Question for people Pro-guns....

[Maleval]

It's kinda funny, how every time a story about some gun-involving massacre comes out from the US everyone's doing the whole "we need guns so that criminals are scared to shoot someone" routine. Somehow the possibility of "ANYONE in his immediate area and beyond packing" never stopped all those people.

 

[t3hmaniac]

First off tell those 2% of people that guns are a good thing. I'm pretty sure if civilians had no guns that number would be around zero. The police wouldn't have to shoot if they weren't chasing down some idiot with a gun.

Sure, that 2% would survive, but that would mean that 98% of the time civilians would not be able to defend themselves from assailants. That's a pretty hefty trade-off.

What about less than lethal weaponry? There's ways to defend yourself without instantly resorting to what is probably going to be a lethal method.

None as certain as a lethal weapon though.

I've seen people hopped up on drugs ignore tazers, pepperspray, even rubber bullets.

You can't ignore a real bullet to the heart or brain though.

Odds of actually hitting those areas? People can shrug off bullets for a time when up on painkillers and other drugs. And in that scenario you've got 2 dead people in a worst case scenario and 1 dead in a best case.

That's exactly right! Best case is someone ends up dead, might as well be the asshole.

Your odds of hitting those areas depend on your choice of firearm. My Mossberg, for example, has a 12 pellet spread. A Barretta has a 10 round mag. You may not hit the first time, but shot two or three? Maybe.

Your chance of hitting with those are way better than a tazer, and you can fire effectively a lot further than pepper spray.

But in my best case scenario: No-one's dead. That's my point.

It appears I edited that post too late. However, your best case relies on my assailant making the decision not to kill me. Frankly, I do not trust him to make that decision, not without help.

See, with tazers, you stop your assailant MAYBE -if he's not on drugs, if he's not wearing a heavy jacket, or if both prongs hit and attach. With pepper spray you can stop him MAYBE - if he is close enough, if he has no face protection.

With bullets, there's still a maybe -sure- but a lot of the uncertainty is lost when the only things that would really help him is tactical armor...which only protects sections of himself in any case.

There's a lot of uncertainty in either scenario. In any case, the guy could very well miss. But once you return fire in a lethal manner, one of you is going to the morgue.

 

[senordesol]

It's kinda funny, how every time a story about some gun-involving massacre comes out from the US everyone's doing the whole "we need guns so that criminals are scared to shoot someone" routine. Somehow the possibility of "ANYONE in his immediate area and beyond packing" never stopped all those people.

Remember: Schools and theaters are 'gun free' zones. That doesn't seem to stop 'em either.

 

[CounterReproductive]

Head over to R&P Moth_Monk, all will be revealed.

But in short: What works in the UK won't work in the US. We Americans (Most of us, anyway) know this, which is why we are so adamant in our defense of the individual right to own firearms.

yes, "your right to bear arms, as part of an organised militia", as the full statement is made.

Personally I don't think gun control is the answer. I shoot and I live in the UK, I have shot rifles, shotguns and pistols prior to the ban following the Hungerford tragedy. I have never once pointed a gun at a person (outside of my military service). I believe proper education and training is the key to proper and correct firearm use. Would help if you had to be a 25 or so before you could OWn your own gun though. at least by then you might have matured enough to know not to shoot people with it.

 

[senordesol]

There's a lot of uncertainty in either scenario. In any case, the guy could very well miss. But once you return fire in a lethal manner, one of you is going to the morgue.

Yes. So?

Let's break the scenario down.

A man breaks into my house. He has committed a crime. He has demonstrated he has no regard for the law or my safety or my family's safety.

I arm myself to repel the demonstrable threat. Either he has armed himself as well, which means he has no problem hurting people. Or he surrenders or runs away.

If he surrenders or runs away, the problems is solved.

If he arms himself, that means that he is an immediate threat to my life and my family's lives.

Since I like living and would much prefer my family continue living too, the question remains: what do I arm myself with? Logic dictates: the most powerful and effective weapon I can so that the margin for uncertainty is reduced when dispatching the threat. Because I do not know why he's here, I don't know if he's alone, I don't know what sort of armaments he has, I don't know what drugs he's on. So the more I can do to maximize my chances of neutralizing him quickly and effectively, the better off I'll be.

