? (an earlier thread) If the latter then this part of the discussopm should be in the section about that deletion. I'll assume the section delete for now (we can move this conversation to the right thread later if no one objects). A fix didn't come because it does not need fixing (or at least sufficient evidence justifying a need for a "a fix" has not been forthcoming - certainly not from you). As for Anastrophe, you say he is precicely correct because of what exactly? If the referenced articles are on topic (and I contend they are), then WP:SYN does not apply because the editor who put the information in the article (me as it happens) is not synthesizing. It is now getting boring have to repeat mysely, but the issue is that some people do wish to curtaile the right to keep and bear arms because of the connection between right and the number of weapons in circulation and the strong correlation between weapons in circulation and gun violence. You happen (I presume from what you say) that you don't believe there is a connection. Fine. But others have expressed that opinion and it clearly relates to the topic of article. So both views need to be in the article. What is wrong with putting information before the reader and the arguments for and against a connection and letting the reader decide? Your vehment opposition to this going into the article smacks of POV editing (and your preparedness even to violate 3RR reinforces this). I have asked several times PRECISE explanation of your reasons for the blanket deletion of an entire section and you have not answered them. If you have precise reasons, please convey them to us precisely.

Are you and Anastrophe twins, alter egos, or just playing tag??? It seems that when I talk to one, the other one replies. --Hauskalainen (talk) 20:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

your question is a non-sequitur, but i'll indulge. no, yaf and i are not twins. no, yaf and i are not alter egos. no, yaf and i are not playing tag. yaf is your fellow editor. you are my fellow editor. yaf is my fellow editor. my connection to yaf is precisely the same as my connection to you, in other words, no connection besides being fellow editors. since this is not a one-to-one medium, you cannot expect one-to-one communications. i'm not constrained in whom i may respond to, nor can you really have any reasonable expectation that when you direct some inquiry at another editor that they will even respond at all. this is a discussion page. it's folly to assume a conspiracy - or even to suggest it. Anastrophe (talk) 04:58, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Saltyboatr. The references you give above do not seem (as far as I can read them) support the argument you give. Please be more precise. You may be interested in this http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/4/leading_gun_control_activist_exposed_as (you don't need to watch the whole program... just click on "watch real video stream" to go direct to the section of interest. --Hauskalainen (talk) 20:53, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The text at issue is the following:

One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths. Accident statistics are hard to obtain, but much data is available on the issue of gun ownership and gun related deaths. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) has made comparisons beween countries with different levels of gun ownership and investigated the correlation between gun ownership levels and gun homicides, and also gun ownership levels and gun suicides. A strong correlation is seen in both. UNICRI also investigated the relationship between gun ownership levels and other forms of homicide or suicide to determine whether high gun ownership added to or merely displaced other forms of homicide or suicide. They reported that "widespread gun ownership has not been found to reduce the likelihood of fatal events committed with other means. Thus, people do not turn to knives and other potentially lethal instruments less often when more guns are available, but more guns usually means more victims of suicide and homicide." Speculating on possible causes the researchers concluded that "all we know is that guns do not reduce fatal events due to other means, but that they go along with more shootings. Although we do not know why exactly this is so, we have a good reason to suspect guns to play a - fatal - role in this". The research reporter found that guns were the major cause of homicides only in 3 of the 14 countries it studied; Nothern Ireland, Italy, and the USA. Although on the face of it the data would indicate that reducing the availabilty of one significant type of arms - firearms - would seem to indicate a fall in both gun crime and gun suicide and overall crimes and suicides, the author did issue a caution, citing the American example, that "reducing the number of guns in the hands of the private citizen may become a hopeless task beyond a certain point".

This content starts with the claim that "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths." Yet, the cite is not about the "right to bear arms" (which is related to the right to give service in a militia, or the right to join an army), but, rather, the cite is about "gun rights" and gun-related accidents and deaths. Neither "right to bear arms" or "gun rights", though, is the topic of this article, "the right to keep and bear arms". It is synthesis to conflate different concepts with the "right to keep and bear arms", and then to infer a relationship with gun-related accidents and deaths from the "right to keep and bear arms". It is likewise synthesis to then infer that "right to keep and bear arms" is somehow related to gun violence, especially so in the absence of cites that make this claim. Then, the statement is made that "Accident statistics are hard to obtain, but much data is available on the issue of gun ownership and gun related deaths." Again, this is unrelated to the "right to keep and bear arms", being a synthesis that gun ownership is somehow the same as "right to keep and bear arms". It is not the same, and it is wrong to conflate these two concepts. The text goes on to state, "The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) has made comparisons beween countries with different levels of gun ownership and investigated the correlation between gun ownership levels and gun homicides, and also gun ownership levels and gun suicides." Again, this is unrelated to the "right to keep and bear arms", conflating gun ownership with the "right to keep and bear arms" and further inferring a correlation between "right to keep and bear arms" and gun ownership levels, between gun ownership and gun homicides and between gun ownership and suicides. These are extreme cases of POV pushing and synthesis, conflating different concepts, with no cites relating the "right to keep and bear arms" with gun ownership, with homicides, or with suicides. The right to keep and bear arms is not an obligation, forcing one to own a gun. Rather, it is a right that may be exercised or not, depending on what one wants to do. It is synthesis to link unrelated content, even with cites, to push a point that was not made in the original cited sources. The cited sources do not provide any linkage between the Right to Keep and Bear Arms with gun ownership, nor between the Right to Keep and Bear arms with either homicides or with suicides. It is synthesis to claim there is a connection with the cites that are in the removed text. The removed text also contained, "They reported that "widespread gun ownership has not been found to reduce the likelihood of fatal events committed with other means."" Again, there is nothing linking the Right to Keep and Bear Arms with this statement, and it is synthesis to claim otherwise with the cites that were used. I could go on, but the message is clear. This entire commentary, cited though it is, does not link the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" with the POV message that was being attempted. Such content, pushing Original Research while claiming a linkage where none is cited to exist, making conclusions not contained in the original cited sources in violation of WP:SYN, etc., does not belong in this article. Hence, it was removed. As for your false claims of WP:3RR, you need to understand 3RR better and stop slinging insults and false accusations of violating 3RR. As for your insults of describing all editors against whom you ply your POV trade as being twins, this is tiresome and is not assuming good faith. The fact is that multiple editors have expressed concerns with your edits, and have identified problems with your POV pushing edits. This POV pushing needs to stop, and you need to stop the synthesis and original research and stick to what the cited sources say. Provide content that agrees with cited reliable and verifiable sources and the problems all go away, and no editor would take issue with your edits. Continue to assume bad faith, push POV statements beyond what the sources say in violation of WP:SYN and WP:OR, and the result will continue to be that other editors will mercilessly delete your POV pushes. Yaf (talk) 21:05, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Double talk. The cited msnbc clearly associates debate over murder rate with the right to bear arms. Restoring the passage. SaltyBoatr (talk) 21:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

But, as stated previously, this is clearly a violation of WP:SYN, being that the "right to bear arms" is not mentioned in the cited source. Rather, the cite talks about "gun rights" and murder rates, neither of which is the "right to keep and bear arms". Please revert yourself. Yaf (talk) 21:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Except that the article does mention the right to bear arms, both under the Pennsylvania and the Federal constitutions. Read the whole article, about half way down: "Even the 232-year-old right-to-bear-arms section of the Pennsylvania Constitution is more straightforward about the rights of individual gun owners than the U.S. Constitution." etc.. SaltyBoatr (talk) 21:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

