[DRAFT] WA Resolution on Arms

[Pommern Samoa]

On Arms
Category: Gun Control
Decision: Relax

RECOGNIZING the member-states of the World Assembly vary widely in technological progress, culture, development indices, urban to rural population ratio, crime rates, and practically all other vital statistics;

ACKNOWLEDING over-arching legislation will cause widespread issues, due to the aforementioned factors and any other factor unmentioned;

ACCEPTING circumstances inside a nation may require the relaxing or tightening of gun laws; on a scale of national, state, municipal or other internal governing body;

BELIVING that the rights of the People should not be impeded without reason;

COMITTED to public health, safety and security;

The General Assembly,

DEFINES "The People", "Citizens", "People", and other synonyms to be all citizens of member states, regardless of race, tongue, sex, religion, or political philosophy;

DEFINES "Firearms" as any and all weapons capable of discharging projectiles to cause signifigant bodily harm;

DEFINES "Ammunition" as any expendable item or unit which the Firearm discharges, or is needed for the discharge of the Firearm;

DEFINES "Acquisition" as the right to not be unduly burdened in purchasing Firearms, Ammunition, or any object or item related to the safe keeping and maintaince of such;

DEFINENS "Use" as target practice, weapons drills, safety practice, hunting, cleaning, self defense, and any other reasonable and practical use of a Firearm;

HERBY OBLIGES Member States to extend the following Rights:


Article 1. The rights in Article 2 of the Convention on the Keeping and Bearing of Arms must be extended to, but are by no means limited to, the following groups:

I. People living outside reasonable response time of local authorities in case of a crime against their person or other imminent threat to home, life or livelihood;
II. Collectors;
III. Hunters;
IV. People whom have reasonable fear of an armed attempt on their life;

NOTES that Article 1, Subsection III does not mandate or comment on the legality of Hunting in member states and shall not be construed as such;

REITERATES Article 2 Rights are in no means limited to the groups named in Article 1, and may be expanded by individual nations;


Article 2. Grants the following Rights;

I. Acquisition, Safe Keeping and Use of Firearms with no unreasonable restriction thereof;
II. Not to be deprived of the aforementioned Rights except in cases of criminal offense, Mental Incapability, and gross negligence
III. Not to be judged Mentally Incapable without the signed, written agreement of no less than two (2) medically trained and certified Doctors;

FURTHERMORE;

FIREARMS banned by national or international laws shall not be confiscated without due compensation;

RECOMENDS World Assembly Nations expand the Rights contained herein to the greatest extent reasonable and practical for each individual nation

OOC: This is very obviously my first attempt at any sort of draft for the WA. I don't have the two endorsements to propose it currently but I have enough people in my region who said they'd endorse me if I wanted to propose a resolution. I think Article 2.II/III is the weak link, personally.

[Separatist Peoples]

"No. Though a huge supporter of firearms and the right to own them, this is not an international issue. Nations have proved several times that there is no universal benefit to banning or unbanning them, and that this is an issue best regulated nationally, not internationally."

[Rapallo]

OOC: This is very obviously my first attempt at any sort of draft for the WA. I don't have the two endorsements to propose it currently but I have enough people in my region who said they'd endorse me if I wanted to propose a resolution. I think Article 2.II/III is the weak link, personally.

On Arms
Category: Gun Control
Decision: Relax

RECOGNIZING the member-states of the World Assembly vary widely in technological progress, culture, development indices, urban to rural population ratio, crime rates, and practically all other vital statistics;
And if you realize this why are you attempting to force values of violence and spread weapons in cultures and societies that are peaceful and have a minor rate of crime at best?

ACKNOWLEDING over-arching legislation will cause widespread issues, due to the aforementioned factors and any other factor unmentioned;
And yet this is exactly what this proposal is. It doesn't go into any real specifics and attempts to impose consensus even on people who would other wise go without.

ACCEPTING circumstances inside a nation may require the relaxing or tightening of gun laws; on a scale of national, state, municipal or other internal governing body;

BELIVING that the rights of the People should not be impeded without reason;
And how is the "Right to wield a more deathly weapon" a real sapient right?

COMITTED to public health, safety and security;
You know what I think when I think of public safety, security and health. Well for one not distributing instruments of death.

