Gun Control is ridiculous

Alt+F4 said:
I agree. I could kill you with a pencil. :rolleyes: However, all the things you mention have other purposes, a gun has only one.

Then what is the answer? I find 20,00 deaths a year unacceptable.
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But how many of those 20,000 would have been prevented with gun control? The suicides? I think any reasonable person would agree that these would happen anyway with the plethora of methods there are to off oneself.

Homicides? Look at the video in the OP--criminals just get guns on the black market. Government can't even keep drugs out of its own prisons; how is it going to keep guns out of the black market? And that brings up another point--how many of these homicides would we actually have were it not for the War on Drugs?

So, even if we grant all 802 of the accidental deaths, again, with guns being used 2-3x more often in defense, how many deaths would you be adding?
 
Skibum said:
http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_024081031.htmlI prefer to have and not need than to need and not have.
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Exactly. It's like insurance: you have it in the hopes you'll never have to use it. In fact, it's better than insurance in that it's a deterrent--no criminal will go up against an armed would-be victim, and a criminal will think twice about committing a crime if he thinks they might be carrying. That was the reason for criminals targeting Miami tourists: with concealed carry, they didn't know who on the street had guns and who didn't, but they knew people coming out of the airport didn't have them.
 
shanek said:
So, even if we grant all 802 of the accidental deaths, again, with guns being used 2-3x more often in defense, how many deaths would you be adding?
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But that makes no sense if you consider the gun homicide ratios per head of population in the US compared to elsewhere in the world.

Sure, the UK has plenty of gun crime, but per head of population it's much, much reduced compared to the US. As is our homicide rate.

From: http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/homicide.htm#murd, in 2000 the USA apparently had 5.64 murders per 100,000 head of population, and England & Wales had 1.61

Having no (legal) guns means I'm less likely to be shot, thank you very much, and manifestly not having guns does not make me as a British citizen more likely to be murdered, mugged or robbed.

To put it another way, you're wrong.
 
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Alt+F4 said:
You're right, the media doesn't bother writing stories when something doesn't happen. But yes, I'll look up statistics where a child got hold of a parent's gun and:
1. killed themselves
2. killed a friend
3. went on a shooting spree
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You might want to look up a study the DoJ's Office of Juvenile Justice did a number of years ago. It's kind of buried, but basically they did a study where they divided kids into three categories: those who got guns illegally (generally through gangs), those who got guns from a parent (the only way to get them legally if you're a minor), and those who didn't get guns at all.

As one might expect, those who got guns illegally had the highest rate of violence. But would you have expected the kids who got guns from a parent to have the lowest? They did.
 
Malachi151 said:
Why does America have orders of magnitude higher homicide rates than the rest of the developed world, because we don't have enough guns?
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Nope, because we do not enforce the laws that we have on the books.

Malachi151 said:
#3 The empirical data showing reduced crime and reduced murder rates in countries that regulate guns more heavily is ignored here by supposedly empirical people
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Tell you what. Since you want to take that position suppose you furnish data from countries that regulate or even ban firearms that shows the truth of your statement. Make sure you furnish data from before the ban/regulation and compare that to after the ban/regulation data. Hint - you will not like the data when forced to make a before and after comparison. You bit and took the bait hook line and sinker believing that because country A has a low per capita incidence of murder that is because of firearm control. The problem you might face with that attitude is that there are countries where law-abiding civilian citizen ownership/possession of firearms is all but impossible but the crime and murder rate exceed that of the US.

Get over it. The firearm is nothing more than an inanimate mechanical contraption and is incapable of action by itself. The problem is persons who choose to ignore the law.
 
I think it was the great Eddie Izzard who said, and I paraphrase, [SIZE=-1] “Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and monkeys do too, if they have a gun.”[/SIZE]
 
Ranb said:
Mandatory firearms safety training in school would be a good idea. But some people would object to it just like they do sex education.
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I had firearms safety training in high school. I think it's an excellent idea.
 
Get over it. The firearm is nothing more than an inanimate mechanical contraption and is incapable of action by itself. The problem is persons who choose to ignore the law.
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Exactly, so which is easier to control, the guns or the people?

Would you prefer some form of mental control system that removed people's "free will"?

Keep in mind here that I myself am a hunter and own guns, I just don't think that "gun control" is ridiculous. Gun control is perfectly reasonable, indeed total lack of gun control is ridiculous.
 
mattlodder said:
But that makes no sense if you consider the gun homicide ratios per head of population in the US compared to elsewhere in the world.
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1) You have to be very careful of cross-cultural comparisons. At the very least, you'd need to do a regression analysis for the comparison to be in any way reliable, and even then it'd have to be a pretty comprehensive one. It's practically impossible.