All unrelated to the claim that is being made in the text of the article. Please revert your POV push. Yaf (talk) 21:49, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Huh? Explain your complaint. The article talks plainly of the debate over a political balance between gun control in response to murder rates against the Pennsylvanian constitutional right to bear arms. SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The msnbc article[16] titled "Gun rights, gun deaths divide Pa. voters" describes 1) the gun rights come from the 232 year old Pennsylvanian Constitition "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." " and 2) the gun deaths in Philadelphia occur daily "Deadly shootings have earned the state's largest city the ominous nickname: "Killadelphia." ". 3) The political divide from this contrast ..."candidates have struggled to avoid alienating either side, to the point of pandering. " . Nothing close to WP:SYN. What is the problem? SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The entire content is synthesis. My complaint is simple. What is the content that establishes or makes the case that "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths." and establishes an effect, alleged or otherwise? The quote in the first cite is unrelated to this statement. The second cite is unrelated to this content. Please revert this POV section that has problems with synthesis, relevance, original research, and that is uncited, being cited with irrelevant citations. (Inserting unrelated cites does not cite the content in question.) Please revert your POV push and remove this section. Yaf (talk) 22:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't really understand your complaint. Regardless, I just posted some alternate wording, saying essentially the same thing, which may satisfy you. Do you question that MSNBC is a reliable source? SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Now you have changed the statement in the opening text to, "One political debate involves the contrast of protecting the right to bear arms in opposition to efforts to legislate gun control in response to the problem of gun related deaths." Where is the content in the cited source(s) that verifies/verify this statement? Where is the verification that the right to keep and bear arms is in opposition to the problem of deaths? The quote from the first cite is "The older Pennsylvania provision declares, "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." Some pro-gun lawmakers consider any legislation advanced by gun-control forces an attempt to chip away at that right."" How is this related to the text? The section content is still full of synthesis, sound, and fury, signifying nothing other than hoplophobia. Please do not change the subject, asking if MSNBC is a reliable source. Please focus on the topic at hand, and address the concerns. Please revert this POV section that has problems with synthesis, relevance, original research, and that is uncited, being cited with irrelevant citations. Or, find cites that actually verify the text. Your choice. Yaf (talk) 23:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The MSNBC article describes this political debate. And, that debate includes fear that easy availability of guns incite homicides in Philidelphia and a resultant push for gun control legislation to mitigate gun violence versus the value of respecting the "right to bear arms" under the Pennsylvania constitution. This is 100% supported by the cited source. Nothing close to WP:SYN. It solidly meets WP:V policy. It appears that merely that you don't like it. SaltyBoatr (talk) 02:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I am astounded at this silly discussion. You are missing the wood for the trees. The entire section highlighting the work of UNICRI shows that OTHERS have connected the issue of the access to guns and the degree of gun violence. So the issue of WP:SYN cannot apply because the connection of those issues has been done by others. The text is quite plain about a causal relationship not being provable but suspected by the researcher (a criminologist of international reknown). Issues of gun control DO affect the right to bear arms. To somehow claim that there is no connection because its not in the text within the reference is disingenuous. That particular use of words may not be there but the effect is the same. I also (for my sins) contribute to the article socialized medicine. If the editors there could only write about the subject using references if they contain the word "socialized" followed by the word "medicine" the article would represent a very one-sided and inaccurate picture of a complex and fascinating subject. I asked you before why you think the "right to keep and bear arms" is unaffected by laws which restrict seek to restrict the right to keep and bear arms, and you have failed to answer this question. --Hauskalainen (talk) 23:39, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you think people calling for gun control do so because they think it will reduce the price of gas? No! They do it because they think it will reduce gun crime and gun deaths. It's that simple!--Hauskalainen (talk) 23:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I am likewise astounded that you believe that it is not necessary for cites to be necessary for verifying the text. Access to guns is not equal to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is not even a requirement to be armed, but an elective. Yet, you conflate the RKBA with gun ownership, and keep pushing more POV text into the article with no relevance or cites. No more. After waiting for this synthesis problem to be fixed, and even tagging the problem areas to try and identify the problems, and seeing the total ignoring of fixing the problems, and that you are actually making the problems worse, I have removed the offensive text that is contrary to Wikipedia policies. Do not blindly restore this, and continue edit warrioring but work out an acceptable set of wording on the talk page first. It is not acceptable to insert POV text that is not cited while committing synthesis and original research. Fix the problems on the talk page first. Have removed the text in violation of Wikipedia policies. Yaf (talk) 04:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

i'm likewise astonished but for other reasons. how many times does it need to be pointed out: "gun ownership" IS NOT EQUAL TO "right to keep and bear arms". "access to guns" IS NOT EQUAL TO "right to keep and bear arms". you state, emphatically: "The entire section highlighting the work of UNICRI shows that OTHERS have connected the issue of the access to guns and the degree of gun violence." but the UNICRI material cited nowhere even mentions "rights", let alone "the right to bear arms" or "the right to keep and bear arms". you are taking two sets of materials and joining them, without providing an established reliable source making that linkage. one more time, with feeling: "access to guns" IS NOT EQUAL TO "right to keep and bear arms". you cannot use one set of cites, making one set of contentions, then link them implicitly by juxtaposing them with material covering a different set of contentions. that's synthesis, how many times does this need to be explained?

i also now see that the material has been further made intensely - and inappropriately - POV, with the addition of "The Brady and Snowdrop Campaigns and the Million Mom March are recent examples of campaigns calling for tighter restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.". wow, cool! so that's the only perspective on the right to keep and bear arms? advocacy groups bear mention in this encyclopedia article? cool, let's add in the NRA, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and all the other advocacy groups on the other side, who argue, for example, that disarming victims only encourages criminals, let's add in gary kleck's survey showing far more defensive gun uses than offensive crimes commited with guns!

i'm being facetious of course. the material is utterly POV, it's synthesis, and it has no place in this article. however, since some POV pushers feel unconstrained in cramming this into the article, i guess i'll have to add material citing a different POV, in order to return to a neutral balance point. fair enough? saltyboatr, care to join me in adding reliably cited material for the NRA and JPFO so that we can balance the POV? Anastrophe (talk) 04:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Again you are twisting matters. Nowhere does the section assert that gun ownership" IS EQUAL TO "right to keep and bear arms" or that "access to guns" IS EQUAL TO "right to keep and bear arms". But it does claim that people wanting restrictions on the right to bear arms believe that it will reduce gun violence. It also observes that others have both examined the connection and found a statistical linkage. And here is another. Wendy Cukier and Antoine Chapdelaine have published "Small Arms: A Major Public Health Hazard" which presents some of the evidence. They say

Firearms have been a significant cause of both civilian and combatant deaths in recent times. When weapons remain in circulation following a conflict, death and injury rates remain high as interpersonal violence replaces violence among warring factions. Despite data limitations, rates of firearms death and injury are linked to access to firearms (my emphasis). In many countries, arms-fuelled violence is a major impediment to the provision of basic health care. While strategies to address the problem must respond to local conditions and capacity, there are many opportunities for international cooperation on research and on measures to reduce demand and control supply. (http://www.ippnw.org/Resources/MGS/V7N1Cukier.pdf)

See the chart (called Figure 2). You have to be blind not to see the upward trend so it's hardly surprising that you want to keep this quiet (as you all seem to be pro-gun judging by your edits)

Because other people have made the link that more access to guns = more firearms deaths and injury, this cannot possibly be a case of WP:SYN on my part. Nor is it POV on my part. I report what I know. If you know otherwise ADD IT to the section. But DO NOT delete it and hope it will go away. It will not.

Yet again you two (Yaf and Anastrophe) have chipped in to this conversation at almost the same time after a long silence. Have you been out together or something and just got back? And which one of you has the ip address which has just deleted the section on gun violence AGAIN? Your behaviours are unacceptable. I am of the opinion that you are not entirely unconnected to each other and also with SaltyBoatr judging by the speed he was able to read one of your comments, think about an answer, type it into the server, and get the server to confirm the update. All in the same minute! He is quick to get references in but they are always double edged. A wolf in sheep's clothing perhaps. I suspect the to-and-fro between you all is just a sham. I have seen this behaviour elsewhere in Wikipedia and it can be defeated. --Hauskalainen (talk) 05:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

your accusations are intolerable. time for sanctions. Anastrophe (talk) 06:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. Equating me to SaltyBoatr is an insult of the worst kind. Equating me to him is an insult that is even worse than Hauskalainen's COWBOY slur that was slung at me previously.[17] Hauskalainen's behavior in pushing an anti-gun, anti-US POV is also unacceptable. His paranoia and communication on talk pages is of the worst kind, in violation of WP:AGF. It is definitely time for administrative sanctions to put a stop to all this nonsense. Yaf (talk) 06:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

'worst kind'? Really? Yaf proceeds to insult me. Please re-read WP:Civility. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Why? Calling me a salty dog would be an insult to dogs, and would be a similar insult of the worst kind, being addressed at an innocent creature. No insult was intended here to SaltyBoatr by me. Equating me to SaltyBoatr was an insult to SaltyBoatr, made by Hauskalainen, not by me. SaltyBoatr, you really should really learn to WP:AGF! Yaf (talk) 17:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

i'm going to ask this again. since editor's personal pov is immaterial, i'm hoping saltyboatr will run with it in the spirit of reaching the neutral balance point. as i asked before: "saltyboatr, care to join me in adding reliably cited material for the NRA and JPFO so that we can balance the POV?" this section as it stands only describes one point of view - that restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms is perceived by some as a way to reduce gun violence (while synthesizing that connection from two unrelated groups of cites, it must be pointed out, for the umpteenth time). since this tips the balance dramatically out of NPOV balance, and since this is - to coin a phrase - a 'pet' argument you make frequently about this and other articles, will you take the lead and bring it back into balance, by adding material produced by advocacy groups on the other side of the argument? we have listed the brady group, million moms, etc - their beliefs are described in the article, but the beliefs of gun rights advocates is excluded. please assist in bringing this section back to the neutral balance point. thank you. hey, if user hauskalainen wants to chip in and return the section to a neutral balance, that would be dandy too. Anastrophe (talk) 16:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, David Windlesham, page 206[18] of his book ISBN 9780195115307, Oxford University Press 1998 makes a blunt equation of "ownership of firearms" to "the right to keep and bear arms". Properly cited, can we stop the edit war now? SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:09, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

that doesn't address the POV imbalance. will you add material listing the gun rights position that gun laws do not reduce crime and violence, etc? and, where does david windlesham then connect that to statistics about gun homicide and suicide? we have a classic case of just what hauskalainen claimed wasn't occurring: A is to B, B is to C - "therefore" A is to C. synthesis. Anastrophe (talk) 17:36, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Which reliable sourcing of "(a) gun rights position that gun laws do not reduce crime and violence" are you looking at? SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:02, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

