Wushu Panda said:
"has been proven that when a gun is in your home you or a family member are far more likely to die by that gun than by that of a criminal"
Do you know why? because people are irresponsible and lazy. That "study" is wrongfully used to support gun control because they leave out other points. In that study it also showed that the guns in question were being kept loaded and unlocked. Parents would hide the gun from their children instead of educating them on the dangers.
My mom grew up in a home of 3 children and her father had a small arsenal. He sat them down taught all of them how dangerous guns can be and the consequences of joking around with firearms. Do you know how many times they had a problem? never. I owned my first gun as a senior in high school, shotgun. Im one of six children. I sat down with my younger siblings and explained how dangerous they can be, we never had a problem either. Its not difficult to educate young kids on the dangers. People are just F*CKING stupid. Every single "accident" could have easily been avoided with common sense.
I dont know what kind of accidental gun fire could have occurred to kill your uncle. Pretty simple rules of dont leave loaded guns unattended and make sure they arent pointed at people.
Owning guns is already well restricted. the NRA even supports a lot of checks to make sure guns are not sold to criminals. But thats where the problem lies. Criminals are not following laws buying guns in stores to allow themselves get checked. They use illegal means to acquire guns, gun control is bullshit because all it does is keep them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.
What the hell do you mean vague? US citizens are allowed to own firearms to defend themselves. Its one of the shortest amendments and most specifically worded. and exactly how many run-of-the-mill people do you know, or heard of, that owns a fuckin orbital laser or thermonuclear weapon? now whos pulling BS out of their ass?
Who said anything about hunting with automatic rifles? Why exactly are you making up stories?
Lastly here is some info for your reading and viewing education.
[link]http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=28253[/link]
An Article by World Net Daily.
"National Academy of Sciences, Justice Dept. reports find no benefits to restricting ownership of firearms"
[link]http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ec7_1251312990[/link]
Penn & Teller's Emmy winning Bullshit series does an episode on Gun Control and much it's useless.
Hm. Funny how the violent crime rate dropped consistently once the Brady Bill went into effect.
Most of the illegally obtained guns used in crime were stolen/illegally purchased from people who bought them legally. It's pretty hard to smuggle an american-made gun into a country it's already in. Obviously systematic gang violence using smuggled weapons that aren't legal in most western countries is an exception.
Anyway, the 2nd amendment actually is kind of ambiguous. When they wrote "bear arms," what arms did they mean? They obviously didn't specify, but does that give everyone the constitutional right to own a bazooka? It also mentions a "well-regulated militia." Now, that's even more ambiguous. How do you define "well-regulated?" Do you mean like the colonial militias in Great Britain, the occasional hoplite training sessions in Greece, or does everyone automatically belong to "the militia?" (I mean the amendment itself is pretty ambiguously worded, the various interpretations of it based on an ancient court ruling are pretty clear.)
I personally think guns need to be regulated in some way, but a complete ban is something different. The other option is to go the route of several other countries, and require everyone to undergo military training, then issue them a powerful rifle. When everyone has one, it's a lot less safe to break into someone's house, so basically as long as everyone has one or no one does, it helps the crime rate. But to be honest, if you're going to half ass it, you might as well regulate certain types of weapons. There will never be a need for any person to own an automatic weapon, since hunting with one is impractical and inefficient, target practice with one is even sillier (Have you ever tried holding an automatic weapon steadily on a target? Even in short bursts it's probably not as a effective as a semi-automatic weapon at any appreciable range), and using an automatic weapon for home defense is just going a little over the top, to be honest. No one will ever need heavy ordinance. Handguns are even less practical, as they're basically useless at any range of over 40 yards, they're easy to conceal (and thus easier to commit crimes with), they're cheap and easy to obtain, and capable of killing a lot of people quickly. When something has no practical use aside from killing people, is it really something you want to have as a widespread aspect of your society? Things like hunting rifles and shotguns, even semi-automatic ones, have clear purposes for both sport and hunting, and as long as you pass the mental health/criminal background check, you should be able to own one in pretty much any caliber allowed under the geneva convention.
Also, going back to the accidents, that's exactly the point. If guns are easy to obtain (a la no gun control laws), lazy and irresponsible people will have easy access to them, and thus accidents will happen frequently. You are more likely (statistically, probably not you personally, from your attitude) to accidentally hurt your own family member than a burglar. You can't regulate gun ownership based on arbitrary determinations of someone's responsibility/laziness, so you really can't keep stupid lazy irresponsible people from owning guns. What you can do is keep them from owning guns most likely to cause those accidents.
