The right to bear arms

[Alpha]

Because we're all sick of people talking about how Issue X belongs in Thread Y, not Thread Z, and I'm all about action and getting people to post in this subforum.

What are your views on gun rights?

Now, it's a contentious issue, and if you're not one to get a kick out of long multi-quoted posts and subtle keyboard warriorishness, then how about you disregard all of the posts in this thread, and offer simple, to-the-point responses to the following (underlined) questions, which can also operate for getting the familiar discussion going:

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

I'll post my own responses at a later date, because I think my dinner is burning. Have at it!

[Hobaginator]

First off, I'm not attacking you, so don't get all sensitive.

if you're not one to get a kick out of long multi-quoted posts and subtle keyboard warriorishness, then how about you disregard all of the posts in this thread, and offer simple, to-the-point responses to the following (underlined) questions

That's a weird way to subtly insult anyone who does not follow your template. You have laid out a very specific outline that you'd like us to follow. You asked us a series of questions about gun control, and you'd like answers to said questions. It's all very structured, yes, but I think without the Hobag, no serious discussion can be sparked with such a controlled environment. Freedom of speech requires a little wiggle-room to get around in.

That being said, allow me to bite the line.

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

I believe that non-criminal citizens have a right to bear small arms. With proper training, background investigation and liscencing citizens should be allowed to own up to fully automatic light machineguns. My reasoning for this is that to this day there has never been a weapon to replace the rifle for basic infanry, and all citizens should have the capability to defend their rights on the infantry level if need be. Explosives should be limited because if the day came that there was open war in the states, it's really not all that hard to just manufacture home-made bombs and grenades. I'm not a warmonger, I'm just prepared for anything.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

Crime and gun ownership are always a touchy subject. Truth is, there's always negroes to steal guns and scratch off the serial number to be then used in committing crimes. The best way to defend ourselves is to shoot criminals on sight during the commission of crimes, but that's generally illegal.

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)

Shoot em, just like Treyvon Martin. But once again, that's apparently illegal.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

I own a Remington 03A3 30.06 battle rifle, a .22 caliber small game rifle and a 20 ga shotgun. I used to own a Glock model 36 subcompact .45 ACP but I went to a beer pong party, got drunk and a pot smoking negro the host allowed in the house stole it from me. True story.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

I've actually drawn my gun and set it on the ground to duke it out with my fists with a high negro who thought he was the toughest thing ever to walk through the hood. Sure, I could have Treyvon Martin'd him and probably would have faced no consequences because he threw the first punch, but I thought it would be more fun to prove to him that he's a little punk byach and he punches like a girl. Would I shoot somebody if I had to? You bet your ass. Did I have to that time? No, dude wasn't even a threat to me. Most negroes can't fight worth a damn. Him included.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

They should have semi-auto assault rifles in addition to their current beat load. Send criminals to hell with my blessing, PD.

My suggestion is if you think U.S. citizens shouldn't own guns... go live in the inner-city "hood" for a month. Even a week. You will change your mind. Unless of course you have nothing the dirtbags want, then they'll leave you alone. If you're a good looking white girl, or a man with money and possessions, you're a target and there's no two ways about it. Best way to protect yourself is to live in a nice white community... if that's not possible then you'd better have a gun at least in your car and a knife in your pocket.

[Alpha]

if you're not one to get a kick out of long multi-quoted posts and subtle keyboard warriorishness, then how about you disregard all of the posts in this thread, and offer simple, to-the-point responses to the following (underlined) questions
That's a weird way to subtly insult anyone who does not follow your template. You have laid out a very specific outline that you'd like us to follow. You asked us a series of questions about gun control, and you'd like answers to said questions. It's all very structured, yes, but I think without the Hobag, no serious discussion can be sparked with such a controlled environment. Freedom of speech requires a little wiggle-room to get around in.

No, it wasn't addressed at you. It's because it is self-evident that most members of this forum dislike entering threads where they get attacked and ripped apart. Some people (you and I included, actually) somehow get enjoyment from it. You don't have to follow my template; I just wanted to make a point of entry for anyone who did.

I believe that non-criminal citizens have a right to bear small arms. With proper training, background investigation and liscencing citizens should be allowed to own up to fully automatic light machineguns. My reasoning for this is that to this day there has never been a weapon to replace the rifle for basic infanry, and all citizens should have the capability to defend their rights on the infantry level if need be. Explosives should be limited because if the day came that there was open war in the states, it's really not all that hard to just manufacture home-made bombs and grenades. I'm not a warmonger, I'm just prepared for anything.

Crime and gun ownership are always a touchy subject. Truth is, there's always negroes to steal guns and scratch off the serial number to be then used in committing crimes. The best way to defend ourselves is to shoot criminals on sight during the commission of crimes, but that's generally illegal.

Shoot em, just like Treyvon Martin. But once again, that's apparently illegal.

I own a Remington 03A3 30.06 battle rifle, a .22 caliber small game rifle and a 20 ga shotgun. I used to own a Glock model 36 subcompact .45 ACP but I went to a beer pong party, got drunk and a pot smoking negro the host allowed in the house stole it from me. True story.

I've actually drawn my gun and set it on the ground to duke it out with my fists with a high negro who thought he was the toughest thing ever to walk through the hood. Sure, I could have Treyvon Martin'd him and probably would have faced no consequences because he threw the first punch, but I thought it would be more fun to prove to him that he's a little punk byach and he punches like a girl. Would I shoot somebody if I had to? You bet your ass. Did I have to that time? No, dude wasn't even a threat to me. Most negroes can't fight worth a damn. Him included

My suggestion is if you think U.S. citizens shouldn't own guns... go live in the inner-city "hood" for a month. Even a week. You will change your mind. Unless of course you have nothing the dirtbags want, then they'll leave you alone. If you're a good looking white girl, or a man with money and possessions, you're a target and there's no two ways about it. Best way to protect yourself is to live in a nice white community... if that's not possible then you'd better have a gun at least in your car and a knife in your pocket.

If you continue to be racist (and sexist), I will warn you. You cannot afford another warning.

But onto your actual argument. Do you really see the Federal government as such a threat that it is likely to unleash the military against its own citizens--against the brothers and sisters of the people who are actually serving in the military? How paranoid can you be?

A) It's not going to happen, ever.

B) Even if it did, what use is a semi-automatic machine-gun against tanks, fighter jets, a navy frigate, stealth bombers, Navy Seals...? A hand gun is only really a great deal of use against a person who is equally- or less-well-equipped as you are.

They should have semi-auto assault rifles in addition to their current beat load. Send criminals to hell with my blessing, PD.

So the Police should be able to kill people extra-judicially? You know what is not constitutional? Killing citizens without just cause or trial by a jury of their peers.

Here's the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Allowing the Police (or, more accurately, enabling them) to kill 'criminals' before they are proven to be such (by a speedy trial with a jury of their peers) is Unconstitutional. And that is a far more important right than your right to bear arms, as evidenced by its far greater universiality globally.

[seanb]

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms?
Yes.

(Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)?
Arms for the purpose of hunting and protection only. These are they only weapons which I feel are necessary. All other weapons which are made for the army should stay in the army and special forces and so on. As far as I'm concerned, grenades and M-16's don't belong under the beds of civilians.

Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)?
Weapon's should need a licence. And to obtain a licence it should take a series of interviews and form's to be completed to prove that the person in question does not have any serious mental health problems or a severe criminal record... (all of which is pretty much how things are were I live)

How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))
I'm not qualified to name a specific number, but yes there should definitely be a limit to the amount of guns you can own. Personally I would impose this more on handguns, more than hunting guns, obviously rifles and shotguns are not just as prone to be involved in crime than smaller concealed weapons.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)
I think crime is affected both positively and negatively in relation to ownership of guns, which is unfortunate as it leaves us with unclarity and confusion when trying to discern ways to reduce terrible crimes. Her, police don't bear arms, which angers me sometimes because they are often outnumbered and cannot handle situations which get out of hand. Handguns are illegal here too for regular use, and I have to say I cannot remember hearing about a crime that has involved a handgun in years. However people can and do get them. and larger weapons end up being used in organised crimes, ie sawn of shotguns.
so I honestly can't give a black or white answer to this one.

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)
Again my views get torn here because I do support the right for responsible owners to have guns. It's getting the balance right with legislation on types of guns, and make sure people are fit and legible to posses a firearm by means of licencing, that's the closest I think we can get to making things as safe as possible for the general public.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)
Not legally, I never bothered getting my gun licence, but myself and my dad go hunting often and I use one of his shotguns. A world apart from the malicious crimes associating handguns.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)
I don't but my neighbor sleeps with a shotgun under his bed and I know for a fact he would shoot anyone who came onto his property who wasn't invited. I admire him for that, he's an old man and has every right to defend himself in his home. I'd do the same if I was in his position.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)
I think they should. They don't here either, and i don't think they get the respect or authority they deserve. I would feel safer in a public place if I knew police armed.

[Hobaginator]

If you continue to be racist (and sexist), I will warn you. You cannot afford another warning.

I will continue to be racist, but I'll leave it out of my future discussion, just for you buddy. Thanks for the pre-warning warning. Although I could afford one more as long as it wasn't over 5 points. I always get the 34 pt ones.

Do you really see the Federal government as such a threat that it is likely to unleash the military against its own citizens--against the brothers and sisters of the people who are actually serving in the military? How paranoid can you be?

A) It's not going to happen, ever.

Not the military... I'd more expect it to be the mercenary PMCs that are corporation-driven merchants of war. I don't expect it to happen until about 2035. Please refer to "MIT predicts Global Economic Collapse 2030" in google.
If you'd like to learn more about Private Military Corporations here's a good link for you:
List / Directory of Private Military Companies (Contractors) or PMCs, Corporate Profiles, Lists of Services, Locations
-- And that's just the start of it. There are hundreds of these companies that operate worldwide. If anybody was going to do it, it would be something like this. That's not paranoia, that's preparation.

As far as the police carrying semi-auto assault rifles... that's so that they can shoot people caught during the commision of violent crimes easier. That's legal.

[Sasquatch]

It's all very structured, yes, but I think without the Hobag, no serious discussion can be sparked with such a controlled environment.

Get over yourself, kid.

Freedom of speech requires a little wiggle-room to get around in.

This is a forum controlled by a private entity. You don't have freedom of speech here. You don't have the right to say whatever you want, and your "rights" wouldn't be "violated" if you broke the rules of the forum and were warned or banned for it.

With proper training, background investigation and liscencing citizens should be allowed to own up to fully automatic light machineguns.

I didn't realize the Constitution actually said, "shall not be infringed ... except for having the federal government choose and keep track of who gets to have a firearm".

I own a Remington 03A3 30.06 battle rifle, a .22 caliber small game rifle and a 20 ga shotgun.

Remington 03A3 hasn't been a battle rifle for nearly seventy years.

I used to own a Glock model 36 subcompact .45 ACP but I went to a beer pong party, got drunk and a pot smoking negro the host allowed in the house stole it from me. True story.

I've actually drawn my gun and set it on the ground to duke it out with my fists with a high negro who thought he was the toughest thing ever to walk through the hood.

First of all, the racism doesn't help your cause. It just makes you look like an ignorant moron, and right now, whether you like it or not, you represent gun owners and Second Amendment advocates, so your ignorance reflects on the rest of us.

Second -- and I can't stress this enough -- if these are true, you are ****ING STUPID. How in the **** does somebody steal a gun that you're carrying? And why the hell would you take out your gun and put it on the ground? A Glock 36 is not only a $500 pistol, it's also a damn GUN. Why would you want to be responsible for something that somebody else could do by simply picking up YOUR handgun? If either of these two stories are true, you are too stupid to own a firearm, and you should sell all of yours immediately.

They should have semi-auto assault rifles in addition to their current beat load.

There are no semi-auto assault rifles. Please educate yourself before discussing firearms.

But onto your actual argument. Do you really see the Federal government as such a threat that it is likely to unleash the military against its own citizens--against the brothers and sisters of the people who are actually serving in the military? How paranoid can you be?

A) It's not going to happen, ever.

It's already happened, multiple times.

Anyway. On to the OP.

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

Many questions in this one. Yes, people have the right to bear arms. Whether you call it Constitutional, or natural, or God-given, or whatever, every person on earth has the right to defend themselves with all means necessary. (Some governments restrict these rights, however.) As for what kinds of arms? Basically, all kinds. I can understand the restriction of certain types of firearms or ammunition for hunting, but there should be very few restrictions on owning. When the American Constitution was written, civilians were allowed to have the same arms that the military had -- military going up against civilians would have been a semi-even match. Now, the federal government can literally do whatever the hell they want, restrict any and all rights they desire, because the populace doesn't have the means to defend themselves. Militia is not the National Guard, it's made up of the civilian populace.

And as far as the purpose goes ... Why should we be allowed to own firearms? Because people that wish to do harm to others -- whether they be governments, opposing armies, or criminals -- always prefer an unarmed populace. That's why some of the worst dictators this planet has ever seen all started by disarming those who might resist their policies. That's how they started -- they continued to slaughter and oppress their own people, because their own people were stripped of their means of defense.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

In short ... yes. Higher legal firearm ownership will always make firearms more available, and thus more easily obtained for those with illegal purposes in mind. However, the only people that will obey laws requiring them to give up their guns are the people who would also obey laws against committing crimes with their guns. Bad guys will get ahold of guns, it's a fact.