it was simply a suggestion for one of many avenues you could pursue in adding material to balance the POV of the brady group, million moms march, etc.. I didn't genuinely expect you to add material favoring the gun control position, to balance the POV. Anastrophe (talk) 05:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This source also only states that the US Constitution, in its Second Amendment, supports a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms that permits individuals the ownership of firearms, in contrast to there being no constitutional right for the ownership of cars, for example. No mention is made in this source conflating the right to keep and bear arms to any association with violence, and to draw this conclusion from this source is again a problem with synthesis. It is the classic example of WP:SYN, where one source says A, another source says B, and then synthesizing that A AND B implies C, with neither A or B drawing this conclusion, is synthesis. This is not permitted. This is not a proper cite for inferring that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms causes increased violence committed with guns. Proper cites of a "cite" that doesn't verify the text is the same as no cite at all. You should know by now to stick to what the sources say, and what synthesis is, and that synthesis is not permitted on Wikipedia. Yaf (talk) 17:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I object to your moving target and straw man logic. The MSNBC and the Oxford University Press cites I have provided support the sentence "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths." which Yaf has repeatedly deleted. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:02, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, they don't. There was no connection to an effect, alleged or actual, mentioned in the "cites". There was also no grounds for the statement "one of the principle debates". There was a mention of gun rights. There was a mention of gun violence. There was a mention of pandering by politicians to elicit votes from both camps. There specifically was no connection made between a Right to keep and bear arms with gun violence. Again, it is a classic case of synthesis. Yaf (talk) 18:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The article titled "Gun rights, gun deaths divide Pa. voters". This is a solid connection. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

It is only a juxtaposition. By your logic, we could infer that Pennsylvania voters are physically dismembered with equal validity to this title. It would likewise be synthesis. There is no cause and effect cited in the "cites", only a juxtaposition. To infer a cause and effect, between a right to keep and bear arms and an increase in violence committed with guns, there needs to be verification in the cited source's text making this connection. The cite does not make this case. It is clearly synthesis. Yaf (talk) 18:30, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not asserting what you say I am asserting, a cause and effect. Certainly, one side believes the cause and effect, and the other disagrees. I am only asserting that there is a political divide along these lines, not which side is correct. SaltyBoatr (talk) 18:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you were asserting a cause and effect: "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths." You then put the cause as gun ownership. So, what is it, you are or are not asserting a cause and effect? If the cites do not verify the text, i.e., the cause and the effect, then the text cannot stand, but becomes problems with original research, synthesis, relevance, etc.. I would propose mediation, but it has never been successful in any mediations in which you have participated in the past. Neither have 3O, MedCom, or even ArbCom been successful with you.[19][20] I am at a loss to propose a path to resolving this content dilemma, knowing your history. (I note that you have resumed your scheming the system, forcing a locking up of the article while edit warring, too, as you are wont to do. You agreed not to edit war too, with Vassyana, if I recall, and to keep to what the sources say.[21] Neither of which you have done, or are doing. Rather, you are simply pushing an uncited POV, with synthesis problems.) Yaf (talk) 18:47, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

(Ignoring your ad hominien attack.) Agreed then? We will include a description of the political divide, as now, you and I agree to not state 'cause and effect' as fact, but rather as the position of one side of the political divide. OK? SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Describing only one side of the position, of the Million Mom, Brady Campaign, and AHSA, etc., organizations talking points, in a one-sided position as you propose, to describe the "political divide" without cites, is not acceptable. To not state cause and effect, but only do synthesis of positions and article text from the effect and then to infer a cause in the form of ownership of guns in the article text is likewise not acceptable, being that there are no cites that make this claim. It is a requirement that reliable and verifiable sources be used to verify the text in Wikipedia articles. Yet, you propose to describe the "political divide" without establishing a basis of fact, with the position of only one side of the political divide, with no cites that verify the fundamental basis of the proposed text that there is an "alleged effect", namely with your proposed text of "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths.". This violates Wikipedia policies and is additionally not a Neutral Point of View, being but a one-sided presentation. I cannot agree to anything of the sort. Not OK. No agreement. Yaf (talk) 21:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Stop the evasion and stonewalling. I have provided two reliable cites as to this political divide, MSNBC and Oxford University Press. SaltyBoatr (talk) 21:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Your "cites" make no such claim, that the right to keep and bear arms is a causative agent of the effect seen of gun related accidents and deaths. For example, the MSNBC article makes a case that politicians pander to individuals who favor gun rights and to individuals who want to stop gun violence, in an attempt to elicit votes from both camps. OK. However, this source makes no claims that verify the text of "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths." There is nothing in the text of the source that verifies the claim of an effect, alleged or actual, linking the Right to Keep and Bear Arms with gun related accidents and deaths. It is synthesis to claim what the source does not say. Reliable cites that do not verify the text are worthless. You know better than this, and know that synthesis is not allowed on Wikipedia. Yet, you insist on synthesizing what the source(s) do not say. Unacceptable. Yaf (talk) 21:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, you fight a straw man. I am not attempting to claim what you say "that the right to keep and bear arms is a causative agent of the effect seen of gun related accidents and deaths" as you assert. Stop it. I am only asserting that there is a political divide where one side of the divide claims this. I totally accept that the other side holds a different view. Both my cites describe this political divide. SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Your proposed text was "One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths." There is nothing in the cites you have provided that claim the right to bear arms causes an effect, alleged or otherwise, on gun related accidents and deaths. It is neither proper to describe a one-sided treatment of the presentation, as you proposed with your proposal to "include a description of the political divide, ... as the position of one side of the political divide.", nor is it a Neutral Point of View treatment. Why then do you insist on presenting a one-sided discussion in the article text that is but a hatchet-job, presented from one point of view only? This smacks of POV pushing. Yaf (talk) 22:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

(I am not insisting on a one sided point of view, again a straw man.) You have read the MSNBC article. If you don't like my wording, what wording do you suggest? SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

That is not what you said previously, see above, where you proposed "...We will include a description of the political divide, as now, you and I agree to not state 'cause and effect' as fact, but rather as the position of one side of the political divide." at 19:20, 24 February 2009 (UTC), and specifically proposed to present only "one side of the political divide". As for what wording I suggest, I can suggest no wording making a false connection where none exists in the source, extending a synthesis beyond what is in the cites. I suggest that you abandon the pushing of a wording of text that is not verified by what is in sources, and simply leave out this synthesis, on grounds that this best avoids problems with synthesis, original research, relevance, and a myriad of other problems. Yaf (talk) 23:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

This is circular. Nothing works for you, and you have no suggestion of what would work for you except nothing. Try again. The MSNBC article specifically describes the 2008 politics of the right to keep and bear arms in Pennsylvania. So, first, do you agree that something might be relevant to the topic of right to keep and bear arms in that article? SaltyBoatr (talk) 03:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

As this whole discussion has been going on, User:SaltyBoatr has attempted to squelch opposition by getting them banned here: [22]. Neither my preferred article to edit, nor my battle, but I did note that as I was posting the edit warring of another user on another article, this familiar name came up. WP:AGF is a good read, Salty. The least you could have done was give Yaf a heads-up that you'd reported him. --Nukes4Tots (talk) 02:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Ignoring yourad hominem logic. SaltyBoatr (talk) 03:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The logic is that you've reported the user whos edits you've been reverting for reverting your edits. If anything, you're the one engaging in ad hominem attacks. Don't know what other way I'd portray it. An ongoing edit war takes two. If you chose the high ground, there is no edit war anymore. Instead, you slug it out in the gutters with Yaf and report him on a near continual basis for various misdeeds that you are also engaged in. Further, you attempt to hold him to a higher standard than you hold yourself. What I'm saying is that if Yaf suddenly drops out of the discussion and you claim victory and consensus, the others engaged here have a right to know, separate from their arguable right to keep and bear arms. --Nukes4Tots (talk) 04:28, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Meat puppets?

Editors may find this note interesting, in the interest of keeping this article free from sockpuppets and meatpuppets.[23] Being that Hauskalainen re-inserted his edit to my comment above with the same alias, per his edit summary, this is detestable, soliciting meat puppets on the leftist journalism site DemocracyNow.org. Such behavior needs admin sanctions.[24] Yaf (talk) 04:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

by my reading of his comments on howardberry's talk page, he's not soliciting for meatpuppets on democracynow - he's referring to his link further above on this page to a democracynow article about a woman who allegedly acted as a mole, infiltrating gun control groups but supposedly working on behalf of the NRA. so, if i follow his logic, i think he thinks saltyboatr is actually a pro-gun mole masquerading as a gun control oriented editor, and therefore in cahoots with you and me. hard to tell for sure though. Anastrophe (talk) 06:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

That article was here.NRA Mole But, I don't see any connection with Hauskalainen via reader inputs or comments to that story. I took his comment to be that he was attempting to solicit meat puppets to edit this article through dropping a line to the hotline story input line at DemocracyNow!,[25] where the content was something along the lines that Hauskalainen was trying to tip off a story that suspects SaltyBoatr is another NRA mole to this Wikipedia article on the Right to keep and bear arms, but that this article was needing to be swayed to the left by soliciting readers of Democracy Now!, that covers the left wing news scene :-) But, "Mary McFate" (the mole) doesn't live where SB lives, though. She lives down in Florida (for one of her addresses.) Most curious. Yaf (talk) 06:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

But, Democracy Now! is part of the Pacifica Radio network. Now, that is interesting. Yaf (talk) 07:16, 25 February 2009 (UTC) Best discussed elsewhere. Yaf (talk) 16:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

it's not entirely clear to me what you may be implying, but i question the direction you're going. is this relevant to the discussion? to this article? is it in good faith? or should this entire matter be discussed elsewhere, under whatever is the appropriate formal aegis for such matters (i suck at keeping track of all of wikipedia's internal policy-wonk driven committees and processes, so have no idea what the right place would be)....Anastrophe (talk) 08:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Anastrophe's comment at 06:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC) hit the nail on the head. I have clearly not engaged in either sock puppetry or meat puppetry.Yaf at 06:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC) is way off the mark. --Hauskalainen (talk) 13:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

uh, your comment on user howardberry's page, under a different userid, certainly constitutes sockpuppetry. not soliciting sock/meat puppets doesn't mean you have not engaged in sockpuppetry, which it's pretty obvious you have done. Anastrophe (talk) 16:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I most certainly hope that the opening comment in this section is not an accusation of "meatpuppetry" against me. By writing that you want to keep this article free of sockpuppets and meatpuppets, and then provide a link to my talk page, it is possible for it to been seen that way. I have not involved myself in any part of the editing of any of the pages in question and have no intention of doing so. Howie ☎ 06:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Back to the article.

