On 5-10-2009 5:18, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
>>> If that were the case, then shouldn't all the other countries with 
>>> tougher gun control have been replaced by totalitarian regimes by now?
>>
>> Many of them have been. The USA is arguably[1] one of the countries 
>> with the longest continuous government. (Altho I don't expect that's 
>> really due to the gun laws. :-)
>>
>> [1] The argument being how you measure "continuous". One can measure 
>> it in a way that very few governments are older.
>>
> Its also the country with the highest number of people in jail, the 
> highest levels of drug use, the highest cases of teen pregnancies, the 
> highest rate of violent crime, the highest level of science denial, etc. 
> Well, once you discount places like the ME, since compared to them, we 
> have only the "second highest" number of religious fanatics.
> 
> Somehow, I would hate to think that "longest continuous government" 
> requires any or all of these things, to survive this long. 

As I understood it that phrase was for some definition of 'continuous' 
with a footnote that other definitions are possible. IMHO you have to 
carefully select that definition *knowing* that the US has to come up on 
top. For any reasonable definition that won't happen.

Let me try at a minimal and sufficient set:
- still in charge in 2009 (to exclude China, Japan and a host of other 
countries)
- a written constitution (to exclude e.g. the UK and the Vatican and to 
narrow it down to countries. Otherwise almost any European city would be 
longer)
- no major changes to the constitution (to exclude e.g. the Netherlands)
- major changes to the area of the country are explicitly allowed.

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