[Discussion] The one and only big fat thread about GUNS.

[Went]

Originally Posted by Rain Dancer

As if most guns used in crimes in the US were legal in the first place. There's your flaw. And yet how does banning legal guns make sense given the amount of smuggling going on?

You can google.

Exactly. As Razor and Live said, and according to the Washington Post, 90% of recent mass-shootings were perpertrated with legal guns. Whoops. Flaw gone. Because, if you ban (or heavily restrict) guns, suddenly 90% of the killers in recent years would have had it much harder to acquire a gun- they wouldn't have been able to buy it on their nearest conveniency store, as they did in many cases. Or steal it from their brother who bought it in Wal-Mart.

And you know a reason why more guns are smuggled from the US than from, let's say, France? Because, in the US, anybody can buy a bunch of them in any shop and try to smuggle them. In most European countries, you need a Government permission to buy them and you need to register any guns you buy with your name. Which means that any smuggled guns can be traced to their owner, and only a bunch of select people can buy them to begin with. As a result, you either need to leave your signature all throughout the process, or take the illegal route from the very first second, which requires a large-scale criminal organization most Random-Depressed-High-School-Joe have no access to. Whatsoever.

So yes, controlling who has guns will reduce the number of shootings.

[FreakyLocz14]

Originally Posted by Razor Leaf

Actually, most guns used in mass shootings were obtained legally. And I think that, from this, we can probably deduce that the same follows for gun crime in the US on a wider scale. So really I can't see a way in which banning guns wouldn't reduce their use.

Wrong! They are all obtained illegally. If you steal someone else's legal gun, then you obtained the gun illegally.

[Toujours]

Originally Posted by FreakyLocz14

Wrong! They are all obtained illegally. If you steal someone else's legal gun, then you obtained the gun illegally.

Many mass shootings were done with a gun that the owner acquired legally. The Newtown shootings were not done with a gun acquired legally; the Dark Knight shootings were.

[Mario The World Champion]

With all the gun control talks surfacing after the Newtown massacre, what about banning sales of high capacity ammo magazines? It's not hard to get a 30-round magazine for your AR-15 or your other assault rifle. If I recall, the Arizona shooter had a 30-round magazine for one of his guns. I'm not sure of the Newtown shooter had a high capacity magazine.

Also, the Newtown shooter got his guns because the mother owned them. So I can see the whole assault rifle ban. My worry is that even if the U.S. bans assault rifles and keeps strict tabs on them, some criminal organizations will most likely go after and use them in crimes.

[CarcharOdin]

Oh Jesus tap dancing Christ, not another one of these topics...

EDIT: Found a rather fitting image:


I can approve of some amount of gun control (really, the average citizen doesn't really need assault weapons. They seem like a waste of lead anyway). But I'm against banning guns. I just don't feel right about that. Yeah, you're making it harder for criminals to obtain guns, this is true. You're also making it harder for law-abiding citizens as well, which just doesn't fly with me. It feels like you're disarming citizens while at the same time only delaying the inevitable. Call me paranoid. By the way, I'm not a member of the NRA, nor have I ever owned an actual firearm aside from air rifles (if you can even call those "firearms"). I've never really felt the need to own a gun, so I just simply don't get one. Yet banning guns (or extreme gun control) still feels to me like it's only cutting out the tumors rather than treating the source (lack of psychiatric services, lack of responsibility in society, etc).

I'm pretty damn sure the U.S. Constitution's 2nd amendment allows the average citizen the right to own a firearm. If you think that makes the constitution flawed, go and lobby about repealing it if it pisses you off so much. If you aren't willing to do that then if you don't feel like guns are necessary to own, don't buy one. You have that right as well. Whatever floats your boat.

Originally Posted by Scarf

Screw skewed interpretations of the US Constitution. That document has some good things in it, but it's flawed. Parts are just outdated dinosaurs who've somehow avoided extinction. The people who wrote the second amendment where envisioning militias with muskets, not lone individuals with automatic weapons.

Since you seem to be such an expert on the thought processes of long dead, American Revolution-era political revolutionaries and officials, please share some of your thoughts on the 1st Amendment as well. After all I'm sure the founding fathers weren't envisioning rock, rap, pop, heavy metal, other kinds of music that wasn't around back then, violence on TV, horror movies, movies in general (especially those with violence and sex in them), violent video games, the internet, and other speech, assembly, and press methods we commonly see today that weren't around in those times. Sure, that doesn't harm people nearly as much as automatic assault weapons, but still, please share. Or, we can make another topic separate from this one.