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)

We enforce the laws and the penalties against illegal firearms. The same way we would deal with rape, child molestation, or any other serious crime -- make the punishment an actual punishment. Make prisons into bad, uncomfortable places to be. Make people lose rights if they show that they can't be trusted not to abuse them.

On the flip side, let's stop going after honest, law-abiding citizens just because they own firearms. Let's stop the police brutality and harassment for Concealed Carry permit holders, let's stop ATF raids (and murders, like the Weavers) on people that "might" have an illegal firearm, let's stop funneling illegal guns into Mexico and then "forgetting" to track them, let's focus on the actual criminals.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

I have a few, yes.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

I have. Other than the military, as well. Two schmucks tried to break down my door a couple years ago, because of something they thought I said about one of their girlfriends, or some BS like that. I had a FNP .40S&W at the time, so I simply leaned back in my recliner, took it out of its case, chambered a round, and waited. Once they got the door open to the chain latch (maybe three inches), they could see that I had a gun, and ... well, let's say that they weren't so enthusiastic about getting into my living room anymore. After that, they stuck around, so after my best friend showed up to make it a fair fight (it was either wait until they break in and I have to shoot, or go outside and get jumped by both of them), one of 'em started a fight, so I whupped his ass, and both of them got arrested that night.

The majority of self-defense cases involving a firearm don't involve actual shooting.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

Yes, of course. On their person. Granted, they should be a little more well-trained in its use (most LEOs shoot twice a year and that's it -- this is reflected in their horrible accuracy), but yes, they should carry firearms on them. Otherwise, they will be completely useless when it comes to facing real danger.

[Halie]

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

This may be the coward's way but I'm honestly torn on the issue. But for the most part, I think yes, they do. As people have pointed out, guns don't kill, people do. In my city, last August/September time, a man walked into a hairdresser's where his ex-wife worked and shot her and a couple of other people who were in the building. Fortunately, all the people who were shot survived. He had a gun license because he was a hunter. So, if nobody was allowed a gun in my country, would this really have stopped him from going into that hairdresser's and trying to kill his ex-wife? I don't think so. The guns were just convenient. I believe he would have found another way to attack her and the other people in the building. In fact, I think any other way might've been more painful, such as beating her to death. On the other hand, being beaten to death certainly takes longer to do than to shoot someone to death. Just one bullet has the power to kill somebody and that happens in a mere second, so what if he'd shot his ex-wife in one of her vital organs? She'd be dead. But if he didn't have a gun and chose to try and beat her to death, he could have been stopped before she'd been killed. There are valid arguments for both sides.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

I do think people are more likely to use them in crime if they have them. It's like the man I talked about above, he used one of his guns out of convenience. I suppose you could say they're an easy way to "get the job done".

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns?

Having citizens be tested before they can own a gun is really the best way around it. Drug tests, mental health tests, etc. One could argue that people who don't past these tests have every right to defend themselves as much as people who have passed these tests do, but I think they'd honestly be more of a danger.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

No, I don't, and I honestly would never want to. I think it would be absolutely bizarre if one day people in my country started walking around with guns in their bags, to be honest. A bit contradictory to my prior argument but hey, like I said, I'm torn. I think I would only own a gun if I lived in a particularly rough area with a really high crime-rate. The story I told earlier was pretty much a once in a lifetime event in this city and regardless of it, my area is somewhat safe. Somewhat. Safe enough to not need to walk around with a gun.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

I would only use a gun to defend myself if I was being raped or something. I'm not a violent person, but I most definitely would use a gun to defend somebody else who was in danger of being killed or raped, etc.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

Not in my area, no, because I believe this type of power would be abused in all honesty. It's not needed in most cases. On the other hand, I agree with seanb, they would be a lot more respected, which is something which definitely lacks in my area and many other places.

[Rowan]

I think it shouldn't be a 'right' to bear arms, but a priveledge. As in healthcare is a right, and guns are a priveledge. Guns are a priveledge because you're entitled to them as long as you meet a certain criteria. Although I dont think outlawing guns would change anything. A lot of the crimes commited with guns are often obtained illegally and by outlawing guns you would be restriciting honest people from owning something which could possibly save the life of another when used in the right circumstances. Having said that, whats stopping people without a record purchasing heaps of guns, filing off the serial numbers and selling them off to criminals? Granted I dont really know much about how the system works, so correct me if im wrong.

[Hobaginator]

Get over yourself, kid.

This is a forum controlled by a private entity. You don't have freedom of speech here.

Yes, but I can advocate it.

Remington 03A3 hasn't been a battle rifle for nearly seventy years.

Battle rifle as in it was in service as a battle rifle over 70 years ago. I even have the bayonet for it now. Working on obtaining the rest of the complete package as close to as it was used in WWII. This rifle is over 70 years old and is what I consider one of the most influential battle rifles ever engineered and deployed into combat. It was certainly battle rifle enough for 7th marine division Baker One Seven at the Chosin Resevoir, North Korea; and the island hopping campaign before that.

Second -- and I can't stress this enough -- if these are true, you are ****ING STUPID. How in the **** does somebody steal a gun that you're carrying?

I wasn't carrying it. It was in my personal bag which he rifled through, found, and stole while I was sleeping off a case of beer. You're quick to insult one for stupidity though you are ignorant to the details.

And why the hell would you take out your gun and put it on the ground? A Glock 36 is not only a $500 pistol, it's also a damn GUN. Why would you want to be responsible for something that somebody else could do by simply picking up YOUR handgun?

It wasn't my glock. It was my rifle. I was bringing it and my other belongings to my car when he started the fight with me. I decided not to use my firearm, so I unchambered the round and removed the bolt slide, putting both in my back pocket, before I placed the rifle on the ground. It's a sturdy rifle, and I decided not to use it. Nobody else had any way of operating it unless they first subdued me (not going to happen), took the bolt from my person, and managed to figure out how to reassemble the firearm before I stopped them (unlikely). I didn't choose to get in a fight while armed, but I did decide to disarm the rifle in that situation. I got sucker punched as I set it down. It was weak. I came out on top. We don't choose every situation we're put in but we can choose how to react to them. I chose to take the firearm out of the equation because I knew he wasn't armed and that I could handle him just fine without it. I was just trying to put my stuff in my car.

If either of these two stories are true, you are too stupid to own a firearm, and you should sell all of yours immediately.

Okay boss. Any other expert advice?

There are no semi-auto assault rifles. Please educate yourself before discussing firearms.

Assault rifles have a variable setting; semi-auto, burst or full-auto depending on the firearm. I'm of the opinion that police should be armed with assault rifles, but restricted to keep them on semi-auto unless given clearance (or are sprayed at by full-auto fire), to then set their firearm on fully automatic. Maybe I should have clarified that.

[Heartless Angel]

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

Yes, any kind up until the point at which it becomes a danger to others (whether by being a dangerous weapon, or being something rare that someone would steal and use, like a working tank or something). I would not support my neighbor keeping a nuclear warhead in his back yard. Anybody who society doesn't have any reason to believe would misuse them. So no criminal record, pass a drug test, and has passed a gun safety course of some sort.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

Negatively, when the system isn't stupid. As it is right now, a lot of places in the states completely destroy the entire reason we allow concealed firearms with their "No concealed firearms allowed inside" signs. Why would you think a sign would stop criminals from concealing a weapon? If somebody comes to a building with a gun, planning to kill people, he doesn't care about laws of morality, the laws of man, or the laws of basic logic and common sense. Why in the **** would you think he cares about a sign in your window? The only people who care about your sign are law abiding citizens. All the "no concealed firearms allowed inside" sign tells a criminal, is that the law abiding citizens inside are unarmed and defenseless. Not helping.

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)

You can't really, you just have to make sure it's longer a major advantage to have a gun. One armed bad guy vs 100 armed law abiding citizens ready to take him out, suddenly his gun doesn't matter so much. Not to say of course this means an end to all violent crime, sometimes the bad guy is gonna kill some innocents before somebody gets a gun on the guy, or you'll have bad guys with bullet proof vests or bombs, or whatever. In any case, you've got a better chance if your law abiding citizens have some means of fighting back, than if they're all just at the bad guy's mercy.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

Several shotguns, various gauges, two rifles, 22 cal, two handguns, 22 cal. I mostly use the shotguns, for hunting and sporting clays. Sometimes I do some stationary target scored shooting with handguns, the rifles haven't been used for ages.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

Never had to, but I wouldn't hesitate if I ever did.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

Definitely. "We have you surrounded but don't have any means of stopping you", isn't a very good threat against an armed criminal. If you want ANYBODY armed to be able to fight your criminals, it's the people employed to do so.

[Aerif]

I should be working, but I'm not working. So I will respond, but not too some of the comments within the thread - mostly because sometimes an idea or a person can disprove itself just by being viewed by an intelligent enough person.

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

No. Full stop.

Despite a common held-belief, it is possible to legally own a gun in the United Kingdom, although only for sport and hunting. In these cases there should be the tightest regulations placed on the use of guns. Individuals should not be able to own guns and keep them in their own homes. Even well-trained individuals can make mistakes or be careless, and guns don't really have any purpose other than to cause harm.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

In 1996, the Dunblane massacre occurred in Dunblane, Scotland. An armed man entered a primary school and killed over a dozen children (5-year-olds) and a teacher who tried to stop him, before turning the gun on himself. This massacre led to the British government effectively banning the ownership of handguns and declaring them illegal. Since 1996, only one 'mass-shooting' has occurred in the United Kingdom.

The population of the USA is approximately 5x that of the UK's. However since 1996 there has been: Tuscon, Cupertino Quarry, Ingleside, Oikos University, Seal Beach, Aurora, Columbine, Northern Illinois University, Wichita, Wakefield, Grand Rapids, Red Lake, Westroads Mall, Wendy's (NY), 9/11, Nickel Mines, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, Cafe Racer (Seattle), and Capitol Hill. Some of these events such as 9/11 are not directly related to a civilian's ability to bear arms, however according to the statistics there have been 10x as many 'massacres' in the United States than in the United Kingdom, when statistically there should only have been 5x as many, I got this information from Wikipedia without looking into every incident.

Logic would dictate that gun ownership is influential to these numbers.

If a person is forced to become a criminal and already owns a gun because they legally already own it, are they more likely to commit a crime with that gun than a new criminal first purchasing an illegal gun and then committing a crime? I'd say yes, because it makes the process easier.

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)

Well you could suggest the traditional 'mental test, background checking, training' stuff, but this can't help every case. Besides, guns can be obtained illegally anyway.

In so far as disarmament goes:

This depends on the country. Guns are a massive part of American culture, and sadly I think the right to bear arms has become a Pandora's box. A ban on weapons would be met with major criticisms and a nation-wide ban would be impossible unless it was done a state at-a-time or something like that.

The banning of handguns dramatically decreased gun-related-crimes in the UK, meaning that it must have disarmed criminals as well as responsible owners. Mostly because a responsible owner can very easily become a criminal - especially if he already has a gun.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

No and no. You'd possibly become more of a victim if you happened to own a gun in this country, with people trying to steal the gun.

If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?

I don't think so. But who can ever tell before being placed in that situation. I'd like to be able to say that I might shoot an attacker in the legs, but only if it were a proportional defensive method.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

No. They should have access to some sort of non-lethal means of disarmament such as guns which can temporarily incapacitate only. But if an armed police man was overpowered by a crazed lunatic that lunatic could take the gun. Or a police woman could be overzealous with her crowd control. Or some other situation which could lead to unnecessary injury or death.

[Rhaps]

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? For what purpose do these rights exist?

I do believe that people have the right to bear arms. I see guns and other weapons as a means of protection after hand-to-hand self defense has either been ruled out as a viable idea (i.e. the threat has a gun, car, some advantage you can't get by no matter how much training you have). We all have a natural born right to protect ourselves and the things we love, and if we can't do it through words, or through our fists, then sadly, guns are a necessity. The world would be infinitely better if we didn't have to fight to protect what's ours, but if there were laws set in place to ban firearms, then there would be a huge issue. How many criminals do you know that follow the law? It sounds very paranoid, but I can't see any other result of a gun ban/the right to bear arms being removed.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

That's a tricky one. I think the federal processes to legally obtaining a gun help cut back on the crime rate in relation to guns, but by no means does it completely end it. Firearms are a double edged sword (and that's irony if I've ever typed it) since their use is entirely up to the owner. So, crime rate is probably going to be more positively associated with ownership, whether or not it's legal, since it's much easier to rob a store or kill someone with a gun than your mean looks.

As for beating bad guys in their lairs, I don't think that happens quite enough to totally undo the positive association. I've got no idea what goes on with that sort of thing, but I can assume that the amount of criminals they take out with guns balances/falls short but close to the amount of crimes perpetrated to begin with.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

I don't own one, really. My grandfather gave me a shotgun for one of my birthdays when I was really young (I can't remember how old I was, under thirteen for sure, though.) and my dad immediately locked it in his gun safe after we test fired it. What little kid needs a shotgun?! But yeah, we registered it under my Dad's name, so I don't legally own it, nor do I really want to keep it for defense purposes. I do want to own guns, but I don't want to collect. Just something for protecting myself/my family, if I ever have one.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

I would indeed use a gun to defend myself. I would try not to hit anything vital, and with medical science as far along as it is now, as long as I don't kill them instantly, they should have a high survival rate if I hit them somewhere to immobilize them, like the leg or shoulder. I really would have no idea what I was doing, since I've only done target shooting outside with my old man, so I'd definitely want training on where to hit to be non-lethal with a gun.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

The only time I could see the police having a gun as a bad thing is in a state of total anarchy. But then, anyone with a gun would pose a serious threat to me. Otherwise, I think police do need to have a firearm on their holster. It adds to their authority, for me at least. You're not going to find someone being all belligerent and unruly when someone with a .45 shows up strapped to his side.

