No one in this clip favors gun control except for the CRIMINAL SCUM
An armed society, is a polite society.
Yes, the Old West was known for its genteel ways and lack of arguments amongst armed men. That's why we tell stories of the Cupcake Fight at the OK Corral.
Actually most western towns had homicide rates that would just about match ours today. It just so happens that history remembers the coolest events.
I personally approve of gun control in most cases, but have a different philosophy on how we should be doing it. Restricting the types of guns is all good and fine but probably won't be the most effective at stopping this kind of stuff.
What needs to happen are procedures that help to detect or at least warm of the possibility of a shooting before it happens.
A good starting one would be an outright limit on the number of rounds you can be in possession of at any given time, and a requirement to provide information about what your spent rounds were used on (hunting is okay, target practice at a firing range is okay), and providing information on what you intend to use purchased rounds for.
You. You are just hilarious. I'd boop your nose if I was able too.
The fact that the guy had relativly easy acces to guns made it so much worse (or much easier to carry out) than it would be if he had heavily resticted or no access to firearms.
So? Every few months some guy in china stabs more people to death than him, in 1955 Elifasi Msomi killed 15 with a hatchet, should we ban knives and blades because someone might abuse them? Should everyone be forced to use public transportation to eliminate deaths related to automobiles? Or should you concentrate on the root of the problem, which is that he was insane, and he was ignored by everyone that should have helped him?
So let's double down and make it easier. In your example, you'd basically be saying that since it's acceptable to sell knives that kill people, it's acceptable sell knives that can kill MANY people with the same amount of effort. The logic being, I guess, that one is just the same as the other.
Again, why is it necessary to have an assault weapon when a pistol is perfectly legal? On the off-chance you're going to have to shoot 30 people? In what realistic scenario is that even likely? The only scenario it's proven true in has applied to sociopaths going on killing sprees.
I'm all for people having the right to own firearms. That's not what's debatable. What is debatable is what kind of guns people should be allowed to carry. And in all the years I've ever debated gun ownership, not one person has ever been able to offer up a reasonable, society-wide justification for assault weapons. It always comes down to "because I can" "because they're fun" "because the government might try to kill me" or "don't tread on me."
None of those justify possession of an assault weapon IMO, least of all needing to gun down many of your own countrymen or political authorities at a moment's notice.
I don't believe that there has been a lot of people going around with automatic weapons killing people, Why? they are quite hard to obtain, and for good reason. I believe it should be more difficult to obtain those, but not banned. Want to know one way to get around 30-round magazines? Carrying several 10-round ones.
Your whole argument boils down to "you don't need that, you might do something dangerous with it, so ban everything" No one needs SUVs, yet they cause more deaths that most other cars, should they be banned? When britain imposed it's gun laws want to know what happened? Knife crime spiked, and they have a high higher rate of violent crime than in the USA
The same laws that apply to gun stores apply to gun shows
And yet even your own link admits that unlicensed firearms sellers at gun shows do exist, even though "they're the minority." (Which they provide exactly zero substantive evidence to prove.)
Gunshows are self-policing, that's the issue. If the owner of the gunshow doesn't want to make an issue of it, they can let unlicensed firearms sellers do business there if they want. And as the current tone of this thread shows, clearly, gun owners, non-gun owners and gun enthusiats view personal responsibility very differently.
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Although if those people didn't sell at the gun show they could always just take an add out in their local paper, or hold an auction. I wouldn't call myself a libertarian, but I believe in personal freedoms, I don't think we can ban our way to safety
No one in this clip favors gun control except for the CRIMINAL SCUM
An armed society, is a polite society.
If you're only acting polite because you're afraid of getting shot, I highly doubt you're actually a polite person. If threat of violent death from their fellow citizens is the only thing keeping people from acting horrible to each other, then 1) There is a much deeper problem at hand, and 2) It's going to fall the fuck apart once someone has an edge over the other in terms of that firepower, like if someone on one side happens to be unarmed.
Personally, I don't really want to encourage a society where people are itching to do awful things to each other and only don't because they're afraid of getting shot. That's not a polite society, it's a scared-senseless society.
Countries like Sweden, where everyone has a gun and is required to use it have incredibly low crime rates. Criminals are deterred if they know people around them have guns. Or Switzerland, in 2001 they had about 420,000 assault rifles in the hands of civilians, yet they don't even have 100 homicides a year. Have those countries become mad-maxesque hellscapes filled with biker gangs? No, no they have not.
Insane people should not have access to guns. If someone who is insane had easy access to firearms (as they seemed to have in the Aurora case), then clearly they were not controlled well enough, by the state, federal bodies or individual(s) responsible for selling them. The knife comparison does not stack up - imagine how many people could have been killed in such instances if you replace the knife for a semi automatic handgun.
I agree with you, someone fucked up. Where I live the mentally ill can't purchase firearms. What I was saying is that he didn't get the help he needed, either his psychiatrist or his school fucked up. If he passed the background check it wasn't the gun stores fault.
Here in the UK, knives and blades are banned for the reasons you describe, in the same manner as which we control guns. This came into law in the last dcade as people were using them to kill at a worryingly high rate. To me this seems logical and rational.
Want to know how easy it is to make a shiv? A piece of metal and rock, something you can literally make in 10 minutes.
Whilst it is hard to legislate law that takes into account or controls the behavoiur of people (or even justify such legislation), who in most cases are unpredicatable, if you can have legal frameworks in place that can minimise the impact of extreme behaviours that protects people you are doing a good job. We too have our shootking/killing sprees, but far less regularly and in general on a smaller scale than you as it is far harder for someone who is likley to commit such an act to gain access to weaponary.
We do have legal frameworks in place, They generally work, sometimes they fail.
As for an armed society is a polite society? C'mon, you gotta be kidding me.
Of course, my views on this are influenced strongly by personal circumstances - I have had a family member murdered by someone breaking and entering her home who used a firearm kept for personal self defence by her husband.
I know that in the US there exists a state of mind that guns are tied in with freedom and liberty. In a modern day context, I hold them to be anything but. The large numbers of guns in the USA is not what makes it a powerful/great/importnat nation, nor is it anymore what protects that freedom.
You can hold them to be anything you want.