Poll: What is your stance on Guns?

[DaJoW]

Law enforcement and hunters can have weapons, don't see the benefit of an armed public.

 

[mb16]

2nd amendment - 1791
Of course the usa hasn't changed in 220 years, so its entirely relevant today. As the evil government want to take our freedom. /sarcasm

see, other 1st world countries with stricter gun regs, aren't being oppressed by the government

OT: I own a few guns, but i have a "need" for them (pest control) you shouldn't have a gun for the sake of having a gun

 

[Daverson]

Concerning:
"Yes, it should be restricted to just small pistols"

Can we not an option the other way? Handguns should be the ones that are illegal. You can justify a shotgun or even a rifle for home defence, target shooting, hunting etc., but pistols are designed to provide a weapon capable of killing a man in the most compact (and therefore concealable) form possible.

I'm going to agree with the firearms law in the UK. It's tough, but guns aren't exactly toys, are they?

 

[faspxina]

Why do you think he implied he had that right?

It's the logical accompaniment of any belief. By virtue of the fact you believe something, you believe you are correct. As such, you believe your view is the correct one and everyone else should follow your lead. That's essentially what a debate is, people attempting to convince everyone else to adhere to their ideal(s).

You can still believe in something and accept the subjectiveness of your belief to the point that you wouldn't force it on other people.

You probably were just questioning a point of view but instead you were questioning the supposed right to force that point of view on others.

 

[Dark marauder]

I think only the police and miltary should be allowed them and I never quite got the whole self defense thing if everyone is allowed a gun to protect themselves from other people with guns then why not get rid of the guns in the first place

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I think only the police and miltary should be allowed them and I never quite got the whole self defense thing if everyone is allowed a gun to protect themselves from other people with guns then why not get rid of the guns in the first place

Run on sentence, ahoy!

Simply put, you CAN'T get rid of every gun. The better (and more realistic) solution is to allow law abiding citizens to be on the same level as criminals in terms of defense.

 

[Yechezkel]

Because letting the general public have access to something that only use is to put chunky holes in things seems like a great idea...

No! only the communist party shall be allowed firearms! the people serve us! if they disobey we shall exterminate them. Never allow the subject race to possess arms. It is political suicide

Why does every NRA member in the US think that fire arms is all they need to combat a government? Common sense informs me that even if you're all armed with M16s and AKs, you'd still get slaughtered

Yeah, I'm for guns and even I don't get this. The US military has stealth fighters, self-propelled artillery, and trucks that shoot pain [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Active_Denial_System]. What exactly does anybody think their made-before-1985 machine pistol is going to do against that?

 

[t3h br0th3r]

We need to have guns to defent ourselves. Have you noticed that mass shootings almost always happen in gun free zones, like malls and schools, and never in firing ranges? They know that if they start firing into a croud of people in a mall or school, nobody will fire back. Also, notice that when gun control was at it's highest, gun crime skyrocketed, and has decreased ever science they have been lightened. I myself carry a Bretta 92 (not sure what varent), I keep it very visable, and nobody is stupic enough to attack me, they know thay will die, common sense, espicaly when I am with friends, all of whoom also have a gun. This all said, I DON'T think we should be allowed to have everything the military has, full autos and RPG-7's arn't very useful in self defense, but we should be allowed to have rifles for recreational purposes, and I can't see limiting it to just non semi ones.

If a criminal wants a gun, he will get one anyways, even if they are illegal, because he is a criminal, criminals don't obay laws, so if he wants a gun and they are illegal, he will get a black market one. Then us law abiders will not have guns to defend ourselves with. I fully support a law saying all law abiding citizens should be required by law to carry a handgun at all times, then no ************ would be stupid enough to attack someone publicly, knowing hundreds might easaly shoot back at him, and it would not arm the criminals, who are already armed, just arm the ones who need to be.

BTW: If somebody gets stupid and threatens the lives of me or my loved ones, that ************ will know exactly what a 9mm wide hole in his vital organs feels like, and I'm pretty sure it's not to good

I agree wholeheartedly.

I am American and do not, nor have i ever owned or fired a gun but I still think people should have the option.

My philosophy is that the citizenry should be allowed to arm themselves as well as the average criminal.

if all they use in one area are brass knuckles and switchblades then that is what you ought to be allowed to use. In the US the average criminal uses handguns and other small arms, therefore the US citizenry should be allowed to use them as well to counter the criminal threat, if the individual so chooses.

and likewise, if you live in a place where the average criminal is part of a militia and walks around with AK-47s and M16s, then that is what the citizens should be allowed to own.

TL;DR people ought to be allowed to be well armed enough to make criminals think twice.

 

[Daverson]

You can justify a shotgun or even a rifle for home defence, target shooting, hunting etc., but pistols are designed to provide a weapon capable of killing a man in the most compact (and therefore concealable) form possible.

So you'd agree that the police should not own them?

They have no need to conceal their weapons as it is as they already open carry. So the need for small arms is redundant and unnecessary when rifles exist.

Cops can carry AR-15s perhaps?