Anything above a handgun should be reserved for S.W.A.T./special divisions of law enforcement. An officer carrying an assault rifle to check your car for drugs is just asinine. A team using assault rifles to neutralize a building where a man has taken several hostages makes sense, to me at least.
--

Hope I haven't stepped on anyone's toes. I don't normally post in I.D. threads for that reason, but this one seemed open enough, and I think I have a pretty solid opinion when it comes to guns.

[Order]

I'm going to answer some of these questions for my own entertainment. I'm not really concerned with how my responses will be recieved. It's more like those personality tests which determine your need for control, routine, etc... Imma see where I come out compaired to others.

What are your views on gun rights?

Before answering the questions, I'll lay out my mindset. During answering, I'll see if my honest opinion shifts at all.
To put it plainly, I want my guns. For sport, for protection, for a sense of security at home and in public, for fun, for competition, for just in case china decides to annex or zombies, aliens or robots attack; there are few things that can fill all of those roles alone.
I don't carry everywhere I go. I wish I could, but douchebag criminals have already taken that away from me.

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms? (Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)? Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)? How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))

I believe american citizens have the right to bear arms.
Specifically, honest, responsable, law-abiding American citizens have the inherent right to own and practice using guns. Anyone short of the definitions of those terms above consciously and expressly forfits the right.
There is and should be no limitation to the number of guns I (a responsable, honest, law-abiding American citizen) can own. Weapons such as tanks, jets, missiles, RPGs, explosives, belt-fed machineguns, fully automatic submachineguns, etc... require licenses issued by the federal government which are apparently expensive and difficult to obtain.
It should remain so.

These rights exist in light of our nation's history including, but not limited to the American revolution and the civil war. When a power, foreign or domestic, demands compliance and a large enough part of American people refuse, military force is used. The American people have the right to form militias at any time, militias require weapons such as guns to be effective.
The American people have the inherent right to form effective militias, armed with their own personal firearms. The purpose of this right is for normal citizens to have the ability to defend themselves against things such as riots, invasion or federal tyrrany. Because American's do not believe any other country would come to our aid on our homeland if the need arises, we ensure that we are, at least, not completely helpless. Furthermore, if the need did arise for American citizens to organize into militias, the rest of the world would have already fallen to whatever chaos caused the need in the first place.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)

I believe that the number of violent crimes attempted is not effected by an area's gun laws.
I'll grab some statistics real quick:
((unrelated, funny how you get violent crimes broken up by race in every major city in the US, the percentages are very similar))
According to the New York Times, 83% of all Americans will be victims or intended victims of violent crimes in their lifetime.
Oh, look at that. There is not one single study of this type done in Britan. There are victims who arrive in hospitals, statistics on what race will do what, what gender gets what crimes commited most often, but there is not one single study which illistrates the likelyhood of an individual being a victim at all in their lifetime.

I did, however find some studies which compare leagal gunownership vs. number of violent crimes. (one map, which I can't be sure of the sources on... excluded california all together. Bias much?)
It appears from these studies that there isn't really much proportionality in the US of legal gunownership and violent crime, however, SC has more guns and more crime than NC, NY has much lower gunownership and much higher crime and AL has much higher gunownership and much lower crime.
I believe it has more to do with the density of an area's population that it has to do with legal gunownership.
States with more crime are host to bigger cities, surprise! huh?

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)

Commit a crime, lose your guns. Allow the ATF to continue doing it's job of investigating, detaining and prosecuting gun trafficers, etc... There has actually been a considerable decrease in the number of illigal guns in the US since the 80's (nobody should be surprised about that).

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)

I own several guns, each with a specific intended purpose. From sport/hunting to recreational shooting, concealed carry and home defense.

If you own a gun, have you ever used it to defend yourself (or someone else)? (If you do not own a gun, would you ever use one to defend yourself at another's expense?)

Nope, most likely never will. I practice handling, safety, accuracy, speed and various styles of firing anyway. I prefer to be able, even if I am not willing.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)

Yes.
There is no need to fear armed law enforcement unless you are a criminal or your country's enforcment departments are so corrupt that you fear they would use them to take over.
This is not the case in the US. Most police have good intentions and use their weapons as they are ment to be, to defend the lives and safety of themself and citizens, to deter potential criminals and to force compliance during potentially life-threatening situations.
Police should carry handguns in holsters as they commonly do in the US. They should have access to shotguns and rifles in their vehicles (a lesson we learned when body-armored baddies shot up a bank and then got into a two hour shootout with police in the parking lot).

Police should always be better trained and better equipped than any criminal organization. Put the power in the hands of those who defend us so they can intimidate, deter, subdue and detain the ones who would do us harm.

I think it shouldn't be a 'right' to bear arms, but a priveledge.

It is for you. Congratulations, you have it the way you want it.
Why is this such an important topic to non-US citizens anyway?
Why do the brits and the aussies and the kiwis have oppinions at all on American gunownership?
To put it in perspective,
I don't give a shit if you have a gun or not. I don't give a shit if you are afraid of guns, love them, think they are evil, want to marry one or whatever.
I don't care if your government stops by your house to collect tax in the form of taking your kitchen appliances or if you rob banks by knife-point sometimes.
I don't care if it is illigal for you to tell someone you dislike their sexual orientation or if you slap children as a pass-time.

Why are foreigners so concerned with the inner workings of the US?
The rights of our citizens?
The crime rate in Austin, TX?
The local gas prices in LA?
You know more about my country than you know about your own city, about your own history.
The only way citizens of most countries learn who is in charge of their fed is when that person is assassinated or an election comes up.
Do you know who the head of your local police force is?
Do you know the name of the person who informs the fed of your area's opinion on gun control?
Do you remember who your country's last "leader" was?

From my expirience, the various countries I have visited and people I have spoken to, the most politically aware people (in reguards to their own government and who did what) was the Phillipines!
A mostly thirdworld country knew more about their own politics than most Aussies. They could name their president off the top of their head as fast as an American service member.
They knew who their representitives were. They knew it was legal not to wear a seatbelt when driving and that it was illigal to insult a member of law enforcement.
In the damn Phillipines!

I dunno about you New Zealand types, but most of the rest of the world has no clue about the workings of their local or federal governing bodies. Japan, Hongkong, south korea, blah, blah, blah. But they all know about american politics. They can name OUR president no problem. They can tell you what Justin Beiber is up to and the name of the kid who got shot by the neigborhood watch.
But they can't tell you who the sheriff is in their town. Much less, what authority that sheriff is granted and what he is not.

Booyah.

Now you know what to think.

[Hobaginator]

The population of the USA is approximately 5x that of the UK's. However since 1996 there has been: Tuscon, Cupertino Quarry, Ingleside, Oikos University, Seal Beach, Aurora, Columbine, Northern Illinois University, Wichita, Wakefield, Grand Rapids, Red Lake, Westroads Mall, Wendy's (NY), 9/11, Nickel Mines, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, Cafe Racer (Seattle), and Capitol Hill. Some of these events such as 9/11 are not directly related to a civilian's ability to bear arms, however according to the statistics there have been 10x as many 'massacres' in the United States than in the United Kingdom, when statistically there should only have been 5x as many, I got this information from Wikipedia without looking into every incident.

Logic would dictate that gun ownership is influential to these numbers.

Hold it right there. Over half of those sources you listed, guns weren't even involved. You can't just take every major death-related incident of recent U.S. history and use it to argue against guns. That doesn't even make sense. You're talking about home-made bombs and terrorists and grouping them into one category under the title of "why guns are bad" and saying that's logical? I think a more logical argument would be why citizens should always be armed: preventing bads from out-gunning them as is what happened in most of those incidents referenced.

Wait... I don't even know why I'm arguing against somebody who actually listed Wikipedia as their resource (and not as a joke).

If a person is forced to become a criminal and already owns a gun because they legally already own it, are they more likely to commit a crime with that gun than a new criminal first purchasing an illegal gun and then committing a crime? I'd say yes, because it makes the process easier.

Being forced to become a criminal? What do you think this is, Max Payne?

You'd possibly become more of a victim if you happened to own a gun in this country, with people trying to steal the gun.

I thought crime rate was better in your country than the U.S.A? Or is armed robbery a daily occurance there? Here, people get their heads blown off for that kind of shit. It's called natural selection. Here in the U.S.A. we're not afraid to exercise our own freedom for fear of becoming a victim. Here, we don't take kindly to having our freedoms infringed upon through fear tactics (terrorism). Your country definitely sounds like it has things under control. Just keep throwing the socialist party more money. That will solve everything.

I don't think so. But who can ever tell before being placed in that situation. I'd like to be able to say that I might shoot an attacker in the legs, but only if it were a proportional defensive method.

I love this. Do you even know how to use a gun? Do you know how to aim with the sights? At 10 yards with a pistol, would you be able to nail the bad guy and pacify him, or would you accidentally murder the woman he's holding hostage at knife-point? Have you ever even fired a gun? If not, you have no means of self-defense nor could you be of any help in a situation requiring that kind of action. You'd be more of a detriment than a help. I'm not trying to dig in to you, I'm trying to make you realize that in unexperienced hands a gun is dangerous to everybody.

If all of you people who hate guns so much and think they are so dangerous actually were taught how to use one properly, aim with accuracy, and how to handle it safely, then you'd look at firearms with a whole new set of eyes. In the right hands, a firearm is just another tool that humans can use. In the wrong hands -- it's a lethal and unpredictable force of nature.

Edit: About the U.S.A being so deadly... total up the deaths in all of those incidents in the U.S.A. Ready?

Libya finds mass grave from 1996 massacre - Video Dailymotion

It was dawn on June 29, 1996 when guards at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli ordered inmates into the courtyard.
They were then shot by security men standing on prison roofs.
This is the account survivors gave to human rights groups.
Now, the first physical evidence of the Abu Salim prison massacre has been found, this mass grave.
Libya's National Transitional Council said it contained the bodies of people killed by toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi's security forces in a 1996 massacre.
It holds the remains of 1,270 people.
It was an event covered up for years."

Prisoners murdered by their govornment and tossed into a mass grave. Unarmed prisoners. Take away people's guns, and they can't fight back. Unarmed people become fish in a barrel for armed psychos. Get my point?

[Clint]

Do you believe that people have the right to bear arms?
Yes, for the most part.

(Bonus questions: Which kind of arms (handguns, concealed, full-auto, hunting only, bazookas, tanks...)?
If it's designated for military purposes, it should be illegal to privately own. Who the hell needs an M-16 or a submachine gun? I'd say limit it to handguns and any variety of hunting rifles. That sounds reasonable to me.

Which people (licensed, drug-free, no criminal records...)?
Everybody, as long as they pass a background check. I don't know how gun retailers get away with selling their products without giving background checks to the people they're selling to. Especially because they're selling potentially deadly weapons.

How many? For what purpose do these rights exist? (Is it Constiutional, and if so, again, for what purpose?))
I think it should be illegal to build an arsenal. You're deranged and paranoid if you think that you need an arsenal, and if you have one simply because you like guns, get over it. I like dogs, but I'm not going to live in a kennel.

Do you think crime is positively or negatively associated with rates of gun ownership? (If people own guns, are they more likely to use them in crimes, or; if people own guns, the good guys are empowered to beat the bad guys in their lairs?)
Gun ownership isn't the problem. The people who go through all the proper channels to obtain their firearms probably just want it for hunting or protection. It's the people who go underground to get their guns that want their weapons for criminal purposes. Illegal arms dealers should be sought out, not people who own guns.

How do we stop evil dudes from obtaining guns? (Do you support some kind of arms amnesty, and would this only serve to dis-arm responsible owners? Are guns a Pandora's box of no return?)
How can you possibly tell if somebody is evil, or plans to do harm to anybody? Even if somebody goes through all the right channels and gets his arms legally, there's still a risk that he's a psychopath. Instead of disarming people of their arms, I have a better solution; more police officers.

Do you own (or do you want to own) a gun? (What kind?)
No, I don't, and I don't want one. I'm not a big fan of guns. I never have been. They're cool in movies, but that's about it.

Should ordinary police persons have access to guns? (This might be a weird question to some, but they don't here, and the thought that they could actually scares me a lot.) (In holsters or in their cars?)
Police officers should have a sidearm at all times, and a rifle stashed in their cars. It's basic self defense, and in the case of an officer, if he doesn't have his gun, it may cost him, or an innocent bystander their life.

[Jinkasima]

in Switzerland there are more guns per household than people, and i mean fully auto machine guns and assualt rifles not just handguns and grampa's old shotgun, and you know how many murders on average are a result of firearms, roughly 1.5 per year, you know how they manage that? gun control that actually works.

[Kyrel]

Not in Europe. Maybe in the US it works. But I don't think it's a very positive thing here, and we've done fine without it so far.

[Aerif]

I wanted to reply to Mr. Hobaginator but unfortunately he has been banned. Still, there's no harm in clarifying some of my points.