(Ignoring the flurry of bizarre personal attacks on editors in the last 12 hours.) I have pointed to three reliable sources, Supreme Court chief justice Warren Burger[26], a MSNBC article[27] and a book published by Oxford University Press[28]. All three of these sources are reliable and all three speak of a public discourse, public perception which places gun control attempts to improve public safety in opposition to political forces to protect the "right to keep and bear arms". Clearly there is a phenomena here involving the RTKBA that I would like to give coverage in this article. Can we focus please and negotiate this edit to the article? SaltyBoatr (talk) 15:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a different point than what has been discussed to date. And, I have no objections to such material being included in the article, if done in a neutral point of view. But, any such text added to the article needs to be factual, following what the cites actually say, such that the cites verify the proposed article text. Claiming an "alleged effect" of the Right to keep and bear arms in terms of causing increased amounts of gun violence is not what any of the cited sources have said, contrary to all the proposed wordings that were previously inserted to the article. I have no objection to a neutral point of view write-up that does not commit synthesis beyond what the sources actually say. Claiming a cause and effect in the text, that is not supported by the sources that you have mentioned to date, is definitely an issue. Any proposed text should not make claims that are not supported by the cites. As to claims of relevance, or non-relevance, that depends on the wording that is added. A hatchet-job write-up, written from only one side of the issue, as proposed and done previously, is likewise not in accord with the article being written in a neutral point of view, nor is it likely even to be relevant content, being nothing more than fringe group talking points (AHSA, Brady, Million Mom, etc.). I suggest that any proposed text be hammered out here on talk, first, prior to insertion into the article, to avoid the problems that have arisen over the last week or so. Agreed? Yaf (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

i was in the middle of posting the following text when i got an 'edit conflict' alert, as yaf had posted the above while i was composing. if the following - juxtaposed with yaf's text - doesn't set certain editors into fits of apoplexy, confirming their belief that there's a vast conspiracy afoot, i don't know what will! we even both use the term 'hammered out', and end in essentially the same question. hilarious! herewith:

:you're welcome to give coverage in the article, but there are two caveats: the incarnation of the section as it existed before was synthetic, using unconnected sets of references to imply a reliably sourced connection. if you leave out the UN 'ownership correlation with homicide/suicide statistics', then there's no synthesis. but then the problem becomes one of it being a strictly one-sided presentation, which is obviously POV and unacceptable. the opposing POV must be given equal weight. only presenting this one argument in favor of restricting the right to keep and bear arms without also presenting the argument in favor of maintaining - or even expanding - the right to keep and bear arms is unacceptably POV. adding POV material in article space - then expecting other editors to 'add balance' after the fact - certainly won't fly here. so i would strongly recommend working collaboratively, here on the talk page - post your proposed text, then it can be worked on in discussion space. once an acceptable casting of the material has been hammered out, then the material can go in article space. fair enough? Anastrophe (talk) 16:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Anastrophe (talk) 16:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Balance with which reliable source? Neither of you point to any sourcing for the assertion that this is a "one sided presentation". Where can I read this "other side"? SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

with all due respect, you're kidding, right? you don't believe that an argument against restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms exists? i have to assume you're being facetious at this point. Anastrophe (talk) 16:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Tell me what you are reading please. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

how about we back up to what both yaf and i asked you: will you agree to work collaboratively here on the talk page to hammer out the proposed text? if you agree, then you can reply "i agree". post your proposed text. then other editors can provide reliably sourced material providing the opposing point of view. agreed?? Anastrophe (talk) 17:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree to work collaboratively. I don't know how to proceed when you claim something is not neutral, but then refuse to cite your sourcing for your claim. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

i repeat then: "post your proposed text. then other editors can provide reliably sourced material providing the opposing point of view.". there's no refusal to cite sources. we don't have the proposed text here even as a start. so, how about posting here (best in a separate section) the text you propose. if it's not POV, then there's no problem, and other editors can discuss whether we have consensus for the addition. if it is one-sided and POV, then other editors can work on balancing the POV. that's how collaboration works. repeating what you said: "Can we focus please and negotiate this edit to the article?". the starting point, post your proposed text. then we can hammer it out. agreed? Anastrophe (talk) 18:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This version is the take off point for proposed text[29]. I see some problem in that that presents one sided arguments as "fact", instead of as one side's argument. The big picture is that there are two sides of the "gun control" versus "right to bear arms" political argument. See George Latkoff, ISBN 9780226467702, pg 199[30] for discussion of this POV dichotomy. SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Saltyboar, if you're being assaulted by a 'fury of personal attacks', please demonstrate how these personal attacks violate WP:NPA as you implicate. If you cannot demonstrate this, then I must assume you are using the "personal attack" mantra for some other reason. --Nukes4Tots (talk) 17:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

My user name is SaltyBoatr, not Saltyboar. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed addition to article, for discussion and collaboration

Gun violence and the politics of the right to bear arms

One of the principle debates about placing restrictions on the right to bear arms is the alleged effect that it will have on gun related accidents and deaths. Accident statistics are hard to obtain, but much data is available on the issue of gun ownership and gun related deaths.

The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) has made comparisons beween countries with different levels of gun ownership and investigated the correlation between gun ownership levels and gun homicides, and also gun ownership levels and gun suicides. A strong correlation is seen in both. UNICRI also investigated the relationship between gun ownership levels and other forms of homicide or suicide to determine whether high gun ownership added to or merely displaced other forms of homicide or suicide. They reported that "widespread gun ownership has not been found to reduce the likelihood of fatal events committed with other means. Thus, people do not turn to knives and other potentially lethal instruments less often when more guns are available, but more guns usually means more victims of suicide and homicide." Speculating on possible causes the researchers concluded that "all we know is that guns do not reduce fatal events due to other means, but that they go along with more shootings. Although we do not know why exactly this is so, we have a good reason to suspect guns to play a - fatal - role in this".

The research reporter found that guns were the major cause of homicides only in 3 of the 14 countries it studied; Nothern Ireland, Italy, and the USA. Although on the face of it the data would indicate that reducing the availabilty of one significant type of arms - firearms - would seem to indicate a fall in both gun crime and gun suicide and overall crimes and suicides, the author did issue a caution, citing the American example, that "reducing the number of guns in the hands of the private citizen may become a hopeless task beyond a certain point".

begin discussion

In my opinion, the whole portion after the first sentence should be moved to a subparagrah describing the public safety theory of the gun control hypothesis. Additionally, there needs to be mention of the hypothesis that the RTKBA guarantees unfettered access to firearms, and inclusion of the middle ground hypothesis that rights to firearms are protected by the RTKBA with the provision and limit of governmental regulation is allowed[31] ISBN 9780765606792 pg 258. SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"the RTKBA guarantees unfettered access to firearms". according to whom? as with all rights, there are excluded classes; this cuts across virtually all cultures and societies, and goes far back in history. small children, those who have been convicted of violent crimes, and the insane, have never had the right to keep and bear arms in any society, to my knowledge. the hypothesis of the gun rights POV tends to be that those who are not small children, who have not been convicted of violent felonies, and who are not insane, should not have "prior restraint" applied to their right. your premise is faulty. Anastrophe (talk) 20:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

furthermore, there's a broad spectrum between 'no restriction', 'some restriction', and 'total restriction' in the public debate. there are those who want all laws limiting access to firearms by those who are not in excluded classes, to be eliminated. and there are those who seek to completely eliminate the right. and a large middle ground, who want some restrictions. if we're to even have this section in this article, it needs to cover the full spectrum of public debate appropriately. Anastrophe (talk) 20:39, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I can see this going nowhere. You consistently only have shifting, never ending objections. You agreed to collaborate, start now. Make your proposal. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

i have only shifting, never ending objections?? pot, meet kettle. kettle, pot. now, for a first starting point: the second and third paragraphs need to be removed, as they're the basis of the synthesis problem. Anastrophe (talk) 21:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, the pot at least is declaring the reliable sourcing of his opinion. The kettle refuses to do that.