EDIT:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...canGunPolitics

This is a rather interesting read. I encourage both sides (and everyone else in between) to have a look at it, even if you aren't American. It provides some rather interesting insight. Take heed, though...it's TV Tropes, so depending on what links you click, whether or not you have a tabbed browser, and/or your self-control, you might be there a while.

[FreakyLocz14]

Originally Posted by Mario The World Champion

With all the gun control talks surfacing after the Newtown massacre, what about banning sales of high capacity ammo magazines? It's not hard to get a 30-round magazine for your AR-15 or your other assault rifle. If I recall, the Arizona shooter had a 30-round magazine for one of his guns. I'm not sure of the Newtown shooter had a high capacity magazine.

Also, the Newtown shooter got his guns because the mother owned them. So I can see the whole assault rifle ban. My worry is that even if the U.S. bans assault rifles and keeps strict tabs on them, some criminal organizations will most likely go after and use them in crimes.

Assault weapons are already banned in the United States, unless one gets special permission from the government. They've been banned since 1934.

Prohibition never works. Banning something creates a phenomenon known as supply shock. Supply shock leads to the rise of black markets to provide the illegal product to black market consumers. Black markets themselves lead to more gun violence, since they tend to be run by organized crime.

[Mr. X]

The ironic thing is that it was the NRA, not the gun control crowd, that skewed the definition of the 2nd amendment.

Before the NRA's... intervention... the 2nd amendment applied to state run Militias, as the founding fathers had intended it.

[FreakyLocz14]

Originally Posted by Mr. X

The ironic thing is that it was the NRA, not the gun control crowd, that skewed the definition of the 2nd amendment.

Before the NRA's... intervention... the 2nd amendment applied to state run Militias, as the founding fathers had intended it.

The 2nd Amendment says nothing about militias having to be state-run.

Originally Posted by the D.C. v. Heller decision

The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved. Pp. 22–28.

[Livewire]

Originally Posted by Rain Dancer

As if most guns used in crimes in the US were legal in the first place. There's your flaw. And yet how does banning legal guns make sense given the amount of smuggling going on?

You can google.

You can google. So where's the smuggling stats then? Pure conjecture on your part without the numbers to back them up. And where's the info that says that most crimes involve guns bought illegally? While mass shootings are only a part of crime, you can infer the overall trend.

Originally Posted by FreakyLocz14

Wrong! They are all obtained illegally. If you steal someone else's legal gun, then you obtained the gun illegally.

Wrong again! The guns in the Newtown Shooting were stolen from Ms. Lanza, who did purchase them all legally. Jared Loughner, the shooter of Gabby Giffords, purchased his legally too. Same with the VT shooter and the Aurora shooter. Basically, most mass shootings involve legaly purchased weapons. Try again.

Originally Posted by Toujours

Many mass shootings were done with a gun that the owner acquired legally. The Newtown shootings were not done with a gun acquired legally; the Dark Knight shootings were.

Correct. Ms. Lanza purchased them legally though. Seeing as Adam Lanza was taught to shoot by his Mother and used the guns regularly, we can't sure if he stole them in a traditional sense or just took them off the dining room table. Which probably isn't too far from the truth given how lax and ignorant his Mother was when it came to proper firearm storage and training.

Originally Posted by CarcharOdin

Oh Jesus tap dancing Christ, not another one of these topics...

EDIT: Found a rather fitting image:

My thoughts exactly.

Originally Posted by FreakyLocz14

Assault weapons are already banned in the United States, unless one gets special permission from the government. They've been banned since 1934.

And your source is what exactly? What definition of assault weapon are you going by?

Originally Posted by Mr. X

The ironic thing is that it was the NRA, not the gun control crowd, that skewed the definition of the 2nd amendment.

Before the NRA's... intervention... the 2nd amendment applied to state run Militias, as the founding fathers had intended it.

Essentially, yes.

Originally Posted by FreakyLocz14

The 2nd Amendment says nothing about militias having to be state-run.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Seeing as there was no federal standing army, who else would run it?

I like how it says well regulated too.

[FreakyLocz14]

Live, stealing your mother's weapons is not obtaining it legally. Since when has stealing been legal?