Hold it right there. Over half of those sources you listed, guns weren't even involved. You can't just take every major death-related incident of recent U.S. history and use it to argue against guns. That doesn't even make sense. You're talking about home-made bombs and terrorists and grouping them into one category under the title of "why guns are bad" and saying that's logical? I think a more logical argument would be why citizens should always be armed: preventing bads from out-gunning them as is what happened in most of those incidents referenced.

Wait... I don't even know why I'm arguing against somebody who actually listed Wikipedia as their resource (and not as a joke).

I did acknowledge that a lot of the incidents didn't involve guns, however even if half of them had nothing to do with gun control that still makes a rather high body count. Perhaps the number of massacres are directly related to the relationship between guns and crime? I'm not really trying to say that there is a definite correlation - but the more people that own guns the more people who can easily cause an incident like this.

And snobbish-ness against Wikipedia is only really relevant in the academic world where it is generally frowned upon due to the past unreliability of the website. Nowadays Wikipedia is almost always an accurate source. And anyway I don't really care if you have a problem with it since I never actually asked you to pick at my points - but merely to consider them.

Being forced to become a criminal? What do you think this is, Max Payne?

Joke if you like, but everyday people who fee that they have no alternative turn to a life of crime in order to maintain a lifestyle or to ensure their survival. Drug addicts often steal in order to support their habit (since a lot of the time support systems are overloaded and unable to assist them), and these crimes can become increasingly violent from stealing money from your grandmother's stash above the wardrobe to getting a gun and holding up a corner shop.

I thought crime rate was better in your country than the U.S.A? Or is armed robbery a daily occurance there? Here, people get their heads blown off for that kind of shit. It's called natural selection. Here in the U.S.A. we're not afraid to exercise our own freedom for fear of becoming a victim. Here, we don't take kindly to having our freedoms infringed upon through fear tactics (terrorism). Your country definitely sounds like it has things under control. Just keep throwing the socialist party more money. That will solve everything.

Did you just use the phrase 'socialist party' unironically? Wow.

Anyway, crime rate varies everywhere and I can't be bothered to look up the statistics - I am fairly certain that the crime rate of Scotland is overall lower than that of the USA.

BUT, I think you missed my point. With guns being so rare (as in an ownership rate of less than 5 guns per 100 people) they could be seen as a valuable commodity to a criminal who may not own one and want to steal one.

It's worth noting that terrorism doesn't have a major impact on Scotland, the last major terrorist attack was the Glasgow Airport Attack, and there were no casualties because some 'innocent bystanders' literally went and kicked the terrorists in the crotch to prevent further damage. The terrorists were a little incompetent - but despite that it is the only terrorist incident I can recall ever happening in Scotland. The only two deaths related to the incident were the terrorists themselves.

I love this. Do you even know how to use a gun? Do you know how to aim with the sights? At 10 yards with a pistol, would you be able to nail the bad guy and pacify him, or would you accidentally murder the woman he's holding hostage at knife-point? Have you ever even fired a gun? If not, you have no means of self-defense nor could you be of any help in a situation requiring that kind of action. You'd be more of a detriment than a help. I'm not trying to dig in to you, I'm trying to make you realize that in unexperienced hands a gun is dangerous to everybody.

No I don't - a fact I am proud of, however I do have a general idea. Yes I do, I will admit that I'm not very good at it, but at a certain range it sort of becomes irrelevant. I wouldn't risk that, and if he were holding her as a human shield I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't risk it - however I do have a natural talent for archery so that may be something. I have never fired a gun, thank goodness.

I didn't actually expect myself to be in a situation which required any sort of action with a gun. It was a hypothetical question. If it were a simple situation where I had access to a gun and was about to witness a serious crime I'd hope to be able to do something.

See the funny thing is that you think I could take offence to having never had access to a gun and being completely untrained. I'm proud of it.

If all of you people who hate guns so much and think they are so dangerous actually were taught how to use one properly, aim with accuracy, and how to handle it safely, then you'd look at firearms with a whole new set of eyes. In the right hands, a firearm is just another tool that humans can use. In the wrong hands -- it's a lethal and unpredictable force of nature.

I think I'm too sane much of a 'socialist' to be able to ever look at guns in a positive manner. Being trained how to use a tool for injury/murder is actually a terrible thing to suggest ever doing. Firearms aren't tools, they are weapons - they have always been weapons invented to kill a fellow human being - that's how they were conceived in China - that's how they are seen by the rest of the non-gun-toting world.

Edit: About the U.S.A being so deadly... total up the deaths in all of those incidents in the U.S.A. Ready?

Prisoners murdered by their govornment and tossed into a mass grave. Unarmed prisoners. Take away people's guns, and they can't fight back. Unarmed people become fish in a barrel for armed psychos. Get my point?

And I'm sure if army officials came in the middle of the night with appropriate identification to take you away unarmed to a mass grave or as a prisoner in a jail cell you'd be able to do something about it. Prisoners don't exactly have easy access to guns.

[Order]

No I don't - a fact I am proud of, however I do have a general idea. Yes I do, I will admitthatI'm not very good at it, but at a certain range it sort of becomes irrelevant. I wouldn't risk that, and if he were holding her as a human shield I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't risk it - however I do have a natural talent for archery so that may be something. I have never fired a gun, thank goodness.

Hunger games, fantasyland-living douche face. Aerif or whatever.

Your post is full of terms like "i didnt do the research.", "I assume my country is better.", "I dont need to draw on any experience on the issue because I cant possibly be wrong."

Your arguement is garbage.
Everything you said is pointless, meaningless babble.
Why would you even approach this topic when you know nothing about it?

You've even pointed out that you are simply spouting pointless bullshit.
On what planet did anything you typed make sense!?

You're a moron to the point that there is no need for anyone to read shit that you type, ever.

Seriously, go back and read what you wrote.
You actually stated that you are proud to know nothing about the topic and did no research at all.
Congratulations, dumbass.

[Heartless Angel]

I did acknowledge that a lot of the incidents didn't involve guns, however even if half of them had nothing to do with gun control that still makes a rather high body count. Perhaps the number of massacres are directly related to the relationship between guns and crime? I'm not really trying to say that there is a definite correlation - but the more people that own guns the more people who can easily cause an incident like this.

So a statistic, obviously inflated by the fact that not all incidents involved guns, to establish what is at best an interesting correlation? Statistics also show that shoe size has a strong correlation with mathematics, reading, and logical reasoning abilities. This is primarily because most adults do these things better than toddlers. Correlation is worth nothing without evidence of causality.

And snobbish-ness against Wikipedia is only really relevant in the academic world where it is generally frowned upon due to the past unreliability of the website. Nowadays Wikipedia is almost always an accurate source. And anyway I don't really care if you have a problem with it since I never actually asked you to pick at my points - but merely to consider them.

Accurate in many cases, but often quite forgetful when it comes to the important details. Wikipedia articles are usually loaded with bias, that's why it's laughed at in the academic arena. Wiki articles aren't reliably objective and fair, so it's generally not a good thing to use for anything other than obtaining the most basic knowledge of a topic for personal curiosity.

Joke if you like, but everyday people who fee that they have no alternative turn to a life of crime in order to maintain a lifestyle or to ensure their survival. Drug addicts often steal in order to support their habit (since a lot of the time support systems are overloaded and unable to assist them), and these crimes can become increasingly violent from stealing money from your grandmother's stash above the wardrobe to getting a gun and holding up a corner shop.

And what 'forced' them to commit the crimes of purchasing and using illegal drugs that they are then 'forced' to become worse criminals to continue buying to satisfy the addiction a law abiding citizen wouldn't have to begin with? They were criminals from the start. When people disregard one law, there's not much reason to believe they care about the rest of them (except of course when they work in their favor)

Anyway, crime rate varies everywhere and I can't be bothered to look up the statistics - I am fairly certain that the crime rate of Scotland is overall lower than that of the USA.

BUT, I think you missed my point. With guns being so rare (as in an ownership rate of less than 5 guns per 100 people) they could be seen as a valuable commodity to a criminal who may not own one and want to steal one.

You also have a lower quantity of illegal immigrants from Mexico, is it then reasonable to assume that illegal Mexicans are the cause of all gun crimes? Of course not. Again what you have is an interesting correlation, not an argument. Guns being available in stores is not where the firearms used to commit serious crimes come from. Guns are purchased illegally by criminals, so they they don't have to be registered, and are more difficult to track. Very few serious crimes are committed with legal firearms. The ones that are, are usually, as you already hinted at, drug addicts, who are already criminals. Stupid criminals. Stupid criminals who usually get caught.

People steal firearms here too. Only the lowest tier of the stupidest criminals would commit a crime using a legal, registered firearm. They either buy an unregistered one illegally, or use somebody else's gun, so they can't be easily tracked.

No I don't - a fact I am proud of, however I do have a general idea. Yes I do, I will admit that I'm not very good at it, but at a certain range it sort of becomes irrelevant. I wouldn't risk that, and if he were holding her as a human shield I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't risk it - however I do have a natural talent for archery so that may be something. I have never fired a gun, thank goodness.

I didn't actually expect myself to be in a situation which required any sort of action with a gun. It was a hypothetical question. If it were a simple situation where I had access to a gun and was about to witness a serious crime I'd hope to be able to do something.

See the funny thing is that you think I could take offence to having never had access to a gun and being completely untrained. I'm proud of it.

I'm not sure why somebody would ever be proud to be lacking in a potentially useful experience. Or even one that isn't useful. Lack of knowledge is never a preferable thing. As for risking shooting a human shield, it's not much of a risk when you're skilled enough to safely hit the target. If there was a clear shot, I'd shoot a criminal with a hostage as a shield without a second thought.

Interestingly enough, bows are also weapons, originally designed for the sole purpose of ending lives. Why then, is only the gun inherently evil?A bow is an equally fatal weapon in the wrong hands. If guns dropped off the face of the earth and somebody wanted to kill somebody at a distance, what would stop them from using a bow? Do we need to outlaw them too? Should we not have access to knives? I mean if a criminal had one and you didn't, you'd be at a disadvantage. People get mugged at knife point sometimes. You can kill somebody with just about anything if you made an honest effort. The thing is, criminals whose intention it is to cause injury and/or death, are going to find a way to do it no matter what you do to keep weapons out of their reach.

I think I'm too sane much of a 'socialist' to be able to ever look at guns in a positive manner. Being trained how to use a tool for injury/murder is actually a terrible thing to suggest ever doing. Firearms aren't tools, they are weapons - they have always been weapons invented to kill a fellow human being - that's how they were conceived in China - that's how they are seen by the rest of the non-gun-toting world.

For the record, there are uses for a firearm outside of killing people and robbing banks. Several sports involve the precision shooting of nonliving targets with a firearm. Many are quite entertaining. Not to mention that whole hunting thing in which people are not the intended targets. Not everybody who owns a gun, or would want to wants it for the purpose of committing mass murders.

[Aerif]

So a statistic, obviously inflated by the fact that not all incidents involved guns, to establish what is at best an interesting correlation?

That was the point, yes.

It does however draw attention that the USA has a disproportionate number of highly violent and murdersome incidents, most likely established by differences in culture. Since the biggest difference between American and British culture is related to gun ownership, it is a a fair conclusion to draw - even if there is no scientific evidence.

As the gentleman so kindly put it, I am pulling things out of my ass. I did not intend to debate over this observation but merely to draw attention to the interesting phenomenon.

Statistics also show that shoe size has a strong correlation with mathematics, reading, and logical reasoning abilities. This is primarily because most adults do these things better than toddlers. Correlation is worth nothing without evidence of causality.

There is causality in some of the cases though, whenever the incident's inciter legally owns the gun for instance. Most likely had he not owned that gun he would not have shot the people. Yes there are bombs and things like that, but when I say I am against the 'right to bear arms' I say I am also against private ownership of bombs. As you all should be. Why do you need a bomb?

Accurate in many cases, but often quite forgetful when it comes to the important details. Wikipedia articles are usually loaded with bias, that's why it's laughed at in the academic arena. Wiki articles aren't reliably objective and fair, so it's generally not a good thing to use for anything other than obtaining the most basic knowledge of a topic for personal curiosity.

Part of the reason why I didn't increase my knowledge. I merely looked at a list of incidents, which is by no means complete and comprehensive, just to show a point. A poorly received and, as you may have seen, criticised point, but a somewhat valid point in the grand scheme of things I feel.

And what 'forced' them to commit the crimes of purchasing and using illegal drugs that they are then 'forced' to become worse criminals to continue buying to satisfy the addiction a law abiding citizen wouldn't have to begin with? They were criminals from the start. When people disregard one law, there's not much reason to believe they care about the rest of them (except of course when they work in their favor)

Oh well that's rather disappointing. I offered a single example - not a complete explanation. But not all addicting drugs are controlled substances anyway. This is also STILL not the only way to be 'forced' to become a criminal.

Note well that I consider the phrase 'forced to become a criminal' ridiculous, as normally there are other options even if they are less 'rewarding'. But people still use it as an excuse, and in some examples it makes sense when listening to them.

You also have a lower quantity of illegal immigrants from Mexico, is it then reasonable to assume that illegal Mexicans are the cause of all gun crimes? Of course not. Again what you have is an interesting correlation, not an argument. Guns being available in stores is not where the firearms used to commit serious crimes come from. Guns are purchased illegally by criminals, so they they don't have to be registered, and are more difficult to track. Very few serious crimes are committed with legal firearms. The ones that are, are usually, as you already hinted at, drug addicts, who are already criminals. Stupid criminals. Stupid criminals who usually get caught.