The General Assembly,

DEFINES "The People", "Citizens", "People", and other synonyms to be all citizens of member states, regardless of race, tongue, sex, religion, or political philosophy;
Well alright than Gays, and the Transgendered are now apparently not considered "people".

DEFINES "Firearms" as any and all weapons capable of discharging projectiles to cause signifigant bodily harm;
"bodily harm" wait I thought this way supposed to be for the health and safety of the people. Also according to this a crossbow and railgun fit the definition perfectly.

DEFINES "Ammunition" as any expendable item or unit which the Firearm discharges, or is needed for the discharge of the Firearm;

DEFINES "Acquisition" as the right to not be unduly burdened in purchasing Firearms, Ammunition, or any object or item related to the safe keeping and maintaince of such;
You have set up no standard for what is "unduly burdened" technically since you haven't a nation could set a 20 year wait period.

DEFINENS "Use" as target practice, weapons drills, safety practice, hunting, cleaning, self defense, and any other reasonable and practical use of a Firearm;

HERBY OBLIGES Member States to extend the following Rights:


Article 1. The rights in Article 2 of the Convention on the Keeping and Bearing of Arms must be extended to, but are by no means limited to, the following groups:

I. People living outside reasonable response time of local authorities in case of a crime against their person or other imminent threat to home, life or livelihood;
II. Collectors;
III. Hunters;
So we have to give weapons to hunters even in states that have moratoriums or complete bans on hunting?
IV. People whom have reasonable fear of an armed attempt on their life;
Well an increasing amount of firearms on the streets probably doesn't help the fear.

NOTES that Article 1, Subsection III does not mandate or comment on the legality of Hunting in member states and shall not be construed as such;
Even if you are not questioning the legality of hunting in a nation you are mandating that we give people firearms on the ground of hunting even in states that ban hunting.

REITERATES Article 2 Rights are in no means limited to the groups named in Article 1, and may be expanded by individual nations;
And if not there where in the world do we draw this arbitraty line?

Article 2. Grants the following Rights;

I. Acquisition, Safe Keeping and Use of Firearms with no unreasonable restriction thereof;
You have not defined the term "Safe Keeping" and now you are making it a right?
II. Not to be deprived of the aforementioned Rights except in cases of criminal offense, Mental Incapability, and gross negligence
III. Not to be judged Mentally Incapable without the signed, written agreement of no less than two (2) medically trained and certified Doctors;
Why two? Usually only one doctor actually diagonses a person with a mental disorder, forcing a second for every single case would bog down most healthcare systems and the fact you leave it open to any doctors. So according to this an ENT and a forensic pathologic can rule on a person's mental status.

FURTHERMORE;

FIREARMS banned by national or international laws shall not be confiscated without due compensation;
Well since your leaving it so widely open like that I guess anyone can actually just ban all firearms.

RECOMENDS World Assembly Nations expand the Rights contained herein to the greatest extent reasonable and practical for each individual nation

Welcome to the snake pits of the WA. You are going to want to think a little harder on this issue. "Guns" and "Firearm" rights are something that get proposed over and over again but it never makes it through mainly because most have the view that it is a national issue and not interregion/international.

[Bhang Bhang Duc]

Use of a spell checker is also advised. I got to the sixth spellng mistake and gave up reading.

[Grays Harbor]

We do not believe it is, nor should it be, up to the WA whether Jim Bob can legally purchase a firearm. That is for nations to determine for themselves based on local conditions.

[The Sheika]

Spelling errors aside, I will give you credit for a good first attempt at your first draft of a WA proposal. However, I must agree with my counterparts that this should not be a WA issue.

[Hirota]

Use of a spell checker is also advised. I got to the sixth spellng mistake and gave up reading.

Not sure what spell check you are using. I count (well, MSword counts) three spelling errors, and one suggested use of hyphenation using British English as the language.

So quick disclaimer, I'm opposed to the idea of relaxing gun legislation, that makes it difficult for me to support any legislation that seeks to do so. Nonetheless, I'll try and do so.

Second disclaimer, I'm not going to get involved in the issue of if it is or isn't an international matter. Personally, I think that line of argument is wheeled out so often as an argument for practically anything that it starts to lsoe it's value as an argument and becomes background noise. That not anyones fault in particular, as a whole lot of people do it on different issues.

What I will do is go through your proposal line by line.