I see your point that the second and third paragraph need to be improved to fix any WP:SYN problems, but deleted? They pretty closely reflect the line of thought of the "public safety" vs. RTKBA hypothesis, expressed elsewhere in reliable sources see Windlesham, Bodenhamer, Cottrol etc.. SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Before getting into the details, there seems to be a problem with the title, "Gun violence and the politics of the right to bear arms". Why not "Public safety and the politics of the right to bear arms". Predisposing the section with a highly biased title is not conducive to achieving NPOV. Why not address the real issue, rather than start with scare tactics? Yaf (talk) 23:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Good point. We should probably go with the terms used in reliable sourcing, George Latkoff published by the University of Chicago Press frames the dichotomy as "gun control" versus "right to bear arms", see pg 198[32] ISBN 9780226467702. SaltyBoatr (talk) 23:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

since it is not strictly a question of firearms, however (see hauskalainens addition of details of the UK laws pertaining to knives), the title should be descriptive of what the section is intended to cover. for example "arguments in favor of and against restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms". but that's unwieldy. so perhaps breaking it down into separate sections, e.g.

"Arguments" or "Public Debate"

(introductory text framing the arguments/debate)

"For increased restrictions on the right"

(content for the section)

"Against increased restrictions on the right"

(content for the section)

something along those lines. Anastrophe (talk) 23:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, based on prior experience the presenting of tit for tat arguments like that suffers from editor advocacy and tends to degenerate into an un-encyclopedic mess. I would prefer to give coverage that the RTKBA topic has a political and 'values' dichotomy, breaking down essentially on the grounds described in Latkoff. In the US it pits a 'gun control' side versus 'bear arms' side. Include a brief summary of the arguments of the sides, given fair neutral framing. (The amount of detail in paragraphs two and three above seems excessive.) We shouldn't say, "these are the facts", but rather it should say "this is the rational of this faction, and this is the rational of the other faction". Outside the US, the dichotomy is likely different, lets check the sourcing. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

latkoff doesn't break it down in the dichotomy you describe, he breaks it down as "nurturant parents" vs "strict father". that's far too abstruse a reference to use as a basis. furthermore, it's not a "liberal" vs "conservative" dichotomy, as he also frames it. we should avoid references that attempt to reframe the arguments in terms that are removed from the topic at hand. perhaps The social science of gun politics would be a good article for this reference. this is not that article.

as it stands, the current proposed text presents a one-sided POV. as long as the text is duly modified to acknowledge that this is not the only POV, that there are people and groups who argue that the right to bear arms should not be restricted, then we're on the right track.

going back to a previous claim you made: "Well, the pot at least is declaring the reliable sourcing of his opinion. The kettle refuses to do that." this is an unreasonable burden on other editors. some editors don't have endless time to work on finding sources. as someone who works for a living, and is in the middle of an intensive project, i have only brief time primarily in the morning and evening to devote to wikipedia during the week. i'm not refusing to declare reliable sources, i haven't begun to look. hopefully, we can work this out here on the talk page before the article is unlocked, and hopefully the existing material won't be jammed into the article again before consensus has been reached. give your fellow editors some time to work on the issues. thanks. Anastrophe (talk) 17:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Astonishing that you can read the section where George Lakoff describes the cognitive linguistics of this topic and come away with the personal opinion just opposite. Your personal opinion doesn't hold much weight. SaltyBoatr (talk) 15:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

uh huh. neither does this single source you seem enamored of. considering that lakoff argues that the liberal POV is superior to the conservative POV, this is perhaps unsurprising? we should avoid partisan sources. as reference, lakoff's DVD entitled "How Democrats and Progressives Can Win: Solutions From George Lakoff". uh huh. Anastrophe (talk) 16:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting you hold such a strong vocal opinion, yet you say[33] you "haven't begun to look" at reliable sourcing. Stop wasting talk page space with your personal opinion. Come back with constructive information based on reliable sourcing. SaltyBoatr (talk) 17:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

please cease with the personal attacks ("stop wasting talk page space"). i looked into the source that you are pushing. forgive me for doing so. i apologize. i'm so sorry that your source is a highly partisan advocate that liberalism is superior to conservativism, and founder of a (now defunct) "progressive" think tank. if he was the founder of a conservative think tank, you'd dismiss him outright too. Anastrophe (talk) 17:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Such irony. You start your paragraph "cease the personal attacks" and end your paragraph with a personal attack based on a false hypothetical presumption. The truth is, the book I cited was published by University of Chicago Press which is not a progressive think tank. Can we discuss the article and the article sourcing and stop discussing your straw men? And, I would view non-academic source books published by any think tank, or any advocacy group, with appropriate skepticism. Generally, books published by academic sources like university presses are considered as "most reliable sources" see Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

To: SaltyBoatr, Anastrophe and Yaf. Can I suggest that we save energy here and allow hot tempers to cool. I am happy to await the independent opinion on the matters of NPOV, SYN, etc regarding this section that I have raised under WP:EA. The argument is getting nowhere very fast right now.--Hauskalainen (talk) 18:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is appears impossible to discuss productively with Anastrophe, when we have no foundation. SaltyBoatr (talk) 20:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

nonsense. we should avoid highly partisan sources. the book you cite from makes the argument that liberalism is superior to conservatism. doesn't matter what publishing house produced the book, you're attempting to use an extremely POV source to frame the argument. i absolutely reject a source that defines the argument as one between liberal "nurturing parent" and conservative "strict father", while later arguing that the former is empirically superior to the latter. we don't need psychobabble injected into this article. perhaps it would be appropriate to the article The psychobabble of the gun control movement. this is not that article.

so, in the simplest terms, i reject your use of this one source. i thought we were to go by the balance of sources in the published material available. lakoff makes one set of claims about the matter that don't appear anywhere else, except in reference circularly back to his book.Anastrophe (talk) 22:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

How do you know "don't appear anywhere else"? Have you looked? Looking, I see many scholarly references[34] to cognitive linguistics and "bear arms". You may be familiar with the Stanford Levinson paper "The Embarrassing Second Amendment" published by Yale Law Journal in 1989? In that paper he discusses "cognitive maps" and public policy perception of the RTKBA, "the politics of interpreting the Second Amendment". SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

i said that lakoff makes a set of claims that don't appear elsewhere. i did not say that cognitive linguistics (which are separate from cognitive maps, it should not require pointing out) has never been juxtaposed with 'bear arms'. these simplistic, synthetic google searches are not helpful to the discussion. lakoff's claims that liberals think in 'nurturant parent' mode, and that conservatives think in 'strict father mode' - and that the former is superior to the latter - do not appear elsewhere, except in other sources that are referencing lakoff's selfsame claims. that's hardly a broadly reliable source, it's a unique position, and it's inappropriate to use to frame the debate. Anastrophe (talk) 17:56, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

You are wrong that Lakoff says that one is superior to the other. Have you read his book? pg 63 "The use of metaphorical thought and language in moral reasoning and discourse in no way impugns the metaphorical moral schemes involved."

We disagree that a book published by University of Chicago Press is a reliable source, astonishing.

And, you refuse to identify any of your sources, reliable or otherwise, how do we move forward then? Also, have you read the Yale Law Review Levinson paper? Would you consider that a reliable source? SaltyBoatr (talk) 01:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

that's it? "you are wrong"? i guess i have to ask: have you read the book? how did you miss chapter 20, "Nonideological reasons for being a liberal", where he details why he believes liberalism is superior to conservativism?

as has been discussed further below, the proposed section should be scrubbed. it's silly to take an overtly POV pushing section of material that was dumped into the article by one POV pushing editor, the follow a tortuous path to balancing the one-sided material that never belonged in the article in the first place. we can happily close this pointless chapter of discussion. Anastrophe (talk) 04:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Got it. You don't like my source. Without regard to the fact that it is solidly a reliable source per WP:V standards. As to keeping a neutral balance, I 100% agree. It is interesting to note that somehow you have reach a conclusion that there is not a neutral balance, magically, without actually reading anything. Or at least anything that you are willing to disclose. That is what I meant by lack of foundation. SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

keep souping. i've explained why it's not an acceptable source for framing the arguments. once more, we should avoid extremely POV sources for framing the arguments. the old 'fox in the henhouse' problem. speaking of magic, it's simply magical that you find the most extreme of partisans to be the best source to frame the debate. a boat missing an oar would ply truer.Anastrophe (talk) 23:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Nearly every paragraph you write includes a personal attack. Please consider not doing that so much, it gets in the way of productive work on the article. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

it's quite obvious that the personal attacks are mutual. it's been an escalating war of words between you and i. so, i'm fine with stopping the personal attacks, and hope that you'll do so as well.

back to the issue at hand. lakoff is a highly partisan source. his theory that liberals think in a 'nurturant parent' mode, that conservatives think in a 'strict father' mode, and that the former is superior to the latter, is not an acceptable source to frame the debate. it would be better to find a source that doesn't advocate that one position is superior to the other, wouldn't you agree? Anastrophe (talk) 17:56, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Does Lakoff say one position is superior to another? Be specific in your complaint. Have you read the book? I don't see it. SaltyBoatr (talk) 01:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

yes, he does. have you read the book? "and in each case, there are good reasons to choose liberalism"..."These and other real-world reasons make conservatism dangerous"...while i happen to agree with his conclusion that the 'nurturant parent' model is clearly and obviously the best model for child rearing, his gross reapplication of the competing models of 'nurturant parent' and 'strict father' simplistically to political ideology is partisan and condescending. i hold both liberal and conservative viewpoints, so reading his aggrandizement of liberals and condescension towards conservatives makes for some pretty good laughs. Anastrophe (talk) 04:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for being specific about your complaint of Lakoff. It seems the POV skew could be easily be addressed in other ways than by denying use of the book, true? Do you at least agree that the Lakoff book published by University of Chicago Press meets WP:V policy standards? Also, you didn't answer whether you accept the Levinson Yale Law Review article as a WP:V reliable source. Please answer.