That's almost a silly response, I suppose it is technically plausible that Mexican immigrants are the cause of high gun crime, but gun crime existed before immigration problems. Gun ownership and gun crime are connected by their very nature - and as you point out registered guns are sometimes used in criminal activity - these incidents involving guns would never happen if the criminal didn't have a gun, surely?

People steal firearms here too. Only the lowest tier of the stupidest criminals would commit a crime using a legal, registered firearm. They either buy an unregistered one illegally, or use somebody else's gun, so they can't be easily tracked.

I know that, but my original point was that with the lack of guns in Scotland it is more difficult to get hold of one, so if you happen to own one and people know this you are more likely to be burgled by some idiot wanting to get their hands on the gun, than say the nice middle-class couple down the road who don't own any guns.

I'm not sure why somebody would ever be proud to be lacking in a potentially useful experience. Or even one that isn't useful. Lack of knowledge is never a preferable thing. As for risking shooting a human shield, it's not much of a risk when you're skilled enough to safely hit the target. If there was a clear shot, I'd shoot a criminal with a hostage as a shield without a second thought.

If there was a 'forbidden word' that could end the entire world by speaking it (ala the first chronological book in 'The Chronicles of Narnia') would you advocate it's learning? To me, guns are like that on a smaller scale. There is a massive dependence on morality attached to a gun, and quite frankly there are too many idiots who lack the foresight of seeing the potential consequences of using a gun - even trained professionals - how many times have policemen 'accidently' killed perpetrators?

If I were trained to use a gun, I would accept the knowledge - because I am a knowledge-seeker, but I wouldn't seek out the knowledge on my own. For the same reasons that I don't seek out the means to dispose of a dead body quietly or the amount of time it takes for a corpse to freeze in a chest freezer. I consider these events attached by the way - I know you don't because of a difference in mind sets - but at present I do.

Interestingly enough, bows are also weapons, originally designed for the sole purpose of ending lives. Why then, is only the gun inherently evil?A bow is an equally fatal weapon in the wrong hands. If guns dropped off the face of the earth and somebody wanted to kill somebody at a distance, what would stop them from using a bow? Do we need to outlaw them too?

True, although bows were first intended to hunting animals they evolved into a tool of war. But I think you misunderstood me, you see even though I am trained to use a bow and have all the safety knowledge attached to it, and the skill to use one effectively - I don't advocate the private ownership of them. Every time I've practised it has been in a secure, supervised enviroment.

However you may ask yourself the question: In countries where people can't own guns (such as coincidentally, Tunisia - which has the lowest gun ownership figures in the world) why don't they kill with bows and arrows - since they are not banned?

Should we not have access to knives? I mean if a criminal had one and you didn't, you'd be at a disadvantage. People get mugged at knife point sometimes. You can kill somebody with just about anything if you made an honest effort.

Glasgow is the knife crime capital of the world, and by true correlation, is the 'murder-capital of Europe'. Knives are very different from guns though in that they have a more practical and definable primary use outside of violence. Because of the crime in Glasgow it has become illegal to carry a knife on the streets in Scotland without it being in some sort of protective case and only if it happens to be crucial to your occupation (such as chefs).

The thing is, criminals whose intention it is to cause injury and/or death, are going to find a way to do it no matter what you do to keep weapons out of their reach.

Of course. But that's why guns were invented. To kill people. That's their big problem.

For the record, there are uses for a firearm outside of killing people and robbing banks. Several sports involve the precision shooting of nonliving targets with a firearm. Many are quite entertaining. Not to mention that whole hunting thing in which people are not the intended targets. Not everybody who owns a gun, or would want to wants it for the purpose of committing mass murders.

I know that, but it is possible to perform all of these actions without having lethal firearms involved. Using blanks for instance.

[Heartless Angel]

That was the point, yes.

The point was to attempt to be intentionally misleading and erroneous with your citing of statistics in an attempt to make people consider that your position might be correct without offering actual evidence or even directly stating the conclusion your data is apparently intended to mislead readers to believe?

You should run for office, you've got the rhetoric mastered.

It does however draw attention that the USA has a disproportionate number of highly violent and murdersome incidents, most likely established by differences in culture. Since the biggest difference between American and British culture is related to gun ownership, it is a a fair conclusion to draw - even if there is no scientific evidence.

The biggest difference between our cultures is gun control? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess you've never actually been to America. Because you couldn't be much more wrong. Even if it were, the correlation itself is not anywhere near enough to draw any sort of logical conclusion whatsoever. In addition to relying on rhetoric to support your position, you now commit the logical fallacy known as the false cause. You have at absolute best identified a singular contributing factor, and at worst done absolutely nothing. Attempting to derive that that alone is the only reason and therefore direct cause of increased violence and crime, is not only intentionally erroneous, but plainly fallacious, and entirely illogical.

As the gentleman so kindly put it, I am pulling things out of my ass. I did not intend to debate over this observation but merely to draw attention to the interesting phenomenon.

When it's the cornerstone of your entire position, you should probably be expecting to debate it. Rhetorical persuasion often seeks to direct attention to something using illogical means to lead people to accept a position you haven't given adequate support for. It's a useful tactic in english classes and political campaigns, but it doesn't go over as well in debates.

There is causality in some of the cases though, whenever the incident's inciter legally owns the gun for instance. Most likely had he not owned that gun he would not have shot the people. Yes there are bombs and things like that, but when I say I am against the 'right to bear arms' I say I am also against private ownership of bombs. As you all should be. Why do you need a bomb?

I'm not sure if you're trying to be misleading, or if you really don't get that criminals do not care in the slightest what you tell them they can't have and what they can't do. If there is a way for somebody who wishes to violate the law to obtain a gun, he will obtain gun. The only way he can't, is if there are no guns to obtain. This means that his potential victims are equally unarmed, and therefore susceptible to lesser weapons and lesser means of inflicting harm upon another person. Knives become the new guns. Take that away, he'll find something else. You can kill a man with your bare hands if you were willing to do so. Taking away weapons is not going to erase violent crime, it's only going to change the rules of engagement. We didn't need the atomic bomb to wage wars, we were perfectly capable of killing each other with inefficient, inaccurate, muzzle loading muskets. Death is death. Changing how it is delivered doesn't make it go away.

No, without a gun he would've likely had some difficulty shooting people. Instead he'd have a knife, and he'd stab people. If somebody is crazy and/or desperate enough to kill people over the stupid crap people kill each other over, he doesn't really care how he does it. The only difference is how successful he'd be. But then if nobody else had guns either, he'd do just as well with a knife as criminals are doing now with guns. The gun is only a tool that makes the job easier. If somebody wants someone dead badly enough, they'll manage without as they did before guns became readily available in the first place.

Part of the reason why I didn't increase my knowledge. I merely looked at a list of incidents, which is by no means complete and comprehensive, just to show a point. A poorly received and, as you may have seen, criticised point, but a somewhat valid point in the grand scheme of things I feel.

Logical fallacies are invalid by definition. By all means you're entitled to your beliefs, whatever they may be, but it takes more than correlations and rhetorical persuasion to convince anybody else.

Oh well that's rather disappointing. I offered a single example - not a complete explanation. But not all addicting drugs are controlled substances anyway. This is also STILL not the only way to be 'forced' to become a criminal.

Note well that I consider the phrase 'forced to become a criminal' ridiculous, as normally there are other options even if they are less 'rewarding'. But people still use it as an excuse, and in some examples it makes sense when listening to them.

So you yourself acknowledge the complete inaccuracy of your original point that anybody is ever 'forced' to become a criminal? Good, because I also found that completely ridiculous. Nobody is ever forced to become a criminal. People choose crime, because it is easier than doing a little hard work and making something of your life the right way. Crimes are not caused by guns, they are caused by people being too lazy to put forth the effort to change their lives, and choosing the easy alternative. Gun salesmen can't detect when somebody has crossed this line. Sure, nobody would give Jack the Ripper a knife now knowing who he is. But he wasn't Jack the Ripper until after he got a hold of one. Nobody carries a neon sign saying they're planning to use any weapon they can get their hands on to kill people. They obtain something with the facade of a law abiding citizen and break the law once they are in a position to do so. If a man who has decided he wants to become a criminal who uses a firearm can't obtain one legally, he will obtain one illegally. At best, stricter gun control laws would mildly inconvenience criminals who intend to commit gun crimes.

Thing is, people have always chosen crime. There was never a time in recorded history (nor likely anytime before) in which everybody was always nice, never did anything wrong or hurtful to their fellow man for their own sake. It's not the nature of the breed. We do what is most beneficial to ourselves as individuals. If a man deems that making a quick buck is more beneficial than preserving his morality and upholding the law, morality and law go out the window. Human nature is the cause of violent crime.

The real biggest difference in our cultures is that America is full of people barely making enough to get by, because the government has bled them dry and done nothing while companies pay them as little as they can get away with, and outsource as many jobs as possible to China, meanwhile we get the poor immigrants from mexico, further reducing the average, and taking more jobs because some employer knows he can get away with paying them a fraction of minimum wage; leaving more of our people dangerously close to the line where crime appears to be more beneficial than preserving one's morality. In addition, American culture places that line at a considerably lower annoyance threshold than it's at in other places. There is no singular cause to anything like this. Human beings are influenced by more factors than you could ever even begin to consider. Attributing problems to something as simple as gun laws is a lazy man's alternative to applying real critical thinking to analyze the true underlying influences which interact to create a problem in the world. Thinking one can magically solve the problems by altering one of those countless variable in a slight way is equally foolish.

That's almost a silly response, I suppose it is technically plausible that Mexican immigrants are the cause of high gun crime, but gun crime existed before immigration problems. Gun ownership and gun crime are connected by their very nature - and as you point out registered guns are sometimes used in criminal activity - these incidents involving guns would never happen if the criminal didn't have a gun, surely?

And homicide existed before modern firearms. Therefore guns can't be the cause of homicide, can they? Again, all you'd accomplish by removing the gun from the equation is changing the headline in the paper from "woman shot in her home", to "woman stabbed to death in her home". Murders committed with a gun are not worse than those committed by other means. Changing the cause of death doesn't make victims any less dead. The variable you're attempting to change here isn't even an important one, let alone the only one as you seem to be suggesting.

I know that, but my original point was that with the lack of guns in Scotland it is more difficult to get hold of one, so if you happen to own one and people know this you are more likely to be burgled by some idiot wanting to get their hands on the gun, than say the nice middle-class couple down the road who don't own any guns.

So, strict gun control laws put certain law abiding citizens at risk of being the victims of potentially violent crimes so criminals can get what they want but have no right to. That sounds vaguely... well, you know, identical... to what gun control laws would supposedly be preventing. So even in theory, gun control laws are not magically solving the problem.

If there was a 'forbidden word' that could end the entire world by speaking it (ala the first chronological book in 'The Chronicles of Narnia') would you advocate it's learning? To me, guns are like that on a smaller scale.

So much smaller that the analogy could barely even be considered valid. If I'm being generous, actually it couldn't be considered valid in any sense whatsoever. Hundreds of thousands of people die each day, more are born each day. The world has come nowhere close to ending because of this. The percentage of those deaths related to crime of any kind is so pathetically small, that comparing a difference that could be made in a percentage of that fraction is so utterly insignificant that one could say it's nearly irrelevant to the state of the world. Not only does knowledge of firearms usage not have anything that even resembles the capability of 'ending the world', but only a very small percentage of firearms are ever used to take a human life, so as utterly insignificant as the factors I've already mentioned makes the knowledge of how to fire a gun to the world, it's actually even more inconsequential. And the sad thing is, most of the dumb****s who hold up a gas station with a gun, or commit an overwhelming majority of gun crimes have never taken a gun safety class. If you watch the movies of some of these robberies, half of these idiots don't even know how to hold a gun properly.

Based on all this, I think I may just be justified in calling your statement the largest exaggeration on the entire internet. Okay, not really, I'm being facetious. But, still, it's not even close to as a big a deal as you're making it out to be. Hyperbole is another wonderful rhetorical tool, but isn't worth anything in a debate.

There is a massive dependence on morality attached to a gun, and quite frankly there are too many idiots who lack the foresight of seeing the potential consequences of using a gun - even trained professionals - how many times have policemen 'accidently' killed perpetrators?

You seem to be laboring under the delusion that these people don't understand what guns do simply because they choose to use them in a way you would not. When somebody points a gun at a person's head and squeezes the trigger, they generally have a pretty good idea of what that action is going to cause. It is in fact exactly what they wanted to accomplish. I'm gonna go ahead and point out that I noticed the dripping sarcasm indicated with the quotes around accidentally. I'll also go ahead and point out that everybody already knows that a good number of them aren't accidents. I don't mean to disillusion anyone, but people who have badges are actually not certified paragons of virtue. They're actually still humans, and some of them are still bad. Some of them even lie about the circumstances of their mistakes at a later date to avoid punishment.

As for the rare cases in which they actually ARE accidents... Shit happens. That's life for you. People die in car accidents every day, yet we still give high school kids who I wouldn't trust with a spitball launcher let alone a firearm thousand pound weapons to go drive around in, when statistically, a very large number of them don't follow the laws in place governing the safe operation of a vehicle.

If I were trained to use a gun, I would accept the knowledge - because I am a knowledge-seeker, but I wouldn't seek out the knowledge on my own. For the same reasons that I don't seek out the means to dispose of a dead body quietly or the amount of time it takes for a corpse to freeze in a chest freezer. I consider these events attached by the way - I know you don't because of a difference in mind sets - but at present I do.