RECOGNIZING the member-states of the World Assembly vary widely in technological progress, culture, development indices, urban to rural population ratio, crime rates, and practically all other vital statistics;

ACKNOWLEDING over-arching legislation will cause widespread issues, due to the aforementioned factors and any other factor unmentioned;

ACCEPTING circumstances inside a nation may require the relaxing or tightening of gun laws; on a scale of national, state, municipal or other internal governing body;

It's preambulatory fluff, but it demonstrates you have an understanding of some of the complaints about micromanagement. Good stuff.

BELIVING that the rights of the People should not be impeded without reason;

COMITTED to public health, safety and security;

Fair enough.

The General Assembly,

DEFINES "The People", "Citizens", "People", and other synonyms to be all citizens of member states, regardless of race, tongue, sex, religion, or political philosophy;

Not sure you need this definition, but if you have the space I suppose it doesn't matter.

DEFINES "Firearms" as any and all weapons capable of discharging projectiles to cause signifigant bodily harm;

DEFINES "Ammunition" as any expendable item or unit which the Firearm discharges, or is needed for the discharge of the Firearm;

DEFINES "Acquisition" as the right to not be unduly burdened in purchasing Firearms, Ammunition, or any object or item related to the safe keeping and maintaince of such;

DEFINENS "Use" as target practice, weapons drills, safety practice, hunting, cleaning, self defense, and any other reasonable and practical use of a Firearm;

All three spelling errors are in there and underlined. "Defense" is an Americanism, so it's perfectly acceptable. "Self defence" could by hypenated. My one concern is that under this definition, mace spray could be considered a firearm. Sure, you could rightly point to it not causing "significant harm", but where does that line get crossed? A taser for example? It's at this point this vigilance towards definition starts to become self-defeating. You could remove all of this and rely on reasonable nation theory, but that would probably draw criticism as well.

For the record, not saying you shouldn't try and define things, and you've done a decent job. Moreover, this is almost preambulatory to the main event, so perhaps not anything argue too much about.

HERBY OBLIGES Member States to extend the following Rights:

Article 1. The rights in Article 2 of the Convention on the Keeping and Bearing of Arms must be extended to, but are by no means limited to, the following groups:

I. People living outside reasonable response time of local authorities in case of a crime against their person or other imminent threat to home, life or livelihood;
II. Collectors;
III. Hunters;
IV. People whom have reasonable fear of an armed attempt on their life;

Ah, we reach the meat of the proposal. So if I understand it, this legislation would seek to allow all these groups the right to bear arms. Unfortunately this list has issues.

According to this list, a person outside of the reasonable response time of local authorities (which is difficult to quantify in itself) is allowed to own a firearm in the event of a crime, or other imminentthreat. So supposedly living near to an active volcano could be considered enough to allow a person to own a firearm. Heck, a floodplain which has a well documented history of flooding would be enough to own a firearm. Both are quantifiable threats to home, life and livelihood.

Secondly, a collector is allowed to own a firearm - should a collector of baseball cards be allowed? Secondly, assuming you mean firearm collector, what is considered a collection? If someone already owns two firearms, why should they be allowed to own three?

I'll try and get back to this later for some more feedback on the second half of your draft.

[Normlpeople]

Clover smiled "Welcome to the WA ambassador! I welcome you with a warning, the nickname of 'festering snakepit' is well earned. As to the draft, while I do like it, I warn you that gun control is a polarizing issue in the WA, the pro-gun and anti-gun sides pretty much only agree that a) its a national, rather than international issue and b) the best legislation on the topic is none at all.

I do not believe you will be able to pass it for this reason. I do congratulate you on a good first attempt though, it is far better than we usually see here. If you wish, I will offer a more complete critique though."

[Herby]

HERBY OBLIGES Member States to extend the following Rights:

No I don't.

[Wrapper]

Not sure what spell check you are using. I count (well, MSword counts) three spelling errors

It seems to be skipping over the all caps mistakes: ACKNOWLEDING, BELIVING, COMITTED, DEFINENS, and, of course, everyone's favorite, HERBY.

[Bhang Bhang Duc]

Use of a spell checker is also advised. I got to the sixth spellng mistake and gave up reading.

Not sure what spell check you are using. I count (well, MSword counts) three spelling errors, and one suggested use of hyphenation using British English as the language.

It's a skill called "literacy".