It is a distraction to have moved off the subject of national criminal statistics and the interpretation of these by a criminologist and others. The statistics are not POV (gathered from police data) and the sources of interpretive analysis (e.g. UNICRIT/an academic criminologist) are impeccable. --Hauskalainen (talk) 12:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

this article is not about national criminal statistics, nor the interpretation of those statistics by criminologists or others. the statistics themselves are not POV, but their synthetic connection to this article is POV. perhaps your contributions would be more appropriate to Gun Politics, or Gun politics in the United Kingdom, or Gun politics in the United States, or Homicide, or Murder, or Violence, or Gun Violence, or Million Mom March, or Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, or National Coalition to Ban Handguns, or quite a few other articles where these statistics may be of interest? Anastrophe (talk) 04:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

..ZZZ this is so repetitious. It is connected because others have already made the connection. I am not synthesizing. Read the report! And others like the Cuckier study I pointed out earlier and that of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice - 6th session Vienna 1997 (at http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/6comm/4e.pdf). These reports all look atthe connection between gun ownership and gun deaths. I only know one reason why the rights to guns and knives and deady gas agents are controlled and that is their potential for harmful use. If there are others then you must let us know what they are. If there was no gun control then there would be an unfettered right to carry and own a gun. Gun control is the very antithesis of the right to keep and bear arms. If the matter is relevant to gun control then it must be relevant to this article also.--Hauskalainen (talk) 20:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Trust me, Hauskalainen, beating this dead horse is just as tiresome and repetitive to the rest of the editors here, too. I offered a compromise below which would link to the relevant articles (gun violence, gun politics, etc.) with {{seealso}} or {{main}} templates, but you apparently don't favor that compromise. That is fine, but since you want the content included, then you have the burden of proving its relevance to the right to keep and bear arms as found in reliable sources. Your repeated assertions that that it is connected and relevant are not convincing. --Hamitr (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

synthesis

this entire paragraph:

Homicide rates in the United States vary widely across the country, though, and the relation to gun ownership is not simple. In 2005, for instance, Wyoming had the highest number of homes with loaded and unlocked guns, at 33% of all homes in the state, of any state in the United States.[80] Yet, the Wyoming homicide rate is 1.7/100,000.[81] In contrast to Wyoming, Detroit has 47.3 murders per every 100,000 residents.[82] Despite the extremely high homicide rates seen in the US in relatively few urban areas, the existence of the very low level of homicide rates seen across much of the country, seen even in the state with the highest number of homes with loaded and unlocked guns, results in a fairly low homicide rate per 100,000 for the nation as a whole.

is complete synthesis and original research.

1. the example of wyoming is drawn together from 3 different sources and then contrasted to detroit, with no connection made in any of the articles.

2. the article which mentions detroit never mentions guns.

3. the homicide rate does not include the main point of this section, ie how many were due to firearms.

4. the last sentence is simply someones opinion. "fairly low" is subjective and unsourced.

i don't really know what can be done to salvage any of it except find a source with nationwide firearm-related fatalities, cite the figures, and possibly add info from both sides in this source (80). untwirl(talk) 06:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well yes, this is synthesis because I have not seen any external reference to it. I have not looked but I would guess that levels of violence in societies are closely related to how closely packed together people become (territorial turf wars and all that).The Wyoming being thinly populated is probably bound to have lower levels of violence than other states. Its why I earlier suggested comparing England & Wales to other areas in the U.S. with similar population densities. But that too would be WP:OR or WP:SYN. Hence my preference to stick to published international data from academics. The fact that crime rates may go up and down with population density is perhaps an interesting issue as far as population density is concerned. And may be marginally relevant to issues of gun control, because of the link to the rural versus cities issue which User:Yaf refers to often. Thus one might be prepared to think that gun ownership in rural areas is both more justifiable (more wildlife for shooting and less dangerous to others) than it is in cities and other large communities (less opportunity for shooting wildlife and more danger to others). The recent SCOTUS decision in the US will perhaps rebound at first on the cities, but could rebound on the rural areas if in the longer term it causes a change in the constitution (hard as that may seem to be). Seemingly random gun violence in the UK did come to harm the right of perfectly law abiding country people to own and keep weapons. This has not happened in Finland despite similar school shootings. The authorites here seem more focussed on preventing the social isolation of students (which was behind the actions of the perpertrators) than controlling access to the weapons themselves. See http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/02/jokela_investigation_commission_stop_youth_marginalisation_574583.html At the end of the day its up to our elected representatives to determine what are the limits on the right to bear arms. Levels of relative social deprivation may be another factor that may vary from region to region and have an influence on overal violence levels. The extent to which this translates (and with what ease) into the levels of GUN violence in a given will no doubt cary with the level of gun ownership in that region. Whether proportionately or dispropotionately is an interesting question and I am not sure if there research on the matter.--Hauskalainen (talk) 20:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

i think you're saying that you agree that this paragraph is original research and should be removed. am i correct? untwirl(talk) 21:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd rather see how YAF responds.... right now I am bruised and I don't need any more bruises. --Hauskalainen (talk) 21:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Being that the article is locked down, cites cannot be added to add the appropriate cites and the wording worked to address the present concerns. But, I assure you, the basic content is not original research, and the wording could be easily changed to address any NPOV issues. At most, a {{fact}} tagline would be appropriate until such time that the appropriate cites can be added. However, it is worth pointing out that "20 percent of U.S. homocides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns" Thus, it appears that the issue is not really population density, ceteris paribus, but, rather, is perhaps related to the presence of gun control. The paragraph is not original research and should not be removed. Minor edits and cites could certainly address all of the present concerns. Yaf (talk) 21:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

There is also no necessity to reference GUNS, per se, as the article is about the right to keep and bear arms, such that homocides committed with knives, baseball bats, firearms, golf clubs, BMWs, golf carts, or whatever, all constitute arms by the US definition of arms. That said, the rate of homocides committed with firearms is around 65% to 70% in the US, so the homocide rate is, with high correlation, nearly identical to the rate committed with firearms in the US. Karate (meaning kara=empty te=hand, incidentally) and similar empty hand martial arts techniques are popular, but such weaponless homocides account for almost none of the homocides in the US. Yaf (talk) 22:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This study (in a peer reviewed journal) actually examined the variance in gun homicides and suicides according to the degree of rurality. The relationship is not as you might think. It concluded that

"The most urban counties had 1.03 times the adjusted firearm death rate of the most rural counties. The most rural counties experienced 1.54 times the adjusted firearm suicide rate of the most urban. The most urban counties experienced 1.90 times the adjusted firearm homicide rate of the most rural. Similar opposing trends were not found for nonfirearm suicide or homicide"

So not only is there not much variation in rates of firearm suicide and homicide, there is no opposing trend for non-firearm, suicide or homicide so the GUN does seem to be a factor. There is no substitution effect visible in the US data (as there wasn't in most of the international data). Which is every reason why there should be a reference to GUNS! It is germain to the article. It seems that rural people are less likely to kill each other but more likely to kill themselves. To quote the report "... although firearm mortality rates were similar in urban and rural areas, the rate of firearm suicide in America’s most rural communities closely resembled that of firearm homicide in her largest cities".

See http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/94/10/1750 --Hauskalainen (talk) 22:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

So, you are in agreement with my statement earlier, that "Thus, it appears that the issue is not really population density, ceteris paribus, but, rather, is perhaps related to the presence of gun control." The most urban counties are not in the 6% of the population where "20 percent of U.S. homocides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns" This would be an interesting addition to this section, to provide POV balance. On the whole, however, I question the relevance of focusing on guns over arms, except if it is to push a hoplophobic anti- tone to the right to keep and bear arms. There is no reason to add POV content, and I question the necessity of attacking the topic of the article, the right to keep and bear arms. It doesn't seem on topic. Yaf (talk) 13:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

1.ncpa is a conservative think tank, not a peer reviewed scholarly source.

2.please address the issue that drawing together facts from various sources to make a point that isnt made in the sources themselves is original research and synthesis (i.e. the wyoming example)

3.the comparison between wyoming and detroit is original research, as well.

