What’s our goal? Only to defend 2A? I’d like to suggest that we should be pro-2A AND pro-safer-society.
In some countries with compulsory military service, Israel and Switzerland come to mind, you have a pool of men, and in some cases women, who have served in the military and received top-notch firearms training. Here’s the crime rate ranking for four countries from Crime Rate by Country 2023
Venezuela: 1 (no compulsory military service)
United States: 56 (no compulsory military service)
Israel: 105 (24-48 months for males and females at age 18)
Switzerland: 132 (245 days (18 weeks training + six 19-day recalls) for males aged 18-30)
If we’re going to promote 2A rights, let’s also promote some form of compulsory military training for able-bodied men and women, including a certain number of firearm training days per year between 18 and 25 years of age, each of them swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. (As did I as a civil-service employee of the USAF - and that oath never expires!)
Then, let’s GIVE each of them a service pistol to use in their military training which they keep SAFELY at home and/or on their person when not in active training. Oh, and what the heck, let’s also give them vouchers for paid membership in a local range.
And when they turn 26, they KEEP their service pistol and can still return voluntarily a certain number of times a year for training and exercises.
Not only would our military have a well-trained pool of people to call on in times of heightened need, but we’d eventually have a huge pool of responsibly armed adults.
Quite a few gang bangers have gone into infantry and come out with an enhanced skill set and perhaps a smidgen of ptsd…so there’s that. If we could get these folks on the 2a bandwagon, that’d be great, but legality is
at the expense of black market business, so may be a difficult sell.
Here we go again. Comparing countries with different traditions, history, cultures, ethnic makeup in crime rates. This is establishing false premise for the argument, regardless of whether we agree with compulsory service or not.
I am afraid you won’t be able to simplify your analysis to a couple of dimensions. How about a dozen factors? You need to hire a team of university scientists for a couple of years for this. Good luck finding unbiased ones.
Hong Kong is listed right next to Switzerland on that list and does not compel military service.
Same for Japan, they are right there on the list, but no compulsory service
United Kingdom is listed as lower violent crime…same for Australia and China and many others.
Looking at crime rates vs 1 variable doesn’t really help us (consider if we took that ranking and compared where the US was vs other countries and only looked at gun rights…)
I grow tired of hearing about how great it is in (your country here). How about this, it’s great to be a Free American in The United States of America. Our laws, Our diverse society, Our wealth and Our Freedoms give us opportunities and challenges that are unique to a free diverse society.
When I was 18, there was compulsory military service, and those of us forced to contribute their service were: (1) denied the right to vote; and, (2) in many states could not buy liquor. I saw my first riot at UC Boulder and was among the thousands of students to be tear gassed protesting the “right” of our government to send us to fight in Johnson/Nixon’s war to keep us safe from the domino-theory of communist expansion and the Tonkin Bay lie. The first of California’s draconian gun control laws were passed in reaction to seeing openly armed black men on the steps of the California capitol building.
A more civil society thanks to conscription. I think not.
The U.S. military branches don’t exist to solve all our nation’s social problems. NCOs have their hands full as it is with an all volunteer force, they don’t need a bunch of kids who were involuntarily wisked away from home because they lost the lottery. You know what’s going to happen? The rare breed of people who are getting the job done now will continue to get the job done, and the rest of the conscripted military will sit in classrooms getting their daily briefs on social justice from the people who thought mandatory service was a good idea.
First off, while I typically like to back my brothers and sisters in Arms, Air Force is more of a country club than the military. Cute and love the food, but your idea of PT is getting out of bed to take a shower. I’m sure your service was “tough”…but thanks for joining voluntarily (Sorry, couldn’t resist).
As for your idea, let’s really put things into perspective so the rest of the world stops making silly comparisons. Switzerland’s population is about what New York has and Venezuela has slightly smaller square footage than Texas Oklahoma & New Mexico combined.
For most of the uneducated masses, they see the country names and consider each equal and that couldn’t be farthest from the truth. Venezuela has around 2-3000 police officers, the US has nearly 700,000. The United States simply doesn’t compare to any other place on this planet. While there are places like Russia, Canada, and China that actually have slightly more land than we do, Canada has about 38 million people & Russia has 144 million compared to our nearly 380 million. China has us beat in population but they also have a communist ideology and don’t have the same freedoms we do. Wouldn’t want to speak out against the government there or they might have 1 less person to account for.
My point is that you can’t compare other countries to the USA because none on Earth have our values, geographic size, population, and differences like we do. We need to come up with our own plan and stop using comparisons to others who are barely the size of a city in our country.
I think every one who gets out of high school should get two years of military service so they learn respect for our flag and learn what it stands for.
That’s the job of our public schools. If they can’t do it in 12 years, that’s their problem. Fix the schools, don’t make their failure one more problem the military has to solve. How about we let our military worry about national defense and winning wars, and everyone else can get off their butts and do their own damn job.
I disagree. This country is now full of extremists on both sides. I also think that these people would refuse any “forced” training. I see the criminality we have now, but with government issued guns. I vote no respectfully.
Its been proven in actual wars that elite professional military is a lot more efficient than one based on compulsory service.
2nd, I recall reporters landing of US base in Afghanistan and reporting being welcomed by Latin Kings (gang) tags. Essentially, you are saying the military should look like society. This is woke staffing policy, and its been turning corporations, schools, and professions to s**t. No, military should eagerly reject applicants, including based on their tats or social media posts.
