Got guns?

[Olene]

Originally posted by charlos3000


in the stead of destroying all guns, i'd rather a more diverse spread of people had them, as opposed to people who intend to kill people.

why'd you say such a dumb, naive thing as that?

what do you mean by 'diverse'?

how are we meant to know exactly who is going to kill and who isnt?

thats the whole problem with american gun culture. plenty of guns for everyone who wants one. you have a huge country and a huge amount of psychos, latent ones, active ones. you have easy access to guns. you end up with these kinds of things happening. you ask for it.



here's an article:

Buying guns, ammo easy in Virginia
Tuesday Apr 17 08:39 AEST
Buying a handgun or rifle is relatively easy in Virginia, where a gunman slaughtered at least 30 people at a university his morning, but the state's gun control laws are not the most lenient in the United States.

Virginia laws allow any state resident over 18 to buy a firearm, including assault weapons, if they pass a check of any possible criminal background against state and federal databases.

According to the Brady Campaign lobby for gun control, the state merits a C-minus on a scale of A to F for the strength of its gun control laws, with 32 of the 50 states ranked D or F.

Buying and owning a gun in Virginia does not require a permit, but without a gun permit only one handgun purchase per month is allowed, and there is no waiting period to acquire the gun.

Those with licenses can buy more than one gun during one month. A non-state resident has to wait 10 days to acquire a weapon, or until he or she gets a positive report from the state police.

The law is broad enough to allow people to buy assault guns and magazines without limit such as AK-47s and Uzis, the Brady report points out on its website.

"Assault weapons are as easy to buy as hunting rifles," it says.

The state maintains "no restriction on the sale or possession of rapid-fire ammunition magazines that can fire up to 100 bullets without reloading."

The state does restrict people convicted of felony crimes from possessing firearms, and forbids giving or selling handguns to minors under 18, except from one family member to another.

But selling rifles and shotguns to children over 12 is permitted. (WTF??)

In one controversial loophole, people can buy weapons at second hand gun shows without waiting periods or background checks. Critics of the laws say it allows people to pay cash and take the gun away with no way to track them.




so, so what if you get checked and vetted before you can carry arms? so what if you get checked for a criminal history? so what if you state on your application that you wanna use it on a farm out in the back woods hunting rabbits? still cant tell if you're a fucking loonie or not.

you just can't vet psychos. too many psychos running around in your country and they have a "constitutional right" to carry a gun and kill you just whenever they please.

have a good day, America.

[herrokitty]

Switzerland and Israel have a very high percentage of gun ownership. The Swiss government encourages recreational shooting, and the country in general has a healthy respect for firearms. I'm not sure about Israelis, I'd assume it's the same way. The quantity of guns isn't the problem. Those places are very homogenized, and have a very strong sense of community.

[golivar]

Originally posted by herrokitty
Switzerland and Israel have a very high percentage of gun ownership. The Swiss government encourages recreational shooting, and the country in general has a healthy respect for firearms.

that's a good point. i think we fetishize guns, the whole "forbidden fruit" thing. it makes guns more appealing to some. and the fact that using violence to solve problems is so ingrained in our culture doesn't help much, either.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by herrokitty
Switzerland and Israel have a very high percentage of gun ownership. The Swiss government encourages recreational shooting, and the country in general has a healthy respect for firearms.

That's why I brought up rural, urban, and shit like that. Alaska has very low gun crime, too. And rural areas of Canada, with farmers owning guns, don't have a lot of gun crime either.

I'm not sure about Israelis, I'd assume it's the same way. The quantity of guns isn't the problem.

I suspect it's a problem with areas of high population density.

Those places are very homogenized, and have a very strong sense of community.

Israel's not a fair example. It's pretty much a military state out of necessity. America's under no such threat of attack. But I agree that it's a societal thing, and guns are in some ways a symptom of a greater American problem.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by matu

Point being, if someone is intent on doing this sort of thing. YOU CANT STOP IT. They will find another way. Make explosive harder to make, they could do something nutty like drive a big car through a crowded marketplace. etc...

If you think otherwise.... explain. Explain how you can stop people from murdering large groups of innocent people please.

But how many gun deaths are from homicidal mass murderers? The problem is that with guns around, I think even normal people will reach for their gun. They might otherwise just have to yell, or walk away, or flip off a careless driver, or bang their head against a wall, but I think a LOT of normal people will end up pointing a gun at somebody or themselves if one were readily available. And more guns mean more people reaching for guns to resolve shit, which makes it seem more normal, and so on.

Then maybe you can also explain why 160,000 Heavily armed and highly trained American soldiers can't stop the same thing in Iraq.

How is this relevant? Not sure if you can compare a war to what happened in Virginia.