The federal government currently bans true military-grade assault rifles (like machine guns), and converting long guns (like sawed-off shot guns), with only very limited exceptions. Liberals want to define all automatic and semi-automatic weapons as "assault weapons", and any magazine with a capacity greater than 10 rounds as "high-capacity". These definitions are erroneously broad.

I like how the 2nd Amendment says the "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". Militias in those days were not all run by the states, but were rather civilian men who were ready to fight immediately. These men were called "minutemen".

Also, it was the Cato Institute, not the NRA, that was behind the Heller case.

[Scarf]

Stealing from your family member isn't the same thing as stealing from a store or other gun seller. People who sell guns keep them safe and regulated (presumably). A private gun owner is basically free to keep their gun safe or not because no one is checking on them. So while, yes, technically a lot of crimes are committed with stolen guns, it's not as if these guns were stolen from locked up gun shops. It's misleading to say then that "criminals will just steal guns" or things similar to that. What is not misleading is saying that lots of these "stolen" guns got into private hands legally. To me, that's another good reason to stop the flow of guns into private hands since it's at the that juncture that many guns get into the wrong hands. In other words, private gun owners are partially responsible for criminals getting their hands on guns. In my view, people can have all the freedoms they want until they show that they can't be responsible with them. When that happens we need to have restrictions put in place and that they should be as strong as necessary.

[Mr. X]

Originally Posted by FreakyLocz14

Live, stealing your mother's weapons is not obtaining it legally. Since when has stealing been legal?

It hasn't, but it goes to show that the guns all start out as legally owned guns. Logic here, less legal supply means less guns that can become part of the illegal supply.

The federal government currently bans true military-grade assault rifles (like machine guns), and converting long guns (like sawed-off shot guns), with only very limited exceptions. Liberals want to define all automatic and semi-automatic weapons as "assault weapons", and any magazine with a capacity greater than 10 rounds as "high-capacity". These definitions are erroneously broad.

Automatics I agree for. Civilians have no need for weapons that can fire hundreds of rounds a minute. And the same for semiautos that fire military grade ammo (The 5.56 NATO mainly.) And as for the mags, I'll agree that that is idiocy, however I see their point. The regular user, really, has no need for a gun with that high mag capacity. You can say defense, but if you can't hit a aggressor with the first ten shots, you are screwed anyway. For other cases, the person can carry additional mags since they are relatively light.

I like how the 2nd Amendment says the "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". Militias in those days were not all run by the states, but were rather civilian men who were ready to fight immediately. These men were called "minutemen".

They were given that right as it was assumed that they were apart of the Militia. Modern day militia's are state run. Really though, because of this the 2nd amendment needs to be removed and replaced with a amendment that lets the states determine gun control laws, minus the regulations for military grade weapons. Anyway, the difference between the definitions of Militia and how they apply to the 2nd amendment is just more proof that the bill of rights needs to be updated to reflect the differences in language.

[Bluerang1]

I take back what I said. Ban all gun. Every single type, not just autos.. It'll be harder for these fools to get hold of them and look at countries where guns are banned, not as much gun crime. GB had lots of knife crime but the really got tighter on it, I know, I was there. It's still exists but it's less. What they need to tackle is all the murder due to deranged people.

Also you can't blame lack of mental help because I looked into Columbine and VT and these demons did receive mental help at some point. So what went wrong? They had guns.

[Insomniac]

I think owning a gun should remain a right. Honestly, there is no way the government can take them away, not without creating more crime and many revolts.

If they took guns away, imagine how much more smuggling would happen, except this time it would be not with drugs, but drugs, machine guns, regular guns, and a whole bunch of other crap the government banned.

It wouldn't be sensible, either, because the majority of people would get angry (especially the south) about the no gun rule, and not being able to defend themselves. I do agree that no one needs an ak-47 but everyone should own at least one pistol or maayyyyybe a shotgun.

[Scarf]

Originally Posted by Insomniac

If they took guns away, imagine how much more smuggling would happen, except this time it would be not with drugs, but drugs, machine guns, regular guns, and a whole bunch of other crap the government banned.

Do you think that the majority of people who would have to give up their automatic weapons in this scenario in which such guns are illegal would bother with the risk of smuggling in new ones, new ones they would have to keep hidden because they're illegal?

Drugs are not a good parallel to guns. Drugs are addictive substances. People who buy guns are (presumably, mostly) mentally stable and can weigh the pros and cons of breaking the law to get guns, unlike addicts who aren't going to be able to make as sound a judgement. It's what happened in other parts of the world when they banned certain guns. People accepted it.

