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Post by teancum79 on Dec 1, 2005 18:10:37 GMT -5
Okay so I was thinking about the guns I'm looking at and how annoying it is to have to wait and see if a manufacture is going to make a civilian legal version of the guns I really like and how much they will alter the thing in the process.
So I figured I’d see what people thought about weapon owner ship in general.
I've covered all the levels of weapon owership restrictions I've run into in my chats with people over the years.
Agh number 2 should say ...grandes not okay
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Post by ophelia97 on Dec 2, 2005 10:09:10 GMT -5
I think guns should be allowed, but with tighter restrictions on selling them. There's nothing wrong with using one for hunting purposes, but when any criminal can buy one without questions or background checks, it's a different situation.
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Post by Tara on Dec 2, 2005 11:09:17 GMT -5
I don't know what to think... I guess because I don't know a lot about guns. But I do agree with Ophelia that being able to purchase a gun without a background check or any of that stuff shouldn't be allowed.
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Post by teancum79 on Dec 2, 2005 14:39:24 GMT -5
Currently in the US you do have to get a background check, but like drugs they are not to hard to find if you want one.
There was an article years back in Newsweek about a law that added 5 years mandatory prison time to crimes if a gun came with. The anti gun lobby said that was the wrong idea.
It was working though people where using bats knives etc., but a lot fewer guns got used because no one wanted an extra 5 years. To the best of my knowledge the NRA and the like support these types of laws.
I used to be rather anti-gun (it is my greasiest alteration to my opinion I’ve had to date). Anyhow balance of power is the bottom line. If “good” people have guns than the “bad” people have top behave more. The “bad” guys have guns and they like the idea of taking guns away from everyone else.
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Post by littlepea on Dec 3, 2005 14:58:33 GMT -5
hand guns should not be allowed, only hunting rifles and shotguns should be legal, and only then with thorough background checks and permits etc
you should not be allowed to carry any weapon purely for self-defence purposes, in my opinion, but handguns should be completely outlawed since although it's true that guns don't kill people, people kill people, i think guns are just too powerful.
guns should only be allowed for hunting purposes or for farmers to shoot foxes and other vermin or for protection from dangerous wildlife (eg. it would be reasonable to bring a magnum with you when you go camping in the woods in case you get attacked by a bear etc.)
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Post by Mestemia on Dec 3, 2005 21:16:17 GMT -5
hand guns should not be allowed, only hunting rifles and shotguns should be legal, and only then with thorough background checks and permits etc Thank you. You just screwed every police force in the USA. What about automatic weapons? Interesting enough I read an article that stated the exact opposite. It stated that if everyone was required to carry a hand gun AND have proper training in the use of said gun, that the crime rate would go down and go down fast. I would be interested in finding out if it would really work. guns should only be allowed for hunting purposes or for farmers to shoot foxes and other vermin or for protection from dangerous wildlife (eg. it would be reasonable to bring a magnum with you when you go camping in the woods in case you get attacked by a bear etc.)[/quote]
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Post by littlepea on Dec 4, 2005 13:06:25 GMT -5
how would i screw the USA police force by banning civilians from owning guns?
i think you thought i said that the police shouldn't be allowed to carry guns, but the poll question is about civilian ownership, so you are wrong to make that assumption. i think in general police officers should not be armed with anything other than a truncheon, apart from specialist police officers, like anti-terror police and airport police - basically the sort of thing that we have in the UK (even in british airports you'll see police officers patrolling with sub-machine guns). they don't need guns if the criminals don't have guns, and if civilians aren't allowed to own guns (other than for the purposes i mentioned) then it's very unusual that the criminals will be armed (hence we only need specialist police officers to carry guns).
i can't agree with the article you refer to, but even if it were true it's practically impossible (you can't educate everyone). i'm not concerned with lowering the crime rate so much as lowering the death rate - surely saving people's lives is more important than preventing crime?
what i said in my previous post applies to knives and bats too - people should not be allowed to carry any kind of weapon for the purposes of self-defence.
it's likely that if you banned guns in the USA then the problem would shift to lesser weapons, but you can't seriously suggest that knives are just as dangerous as guns ...
or think about it this way: if there was something that gave you the power to look at somone, clap your hands and then they'd drop dead on the spot, there's absolutely no way you'd feel comfortable having this device in free circulation for just anyone to get their hands on is there?
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Post by teancum79 on Dec 5, 2005 16:00:27 GMT -5
My brother was living in the UK during there big buy the guns back thing I guess that was 8 or so years back. He said that the crime seemed to go way up just after it happened.
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Post by littlepea on Dec 5, 2005 18:00:33 GMT -5
unfortunately i don't know what you're talking about ... i would have been 11 at the time so i might not have noticed it, but if you could give me a link to a bbc news story about it or something that'd be good.
like i said before, i'm more concerned with lowering the homicide rate than lowering the crime rate. the number of homicides in the US is atrocious, are you telling me that if you banned guns then this wouldn't drop?
without a gun you have to beat or stab someone to death, it's not as easy as pulling a trigger - that alone would eliminate the number of accidental deaths caused by guns and it would significantly reduce the number of deaths as people have a better chance of surviving and running away.
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Post by Mestemia on Dec 5, 2005 20:01:29 GMT -5
Banning alcohol did nothing but make the situations they were hoping to eliminate worse. Perhaps that is what the article I read was refering to.
I honestly don't know. But it does seem reasonable that if everyone had guns and was trained to use them then perhaps people would be less likely to cause problems.
