There is absolutely no reason gambling should be illegal.

[Grummgug]

I think perhaps humanity is doomed to cycle through this train of thought forever.

1. young adults ask "Why can't we have gambling casinos and bars?"
2. young adults assert "There's no reason we cannot have these things!!!"
3. Casinos and bars get installed. Things are great at first.
4. Things get out of control as a criminal element moves in and takes root. Murder and violence strikes.
5. The young adults, now older and wiser, now mugged by reality, become more conservative in their thinking and understand why we need a stronger moral code.
6. The bars and casinos get shut down.
7. goto 1.

Every new generation seems to think they have new ideas never considered before, and the older generations just shake their head.

[Deleted]

cars should be illegal because people get killed in road accidents,
air planes also
kitchen knife too because some mad housewife can stabb hers hubby!

no seriously stop this nonsense!

everything is for people, they only have to use it sensibly: "gambling should be fun not a problem"

[Attackrabbit]

It's perfectly legal here (and before you say 'but I'm talking about the USA' you should maybe include that in your post)

[shise]

Unfortunately, not everyone is cloever enough to know what is good for them, so there needs to be control over them in order to help them stay away from harmful actions such as gambling.

In the current system we live in, you simply can not give full freedom to people, then the system breaks.

[Mad_Murdock]

no seriously stop this nonsense!

everything is for people, they only have to use it sensibly: "gambling should be fun not a problem"

There is a much bigger picture than simply, "cars\kitchen knives kill people they should be illegal too". In the State I live, they argued against all the different lotteries being allowed because of the fear of what could happen.

I'm in a overall poor state, poor people will gamble foolishly in hopes of striking it rich! In turn, they spend money they needed for Groceries and such on tickets. Now here is the more complicated part. We don't really live in a society where you get to make bad decisions and your whole family dies as a result. No, now that family gets help from the local, state, Federal Govt especially if kids are involved. So now the social services are getting used more because more people are squandering money, in turn, that cuts other aspects of the budget and the local and state suffer.
I don't gamble and I'm paying taxes, but I'm not getting my full value of those taxes, because the state needed to expand it's social services because opening up the lotteries and other means of gambling, only acted as enablers for people who couldn't control themselves.

You can say "cut social services!" but then you're basically saying "let the children die!" and that's just never going to go over good with our more liberal minded population. Whether it should be legal or not, is pretty much the same argument for Alcohol. I personally think the world or at least the US would be a far better place if we never had alcohol. Whatever minor "benefits" it offers would never match getting rid of all the drunk driving deaths, all the unwanted pregnancies, all the drunk college girl rapes\sexual assaults, fights and domestic violence. But we all love our booze too much, so we'll just keep the problems.

[Baladash]

Where I live it practically is legal. Indian reservations surround my city and as soon as you cross into one there is almost a guaranteed GIANT CASINO on the side of the highway. Ahh the southwest.