The funny thing is, most of those questions could be answered by the same field of study that develops life saving medicine. And if not for law abiding citizens seeking that same information, we wouldn't be as well prepared to seek out and punish those who commit crimes. Even 'bad' knowledge you wouldn't want has its uses, often good ones. No knowledge is inherently evil.

True, although bows were first intended to hunting animals they evolved into a tool of war. But I think you misunderstood me, you see even though I am trained to use a bow and have all the safety knowledge attached to it, and the skill to use one effectively - I don't advocate the private ownership of them. Every time I've practised it has been in a secure, supervised enviroment.

And they're not the only thing that has been adapted for the taking of lives. Do you advocate private ownership of real kitchen knives? Do you think we all need supervision to be trusted with can openers and corkscrews? I assure you, you could end someone's life effectively with either. That something can be used in a bad way does not make the object inherently evil.

However you may ask yourself the question: In countries where people can't own guns (such as coincidentally, Tunisia - which has the lowest gun ownership figures in the world) why don't they kill with bows and arrows - since they are not banned?

I'll go ahead and assume that was rhetorical question, but on the off chance it wasn't I'll go ahead and point out that bows take time to draw, skill to aim, and can't be concealed terribly effectively. The quiver and vambrace are usually a dead giveaway. Bows haven't been a terribly popular choice for homicides in recent centuries.

Glasgow is the knife crime capital of the world, and by true correlation, is the 'murder-capital of Europe'. Knives are very different from guns though in that they have a more practical and definable primary use outside of violence. Because of the crime in Glasgow it has become illegal to carry a knife on the streets in Scotland without it being in some sort of protective case and only if it happens to be crucial to your occupation (such as chefs).

And I'm sure people who killed people with knives in Glasgow went to culinary school and became listened chefs to obtain legal rights to carry their knives on their person. They didn't just, you know, grab one from their kitchen and hide it in their pockets or anything. Because everybody everywhere always follows the laws you implement to keep them from having things you don't want them to have.

Nope. Couldn't keep a straight face... Not even while typing.

Of course. But that's why guns were invented. To kill people. That's their big problem.

So were the first rockets, another clear example of how anything that was invented as a weapon could ever be used for anything other than psychopathic serial murder... oh... wait... never mind.

I know that, but it is possible to perform all of these actions without having lethal firearms involved. Using blanks for instance.

Yeah, I suppose if you pull an Animal House move and manage to give the deer a heart attack with the sound of the blank... but that isn't a terribly reliable way to acquire deer jerky. As for shooting sports, they work, but not well. They're less accurate, have less range, and otherwise make the game less enjoyable. And honestly, any moron could convert a weapon made to fire blanks like that into a real firearm. Hell, you can build a functioning gun with shit you can find in your own house. It wouldn't be pretty, but I could build my own gun right now if I felt like it. It isn't rocket science.

[Order]

I was talking about this topic with a coworker and we came up on an interesting idea for gun control,
What if there were a class in schools (middleschool for example) which taught proper safety and handling of a firearm from rifles to pistols. Familiarize students with safety in the event that their parents haven't taught them or they go to a friends house which has firearms in it, the student would be equipped with the knowladge not to accidentally shoot themself or their friend or family, whatever.

It could be a manditory 3 week course, focused on recognizing types of firearms, how to tell if they are loaded, how to handle one safely, load, unload, etc.
All of that can be done with "snap caps", fake ammunition made of plastic.

Familiarizing people with proper and safe handling of firearms would result in fewer accidental deaths at least.
I have seen many people who disliked guns and take the time to learn about them and become comfortable around them evenutally begin liking firearms. For example, my mother, my sister, friends of the family, blah blah blah.
I have never witnessed someone become familiar with firearms and still claim they dislike them, or even don't understand the attraction to them.

Knowladge is power,
Those who know, know that there is nothing inherently wrong with owning a gun.

I think much of the negativity toward firearms is due to a lack of knowladge and familiarity.
I will admit freely that I don't know anything close to everything about guns, but I do know how to handle the majority of guns safely and feel comfortable around them.
It is knowladge and skills nessicary to living in modern America which many Americans lack. I see it the same as not knowing how to navigate the internet or operate a DVD player.

[Aerif]

Sorry, I'm not coherent in the mornings anymore what with the high temperatures, and I can't guarantee that my argument will be much better this time - since it is well over 40C right now.

The point was to attempt to be intentionally misleading and erroneous with your citing of statistics in an attempt to make people consider that your position might be correct without offering actual evidence or even directly stating the conclusion your data is apparently intended to mislead readers to believe?

You should run for office, you've got the rhetoric mastered.

Thank you.

I used a lot of question marks this morning, didn't I?

Look.

The biggest difference between our cultures is gun control? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess you've never actually been to America. Because you couldn't be much more wrong.

I haven't been to America. I know many people who have, and I watch a lot of American television. It's not the same as living there of course, but any casual observer can note the strange differences in attitudes to guns. If a casual observer notices this first when watching American television then it is a major difference if they notice nothing else.

Even if it were, the correlation itself is not anywhere near enough to draw any sort of logical conclusion whatsoever. In addition to relying on rhetoric to support your position, you now commit the logical fallacy known as the false cause. You have at absolute best identified a singular contributing factor, and at worst done absolutely nothing. Attempting to derive that that alone is the only reason and therefore direct cause of increased violence and crime, is not only intentionally erroneous, but plainly fallacious, and entirely illogical.

Chill.

You are taking an almost mechanical attitude to the whole argument. I've never said that it is the only cause or reason. But I really can't see how you can't make the 'leap' in logic that more guns leads to more gun crime.

When it's the cornerstone of your entire position, you should probably be expecting to debate it. Rhetorical persuasion often seeks to direct attention to something using illogical means to lead people to accept a position you haven't given adequate support for. It's a useful tactic in english classes and political campaigns, but it doesn't go over as well in debates.

I don't want to debate, see how little I've written. I just wanted to input my opinion today.

I'm not sure if you're trying to be misleading, or if you really don't get that criminals do not care in the slightest what you tell them they can't have and what they can't do. If there is a way for somebody who wishes to violate the law to obtain a gun, he will obtain gun.

And he does obtain a gun, and goes on to commit a crime with it. But it just so happens that these crimes happen proportionally less in countries where citizens do not have the 'right to bear arms'.

No, without a gun he would've likely had some difficulty shooting people. Instead he'd have a knife, and he'd stab people. If somebody is crazy and/or desperate enough to kill people over the stupid crap people kill each other over, he doesn't really care how he does it. The only difference is how successful he'd be. But then if nobody else had guns either, he'd do just as well with a knife as criminals are doing now with guns. The gun is only a tool that makes the job easier. If somebody wants someone dead badly enough, they'll manage without as they did before guns became readily available in the first place.

Sometimes I think all you can really do is reduce the damage, and gun control would help that. Well - firstly you should try to prevent the incident from happening but it seems that there are some people just designed to snap at some point. That's a bad sad - but if a person is going to try and kill lots of people then it's better if they only have access to something that can do less damage.

Logical fallacies are invalid by definition. By all means you're entitled to your beliefs, whatever they may be, but it takes more than correlations and rhetorical persuasion to convince anybody else.

It's only a logical fallacy if you see it that way. Great minds can look at the same problem and return with different solutions. Besides this is a point that is affected by bias, both yours and mine. We should leave it alone since we won't come to a conclusion like this.

So you yourself acknowledge the complete inaccuracy of your original point that anybody is ever 'forced' to become a criminal? Good, because I also found that completely ridiculous. Nobody is ever forced to become a criminal.

Complete innaccuracy? You realise I wasn't 100% serious when I used the phrase 'forced to become a criminal', right? Give me a little credit.

People choose crime, because it is easier than doing a little hard work and making something of your life the right way. Crimes are not caused by guns, they are caused by people being too lazy to put forth the effort to change their lives, and choosing the easy alternative.

I know this. And to me it is one of the most dangerous factors of being able to easily obtain a gun. People are idiots. They take risks at the cost of others.

Gun salesmen can't detect when somebody has crossed this line. Sure, nobody would give Jack the Ripper a knife now knowing who he is. But he wasn't Jack the Ripper until after he got a hold of one. Nobody carries a neon sign saying they're planning to use any weapon they can get their hands on to kill people. They obtain something with the facade of a law abiding citizen and break the law once they are in a position to do so. If a man who has decided he wants to become a criminal who uses a firearm can't obtain one legally, he will obtain one illegally. At best, stricter gun control laws would mildly inconvenience criminals who intend to commit gun crimes.

Thing is, people have always chosen crime. There was never a time in recorded history (nor likely anytime before) in which everybody was always nice, never did anything wrong or hurtful to their fellow man for their own sake. It's not the nature of the breed. We do what is most beneficial to ourselves as individuals. If a man deems that making a quick buck is more beneficial than preserving his morality and upholding the law, morality and law go out the window. Human nature is the cause of violent crime.

It is.

But if I had the power to reduce the amount of violence caused by human nature and lower the death rates connected to these crimes I'd take it.

That's why people are ultimately against gun ownership, not to give the government more power - but in an attempt to reduce the risk of they and their kin being injured or killed by Mr. Lazy and Mr. Crazy. And it seems to work statistically, what with violent crime being lower in first world countries where gun control is tight.

The real biggest difference in our cultures is that America is full of people barely making enough to get by, because the government has bled them dry and done nothing while companies pay them as little as they can get away with, and outsource as many jobs as possible to China, meanwhile we get the poor immigrants from mexico, further reducing the average, and taking more jobs because some employer knows he can get away with paying them a fraction of minimum wage; leaving more of our people dangerously close to the line where crime appears to be more beneficial than preserving one's morality.

The exact same thing happens in the United Kingdom. But people pay more taxes and the immigrants brought in to take the jobs are from Eastern Europe - they are also all legal immigrants thanks to the EU's working laws. A lot of outsourcing goes to India and China, like in the USA.

In addition, American culture places that line at a considerably lower annoyance threshold than it's at in other places. There is no singular cause to anything like this. Human beings are influenced by more factors than you could ever even begin to consider.

I know this. I've witnessed it.

Attributing problems to something as simple as gun laws is a lazy man's alternative to applying real critical thinking to analyze the true underlying influences which interact to create a problem in the world. Thinking one can magically solve the problems by altering one of those countless variable in a slight way is equally foolish.

Thank you, for opening my eyes to how lazy I truly am.

*Sigh*

If you take the guns away from the people they are less likely to kill each other with them. It's not a magical solution and it won't eradicate crime, but it will reduce it. Taking away the mean to the ends will make a noticeable difference.

And homicide existed before modern firearms. Therefore guns can't be the cause of homicide, can they? Again, all you'd accomplish by removing the gun from the equation is changing the headline in the paper from "woman shot in her home", to "woman stabbed to death in her home". Murders committed with a gun are not worse than those committed by other means. Changing the cause of death doesn't make victims any less dead. The variable you're attempting to change here isn't even an important one, let alone the only one as you seem to be suggesting.

Everything you said until the final sentence is true and I agree with it. However shooting someone is presumably the easiest and least messy way to kill a person. If you take away the easiest method then your going to lower the number of occurrences.

So, strict gun control laws put certain law abiding citizens at risk of being the victims of potentially violent crimes so criminals can get what they want but have no right to. That sounds vaguely... well, you know, identical... to what gun control laws would supposedly be preventing. So even in theory, gun control laws are not magically solving the problem.

A few attempted burglaries on gun owners in exchange for dozens of murders caused by irresponsible gun owners seems like a fair trade to me.

So much smaller that the analogy could barely even be considered valid. If I'm being generous, actually it couldn't be considered valid in any sense whatsoever.

Yep, that's what the hot Tunisian mornings will do to you.

Hyperbole is another wonderful rhetorical tool, but isn't worth anything in a debate.

You're taking non-literal examples literally. The point was that knowledge can sometimes do more harm than good.

You seem to be laboring under the delusion that these people don't understand what guns do simply because they choose to use them in a way you would not. When somebody points a gun at a person's head and squeezes the trigger, they generally have a pretty good idea of what that action is going to cause. It is in fact exactly what they wanted to accomplish.

They know what will happen if they pull the trigger. But rage is a powerful thing, and when I say consequences I don't mean the death of the target I mean everything else as well. I'm too tired to really argue on the topic though, I'm going to make the assumption that you don't consider me an idiot and understand that some of my arguments when read don't exemplify what I meant. I really don't have a clear head right now and didn't when I typed the message.

I'm gonna go ahead and point out that I noticed the dripping sarcasm indicated with the quotes around accidentally. I'll also go ahead and point out that everybody already knows that a good number of them aren't accidents. I don't mean to disillusion anyone, but people who have badges are actually not certified paragons of virtue. They're actually still humans, and some of them are still bad. Some of them even lie about the circumstances of their mistakes at a later date to avoid punishment.

I don't think anyone is under the impression that anything other than that is true.

As for the rare cases in which they actually ARE accidents... Shit happens. That's life for you. People die in car accidents every day, yet we still give high school kids who I wouldn't trust with a spitball launcher let alone a firearm thousand pound weapons to go drive around in, when statistically, a very large number of them don't follow the laws in place governing the safe operation of a vehicle.

This varies by country. It's not the current topic but I think it's ridiculous that 15-year-olds can learn to drive in the United States and get a license at 16.

