Guns or not Guns

[marharth]

Well to be fair, no one would have had to shoot anyone if the robbers didn't have guns in the first place.

 

Criminals may buy guns anyways, but this is not the case in countries that already have gun control. That and it is a lot harder and more expensive to buy a gun illegally. People would probably just use other weapons that are not as lethal.

 

The reason it is a argument not to own guns is because it will prevent more deaths in the long run. What if the store owner has a gun and he pulls it out and gets shot because he tried to attack the robber? It would be better in most cases if the store owner just got robbed and called the police, instead of taking a crazy risk that mind get himself killed.

 

Also take note that is is advised to NOT shoot someone who is robbing a store, or use a gun to intervene. It causes more death to do that then it would to just wait it out.

 

It is extremely rare for a thief to kill someone unless they are at risk. Not much reason for a criminal to shoot you if you don't pose a threat first. Pulling a gun of a thief probably has a higher chance of getting yourself killed. Your life is worth more then your money and property.

 

The more guns there are, the more likely there is going to be mistakes with guns. The more likely it is for someone who wants to kill someone to commit a murder.

 

Also consider the following. You are extremely mad at someone and you have a gun. In a fit of rage, how easy is it to pull the trigger on a gun, when you compare it to stabbing or beating them to death? You are going to think about cutting someone up or bashing their skull in a lot more then simply moving your finger.

Edited February 10, 2012 by marharth

[WizardOfAtlantis]

Well to be fair, no one would have had to shoot anyone if the robbers didn't have guns in the first place.

 

Criminals may buy guns anyways, but this is not the case in countries that already have gun control. That and it is a lot harder and more expensive to buy a gun illegally. People would probably just use other weapons that are not as lethal.

 

The reason it is a argument not to own guns is because it will prevent more deaths in the long run. What if the store owner has a gun and he pulls it out and gets shot because he tried to attack the robber? It would be better in most cases if the store owner just got robbed and called the police, instead of taking a crazy risk that mind get himself killed.

 

Also take note that is is advised to NOT shoot someone who is robbing a store, or use a gun to intervene. It causes more death to do that then it would to just wait it out.

 

It is extremely rare for a thief to kill someone unless they are at risk. Not much reason for a criminal to shoot you if you don't pose a threat first. Pulling a gun of a thief probably has a higher chance of getting yourself killed. Your life is worth more then your money and property.

 

The more guns there are, the more likely there is going to be mistakes with guns. The more likely it is for someone who wants to kill someone to commit a murder.

 

Also consider the following. You are extremely mad at someone and you have a gun. In a fit of rage, how easy is it to pull the trigger on a gun, when you compare it to stabbing or beating them to death? You are going to think about cutting someone up or bashing their skull in a lot more then simply moving your finger.

No, criminals never have problems getting guns. Gun control never stops criminals from having guns. Period.

And the politic of bending over and pulling your pants down for criminals? This "let them do whatever they want" nonsense? That's just foolish, sheep behavior. You promote violence that way because the bad guys know then that they can get away with it even easier. If that was the correct path, then that's what police officers would do, too. But they don't, do they? Because the Just and Right thing to do is to stand up to the bad guys.

"The more guns there are" is also wrong and misleading. The truth of it is, "the more people there are". I grew up around guns, had my first gun waiting for me before I was even born. I went out and played with a shotgun or a hunting rifle before I was a teenager. My uncle's house had guns over the door frames, etc. We would as often spend out time out in the countryside armed and shooting. There were, for a "normal" "city person's" mentality, guns everywhere. And you know what? NO accidents. Ever.

So, if the formula was that simple, you would be right. More guns equals more deaths. But it's not guns. It never is. It's people that are the problem. It's always the people.

I see so much arguing/debating, and it rarely goes to the heart of the matter. People want to draw lines, and they want to blame "things" because it's easy that way to pull the wool over your eyes. They want to cite numbers, as if that will tell the story of the young black kid raised in a concrete jungle which wouldn't even be comprehensible to your average suburbian emo, or the tales of madness that have wrapped around the mind of the guy who's getting in his car with a rifle ready to shoot him up some people, any people.