[AdrianD]

Originally Posted by PokéZoom

Source: http://bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20838729



Personally I find this petition ridiculous, what are your thoughts? >_<

Ya this will go as far as the states wanted to succeed from the union. If we are going to deport him for supporting guns, maybe we need to deport Honey-boo boo and her family for making red necks look bad. Cuz im sure not all of them are this bad

[Rococo]

Hum,what was that guy's name who also decided that citizans shouldn't have guns...Fitler? No... Bitler?....nope... Oh,Yeah. Hitler.

You get my point.

Sadly at this point it seems that there will be some more gun laws.
Great job turning Sheep into Lambs guys! :D

[Went]

Originally Posted by Rococo

Hum,what was that guy's name who also decided that citizans shouldn't have guns...Fitler? No... Bitler?....nope... Oh,Yeah. Hitler.

You get my point.

Sadly at this point it seems that there will be some more gun laws.
Great job turning Sheep into Lambs guys! :D

Oh, I was thinking of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who banned guns almost completely in the UK back in 1997, turning the British Islands into a hellhole of weapon smuggling and underground crime causing thousands of deaths every year.

Wait no. The crime rate there is less than half than in the US. Are Brits some sort of pacifistic superrace of humans? Or maybe is it just a matter of education?

But yeah, please let's try to keep this discussion away from Godwin's Law. Throwing a gratuite Argumentum Ad Hitlerum is never a synonym with "intelligent debate".

[twocows]

Originally Posted by Went

Oh, I was thinking of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who banned guns almost completely in the UK back in 1997, turning the British Islands into a hellhole of weapon smuggling and underground crime causing thousands of deaths every year.

Wait no. The crime rate there is less than half than in the US. Are Brits some sort of pacifistic superrace of humans? Or maybe is it just a matter of education?

How did the crime rate before '97 in the UK compare to the US?

Originally Posted by Scarf

Drugs are not a good parallel to guns. Drugs are addictive substances. People who buy guns are (presumably, mostly) mentally stable and can weigh the pros and cons of breaking the law to get guns, unlike addicts who aren't going to be able to make as sound a judgement. It's what happened in other parts of the world when they banned certain guns. People accepted it.

Yes, I forgot about all the would-be criminals who are worried about buying their weapons legally. Wouldn't want to get a $50 fine on top of 15 to life.

[Arlo]

Originally Posted by LilJz1234

The 2nd amendment was also made during a time when guns had to be reloaded way more often than now. When semi automatics didn't even exist yet.

Yes, and the 1st amendment was made during a time when radio, televisions and computers didn't exist. So either freedom of speech should not apply to radio, television or computers, or the fact that semi-automatic weapons didn't exist at the time of the drafting of the 2nd amendment has nothing at all to do with the protections it's meant to extend.

You can't have it both ways.



There are a number of other posts I'd like to respond to in this thread, but honestly it's too depressing to even bother. It's sad, but not news to me, that so few people have any understanding of rights and so many are so eager to see them eliminated.

No tyranny has ever come to be without some considerable number of people who demanded that somebody be given the power to take rights away from somebody else. They live in their own little bubble worlds, where all that matters is what they want, and if somebody else wants something else, that shouldn't be allowed and it's not only justified but right that power be granted to prevent it. They don't wake up to the fact that granting the power to deny someone else's rights creates the power to deny their own rights until those rights are set to be denied, and by then it's too late.

Go ahead - throw out the second amendment. Just don't cry when the people to whom you grant that power also throw out the first and the third and the fourth and the fifth and all the rest of them while they're at it, because at its most basic level, it's going to be YOUR fault when they do.

[Mr. X]

Originally Posted by Rococo

Hum,what was that guy's name who also decided that citizans shouldn't have guns...Fitler? No... Bitler?....nope... Oh,Yeah. Hitler.

Hmm, what was that guys name who decided that private citizens could own guns? Kaddam? No... Raddam? Nope... Oh, yeah. Saddam.

You know, for all the talk about guns being a way to prevent governmental tyranny, it seems strange that it occurred in his country despite it having lax gun control laws.

The funny thing about the UK... The increased crime rate isn't a result of gun control, it's a result of them changing the way they calculated the crime rate. I don't think anyone is using the older methods anymore, but while they did they found that despite the new methods showing a increase in crime, the older methods showed a decrease in crime. I suppose that it would have leveled off since then, but saying that the UK experienced a massive increase in crime when the gun ban was put in effect is completely false.

