Gun Control is ridiculous

How many of them would have been as a result of other forms of hurting someone? Guns do not have a monopoly on being able to injure another person.

No, but they make it easier, else you wouldn't be advocating carrying them for protection. Either guns are dangerous, or they aren't.

In terms of your other post, my position is along the lines of Loss Leader's. As I've said to Quad, no doubt you could postulate a hypothetically unlikely set of circumstances for you as an individual whereby shooting your assailant is above and away the best course of action to preserve your life. Nevertheless, the sociological costs of gun ownership - higher rates of gun crime, massively higher rates of injuries from the accidental discharge of guns, thousands of deaths that might otherwise have been prevented - is not an acceptable price to pay for the individual's right to shoot people if the unlikely circumstances demand.

You are looking at this issue from an individualistic standpoint. It might be the case (though i seems not) that you are better off with a gun once in your lifetime. From a social point of view, society is worse off for having the scourge of guns on its streets.

Look at the bigger picture.
 
Volatile I found a very interesting article about guns in England. You should give it a read.

"Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html
 
"� In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted �5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin."

There are a ton of other stories like this from England. I now see why your views of guns are SOOO misguided volatile.
 
No, but they make it easier, else you wouldn't be advocating carrying them for protection. Either guns are dangerous, or they aren't.

Crowbars are more dangerous than fists. Should we outlaw them? Vehicles make it easy to kill someone. Should we outlaw them? You're more likely to die by car than firearm. Should we outlaw them too?

In terms of your other post, my position is along the lines of Loss Leader's. As I've said to Quad, no doubt you could postulate a hypothetically unlikely set of circumstances for you as an individual whereby shooting your assailant is above and away the best course of action to preserve your life.

Why does everyone assume that if I have a gun, I'll immediately want to use it? Even the threat of using it, or the fact that I have it on my person is enough to deter many criminals. Why can you not understand this?

Nevertheless, the sociological costs of gun ownership - higher rates of gun crime(...)

As opposed to non-gun violent crimes, which still would happen.

(...)massively higher rates of injuries from the accidental discharge of guns (...)

As opposed to motor vehicle accidents, which occur far more often.

is not an acceptable price to pay for the individual's right to shoot people if the unlikely circumstances demand.

On the contrary, my life and the lives of my family are certainly an acceptable price to me. And I'll be damned if you'll tell me otherwise.

You are looking at this issue from an individualistic standpoint. It might be the case (though i seems not) that you are better off with a gun once in your lifetime. From a social point of view, society is worse off for having the scourge of guns on its streets.

That is your opinion, and you have continually cited "facts" without providing citations so that they can be checked. You have further used debunked and faulty stats to prove your point.

Pardon me if I'm a bit skeptical.

Look at the bigger picture.

I am. I just prefer a good-looking picture that's enhanced with the colors of reliable facts and reality, instead of what looks to me like scribblings of an adolescent child.

(Not that I'm claiming you're an adolescent child, I just felt that that would sound funny).
 
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"� In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted �5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin."

There are a ton of other stories like this from England. I now see why your views of guns are SOOO misguided volatile.

You should read more about Tony Martin. He had an illegal shotgun, he lay in wait for the local gypsy kids and then shot a 16 year old burglar in the back as he was running away...

How courageous.
 
Volatile I found a very interesting article about guns in England. You should give it a read.

"Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

Yeah, we already covered that erroneous statistic elsewhere in this thread. It's nonsense. From here:

"Recently it has been claimed that gun crime has risen three-fold since 1996, the year before the post-Dunblane handgun ban was introduced. Ross Clark in an opinion piece in The Times (14 March) quoted a figure of 7,753 gun crimes in 1996 rising to 24,094 in 2003-04. Any careful check would have revealed that the correct figure for all gun crime in 1996 was 13,876. The mistake is not even explained by the exclusion of airgun incidents from the earlier but not the later total. Furthermore, this was not a one-off. Graham Lane, writing to the Sunday Herald letters page (12 March), asked for an explanation for the “massive threefold increase in armed crime and murder by use of firearms since this ban.” GCN believes that it is no coincidence that Clark and Lane used similar exaggerations in pieces in which they both argued for a reversal of the handgun ban. Such incorrect statistics ought to have been challenged before publication.

