You have made some very good arguments. I would have to say that I would never agree with complete deregulation of gun controls or any such thing. Not controlling who guns go to would be a big problem in any society. And I would never argue that what we have is by any stretch of the imagination better than anywhere else. But it's simply not right to punish people who use guns responsibly because some do not, whether it's due to ignorance about firearms or some weird psycho fantasy they picked up from some action movie.Noelveiga said:
The right to own a gun may be an historical aberration, but that does not mean it has not yielded positive results, or that it, in and of itself, is a negative aspect of our society.
And I mean no disrespect, but knowing people from a country and watching American news does not indicate that you are informed about America, socially speaking. There are so many things that do not make it on the news that it borders on ridiculous. And I'll inform you about a few that makes it not ok for police to be the only form of protection in our society. Detroit SRT invaded a home serving a no knock warrant, which summarily resulted in them firing upon and killing a 4 year old girl, despite not having been fired upon themselves. 6 police were chasing a vandal who fell off a bridge and broke his back, but then when he could not comply with the officer's orders (they didn't believe he was hurt) to come up from the where he had fallen, they tazed (spelling?) him to death (the death part was accidental of course). In New Jersey (where I'm from) a police officer ran a stop sign killing two girls (one 17 year old driver and her 16 year old sister), but he was not even relieved of duty. These are the type of ineptitude's Americans are left with for protection without the ability to protect ourselves. I'm relatively sure that you have heard of none of these things. One big thing that had happened in Philadelphia you may have heard of is the instance where 13 police officers beat three suspects nearly to death in front of everyone (including a helicopter news camera). They believed the suspects to be responsible for a police shooting. None of the officers lost their jobs. The only one who was demoted was the one who was so confused he just stood there not knowing what to do. People need to be able to defend themselves when the police can't be trusted to do it. I'm sure that in your country, the police are very different and are capable of coming to your aid, not necessarily here though. And more often than not, the gun owner can fire a shot as a warning to scare the bad element away.
I'm not defending people who use guns to kill other people except in the most extreme self defense circumstances, but I can't agree that stronger gun controls or prohibition of guns (not that you said that, just stating as part of my point) is the answer. I can understand your point, I honestly hate guns, if you have ever been hunting with a gun or seen an animal shot, I think you would want to be nowhere near them unless you had no other choice. Guns are a deterrent, that is all. If you lock your car, it will deter a car thief, but only if he doesn't want it bad enough. If someone means to harm someone else, the gun may be a deterrent, but not if he means to do them harm enough. My friends father had a saying, "if everyone has guns, at very least people are cordial to each other".
I respect your side of our debate. But there are plenty of instances where crime rates increase with the inclusion of draconian (we'll use that as an extreme, but no gun controls is not actually a good thing) gun controls. In most cities, people can still have a rifle or shotgun, or some means to defend themselves, in their home. People do try to make the argument that handguns are necessary for this, but that is obviously false. I know I brought this up before, but Chicago completely ban gun ownership, and their crime rates did increase. That is statistical fact. Then they relaxed the gun controls, and they dropped. I was looking for a map I had found previously, and it broke down the distribution of gun ownership and and intended homicides with gun violence, and it really was telling. But for the life of me I cannot find it. The best I could find was a state by state breakdown of gun homicide rates, which is much more telling than a nation wide statistic.
You are quite right, the amount of homeless people in the US drives me insane. There is no reason for it. I know that many people who are homeless have some form of mental illness, it's what makes Penn Station New York kinda scary late at night in the winter time. So many homeless people, so many people talking to no one. One of my major political issues is when there is a drive to help people in other countries fix this problem when it is present in America. I lived in New Mexico for a short while. Not in a major city, but about 14 miles outside of a really really small town, and when I went shopping on Fridays, there would be 15 homeless people by the highway entrance trying to get somewhere. The most disconcerting part is that while I expected to see that in New York, I didn't expect to see it in the middle of nowhere. I am not against aiding developing nations, I don't want it to seem that way, and if there is a large natural disaster that lead up to the problem, I'm all for that. But to say we must subsidize a developing nation because of lack of homes and clean water seems outright stupid when we have people in America who do not have homes or easy access to clean water.
As I said before, it is one of our many social problems. And time will fix these, given enough of it. The policies that are in place to do it now are money pits. They are ineffective and the politicians answer is to simply throw more money at the same programs, which yields ever diminishing results. It is one of the reasons why there is so much political strife in America, and why it's divided so deeply. The common misconception is that Republicans would rather get rich and never worry about it while the Democrats like to think that just giving these people money will help them. Both want to alleviate the problem, but in their own way. In the instance of the Democrats, it really started with JFK's war on poverty. Which has been twisted in so many ways that it's not nearly the same as when it started. The Republicans like to think they are looking for market solutions to fix it. Neither side is any good at it though, as it turns out. But, I digress, I've gone on a tangent. Anyway, it's been fun going back and forth with you. The more level headed people there are floating around on these forums, the better off we all are.
