It's nice to see that most everyone from the rest of the world who's interested in commenting on such matters is as much of an anti-gun crazy as the anti-gun crazies we have here in the U.S. I wouldn't want to feel like I lived in the *only* nation capable of gross ignorance, failure to think, and arguments made as knee-jerk reactions. I also have to wonder if there's a bit of the hate-EA^H^HUSA-because-it's-cool thing in here, too, though that could just as easily be lumped in with the knee-jerk gun hatred.
Let's look at some statements/arguments:
1. "Your stats/charts/whatever are bunk because there's information missing or provide a view of the available data that doesn't seem to support my point." This likes to be accompanied by stats/charts/whatever that have information missing because it doesn't suit the person making this argument. What? Why do you people get to decide which overly-simplistic view of information based on only two values (estimated number of guns in a country, gun-related deaths/crimes, average shoe size) is more valid than another? In the case (in this thread) from which I take this point, I see a favorite argument of gun-loving types (some of whom are, I'll admit, a bit more excitable on some matters than they should be) and a favorite argument of gun-hating types. Both consider very little and try to make the issue look like something even now we in the U.S. would expect our middle school students to be able to determine the obvious solution to. One graph won't prove that sane legislation (that's actually enforced, this time, just for the lulz and novelty factor) wouldn't help matters here (it would). One chart won't prove that an immediate gun ban would be an effective and reasonable thing to do (it wouldn't).
2. "I don't care about anything, normal people shouldn't be allowed to have guns!" Ha ha. Go find a soldier or police officer who's authorized to have firearms and ask where he/she gained the super-human ability to be a sane, responsible human. The millions of gun owners who haven't killed anyone yet eagerly await this knowledge and fear that any day they may all just completely snap due to the soul-crushing challenge of not loading a gun and shooting people with it. I'm actually starting to feel bad for you people; you must be in a rather sad state given how strongly you seem to believe that you can't be trusted to not promptly murder someone given a lump of metal that you associate with an opportunity to do so. Maybe I'm just projecting my opinion of myself (I've been around firearms and other things that would terrify many who've posted to this thread for most of my life, so I'm not inherently afraid of such things) onto humanity as a whole, but I have to believe that more than a few of us are capable of independent thought and responsibility. Instead of demanding that someone (government, law enforcement) come hold our hands and take away all responsibility for everything, I assert that we should demand of ourselves true independent, critical thought and a strong will to assume and enforce responsibility. As I see it, if we're inherently as feeble as some of you seem to believe then there's really no hope for us at all and we're going to remain largely a flock of timid and industrious animals.
2b. Also note that criminals have that ability. They just don't use it, so once everyone's disarmed we'll have lots of nice little defenseless victims and plenty of guns still going around (and we would; even the anti-gun types who have any sanity at all recognize that they won't all just vanish overnight) to ensure that law-abiding citizens are extra vulnerable. Admittedly, this is an argument that's used a lot by pro-gun types. Does anyone argue against it? What do unarmed people in regions with strict gun control laws do if someone who is armed breaks into their homes or otherwise attacks them/their family/their property? (Honest questions; I'm not here to be a parrot or troll. I really think that more honest argument would do the world a heap of good.)
3. "With loose gun control laws, you had it coming!" Oh, you're completely right! Let me just go fix that now and by the end of the week everything will be perfect over here. Only *you* will still have people getting shot, stabbed, beaten, etc. And you'll have it coming because you don't have a ban on limbs (arms, legs) and teeth (those can draw blood, you know!)! Don't worry about the fact that even your current laws haven't solved your problems or the fact that practically everything is a least a little different there than its counterpart is here. (I'd love to make a bigger point of this, but there's already a lot of crap to not want to read so just... realize for yourself that laws, rules, and customs that work (maybe even rather well, I don't know) for a place inhabited by folk who'd wet themselves at the sight of a pellet gun may not be appropriate for a place inhabited by people who think that firing a Desert Eagle (.50, naturally, for maximum manliness) is a manlier way to stress one's wrist than, well, whatever else one might think of that doesn't involve an even sillier gun.
4. "Oooh, guns are so scary and bad, make them go away!" Go change your pants and let the grown-ups do the bickering? Fear(/emotion in general) is an excellent reason to back off and let people who are prepared to think rather than feel handle rule-making, at least at high levels such as, say, the federal level in a nation full of people who mostly *don't* kill each other. Again, we're not you and we're not all the feeble-minded drooling idiots some of you seem to think all humans (or, uh, "normal people") are. Proper education, upbringing, and socialization into a society that isn't utterly nuts (this last bit being where the real problems come from) would enable a much safer world than even what the anti-gun crazies who've had their way live in.
4a. "Zomg assault rifles! Automatic weapons! You're all crazy!" Yep, totally, we've all got assault rifles on gun racks in our huge, jacked-up, four-wheel-drive pickup trucks. And by that I mean SARCASM, SARCASM, when was the last time there was *correct* news about a civilian using an *actual* automatic weapon or, by any meaningful definition, assault weapon? Semi-automatic firearms are hardly special here or in practically any context other than, judging by the amount of fear, civilian ownership in heavily "gun controlled" areas. Fully automatic firearms aren't what these people are using and are rarely in the hands of civilians anyway. In truth, this is a non-issue raised by the same terrified sheep as those spouting #4. Both have no merit at all and can be discarded without losing useful information.
