Has our gun situation in the US gotten worse since they ended the draft?

[elehhhhna]

When guys were in the MIL they got gun training. Do you think that training helped them gain a healthy respect for the dangers of gunplay? Now any yahoo can buy one for playtime.

[stone space]

1. Of all the lame arguements for bringing back the draft (and they are all pretty lame), this one...

...is perhaps the lamest.

Of course, the competition is pretty stiff, so reasonable people can certainly disagree on which argument for the draft are the lamest.

[spin]

2. If you are referring to the rate of gun violence ...

it has fallen significantly in the last two decades.

Gun violence in US has fallen dramatically over past 20 years, Justice Dept. report finds
Tuesday May 7, 2013 12:50 PM

By Pete Williams, NBC News chief justice correspondent

Gun violence in America has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, and the number of murders committed with a firearm is down too, though guns are still by far the leading type of crime weapon, according to a new report from the Justice Department.

As for where crime guns came from, the study notes that less than two percent of convicted inmates reported buying their weapons at gun shows or flea markets. The highest number, 40 percent, said the guns came from a family member or a friend. About 37 percent said the weapons were stolen or obtained from an illegal source. The rest say the guns were bought at a retail store or pawn shop.

Murders committed with a gun dropped 39 percent to 11,101 in 2011, from a high of 18,253 in 1993, according to the report.

Other crimes committed with guns were down even more sharply — from 1.53 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011, a drop of 70 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/07/18108298-gun-violence-in-us-has-fallen-dramatically-over-past-20-years-justice-dept-report-finds?lite

I firmly support firearm safety training. I was in the Air Force during the Vietnam era and while I never seen combat, I did have to qualify with a rifle on the range yearly.

I personally feel that firearm safety training should be required in high school along with a course on first aid. Gun control advocates disagree as they feel that exposing high school students to firearms may lead to interest in owning such weapons. I argue that in a nation with 300,000,000 firearms and 80,000,000 people who own them, high school firearm safety training only makes commonsense.

I also feel that an individual who wishes to buy a firearm or ammunition should have a card proving that he/she has had firearm safety training. Scuba divers have to have such a card to fill their tanks and sky divers need one to board a jump plane.