Poll: Fun control

[stonethered]

i vaguely remember an example of this in social studies,
some country armed with guns fought against china, who were armed with swords. needless to say, the chinese were masicured, and realized their swords were not enough anymore

hmmn.
that does sound familliar.
were you aware that many countries maintain armories?
it is possible to have a country that is both defended against external threats and able to reduce the potential impact of internal violence.
i didn't say to abolish guns, just that civilians should consider alternative, less dangerous, forms of self-defense.
and with proper equipment police would be considerably less vulnerable to street knifings. since that is still a very considerable problem. it's the reason why i recomended the more difficult to conceal sword.

 

[Dorian6]

I'm all in favor of giving guns to hunters. That'll increase the chances of two rednecks blowing each others heads off.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

Civillians should never be allowed to have guns.

If you answered this your an intelligent person who understands the value of life.

If you answered anything else your American.

 

[Lazzi]

I like being able to conceal my .44 mag and I'd like to keep it that way. Was the 2nd ammendment reference really neccesary though?

Its unintentioanly makes the thread a bit more light hearted, otherwise we might not have gotten all these nice "bear arms" pictures.

 

[JonnoStrife]

Semi-Automatic weapons limited only to people who are of sound mental health and have no criminal convictions at all. This means no freak with schizoid tendencies can go and get a M16, take it down to the nearest duck pond and blow away half the small children and new parents gathered at its edge. It also means that if a punk ass 'Thug Life' ****** goes to pray on your grandma's bridge buddy , she can blow out his knee cap to teach him a lesson.

 

[Thwarted]

Civillians should never be allowed to have guns.

If you answered this your an intelligent person who understands the value of life.

If you answered anything else your American.

nonsense. Life is meaningless without the freedom to choose how to live it. If we banned things because they are dangerous then cars and alcahol would go long before guns. It comes down to wether you want your government to prioratise your freedom over your safety or not, and I for one quite like living in a liberal democracy.

 

[sheic99]

Semi-Automatic weapons limited only to people who are of sound mental health and have no criminal convictions at all. This means no freak with schizoid tendencies can go and get a M16, take it down to the nearest duck pond and blow away half the small children and new parents gathered at its edge. It also means that if a punk ass 'Thug Life' ****** goes to pray on your grandma's bridge buddy , she can blow out his knee cap to teach him a lesson.

An m16 is a semi-automatic.

Civillians should never be allowed to have guns.

If you answered this your an intelligent person who understands the value of life.

If you answered anything else you're American.

As an American, I don't appreciate your trolling.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

Well, seeing as this is a casual conversation, I'm not really in the mood to do extensive research, so I'll just use the same source you used- whenever I hear about gun crime or see it in the news its almost always related to domestic violence, planned murder, murder-suicide, or kidnapping, all usually committed by seemingly normal people who have legally owned guns for quite some time.

EDIT- If anybody wants to look up some statistics and send them our way, go for it.

Interesting. Do you mind if I ask where you live? I wonder if it's a regional thing. I live in rural Illinois, USA. Most of my news comes from the Chicagoland area. And yeah, anyone willing to look up gun violence stats-much obliged.

Also interesting. I'm not willing to give you too much of an approximation, but I will say that I live in Northern Indiana, so it seems like our news shouldn't differ too much. However, seeing as you get your news from Chicago, I can definitely see why you seem to see a lot more reports of drug dealers and the like. We have meth labs and armed robberies where I live, but the methies don't tend to be armed, and the robberies are sparse. I still think that guns should be more heavily restricted than they are now, but I do understand where you are coming from- perhaps this issue should be dealt with using state legislation, rather than a sweeping national law, as circumstances are varied throughout the country. I will say, however, that I don't like the idea of anyone owning semi-auto weapons- they may not be as powerful as fully automatic weapons, but they're still ridiculous for any purpose other than mass killing.

 

[JonnoStrife]

Semi-Automatic weapons limited only to people who are of sound mental health and have no criminal convictions at all. This means no freak with schizoid tendencies can go and get a M16, take it down to the nearest duck pond and blow away half the small children and new parents gathered at its edge. It also means that if a punk ass 'Thug Life' ****** goes to pray on your grandma's bridge buddy , she can blow out his knee cap to teach him a lesson.

An m16 is a semi-automatic.

Civillians should never be allowed to have guns.

If you answered this your an intelligent person who understands the value of life.

If you answered anything else you're American.

As an American, I don't appreciate your trolling.

My point being that a regular person could own and M16 but the person i described was obviously
NOT regular. He would fall into the not-of-sound-mental-health section.