Pointing fingers leaves you looking at the moon.

 

 

[marharth]

Well to be fair, no one would have had to shoot anyone if the robbers didn't have guns in the first place.

 

Criminals may buy guns anyways, but this is not the case in countries that already have gun control. That and it is a lot harder and more expensive to buy a gun illegally. People would probably just use other weapons that are not as lethal.

 

The reason it is a argument not to own guns is because it will prevent more deaths in the long run. What if the store owner has a gun and he pulls it out and gets shot because he tried to attack the robber? It would be better in most cases if the store owner just got robbed and called the police, instead of taking a crazy risk that mind get himself killed.

 

Also take note that is is advised to NOT shoot someone who is robbing a store, or use a gun to intervene. It causes more death to do that then it would to just wait it out.

 

It is extremely rare for a thief to kill someone unless they are at risk. Not much reason for a criminal to shoot you if you don't pose a threat first. Pulling a gun of a thief probably has a higher chance of getting yourself killed. Your life is worth more then your money and property.

 

The more guns there are, the more likely there is going to be mistakes with guns. The more likely it is for someone who wants to kill someone to commit a murder.

 

Also consider the following. You are extremely mad at someone and you have a gun. In a fit of rage, how easy is it to pull the trigger on a gun, when you compare it to stabbing or beating them to death? You are going to think about cutting someone up or bashing their skull in a lot more then simply moving your finger.

No, criminals never have problems getting guns. Gun control never stops criminals from having guns. Period.

And the politic of bending over and pulling your pants down for criminals? This "let them do whatever they want" nonsense? That's just foolish, sheep behavior. You promote violence that way because the bad guys know then that they can get away with it even easier. If that was the correct path, then that's what police officers would do, too. But they don't, do they? Because the Just and Right thing to do is to stand up to the bad guys.

"The more guns there are" is also wrong and misleading. The truth of it is, "the more people there are". I grew up around guns, had my first gun waiting for me before I was even born. I went out and played with a shotgun or a hunting rifle before I was a teenager. My uncle's house had guns over the door frames, etc. We would as often spend out time out in the countryside armed and shooting. There were, for a "normal" "city person's" mentality, guns everywhere. And you know what? NO accidents. Ever.

So, if the formula was that simple, you would be right. More guns equals more deaths. But it's not guns. It never is. It's people that are the problem. It's always the people.

I see so much arguing/debating, and it rarely goes to the heart of the matter. People want to draw lines, and they want to blame "things" because it's easy that way to pull the wool over your eyes. They want to cite numbers, as if that will tell the story of the young black kid raised in a concrete jungle which wouldn't even be comprehensible to your average suburbian emo, or the tales of madness that have wrapped around the mind of the guy who's getting in his car with a rifle ready to shoot him up some people, any people.

Pointing fingers leaves you looking at the moon.

As much as you might hate it, if helping criminals saves lives then that is what you should be doing. Same thing applies to negotiating with terrorists. Sometimes you have to do something you might think is bad to get a good result. It is not foolish to let a criminal rob you if you end up not risking your life. Money is replaceable, your life is not.

 

You are right in saying it is people. The simple thing is that if people didn't have those guns it wouldn't be a problem. You need a person to pull the trigger, but why bother with that when you can get rid of the gun altogether? If you have a person who wants to shoot up a school, but doesn't have a easy access to a bunch of guns, they are going to be a lot more likely to rethink that.

 

True, more people with certain views and attitudes equals more deaths. But if you have more of these people with guns, its going to be a larger problem.

 

Also you are rather lucky that you didn't get yourself killed if you played with a firearm as a kid. Not something you should be advocating, I can say that much.

 

Are you going to tell me is it easier to get a gun in a country like Norway, the it is in the US? Really? Care to explain that?

[Aurielius]

I have billiards equipment I collect and billiards equipment I use. Guns are no different.

Okay, I think I've identified the problem here.

