I'm not sure about the title [/Balance? of Power] for that page. The page is supposed to discuss the role of privately owned guns in aiding people in (for better or worse) fighting against an existing government. Such a page should cover the widely held view among the "Founding Fathers" of the United States that widespread ownership of guns was important for the maintenance of a good government, as well as covering the widely held modern view that rebels with guns are a bad thing.
Anyhow, I'm not sure what to call that page.
Why progressives should stop pushing for more gun control laws -- There are already thousands of them, too many of which don't work. Every ineffective law brings government into disrepute. -- Prohibition of something that large numbers of citizens want always fail, witness the [war on the drugs]?. It merely increases the value of the prohibited item and changes the distributors from honest people to crooks. -- Gun control laws are highly divisive to no good end. Since they don't work well, why get everyone so mad about them? Progressives should instead start finding issues that make people happy. -- Treating [gun laws]? as a national issue exacerbates cultural conflict, such as those between rural and urban, east and west, wealthy and not so well off. Telling rural Westerners to get rid of their guns is like telling an urban blacks to stop reading African-American books. -- There is no evidence that members of the NRA? murder people at a higher rate than non-members. It is insulting to gun owners to speak as though they did. [Why progressives should stop pushing for more gun control laws] By Sam Smith
I moved the bit on "why progressives should stop pushing for more gun control laws" to go under "Argument of a Pro-Gun Person", because it has (obvious) pro-gun bias.
Am I wrong to think that the Gun Lobby is mostly an American thing? We in Australia do have a pro-gun lobby, the "Shooters Party", but it seems to me to be a pretty minor and fringe force in Australian politics, not at all like the NRA in the US. I think in Europe its a pretty similar situation; there may be some pro-gun lobbies, but I've never heard of any. And I think most non-Western countries have pretty tough gun laws as well.
Finally, I don't think anyone claims the NRA members murder people more often than non-NRA members, but I would not be suprised if they murder people with guns (as opposed to by other means) more often. And having guns easily available in the community I'm sure increases the incidence of crimes committed using guns -- a lot of guns used in crime are stolen or diverted from legitimate users, so if there were less legitimate gun owners there would be less illegitimate guns also. -- Simon J Kissane
Actually, Simon, it would be astounding to discover that NRA members murder people with guns more often than non-NRA members. The demographics of murders (the vast majority of which have prior criminal records) and NRA members are wildly different. The vast majority of serious criminological research supports exactly the opposite conclusion from your other hypothesis, too: having guns easily available in a community has no correlation with crime in that community, and in fact, laws which have liberalized concealed carry have been shown to significantly reduce crime.
Let me make a meta-comment about this page: it's going to be very hard to write this page in a way that is satisfactory to all parties. One big difference between pro-gun people and anti-gun people is that pro-gun people tend to be much more involved with the issue, and to therefore have all the facts and figures at their quick disposal. So they won't stand for saying things like "I'm sure X, Y, and Z are the case." when the author isn't really sure in the sense of being able to cite research, but is really speaking colloquially for "I bet X, Y, and Z are the case."
On the other hand, being involved in the issue, the pro-gun people who have all the facts and figures at their disposal will tend to present them in a very pro-gun light. This makes for bias, too, of course, and the Wikipedia is no place for political agendas.
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