 

[yeti585]

OK, I'm ambivalent about gun control. I was mostly just reading this thread out of boredom, but I have to comment here.

Please, please, PLEASE, stop using this argument to support the second amendment. That rationale ceased to carry any weight about 100 years ago. Back when that amendment was written it was entirely possible for any civilian to have weapons equal to what the military had (barring cannons). It meant that an armed populace could potentially stand up to military force. Not likely but possible.

Today's military has the civilian sector so out gunned it's not even worth commenting on. That 30-06 in your gun case isn't going to do a damn thing if they drop a cruise missile in your living room, and it certainly isn't going to penetrate any armored vehicles should they decide to waltz down your street.

There are plenty of arguably good reasons to support the right to bear arms, so please stop using the one that ceased to be true a century ago.

It is unlikely on the surface that civilians today could stand up to our military. But something to ponder? Have you ever heard of the "FP-45 Liberator[footnote]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator for your convenience[/footnote]"? It is a handgun that was mass produced in the USA during WWII. It was made to aid resistance forces in occupied areas. It is a small, crude, disposable, single shot, handgun. I'll quote the Wikipedia article to paint a better picture

The Liberator was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, a wooden dowel to remove the empty cartridge case, and an instruction sheet in comic strip form showing how to load and fire the weapon. Extra rounds of ammunition could be stored in the pistol grip.

The idea behind this gun was that a resistance fighter could take out a stray soldier and take his equipment. Whether this concept could work with civilian arms in the place of the Liberator, I have no clue. But the concept is still pretty bad ass.

 

[MorganL4]

The following are the facts as copied from the sited sources. Do with them as you will( the per 100,000 stats mean that for every 100,000 people in the country that is how many fall into said category) :


Total homicides us 2005: 16,740

Total homicides with a gun 2005: 10,158

Unintentional gun related deaths 2005: 789

Total homicides per 100,000 people: 5.66

Total gun related homicides per 100,000 people: 3.43


US Population in 2005: 296 million








Total homicides in the UK 2005: 764


Total homicides with guns 50

Total unintentional gun related deaths 2005 unavailable, last available year 1999: 6

Total homicides per 100,000 people: 1.3

Total homicides with a gun per 100,000 people: .1

England and Welsh Population in 2005 53.4 million


http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Customs/questions/population.html


http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/

This means absolutely nothing. Comparing one country to another doesn't accomplish shit statistically. Statistically, there is no evidence whatsoever that increased gun control reduces gun crime. These are the results of my attempts to find evidence real scientific evidence that increased gun control reduces crime, I was unable to find even one such piece of evidence.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0210e.asp
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
http://gunowners.org/fs0404.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29liptak.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj26n1/cj26n1-6.pdf
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

I just wanted to point out that I did not in fact make any argument one way or the other, I simply felt that it would help the debate if some reference-able facts were available, and you proceeded to get offended by the facts and started swearing at me.

Also, if I cannot compare a country to another country, what can I compare a country to? A tree?

I didn't get offended by the facts, I was not offended at all. I curse a lot, I wasn't cursing at you, "doesn't accomplish shit" is just the phrase I use when something doesn't accomplish shit.

I misspoke myself, you can compare one country to another all you want, but the results won't be significant because you have no way of controlling for other variables such as population density, cultural background, and economic stability, just to name a few. If you want to draw any meaningful conclusions about gun control, you need to look at how the implementation of gun control has effected the area that implemented it, or examine a very large number of nations in a statistical analysis. Every single one of my sources did one of these things. Also, why did you cut out the greater part of my post? It had some of the most relevant information, including links that would have told you all this.

There were a couple reasons for my choice of nations, 1. the OP is British, and was posing a question to us here in the USA. 2. The USA and the UK are probably two of the easiest nations to compare... We share a language, we both have predominantly Caucasian populations, we are both first world nations, we both elect our government officials ( in slightly different ways, but still).

Now I will grant the serious discrepancy in population density, the UK is an island approximately the size of Washington State. However, this is the reason that I included the per 100,000 stats, because it was the best possible way to address the discrepancy.