Whilst gun crime has risen in England and Wales since 1996 the official figures reveal that this is largely owing to big increases in the number of incidents involving airguns, imitation guns and other weapons such as paintball guns for which there are few controls. Total gun crime, and handgun crime in particular, has fallen significantly in Scotland since the mid-1990s. In England and Wales handgun crime has fallen for the last two years, as has the total number of crimes, if those involving airguns and imitation guns are excluded.


The lazy or deliberate use of incorrect statistics has contributed to a situation in which too many journalists automatically describe gun crime in Britain as “rocketing out of control”. The correct statistics show that this is not the case."
 
You should read more about Tony Martin. He had an illegal shotgun, he lay in wait for the local gypsy kids and then shot a 16 year old burglar in the back as he was running away...

How courageous.

And what about these stories?

"In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.

� In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.


� In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal."



England makes me sick.
 
You should read more about Tony Martin. He had an illegal shotgun, he lay in wait for the local gypsy kids and then shot a 16 year old burglar in the back as he was running away...

How courageous.

Indeed. But no matter how scummy his acts were, do you think he would have acted more peacefully if he had no guns? Or would he have just used the "next best thing"?
 
13 pages in a day and a half. Pretty good for a gun control thread. I think it almost lives up to the gun control threads of yore. Don't you think, Claus? Nice to see the newer generations are still full of spunk.

Carry on.
 
Crowbars are more dangerous than fists. Should we outlaw them? Vehicles make it easy to kill someone. Should we outlaw them? You're more likely to die by car than firearm. Should we outlaw them too?

Nonsensical argument, addressed numerous times in this thread. Guns are primarily designed for killing people, cars and crobars aren't. Furthermore, carrying a crowbar around as an offensive weapon is already outlawed.



Why does everyone assume that if I have a gun, I'll immediately want to use it? Even the threat of using it, or the fact that I have it on my person is enough to deter many criminals. Why can you not understand this?
Why have a gun if you don't think you'll use it? You can't have it both ways. Either the gun is dangerous enough to make it a better weapon for your protection than any other, or it isn't. If it wasn't, you wouldn't need to carry it in the first place. You're arguing in circles.


As opposed to non-gun violent crimes, which still would happen.

As opposed to motor vehicle accidents, which occur far more often.
True. How is that relevant to whether banning guns makes people safer?


On the contrary, my life and the lives of my family are certainly an acceptable price to me. And I'll be damned if you'll tell me otherwise.
Every man for himself is a really unpleasant philosophy in my humble opinion. It hardly makes for a civil society, or a nice world to live in.
 
A gun in the home in 7 times more likely to be used to commit a crime than to prevent one.
Jeeze, 500 posts in one day? CFL must be around here somewheres...

Anyway, let's talk abou that claim that "a gun in the home is 7 times more likely to be used to commit a crime than to prevent one."

I think it's a pretty safe bet that people who own guns largely fall into two broad categories: 1) law-abiding people who own them for justifiable reasons (hunters, self-defense, etc.), and 2) criminals, who own them so they can commit crimes.

Your statistic may be true, (or not - let's assume it is)but the thing is, it lumps all gun owners in the same pot. Having a gun in your home does not automatically mean you will be more likely to commit a crime with it than to prevent one. A criminal is probably a hundred, or even a thousand or ten thousand times more likely to use a gun to commit a crime than to prevent one. And the law-abiding people would be far less likely to use it to commit a crime than prevent one.
 
Nonsensical argument, addressed numerous times in this thread. Guns are primarily designed for killing people, cars and crobars aren't. Furthermore, carrying a crowbar around as an offensive weapon is already outlawed.

Knives, then?

And even though knives of a certain size are "outlawed", it does not stop criminals from carrying those sizes of knives. Kinda telling as for the whole idea of banning firearms, doesn't it?

Furthermore, are you really going to convince me that all guns are made for the sole purpose of killing someone? Then what are target range pistols made for?

And knives over a certain size ARE meant for dealing damage, or at the least are meant as a cutting tool.

Why have a gun if you don't think you'll use it?

Been addressed several times in this thread. Do I really need to rehash the same point over and over again?

1) I take firearms to shooting ranges, and find that rather fun personally.
2) When it DOES come up, it matters. A LOT. I don't know how much your life or the lives of your family are worth, but I do not put a price on mine.
3) Hunting. I don't hunt, but some others do. And a hunting rifle is just as capable of killing (in fact, MORE capable of killing) than a pistol.

You can't have it both ways. Either the gun is dangerous enough to make it a better weapon for your protection than any other, or it isn't.

