Guns

The thread on the Arizona shooting begged for a thread such as this one.
So here it is. Discuss "the right to bear arms".
I'm making this thread because I want to know more about this subject. Therefore, I don't have a real opinion of my own on this. I want to see which side presents the strongest arguments.

 

I dislike guns, but I dislike them for a very weird (and possibly stupid) reason. I do think people should have them because, well... Otherwise we're big pink squishy walking meals for the rest of the animal kingdom. See: Coywolves, cougars. We stopped hunting them, they stopped being afraid of us, they started hunting us, we started dying.

Not much of an argument, but I'm also mostly waiting to see what everyone else has to say.

 

I think you raised a good point in the Arizona shooting thread :

IMO guns can only lead to bad things. I cannot see a single good thing a gun could bring to someone who is neither a cop nor a hunter. That' s why I wouldn' t see any problem in simply forbidding them. BUT I' m French. I do not know anyone here who would want a gun. Not a single soul. What for ? It' s not like we fear we might need one someday. On the other hand anyone can have a gun in America, and lots of people do have one, indeed. That knowledge can only lead to fear and paranoia, which of course in turn leads even more people to want to have one just in case ... I guess there' s a huge cultural difference here.

There' s also what I call the "Lord of the Ring" symptom : when you' re used to be allowed to have something then forbidding it can only be perceived as a hindrance, an inconvenience, (my prrrrecious).

 

How about self-defense? From muggers, riotous individuals, disgruntled characters, native animals... The type and degree of self-defense needed varies not only between people, but between locations; some areas are just more dangerous. And the danger does not always stem from other guns, so you can't say it's purely a matter of fighting fire with fire. There are other factors to consider.

I'd never call it the ideal situation, but there are positives and negatives. The negatives can be regulated; the positives, emphasized. Often such is not the case, but such a drastic socio-economical change as would be needed to remove firearms from the equation entirely is not going to happen tomorrow. Not that it wouldn't be nice if it did.

And you're just lucky you don't have coywolves in France. >:T

 

i'm usually someone who doesn't lean towards one side of argument so heavily but with guns, i really do believe that they do a shitload more harm than they do good. the reason, for it to even do any good, it has to hurt someone or something (like an animal). i mean, i know a lot of anti-gun control people like to argue it's a deterrent for other crimes, but there's really no statistics to prove this. there are however statistics that show how many people have gotten hurt or killed by guns. the fact that there are statistics for how much harm guns have done and not on how many lives were saved by them really causes me to believe guns are bad.

to be honest, i really don't know that much about gun control laws but this case does come to mind when i think about gun control.

my state governor proposed a 1 gun a month law which i think is perfect. i really think that's the perfect middle ground solution to reducing the number of illegal guns. that means, that no one can buy more than 1 gun a month. however, the proposal was unpopular and pretty much "shot" (yes, a pun :)) down. the people against this law just said a bunch of dumb crap like "if they can reduce you to one gun, they can reduce you to zero" and those arguments weren't really backed up by anything.

on the other hand, i can see why the anti-gun law people are wary of gun control laws because i remember reading about when they made a proposal to reduce the amount of assault rifles (i think it was California), and promised not to ban them altogether. they actually ended up banning them altogether. i'm not saying people should be able to run around with assault rifles but that i can see why anti-gun law people are wary to trust gun laws after they did something like that.

i believe there should be more gun control laws. the 1 gun a month proposal sounds like the perfect middle ground solution to me. i just never understood one thing about people who are against gun control laws: why is the right to bear arms more important to them than someone's life?

 

I personally find it an idiotic move to legalise weaponry to the public.

I live in the UK where it is illegal to hold any type of firearm, even the police don't carry them. Now I live in far West London, so we don't have the worst of assault with weapons but knife and gun crime is still pretty common compared to most of the country. So far I've yet to actually see the need to allow guns for the public or the law enforcement to carry.

Self-defence is all well and good but the number of times a weapon is ever properly used to defend yourself or others is minimal, you're more likely to have it turned against you. I, personally, feel safer that random people on the street are not likely to be carrying a concealed weapon because of a law in place that deters them. I'm on par with them. We are the same. I can't cope if a situation arose where a weapon was pulled out, how would I cope with that, unaided myself and unable myself I don't know, so that's why people can't afford a situation like that.

