So what if they were? It's pretty damn sad for a person young enough to be considered a child to die from gun violence regardless of who they were! A sad societal failure on top of our failure to set them up with life circumstances that made them unlikely to fall in with a gang.

So a policy stricter than the US can have isn't enough to solve this problem. That's why it's better to aim at reducing accidental underage gun deaths which is much more achievable.

As a Canadian who grew up in a household with a dozen firearms, I never once touched those firearms, and hardly ever saw them until I was taken to the range by my father and taught how to use them.

also, fun fact, when your government spends a hundred years assisting coups of democratic or socialist governments, those counties are going to have a lot of political instability.

The United States has one border with a central America country (Mexico). Please show on the map where it has a border with any south American country?

It seems like their policies do go a big way to solve the problem, as infeasible as they appear to be for the USA.

They have a real welfare system, diminishing social inequalities and with that the feeding ground for crime.

…but it’s also worth pointing out that murder rates are also a lot lower than the US in other developed countries that don’t have Scandinavian levels of welfare transfers.

Also, I don't understand the focus on murder rates. Compare all violent crime at least.

It has a problem with a few small and very violent gangs that occasionally gun down people in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, completely disregarding the safety of the people around them, which is bad but nothing like the gang problems in the US or Latin America.

A multi-pronged approach that involves reducing the amount of guns in American is a surefire way to reduce access to guns by children, both in gangs and out.

But that’s of course not the main thing about guns and kids in the US like everyone knows.

School shootings are far down the list. They get a lot of attention but don't account for a large proportion of deaths.

Of course, that any of these deaths occur is tragic, which is why the most sensible solution is repeal of the Second Amendment and implementation of a nationwide, federal license requirement to purchase or own a firearm. 120-day grace period. License each gun, turn them in, or go to jail.

Let the gangs resort to cutting each other like Japanese gangs.

School shootings are far down the list as far as fatalities go. But that's a poor way to measure the impact of school shootings. The trauma inflicted by each of these events goes way beyond the number of children killed. Everyone who has heard actual gunshots in their own school building feels life-changing trauma.

When a kid in the US says "I'm scared to go to school," you can't tell them they have nothing to be scared of. You can tell them "It's not likely to happen at your school today." That's small comfort.

Repealing the 2nd would be a full-throated declaration that wielding weaponry is a privilege, not a right.

I am not a gun nut, and have little interest in owning/shooting guns. I've done it, and found it boring. But my defense of the 2nd Amendment is based on the domino theory that if the 2nd can be ignored, there goes the First and every other "inconvenient" right enshrined in the Constitution. The First is the most important of all those Rights.

Thanks for illustrating I am right that the First would be put on the chopping block right after the Second.

I don't care about gun rights. I do care about the Constitution, and I very much care about the First Amendment.

You could clarify that you mean the rights stated in the amendments of course.

Sorry, but the first amendment, as currently formulated, really needs to go. It should be replaced with a formulation of freedom expression that better balances individual freedom with the public interest according to modern political standards.

In fact, given the problems with corruption in the American system and first-past-the-post voting leading to money-driven, rather than truly democratic, politics, the entire constitution probably needs to be rethought. No less of an American political thinker than Justice Ginsburg has opined that the US constitution is no longer, in the current era, a model for good governance. This should happen in a civilized fashion with a convention and ratification much like the current constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, but it nonetheless needs to happen.

No, there aren't.

> the first amendment, as currently formulated, really needs to go

That's the first thing the Nazis did, as well as Mussolini, and every other repressive government. Without free speech, the rest of your rights go down the drain.

If Ginsburg advocated getting rid of free speech, I'd like to see a cite from you about that.

https://africasacountry.com/2012/02/ruthbaderginsburg/

On the matter of free speech, note that the South African and Canadian constitutions, and the ECHR, all protect freedom of expression exclude hate speech as protected speech. It is VERY much in line with modern statecraft to do so, and the doctrinaire approach of the First Amendment (only established in 1969, by the way, before which the USA implemented speech restrictions not dissimilar from those seen elsewhere) is the outlier here. Also note that getting rid of the First Amendment is not getting rid of freedom of expression.

Granted, her position was not even as radical as mine, which is that we must rethink the constitution from the ground up and implement a new form of government more resistant to corruption, again drawing from examples of more modern statecraft -- a multiparty parliamentary system, for instance. All she was saying was that new governments should look elsewhere for a template.

Ginsburg's views that the U.S. constitution is the supreme law of the land, and must be hewed closely to and not played fast and loose with for as long as it is active, were congruent with mine.

What's needed is a ban on semiauto rifles and pistols in civilian hands without a license. While we're doing that, may as well restrict all firearms.

What is that based on? The only people I hear even talk much about 'gangs' is conservative propgandists trying to demonize black and brown people and cities. I'm not saying no gangs exist, but they aren't really an issue (unless you define 'gang' as any association of >1 person

> the most sensible solution is repeal of the Second Amendment and implementation of a nationwide, federal license requirement to purchase or own a firearm. 120-day grace period. License each gun, turn them in, or go to jail.

It's a politicized judiciary. For centuries, nobody interpreted the 2nd Amendment the way the conservative judges do now, but when the Federalist Society intentionally politicized the judiciary, this is what happened.

Sounds like you've never been poor in urban areas?

For one thing, talking about them like they are all the same betrays that you haven't. They are as different as any other neighborhoods.

Not too far off. The federal definition is 3+. Gangs aren’t necessarily big.