[kamenriderv3]

Originally posted by matu
As for the road rage example, if a person is angry enough that they would fire a gun at a person and end one anothers life, liberty, and happiness, i would suggest that such a irrational person would not hold back from using their vehicle as a weapon as well. I would suggest that this is just as deadly considering how difficult it is to shoot from a moving vehicle at a moving target... and how easy it is to maneveur a car up someone's backside.

you obviously don't understand modified import car owners. they loves their car and would not damage it on purpose.

they will shoot you though.

[charlos3000]

Originally posted by Olene


why'd you say such a dumb, naive thing as that?

what do you mean by 'diverse'?

how are we meant to know exactly who is going to kill and who isnt?

because it's the reality of the situation. there'll always be guns here, for better or for worse, and in light of that fact, it's probably best that people other than criminals are armed as well.

we aren't going to know who is going to kill and who isn't, but if you gave me the choices presented to VAtech students today (run, hide, wait for help that didn't come in time, fall victim to crazed gunman) and an alternative of being armed, i'll take the latter. if someone is going to kill me, whether i'm armed or not, i'll elect to be armed.

granted, it's not a scenario people encounter everyday, and many would think that the city in which i live, the prospect of an armed threat is low, but my neighbor was robbed at gunpoint in the middle of the day. whether i would have shot that guy or gotten shot, or simply let him take my stuff, i don't know, but fuck give me the choice at the very least?

[kamenriderv3]

sure the adults can carry but what about the kids? and the other people who aren't allowed to carry for whatever reason? what if someone shoots your grandma?

ignoring the unarmed portion of the population for a second, does anyone know of shooting rampages that were ended by armed citizens? do people actually carry and stop crazy killers? a lot of people talk about it but does it happen?

its nice to have people who are responsible but there's a lot who aren't. my perspective on firearms is mostly negative and its mostly because of the bad neighborhood i lived near by.

[Robocon^^]

Yeah, I tend to believe that more guns would lead to more gun related incidents/accidents. It's just a matter of running the numbers. More guns = more opportunities for bad things to happen.

As for putting handguns in the hands of everone to stop random school massacre shootings. Those killers preplan their shootings. If everyone carried handguns they'd use sniper rifles like Kent State or set off remote explosives or wear body armor or more high powered weaponry. It just means they'll find a different way.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by matu
My example is alluding... that our police force(as a whole) is incapable of protecting us against determined individuals. They are not rational people. They are sociopaths.

But instances of homocidal maniacs is extremely limited, so much so that I just can't take a pro-gun stance based primarily on that very seriously. It's the same logic the Bush administration uses to do everything and anything. Way more people are going to die from illnesses and sickness than terrorist, yet he's sold this war on making America believe that the highly improbable (you're going to die from terrorist attack) is just around the corner, while at the same time trivializing the inevitable (needing medical attention sometime in your life). If saving American lives is the goal, it seems to me that Universal Healthcare would be much more effective than bombing the shit out of Iraq. We should just spend all our money of developing anti-meteor technology, fuck medical research.

Likewise, the idea that Americans should be armed in order to stop homicidal mass murderers is ludicrous.

as for guns being readily available, they already are. You know I own guns, I also have a rather nasty temper. I have only pulled out a gun on one occasion in my life and it was warranted. It quickly defused the aggression directed at me. I won't get into it, but I was definitely ready to use it. Never ever needed a gun for any other situation when someone has pissed me off and trust me, that happens a lot!

I meant readily available in terms of being inside or a person's home, not in terms of being able to purchase one easily.

But do you agree that if everybody had guns, a lot of situations that are currently diffused by one person walking away... or by yelling... or pushing one another... etc... would instead end up with people pulling guns out? Just saying that if more people have guns, more people will think they need guns in order to protect themselves. It's a vicious cycle. And more people at their rashest, most angry moments, instead of punching a wall or screaming at the top of their lungs, might reach for their gun.

As for the road rage example, if a person is angry enough that they would fire a gun at a person and end one anothers life, liberty, and happiness, i would suggest that such a irrational person would not hold back from using their vehicle as a weapon as well.

Maybe, but shooting a gun is probably more dangerous than bumping somebody from the rear. And I think there's something about ramming a car into something that requires more commitment than pulling a trigger, it's less likely to be done spur of the moment. Just my opinion.

I'm not saying that guns should be illegal, but I don't think MORE guns is the solution at all.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by matu
changing the laws to make somebody wait a few months for a gun will only result in the person having the gun a few months later. I guess that would be a long enough delay for a pissed off nutjob to cool down

Exactly, and that's good.

Dr. Ted Miller, National Public Services Research Institute examined the link between gun ownership rates and firearms death within Canadian provinces, the United States, England/Wales and Australia and concluded that 92% of the variance in death rates was explained by access to firearms in those areas. He suggested that a 1% increase (or decrease) in the percentage of households with guns in Canada would be associated with a 5.8% increase (or decrease) in the Canadian gun death rate.(T. Miller, M. Cohen. "Costs of Gunshot and Cut/Stab Wounds in the United States, with some Canadian Comparisons. " Accid Anal Prev 1997; 29 (3): 329-41.)

or maybe just try some other way to kill people, but thats assuming the fellow doesn't have a gun already. what then? pointless. criminals will still get guns illegally as usual.