Guns are for war and battle. Not in peace and on the streets. I still support the teaching of discipline of weaponry as tools for change and not for death and fear, where a weapon can be purely to defend someone. A man swings the sword, pulls the trigger and needs to know the consequences of such a thing. Without it, you see the effects of such things in the Arizona shooting, which causes pain for all.

 

As stated earlier, I very strongly believe that restriction is much more effective than outright banning guns entirely, although I wish there would be no need for guns for the public at all. I'm not fully schooled on the gun laws here in Canada, but I generally know that you have to have a liscence and/or be a police officer to have one here. That doesn't mean it's impossible for someone who wants a gun to get one illegally. But I don't fear being shot for trespassing or anything like that.

 

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1300&discuss=1#discuss
^ This is how much I feel.
Also the reason why are founding fathers gave us right to keep and bear arms is to protect our self from the gov't.

 

That was 200 years ago. If you haven't noticed, things have changed in 200 years.

We're in a lot more violent society than we were back then. Even if we totally don't ban guns, we shouldn't have ANY, ANY gun in a household with a mentally ill person. I don't care which family member owns the gun, it shouldn't be in the house.

During high school, I dated a schizophrenic. He was actually a nice guy, he was a gentleman and very kindly. But especially when doctors were screwing around with his medications, he would go and start looking at swords and knives and talk about the ways he could murder people with them. A very nice guy, but he had the moments where he scared me with his talk. He eventually broke up with me to sleep with another girl, but I digress.

The thing is, he was one of the nicest guys I ever dated. Hell, the second nicest guy I ever dated, and yet if he hit the right mood, he'd be talking about killing people in different horrible ways. The thing is, I wouldn't trust him with a weapon like a gun in the house. He tried to hook up with later on, but my parents refused saying they feared for my life with his stability.

Here you have a guy who has schizophrenia who might not be on his medication or not have any medication who has access to the weapons to kill people. It doesn't matter how hard you lock away those guns, it doesn't matter who buys those guns, the person now has access to a weapon that he can murder people easily with. Like my parents or the boyfriends parents buying my ex-boyfriend that sword or even worse, a gun, he now has a weapon he can use to murder people with if his mood hits the right point.

It's a very scary thought in a very scary country.

 

Hmmm..don't know where I stand with guns. But I do like the idea of trying to play skeet or whatever its called when you use a gun to shoot at plates. Or at a shooting range. Don't know why. I also like I think it was Chris Rock's (?) idea of raising up the prices of bullets and not gas. Though that'll probably backfire...

 

Sorry but things have not changed. People have been killing each other even befor guns were made. If people don't have guns to kill some one then they would use a knife if they can't use a knife then they would use a bat etc.
Sorry about your BF but just because he was not stable does not mean that every one that have a gun will be like him. We have a right to protect our self. The more guns people have the selfer we will be. We can't reley on the cops to came and save us all the time. Like the saying goes "It takes a few seconds to dial 911 in an emergency, but it could take the rest of your life for the police to arrive."

 

Outlawing guns would probably be one of the worst mistakes the US government could make.
Drugs are outlawed, yet look at the amount of problems that alone causes - and instead of having drug trafficking, it'd be gun trafficking, which would be just as (if not more) dangerous.

Personally...I do believe guns are not "evil" on their own. It's people with bad intentions that make things have a negative portrayal.
Yes, they can be used to kill. But are they used ONLY for killing or self defense? No.
Sharpshooting and other "gun sports" are purely for enjoyment; just like any other competition it's a test of skill and ability. And it takes a goddamn lot of skill to shoot a gun.

Despite what many think (thanks to movies and TV), shooting a gun is not an easy thing to do. If you're picking up a gun for the first time, there is almost zero chance of hitting your target unless you're standing at a pointblank range, and if you're that close, it's not going to go unnoticed.
Guns - especially the higher calibered - have an incredible recoil when you shoot, and if your hand jerks too much as you pull the trigger (which 90% of the time it will if you're just starting to learn to shoot) you're going to miss your target. I'm speaking for personal experience on this, I've paintballed for a fair part of my life and the first time I shot a real gun, I missed my target completely at 15 feet away. And even then I could only shoot a few more rounds before my hand hurt from holding the gun and dealing with the recoil.
Semiautomatic rifles are even more of a ***** to shoot, I could barely aim the thing properly. So it's something you would need skill at doing for a long time if you're planning to be an accurate shot and have premeditated killing someone. And if you're thinking about killing someone and have experience as a marksman, then there's a good chance there's something wrong with you mentally.