As for why I cut most of your post, it was a simple matter of your post being rather long, and quoting a long post within a long post within a long post becomes rather ungainly and starts to look ridiculous, so I simply quoted the part I was replying to and cut the rest. I did in fact read your whole post, though I did not read all the reference sites, as I had other things I needed to do and had run out of time to address this topic.

Those similarities are superficial when compared to our cultural differences, otherwise, your violent crime rate wouldn't be so much higher than ours. You have a monarchy, even if it's mostly or entirely for show, it still impacts your culture, as does being a part of Europe. I imagine being on the receiving end of so much bombing in WW2 impacted your culture too. You can't just compare two countries and draw meaningful results. It is exactly like the thing news stations do saying how since one guy who went psycho played video games it obviously means playing video games makes you psycho. It's not even enough data to establish correlation, let alone causation.

And that's fair, I was just curious why you went through the effort of cutting out a large chunk of my post, but that makes sense.

I'm sorry but I am a bit confused.... Are you British or American? Your last post makes that unclear, I was born and raised in the USA.

As far as smuggling goes, if Wikipedia is to be believed the USA has absolutely no need to smuggle guns INTO the country as Canada is ranked 14 on the fire arm production list and neither Mexico nor any South American nations even list.... On the other hand, the USA ranks 1st. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry

Granted things do get smuggled in and out of the country but the firearms used by the smugglers have a higher chance of coming from this nation than any other, with the exception of maybe Russia, if only because we still have large numbers of unaccounted for cold war stocks... but those are depleting as that was over 20 years ago now.

 

[RadioactiveMicrobe]

Because what's going to stop a criminal getting a gun illegally?

 

[Aprilgold]

Simple solution: legalise guns. Have bullets cost 10000$ each.
No harm having people walk around wielding what are in essense metal clubs.

Government gets the taxes, obviously

Because, you know, criminals TOTALLY buy THEIR guns legit.

Three people have suggested [I'm still counting] and it doesn't stop being idiotic. So what would happen, if say, the criminal just bought a 9mm mag with ammo through say E-Bay for less then 10,000$?

It's a joke from a Chris Rock skit. Don't bother yourself over it.

What's alarming is that in the shooter's state, gun sales have balooned. Either people want to buy guns before potential gun control appears, or they think they're Charles Bronson, and plan to protect theatres from crazed gunmen. That latter one gets on my goat especially.

Do they honestly think another guy is going to attack a theatre? Now that every patron brings a gun in? Won't they do what they always do, and attack somewhere where people wouldn't have thought to carry guns? Like a swimming pool? Even if a gunman did attack another cinema, what are the odds that someone in the audience is going to pick them off in the dark, amoung a panicking crowd? Jesus people. Think about it for a minute.

The inflate could be any number of things unless your numbers are strictly to Colorado where the wannabe Joker had a killing spree.

If your numbers are not then it could simply be more people are just falling in love with guns [SHOCKER I haven't] or, doing exactly what you said, thinking ahead before the government cracks down, stupidly on it.

The amendment that has the right to bear arms, in the writers [Thomas Jefferson] own words, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." For all intensive purposes, the above statement means that, once a government goes corrupt, they want to allow a second-generation of them in essence to come and fight for what they believe is right.

I ask you, if a man went on a fourteen people killing spree while operating a motor vehicle [AKA he hit fourteen dudes with his SUV] should we crack down on cars so that this didn't happen again? Should we crack down on knives that can be carried easily on your person to stop knife related murders? A gun is a tool, a gun is not a murderer. A gun used in a murder had no way to stop him from being used to be murdered, its a tool, a gun used to hunt animals for selling of furs or meat is not a good-little-gun, its a tool.

IN CONCLUSION, since the topic is apparently on the Aurora Theater Shooting and if or if not the US country should take action on guns, I have this quote "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms..disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes." - Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria, Criminologist in 1764. That was 230 years ago. -Thomas Jefferson

There is no way to stop premeditated murders, there isn't, so stop assuming making premeditated murderer use something else but a gun would stop a murder, and there is no guarantee they wont use a gun illegally.

 

[Aprilgold]

Question to people who are anti-guns: What do you think happens when a criminal who wanted to shoot someone in the face does if he doesn't get a firearm?