And pedophiles intent on getting their hands on child porn will still get it no matter what but that's not the point of laws. From tax evasion to drunk driving to domestic abuse, no law magically makes the problem it's designed to address magically disappear forever. That's not the point, and certainly no reason to not even try.

And, again, in countries with tighter gun control, I'm sure criminals still get guns, but show me something that suggests that limiting the access of guns doesn't change anything. I want to see if industrialized western countries with less guns circulating than in the USA has anything remotely approaching the same levels of gun related incidents per capita as the USA.

banning all firearms outright just won't work as that is specifically protected. The only people anti gun advocates are bothering are gun owners, hunters, and shooting sportsmen. nutjobs and criminals don't care. really lame argument that does nothing.

Not sure if anybody on this thread has proposed a ban, but would you agree that the USA is in the midst of a very dysfunctional love affair with guns? It's not that guns are the ONLY things that can kill, it's just how well and easily it does it, and at what scale. It's pretty much the same reason why Americans don't want terrorists to have nukes. Yes, there's no way to stop them from killing, but with that said nukes makes it easier for them to kill a lot of people.

Not sure what the solution is. Not saying that guns need to be banned, but not sure why people need assault rifles and armor piercing rounds. And why gun manufacturers aren't insisting on implementing new technology to limit the ways in which their products can used for bad.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by charlos3000
we aren't going to know who is going to kill and who isn't, but if you gave me the choices presented to VAtech students today (run, hide, wait for help that didn't come in time, fall victim to crazed gunman) and an alternative of being armed, i'll take the latter. if someone is going to kill me, whether i'm armed or not, i'll elect to be armed.

granted, it's not a scenario people encounter everyday...

And that's my point: if a lot more people had guns, this unlikely scenario will become way more likely.

How might being able to walk around with a handgun change the way people think and interact with one another? Right now, when I think of urban gangsters, I don't see this theory of more people carrying guns equaling more safety playing out the way you suggest it might. It seems like with them, having a gun and knowing their rivals have a gun simply means they're more likely to pull their gun out. It seems to escalate gun violence instead of neutralizing it.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by lifelibertyland
^
Thant's ok, I understand where you're coming form hvaing had a gun pulled on you. That's a shitty situation.

My opinion isn't based on this personal experience. I wasn't scared either time, just really pissed off. The first time I was ready to destroy this person for pointing a gun to my face and my friends will attest to this. The second time it was just funny. We got robbed, he shot our car to show he wasn't "playin," and we were laughing about it three minutes later.

Don't want anybody to think my personal experiences is clouding my judgment. It just doesn't seem rational to me to believe giving everybody guns is the way to stop gun violence. We need to stop glorifying guns and gun ownership somehow. American celebrate the freakin' gun, and violence in general, way too much.

[35ft6]

Originally posted by matu
I agree that more people carrying guns would naturally lead to more incidents. Thats just statistics

I don't think anyone here is suggesting we increase the number of people who carry guns.

I think Charlos is suggesting exactly that, and he's not being ambiguous about it.

I realize what anti-gun advocates are suggesting is the reduction of legally concealed weapons in order to reduce gun violence.

Just tighter control. For example, I once read that 50% of gun crimes can be traced back to 1% of the stores that sell guns. Not sure if Walmart is one of those stores but it suggests that guns are too easily accessible, and that a few bad examples that don't follow procedures can cause a disproportionate amount of havoc.

SILLY. Why? I suggest that such measures would see minimal results as far as concealed weapons go... most deaths are a result of willful homicide(in regards to concealed weapons, and all examples cited thusfar).

Do you have a link that gives a breakdown of gun deaths? Like accidents... ages... shot by people they knew... during a criminal act done by a stranger... etc. I'm looking too. Haven't found one yet.

[charlos3000]

Originally posted by 35ft6
And that's my point: if a lot more people had guns, this unlikely scenario will become way more likely.

How might being able to walk around with a handgun change the way people think and interact with one another? Right now, when I think of urban gangsters, I don't see this theory of more people carrying guns equaling more safety playing out the way you suggest it might. It seems like with them, having a gun and knowing their rivals have a gun simply means they're more likely to pull their gun out. It seems to escalate gun violence instead of neutralizing it.

would it become more likely that average people would be compelled to rob people at gun point?

i agree, that if you put enough guns in the hands of enough people, that you'd have more incidents, but i'm not arguing that everyone should get a gun. however, people shouldn't be prevented from getting a gun should they feel like they need one or want one, and you can only hope that they have the mental fortitude to use one w/ discretion.

however, your local sociopath probably isn't worried about a 10-day waiting period or 10-round mags, and will probably pick up a 17 round 9mm, if he really wants one, from somewhere.