2) As I said, how many of those would have happened were it not for our insane War on Drugs?

From: http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/homicide.htm#murd, in 2000 the USA apparently had 5.64 murders per 100,000 head of population, and England & Wales had 1.61
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How about this: Go to the FBI's website and look up the Uniform Crime Reports. Look at the cities and states with the highest vs. the lowest murder rate. Then compare them to which cities and states have the most strict vs. the most lax gun laws. Then get back to me with what you find.
 
mattlodder said:
Yeah, legally held guns are less lethal than those whose owners lack the proper paperwork... :rolleyes:
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Well, it's not the guns that do the killing, it's the people who hold them. Who do you think is more likely to kill, a law-abiding gun owner, or someone who got his gun illegally?
 
Malachi151 said:
Keep in mind here that I myself am a hunter and own guns, I just don't think that "gun control" is ridiculous. Gun control is perfectly reasonable, indeed total lack of gun control is ridiculous.
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It seems to me that lots of these arguments can be summarised as "I should be able to have a gun, but no-one else should". I mean, the term "gun control" applies to all and any restrictions on ballistic weapon ownership, and I don't see many people having a problem with statutes preventing people running down a crowded high-street with a loaded AK-45 blazing.

The question then becomes, as you astutely point out, not "Should we control gun ownership?" but "How should we control gun ownership?". It becomes a question of where the government draws the line.

Personally, I'm happy living in a country where it's damn difficult to get a gun, and where I know I'll almost certainly never even see a firearm, nevertheless be near one fired in anger. How people really feel "safer" when people are able to own deadly weapons and carry them around town "just in case" absolutely boggles my mind. It really does.
 
mattlodder said:
Speaking as a Brit, I have to say I'd definitely feel safer if all those burglars, rapists and muggers that we already have had easy, unfettered access to firearms,
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You think they don't?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai....xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/02/24/por_right.html
http://talk.workunlimited.co.uk/gun/0,,178412,00.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

And, in fact, the UK violent crime rate is higher than the US in nearly every category. The fact that the UK homicide rate appears much lower than it is is due to major differences in reporting between the UK and US.

And before all you Aussies get too self-congratulatory, Australia has a higher violent crime rate than either the US or UK.

http://www.unicri.it/icvs/
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi115.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21902


Interesting that the police commissioner calls a three-fold increase in firearm-related homicides, along with a substantial drop in the street price of illegal handguns due to increasing availability -- despite the removal of "600 guns a year" -- a "success". Here in the US, we'd call that a profound failure.

The Japanese national police commissioner stated about 10 years ago that they were unable to stem the flow of illegal firearms into the hands of criminals. This despite some of the most restrictive laws in the world. Private ownership is banned completely, and all firearms must be smuggled into the country, or manufactured clandestinely.
 
shanek said:
Well, it's not the guns that do the killing, it's the people who hold them. Who do you think is more likely to kill, a law-abiding gun owner, or someone who got his gun illegally?
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You're asking the wrong question. Who do you think's more likely to kill, the unarmed monkey or the monkey with the Glock?
 
luchog said:
You think they don't?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm
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I know we have gun crime. But I fail to see how making guns easier to get hold of makes gun crime less likely! We have enough (too much) gun crime with guns rather difficult to obtain. You think that making it possible for anyone without a criminal record but with criminal intent to walk in to a supermarket and come home with a handgun makes you safer? Really? You think the way for the UK to reduce its gun crime would be to make guns more easily available? That would reduce the number of shootings and killings, would it?

Your entire argument is absurd.
 
shanek said:
What do monkeys have to do with anything? People aren't monkeys.
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Don't be obtuse. Who's more likely to paint a picture? The guy with a paintbrush, or the one without? Or if I have to spell it out without the use of metaphor - who's more likely to kill, the unarmed person or the person with the gun?
 
mattlodder said:
Sure, the UK has plenty of gun crime, but per head of population it's much, much reduced compared to the US. As is our homicide rate.
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No, it's not. Your source is erroneous, due to a huge difference in reporting methodology between the US and UK. In the US, all firearm deaths, with the exception of suicides or obvious accidents, are coded as homicides, regardless of whether they're actually prosecuted as such, or later downgraged to manslaughter or accidental death. In the UK, the status of firearm deaths are re-categorized depending on prosecution and later determination; if a firearm death is originally coded as a homicide, but later determined to be accidental or incidental, it's recoded as such, which does not happen in the US. Although the homicide rate is still lower, it's not nearly as much lower as your source claims. And all other violent crime, including firearm-related violent crime, is higher and increasing. See the links in my previous post.
 
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