The one and only big fat thread about GUNS.

Yoshikkko said:

You'd think the fact that America has had like 5 shootings lately would be an eye opener.

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You'd think that over 1000 gun deaths since the Sandy Hook massacre would be an eye opener, too, but it isn't.

There's something wrong with our collective American consciousness.

Georgia Man shoots and kills person... for pulling into his driveway.

A Georgia man is accused of killing a man whose GPS system mistakenly led him to the wrong house.

Phillip Walker Sailors, a 69-year-old resident of Lilburn, Ga., was arrested and charged with murder for the death of Rodrigo Abad Diaz, a 22-year-old Cuban immigrant, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Passengers in Diaz's car say they were on their way to pick up a girl to go ice skating around 10 p.m. when their GPS led them to the wrong address, according to Fox 5. As they waited in the driveway, the owner came out with a gun. He fired two shots: one in the air and one that killed Diaz.

Sailors' lawyer says his client feared for his life.

"He is very distraught over the loss of life from the defense of his home," he told WSB-TV. "This incident happened late in the evening hours when he was home with his wife and he assumed it was a home invasion and he maintains his innocence."

Sailors, a war veteran and former missionary with no known criminal history, is currently being held without bond on charges of malice murder, according to the station.

This is not the first time an armed homeowner has been charged with murder.

In November, Minnesota resident Byron David Smith allegedly shot and killed two unarmed teenagers, whom he reportedly found in his house on Thanksgiving Day. The teenage cousins, ages 18 and 17, were said to be in the midst of a break-in when Smith allegedly shot them multiple times with his Mini 14 rifle and 22-caliber revolver.

According to authorities, Smith admitted to firing "more shots than I needed to" and reportedly was proud of "a good clean finishing shot" that killed one teen, the Associated Press reports. He was charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...ills-immigrant-gps-wrong-house_n_2574273.html

He murders a person for entering the driveway.

The person doesn't get out, just waits. And this person runs out and kills him, for no justifiable reason.

He claims he feared for his life... but what threat did this person pose, just sitting in his car? No threat.

He is a prime example on why more mental screenings are needed before being allowed to purchase/own a gun.

No, person below me, just somebody dumb.

please don't go on a gun debate, pretty please…this has nothing to do with it. It's more of somebody being dumb, that resulted in somebody dying.

…oh fine troll away

No words can be said about the horrors of this. I have no problem with gun possession, having lived out of the US for quite some time now I have no idea what exactly is going on there for all this sudden drama to be appearing, but the dam is slowly breaking I fear. Entitlement to heavy weaponry is never a good sign, even if its for collective reasons, simply cause cases like this will appear more often. Once you give the people entitlement for owning something like this, shotgun's for hunting are okay but still, the looming danger for entitlement of usage slowly creeps closer as well. As I said, I'm not entirely sure what's going on, history surely hasn't provided such an example to go by, but pure logic dictates as I said that entitlement for ownership surely leads to entitlement for usage, and in this case it can only go horribly, horribly wrong.

What.the.hell.

Well, I'm never going to Georgia then. I turn into people's driveways to turn around or check something all the time.

At first I thought this must be a racial reaction. But I don't know if he could see into their car in the darkness of 10-o'clock at night and tell they were Cuban.

Why can't people call 911 if they're concerned?

TRIFORCE89 said:

Why can't people call 911 if they're concerned?

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911 response times are absolutely horrible and can sometimes take a half-hour for police to arrive on scene, especially in rural areas.

I'm not going to make a judgement until more facts are known here.

Someone simply parking in his driveway made him "fear for his life." He's either lying (and a cold blooded killer) or not mentally capable of responsible gun ownership.

And therein lies the biggest problem with the suggestion that we have better mental health services and screenings for gun ownership: what do you do with people who already own guns? Do you require every owner to come in for a mental health screening? If we don't then we're leaving potential dangers out there. And what if they do come in and they don't pass, do you take their guns away and then inflame all the Charlton Hestons out there, or do you leave the guns in their incapable hands? And, on top of these problems, how do you pay for mental health service for this when just getting regular healthcare is next to impossible?