I do agree with Egypt; things really haven't changed. The method of killing may have, but that's not to say that people still aren't killed with knives or even everyday objects. So if things get extreme enough where every imaginable weapon is outlawed and people start killing with scissors, are we going to disallow everyone to use scissors because of it being a potential murder weapon?
And even if there is someone with a mental problem in a house, steps can be taken to prevent access for the firearm. Like a gun safe. My family has one, it's relatively inexpensive (if you already have a gun), and it's goddamn heavy. Even if a person with killing intent can get access to the safe, they'll then have to deal with cracking the safe's code. Which can be prevented by not openly talking about the code or writing it down.

There's a saying in my part of the country; it's "In the northeast, you can expect a pizza delivery boy to get to your house faster than the cops". And the Northeast isn't exactly the safest place in the country, so one can see why firearms as a self defense can be very effective. Shots don't even have to be fired, but in the situation of an intruder either unarmed or armed with a knife and is threatening your family's safety, the homeowner's threat of having a gun as defense can deter the criminal. Because let's face it, even if you're robbing someone, you really don't want to get shot.

 

Hold on a sec. Isn't this really an argument against entrusting Average Joe with a firearm (blindingly so)?
As in: "Joe buys gun for self-defense, thief robs Joe, Joe shoots thief, hits expensive Ming vase instead, thief draws own gun, kills Joe and his family because thief's life would be in danger if he didn't".
As far as sayings go, isn't there one that says "Cornered prey struggles the most viciously" or something like that?

Just to drag the Arizona shooting incident into this... A recurring argument I read on another site was this:

Should we instead establish that, if an armed citizen actually did open fire, he'd have as much chance to hit an innocent bystander as he would have of actually disposing of Loughner?

 

I would assume that if you have a gun in your house, you know how to use it. Otherwise it's a hundreds of dollars piece of metal sitting in your house.

As for the Arizona thing, I don't know the gun laws for the state, but in many you can't carry a gun on you in public (and I actually prefer it that way).
But yes, when you have a gun with you there are a quite a few things that can go wrong, especially when outside - wind speed and direction, misfiring, obscured shot, and so on. Could an armed citizen have taken out the man? Yes, potentially. Could he have also hit a bystander? Yes, also possible.
Even if he didn't miss, if the shot was taken from just the right angle, the bullet could've passed through Loughner and hit someone anyway.

 

That's how it should be, but I seriously doubt that that's really how it goes.
Wouldn't many homeowners just buy the thing for the detering effect and think nothing more of it, I wonder? Like you said, the difficulty of wielding a gun is so often underestimated that I wouldn't be surprised if a great deal of people just assume that they have all the necessary skills to kill the bad guys.

Mandatory lessons could solve this particular problem and also discourage people to buy them as a form of insurance (yes, I have seen them being refered to as such).

I agree. If you'd be allowed to carry them in public you might as well take one with you to a bar, get drunk, and be involved a very lethal bar brawl. I'd pass on that.

 

i never really liked that argument because i really don't care if it inconveniences killers to have to come up with a new way to kill someone. and also, it's ALOT harder to kill someone with a knife or a bat instead of a gun. so with that argument, they'll just come up with a new way to kill people i say: LET THEM

but the thing is, even though guns ARE legal, they are still illegally distributed for people who can't legally own the gun.

that's not how it always is though. also, even if YOU know how to use the gun, doesn't mean anyone else in the household does. i'm aware you can keep it locked up in a safe or something but there have been so many cases of kids who use their parent's guns to do harm.

i'm not saying guns are COMPLETELY evil and i'm not saying they should be banned altogether, but it definitely doesn't hurt to have more gun control laws.

 

First off, no. You won't see a great demand for guns just because it's turned into an illegal possession. The reason drugs are in such great demand is because it is an addictive substance. You get addicted to it and youll want more of it, therefore demand is constant for it because of that addiction. Drugs are also a non-durable good, in the sense that once used, it can't be used again, unlike a gun which is durable and can be used again and again (only bullets would be needed). Unless people start getting addicted to owning multiple guns, I wouldn't worry about the increase in demand.

