Daveman said:
I've had a fair few discussions with pro-gun peeps and there are a few arguments used. Most of them are ripped right from Penn and Tellers Bullshit episode if you want a good proposal of the downsides, although to quote them, they're talking bullshit.
1) Criminals are not going to commit crimes when there's a chance people will have a gun.
The flaws with this argument are that firstly it suggests that if there's a chance people have a gun, people won't mug people. Well we know that's bullshit because there are people getting mugged right now. So maybe the criminals don't think that the proportion of people with guns is high enough to be a serious risk. It's possible I'll admit, but that does suggest that there's a group of people sat at home waiting for gun laws to become more strict before they go out and mug people.
I would say that there is already a lot of risk associated with mugging people regardless of gun laws, like a prison sentence. It's not a rational choice.
2) It's for hunting.
No animal requires an AK47 to take it down. Hunting rifles are fine in my opinion, just so long as people register for them and pass background checks etc to check they're not crazy. That is simple gun control. This also would mean handguns aren't justified either.
3) The second amendment.
There are two issues for me here. Firstly I take the fact that it's an amendment to be that the constitution isn't gospel, you can change it to reflect the times. Quoting an ancient law is hardly making your case seem sensible.
Secondly, holy shit! Am I reading this right? You have a clause that allows people to keep guns to overthrow the government? Oh, if it becomes tyrannical. You do realise it's a democracy? That's how you prevent tyranny. Really a better way to prevent it would be to make voting mandatory as a staggeringly low percentage of people actually vote. It worries me that the people trying to export democracy to the rest of the world have no faith in it themselves.
Final word
One thing that really struck me as odd on the episode of Bullshit on gun control was that I had just previously watched the episode on the Death Penalty, which they were against. The argument against the death penalty was that as long as there's a chance that you could kill one innocent person, it's wrong. Yet this runs completely counter to the argument against gun control. This allows people to kill, without any trial or jury, anyone so long as it is classified as "self-defence". Know what? Just hand over your fucking wallet.
1) Hyperbole. no one ever claimed gun carry stopped crime all together, but studies have shown that it does reduce violent crime, including armed robbery, rape, and even murder.
Here's a link to a primary source that confirms it: http://gunowners.org/fs0404.htm
2) It's not just about hunting, it's about self defense(and you don't want to defend yourself from an ak-47 wielding gang banger with a bolt action rifle). Further, fully-automatic weapons are already virtually illegal in the US, no one legally owns AK-47s, so you're again using hyperbole. The rifle you should be talking about is the AR-15, which is one of the best sport shooting rifles because of good accuracy, cheap ammo, and low recoil, not to mention a bunch of attachments. It's also a top choice for hunting certain game like bears and boars because a quick follow-up shot could save your life. Many hunters of these animals carry semi-automatic handguns for the same reason. Also, semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 are some of the best and only reliable home defense options. For example, in Arkansas, a police officer was fired upon by a drunk individual and it took 15 bullets from the officers handgun hitting the man to stop him from firing. Illinois police were fired upon by a junkie and it required a staggering 33 hits to prevent him from firing his weapon. http://gunowners.org/fs0404.htm As hunting rifles rarely carry more than 5 shots because it's often illegal to hunt with more than 5 loaded, they are not adequate for self defense.
3) Here you have to understand something, yes the constitution can be amended to adapt to changing times, but until it is amended by congress it is a binding document which protects our legal right to bear firearms. If you truly feel a ban is necessary, then do not argue for gun control
laws which set precedents for violations of the bill of rights, but instead argue for an Amendment to the Constitution. So, while the 2nd amendment may not always be an argument against gun control, and individual who believes in the bill of rights should treat it as such until and unless it is amended out of the constitution.
Final word: It is wrong to allow innocent people to die, but as I've already said, a person is about 42 times more likely to defend themselves with a firearm than they are to be killed by one, including suicide. If you exclude suicide, a person is 125 times more likely to defend themselves with a firearm, than to be killed by one. So banning guns would cause many more deaths than it would stop, and by the it is wrong to kill an innocent argument, a gun ban is far worse than gun ownership.
Also: "readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The ?error rate? for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high"
Maybe we should ban the police from having firearms and not the populace.
Shout out to any Australians on the forum, you might want to consider writing your politicians and asking them to re-legalize firearm ownership and use for self defense: * Australia: Readers of the USA Today newspaper discovered in 2002 that, "Since Australia's 1996 laws banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24% and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%." From the same primary source as above, if you want to fact check it.