I'll answer it, they either start doing things like creating highly-complex chemical bombs or they pick up a rock and smash the dudes head in with it. Take their rock away and they'll use a branch. Take their branch away and they'll use the fists. You could go down a endless list of ridiculous bans and you would still have crime.

WHEN THERE IS A WILL, THERE IS A WAY!

The pro to letting your citizens carry fire-arms is that they can stop people who are mugging / raping / trying to kill them without having to wait five or ten minutes for the cops if they get a phone in that time.

Also, banning guns doesn't mean that people won't get them or make them, look at the prohibition.

But in those cases it's easier to get a tip off that something is up. Massacres like this take planning, when you start bringing en-masse chemicals it's more likely to attract police attention especially in the age of Terror scares.

Just because it can't take away a problem completely does not mean that there should be no steps taken to reduce it. Otherwise you might as well have everyone the right to smoke pot.

AHEHAH, I NEVER SAID IT WAS RELATED TO THE AURORA COUNTY BATMAN: RISES THEATER SHOOTING! Another thing that man used was chemicals to create several different bombs, should we ban citizens from using chemicals in case they want to use them for bad?

Guns are used for more then murder mate, they are used for recreation. [trapshooting]

While here, I'm going to adress something, do you have a clue on how the process to get guns in America is, and can you detail it before reading what I have to say?

If the answer is anything but yes then you are in no way suited to argue gun control in a country where you don't understand the country in general.

Gun's in America are not sold with happy-meals, the process to buying a gun where I currently live as follows, you go to the gunshop and pick a gun, the seller, depending on the weapon will take a certain number of days to do a extensively background search you, this can be as little as three days to, I'm just guessing on this number, a week.

How, exactly, do you lessen the above without full blown taking out buying guns? In the case of the Aurora Shooter, he had a clean record when he bought the fire-arms, if he somehow lives and gets a miracle and eventually gets to leave jail, he would have no way of requiring fire arms. This system helps prevent return villains while still allowing guns to be sold to fanatics and, in other cases, premeditated criminals.

Saying its also "easier to trace" is stupid, we can trace the make and model of many guns, along with their bullets and calibers just by what was left at the crime scene [bullet hole, casing, shelling etc] and track it down to a possible suspect by just standard operating procedure. Making it a knife does nothing more then, instead of a bullet wound, it is several cuts and lacerations.

The guns in the Columbine shooting were obtained illegally, how would making stricter gun control stop people from getting guns when two kids very easily got enough firepower to start a massacre?

And, for a record, the place that the Aurora County Theater Shooter chose was a no-gun place. All that had happened, since it was a no-gun place, ensured that the only people who could possibly fight back, were cops. Great idea many people in this thread, guns totally don't have the upside of being able to fight on a even playing field with another marksman, thus lets remove guns from the general public to stop premeditated criminals, which this won't inhibit at all.

In conclusion, gun control does nothing except for change the weapon that a murderer uses and having super strict no-gun policies where you shoot them on sight if their holding anything with a semblance of a gun won't stop gun related murders, but instead everyone will be happy cutting each other's throats.

 

[acosn]

The question shouldn't even be about gun control.

People need to be asking what drives crime in the first place. Just how maligned by society does an individual need to be in order to be driven to do such shit?

 

[kickassfrog]

Oh dear lord this thread again.....

I'm going to say that I'm in support of greater gun control laws in America, but not necessarily against gun ownership. What I think is that people should probably get psychologically checked before they're allowed to handle a weapon. And don't tell me about the whole 'right to bear arms thing'. That was from a different era when it was basically a necessity.

"Guns are for protection, hunting dangerous or delicious animals, and keeping the King of England out of your face"- Priceless

On an actual on-topic note, I think guns should be legal to carry, but I would want some pretty thorough checks. Ideally, I'd like all guns to be tagged with some kind of GPS beacon as well, but technology still has far to go.

I don't really like the idea of anyone walking down the street thinking "I could shoot a bunch of people here" and actually being able to.

Also, on a note to whoever it was suggested guns allow you to shoot other people with guns, bear in mind a lot of shooting rampages have happened in america where the police have arrived before the nutjob ran into someone with a gun.