4.the last sentence is a conclusion not drawn by any of the sources cited. untwirl(talk) 03:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

the mentioned paragraph, and in fact all of the statistics having to do with homicide/suicide rates, have no direct relevance to this article, and should be scrubbed from it. this article is about the right to keep and bear arms, it's not about Gun politics, Homicide rates, Suicide rates, Disparity between rural and urban homicide and suicide rates or any other synthetic connection. This article should actually be a fairly brief description of a right that appears in historical texts and codified in some country's laws, and have a brief list of 'see also' links to related articles. what we have now is a lot of POV pushing content from both sides, that's not directly relevant to the article, only synthetically relevant.Anastrophe (talk) 06:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The gun politics content is not germane to the topic of the article. It would be better to keep this content in the various gun politics in ____ articles, (see right bar), not here. Yaf (talk) 13:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Gun death statistics are referred to by those making sholarly reccomendations to policy makers who can affect the legal right to bear guns, a deadly form of arms. They are also referred to by pressure groups seeking restrictions on the right to bear arms. So gun death statisitics are of direct relevance to the article. But the data must be from a WP:RS and not constitute WP:SYN. The information in the section that I added and was was deleted (and has since been forwarded for a second opinion at WP:EA) meets these criteria in my opinion, as does this one

. --Hauskalainen (talk) 09:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Gun death statistics have no relevance to this topic. The article is about the right to keep and bear arms, not guns. Are there any discussions of paper cuts in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution article, from handling all the paper on which is written freedom of speech content? It would be much the same argument to include such content as gun death statistics here. There are articles such as Gun violence in the United States for such content. This article is not the place nor is it a forum for anti-gun rhetoric. The intense focus on guns leads one to assume a problem with hoplophobia exists in the minds of some editors, or that some editors are somehow anti-right to keep and bear arms. Gun death statistics are irrelevant for this article, being better handled elsewhere. Yaf (talk) 13:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

part of the debate over "right to keep and bear arms" is whether or not it includes firearms implicitly. that debate should be included in the article, but only the arguments directly used by reliable sources should be used and cited.

i think we need to decide: either homicide statistics in general are relevant, or they arent. if they are, then gun fatalities are just as pertinent due to the nature of the debate surrounding this topic. untwirl(talk) 14:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

(To User:Yaf). I am not focussing totally on guns. Here are some more questions for you to duck (like the others I asked you and you have failed to answer)

1. Are you saying that laws in the UK that the right to carry certain types of guns, knives, gas cannisters, etc.. do not restrict the right to bear arms in that country?

2. Do you have evidence from a WP:RS that some have called for the restriction on the use to carry paper in case it is used as a form of armament?

Guns are arms and particularly lethal ones at that. They are a natural focus for laws aiming to restrict the right to bear arms. But I agree that we should not focus exclusively on guns or on the United States. Gun are a problem in many countries and some have an even bigger problem than the U.S. (for instance Thailand) We can include knives (for as I said, carrying a knife in a public place in the UK is potentially a legal offence) or gas canisters such as tear gas for similar reasons. --Hauskalainen (talk) 15:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

To: User:untwirl. Total homicide rates ARE relevant when taken together with data on the method of causing the homicide. And suicides too. The research I have seen looks at both overall homicide and suicide rates as well as gun homicide and gun suicide rates in the context of the level of gun ownership. If the homicide rate is the same in areas with high and low gun ownership and but the gun homicide rate is higher in areas where there are more guns, that merely seems to show substitution and that reducing gun ownership levels would probably not reduce gun deaths. But if the homicide and rate is higher in areas with higher gun ownership, then it indicates that guns could be contributing to the higher rate of homicides. But this data has to be carefully interpreted and once should not be too picky with the data by picking out exceptions which do not meet the general rule. Hence We should for example at European data covering all of Europe or US data covering the whole of the US. I accept that there are areas like Wyoming and Switzerland that may not have a big gun crime problem in spite of the presence of a lot of guns. We need to refer to inclusive data that informs the debate and not misinforms it. --Hauskalainen (talk) 15:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

all of this belongs in the article on gun control and not in this one. a simple statement that there is controversy over whether the right to bear arms means the right to individual gun ownership, with a link or a "for more information see" directed to gun control would be the best way to handle this. both of you seem to have done a lot of research and could either create or add to articles related to homicide rates and their relation to gun control, but i don't see ihow that information fits into this particular article. untwirl(talk) 17:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

In response to the questions posed above:

1. Are you saying that laws in the UK that the right to carry certain types of guns, knives, gas cannisters, etc.. do not restrict the right to bear arms in that country?

There is no right to keep and bear arms currently in the UK, if I understand UK's current position correctly. All forms of self defense have been made illegal. If the people there get fed up with increasing amounts of violence and civil unrest, perhaps having a problem such as occurred in France over the last few summers, when so many vehicles were burned, and the rates of crime continue to drop in the US in areas with concealed carry permits being more and more popular, then presumably, people in the UK will elect MPs to reflect this change of opinion, and MPs will restore the historic rights to self defense that every Englishmen had previously to achieve the low rates of crime seen in the US in so many areas. (The areas in the US where 6% of the population seem so eager to kill each other, having 20% of the homicides of the nation as a whole, are seeing increased efforts to restore gun rights, to reduce crime.)

2. Do you have evidence from a WP:RS that some have called for the restriction on the use to carry paper in case it is used as a form of armament?

There have been numerous cases in the UK where fire extinguishers have been banned over the last several months (among flats in Bournemouth, et al), on grounds that they were being used, or could be used, as weapons. I see no difference as being likely if reams of paper are used as weapons, too, in the UK. Now that I think about it, this article should have a discussion on restrictions on fire extinguishers in the UK, too, being that they are regarded as arms. It would provide balance to the inordinate focus on guns. In the US, arms include much more than guns. Judging from the banning of fire extinguishers in the UK, it would seem that arms include much more than guns there, too. Yaf (talk) 16:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

so far as the subject of this talk section is concerned, the paragraph in question is a textbook example of WP:SYN and should be removed as such.untwirl(talk) 17:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

(To User:Yaf).

If I read you correctly, your answer to Question 1 above is that do you accept that laws have been imposed to restrict the right to bear arms. This makes the restrictions relevent to the right to bear arms. And not just in the UK but almost everywhere right is restricted by law, common law, legislated law or constitutional law. This makes the issue relevant to the tropic of the article.

Re my question 2 you have not provided evidence from a WP:RS that there are laws or people calling for a change in the law restricting the right to use paper (or a fire extinguisher for that matter) as as a form of armament. So I think I am right in saying that it is certain types of very dangerous arms that are restricted. So we should be focussed on those where legislation has been introduced.

I agree there is some overlap here with gun control but it is not complete because of the controls on things like knives, gas, tasers, etc. --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

To:User:YafYou stated "so you are in agreement with my statement earlier, that "Thus, it appears that the issue is not really population density, ceteris paribus, but, rather, is perhaps related to the presence of gun control." . Well not wholly to the first issue and don't think I referred to gun control at all, so no to the second issue. Gun controls may work or may not work. I suspect that it takes a very long time for a culture to change. There have been many "gun amnesties" in the UK and each once seems to bring in large numbers of weapons that should have been surrendered long before in earlier amnesties. It takes time. I agree that population density is not the main issue (but it is probably AN issue as the most densely populated areas do seem to have more violence. That's as true in the UK as in the U.S. But its not a factor that applies across the range and certainly does not account for the overall gun crime levels. What(gun violence) does seem to be related to is the issue of the presence of guns (irrespective of what the gun law says). What advantage less gun crime ridden states such as Wyoming seem to gain in terms of lower gun homicides, they seem to make up for when it comes to the much higher rate of gun suicide. That's what the research shows.. a relation between gun ownership levels and gun violence. Oh by the way, not all guns are banned in the UK. A lot are but not all. I believe rifles are still owned and kept at home by some, properly locked up and covered by licences. I believe small arms can be used in clubs where for example there are shooting ranges and adequate protection for the security of the weapon. (I may be wrong here, but that is my belief. This is actually not a topic that excites me greatly). --Hauskalainen (talk) 19:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

gun violence, gun politics, synthesis, statistics, etc.

I agree with Anastrophe, Yaf, and [possibly] untwirl that we should remove all homicide/suicide statistics from the article. In place of the contested (and now removed) "Gun violence and the politics of the right to bear arms" section, we should include something to the effect of:

The right to keep and bear arms is sometimes referenced in discussions of gun politics, gun violence...

SaltyBoatr listed some sources above which, although they didn't convincingly connect the rkba to gun death statistics, they do support that the rkba is mentioned or referenced in discussions of the other topics.

In my opinion, if the death statistics are allowed to remain in the article, the "ad-hoc" comparisons and cherry-picked statistics will have to be replaced with assertions from reliable sources/studies. Such studies will, inevitably, include those by Martin Killias. Then, to add balance, studies from Gary Kleck and John Lott will also be added. By this point, we will have completely duplicated the material found in Gun politics, Gun politics in the United Kingdom, Gun violence in the United States, Political arguments of gun politics in the United States, etc.

