FrankTrollman wrote:People owning guns makes people less safe. First of all it makes the people literally owning the firearms the most less safe. But it also makes their family and neighbors less safe as well.
That is the problem. The problem is that statistically owning a gun is a safety liability not only for the person owning the weapon, but for everyone around them. Now while I will grant that this is substantially more true for pistols than it is for shotguns, but the safety record of all firearms is universally bad.
I completely agree with you here and this is the key reason I don't own a gun even though I know I could handle one properly. It is a huge safety liability that I do not want to personally inflict on myself or my kids.
However, my only response to your very correct point is that the billions it would cost to enforce such a ban could be much better spent on helping the poor in this or other countries and the ban is likely to fail for the reasons I mention in my post above to Crissa. If you could buy a wish for $19 billion dollars (the cost of the War on Drugs for 2003), would you wish away the 13,000 homicide and accidental guns deaths per year or solve some other problem? By looking at the issue in that light, the statement "guns=bad" is placed in a new light even if "guns really do = bad".
Last edited by Lich-Loved on Wed Apr 08, 2009 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Unfortunately, your statistics do not put lie to Frank's assertions. Nor mine - the guy with the unlocked weapon is the same guy who sold his weapon without doing a background check or had his weapon stolen.
All but a tiny fraction of weapons were purchased legally before being used in a crime. So much so, that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico were purchased legally in the US.
Those statistics merely say that poor people are more likely to be killed than rich people. They don't say who owned those weapons, or the lives of those weapons - gun nuts don't want us to have that information.
So what? That didn't have anything to do with what Frank said.
Crissa: You are right that my statistics don't say how the gun ended up in the hands of the criminal. But let's not try to put too fine a point on it. The guy with the gun is the owner of the gun, possession being 9/10ths and all that. Sure, you could argue that there is no traceable gun ownership and perhaps their should be, but again the only people filling out the paperwork would be law-abiding citizens selling guns to the same. The guns the criminals use will still be effectively untraceable. Unless of course you are suggesting that we ban guns completely so as to remove them from the hands of everyone. I agree if that were somehow mystically done, then there would be far fewer guns used illegally.
But if you are saying you want to ban guns completely, how do you justify the cost of such a ban, the interdiction on our borders that would require, the increased incarceration rate of the poor who will still use guns to defend their drug turf ban or no ban and the general failure of bans in our history? If we can't stop illegal drugs from entering this country, we aren't going to stop handguns from being sold right along with the shipment as a package deal:
"Today Only! 2 keys of fine Peruvian flake, 10 9mm Glocks and 1000 rounds of ammo! First Come, First Serve!"
I do not actually disagree with any of the humanitarian points you or others have raised. I am quite in agreement with them. I am merely pointing out that the waste of implementing yet another failed solution could be averted and spent instead on something that may actually move some of our poor (or Mexico's poor) out of poverty or improve the quality of their lives.
I think I have made my point, and I know that you have heard me, so to be sure that I not antagonizing everyone with these posts, I will just listen in for a bit and not add anything else. I do hope others post their thoughts on this topic, however.
Crissa wrote:Strangely, the gun lobby works against laws securing weapons or licensing weapon owners as well... Kinda like they want guns to be stolen or used inappropriately.
That's because the Gun Lobby is afraid that if the government starts keeping laundry lists of people that have firearms, the "Evil Liberals" will take all of their guns away and round them up and put them in death camps.
It's not like the government doesn't already keep lists of everyone who has bought or sold firearms already.
Most guns are made here. People buy drugs with guns. Tourists come to the US to play with rental guns. Yes, we probably couldn't stop guns from being shipped in. We certainly can't stop them from being shipped out.
But the point is, most guns used in crime in America, nay, nearly all, are purchased legally in the US.
-Crissa
Last edited by Crissa on Thu Apr 09, 2009 3:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
Crissa wrote:Strangely, the gun lobby works against laws securing weapons or licensing weapon owners as well... Kinda like they want guns to be stolen or used inappropriately.
That's because the Gun Lobby is afraid that if the government starts keeping laundry lists of people that have firearms, the "Evil Liberals" will take all of their guns away and round them up and put them in death camps.
And the irony is that, if the government wanted to put you in a death camp, there's not much you could do about it whether you had a gun or not. Not when the government has tanks, helicopters, jet fighters, etc.
Well, okay, you could do something, but that something would be running and hiding, not fighting back effectively.
I don't know A_W, insurgencies can be fairly effective in the face of modern militaries, provided you don't mind your attrition rate.
About your point though, the "fight the government" fantasy hinges on the notion that any uprising would be viewed as a heroic band of patriots and freedom fighters, and not as a bunch of thugs and lunatics. These noble warriors would lead by example, inspire the citizenry, and be the catalyst for the revolution.
Absentminded_Wizard wrote:And the irony is that, if the government wanted to put you in a death camp, there's not much you could do about it whether you had a gun or not. Not when the government has tanks, helicopters, jet fighters, etc.
You know, we used to have this thing called Posse Comitatus, where the army is prohibited from acting in a law enforcement role. The FBI doesn't have any tanks, attack helicopters, or jet fighters.
Mind you, Bush did his best to beat the crap out of that law, so who knows anymore.
violence in the media wrote:I don't know A_W, insurgencies can be fairly effective in the face of modern militaries, provided you don't mind your attrition rate.
About your point though, the "fight the government" fantasy hinges on the notion that any uprising would be viewed as a heroic band of patriots and freedom fighters, and not as a bunch of thugs and lunatics. These noble warriors would lead by example, inspire the citizenry, and be the catalyst for the revolution.
Yeah, somehow I'm not seeing it either.
Yeah, very good point.
I think it should be legal for private citizens to own tanks, planes, and nuclear weapons to restore the balance of power that the founding fathers intended. Well, except for the slavery and stuff.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
