{"id":7711,"date":"2023-12-12T13:08:54","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T12:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/?p=7711"},"modified":"2024-04-24T11:41:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T10:41:53","slug":"linking-civilian-armament-with-a-states-democracy-levels-is-misguided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/2023\/12\/12\/linking-civilian-armament-with-a-states-democracy-levels-is-misguided\/","title":{"rendered":"Linking civilian armament with a state’s democracy levels is misguided"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Orig<\/a>i<\/a>nal article<\/a>\u00a0(in Slovenian) was published on 29\/11\/2023; Author: Nina Rozman <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin Flander, professor of law at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, argues that the US is not the right country to compare Slovenia with when it comes to civilian access to weapons, as the European and American concepts are different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On November 3, the Nova24tv.si portal published an article with a headline asserting that armed civilians are a “a feature of democratic countries”. This was a reference to a post<\/a> from October 20, 2023 by Democratic Party (SDS) president Janez Jan\u0161a on the social network X in which he encouraged people to obtain firearms through legal means. He was responding to a video showing a group of individuals waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Allah is great” in Arabic, which was filmed in Ljubljana’s Pre\u0161eren Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin Flander, an associate professor of law at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, explained to Razkrinkavanje.si that “the answer to the question about the relationship between the level of democracy and security in a society and the availability of weapons is not unambiguous”. He said it is not possible to claim that greater access to weapons brings greater security, nor that private gun ownership is a feature of democratic states.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stressed that there are differences between the European and the American concept of civilian access to firearms. In the US, the right to bear firearms is a constitutional right, which is the result of historical circumstances and the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. In Europe, however, with few exceptions, there is generally a presumption that firearms pose inherent dangers, which is why access to weapons is more severely restricted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to the question of arming civilians, the United States and Slovenia are hardly comparable, given their stark differences in nearly every aspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees<\/a> the inalienable right of citizens to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Slovenia, this right is regulated by the Weapons Act<\/a>, which has been in force since January 2001. A person of legal age who is reliable can obtain a license to purchase weapons and ammunition, a license to possess weapons and a weapons certificate. This is verified by a competent authority on the basis of established facts which confirm that the holder will not misuse, negligently use or store the weapon, or leave it with a person without a valid license. In order to obtain these licenses, the holder must also pass a medical examination and a weapons handling test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law restricts eligibility for a weapons license to specific groups, including individuals facing threats who require a safety weapon, hunters, members of shooting sports organizations, and those who have inherited or received firearms as gifts. Individuals with a prior conviction for intentional violent crimes, human trafficking, or drug offenses as determined by a court of law are prohibited from possessing firearms under this legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flander argues that the civilian use of weapons is “in principle adequately regulated in the Weapons Act. If anything, minor changes are needed, but Slovenia certainly does not need a reform that would go in the direction of \ua78cliberalization\ua78c or \ua78camericanization\ua78c of the rules”. Relatively restrictive regulations “contribute to Slovenia still being one of the safest countries in the world”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he warned of the risks of an oversimplification of the legalization procedures, as such changes could, for example, promote a black market in weapons, even as they would “most likely encourage some holders of \ua78cunregistered\ua78c weapons to obtain the relevant licenses, thereby improving security”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same article, Nova24tv reported that Slovenian mainstream media report on the dangers of appeals for the legal arming and issue warnings about mass shootings in the US, but the article argues thar these phenomena “are mainly a reflection of other social ills”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A survey on the link between gun ownership regulation, gun possession rates, and the incidence of mass shootings in the US, published<\/a> in 2019 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal BMJ, confirmed that mass shootings are more common in states with less stringent regulations and high gun ownership.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A comparative analysis of 50 key gun laws in the US, carried out this year by Everytown, a US non-profit working for civilian gun control, found<\/a> that countries with strict gun regulation have less gun violence. Among 50 key laws, they identified five basic ones. This year, 14 states without these five laws had three times as many gun deaths as the eight states with the strictest laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Razkrinkavanje has shared the findings with Nova24tv and the response will be published as they respond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim in the headline of the Nova24tv.si article that “armed civilians are a feature of democratic countries” is without merit. Countries have different concepts of civilian access to weapons, so making a link between armed civilians and the level of democracy in a country is not credible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim that mass shootings in the US are “primarily a reflection of other social ills” rather than increased access to legal guns is false.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article\u00a0(in Slovenian) was published on 29\/11\/2023; Author: Nina Rozman Benjamin Flander, professor of law at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, argues that the US is not the right country to compare Slovenia with when it comes to civilian access to weapons, as the European and American concepts are different. On November 3, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[225,10,34,15],"class_list":["post-7711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fact-checks","tag-guns","tag-politics","tag-slovenia","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7714,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions\/7714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}