South Dakota Citizens Will Be Requires To Buy A Gun

[Richard Norway]

I just can't believe this. Five South Dakota lawmakers have introduced legislation that would require any adult 21 or older to buy a firearm ?sufficient to provide for their ordinary self-defense.?

http://www.argusleader.com/article/2011013...itizens-buy-gun

[Bruin Fisher]

Hmmm. Over on this side of the big pond where firearms are a rarity we tend to watch the US attitude to them with some puzzlement. I think the last time I even saw a real firearm (other than those holstered at the waists of policemen in airports) was forty years ago.

It seems that the lawmakers in South Dakota are not seriously attempting to make the purchase of a firearm mandatory, they're merely highlighting their view that just as citizens should not be forced to buy firearms, neither should they be forced to buy health insurance. And over here that too causes raised eyebrows - the National Health Service here is paid for out of taxes. How very different these two English-speaking countries are.

[Cole Parker]

It seems that the lawmakers in South Dakota are ... merely highlighting their view that just as citizens should not be forced to buy firearms, neither should they be forced to buy health insurance. And over here that too causes raised eyebrows - the National Health Service here is paid for out of taxes. How very different these two English-speaking countries are.

I suppose we could have done the same here: instead of making health insurance a mandatory purchase, we simply could have raised taxes and used the money the same way.

I imagine that in England, like here, some people don't make enough money to have to pay taxes, yet are still on the National Health program. We'd have that here, too, if we'd financed the system the same way. Some people wouldn't pay for what they'd get.

I wish, when we'd decided how to build a universal health care system for our country, we'd have taken a close look at what works and what doesn't work in the systems already extant in England and Canada and other countries that have them. We seemed to go about this by completely reinventing the wheel. Now we're discovering it's a bit out of round. Not too surprising, I'd say.

C