It's hard to hide illegal non-trained use of a car though. With guns you don't find out until after the gun is fired.

The funny thing is, most of those questions could be answered by the same field of study that develops life saving medicine. And if not for law abiding citizens seeking that same information, we wouldn't be as well prepared to seek out and punish those who commit crimes. Even 'bad' knowledge you wouldn't want has its uses, often good ones. No knowledge is inherently evil.

There are benefits in knowing this information to some people. Like I said I would accept and learn this knowledge if it was required of me, but I'm not going to seek it out due to personal beliefs.

Whilst I can't think of any specific examples, there probably will be knowledge that is inherently evil due to the inability to use it for good. Not a lot of knowledge could be defined in this way, but of all of the knowledge in the universe there must be some that could possibly be used only for evil purposes. How about the knowledge of the most effective way to kill large amounts of innocent people? Is there anything morally positive about that which I'm missing?

And they're not the only thing that has been adapted for the taking of lives. Do you advocate private ownership of real kitchen knives? Do you think we all need supervision to be trusted with can openers and corkscrews? I assure you, you could end someone's life effectively with either. That something can be used in a bad way does not make the object inherently evil.

Again this isn't the main purpose of these items. Kitchen knives are used far more frequently for their intended purpose than for crime, even in Glasgow. Again guns were invented for killing people.

I'll go ahead and assume that was rhetorical question, but on the off chance it wasn't I'll go ahead and point out that bows take time to draw, skill to aim, and can't be concealed terribly effectively. The quiver and vambrace are usually a dead giveaway. Bows haven't been a terribly popular choice for homicides in recent centuries.

You caught me, again with the rhetorics. Probably because being surrounded by people who don't have English as a first language means I've not asked a rhetorical question in over two months. You'd do the same wouldn't you? (DAMN. Well that was actually self-aware and not all convincing I apologise.)

Bows are still more effective at greater distances than knives. And can be obtained more easily than firearms in most European countries. Killing someone with a gun isn't exactly stealthy though so the give-away point is a little moot, guns make loud noises which come from the very people that fired them .

And I'm sure people who killed people with knives in Glasgow went to culinary school and became listened chefs to obtain legal rights to carry their knives on their person. They didn't just, you know, grab one from their kitchen and hide it in their pockets or anything. Because everybody everywhere always follows the laws you implement to keep them from having things you don't want them to have.

Nope. Couldn't keep a straight face... Not even while typing.

Some of them did.

Others just stayed at home. These new laws had a remarkable positive effect on reducing the amount of knife crime incidents.

Wait what are we arguing about? I said they introduced laws because of the high amounts of knife crime and you said everyone was a chef?

Yeah, I suppose if you pull an Animal House move and manage to give the deer a heart attack with the sound of the blank... but that isn't a terribly reliable way to acquire deer jerky. As for shooting sports, they work, but not well. They're less accurate, have less range, and otherwise make the game less enjoyable. And honestly, any moron could convert a weapon made to fire blanks like that into a real firearm. Hell, you can build a functioning gun with shit you can find in your own house. It wouldn't be pretty, but I could build my own gun right now if I felt like it. It isn't rocket science.

It's enough effort to prevent the more casual users from doing it.

I just wanted to clarify some of my points HA, I don't want to discuss the topic further for now. I still don't feel like I've done my argument any justice, and I don't see that improving for the time being.

I've really written practically nothing.

[Order]

I've really written practically nothing.

Well, you did write that less guns leads to less violence.
That's actually not true.
If you look at the US alone, there is no connection between rate of ownership and guns used in crimes.
However, california has the most restrictive laws for any US state yet has the highest gun related crime rate.

If you look at it internationally, the statistics are misleading due to facts pointed out by Jox in the colorado thread (the US has more accurate and unbiased statistics than most other countries, especially pertaining to crime and gun violence), but taken objectively, it is clear that guncontrol laws do not effect a country's rate of gun crime.
In london, their crime rate overall surged after strict gun control was established.

[Heartless Angel]

Sorry, I'm not coherent in the mornings anymore what with the high temperatures, and I can't guarantee that my argument will be much better this time - since it is well over 40C right now.

40C? Holy shit, gross. Gotta love air conditioning.

I haven't been to America. I know many people who have, and I watch a lot of American television. It's not the same as living there of course, but any casual observer can note the strange differences in attitudes to guns. If a casual observer notices this first when watching American television then it is a major difference if they notice nothing else.

American television doesn't accurately reflect the differences in cultures. What you're seeing is what we're showing you. If you every actually see America, the cultures are quite different. Don't think I'm trying to pull the usual ultra right wing "You've never been here so your arguments are invalid. And you're stupid.", crap, I'm not. I'm just saying, what you've seen of America doesn't give you adequate knowledge of the differences in our cultures. Gun control laws and attitudes towards guns are far from the biggest difference between the two.

Chill.

You are taking an almost mechanical attitude to the whole argument.

Dunno if you've noticed mate, but that's how I always argue. Logic is a fairly 'mechanical' process. I don't employ rhetoric or emotional appeals when arguing for or against a position, because they're logically worthless. I'm a pretty mechanical dude all in all.

I've never said that it is the only cause or reason. But I really can't see how you can't make the 'leap' in logic that more guns leads to more gun crime.

In the same way that the Big Bang lead to us having this conversation. It's erroneous and rhetorical to ignore the countless other factors involved for the sake of placing the blame all on one factor you personally dislike. You're trying to prescribe ibuprofen to cure Ebola here. Treating a minor contributing factor is not addressing the real problem.

And he does obtain a gun, and goes on to commit a crime with it. But it just so happens that these crimes happen proportionally less in countries where citizens do not have the 'right to bear arms'.

And again, the gun control laws are one minor difference of the million differences between the U.S. and those countries. You can't focus on only one detail and attempt to conclude that there's a direct causal relationship between gun control laws and crime. I could just as easily conclude that building another Great Wall to block off Mexico from the U.S. would solve all problems, because it'd stop a percentage of drugs and illegal firearms from entering the country, leading fewer people to become criminals in the first place. This 'solution' would also be utterly nonsensical, because it ignores the overwhelming majority of crimes that have absolutely nothing to do with the one contributing factor it addresses. For the same reason, you can't claim focusing on a single factor is going to fix the world.

Sometimes I think all you can really do is reduce the damage, and gun control would help that. Well - firstly you should try to prevent the incident from happening but it seems that there are some people just designed to snap at some point. That's a bad sad - but if a person is going to try and kill lots of people then it's better if they only have access to something that can do less damage.

Or we could try fixing the problems that actually, you know, matter. We could focus on building a world which doesn't force people into the position where the easy way out through crime begins to look appealing. But let's ignore all the other problems in the world, the guns did it. Damn evil guns inducing psychosis, pushing people to their breaking points, whispering sweet nothings into crazy people's ears and convincing them to dress up like the Joker and kill people. I bet if the guy who held up the gas station down the street from me last month hadn't had a gun, he would've gone to Medical school, become a doctor, and won a Nobel Peace prize or some shit. Or maybe he just would've broken in to a different store that was closed so he didn't need a gun. Or held the guy behind the gas station counter up with a knife instead. Or obtained a gun anyways through illegal channels. There's another thing Mexico helps us with a lot. We get all kinds of lovely illegal weapons from em.

It's only a logical fallacy if you see it that way. Great minds can look at the same problem and return with different solutions. Besides this is a point that is affected by bias, both yours and mine. We should leave it alone since we won't come to a conclusion like this.

Solutions are easy to come to. What's difficult is coming to a solution that's easy to implement. It's a hell of a lot easier to say 'No more guns' than to actually fix a country's problems and prevent a significantly greater portion of crimes, both violent and otherwise. What you're looking for is some magical silver bullet that will instantly slay all our problems. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. You want to change the world? Then you have to change The World, not just a few insignificant variables within. I'm not arguing from bias. I'm arguing from simple logic. I'm not saying outlawing guns wouldn't prevent some crimes here and there. I'm saying it's not the silver bullet. I'm saying it's an extreme measure that places unreasonable restrictions on the many, to stop the few from ****ing it up for the rest of us.

Complete innaccuracy? You realise I wasn't 100% serious when I used the phrase 'forced to become a criminal', right? Give me a little credit.

I know, it was another rhetorical device. You'll have to forgive me, I hate rhetoric. I have the burning desire at the back of my mind to attack it whenever I see it. Particularly in debate.

I know this. And to me it is one of the most dangerous factors of being able to easily obtain a gun. People are idiots. They take risks at the cost of others.

People take risks at the cost of the safety of others in traffic too. Do we need to ban cars? It'd reduce the rate of vehicular homicide and manslaughter. Of course not, nobody would suggest this, because cars are not inherently evil, and are not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is people being idiots. If we need to change any laws here, we ought to make incompetence a federal offense. Solve all kinds of problems right there, but that's unfortunately another of those solutions that would be difficult to implement, so we don't do that.

It is.

But if I had the power to reduce the amount of violence caused by human nature and lower the death rates connected to these crimes I'd take it.

There's a thin line between what is a reasonable sacrifice for that, and what is not. Again the example I used above with cars, obviously the problems that would cause are far greater than those it would solve, so we don't outlaw cars. We punish bad drivers after the fact. The only difference between us right now, is that you see freedom as a reasonable sacrifice to prevent a very small number of deaths. I do not.

The exact same thing happens in the United Kingdom. But people pay more taxes and the immigrants brought in to take the jobs are from Eastern Europe - they are also all legal immigrants thanks to the EU's working laws. A lot of outsourcing goes to India and China, like in the USA.

If you gave me a choice of letting in Eastern Europeans instead of illegal Mexicans, I'd be all over the Europeans. Because they're not just massive drains on society like the majority of our illegals.

I know this. I've witnessed it.

So you know that Americans are simply more inclined to be lazy ****s who grab a gun instead of trying to make something of themselves legally, and yet you still blame the gun and not the people?

If you take the guns away from the people they are less likely to kill each other with them. It's not a magical solution and it won't eradicate crime, but it will reduce it. Taking away the mean to the ends will make a noticeable difference.

Not really. Yes, statistically, if you remove a small percentage of something, you will have less of it. That's fairly obvious. But the overwhelming majority of gun crimes are committed with illegal firearms your gun control laws would not remove. If anything, they would make crimes involving these worse, as nobody, including our police would have guns to return fire. So sure, you'd remove a few gas station robberies at gunpoint and the relatively few injuries and homicides that would not have occurred without them, in exchange for giving more power to gangs and people who commit real crimes on a larger scale. Not helping much if helping at all, possibly making the situation worse since we have a steady stream of illegal firearms from our friends across the border. So we can accomplish little to nothing, all at the low, low price of a basic freedom, and empowering the government to take away things they don't think we can handle! Sounds like a bargain. I'm lying.

On the subject of empowering governments, never a good idea. Nobody EVER willingly relinquishes a power you've given them. They seek to use it more to do more things. I'd rather not let them get their feet in my door, but that's just me.

Everything you said until the final sentence is true and I agree with it. However shooting someone is presumably the easiest and least messy way to kill a person. If you take away the easiest method then your going to lower the number of occurrences.

Jamming something sharp into an important artery or vital organ is pretty simple stuff really. The only things you'd really be stopping are the extremely rare occurrences of multiple killings with a legal firearm. These account for such a small percentage of homicides in the U.S., it's not even close to being worth the loss of a freedom.

A few attempted burglaries on gun owners in exchange for dozens of murders caused by irresponsible gun owners seems like a fair trade to me.

And a few dozen more cop killings by gang members who have illegal firearms now that their opponents are unarmed, a few more serial murders now hat the type of psychopathic murderer willing to go the extra mile to make an impact know they have the advantage... an increase in the sales of illegal firearms funding more crimes... If you look past the end of your nose, you're really not solving a whole hell of a lot here.

You're taking non-literal examples literally. The point was that knowledge can sometimes do more harm than good.

I'm countering rhetoric which has no logical basis yet attempts to convince somebody to adopt a position when you haven't supported it in the slightest with anything based in reality.

They know what will happen if they pull the trigger. But rage is a powerful thing, and when I say consequences I don't mean the death of the target I mean everything else as well. I'm too tired to really argue on the topic though, I'm going to make the assumption that you don't consider me an idiot and understand that some of my arguments when read don't exemplify what I meant. I really don't have a clear head right now and didn't when I typed the message.

Nobody forgets the illegality of homicide. They just don't consider it until afterwards. What you're describing here isn't a lack of knowledge, it's regret. Regret doesn't stop crimes from happening, it occurs after they;re committed. Hindsight is 20/20. A lot of decisions suddenly appear bad when you look at them in retrospect.

This varies by country. It's not the current topic but I think it's ridiculous that 15-year-olds can learn to drive in the United States and get a license at 16.

It's hard to hide illegal non-trained use of a car though. With guns you don't find out until after the gun is fired.

Not really. I've never seen a cop pull somebody over for no reason to ask them if they have a license. They pull them over when they are visibly violating the laws of the road, putting innocent law abiding citizens in danger. You don't find out a drunk driver is a drunk driver until he's behind the wheel intoxicated. You don't find out a teenager is going to speed until he's speeding. The actions are always unsafe, it's just possible to catch them before they become fatal.

There are benefits in knowing this information to some people. Like I said I would accept and learn this knowledge if it was required of me, but I'm not going to seek it out due to personal beliefs.