 

You're living in a fantasy world. You're living in Kleck and Gertz's world, where 25 people turn into 2.5 million. You're living in Aurelius's world, where you can get rid of 31,224 individually hand-counted death certificates by cutting them up into a million pieces.

Opens MB's big book of cheap shots....snickers with wry derision. FYI..have seen more violence than you ever will.

[marharth]

I have billiards equipment I collect and billiards equipment I use. Guns are no different.

Okay, I think I've identified the problem here.

 

You're living in a fantasy world. You're living in Kleck and Gertz's world, where 25 people turn into 2.5 million. You're living in Aurelius's world, where you can get rid of 31,224 individually hand-counted death certificates by cutting them up into a million pieces.

Opens MB's big book of cheap shots....snickers with wry derision. FYI..have seen more violence than you ever will.

Quite a few your posts here are cheap shots without counter arguments. I am also not sure why you said he took a cheap shot when you ended your post with "FYI..I have seen more violence than you ever will" like that helps your argument or something. Seeing violence has nothing to do with gun control, so you just took a cheap shot at him in the same post where you told him not to take cheap shots.

 

You are not in the place to even mention cheap shots in one of your posts.

Edited February 10, 2012 by marharth

[hoofhearted4]

Okay, perfect. Tell the uncle that whoever his sons were burglarizing could've called 911, and nobody in that situation should've had guns in the first place, but instead his sons had to die because you like to collect killing tools.

 

Be sure to include the bit about guns being just like pool cues. It makes you super sympathetic.

 

hes actually more along the lines that his sons were idiots. they were like 25 or something IIRC. they werent kids. they were looking for s*** to pawn for drugs. as far as my uncle is concerned, he says he woulda done the same thing. if his boys didnt have a death wish they wouldnt have robbed that guys house armed. and wouldnt have fired first. if you take away people right to guns, those boys still would have had their guns, but the guy wouldnt have.

 

as weve identified in this thread, the Police arent exactly the best solution. my uncle lives like 20 minutes away from the sheriff's office.

 

and as i said, my uncle is an avid gun supporter and has multiple guns. he does in fact collect them. he hunts. he goes to shooting ranges. all that good stuff.

 

why is it bad to collect guns? should we stop people from collecting swords and knives?

 

 

also as far as im concerned, there is no reason the police should be able to have guns and i shouldnt. my fate shouldnt rest in their hands. if someone breaks into my house, ill call the police, but the problem may be solved before they get here.

 

 

the whole point in letting everyone have guns is so that the robber or criminal or whatever will think twice. every person/house/store he wants to bring danger to, he has to think "will they have a gun in there or on them" as it is now, chances are no. if everyone had guns hes going to have to think long and hard if its worth it or not because chances at that point that the target is armed is high. most robbers/criminals dont want confrontation. so the fact that everyone is most likely armed is a huge deterrent.

Edited February 10, 2012 by hoofhearted4

[marharth]

also as far as im concerned, there is no reason the police should be able to have guns and i shouldnt.

This is something I agree on to a certain extent. Not because of self defense however.

 

You need to have methods to properly counter an abusive government. Law enforcement needs to also have a counter.

[Ghogiel]

as i say, gun crime wouldnt stop if only some people had guns. gun crime wont stop no matter what. but if everyone carried a gun, im still willing to bet there would be a lot less gun crime.

I disagree. In the US, gun crime might drop to very low levels IF it was at all possible in anyway to actually remove guns from circulation, and then to control guns. But it's not feasibly possible, it's too difficult to remove them from any population.

that is generally what people mean when they say gun control doesn't work. But control in the sense of the UK or Japan does indeed work, and both have very stringent laws, low numbers of hand guns in circulation and some of the lowest gun crime in the world.

 

The government will probably lowjack and microchip your guns in the end.

[Syco21]

Kids summer camps do not use real firearms, they commonly use pellet guns and other non lethal weapons for target practice.

 

How could guns in the hands of citizens help in school shootings? Quite a few schools in the US have metal detectors. You are not legally allowed to carry guns on school campus. Not to mention you can't even carry a knife.

