The one and only big fat thread about GUNS.

Rain Dancer said:

Guns are already banned in the UK, but murders seem to continue for some reason. Oh no

They're stabbing each other using kitchen knives now.


It must definetly be the kitchen knives' fault then, without a doubt. Let's ban them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm


It might seem like a joke, but that's the kind of logic all these anti gun people here are following. The same kind of nonsense the medical industry also practices: Treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. The problems can just go on forever.

Add to that the fear factor caused by the mainstream media news, and the people will accept just about everything in order to have that illusion of ''security''.

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Knives were made to cut stuffs, like bread, meat, cheese. Food most likely.

Guns were meant to serve one purpose, to kill. Anything can be used as a weapon. Heck I can even use a spoon as a killing device. People just need to learn that guns were only made to kill, period.

Also, you could perform a massacre with a gun, with a knife, you will lost likely get stopped by someone before killing half of the number of people you would with a gun.

Rain Dancer said:

Guns are already banned in the UK, but murders seem to continue for some reason. Oh no

They're stabbing each other using kitchen knives now.


It must definetly be the kitchen knives' fault then, without a doubt. Let's ban them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm


It might seem like a joke, but that's the kind of logic all these anti gun people here are following. The same kind of nonsense the medical industry also practices: Treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. The problems can just go on forever.

Add to that the fear factor caused by the mainstream media news, and the people will accept just about everything in order to have that illusion of ''security''.

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The underlying cause is that some people have mental issues. Yes. Let's fix them.

But, turning things upside-down, what are guns freely given to everybody used for? To defend yourself from people using the guns you are freely giving around! Amazing. Since the sauce we used tastes bad, let's have another layer of sauce which will likely make the dish taste even worse.

Crime is hard to avoid -specially when a sizeable amount of US States don't give a flipping burger about education-, but freely handing out weapons whose only purpose is killing people, which do it easily and swiftly and from a distance- is not, not, not helping anything. There are almost as many machines whose only purpose is killing people in the hands of untrained citizens as actual citizens in the US! (88 per 100 people). Meanwhile in Europe and Canada, where guns are heavily restricted, gun crime rates are hundreds of times lower than in the US. Maybe it's because there aren't as many guns lying around? It's just a working theory.

And yes, knives can kill people. But killing people is NOT the only use of a knive, and there are rounded knives that would take a ridiculously insane precision to kill anybody, if at all. Do you know of any sort of gun who can be used for anything else than killing people? No! Because their only use is killing people!

And again, defence. Well, a gun only gives you a true advantage against knives and the like, since any criminal who wants to kill you with one has to get close to you, probably fight against you, etc, giving you time to shoot them (incidentally, this also means you can try to disarm them without a gun, or simply run away or throw things at them in an attempt to incapacitate the criminal as they can't just simply pull a trigger from a distance).

But another gun? Well, you are in a Wild West shootout- the faster one wins! Or the one who is aware that they are carrying a gun they want to use, since the unaware victim won't be able to defend itself in that case, even if they are carrying a billion guns with them. Or the one who decides to shoot instead of running for cover once they see their life directly challenged.

And a car? If someone comes running at you at high speed, shooting them (if you are fast enough to even react) won't probably change a thing. A bomb? Lethal virus? What the hell can you do with a gun? Nothing!

In other words, many countries decided that the "loss" in self-defence is worth it if, in turn, crazy people have it much, much, muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch harder to get their hands on a gun and shoot a dozen people every year.

Education is the best solution? Why of course! Detecting and helping people with mental issues? Certainly! But, until then, maybe not distributing machines whose only purpose is killing people to anybody who asks for them could be a good patch until then.

Scarf said:

The US has more guns than any country and more gun related deaths than any country. When other countries had gun massacres they put strict gun ownership laws into place and didn't see any more massacres. That's really all I would need to convince me that strict gun laws are the way to go.

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.

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The Constitution is the supreme law of the land in the United States. If you think that it's outdated, encourage your representatives in Congress to amend it. Until that day happens, I will continue to defend the Constitution's guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Went said:

But, turning things upside-down, what are guns freely given to everybody used for? To defend yourself from people using the guns you are freely giving around!

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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.

Rain Dancer said:

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.

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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.

Rain Dancer said:

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.

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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.

Razor Leaf said:

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.

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

FreakyLocz14 said:

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

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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.

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.

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.

Scarf said:

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.

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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.php/UsefulNotes/AmericanGunPolitics

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.

Mario The World Champion said:

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.

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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.

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.

Mr. X said:

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.

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

the D.C. v. Heller decision said:

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.

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Rain Dancer said:

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.

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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.

FreakyLocz14 said:

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

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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.

Toujours said:

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.

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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.

CarcharOdin said:

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

EDIT: Found a rather fitting image:

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My thoughts exactly.

FreakyLocz14 said:

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

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

Mr. X said:

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.

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Essentially, yes.

FreakyLocz14 said:

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

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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.

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

I like how it says well regulated too.

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.

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.

FreakyLocz14 said:

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

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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.

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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".

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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.

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 said:

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.

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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.

PokéZoom said:

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



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

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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