USA Gun Control

Romanos

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This seems to be a never ending topic that causes harsh debates and rises the flames to new heights constantly.

What do you feel is the best avenue of thought regarding gun control?
 

MoreCoffee

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This seems to be a never ending topic that causes harsh debates and rises the flames to new heights constantly.

What do you feel is the best avenue of thought regarding gun control?

Have less of them in the hands of people who do not own a farm or go hunting or use them for rifle ranges where they can shoot for sport at targets. Require them to be kept in locked gun safes. Keep ammunition in a separate locked safe. But in the end gun laws and restrictions on ownership cannot cure the problems that lead to gun murders and killings. For that some serious culture change is needed. The USA has a lot of guns but the Swiss have more and the difference in per-capita gun deaths in the two nations is startling. The problem is not just the prevalence of guns in USA society there is something else at work that leads to the mass shootings and other problems associated with guns in the USA.

Other western democracies also have occasional mass shootings, but they are much less common than in the USA.
 
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psalms 91

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We should have the freedom to own guns period. The second amendment is clear. Guns dont kill, people do. An old cliche but a very true one. A gun is an inanamate object that is neitheer good or bad, it is the person behind it that is good or evil.
 

tango

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This seems to be a never ending topic that causes harsh debates and rises the flames to new heights constantly.

What do you feel is the best avenue of thought regarding gun control?

The first thing that has to be done is to stop the tub-thumping and rabble-rousing on both sides.

If it were as simple as "more guns is more dangerous" then Switzerland would be a bloodbath. If it were as simple as "more guns is more safe" then South Africa would be a crime-free paradise. There's clearly more to the issue than the availability or otherwise of firearms.

Ultimately if people want to harm other people they will find a way to do it. Guns make the process convenient but if we could take the guns away from the Bad People they'd just use something else. It's clearly not realistic to ban kitchen knives, baseball bats, bricks and similar everyday items and any of those can be deadly in the wrong hands. A gun makes it easy for a Bad Person to harm lots of people quickly in a way that's just not possible with a knife but then it doesn't take very long to practise throwing knives for greater effect, and the same gun that makes the Bad Person's job of hurting people easier also makes it easy for the Good Guy to put a stop to the rampage. A deadly weapon also levels the odds in any encounters between the young/strong and the older/weaker in that you can see off a would-be assailant without having to overpower them. So at a stroke the young woman at night has a means of defending herself against a would-be rapist, an elderly guy has a means to defend himself against would-be robber and so on.

One question that has to be asked is how many deaths we are willing to tolerate as the price for living in an open society. Before anyone chimes in with a pat answer of "one death is one too many", if we took the same attitude elsewhere we would also have to ban air travel, motor vehicles and the like. We accept the loss of thousands of lives every single year on the roads as the price we pay for the convenience of using our own motor vehicles. We don't see a motor collision where 20 people die as an outrage and immediately start demanding that the government Do Something About It, yet when half that many people die in a shooting incident it's a different matter. It's not even an issue of consenting to the risk when getting into a motor vehicle because many of the victims of car-related accidents weren't in a car at all, and that's before we even consider the health implications of thousands of internal combustion engines and their emissions.

As it stands the 2nd Amendment grants the right to bear arms. I suppose (I'm not an expert on the US Constitution, so correct me if I'm wrong) if there were the political will to change it then that provision could be altered or nullified, but frankly I think the government has more pressing issues.
 

MoreCoffee

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We should have the freedom to own guns period. The second amendment is clear. Guns don't kill, people do. An old cliché but a very true one. A gun is an inanimate object that is neither good or bad, it is the person behind it that is good or evil.
So too a nuclear weapon is an inanimate object that is nether good nor bad in itself so let's allow the Iranians to have as many as they want. And why not let Cuba have as many as Russia wants to give to them. Its a "free world!" ...

The line of argument in your post makes not real sense.
 

tango

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So too a nuclear weapon is an inanimate object that is nether good nor bad in itself so let's allow the Iranians to have as many as they want. And why not let Cuba have as many as Russia wants to give to them. Its a "free world!" ...

The line of argument in your post makes not real sense.

One obvious question to ask is why one group of nations gets to decide what other groups of nations can own what weapons. Iran getting a nuclear weapon would almost certainly be bad news for the west, it would certainly be bad news for Israel. But then we get into a thorny debate about when aggression as a form of defense is acceptable. We might argue that destroying an Iranian uranium enrichment plant is an act intended as a self-defense exercise even if it is offensive on the face of it. Given the difference in military might the Iranians might decide that blowing up a few subway trains in New York City as a means to encourage the US to stop the attacks is equally intended as a self-defense exercise. Who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong?

Put another way, if we decide that our attacking an Iranian military installation is acceptable but Iranian forces attacking one of our military installations is unacceptable, are we doing anything other than saying "I'm bigger than you, therefore my word is law"?
 

