1) The report filed by the adjutant general of a militia basically stated the militia’s fighting ability. X number of fully equipped men, the organizational structure thereof, specialists, as well as rolls. I don’t understand why you keep comparing it to a modern registry. The law mandated that a militia man own a checklist of items. During exercises, their inventory was verified. That’s it. There were no serial numbers. It didn’t matter what they had or where it came from as long as it ticked a box on a checklist. That’s not a gun registry. It’s a militia registry. It’s no different than today’s military. ‘That man’s an infantry soldier, I reckon he has a gun somewhere.’ The weren’t keeping track of guns, they were keeping track of able-bodied, equipped fighting men. Because it was a draft, not gun control.
2) You keep talking about opinions and how we can go round and round forever without getting anywhere, which I agree with. But you also keep declaring that freedmen were not allowed to own guns as a fact, and I simply don’t believe you. I cannot find any support of that in the 1790's except for two state statutes- Virginia and South Carolina. Those date to 1712, and with the passage of the Constitution, it is arguable that they indeed could have been struck down as unconstitutional if anyone had cared enough to fight it.
It wasn’t until 1806 that Louisiana kicked off the new wave of slave gun restrictions, which in some areas did expand to include freedmen. But we’re not talking about 1806-present, we’re talking about the 1790's because that’s what your initial claims were centered on.
Now, that’s the letter of the law. I can’t any national law that corroborates your claim. And you may have information based on first hand accounts, but let’s understand that Afircans of that era were subjected to quite a lot of extra-legal punishments. So, sure, a freedman in the North might have been executed for owning a gun, or reading, or what have you, but that doesn’t make it the law. We have to be clear about these things.
I’d like to point out that Nat Turner was born in 1800, so I have no clue why you’re talking about him. And the Haitian revolt began in 1791 and lasted until the massacre of 3,000–5,000 French in 1804. Some historians don’t believe that Haiti had much of an effect on slavery as an institution because it persisted for so long after the fact. Most slave revolts were suppressed in the US. Others merely suggest that Haiti may have inspired revolts by American slaves, which arguably isn’t much considering there have been revolts for as long as there’s been slavery. Even so, that didn’t matter in the 1790's. If you had brought up the German Coast Uprising originally, we’d be having a different conversation, but you didn’t. The biggest effect Haiti had was on U.S. Politics, as it made slavery a hot button issue. 1804, that magic year, was when all of the Northern states had abolished slavery. And in 1807 Jefferson signed a law banning the importation of slaves. That’s what Haiti did. Not whatever it is that you’re claiming.
3) Violent crime is a massive cause for concern. Rape is a terrible, awful thing that barely gets the treatment it deserves. Just today I saw a headline about a college student convicted of rape that won’t serve any jail time. That’s despicable.
According to the FBI, in 2014, out of 1,165,383 violent crimes (which is 16.2% less than 2005), aggravated assaults and robberies accounted for 91.6% of all violent crimes.
Rape was 7.2%
Murder was only 1.2%. Guns accounted for 67.9% of that 1.2%.
Firearms were also used in 40.3% of the robberies, and 22.5% of the aggravated assaults.
They don’t even collect weapons data for rape.
Doing a little math, that means that guns were used in 307,764 violent crimes in 2014. Out of 1,165,383. That’s 26.4%.
So, again, I say that violent crime is a massive cause for concern. Specifically the 75% of it that is perpetrated without guns! Because if you banned guns, there’d still be that 75%!
Violent crime is at historically low numbers. 1.2 million crimes per year in a country of 320 million people, you can’t get much better than that through “tough on crime” legislation. The law of diminishing returns forbids it.
People point at Australia and Britain and France and Canada, and how peaceful those places are… Germany, with a population of 81 million is bigger than all of them, and it’s still 4 times smaller than the US.
There are 5 countries in the world with more than 200,000,000 people. China (an authoritarian government), India (rape much), United States (gun crazy), Indonesia (child prostitution! 5,000 in Jakarta alone), and Brazil (they had between 50,000–65,000 MURDERS in 2012, depending on sources).
So please, tell me more about how depraved Americans are, and how evil guns are. Considering that there are over 300,000,000 guns in this country, and only 307,000 violent crimes committed with guns annually (and still declining), I think 0.1% is an acceptable margin of error that doesn’t warrant flying off the deep end over.
Can we do things better? Yes we can. But anti-gun people don’t have the slightest idea of what would actually help.
Just spitballing here…
Open NICS to the public so anyone can perform a background on anyone voluntarily, without legal mandate.
Insurance companies and the IRS should promote the purchase of gun safes through financial incentives and subsidies. (I mean, if violence is a public health issue, locking guns up may reduce some violence, lowering the tax burden, so make it a write off!)
Universal single payer healthcare that includes mental health services.
Modernize NICS so that the army of telephone operators are made redundant. Repurpose them as data collectors, updating the system with the most up to date criminal history data available. Because the current system moves too slow.
Have local law enforcement serve warrants within 30 days of a conviction of a disqualifying offense to confiscate firearms from the homes of convicted criminals.
There’s 5 random ideas that would do more to curb gun violence than a new Assault Weapons Ban.
We all want less violence and more safety, but hardly anyone knows how to get there.