Yeah, have mental health services to help keep the wrong people from having guns, but that's only one small piece of the puzzle.

One thousand gun deaths is surprisingly low to the vast amount of other killer diseases and other factors such as suicide. Suicide is higher than murder in the US.
Most of the gun violence is due to gang violence.
These special "shootings" are only a small blip in society compared to the vast amount of other problems facing the world.
If a teenager shoots his family or another person's family, who bought the gun and where was it kept ?
If it was in a secure location such as a key-padded security cabinet where only the parents had access to and essentially the teenager had bought a weapon himself or stolen it from someone else and then used it on the victims, then that's different.
What if the gun was IN the house, just lying around and he knew this family owned a gun and it was kept it "so and so" place just in case of a "burglar attack." Got pissed off at them and then decided to go "ape sh**" and shot them dead. Then it was the family's fault for keeping a gun in the house.
Weapons cannot be used defensively if they have the sole nature of seriously harming someone. In england, if you're found with a knife on you (because apparently a knife is meant to keep you safe) then you'll get a prison sentence just for having one on you.
If Americans were smart enough to say "Okay, maybe we DO have the right to bear arms..but maybe only particular people should ?"
Americans want to have their guns and rifles because it gives them a false sense of security. If a team of robbers actually wanted to invade your house and steal everything then they should be smart enough to either do it when you're not at home OR when you're fast asleep and just have superior numbers that can overwhelm you from EVER getting to your rifle or pistol.
In a shooting situation, it is chaos and people will just panic and get out. Nobody needs to carry a gun at school or the cinema or the shopping center. If normal everyday people want to go around killing people, then maybe Americans should agree that guns are NOT good for society and they should not be legal.

Renpuu said:

One thousand gun deaths is surprisingly low to the vast amount of other killer diseases and other factors such as suicide. Suicide is higher than murder in the US.
Most of the gun violence is due to gang violence.
These special "shootings" are only a small blip in society compared to the vast amount of other problems facing the world.

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It's gone past 1500 since I posted last. Just pointing this out.

And compared to many other causes of death, yes, guns aren't "as deadly" but they are still deadly (meaning still a problem that we can try to solve while still acknowledging other serious problem and simultaneously dealing with those) and deadly in different ways. There's no such thing as drive-by heart disease, for instance. There aren't typically "warning signs" like there are with diseases and suicide. (Well, you could say that an overabundance of guns is a warning sign, I suppose.) That makes gun deaths something extra dangerous because they are so sudden.

Whooooops forgot to merge this one into the main gun thread. I'll get on that now.

Adding to our lengthy thread is this sad story of a 3 year old boy who died after playing with a pink gun he thought was a toy. The pink gun (presumably it's color is why it was mistaken for a toy) accidentally discharged while the boy and his sister were playing with it. The parents were not home and apparently grandparents were in the next room. People said they would prefer people kept their guns in lock boxes, or "at least have them out of the reach of children."

Inevitably responses from the internet about this have been heated. Some say it proves that assault weapons bans would not do anything to stop things like this. Others rightly point out that assault weapons bans are intended to stop mass shootings and that the US is a crazy, crazy place for not having laws about how you store your guns.

Its a parent's responsibility to keep guns out of reach of children and teach them that they aren't toys, yes the gun shouldve been locked away. When you have children, you have the responsibility of making sure they are safe in the home and have no access to dangerous objects. Gun laws are not going to keep this from happening if people don't have the responiblity to keep them away from the children.

Scarf said:

Adding to our lengthy thread is this sad story of a 3 year old boy who died after playing with a pink gun he thought was a toy. The pink gun (presumably it's color is why it was mistaken for a toy) accidentally discharged while the boy and his sister were playing with it. The parents were not home and apparently grandparents were in the next room. People said they would prefer people kept their guns in lock boxes, or "at least have them out of the reach of children."

