Doomlord1375 said:
I hate to use analogies right off the bat, but I feel it is necessary to do so in this case.
Think of it in a different way- If nobody in your family ever ate burgers or fries, would you feel the need to ban ketchup from the house? I mean, you've never touched a bottle of it, never seen a bottle of it, and you have yet to be in a situation in which you have needed it. What's the purpose of keeping it around?
Why? There is always a possibility someone will bring home an order of fries one day. Perhaps a guest to your house, or something. Then (analogy stops here) you have the people that use firearms all the time. Hunters, competitive sport shooters, and people who just like to head out to the shooting range occasionally and do a little target shooting. A vast majority of them have never been harmed by their weapons, and have never harmed anyone else with their weapons. What justification do you have to take from those people, many of whom are probably more trained to fire a weapon than most cops?
The way I see it, there is only one situation in which banning guns doesn't lead to disaster. That being if you manage to destroy every single one of them in the world along with any knowledge of how to make then and how they work. That is not going to happen.
Once something is introduced into the world, it seeps deep into the cracks and stays there. You might be able to easily clean off the surface, but you'll never be able to completely eradicate it. Even if you do manage to physically "completely destroy" something, the knowledge of it still exists, and someone out there could always be determined enough to make more. For that reason, banning guns is a bad thing- it is an action which serves only to disarm those who would follow the law and give up their weapons.
In a "perfect" world, we might not need guns. This is not a perfect world. It has been contaminated. We can dilute to contaminant as much as we want, but the world will never be perfect and pure again until it is nothing more than a memory.
That was a bit of a bad analogy cos I hate ketchup so if you want to eat it B.Y.O.K.
Lets translate that analogy, my family has never seen a gun so should I ban them from the house? yes. I would never be in a situation were I would need a gun. I would have it around cos it is banned from the house (I say house I mean sheltered housing/homeless shelter).
There is a possibility somebody will come round to rob me? I assume your trying to get at. Well the insurance would probably cover whatever was stolen so why would I want to go to jail for defending my house? Yes, that is the law in the U.K, if somebody breaks into your house, you can't touch them, shoot them ... I'd refrain from screaming/shouting in case they sue you for mental and emotional distress aswell.
There were two cases that spring to mind, 1 guy was sued for shotting a guy in the leg cos he was robbing his house, the other case a company was sued cos they had razor wire round the top of a wall and a robber cut his hand on it while trying to enter illegally.
You brought up hunting, maybe if humanity didn't have guns there wouldn't be so many lazy people who get to 400 pounds.
Competitive shooting and target practice, if we don't use guns then we wouldn't need these things and I am sure that the competitive shooters could find some other sport.
what justification do I have to take the guns off them? with one simple question, why do you want a gun? You don't need to hunt for food, you can easily defend yourself without a gun, any more reasons to own a gun?
Maybe if guns were destroyed then the human race could start getting it's killer instinct back, instead of being the softest race on the planet or maybe if the planet had smarter people we wouldn't need to go to war, we could be a civilized race and instead of America and england sending soldiers over to Iraq they could talk about it and get it solved. (I know the chances of that are non existent but still ...) we could even have a mix of both, get our killer instinct back but not kill our own race.
I will agree with you on one thing though, if guns are banned it will be exactly the same as booze being banned, metal workers will start producing guns in secret and all guns will evolve to be silent and small to make them easier to hide.
I am a very straight person with things like this, the way I think is do we need it? No, then why have it? I know somebody will say what about games or films or whatever but we do need them cos without them there would be no entertainment, which means we would all work all day then get home, eat, sleep then back to work which isn't a great life for any body.
I have rambled for long enough so Ill stop here, sorry.