Instead, we should link to those other articles either throughout the text, with {{main}}, {{seealso}}, or {{details}} templates per WP:SS, or a combination thereof. --Hamitr (talk) 16:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

thanks for supplying a better informed analysis than mine. i am completely uninvolved in this area of wp and was only commenting on the single paragraph that i immediately realized, by glancing at the sources, was original research.untwirl(talk) 18:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I concur with Hamitr's proposal. We should remove all of the death statistics. This resolves a lot of perceived problems with the article, while additionally not duplicating information that is found in other articles (Gun politics, Gun politics in the United Kingdom, Gun violence in the United States, Political arguments of gun politics in the United States, etc.). This also removes the Wyoming content, while putting in links to the appropriate other articles. Yaf (talk) 01:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about this. One side could say that the statistics have nothing to do with the right, and that it should be kept in the abstract. On the other hand, things go hand in hand - anything you have a right to do might carry a risk of accidental injury - including free speech, or driving a car. So yes, there's something negative about it, but can you really say it has no place here? I think the limitation should be publishing only reliable statistics - e.g., none of the politicized, nonscientific, nonsense about people being 40 times more likely to injure themselves with a gun than use it in self-defense. There is a risk that adding those statistics could be seen to push a hoplophobic POV. On the other hand, to remove them alltogether with prejudice to reinclusion seems self-consciously anti-hoplophobic. You can't fight a NNPOV with another NNPOV. It seems like that's what we might be proposing here. Care to comment?Non Curat Lex (talk) 08:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

homicide statistics are only relevant insofar as they are describing people who were victims to those who were not engaged in their right to keep and bear arms. just as one is not engaged in their right to free speech if they slander someone, or (canonically) yell "fire" in a crowded theater, someone who commits murder is not engaged in his right to keep and bear arms. as a means of defining what the right to keep and bears is not, it's of interest, but only minimally. are there statistics in First Amendment of the United States Constitution regarding how many people are victims of slander each year? its worth noting that accidental injury pursuant to employing one's rights is far different from intentional acts in contravention of the right. and also, driving a car isn't a right. :^) Anastrophe (talk) 09:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The right to bear arms is not absolute. It is restricted in most countries. The degree to which it is restricted is dependent on the balance of risks as perceived by politicians. Accurate statistics, whilst open to interpretation, are part of the process of obtaining a balanced peception. You cannot pretend that these statisitics don't exist and don't influence people! BTW the approximately 40 times statistic I referred to earlier was not the balance of risks of injury in using a gun in self defence versus an accident. It was the increased risk that the average US citizen faces of being murdered with a gun than his English cousin across the water (where there are very tight gun laws and nearly all policemen are unarmed). I don't think that has anything to do with gun phobias and it is not POV. Its a bald fact. You are muddying matters by claiming that "homicide statistics are only relevant insofar as they are describing people who were victims to those who were not engaged in their right to keep and bear arms". So if you are exercising your right to bear arms, say on a hunting trip, and someone else shoots you dead (whether on purpose or by accident as could easily have happened in the Dick Cheyne incident), your death is not a relevant gun death? How so?? Or if you shoot your wife and she was carrying a pistol in her handbag, her death is not relevant? It seems to me that you are clutching at straws to try to prevent WP:RS statistics by a criminologist doing his job of analysing gun deaths (with the precise aim of analysing how gun ownership rates vary with gun death rates), and previously published by a United Nations body whose main function is to "advance policy and practice in the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency and adult criminality" from being mentioned in article on the right to bear arms. The statistics are WP:RS, NPOV, and relevent to the article subject. --Hauskalainen (talk) 11:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hauskalainen wrote:

The degree to which [the right to keep and bear arms] is restricted is dependent on the balance of risks as perceived by politicians.

So, gun legislation, which restricts the right to keep and bear arms, depends on risks as perceived by politicians. That sounds like information that should be added to the Gun politics article. But wait, homicide and suicide statistics are already included in that article. Maybe we should link to it from this one rather than duplicating that content here.

Also, you seem to be missing Anastrophe's point that perpetrators of homicide are not exercising their right to keep and bear arms. The right to keep and bear arms does not include the right to commit homicide. Please let me know if I should explain this point further. --Hamitr (talk) 15:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Please tell us your sourcing.SaltyBoatr (talk) 22:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that you have sources saying that he right to keep and bear arms includes the right to commit homicide? If you can produce such sources, then I'll try to find the ones that you requested. --Hamitr (talk) 23:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Why ask for his sourcing? It wasn't even a comment relevant to the thread. Non Curat Lex (talk) 01:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

how is my comment not relevant? those who commit murder are not acting within their right to keep and bear arms, thus statistics concerning that are not directly connected to what this article is about. the inclusion of homicide statistics in this article seems based upon the idea that since there are people who use guns criminally - extra the right - that this somehow has something directly to do the right this article is about. that idea has so far been shown only synthetically. it makes no more sense than insisting that the article Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution include statistics regarding people who have been convicted of Breaking and Entering - on the synthetic grounds that when someone breaks into a home, they're violating someone's right against unreasonable searches and seizures. if you squint and cock your head to the side, it might seem like it makes sense. it does not. no more so than this inclusion. there are manifold other articles where these statistics are entirely relevant. and that's where they belong. Anastrophe (talk) 04:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I felt Hausakalainen's comment was irrelevant, not yours, Anastrophe. Non Curat Lex (talk) 07:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems clear to me.Prussian725 (talk) 18:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Now HamitR is twisting words. I did not say that the right to keep and bear arms includes the right to commit homicide. Those who carry a weapon and later commit a murder can merely claim, right up until the time that they kill someone, if stopped and found to be carrying a weapon, could claim in some jursidictions that they are merely exercising their right to carry a weapon.By which time its all too late for the poor victim. Murder is not always a deliberately planned act but can just emerge from the moment. At a moment of tension, the very presence of a weapon makes it more likely that deadly force will be used. If they are not allowed to carry a weapon in the first place, when a moment of tension arises, it is much less likely that deadly force will be used. This is the main finding I think of the UNICRIT report. Therefore the rights of innocent victims of crime ought to be protected when weapons are not present. The law can help to reduce the likelihood of a weapon being present. In the UK, for instance, in areas where there is a high crime rate and a policemen suspects that a person may have been involved in a crime or may become involved in a crime he or she can exercise a right of Stop and search and see if the person is carrying an offensive weapon. This makes it harder for potential criminals in high crime areas to carry a knife or a gun with the intent of using it to threaten violence (to obtain money for example). The UK has not eliminated gun crime and knife crime entirely but it is very very low and the lives of otherwise potential victims, their families, and of course the lives of potential perpertrators and their families, are undoubtedly improved by the relative absence of gun and knife crime in the UK. As for Anastrophe's points, if the statistics are relevant to gun politics, and they are, they are equally relevant here because gun politics does mostly seem to be about the degree of right to keep and bear arms. There is no harm in summarizing the issues here. The issue and people can go to gun politics to be bedazzled by the array of arguments there. And of course, as I say, this is not just about guns. It covers many other forms of arms too.--Hauskalainen (talk) 09:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, OK, we get your point. The UK has no right to keep and bear arms, and you think that is a good thing. The US does have a right to keep and bear arms, and you think that is a very bad, very dangerous thing. And you will argue vehemently to include homicide and suicide statistics, because that makes the UK look good and the US look bad. Your opinion has been noted, but I doubt that you've convinced anyone, at least not me. --Hamitr (talk) 13:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

My own views are of no importance. I am merely stating that the record on violence via the use of arms is the reason why legislators in some countries have restricted the right to bear arms. If there was no violence in the absence of controls then there would be no pressure to restrict the right to bear arms. It is because of illegal violence that there are such controls. I am just stating the obvious. --Hauskalainen (talk) 16:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way. You are wrong to claim that there is no right to bear arms in the UK. There is a right to use arms in the UK to defend oneself. You can carry a club around with you for instance. You can carry a non-lethal ink spray or a water pistol filled with a non-noxious substance intended to deter (though I doubt that many do). You just can't carry certain designated types of deadly arms around with you "in case of need" unless you have a special permit (which you can only get if you can show good reason). --Hauskalainen (talk) 16:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Not true. Water pistols are explicitly not effective for self defense, nor are they allowed in the UK.(Door to door search of toy vendors) (Non-noxious == water, incidently.) It is an offence to carry even a toy gun in a public place. Helicopter raid on Cowboy and Indian Party Yaf (talk) 21:10, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The split by "judicial origin" is a meaningless one in the context of this article. It should be removed.

I have no idea why there is a split of countries by judicial origin. There seems to be nothing specific about the English Law tradition that would seem to make it sensible to separate it from the other legal systems. The law is the law however it develops and is exercised. Also I am not convinced that the U.S. is different in terms of its legal system from other English Law countries as the article seems to imply. There are overriding constitutional laws in India, Australia and Canada for example which take precendence over laws passed by their legislatures.

The fact that the U.S. constitution (as amended) mentions a right to bear arms is something that is relevent to that country's section of the article rather than the section as a whole. If someone wishes to claim that the US and the UK are unique for having the right to bear arms in a document forming part of the national constituion then let us have a reference for that. I have no idea if the countries other than the UK and the UK have constitutions that mention a right to keep and bear arms as a right.

The English Bill of Rights is an important part of the English Constitution. It does mention a right of some to bear arms but those words do not have overriding force in law because unlike the U.S. or India, the constitution can be changed by a simple majority in parliament. That makes England's English Law something different to certain other countries having a basis in English Common Law. Which re-inforces my feeling that we should save country specific information to the country section and scrap this artifical distinction because it is confusing. The law is the law, however it is derived. --Hauskalainen (talk) 22:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)