Inevitably responses from the internet about this have been heated. Some say it proves that assault weapons bans would not do anything to stop things like this. Others rightly point out that assault weapons bans are intended to stop mass shootings and that the US is a crazy, crazy place for not having laws about how you store your guns.

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Or, even better - Stop making the guns look like toys. By this I mean stop painting them in bright, attractive, colors.

Anyway, personalized guns would solve a lot of issues. Basically, a personalized gun is a gun that will only fire for it's owner. Biometrics are cheap and reliable enough for them to be fitted to most guns, and locking the use of the gun to its owner would prevent a lot of cases like this.

Really, this solves more then this - It puts in place a way to prevent those guns from falling into criminals hands. Given that people will resale guns, gun manufactures would have to have systems in place to reset the security features on the guns. They would use this system to track ownership of that gun. With this, if a gun is used in a crime and recovered then the police would easily know the person who used it, and if applicable, the person who sold it to the criminal. And really, given that it's a crime for a person to, knowingly or unknowingly, purchase stolen items it really should be a crime for a person to, knowingly or unknowingly, sell a gun to a person who intends to use it for crime.

The technologies for personalized guns are in existance - fingerprint scanners and voice recognition are the basics although more sophisticated systems could be used.

Mr. X said:

Anyway, personalized guns would solve a lot of issues. Basically, a personalized gun is a gun that will only fire for it's owner. Biometrics are cheap and reliable enough for them to be fitted to most guns, and locking the use of the gun to its owner would prevent a lot of cases like this.

Really, this solves more then this - It puts in place a way to prevent those guns from falling into criminals hands. Given that people will resale guns, gun manufactures would have to have systems in place to reset the security features on the guns. With this, if a gun is used in a crime and recovered then the police would easily know the person who used it, and if applicable, the person who sold it to the criminal. And really, given that it's a crime for a person to, knowingly or unknowingly, purchase stolen items it really should be a crime for a person to, knowingly or unknowingly, sell a gun to a person who intends to use it for crime.

The technologies for personalized guns are in existence - fingerprint scanners and voice recognition are the basics although more sophisticated systems could be used.

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This is perhaps one of the most agreeable gun control measures I have ever seen. Reminds me of the guns used in License to Kill and Skyfall where the gun would only fire if it was in the Bond's hands. They need to get on this.

CarcharOdin said:

This is perhaps one of the most agreeable gun control measures I have ever seen. Reminds me of the guns used in License to Kill and Skyfall where the gun would only fire if it was in the Bond's hands. They need to get on this.

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It was attempted in the past. The technology was more expensive back then. This, coupled with the NRA saying that personalized guns were a attempt to reduce a persons second amendment rights, ment that nothing ever got beyond the "Hey, this sounds like a good idea!" phrase.

How exactly can personalized guns abridge second amendment rights? They would still have their guns in their arms.

I think because it prevents other people except the owner from using it. Like say the owner was away, and someone who lived with them wouldnt be able to use it for self defense if someone was attemping to hurt them, at least I think that's what they mean.

Shiny Celebi said:

I think because it prevents other people except the owner from using it. Like say the owner was away, and someone who lived with them wouldnt be able to use it for self defense if someone was attemping to hurt them, at least I think that's what they mean.

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The security measures could easily be designed to allow for multiple users though.

The owner of the gun would be the person who determines just who can use the gun.

Still - ensuring that only the owner of the gun is the only person able to use that gun does nothing to infringe upon their rights.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Rococo said:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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Personalized guns don't take away a persons rights.

If they want a gun, they have to buy their own - Really, personalized guns would enforce their rights.

Besides - We've already given up rights for safety. Especially when it comes to the second amendment. The law against felons owning weapons is against the second amendment.