I've been to a summer cap, it's where I shot my first gun. I know what I am talking about through experience. And since you weren't paying attention(funny how I am the one accused of ignoring something) I've already listed a real world situation where an armed citizen was able to stop one school shooting from becoming two school shootings.

 

Guns in schools should not be outlawed outright. I wont argue for everyone having a gun at all times. But there needs to be some sort of system where teachers have the ability to at least apply for a permit to keep guns on them. I know, this scares people. Oh well. Would you rather be scared or dead? Once again, lives were saved at UT Austin and the Pearl middle school because of armed citizens.

 

Okay, I think I've identified the problem here.

 

You're living in a fantasy world. You're living in Kleck and Gertz's world, where 25 people turn into 2.5 million. You're living in Aurelius's world, where you can get rid of 31,224 individually hand-counted death certificates by cutting them up into a million pieces.

 

Want to get back to the real world? Find the parents of someone who died from gun violence. It shouldn't be too hard. Call them and explain that their child had to die so you could collect more killing instruments. Tell them guns are just like pool cues.

Once again, there hasn't even been 31k murders in the US in a single year period, let alone 31k murders with guns. So the claim that there are 31k deaths do to gun violence is just straight up false. I did not use statistics to make things disappear, I used cold hard facts. The fact that the number espoused is incorrect. They can't be cut up into little pieces, because once again, they don't exist. Did you count them yourself? I highly doubt that. 31k is a popular number espoused by the Brady Bunch. It includes homicides, suicides and accidents. And it's still wrong.

 

The actual numbers are roughly;

 

9k homicides

550 accidents

18k suicides

 

Suicides should not be lumped with the rest. They're not gun violence. They're acts of self destruction and are not affected by gun ownership. The only thing that changes is the method of suicide.

 

If you want to count gun accidents, fine. But then one must also consider other types of accidents. A favorite of gun rights advocates is motor vehicle accidents. There are roughly 39k motor vehicle accidents per year in the US. There are roughly 550 gun accidents in the US each year. There are as many guns as, if not more than, cars in the US. So for the sake of discussion, let's all it a 1/1 ratio. This means that your car is 71 times more likely to accidentally kill someone than my gun.

 

It has been estimated that around 2.5m people use guns in self defense every year. These numbers can hardly be verified. Thus my point was simply that I can pull a big number out of my ass as well. I don't know how many people use guns each year to defend themselves, but I know the number is a LOT higher than 25. The lowest estimates for gun use in self defense exceed 100k.

 

I live in the real world. The difference is that I get my information from the CDC, and you seemingly get your information from the Brady Campaign.

 

Okay, perfect. Tell the uncle that whoever his sons were burglarizing could've called 911, and nobody in that situation should've had guns in the first place, but instead his sons had to die because you like to collect killing tools.

 

Be sure to include the bit about guns being just like pool cues. It makes you super sympathetic.

Way to twist what I said. I wasn't saying they're just like cues. I was saying that like the other hobbies, they have their place for different purposes. I collect some, I shoot some and some are for SD.

 

Also consider the following. You are extremely mad at someone and you have a gun. In a fit of rage, how easy is it to pull the trigger on a gun, when you compare it to stabbing or beating them to death? You are going to think about cutting someone up or bashing their skull in a lot more then simply moving your finger.

I know exactly what I'd do, and I know from experience. I would keep my calm and handle matters as best I could, like a rational adult that doesn't turn into a murderer at the drop of a hat. Which does not happen. People don't just turn into homicidal maniacs because they have a gun. They have to have a predisposition to homicidal tendencies, and then it wont matter if they have a gun, a knife or a big rock. Basically, to go crazy like that, they have to be crazy in the first place.

[marharth]

Kids summer camps do not use real firearms, they commonly use pellet guns and other non lethal weapons for target practice.

 

How could guns in the hands of citizens help in school shootings? Quite a few schools in the US have metal detectors. You are not legally allowed to carry guns on school campus. Not to mention you can't even carry a knife.

I've been to a summer cap, it's where I shot my first gun. I know what I am talking about through experience. And since you weren't paying attention(funny how I am the one accused of ignoring something) I've already listed a real world situation where an armed citizen was able to stop one school shooting from becoming two school shootings.