I was more referring to private ownership, though I will say that giving every policeman a pistol is a bit excessive. (Especially somewhere like the UK, where there's very few people who do own firearms!)

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Another one of these threads! Yay!
It always makes me laugh when people just spout "We should do this..." when we already are doing it, or just flat out say "I don't like guns, therefore no one else deserves to own a gun."

Warning, wall of text

"Gun control is hitting your fucking target."

This is basically my stance on firearms. If you can't accurately hit a target, and maintain these firearms; you don't deserve to own a gun. Most people say that just about anyone can go out and buy a gun in America. This is true for rifles, but in most states for a handgun you have to take a course and pass a handgun safety certificate test. This is basically saying to the government that you know all about firearms maintenance and safety and that it is safe for you to own a concealable gun. I have no problem with how things are now, I just wish we were given more option. In California, we aren't allowed to have a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds in our guns. I can understand why we don't (don't you dare go "Oh, that's too much already" I really don't want to go into details why it can be necessary to have more than 10 rounds in a mag.) but it's really just a nuisance. You have to either buy more magazines or spend more time loading them than you should, effectively reducing your time behind the gun and taking away from your training/fun/whatever. Right now, I'm trying to make myself more accurate with a Sig P226, so I have to continually shoot it until I know exactly where the round is going to hit. I know how to maintain it, I know how to safely use it. I see no reason why I should be banned from owning said firearm because some random guy who bought the gun illegally in the first place went out and shot up a shopping mall.

Right now, I'm just going to finish by quoting a couple of things I said in past threads.

For me, I don't own my guns to keep the government in check. I own them because shooting is a relaxing hobby where I can enjoy some time with friends and we can forget about the worries of the world. Cleaning these guns teaches me about responsibility and keeping things in good maintenance. Training with them teaches me persistence and effort, and the effects of working towards a goal (the more I train, the more accurate I become). Do you really want to take this away from me because you fear that I will suddenly crack and shoot up a supermarket?

I don't believe that guns are a big problem. Mostly because they're tools. I've written multiple posts about how guns shouldn't be as demonized in society, and I'm too lazy and tired to write another one right now, but I'm just going to finish with a couple of quotes.
"If you make guns illegal, the only people who will own them are criminals."
"Guns cause crime the same way spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat."

 

[zelda2fanboy]

My house is filled with guns, but I've never fired one. There is no reason we shouldn't have guns that can't be argued for any number of other dangerous objects that exist in a house. "You can't have an oven because they can burn down houses. You can't have showers because you could slip and fall. You can't drive a car because you could die or kill someone. You can't have alcohol because etc." Sure, guns' only purpose is to kill people, even though there's an growing dangerous deer population that skilled hunters could diminish significantly. Also, that massive civil war rifle I have in my hallway is a public menace. Or the 1912 .22 needs to be registered with the local police force. Or my grandma's fully functional hunting .22 needs to be turned in and destroyed.

I grew up with all of this stuff, plus many other handguns and never came close to hurting myself or anyone else. If a little kid got into my house and managed to dig up a pistol, open the chamber, load it, close the chamber, work the safety, and pull the trigger, that kid was probably going to kill somebody some other way eventually. But as a child I was told that there were guns in the house and told that they were instruments of instant death and destruction. A little honesty with a kid goes a long way.

 

[itsausernamewhatofit]

You didn't put an option between small pistols and everything the Military has. You can actually get almost anything the military has if you have the cash to afford it and the... I can't remember exactly what all you need, but I do know it requires an extensive background check. I'm fairly happy with the way it is now myself. If people want to kill each other, they don't need a gun. Guns are noisier than knives, and unless you dig the bullets out of the person, you leave evidence in the person you shot. This makes it slightly easier to track the criminals.

This is exactly what I was going to post. An extensive background check is required (at least in the states) and limiting it to small pistols is completely ridiculous. I own several firearms and shoot for fun frequently. I believe that the current system works and that severely restricting firearms would create more problems than it would solve.

 

[Yechezkel]

I think only the police and miltary should be allowed them and I never quite got the whole self defense thing if everyone is allowed a gun to protect themselves from other people with guns then why not get rid of the guns in the first place

I never understood the whole police thing. Why do they need guns if guns are outlawed?

And why would I want to call someone with a gun to come respond to a crime where there are no guns? Wouldn't that just escalate the situation? There are no guns, cop brings a gun, your family members are in danger. According to Brady, he's more likely to shoot your children then stop a crime!

Second-strike potential, basically. The theory is that if you're being harassed by a guy with a knife and a cop strolls up with a gun, he'll never actually have to fire it. The kill potential of firearms is assessed under this theory to be so much greater than that of other weapons that the gun-unequipped subjects will be forced into compliance by the simple fact that there is no way they could possibly succeed in resisting police equipped with guns.

Further, criminals will always have guns. Whether you're for or against gun control, you must realise that some criminals will always have the capacity to acquire guns. Thusly, it makes sense for at least some segment of the police force to be equipped with similar force so that the above scenario does not work in reverse.