Poll: Lets pretend the government passes a law stating that you can't have a gun anymore...

[Raytan941]

You proposed that enacting gun regulation would not change violent crime in the US. The burden of proof is on you to back up that claim. Your only evidence so far has been that some states have laws regarding guns. That does not back up your point.

As has already been stated multiple in this thread and others like it violent crime rate and murder rate have been decreasing steadily over the last 20 years and are at an all time low. The only major gun regulation that has been passed in the last 20 years was in September 1994 when the Clinton Assault Weapons ban was signed into law. At the time is was signed violent crime had already been on the decline and continued to decline at about the same rate. In September 2004 the Clinton era assault weapons ban was allowed to expire and despite dire warnings from anti-gun groups there was no jump in crime or murder rates, they continued to fall at about the same rates as before and during the Clinton assault weapons ban. Furthermore over the last 10 years many states have loosened the law's regarding the carrying of firearms again despite warning from anti-gun groups about "wild west style shootouts in the streets of America" no such events have taken place.

I am not going to bother citing sources because they have already been cited numerous times over numerous threads look them up yourself, the FBI's crime statistics database can be found here http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/crimestats enjoy.

Oh and one last thing lets all agree to stop trying to compare other countries gun control efforts to those of the US it's silly to compare island nations like Australia, Japan and the UK to the US. They have a fraction of our population as well as a different diversity, culture, values, and government. It's just a stupid argument to say "look at Japan they don't have guns and their murder rate is really low the US should be like Japan". And it's just as stupid an argument to say "look at El Salvador they have very strict gun laws and a fraction of the guns owned in the US and yet their gun related deaths are more then 5 times higher then in the US!".

 

[the clockmaker]

If that is what you really believe then where does your pursuit of safety end?

At a happy balance between anarchy and totalitarian society, because this is not a slippery slope.

Human beings being the flawed creatures we are and this world with both its natural and man made dangers it is imposable to ensure ones safety 100% of the time.

No, it is not, but that does not mean we cannot remove dangers, no one is saying 'regulate the entire world until everyone is safe forever' people are saying 'that there, that shit is unnecessarily dangerous, lets get rid of that shit'

But if safety and order is of utmost importance to you just what freedoms are you willing to give up to ensure the safe and orderly society you envision?

The ones that do nothing but allow me to impinge on the freedoms of others

If the government determined that it would be safer for you and your wife to not have children even though you want children and you will both be forcibly surgically altered so you cannot have children do you comply?

slippery slopes argument, I mean surely you can see the difference between the average joe blog on the street not being able to deal death at a whim and forced steralisations

If it was determined that democracy and freedom of speech were a danger to order and safety do you give up the right to vote and express your opinion?

Because freedom of speech can kill an entire family in the time it takes to read this sentence... oh wait no it can't

If it was decided that for public health and safety reasons all citizen's will be forcible enrolled in mandatory government run exercise programs, would you agree to go?

actually I would like to see something like this linked to medicare, if you are fat and want treatment for your obesity induced heart disease, go for a run or we won't pay for your treatment.

If you and your family all contracted a highly contagious virus and for safety reasons it was decided that it would be best if you were all euthanized do you willingly agree to your slaughter?

Really depends on the situation here, like, say, H1N1, probably not because we have basic sanitation procedures to combat that sort of thing, the rage virus, hell fucking yeah kill me.

Overall, you seem very fond of the slippery slope argument that not having the ability to deal death at a whim is either equal to or will lead to forced steralisations and an Orwellian nightmare.

Where does it end?

It never ends, society should always be adapting, tightening and loosening laws where attitudes and situations change. A society whose evolution has 'ended' is by definition anti-democratic as attitudes towards laws will definitely change.

The ultimate pursuit of safety my lead to order (though I would say oppression) but I don't want to live in that type of world and I bet if you really think about it you wouldn't want to live there either.

No, I don't want to live in a tyrannical hell hole, the contention is not 'lets ban guns and then keep going with banning everything else' the contention is 'holy shit, guns are dangerous, maybe that shit should be regulated'

I'll finish this off with one of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes,

again, what is it with yanks and the founders of their nation? Its kind of weird that they seem to be the trump card for all things American.

They that can give up essential liberty

Define what essential liberty is, because there are many laws in the US that limit your liberty, you cannot drink and drive, you cannot slander or libel, you cannot burn down your own home in a residential neighborhood, you cannot transport unshielded radiological materiel etc etc

to purchase a little temporary safety,

Why is it only a little safety, why is it temporary?

deserve neither liberty nor safety

Yeah, unless you are a hard charging real man anarchist, you deserve to die, or at least live in fear! Franklin was a legislator, he passed laws that where necessary infringed upon the individual liberty of people in order to make society a safer or better place. So if you run with the idea that giving up any sort of freedom at all means you don't deserve to be safe or free (and again what the shit, that sounds more like a threat than anything else) what does that say about what Franklin thought of Americans?

 

[mattttherman3]

"As soon as your prove YOU can keep them safer than I can."

Who do you mean by "YOU"? Do you mean the government? What do you think they'd do with confiscated weapons? Just throw them in a dump somewhere?

I believe the guns would be simply destroyed. That is what the authorities do with illegal guns anyway, at least in canada.

 

[Strazdas]

The eternal pursuit of freedom is anarcy.
The eternal pursuit of safety is order.
Id rather take order.

If that is what you really believe then where does your pursuit of safety end? Human beings being the flawed creatures we are and this world with both its natural and man made dangers it is imposable to ensure ones safety 100% of the time. But if safety and order is of utmost importance to you just what freedoms are you willing to give up to ensure the safe and orderly society you envision? If the government determined that it would be safer for you and your wife to not have children even though you want children and you will both be forcibly surgically altered so you cannot have children do you comply? If it was determined that democracy and freedom of speech were a danger to order and safety do you give up the right to vote and express your opinion? If it was decided that for public health and safety reasons all citizen's will be forcible enrolled in mandatory government run exercise programs, would you agree to go? If you and your family all contracted a highly contagious virus and for safety reasons it was decided that it would be best if you were all euthanized do you willingly agree to your slaughter?

