Take my guns? But how will I shoot things?

[Ó Cathasaigh]

My reasons why Gun Laws should remain as they are

1. Current Gun Laws are restrictive enough as it is, if you purchase them legally
2. Criminals do not follow laws, so why would they follow gun laws?
3. firearms are not only a weapon of death, they are also a tool of recreation
4. school shootings are often the result of illegal weapons purchases or irresponsible parenting, why should the responsible suffer the consequences?
5. The Second Amendment
6. personal protection is a big thing in America, conceal and carry permits should be in use by anyone who has no criminal history and passes the requirements, who has the right to tell you what you can and can't carry for protection?
7. hunting is not only recreational; it is also good for the environment. Overpopulation is a major problem, ask any wildlife agent.
8. Gun violence is a lot lower in countries like England where no one has guns, but that doesn't mean taking the guns out of law abiding citizens will make the streets any safer, if anything, it gives the criminal an unfair advantage, why would the criminal give up his guns? If no one but the crooks have guns, it's good for no one...but the crooks.

FAQ

• Don't Guns kill over 10,000 people a year in the United States?

Yes, they do. But with a population that just reached 300,000,000 it's a drop in the bucket. Car accidents kill upwards of 40,000 people a year in the United States; I think our time would be better spent making road travel safer.

• Hunting is cruel isn't it?

It is no crueler for me to shoot a deer than it is for a mountain lion to get him, in fact I'd rather be shot.

• Eating what you hunt still can't justify the cruelty of killing an animal, can it?

of course it can, at least when you hunt, the animal has it's chance to escape, rather than being put through a slaughter house and on to your dinner plate.

Will add more as the discussion continues and my fellow NRA nuts debunk your arguements.

[Gaidin]

Question 1: Why is ammendment 2 in position 5 of a list consisting of mostly *legal* reasons?

[over-man]

Who is disputing your right to own a gun?

[Gaidin]

currently...nobody new that he's told us of...

[Ó Cathasaigh]

Question 1: Why is ammendment 2 in position 5 of a list consisting of mostly *legal* reasons?

Order they came to my mind. The Order shouldn't matter.

Who is disputing your right to own a gun?

Gun Control Nuts. Due to the current elections, there are a few too many for comfort in power.

[danzig]

Gun Control Nuts. Due to the current elections, there are a few too many for comfort in power.

Wont happen unless democrats are galactically stupid and fail to see the election was anti republican not pro democrat...besides a good number of democrats who were elected fall far more on moderate/right side then would be expected. Look at Senator Webb...its almost mind boggling he is a Democrat Ive seen some comment that Webb vs Allen was like Allen running against a better version of himself.....

[Ó Cathasaigh]

You might be surprised Danzig, they are talking about a Draft....not to actualy install the draft mind you, just to "teach us a lesson".....a lesson in what? Waisting Tax-payer funds by paying you 160,000 a year to make points but not progress? Way to go Dems.

[over-man]

To my knowledge, there isn't much of a debate among Americans over whether or not we have the right to own guns. I live in quite an outdoorsman state though, and I love my mosin-nagants.

[RusskiSoldat]

Criminals do not follow laws, so why would they follow gun laws?

Hopefully because there is a police to enforce laws.

Gun violence is a lot lower in countries like England where no one has guns, but that doesn't mean taking the guns out of law abiding citizens will make the streets any safer, if anything, it gives the criminal an unfair advantage, why would the criminal give up his guns? If no one but the crooks have guns, it's good for no one...but the crooks.

Again, policing.
The west seems to have some sort of revulsion towards having an effective police force, so if you take it for granted that police will do a bad job, there is indeed no reason to restrict guns.
And I doubt you can somehow collect the 300 million floating around America.

You might be surprised Danzig, they are talking about a Draft....not to actualy install the draft mind you, just to "teach us a lesson".....a lesson in what? Waisting Tax-payer funds by paying you 160,000 a year to make points but not progress? Way to go Dems.