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So too a nuclear weapon is an inanimate object that is nether good nor bad in itself so let's allow the Iranians to have as many as they want. And why not let Cuba have as many as Russia wants to give to them. Its a "free world!" ...

The line of argument in your post makes not real sense.

You basically lost your argument with your first sentence. Bill is correct. We should -- and DO -- have the freedom to own firearms. That right cannot be revoked and should not be revoked.

You can put two guns alone together in a room -- or two nukes for that matter -- and neither is going to cause any harm to the other. It is the PEOPLE behind those guns -- or nukes -- that cause the violence.

Telling law abiding citizens that they can have a gun, but must keep it in one safe and their ammo in another safe, is absolutely incorrect. The thug that breaks into their house in the middle of the night is going to be fully armed and dangerous -- and will not have a gun in one hand and ammo in the other. They will have the ammo INSIDE the gun and be ready to shoot. Conversely, the law abiding owner of the house must also have his/her gun loaded and ready if it is needed.

Criminals, convicts, etc., are NOT allowed to own a firearm. But they do anyway, don't they? And it is against the law. A gun law.

So it is not a difficult equation to understand that seedy elements do not care how many laws on the books say they cannot have a gun. They will ALWAYS have guns despite those laws. Just ask the people of Chicago, where the toughest GUN LAWS in America exist.

it is also a matter of fact that wherever there is a law saying that residents ARE REQUIRED to own guns -- the crime rate almost disappears. Because the thugs know that their intended victims are armed. And it is not a coincidence that some of the most recent gun shooting sprees -- including a couple weeks ago -- took place in places that are advertised as "GUN FREE ZONES." That law didn't stop the shooter from coming in, did it? It only encouraged him to come in and shoot people he already knew were unarmed.

Same thing with Iran. It's not the nuke -- it's the PEOPLE behind the nuke. In this case, crazy people who would not hesitate to detonate a nuke over israel or the USA. And yet our president just made it LAWFUL for them to have a nuke.

In this case, it is also the person behind the desk in the White House.

The real solution to the "gun problem" is to quickly and harshly prosecute people who commit crimes with guns. If you kill a cop, for example, you should be EXECUTED. Same thing with those who spray bullets in shopping malls, etc. Swift, horrific and unalterable justice would put a stop to the vast majority of these murder sprees.

But the same people who try to impose these inane gun laws on us are the same kind of people who refuse to prosecute those who do commit crimes with firearms.

A lot needs to be done to clean up this country. But yet another gun law is not the answer.
 

psalms 91

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So too a nuclear weapon is an inanimate object that is nether good nor bad in itself so let's allow the Iranians to have as many as they want. And why not let Cuba have as many as Russia wants to give to them. Its a "free world!" ...

The line of argument in your post makes not real sense.
Neither does taking peoples rights away from them make sense . We have given up far to many freedoms in the name of safety
 

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How many violent mass shootings have been caused by law-abiding gun owners?


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In the same week that the Louisiana shootings took place, another mass murder happened in Oklahoma. Did you hear about that one? Did it make national news? Nope. Why? Kitchen knife.


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Neither does taking peoples rights away from them make sense . We have given up far to many freedoms in the name of safety
Gun ownership is not a human right but human rights or USA constitutional amendments were not the topic of my post or of this thread. My post was about the culture that makes USA percapita gun killings ten or more times more common than percapita gun killings are in Switzerland when Switzerland has more gun ownership than the USA.
 

psalms 91

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If you are looking for causes then we must look at society and recofnize that our culture is violent. Entertainment games etc. A lot of violence that can desensitze people to violence.
 

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If you are looking for causes then we must look at society and recofnize that our culture is violent. Entertainment games etc. A lot of violence that can desensitze people to violence.

Yes, USA culture is violent compared to Swiss, English, Australian etcetera.
 

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Yes, USA culture is violent compared to Swiss, English, Australian etcetera.

And gun control won't fix that.


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MoreCoffee

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And gun control won't fix that.


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Gun control laws may help to do it but they will not do it alone.

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Gun control laws may help to do it but they will not do it alone.

Really? Do you know how many gun control laws we have now? Do you know how many of these laws that those who mean to do harm follow?


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MoreCoffee

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Really? Do you know how many gun control laws we have now? Do you know how many of these laws that those who mean to do harm follow?


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No I don't, seems each state has different laws on that matter. In Australia all the states agreed to have uniform gun laws after the Port Arthur incident in 1996. We haven't had a mass shooting since.
 

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No I don't, seems each state has different laws on that matter. In Australia all the states agreed to have uniform gun laws after the Port Arthur incident in 1996. We haven't had a mass shooting since.

Any other mass killings?


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MoreCoffee

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Any other mass killings?


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No, but there are serial killers occasionally. Mass killing is harder to perpetrate without a gun.
 

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No, but there are serial killers occasionally. Mass killing is harder to perpetrate without a gun.

Really? Five killed the other day by a guy with a knife.


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