Of course it's dangerous. But what's more dangerous isn't the firearm, but in how the person that has it uses it. And I like to think that the majority of people in society are good people, and that the minority are the criminals. But that minority has a chance of doing harm to me and the other good people.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't need to carry it in the first place. You're arguing in circles.

I would only be arguing in circles if my argument was, "Guns aren't dangerous!" I don't believe I ever argued that. Would you quote me if I did?

The fact is, there are always going to be somethign that is "more dangerous" than unarmed fighting. I do not thinking that banning all of those items from the use of every person is going to solve any problems.

True. How is that relevant to whether banning guns makes people safer?

Because the people that get hurt from firearms stand just as significant a chance from suffering from non-gun violence. If a man comes up to rape a woman while threatening her with a firearm, he could be just as likely to come up and threaten her with a knife. Name me one thing that can't be done with another weapon that we're under threat of with firearms?

Every man for himself is a really unpleasant philosophy in my humble opinion.

Just remember, if you were my neighbor I'd be taking care of YOUR family if a criminal decided to attack you. So no, that isn't an "every man for himself" philosophy, as that implies that I am not willing to help others.

I just have yet to be shown that banning firearms is a good answer to the problems that you propose. If anything, crimes will spike, not lower. I'm also dubious that government regulations are the only answers to crimes. But it seems that everyone runs to the government as soon as they perceive a problem...

It hardly makes for a civil society, or a nice world to live in.

Civility has to do with attitude and cultural values, not with the tools with which you have access to. There were far more "uncivil" societies before firearms ever went into mass production, or were even developed.

In fact, I'll repeat this again: Those that oppose newer weapons do not pose a civil society, but instead a return to rule by brute strength, where the stronger take from the weak. With firearms, a 5'3" woman actually has a chance to defend herself against a 6'3" rapist.
 
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What difference does it make? It just shows the INSANITY of the British government/court system

Why is cracking down on people using weapons on each other bad? We have a long history of precedent laying out reasonable force, and a legal system based on jurisprudence. Did you read the judge's decisions in those cases, or just the hysterical tabloid re-rendering of them like you did with the Martin case?
 
Why is cracking down on people using weapons on each other bad? We have a long history of precedent laying out reasonable force, and a legal system based on jurisprudence. Did you read the judge's decisions in those cases, or just the hysterical tabloid re-rendering of them like you did with the Martin case?

Are you telling me that there was a different outcome than in those stories?
 
Still investigating statistics, but start here: http://www.csgv.org/docUploads/Gun Violence Fact Sheet.pdf

More than half of all fatal shootings in the US in 2003 were suicides or accidental discharge.

A gun in the home in 7 times more likely to be used to commit a crime than to prevent one.

The link you posted leaves much to be desired.

It says that the primary purpose of handguns is to kill human beings. There is no authoritative source for this claim. I am certain that handguns are used much more often for sport than for killing people.

It says that handguns, unlike rifles and shotguns serve no practical sporting purpose. The truth is that handguns serve almost exactly the same practical sporting purpose as shotguns and rifles. The only thing I have not seen a pistol used for is shooting clays, flying birds, and targets at extreme long range. Handguns can be used for every other sporting purpose that rifles and shotguns are used for.

The link also claims that "A gun kept in the home is 4 times more likely to be involved in an unintentional shooting, 7 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault or homicide, and 11 times more likely to be used to commit or attempt suicide, than to be used in self-defense."

The source for this claim does not imply that the gun that was in the home is responsible for the great increase in shootings like your link does. I am not able to view the actual article unless I give up my CC number, so I read the summary of the journal here, http://www.jtrauma.com/pt/re/jtraum...q3LR5vvQvf6GTQSc!380829556!-949856145!8091!-1

I think the person who wrote the gun violence fact sheet has an axe to grind against handgun owners.

Ranb
 
I think the person who wrote the gun violence fact sheet has an axe to grind against handgun owners.

Ranb

Agreed. its funny how you can make statistics say just about anything you want isnt it?
 
Why do you feel you have to resort to hyperbole?

Are you really under that much pressure?

Because the argument is ridiculous.

Now if we're talking about taking away assault rifles from all people, UNLESS they have undertaken proper training, and the have a certificate to show for it, then you have a point.

But to suddenly take away all guns from law abiding citizens? How the heck am I supposed to defend myself against a cougar when I go horse-back riding in the mountains?

With a knife? Once guns are banned, knifes will be next.
 

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