"They"?
You mean Rangel and precisely no one else?
Yes, one representative from a gerrymandered district is bound to get things done!

To my knowledge, there isn't much of a debate among Americans over whether or not we have the right to own guns. I live in quite an outdoorsman state though, and I love my mosin-nagants.

I live in Brooklyn, and I don't love being mugged at gunpoint.

[over-man]

I live in Brooklyn, and I don't love being mugged at gunpoint.

Would you rather be mugged at baseball-bat-point?

[Admiral Nelson]

Would you rather be mugged at baseball-bat-point?

I would

[Aristophanes]

Hopefully because there is a police to enforce laws.

The same way laws against drugs, booze, and everything else on the black/grey markets have been sooooo effective.

Again, policing.
The west seems to have some sort of revulsion towards having an effective police force, so if you take it for granted that police will do a bad job, there is indeed no reason to restrict guns.
And I doubt you can somehow collect the 300 million floating around America.

I forgot how effective the Eastern police forces are at killing political opponents.

Mind you, I also forgot how effective they were at rooting out corruption and mangling the black markets which sustained the Soviet Union.

I live in Brooklyn, and I don't love being mugged at gunpoint.

Good for you. Do you have any other anecdata to share?

It seems poor logic to blame the results of an activity on the tools rather than the people manipulating them. I imagine Londoners don't enjoy getting mugged or burglared at gunpoint, but that's exactly what has increased since the English ban on most firearms and extremely strict regulations on long-arms. Australia has had exactly the same problem, and I can assure you that gun crime has not been reduced one bit in Canada by an increasingly onerous registry.

The underlying conditions in Brooklyn have far more to do with the amount of criminality you suffer than the presence of guns. I can guarantee you that there are a bazillion suburbs in the United States with 5 times the number of firearms per capita and a tenth of the number of firearms crimes/deaths per capita.
But why let fact fly in the face of unreasonable fears?

[RusskiSoldat]

Yeah, actually.
Because it's hard for someone to pull a baseball bat on you that you didn't know they were carrying.
That and a baseball is handled with both hands, leaving him to mug me with none.
I really don't see how that would work.

[lawngnome]

Well, fine, how about a machete? That's perfectly concealable.

Well, living in Texas, coming from Missouri/South Carolina/Michigan before... I'd be rather odd to not like guns. I don't own a gun, but I do think hunting is quite necessary. Especially in the midwest, natural predators have been removed, and the only way to control overpopulation of deer is to hunt them. Overpopulation would mean they would all starve and become sickly... not pretty. Of course, hunting could be done with bow and arrow, as it is about 25% of the time already.

[Valus]

I think hunting is fine as long as you eat what you hunt or, so that you dont just do it for sport, or because an area is overpopulated...
Í would prefer to hunt with a bow and arrow, though I cant tell why..
Other than that I seriously have problems understanding why you would ever need a gun and this view point of mine of mine has not changed, if anything I find more disturbing, since I joined the armed forces...

[Dromikaites]

[SIZE="3"][B]
FAQ

• Don't Guns kill over 10,000 people a year in the United States?

Yes, they do. But with a population that just reached 300,000,000 it's a drop in the bucket. Car accidents kill upwards of 40,000 people a year in the United States; I think our time would be better spent making road travel safer.

10,000 is indeed a drop in the bucket especially now that the US population has reached 300,000,000. Luckily guns can prevent overpopulation but at only 10,000 deaths/year that's not too efficient, is it? So how about another Civil War?

[Erik]

• Gun violence is a lot lower in countries like England where no one has guns, but that doesn't mean taking the guns out of law abiding citizens will make the streets any safer, if anything, it gives the criminal an unfair advantage, why would the criminal give up his guns? If no one but the crooks have guns, it's good for no one...but the crooks.

This is the only one I agree with.

I am very happy that my country has very strict anti-gun laws
The chance of getting mugged at gunpoint (or getting mugged at all) is extremely low here.
I know just ONE person who got mugged (with a knife, not a gun) in the 10 years I live in Amsterdam.
And the police made a huge deal out of it (I was surprised because they have very little manpower available already), so it's clearly something unusual.