 

Guns in schools should not be outlawed outright. I wont argue for everyone having a gun at all times. But there needs to be some sort of system where teachers have the ability to at least apply for a permit to keep guns on them. I know, this scares people. Oh well. Would you rather be scared or dead? Once again, lives were saved at UT Austin and the Pearl middle school because of armed citizens.

 

Okay, I think I've identified the problem here.

 

You're living in a fantasy world. You're living in Kleck and Gertz's world, where 25 people turn into 2.5 million. You're living in Aurelius's world, where you can get rid of 31,224 individually hand-counted death certificates by cutting them up into a million pieces.

 

Want to get back to the real world? Find the parents of someone who died from gun violence. It shouldn't be too hard. Call them and explain that their child had to die so you could collect more killing instruments. Tell them guns are just like pool cues.

Once again, there hasn't even been 31k murders in the US in a single year period, let alone 31k murders with guns. So the claim that there are 31k deaths do to gun violence is just straight up false. I did not use statistics to make things disappear, I used cold hard facts. The fact that the number espoused is incorrect. They can't be cut up into little pieces, because once again, they don't exist. Did you count them yourself? I highly doubt that. 31k is a popular number espoused by the Brady Bunch. It includes homicides, suicides and accidents. And it's still wrong.

 

The actual numbers are roughly;

 

9k homicides

550 accidents

18k suicides

 

Suicides should not be lumped with the rest. They're not gun violence. They're acts of self destruction and are not affected by gun ownership. The only thing that changes is the method of suicide.

 

If you want to count gun accidents, fine. But then one must also consider other types of accidents. A favorite of gun rights advocates is motor vehicle accidents. There are roughly 39k motor vehicle accidents per year in the US. There are roughly 550 gun accidents in the US each year. There are as many guns as, if not more than, cars in the US. So for the sake of discussion, let's all it a 1/1 ratio. This means that your car is 71 times more likely to accidentally kill someone than my gun.

 

It has been estimated that around 2.5m people use guns in self defense every year. These numbers can hardly be verified. Thus my point was simply that I can pull a big number out of my ass as well. I don't know how many people use guns each year to defend themselves, but I know the number is a LOT higher than 25. The lowest estimates for gun use in self defense exceed 100k.

 

I live in the real world. The difference is that I get my information from the CDC, and you seemingly get your information from the Brady Campaign.

 

Okay, perfect. Tell the uncle that whoever his sons were burglarizing could've called 911, and nobody in that situation should've had guns in the first place, but instead his sons had to die because you like to collect killing tools.

 

Be sure to include the bit about guns being just like pool cues. It makes you super sympathetic.

Way to twist what I said. I wasn't saying they're just like cues. I was saying that like the other hobbies, they have their place for different purposes. I collect some, I shoot some and some are for SD.

 

Also consider the following. You are extremely mad at someone and you have a gun. In a fit of rage, how easy is it to pull the trigger on a gun, when you compare it to stabbing or beating them to death? You are going to think about cutting someone up or bashing their skull in a lot more then simply moving your finger.

I know exactly what I'd do, and I know from experience. I would keep my calm and handle matters as best I could, like a rational adult that doesn't turn into a murderer at the drop of a hat. Which does not happen. People don't just turn into homicidal maniacs because they have a gun. They have to have a predisposition to homicidal tendencies, and then it wont matter if they have a gun, a knife or a big rock. Basically, to go crazy like that, they have to be crazy in the first place.

Most people are not rational adults. People kill without meaning to do so just because they have a gun. There is a entire difference in law between killing someone in a fit of rage, and killing someone with planning. Killing someone does not make you crazy.

 

I also went to a summer camp that did not allow firearms. It seems to me that allowing firearms at a summer camp is a terrible idea.

 

The shooter at UT Austin killed himself, no one else stopped him. The pearl shooting involved the assistant principle stopping him at his car after he already killed multiple people. Sure he stopped him from killing more people, but if he didn't have the gun in the first place no one would have died.