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Post by teancum79 on Dec 5, 2005 20:27:12 GMT -5
Well as I said my brother was there I've not gone looking for any reports. There was a state trooper who was shot back in my home town a few years back. The shooter was an illegal alien who had a long criminal record. Getting a gun is not hard the only way to make the bad guys behave is for good buys to be armed.
I do not want to have a bunch of stupid yahoo’s running around shooting everything in sight, but if say 10%-20% of the adults in a community were armed the odds of getting shot when committing a crime would be rather high.
Also making explosives or poisons is quite easy. I’d guess that if you remove a means to and end (taking away guns) people will still reach their end. If there are no guns than other means will be used. Some may be more primitive but 2 gallons of gas and a fuse will kill someone just a surly as a gun. It will also have a lot more collateral damage.
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Post by Tara on Dec 5, 2005 21:20:22 GMT -5
I don't know if it is so much the means as it is actually being able to properly nurture society from the start. (kinda like how I mentioned in one of the other threads)
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Post by littlepea on Dec 5, 2005 22:06:58 GMT -5
Well as I said my brother was there I've not gone looking for any reports. There was a state trooper who was shot back in my home town a few years back. The shooter was an illegal alien who had a long criminal record. Getting a gun is not hard the only way to make the bad guys behave is for good buys to be armed. I do not want to have a bunch of stupid yahoo’s running around shooting everything in sight, but if say 10%-20% of the adults in a community were armed the odds of getting shot when committing a crime would be rather high. Also making explosives or poisons is quite easy. I’d guess that if you remove a means to and end (taking away guns) people will still reach their end. If there are no guns than other means will be used. Some may be more primitive but 2 gallons of gas and a fuse will kill someone just a surly as a gun. It will also have a lot more collateral damage. why are you so obsessed with preventing crime when the number of gun-related deaths is so horrifically high? why is crime prevention more important than death prevention? i agree that restrictive gun laws would not prevent crime and violence, but do you disagree that having UK-like gun laws would lower the homicide rate? the situation you describe in your first paragraph is exactly what's wrong with your liberal gun laws, that sort of thing should not happen, so why not just make guns illegal? explosives and poison ... what has that got to do with anything? you can't accidently lug around 2 gallons of petrol and blow up a supermarket, you can't inadvertantly boil toads and then scoop the poisonous foam into someone's soup - people will still commit murder without guns, but accidental deaths will be severely reduced. compare the US to the UK - liberal gun-laws compared to restrictive gun-laws. both societies are pretty violent and both have very bloody histories. the USA has a problem with guns and the UK has a problem with knives. how many people are killed each year in the US compared to the UK (not just murder but all forms of homicide including manslaughter, self-defence and pure accident)? the best statistic i could find was this and it's only for murders - you are roughly 3 times more likely to be murdered in the US compared to the UK. there are statistics for manslaughter on there but they don't contain information on the UK and US statistics for some reason. i wish i could see the total homicide statistics for both the US and the UK since i believe the major problem with guns is the number of deaths that occur which don't necessarily result in murder convictions. this article makes a few valid points that point out that England & Wales only report murders as homicide whereas the USA reports all homicides as homicide, just like Scotland in fact. so maybe we should compare the homicide rates of the USA to Scotland's? i can tell you from first hand experience that Scotland is not a particularly peaceful country, so let's look at some numbers ... this site, although one-sided and unprofessional, shows the figures from the year 2000. you are roughly 2.5 times more likely to be killed in the USA than in Scotland. sure, we have more differences than just guns, i don't mean to say that if you made guns illegal then your homicide rate would be cut by 60%, and i don't want this to turn into an argument about which country is more violent, Scotland or the USA, but can you seriously believe that if you had gun laws like in the UK then the homicide rate would not decrease?
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Post by teancum79 on Dec 6, 2005 1:32:28 GMT -5
Well I'm not going to say that guns are not involved in killing people. As is the situation with trooper Saunders. What needs to be understood is that it was totally illegal for the guy who killed him to have the gun. Banning guns does not = bad guys don’t have them. ‘gun deaths’30,242 gun deaths in the US in 2002 only 11,829 were homicides. ‘causes of death’ Guns did not make the top 10 list for causing death. ‘more data’ I think this last spots idea is to prove that Mary J is not bad for you. Anyhow all in all guns are not a major cause of death in the US compared to many other things. I’m not saying that there is not a problem, but rather that it is not nearly as bad as many people make it out to be and that the benefits of having guns far outweigh the risks.
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Post by littlepea on Dec 6, 2005 10:23:37 GMT -5
all the information in the first link you gave points to why we shouldn't allow handgun ownership. the second link is completely meaningless, the last link kind of backs up the 30,000 figure from the first.
what is the purpose of a handgun? it's purely for self-defence purposes, isn't it? i don't think you should be allowed to possess any weapon purely for self-defence purposes. if it's for hunting or protection from wildlife or for killing vermin then fine but not for self-defence purposes. this goes for weapons other than guns too, such as brass knuckles, flick-knives and other objects which clearly serve no other purpose (a favourite among the scum in scotland is a stanley knife taped to the end of a hammer - just imagine what damage that could do ... )
that's just it: you shouldn't be allowed to carry weapons for self-defence, people should not be encouraged to take the law into their own hands, if everyone were armed then there would be complete anarchy.
of those 30,242 deaths, if you could save one life by banning guns then surely that would be worth it? maybe crime would increase, but how many lives would need to be saved to justify the increase in crime? why don't we just kill everyone, then there would be no crime any more?
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