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To: Suma who wrote (303)	6/9/2008 11:28:18 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 3816

Isn't the amendment's thirteen-word preamble a clear-cut indication of a militia-related purpose? 1 - It clearly uses the need for a militia to justify and support and recognition of the individual right, but it doesn't say "the right of the militia", or "the right of militia members", or "the right of the state to form militias", it says "the right of the people". 2 - The militia is and traditionally has been, the people serving with their own weapons. If the purpose is for a militia, that doesn't mean it is not an individual right. 3 - By US law most men, and some women are members of the militia. While there appears to be a direct correlation between gun-ownership rates and the number of gun-related deaths, No there doesn't. Within the US many places with high gun ownership rates have lower homicides than many place with low rates. "Guns don't kill people -- people kill people". Wow, folks, deep thinking Based upon that faulty logic, instead of searching passengers, the airlines may as well hand out free box-cutters with every boarding pass. An aircraft is a very controlled area, where you can hope to disarm criminals as well as law abiding citizens. But even here you have a good example of what happens when the criminals have a monopoly on being armed. I would not recommend or support generally allowing firearms or other types of deadly weapons on commercial flights, but if someone besides the hijackers was armed on 9/11 the World Trade Center buildings would probably still be standing. You can probably disarm everyone on a plane almost all the time, so situations like that might not happen too often (still I'd like to see pilots armed, just in case they do), but disarming criminals across society, rather than just on airplanes, is something that isn't likely to happen. Look at all the effort, and all the failure, of the "war on drugs", and drugs get used up an need to be replaced. Ammo easily lasts years, and guns easily last decades.

To: Suma who wrote (303)	6/9/2008 11:34:52 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 3816

While there appears to be a direct correlation between gun-ownership rates and the number of gun-related deaths I've already commented about this withing the US, now for a response to international comparisons. -------- Is Gun Ownership Correlated with Violent Deaths? In 1993 a Swiss professor, Martin Killias, published a study of 18 countries concerning gun ownership, homicide and suicide. He in part concluded there was a weak correlation between total homicide and gun ownership. For a partial criticism of his study see Dunblane Misled where using the countries studied by Killias, these researchers found a much stronger correlation between firearm homicides and car ownership. More seriously, when the United States was included in the Killias study, a stronger correlation between total homicide and gun ownership was found. When two countries were excluded, the U.S. (high gun ownership, high murder rate) and Northern Ireland (low gun ownership, high murder rate) the correlation was marginally significant. Gary Kleck writes, "Contrary to his claim that 'the overall correlation is not contingent upon a few countries with extreme scores on the dependent and independent variable', reanalysis of the data reveals that if one excludes only the United States from the sample there is no significant association between gun ownership and the total homicide rate." (Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 253. Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York, 1997.) Kleck concludes that "the homicide-guns study was not international at all, but merely reflected the unique status of the United States as a high-gun ownership/high-violence nation...Since the positive association Killias observed was entirely dependent on the U.S. case, where self-defense is a common reason for gun ownership, this supports the conclusion that the association was attributable to the impact of the homicide rates on gun levels." Using homicide and suicide data from a larger sample of countries, 35, (International Journal of Epidemiology 1998:27:216), Kleck found "no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate in the largest sample of nations available to study this topic. (Associations with the total suicide rate were even weaker.)" (Targeting Guns, p 254.) A more recent study, by Killias, concludes "no significant correlations with toal suicide or homicide rates were found, leaving open the question of possible substitution effects." This article by Rutgers University professor Dr. Goertzel offers sound advice regarding statistical analysis: "When presented with an econometric model, consumers should insist on evidence that it can predict trends in data other than the data used to create it. Models that fail this test are junk science, no matter how complex the analysis." guncite.com ------ I would also add that the US has more knife homicides that most other developed countries. The easier availability of firearms would seem to decrease the number of knife homicides (because a gun is generally a superior substitute). This seems to indicate that Americans are more violent, not that people with more guns are more violent.

To: Suma who wrote (303)	6/13/2008 10:36:51 AM
From: one_less	Respond to of 3816

Impasse in US-Iraqi forces talks Maliki may be signalling that a deal on US forces is some way off Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has said that talks with the US on a long-term agreement allowing US forces to remain in Iraq have "reached an impasse". Speaking in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Mr Maliki said the American demands infringed Iraqi sovereignty. He said negotiations continued as new proposals were being considered. George W Bush has said he wants an agreement by the end of July. The UN mandate for US forces to be in Iraq expires at the end of 2008. We have reached an impasse... we did not realise that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty Nouri Maliki Sensitive to feelings in his own and neighbouring countries, Mr Maliki appears to be is signalling that there is a lot of work still to do, BBC Baghdad correspondent Nick Witchell says. "We have reached an impasse, because when we opened these negotiations we did not realise that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and this is something we can never accept," Mr Maliki said. "We cannot allow US forces to have the right to jail Iraqis or assume, alone, the responsibility of fighting against terrorism," he said. 'Heart of relationship' Our correspondent says this disagreement goes to the very heart of the relationship between the United States and the Iraqi government. It concerns the legitimacy of the US presence in this country, and the immensely sensitive issue of who is actually in charge here, the Americans or the Iraqis, our correspondent says, so the Americans are trying to negotiate a new Status of Forces agreement with the Iraqis. However, the Iraqi government regards many of the American demands as infringements of Iraqi sovereignty. The Americans want to maintain military bases and, it is reported, to keep control of Iraqi airspace. They also want immunity from prosecution for their own forces and for US contractors, a proposal which Mr Maliki said Iraq "rejected totally". More than five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, there are 150,000 US troops based in the country. news.bbc.co.uk