Personally, I would like to own one, but carrying it around with me would be where I draw the line.

 

[acturisme]

Because there's a difference between "crime" and "gun crime", and they respond in opposite ways to gun laws.

Basically, for every person that you spare from death by bullet wound, you're getting a mugging, a rape, and two deaths by knife wound in return.

We're just better at math than you are.

TLDR
Still, this is the smartest response to the OP.

 

[Raytan941]

Anyone who is truly interested in guns, gun control or the 2nd amendment, what it is, why its there or how it works take the time to watch these two videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RgLEGibyXs&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ln56Zp22res

My personal opinion, bad people are gonna do bad things and no Government, religious, political, social or otherwise group can stop bad people from doing bad things no matter how many laws or restrictions they pass. At best all they can do is hope (and do mean HOPE) to limit bad people from doing bad things, punishing the many due to the actions of the few is foolish at best.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

snip

I misunderstood you, I thought you were saying the AR was nationally banned. I withdraw my objection

 

[Trippy Turtle]

First off tell those 2% of people that guns are a good thing. I'm pretty sure if civilians had no guns that number would be around zero. The police wouldn't have to shoot if they weren't chasing down some idiot with a gun.

Sure, that 2% would survive, but that would mean that 98% of the time civilians would not be able to defend themselves from assailants. That's a pretty hefty trade-off.

Wouldn't you feel safer knowing the guy mugging you doesn't have a gun. I'd rather lose my wallet then risk getting shot for trying to shoot them.

 

[thiosk]

One needs only turn to the Federalist Papers to answer these questions.

The founding fathers blew off the still-smoking barrels of their glocks and holstered their sawed off shotguns.
Benjamin Franklin took a long drag off his quintuple sticky icky blunt before placing both hands directly on his junk. "The esteemed gentleman Hamilton agrees thusly that all citizens forthwith are endowed by their creator the right to pack heat, forsooth?"

Hamilton drew his sword and bisected the still-quivering hybrid in a single, smooth motion.
He bowed his head and confirmed "Forthwith, Mr. Franklin."

"Forthwith."

 

[Biosophilogical]

-snip-

It is rather amusing that he thinks we're allowed to defend ourselves, as long as it's nothing that'll hurt the person trying to kill us or give us an unfair advantage. After all, rapists and home invaders deserve a fair fight!

Holy flying donkey-genitals! I kind of expected this many responses though, so I shouldn't sound (read?) so shocked.

I do think you are allowed to defend yourself. And I do think you are allowed to do so at the expense of the safety of your assailant(s). What I do not consider acceptable is putting anyone else in danger to do so. So unless you and your assailant are alone in the middle of a street, with no openings (alleys, windows, doors or the like) that could hold other people (within reasonable firing range, after all, a person in an alley fifty metres behind you isn't at risk if your assailant is in front of you), then any use of a firearm could potentially harm people not involved in the conflict (and more than likely not responsible for it). And honestly, I don't give two shits what the other person did, because when you endanger someone who isn't responsible for your current situation, you overstep the line, you do exactly what the person causing you problems is doing, so by your logic, if you used a firearm for self-defense, anyone else in the vicinity who is potentially endangered by your actions could stop you from doing so, even if it meant endangering another person to do so, because by endangering someone not responsible for your predicament, you've created a completely new scenario of victimisation, and you are most certainly not the victim in that one.

Short version: You can defend yourself. You can do so at the expense of the one responsible for the problem (provided such action would actually relieve the problem in any way). What you cannot do is defend yourself at the expense of people not responsible for the problem.

 

[marche45]

Also, how does making guns illegal stop CRIMINALS from getting them? Really, I'm dying to know.

Also, also, whom to trust with my life: myself, who knows how to operate a firearm safely and responsibly; or an incompetent police force? I don't think the decision is a hard one.

Its not the criminals I am worried about getting hands on guns. Its idiots who believe they can operate a firearm safely and responsibly that I don't want near the things. First sign of trouble and someone gets shot.
Also it is a hell of a lot harder for a criminal to get a gun when they can't walk down the street and and buy one.

Which won't actually stop them from acquiring a gun.So many guns are floating around the US it wouldn't be THAT hard.