Where does it end? The ultimate pursuit of safety my lead to order (though I would say oppression) but I don't want to live in that type of world and I bet if you really think about it you wouldn't want to live there either. I'll finish this off with one of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes,

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety

It ends with usefulness. When further pursuit of saferty would give no results there is no reason to pursuit it. As it is now, removing weapons would give results. It surely is impossible to ensure 100% safety, because yes, humasn are flawed. but i think that 80% safety is better than 60% safety, would you not agree?
I am willing to give up a lot for betterment of society, because i prefer the human race being better than my own egoistic goals.
I think regulation of amount of children people have is a feature that we must implement, that is, if we are not too late already.
If it was proven that freedom of speech does indeed make large security problems i would agree with those problems being solved. Oh wait, we already do that, its called national secrets. can you walk to any army base and ask everything about military? no, they are not allowed to tell you. we already got that.
I would not agree, but i would go to the said excercise program.
The best case scenario in virus epidemic is isolation, and if that means destruction of those people, then so be if. if my death meant i would not infect the town neighboaring mine i would accept that as a reasonable explanation for need of my death.
and Ben Franklin was wrong, because freedom and saferty is not mutually exclusive. You can be both free and safe.

And judging from your avatar you are probably going to call me a commie and think im some sort of spawn for evil because i put the human race above my own personal needs.

 

[mattttherman3]

I wonder if the current 147 killers would ever consider killing themselves over other people. Because I don't think the "right" to bear arms is really worth killing over. I also wonder if they are the religious sort, how do you justify the Murder (or suicide) to your God? Because they wanted to take your guns? I'm sure that IT would find that ridiculous and send you off to oblivion(because he loves you). Guns are really just trivial.

(again, no need to quote me! I read all responses! A lot of nutty responses to this thread there is!)

 

[AgedGrunt]

You proposed that enacting gun regulation would not change violent crime in the US. The burden of proof is on you to back up that claim. Your only evidence so far has been that some states have laws regarding guns. That does not back up your point.

But I haven't made a claim as to how I think guns should be regulated in the US. I'm still waiting for the pro-gun side to produce a valid argument based on facts. America has been waiting on this for decades.

I never stated nor claimed that, nor have I advocated for rights without restriction. What I did was lay out examples of dense regulations Americans live under:

Bans on concealed carry. Bans on automatic weapons. Bans on specific models. Bans on assault weapons. Bans on magazine capacity. Bans if you are deemed mentally unfit to own a firearm (this prevented the Sandy Hook gunman from his own attempt to purchase a weapon in CT). Heavy regulation around traveling with a weapon. Background checks. Waiting periods. Etc.

Oh? I look forward to seeing your evidence that dangerous, crime ridden areas in the US would be equally dangerous if guns were regulated.

Does that look familiar? I hope it does, because those are your words. You did it again at the first quote, implying that guns aren't already a regulated thing.

No, what some in America are waiting for is confiscation of all firearms because they'll never be satisfied, no matter how many laws are passed, when the tragedies continue. My entire thesis is that this problem cannot be solved with regulation because criminals do not care what someone signed in Washington, D.C. or anywhere. Never have. Never will. As such gun control only makes sense to a certain extent and we're by and large exhausted on that front, it's time to focus on the sources of violence, not solely on one tool. That's a scapegoat by any measure.

 

[AgedGrunt]

Americans in certain jurisdictions live under. In other jurisdictions there are hardly any regulations. Which renders the exercise rather meaningless, as it's trivially easy to carry a weapon from one state to another.

The point of contention was the claim that further regulation would have no impact on crime levels, and I am still waiting on evidence to back up this claim.

Yeah... you probably shouldn't call that a thesis seeing as how you have no evidence.

Criminals might not care- but there's more to a criminal's ability to commit a crime than how much they care. Once again, there are numerous countries around the world where guns are heavily regulated and violent crime is much lower than the US.

It's trivially easy to acquire and carry any weapon if (please read this next part slowly, out loud) they break the law. I can type it until my fingers wear to the bone: the Sandy Hook school gunman was denied purchase of a rifle and then stole his weapons of choice. Which of those two parts, the regulation working and the law being broken anyway, is not evidence of the failure of laws to protect the innocent?

Violent crime has dropped 50% in the US over the last 20 years.
Murder rate has dropped 54% over the same period.
The violent crime rate in England & Wales is 3.5 times the U.S per 100,000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0

I'm done trying to appease you with "evidence" and refuting that lawful access and ownership of firearms makes the U.S. an excessively violent place. Introduced regulation (read: gun bans) is not a solution nor even justified against all Americans.

 

[Aesir23]

Honestly, I don't own a gun but if I did then I would give it up. A gun is something that is just not worth raising such a fuss over. Yes, many countries do have high violent crime rates (many of which have a declining rate of violence) even with gun legislation but that legislation is having some effect as those countries generally have a much lower rate of gun violence than the U.S. There have been 130 school shootings in the U.S. since Columbine in 1999 with 62 resulting in the death of more than one student or employee. That's a period of just 14 years and not even counting other large scale shootings that have taken place like the shooting in Arizona or the Aurora, Colorado shooting.

I'm not advocating the banning of all guns but if things like that don't make people want to take at least some sort of preventative measure then people seriously need to rethink their attitude regarding guns.

http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/

 

[piinyouri]

Probably wouldn't be too miffed about it.