 

[similar.squirrel]

If it's all allegedly for self-defense [the ultra-democratic excuse is bullshit, army ALWAYS has better hardware], then there is nothing wrong with beanbag shotguns, tasers and the like.

 

[Thwarted]

beanbag shotguns have a very short effective range, can only fire one shot before reloading and are impossible to carry concealed. Tazers are also only good for one shot with their electrodes, if you miss you have to try and poke them with it instead. The FN 5-7 and other such automatic pistols are accurate to around 50 yards, easy to conceal and have magazine capacities in excess of ten rounds.

 

[Tears of Blood]

I did a presentation on this for Sociology class.

Basically, I was pretty biased, because if you do the reasearch, you learn that areas that impose more gun control laws end up with not just more homicides via firearm, but homicides in general! It's completely crazy.

 

[AvsJoe]

I believe that every American can and should own an automatic rifle that can fire over 100 rounds before reloading. Every American. Including the cokeheads, the criminals, and the clinically insane (and also the children. Won't somebody please think of the children?). And I believe that bullets should be dirt cheap. But the second any American should leave their country for work/vacation/whatever, they have to leave their guns at home. That would be a perfect solution right there.

 

[Iskenator67]

Where is the "I should be able to build an A-bomb in my backyard option?"

 

[Jemal]

I'm Canadian, not American, and I believe everybody should be armed. I don't see why people allways think of this as an 'American' Debate, it's a Human debate. Crime and weapons aren't limited to the united states, every country on earth has them. The yanks are just some of the few smart enough(Wow, never thought I'd say that! ) to let people use said weapons to defend themselves against said criminals

The very real possibility of retribution is the best deterence IMO. It may not be nice, pretty, and 'world peace'-ey, but it's the true human condition. If there's a very real chance that hurting or trying to hurt someone will end up getting YOU hurt in return, most people are less likely to go through with it - It's called survival instinct.
Having to wait for the cops to come in with THEIR weaons is just removing the threat by one more degree. Instead of having to worry about immediate retribution, the criminal has to worry about retribution once or twice-removed... and only then if the police are able (and in many cases willing) to track him/her down. And even if they DO track him down, he may still get off without any punishment, or with a minor one.

That's not nearly as much of a deterrent to crime as "If I do this I might get my freaking nuts shot off!"

 

[Souplex]

I am fairly certain Australia has banned handguns and I am also fairly certain they have a relatively low crimerate. If someone could retrieve some figures that would be nice.

 

[tsb247]

It is ridiculous that you can buy an assault weapon in the U.S. No amount of deer hunting requires armor piercing rounds and a muzzle velocity of 3,200 ft/s.

Define assault weapon. We can't own anything in full-auto in most states, and in the states where you can own one, you are required to pay a large fee for a liscence, background check, and in some cases you must have written permission from the local sheriff and/or the attorney general. Getting one's hands on a (legal) assault weapon is difficult and expensive.

I would also like to point out that a .30-06 (150 grain bullet - ballistic tip) round (considered to be a common deer hunting round) has a muzzle velocity of around 2,900 ft/s. Fast bullets are hardly unnecessary.

 

[Last of the Chinchillas]

It is ridiculous that you can buy an assault weapon in the U.S. No amount of deer hunting requires armor piercing rounds and a muzzle velocity of 3,200 ft/s.

Define assault weapon. We can't own anything in full-auto in most states, and in the states where you can own one, you are required to pay a large fee for a liscence, background check, and in some cases you must have written permission from the local sheriff and/or the attorney general. Getting one's hands on a (legal) assault weapon is difficult and expensive.

I would also like to point out that a .30-06 (150 grain bullet - ballistic tip) round (considered to be a common deer hunting round) has a muzzle velocity of around 2,900 ft/s. Fast bullets are hardly unnecessary.

If you but will peruse the first page of this thread, good sir, you will see that this issue has already been settled for me. My comments were made due to a partial misunderstanding of the more techinical bits of firearms on my part.

 

[tsb247]

Its not like civilians use their guns to protect themselves. When have you heard someone using a gun on a gangster?

Here is one example of a civilian defending themself as well as co-workers using their own weapon.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32426383/

There are countless more... All you have to do is search the internet and you will find thousands of stories like this one.

 

[tsb247]

I honestly think that its laughable that this law is still around. "self defense" is bullshit and even more so when these people say "we won't be keeping the guns out of the hands of criminals". Well I think it will help and maybe, just maybe, the redneck gun owners are more dangerous than the criminals themselves.

What is laughable is that you seem to think that being able to defend yourself is laughable. "That guy is bigger than me and armed... I guess I had better let him rape my wife and murder my children since I don't believe in owning a handhun to defend my home."

Apparently you have never suffered a home invasion. If you had, you would be singing a different tune.