[Razor Leaf]

I read a great post elsewhere the other day with some statistics relating to this sort of thing. I'll share some of them here.

The US is ranked tenth for highest rate of firearm-related deaths. Rate, not number - its large population's been accounted for here.

Following its '97 ban of all handguns, followed by further ban of all guns not used for hunting, the UK sits near the bottom for both rates of gun-related deaths and homocides. While I don't know the 'before and after' statistics or know their comparisons, this is undeniably very low. And personal, non-hunting firearms are illegal. I'm putting two and two together here.

Japan with its zero-tolerance policy of guns has only ten gun-related deaths on average per year.

Since 1996, the US has had 31 school shootings. The rest of the world has had 14. The strong majority of the guns used were obtained legally.

If these don't convince you that there is a problem in the US with the availability of guns, then I have no idea what will. The stats are there and they show that making guns illegal reduces gun crime rates, and that the US has an embarrassingly high rate of gun-related deaths.

If anyone's interested, by the way, I found these in a post by Cipher on SerebiiForums. I'll probably go dig up some of my own ones in a bit since I feel cheap just copying them like this, lol.

edit:
Guns, which are 2.8x more likely to kill in this given example, were used to commit 75% of over 10,000 homicides in 2005. Also, when compared to similarly politically and economically developed countries, the US has a gun-related death rate eight times higher.

[CarcharOdin]

Found something rather interesting:



What do you guys think?

[Went]

Originally Posted by Arlo

No tyranny has ever come to be without some considerable number of people who demanded that somebody be given the power to take rights away from somebody else. They live in their own little bubble worlds, where all that matters is what they want, and if somebody else wants something else, that shouldn't be allowed and it's not only justified but right that power be granted to prevent it. They don't wake up to the fact that granting the power to deny someone else's rights creates the power to deny their own rights until those rights are set to be denied, and by then it's too late.

Go ahead - throw out the second amendment. Just don't cry when the people to whom you grant that power also throw out the first and the third and the fourth and the fifth and all the rest of them while they're at it, because at its most basic level, it's going to be YOUR fault when they do.

Do you even know how the US political system works? Have you ever heard about heir constitutional framework? Because for a single person/group to remove or change anything from there without the support of anybody else, you need a majority control in the House, the Congress, the White House, and the Congress, the Senate and the Governorship of at least 39 States. And there are elections going on every two years, meaning that, for all of these circunstances to meet, you either need
a) a fantastic landslide which would effectively give you enough legitimacy to change anything (because that's the point of democracy, after all, making sure most people agree with your ideas before being allowed to enact them),
b) an extraordinarily suicidal electorate who would be ready to vote for the people supporting the removal of (insert clause here) despite being clearly negative for them, and do it in massively majorities all over the country, going back to a), or
c) a general agreement between different parties to support a decision believing is actually positive for them, and a population which would agree to the idea and support it with majorities (example: most of the existing amendments).

In fact, the purpose of having a constitutional framework is precisely preventing one ruler to go all power hungry and change everything on his own, that's why most dictatorships come after a war, or in countries with paper-strong institutions that can be blown up just by breathing too hard around them. If you think the US would allow someone to just randomly supress the Senate or outlaw elections out of the blue, you have a ridiculously unrealisticly low faith on them.

And, despite all this, if somehow an evil President took over the US, I'm pretty sure guns would help stop the largest army in the world- all those tanks and drones and missiles and internet control over the water supplies have nothing to do against a good old rifle, right? Right? In fact, they probably would not be necessary if there are massively gigantic demonstrations.

[Scarf]

Originally Posted by Razor Leaf

If these don't convince you that there is a problem in the US with the availability of guns, then I have no idea what will. The stats are there and they show that making guns illegal reduces gun crime rates, and that the US has an embarrassingly high rate of gun-related deaths.

I'm convinced! (I was already convinced though.)

I do wonder though. If you're a person who accepts that there are a lot of gun-related crimes wherever guns are legal and that by making gun ownership near-impossible some countries have greatly reduced the number of gun-related deaths, in other words taking away guns saves lives, would you still oppose the general idea of taking away guns on principle even if it saves lives?

To use a non-gun example of the same idea: Lowering speed limits has been shown to reduce vehicle accidents and deaths, but people would have to drive slower and you'd get a fined for driving the speed you always have. Would you accept it if it meant fewer deaths?