[Hirota]

Not sure what spell check you are using. I count (well, MSword counts) three spelling errors, and one suggested use of hyphenation using British English as the language.

It's a skill called "literacy".

This coming from the guy who wrote "spellng?" Drop the snark.

[Ponaeamic]

[size=150]Well then, this escalated very quickly, and is of no use to the topic being discussed by this thread. [/size]

[Bears Armed]

It seems to be skipping over the all caps mistakes: ACKNOWLEDING, BELIVING, COMITTED, DEFINENS, and, of course, everyone's favorite, HERBY.

If they're using the spellchecker that's part of MS WSord, in my experience It always does that.

[Chester Pearson]

It's a skill called "literacy".

This coming from the guy who wrote "spellng?" Drop the snark.

I'm sorry, but were you made a moderator secretly?

[The Dark Star Republic]

(Heh)

Anyway, I do feel a bit sorry for people writing Gun Control proposals. Every time one is posted they are always immediately told this isn't a matter for the WA. A reasonable response might be: so why does the category even exist, then?

[Frisbeeteria]

This coming from the guy who wrote "spellng?" Drop the snark.

I'm sorry, but were you made a moderator secretly?

I'm sorry, were YOU? It's perfectly acceptable for nations to call other nations to task for errors.

[Hirota]

I'm sorry, but were you made a moderator secretly?

As I have observed in my signature for the span of several months - what a terrifying thought. Seriously. Wouldn't want the responsibility. I'd be terrified of a lapse in judgement or letting my personal biases affect me.

Also, were you actually planning to take a stab at constructive feedback for this first time author? Cos, I'd rather like to carry on where I left off, actually taking the time to try and respond to this new author and try and give him the courtesy of at least one detailed response to his draft.

Where was I? Ah yes...

Article 1. The rights in Article 2 of the Convention on the Keeping and Bearing of Arms must be extended to, but are by no means limited to, the following groups:

I. People living outside reasonable response time of local authorities in case of a crime against their person or other imminent threat to home, life or livelihood;
II. Collectors;
III. Hunters;
IV. People whom have reasonable fear of an armed attempt on their life;

I've talked about the first two already, no need to go over that again. Compared to the issues on the first two, hunters are a pretty mild exception.

The last exception, number 4 - how would you define a reasonable fear of an armed attempt on their life? Is this based upon someones perceived fear of an attempted, armed murder, or on the actual probability?

Is it also worth noting that surely by making it easier for firearms to be obtained, you are inevitably increasing the chances someone will believe they will get murdered with a firearm, and thus perpetuating the spread of firearms?

NOTES that Article 1, Subsection III does not mandate or comment on the legality of Hunting in member states and shall not be construed as such;

REITERATES Article 2 Rights are in no means limited to the groups named in Article 1, and may be expanded by individual nations;

Meh, not really anything here to get worked up about.

Article 2. Grants the following Rights;

I. Acquisition, Safe Keeping and Use of Firearms with no unreasonable restriction thereof;

There's an issue here, but I'm tired and can't put my finger on it. Ill ponder this and get back to you.

II. Not to be deprived of the aforementioned Rights except in cases of criminal offense, Mental Incapability, and gross negligence

Is this a criminal offense in the particular member state, or in any member state? Searching a database of several trillion(?) individuals would be time consuming, and who would host this database?

III. Not to be judged Mentally Incapable without the signed, written agreement of no less than two (2) medically trained and certified Doctors;

You've covered incapability, why have you not discussed how someone is guilty of gross negligence.

FURTHERMORE;

FIREARMS banned by national or international laws shall not be confiscated without due compensation;

Who pays this compensation? Also, if someone came over the border into a WA nation, with a banned firearm, why should they be paid compensation? Could an arms dealer offload a couple of crates of shoddy AK's by sending them fedex?

RECOMENDS World Assembly Nations expand the Rights contained herein to the greatest extent reasonable and practical for each individual nation

Fluffy enough to not be offended.

I quite like your resolution, it's the best draft I've seen on relaxing gun crime for a while, and I've been harsh (you might think petty) for that reason. I hope you write other resolutions in the future, and don't let the squabbling get you down.

Anyway, I do feel a bit sorry for people writing Gun Control proposals. Every time one is posted they are always immediately told this isn't a matter for the WA. A reasonable response might be: so why does the category even exist, then?

It's a reasonable question.