But America already made the mistake of providing guns to it's general public, and it would be near impossible to remove them again, so the best they can do is reduce the spread of new, high power weapons.

• Don't Guns kill over 10,000 people a year in the United States?

Yes, they do. But with a population that just reached 300,000,000 it's a drop in the bucket. Car accidents kill upwards of 40,000 people a year in the United States; I think our time would be better spent making road travel safer.

I wouldn't call 10.000 on a population of 300.000.000 a drop.
9/11 killed 3.000 and this was a one time event, is that a "drop" too?

Car accidents are considered a huge problem, so certainly something that causes 1/4th the deaths of car accidents is still a big issue.

And making road travel safer is going to cost a lot of money and would most likely create a lot of restrictions to the daily lives of average Americans. Even reducing the maximum speed by 10mph is a considerable restriction if you consider how many extra hours people would spend en route each year.

Restricting the use of certain firearms like semi- or fully-automated assault rifles and (sub-)machine guns on the other hand makes very little difference to the average American, yet this has turned into a hot issue with the pro-gun crowd.

Would you rather be mugged at baseball-bat-point?

Yes, for the simple reasons that:
1) You can run away much easier from a baseball bat, because it doesn't have anywhere the range that a gun has. The guy I talked about at the top of my post escaped by jumping in the water, out of range of the muggers knife, but not out of range of a gun.
2) Killing somebody with a baseball bat or knife is very unlikely unless you explicitly try.
Muggers aren't murderers, so you might get beat up but your life isn't really in danger.
A mugger with a gun can easily do much more damage than he intended, for example when he panics or if he has a bad aim.

[the Black Prince]

numbers of gun deaths don't really matter that much, compared to proportional figures which negate the US' hugh population advantage.


the simple fact is that gun deaths per thousand of the population in the USA is still a higher figure than the COMBINED gun deaths per thousand of the EU15 (pre enlargement EU countries)


moving on, if current gun laws are so restrictive, how come it is so easy for pretty much any nutter to go into a highstreet store and buy a gun?
you want restrictive gun laws? come to the UK! what you have in the US is hardly what can be defined as restrictive

indeed, criminals do not follow laws. but if its not possible to walk into the nearest hardware store and buy a gun, it makes it a lot harder to get hold of one. not impossible of course, there will always be a black market for them, but a lot harder, and almost certainly put the guns out of the reach of small time petty and/or opportunistic criminals

is American society so ill at ease that you feel the need to carry protection on the streets? perhaps instead of moaning about gun control issues you should be lobbying congress to do something about public safety, which is, afterall, a government (or in your case probably state) concern. A citizen should not need to carry a gun to feel safe on the streets of his city, the mere fact that he is a US citizen, protected by the laws and power of the US should be enough. If it is not, something else is failing.

Hunting and Sports shooting are areas i can agree with. this is why i don't push for total gun bans, and why many people in the UK disagree with the legislation we do have. Such weapons should be fully licensed though, and subject to vigorous checks.

there are however, a large number of weapons sold in stores that aren't suitable for hunting or marksmenship
taike for example the Penn Arms PGL65-40

This is a pump action 6 shot 40mm grenade launcher. Ammunition 40mm x 127mm maximum length Barrel Length11 inches Rifled, 6 grooves, twist 1:47 inches Overall Length 21 inches / 533mm with folding stock closed 32 inches / 813mm with folding stock open or fixed stock (optional) Sights Combination pachytene rail, ghost ring and bead sight All standard electronic sights can be fitted. This is a Destructive Device all NFA laws apply.

its a bloody GRENADE LAUNCHER!!! how on earth is that legal!!
sold for $4,500 according to www.gunsamerica.com
this website lists guns by make and category. i found that by looking under the category Destructive Devices!!!
what possible use could you want these things for? are you mad?? for $7,500 you can get a legal ANTITANK rifle!!! what recreational sport or purpose could possibly require such a weapon? this website has assault rifles, semiautomatic machine pistols grenade launchers, as well as shotguns, hunting rifles and pistoles which are the sort of guns you'd actually consider for sports and recreational use.


