Sure, but given the massive drafts of the period, there is no way to know if volunteerism would have been effective (or if other strategies, like incentivizing enlistment, would have been). I’m also not sure that one justifiable war justifies the next seventy years of ambivalent ones.

Women have been in combat roles for thousands of years and are killing people as we speak as members of numerous militaries and rebel units around the world. Some of the most famous fighters in WWII were the Soviet Night Witches, elite female fighter pilots. The first woman in the US to get a military pension was a…

Frankly, I don’t even understand why we allow guns to be manufactured that a child can fire. There is no reason why civilians should have guns with trigger pull weights light enough for a toddler to operate them.

I don’t doubt that combat is horrible. But it is important for women to be treated as equally capable to men. Women have been in combat roles for thousands of years, are perfectly capable of achieving the physical standards of the military, and should be equal citizens to men. Yes, war sucks, but hiding under the…

IDK...I can’t say that the Gulf Wars, Vietnam, or even Korea made a particularly strong contribution to our national welfare. I’m not saying we should not have a military at all, I’m saying we should not be drafting people into it.

I can see not wanting fingerprinting on police guns (my understanding is many smaller precincts share guns anyway) but for private owners I think it should at least be an option. If I had small children, for instance, I would want it.

I didn’t say it applied only to women. I am against drafting anyone.

People actually are held liable for others’ actions quite often. One example of this is teenage drinking—in many states parents can be held liable for teenagers drinking in their household (even other people’s children) if they know it is going on and fail to stop it, fail to adequately secure alcohol, or fail to…

Well in the US slavery generally refers to the enslavement of African-Americans or to forced labor without compensation. Soldiers are compensated whether they are drafted or not, so I don’t really think slavery is an accurate term for draftees.

Nope! I don’t like it that men are drafted either and I think that men also have the right to bodily autonomy. Every person should be able to enforce their boundaries about their bodies.

I would hope, but in general I just don’t think drafts are morally right or democratic.

Yeah, you can’t be accountable for stolen property, but if you teach your kid to use a gun and where the gun is and the kid uses the gun on another person...I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you.

I don’t really have a problem with the parents owning a gun, but I do think that teaching teenagers to use guns is a very bad idea and should be illegal. There’s no real reason why a teenager should know how to use one or have access to the gun. And yeah, I do blame the parents for that—you should be able to lock up…

Part of feminism (at least the strain of feminism I keep with) is having respect for a person’s bodily autonomy. The draft ignores that for dreaftees, and it also forces people to work for an institution that is all about the killing of other humans including civilians (for sometimes unjustified reasons).

ACK..

Or just accidents. It’s the whole false positives thing from Statistics 101. There are far more gun accidents than there are crimes prevented by guns. If we increase people’s access to and time with guns, gun accidents will soar.

I think that would be great.

Yup. As a feminist I hate the draft on principle, but if you’re going to have a draft, it needs to be equal. I also hope this will help women in the military already be taken seriously and maybe scare TPTB into dealing with the rampant sexual assault problem there.

I swear to god, there should be penalties for people whose guns are used by family members to commit crimes, and no one under 18 should be allowed to handle one.

I’m sure if it turns out to be real problem, we’ll see some sort of “businesses under two years old” or “businesses under X employees” (like for FMLA) limitation go into effect.