I'll absorb any knowledge I come into contact with. I'll seek anything out if it interests me. I seek knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Whilst I can't think of any specific examples, there probably will be knowledge that is inherently evil due to the inability to use it for good. Not a lot of knowledge could be defined in this way, but of all of the knowledge in the universe there must be some that could possibly be used only for evil purposes.

I'd in fact submit that nothing is inherently evil, and that evil is nothing more than a human belief rooted in basic psychology of needs. I won't go into that, if you want to see my opinions on human morality, I've gone into it too many times in other threads as is.

On the subject of evil knowledge, I'll submit that knowledge by its very nature can't be evil. Knowledge has no control of who obtains it or what they do with it. One can use knowledge for good. And I'd be happy to find a way for any example you can throw at me.

but of all of the knowledge in the universe there must be some that could possibly be used only for evil purposes.

That's another logical fallacy known as the Appeal to Probability. That it is possible, and there are theoretically an infinite number of instances in which it is possible does nothing in the way of proving that there is a specific instance anywhere in which that possibility is true.

How about the knowledge of the most effective way to kill large amounts of innocent people? Is there anything morally positive about that which I'm missing?

I'd certainly hope military officials have that knowledge when planning out war tactics, as well as anyone in charge of security anywhere so they can plan for and stop anybody who would seek to implement that knowledge in a bad way. For any knowledge that any person could conceivably use for evil, someone good must possess the same knowledge to be better equipped to stop them.

Again this isn't the main purpose of these items. Kitchen knives are used far more frequently for their intended purpose than for crime, even in Glasgow. Again guns were invented for killing people.

And guns are used more for hunting, sporting clays, and making legal owners feel safe than are used for committing crimes. Gunpowder was also invented for weapons. It now has many nonlethal uses, just as guns do. Rockets were invented as a weapon, without the theory behind them we'd never have celebrated a holiday with fireworks. The circumstance of their creation does not make one weapon nicer than another.

You caught me, again with the rhetorics. Probably because being surrounded by people who don't have English as a first language means I've not asked a rhetorical question in over two months. You'd do the same wouldn't you? (DAMN. Well that was actually self-aware and not all convincing I apologise.)

Not in an attempt to prove a point, maybe to troll. Rhetoric is all well and good, I use it myself for humor, but it doesn't belong in a logical argument.

Bows are still more effective at greater distances than knives. And can be obtained more easily than firearms in most European countries. Killing someone with a gun isn't exactly stealthy though so the give-away point is a little moot, guns make loud noises which come from the very people that fired them .

You don't have much of a knack for criminal psychology mate. Concealing a firearm is most important before use, not after. A bow would actually be a pretty good method of killing someone, since you could just burn the evidence. But you can't really sneak into a mall with a bow and quiver full of arrows in your pants. Someone's going to stop you from accomplishing your objective. The objective matters more than getting away with it to a criminal.

It's enough effort to prevent the more casual users from doing it.

Yes, but once again, they're not the ones you need to worry about. They account for an extremely small percentage of serious guns crimes. The serious criminals will still be armed. If they're the only ones armed, that makes them even more dangerous. You reduce a small danger to increase a large one. You haven't accomplished anything.

I just wanted to clarify some of my points HA, I don't want to discuss the topic further for now. I still don't feel like I've done my argument any justice, and I don't see that improving for the time being.

I've really written practically nothing.

Not a problem, I'm always ready for a debate should you wish to debate the subject further at a later date. I know I come off as a douche sometimes in arguments, but it's really not my objective, so try not to take offense to anything I say.

[lovehearty42]

As a member of the Christian faith made up of saints who aren't totally effin' insane, I think it is morally wrong for myself to own a weapon. That is not a standard I would try to impose on anyone else. However, it is one that I impose on myself for a number of reasons. Chief among those is the fact that I do not want to be responsible for the death of another human being. Even if, in self-defense, I shoot someone in the leg to disable them, I could still cause them to die if I hit the femoral artery. They would bleed out in about ten minutes.

I was a soldier, for a time. It wasn't for me. I didn't feel like I was defending or expanding anyone's freedom so much as I was working for a corporate machine who only gave a damn about profit margins. As a way of redeeming myself, I am working toward earning my Paramedic certification, and hope to be a licensed physician within the next ten years. I want to lead a life that helps people, so that I have no reason to defend myself. I realize there is always some risk involved in whatever profession one chooses, but the fact of the matter is that if I am in a position where a person has a weapon and I am unable to subdue them with my bare hands, I will probably take that as a sign that it is my time to take my leave of this plane of existence.

I understand that this may be a ludicrous set of values to have, but they are mine, and they make sense to me. The crux of it is that I don't want to be the cause of someone else's pain.

Although, if someone attacks my kids or my wife... all bets are off.

[Sean]

Personally no one has ever properly explained to me how "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." equals any asshole can buy a gun.

Here's the problems:

1. Constitution was ratified when there was still major fear of Britain coming back and the US still didn't have an official standing army at the time. Citizen militias won the war, and citizen militias would protect America from Britain again.

2. The founders wrote the damn then when firing two shots a minute was expert skill, not hundreds.

3. The right is granted specifically, in the wording of the constitution, to create a citizen militia.

If a citizen militia is no longer necessary (it isn't) then why hasn't the right to bear arms, which was granted according to the constitution in order to create a well regulated militia, been revoked? Why do people still believe it's their constitutional right to own a gun but have no part in the protection of the country with said gun?

We no longer have regulated citizen militia, we have a regulated armed services. The second amendment has been null and void for decades. No where does the wording imply that anyone can own a gun for the sake of owning a gun.

Now many people argue that they own weapons to protect themselves from the government, so that when the time comes they can rise up and be anarchists. Others own them for personal defense, for hunting, for sport, etc. There's certain things I think are fine.

Personally I'd be happier with no guns, period, but that's not logical. Hunting weapons and personal defense weapons, I think, are all fine and dandy. I just want horrendously strict laws about automatic assault weapons (read: complete ban and severe punishment for owning one unless active duty police officer or military personnel whom are assigned one for duty), a national registry for ammunition sales, and strict oversight to gun sales.

I'd also like to see all concealed carry permits removed and that it be illegal to carry a loaded weapon anywhere in public. Private or government-owned hunting grounds not withstanding.

Edit: I should clarify that while it's my opinion I want these things, I know most are not feasible.

I don't buy the argument that if you take away all the guns only criminals will have them and no one will be able to stop them. It's fear mongering, plain and simple.

I do buy the argument that most weapon owners are sane, normal people who are not dangerous, however, and punishing them would be unfair. I'm not advocating that we remove everyone's weapons, though. I'm advocating strict control to keep people from amassing stockpiles of weapons and ammunition to try and play anarchist.

[Order]

You dont want to own a gun, thats fine. Dont.
Why dont you want me to own a gun and carry it?
Does it make you safer if I dont have a gun?
No.
Does it make you less safe if i do?
No.

Does it make me safer if I dont own a gun?
No.

It issue is not day to day life. Gun ownership and carry is about having the option to defend yourself if you are put in that situation, which may never occur and you definately wont know if it is going to happen.

Why do you feel that it is outdated and pointless?

If it is actually pointless, why do you have a problem with it?

Because you are not familiar with guns?
Because you dont own one?
Because you dont have a consealed carry permit?
Because you arent confident in your ability to defend yourself?

Gunownership is not about fear. Its about freedom from fear.
You are afraid.
I am comfortable.

[Sasquatch]

Ah, good ol' hoplophobia ... Hell, even Freud associated fear of weapons with sexual and emotional immaturity.

As a member of the Christian faith made up of saints who aren't totally effin' insane, I think it is morally wrong for myself to own a weapon. That is not a standard I would try to impose on anyone else. However, it is one that I impose on myself for a number of reasons. Chief among those is the fact that I do not want to be responsible for the death of another human being.

Perfect example of something I've seen floating around the internet. "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound."

The idea that it is morally wrong to protect oneself against those who wish to do harm to innocents is nothing short of asinine. Logically, it's better -- or, at least, less bad -- for a wrongdoer to be hurt or killed than it is for the same to happen to a law-abiding, employed, supportive citizen. Ethically, the wrongdoer deserves less of a life than the innocent civilian. Morally -- especially under Christianity -- well, Jesus even told some of His disciples to bring a weapon, and if they didn't have one, to sell their cloak and buy one.

Personally no one has ever properly explained to me how "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." equals any asshole can buy a gun.

The militia is made up of all able-bodied male citizens. Basically, anybody who could fight. No uniforms, no government oversight or control, just a group of armed men. Since then, obviously, rights have been expanded to include women, non-whites, and those with certain disabilities -- on a presentation in a college course, my professor (who was a little person) brought up this point, and I explained that through things like the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, even those with disabilities or physical conditions that may bar them from official military service are considered part of the militia.

So yes, any asshole of military age can -- and should, responsibly -- own a firearm.

1. Constitution was ratified when there was still major fear of Britain coming back and the US still didn't have an official standing army at the time. Citizen militias won the war, and citizen militias would protect America from Britain again.

In 1787, Britain wasn't nearly as much of a threat to the United States as were specific factions and states within. There was much more of a threat of dissolution than foreign invasion. And the United States Army was officially re-created in 1784, three years prior to the Constitution's writing.

The Second Amendment was written not to ensure American civilians' protection from foreign invaders, but to ensure American civilians' protection from tyrannical American government. This has been expressed not only in the Constitution itself (which is why it mentions a free State instead of simply a sovereign State), but in myriad quotes by the vast majority of Founding Fathers.

2. The founders wrote the damn then when firing two shots a minute was expert skill, not hundreds.

And the same rate of fire -- by the exact same firearms -- would be matched between military and civilian. The rights of civilians to own the same weapons as the military were protected. They didn't tell civilians that they could own bows and arrows, but not firearms -- no, they wanted civilians to be able to hold their own against any force.

3. The right is granted specifically, in the wording of the constitution, to create a citizen militia.

As explained, the citizen militia is made up of every citizen capable of fighting.

If a citizen militia is no longer necessary (it isn't) then why hasn't the right to bear arms, which was granted according to the constitution in order to create a well regulated militia, been revoked?

Who are you to say that a citizen militia is no longer necessary?

Look at history's blatant examples of citizens being stripped of their rights of defense. Check out what tyrannical governments have done to their own people, shortly after removing their rights of self-defense. An armed populace keeps its government in check. Without it, you have concentration/death camps, gulags, intentional starvation, extermination of political dissidents, etc., etc. Many of these examples weren't too long ago.

Why do people still believe it's their constitutional right to own a gun but have no part in the protection of the country with said gun?

Because that's what the Constitution says. If you disagree with that, then you may disagree with the Constitution itself -- but unless and until the Constitution is amended to repeal the Second Amendment, it is our Constitution right as American civilians to own firearms, whether we are actively involved in the defense of the country or not.

We no longer have regulated citizen militia, we have a regulated armed services. The second amendment has been null and void for decades. No where does the wording imply that anyone can own a gun for the sake of owning a gun.

Except, you know, the time-accurate definition of the word "militia", or the definition of the word "infringed". The Second Amendment could very easily -- and accurately -- be re-worded to "don't **** with peoples' guns".

Now many people argue that they own weapons to protect themselves from the government, so that when the time comes they can rise up and be anarchists.

There's a difference between protection against a tyrannical government and a devotion to anarchy.

I just want horrendously strict laws about automatic assault weapons (read: complete ban and severe punishment for owning one unless active duty police officer or military personnel whom are assigned one for duty), a national registry for ammunition sales, and strict oversight to gun sales.

There already are horrendously strict laws about automatic assault weapons. You can't just walk into a gun shop with a few bucks and walk out with a machine gun, it doesn't work like that. The idea that it is, in any way, "easy" to acquire an assault weapon is extremely ignorant -- keep in mind, an actual assault weapon, not the modern synonym of "scary-looking gun".

And registering ammunition sales or tightening already-tight restrictions on firearm transfers won't help anything. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand -- people that will break laws with guns will break laws to get guns.

I'd also like to see all concealed carry permits removed and that it be illegal to carry a loaded weapon anywhere in public. Private or government-owned hunting grounds not withstanding.

Because no crimes are ever committed, and nobody ever needs to defend themselves, in a public place, right?

I don't buy the argument that if you take away all the guns only criminals will have them and no one will be able to stop them. It's fear mongering, plain and simple.

Nah, because we all know that criminals obey gun laws. Hell, imagine how many Columbines there would have been if the would-be murderers hadn't been worried about breaking gun laws?

I do buy the argument that most weapon owners are sane, normal people who are not dangerous, however, and punishing them would be unfair. I'm not advocating that we remove everyone's weapons, though. I'm advocating strict control to keep people from amassing stockpiles of weapons and ammunition to try and play anarchist.

So you're not advocating a complete ban on firearm rights ... just an infringement on the right to bear arms.

...

While I'm posting here anyway, I'd like to point out a few things. Maybe enough to get people thinking and researching on their own.

In 1999, only 13% of bullets fired by the NYPD during gunfights hit their intended target. Historically, only about 1/3 of rounds fired from police officers hit their intended target. Civilians responding with deadly force have over an 80% hit rate. Civilians are also much, much less likely to hit an innocent bystander, and civilians are responsible for more justifiable homicides annually than law enforcement officers. And logically, civilians with concealed-carry permits must have some sort of interest in firearms, and it doesn't take much to out-practice LEOs, most of whom do no more than the semi-annual familiarization fire with their issued firearm.