overall, from my viewpoint, its not that you have guns, its the type of guns, the way you use them, the way you carry them, and the overall prevalence of them

[Gaidin]

moving on, if current gun laws are so restrictive, how come it is so easy for pretty much any nutter to go into a highstreet store and buy a gun?you want restrictive gun laws? come to the UK! what you have in the US is hardly what can be defined as restrictive

BLANKET STATEMENTS ARE FUN!

Great to know that owning slightly dangerous objects makes you a nut.

is American society so ill at ease that you feel the need to carry protection on the streets? perhaps instead of moaning about gun control issues you should be lobbying congress to do something about public safety, which is, afterall, a government (or in your case probably state) concern. A citizen should not need to carry a gun to feel safe on the streets of his city, the mere fact that he is a US citizen, protected by the laws and power of the US should be enough. If it is not, something else is failing.

First, we dont carry guns to feel safe. We carry guns to stack the odds in our favor *should* something happen that day. Second, petitioning for public safety stuff is all good, but in the end it all depends on whether it can get to the problem area fast enough.

there are however, a large number of weapons sold in stores that aren't suitable for hunting or marksmenship
taike for example the Penn Arms PGL65-40

its a bloody GRENADE LAUNCHER!!! how on earth is that legal!!
sold for $4,500 according to www.gunsamerica.com
this website lists guns by make and category. i found that by looking under the category Destructive Devices!!!
what possible use could you want these things for? are you mad?? for $7,500 you can get a legal ANTITANK rifle!!! what recreational sport or purpose could possibly require such a weapon? this website has assault rifles, semiautomatic machine pistols grenade launchers, as well as shotguns, hunting rifles and pistoles which are the sort of guns you'd actually consider for sports and recreational use.

Different sports for different people. In the end the idea of sports is narrowed down to self-amusement. Marksmanship is not the only competition. Also, you typically can't just buy one. You usually need a high level permit which often involves signing away one or more of your privacy rights(translation: ATF can do snap inspections of your property).

[LoZz]

well america needs to deside, if they want to have their guns then theirs going to be more columbines etc, if your ok with that, thats ok.

here in the uk after the dunblane (what ever it was called) we banned hand guns, and i am proud to say it hasnt happened since.

i pitty a society that needs guns and i agree with the black prince fully

and their was this guy up north, forget the name who went around a town with an ak47 shooting everyone, after him guns where all practicaly banned and we havent had something on that scale before.


but like i said its up to you, personaly i think a childs life is worth more then your right to shoot ducks and pretend to be cowboys. and how many times do kids take their parents guns into school or play with them and shoot themselves?

i personaly dont think america needs guns in its civilan populations anymore, sure let the police have them but no one else needs them, this whole criminals have guns is BS. of course they have guns! you can walk into walmart and buy one! if you ban guns it will make it harder for them to have guns and it will reduced gun crime.

This is the only one I agree with.

I am very happy that my country has very strict anti-gun laws
The chance of getting mugged at gunpoint (or getting mugged at all) is extremely low here.
I know just ONE person who got mugged (with a knife, not a gun) in the 10 years I live in Amsterdam.
And the police made a huge deal out of it (I was surprised because they have very little manpower available already), so it's clearly something unusual.

But America already made the mistake of providing guns to it's general public, and it would be near impossible to remove them again, so the best they can do is reduce the spread of new, high power weapons.

not true, till about 30-40 years ago britian had simular gun laws to america, people could own hand guns and ak47s etc, we banned them, and gun crime is very very low now, and death per 1000 of guns is much lower then the states. if we can do it, so can they

you will find only the harden criminals, the few will actualy keep their guns or buy from the blackmarket, it will take years for it to start making a diffrence though, it wont be an instant reduction, and you will stop future generations of crmininals of having guns.

so please wont someone think of your children!