Next, guns are not evil but they're not good either. Neither of them matter to an inanimate abject, only people can assign morality to each other. However remember one thing. Guns never defend. A shield defends. Armour defends. Retreating is defending. But shooting is an act of aggression. It is not a defence but an attack. No matter how you justify it, it's intended to hurt and kill. A gun wasn't designed to shoot bubbles or flowers out of it, basically just bullets into stuff we don't like.

Moving on, things have changed. Back in the time of the founding fathers, attacks from the British empire was a constant worry, that they'd retaliate with a fighting force to kill all the immigrants to America, not to mention the amount of deadly wild animals that were high in numbers and conflicts with native tribes, guns were seen as a necessity. Can you really compare that to the world today? Do we have the same laws and thoughts of the 1800s? No. It's like a quote, 'The past is a foreign country; they do things different there'. It's true, times change.

Now, scissors are not made to be used as a weapon, hence why when used as such are labelled 'makeshift weapons'. A gun is not makeshift, and instead is purposely designed to be a weapon. That is what should be illegal, things built to be weapons. No matter how you put it, guns have no other purpose than to shoot lead into things. Not to slice bread or to cut paper. Not anything practical.

Finally, concerning the police not arriving early enough, that's not due to the legality of guns but the effectiveness of the police force. And don't worry, I know wha point you're trying to say that you could be shot in the time the police can get to you, but even without a gun you could still be killed relatively quickly with any blunt weapon lying about in your house, with enough force and such. With or without guns around, if someone wants you dead, you're going to be killed. I'll also point out that more accidental murders occur in house break-ins because of guns, since without training and as you noted the difficulty in effectively using them, means greater chances of both inhabitants and invaders firing randomly or by accident that could kill. In general, if guns weren't involved in a confrontation at all, safer for all concerned.

 

I'm sorry but guns have been use as self defend. So the reason I have a gun is because I'm going to attack someone? Every that have a gun know that its not going to shoot bubbles or flowers.
The reason our founding father gave us the right to bear arms is because they were afriaid of big gov't. They knew that the gov't down the road will grow and will start taking away our freedom which they been doing for years. Our guns our any weapon is the only way we can keep our freedom.
No we don't need to ban guns. If you outlaw guns only outlaw will have them. You go ask the Jews if banning guns have kept them self from Hitler. There is a saying "People who don't know history are doom to repeat it self."

 

The only reason you would have a modern gun is if you were planning on shooting someone or something in a certain situation, yes. There is no other situation when you would require one.

Guns aren't what's keeping people in power. I have almost every western nation in the world to back me up. They have no guns, yet they're no more corrupt than the USA. Furthermore, you are able to riot without guns, as shown in Britain at the moment.

If you outlaw guns, only outlaws who are able to come into possession of them, and law enforcement officers will have them. Not any outlaw will be able to get their hands on a gun. School shootings will lessen greatly, as will spur-of-the-moment murders. Yes, hardened criminals with connections will be able to get guns. You average-Joe criminal won't have access as easily.

Jews were a minority. Hitler had the support of a nation. The situation is entirely different. Even if they had guns, they could hardly start up a Jewish revolution in the heart of an anti-Semitic nation. They'd be outclassed by the army. Also, Godwin's Law, etc.

 

(Edited for slightly better English.)

No wait, hang on, what?

You're afraid that the government will start pushing you around if they take away your guns?

The implication there is you've been holding your own government hostage. What?

Additionally, you officially fail, because you went and brought Hitler into this. This is not about Hitler.

And yet the person who gave that man that gun treated the situation as if it did. A Google search would've revealed him to be an insane individual and a criminal, but the seller took no precautions in giving this man a dangerous firearm designed to kill.

To be honest I think the only solution people aren't going to riot about is setting up a system so that if you have a history of disruptive behavior, you don't get a gun, and making sure every clerk knows about it, does something about it and gets fired if they don't. It's not constitutional? I'm sorry, but you'd really rather be constitutional than keep weapons out of the hands of obvious madmen?

Besides, the 'right to bear arms' - didn't that originally apply to the US army?