4b. "Zomg, think of the children!" Yes, think of them. Think of how likely they are to end up committing crimes possibly just like this one because A. guns are like the One Ring but without having to be worn to subvert individuals' wills or B. something's broken in our society and instead of doing something about it we're all attacking people and organizations that weren't responsible for it at all, pointing fingers and filing law suits like life is easy and we can just make all of the difficulty, the hard choices, and the tough problems go away by accusing somebody else of being at fault. We can't. If we ever collectively grow up and stop running frantically away from reality we'll likely make surprising progress.
---Counter arguments/statements over. Pointy points follow.
On gun hate: Guns don't make reasonable people angry, homicidal, depressed, or much of anything else. A lot of anti-gun types live in countries with firearms licenses and armed police (though not necessarily all police in any given country are armed, I know). Do those people go mad and gun others down because the guns tell them to? If so, I'd expect you to realize that those people were *mentally ill* to begin with. Do people get angry and hurt others there? Of course they do. This leads into what *I* think is the gorilla bouncing around the room while people ignore or otherwise fail to notice it in favor of the papier-mâché elephant they've constructed:
Society: Cue immediate mindless attacks due to comments about societal faults being immediately considered the worthless rantings of an angry youth, or whatever exactly people think that leads to this issue rarely if ever being discussed. Why do anti-gun types think we still have so many guns? Do they all honestly think that the guns are just magically making us crazy ( and stupid, and fat... or are those due to other things that just happen to be convenient targets?) without any other influences on the matter at all? I have a hard time believing that anyone can be dense enough to think that guns are the only things that affect people. Surely even the most thick-headed troll of a U.S./gun hater realizes that a lot goes into any given person's behavior. To be honest, it's incredibly irritating to find that every time a "shooting" occurs here our media makes a big fuss and a whole load of people here and abroad feel compelled to attack U.S. gun laws and gun ownership(/owners) for having guns simply because they in some cases take part in symptoms that even these attackers themselves share. Wherever these people are, they have shootings, they have stabbings, they... apparently want to work toward putting everyone into straitjackets and padded cells so that, no matter what, no one can hurt anyone else? What other logical conclusion is there to the path of taking away everything that can be used as a weapon? Meanwhile, the point has seemingly eluded everyone: weapons aren't the problem. The problem is with the *people.* The straitjacket comment is based on this: people will hate and hurt as long as there's an opportunity for them to. If there's a will and a way, it'll happen. Taking away the ways is ridiculous, especially in the case of a country in which the citizens together own more weaponry than some armies. "Shootings" have apparently become part of the culture here, they're in the minds of everyone, so that's what people do when they snap. Thus...
Big, shiny point: What we (all, not just those of us in the U.S., apparently many of whom are still quite capable of both owning guns and *not* killing people with them... at the same time!) need to do is deal with the actual problems, rather than just whining about the symptoms and attacking each other (or in this case, mostly just us) for having them. Instead of removing everything in the world to attack the ways of harming people, we must target the source of the *will* to harm people. As previously pointed out in one of the few posts here with much thought visibly put into it (thanks so much, Athinira), it's not possible to stop these individuals (considered as a group) who spontaneously decide to shoot up(/stab/otherwise harm people at) a school or mall or whatever. The commonalities that can be exploited to maximize prevention (a worthy aim; the need to increase response effectiveness shouldn't be taken as a lack of need to also improve prevention) are, again, the will and the ways. The ways are numerous (guns, knives, bits of pipe or wood, vehicles, bare hands can all be used to harm people) and even in areas with strict weapon control laws (within the U.S. and abroad) the weapons don't vanish because some people want them to (and being on the Internet, we should all know well that things don't go away just because people want them to). The will seems to come from only a few sources, most of which are considered illnesses. Particularly in the case of social illnesses, it seems appropriate to examine society for signs of flaws that could lead to people unwillfully being (or feeling) excluded from it and possibly becoming socially ill and potentially dangerous. Dealing with such flaws, should they be found (as I think an honest look would do) will require societal change.
Society affects all of us, probably more than most acknowledge. Where do people get their ideas regarding guns, shootings, stabbings, etc.? I hope you said "other people!" Now, why? What governs the interactions between people and how they perceive themselves in relation to each other and to society or the world in general? This type and degree of influence makes it a difficult thing to affect, I admit. Good solutions won't come through brute force, forcing things on people or taking things away. Unfortunately, the hard way *is* the correct way forward. We've got to all work together to make *our* world, our societies decent, reasonable things to be part of. I assert that too little is being done to produce and support a population comprised of thoughtful folk who demonstrate their vested interest in the health of their societies if not in the welfare of others around them. Further, until such behavior is natural there *will* be shootings, stabbings, beatings, suicides, and various other sorts of unpleasant things.
TL;DR: Guns don't make people hurt people. If anything, society combined with social illness (this being, I think, the major targetable source of violence) makes people hurt people. People hurting other people isn't only a problem in the U.S. There's no real correlation between gun ownership and murder rates (the real symptom; people like to argue about firearms-related deaths or crime even when it's merely replaced by deaths/crime using other weapons or tools) while there are obvious social and economic issues that can and do lead to serious issues. Issues that can lead to people "snapping" and going off like the various people we hear about shooting people though they were known the have issues or be likely to have them. The correct way to handle this is to build a society that is more effectively inclusive and less conducive to real violence.
Notes:
-By "socially ill" here, I refer to the condition of a person who has significant difficulty interacting with or taking part in his or her associated society (in this context, really any society the person could participate in and thus develop socially and emotionally in a healthy manner).
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Apologies for a bit of a rant that may not be the best-constructed wall of text on the Internet. I'll likely not be producing another one on this matter any time soon; I simply felt that there's been far too much missing of important points in favor of shoddy, parroted bickering between sides. We don't need sides, we need solutions... to real problems, not imaginary ones.
