Tuscon incident and gun control discussion

[Ritterin Sophia]

Oh, and the police are also six minutes away in Germany. By your argument everybody in Germany should carry a handgun.

You left out the part where Germany actually provides comprehensive subsidies to it's population and sufficient pay and unemployment programs to ensure it's populace have the healthcare they need and aren't forced to crime just to survive. America does not.

How so?

Well for one, the less time you spend on trying to get the government to provide for the welfare of it's people, the less people

And what great social programs are there currently that provide comprehensive mental health care?

Universal Health Care which most of the Western world has, but America doesn't and the people with mental health issues can't get a job to afford the care that they need to become healthy members of society and so they can't get a job because they're unstable, it's an endless cycle.

Even if you have a 100% sane populace, accidents etc. will still be happening. And don't you see how guns are a self-fulfilling prophecy? If you do not start cutting people off at one point then there is a danger.

Cars are dangerous as well, in fact going outside you can have a fatal accident, in fact you can die just getting out of bed, oh wait cancel that you can die just laying in your bed. At what point do you decide the chance of an accident is too much.

Besides, how many people in the USA actually protect themselves each year by handguns? And is that number higher than the accidental deaths, gun murders etc? Heck, I'd just might as well argue that by having such prevalent guns, criminals are required to constantly up the ante to get an advantage. Where before they might have threatened a guy with physical violence or a knife, now they do it with a gun and are constantly trigger-happy for fear of getting shot themselves.

According to the Florida State University's National Self Defense Survey in 1994, there is a defensive gun use every 13 seconds. According to that there have been an estimated 2.5 million defensive uses of a firearm since Jan 1st. I'd like to see your evidence that criminals are suicidal.

You do not have to cover all ten million square kilometers. And besides, this "you failed, so why do something" attitude is exactly part of the problem. What, do historical prerequisites not count? What is it that makes America so special that the historical precedents of countries that disarmed its citizenry (in Western Europe all of them) does not count?

No, they don't count, because none of those nations are comparable in any form or fashion to the US, the US is by far larger than the European states and has far more firearms owners per capita and far more firearms in total.

[K. A. Pital]

Why do that when we can focus our efforts on stopping the impetus for violence in the first place? As far as I'm concerned getting rid of the reasons for violent action is a far more beneficial act than just making killing harder.

It is more beneficial, but since the US political establishment is a poisoned well which would never bear fruit in this undeniably right direction, alternative and supporting measures should also be considered. In a population filled with a large percent of idiot electorate with an oligarchic power that doesn't give two shits about it's people you have to take the options you can push through, not the ones you HOPE will some day come to pass. This is number one.

Number two, of course, is that there is a strong correlation between the spread of legal handguns and illegal handguns, where the former become the latter and then are used as murder weapons. And so handguns should be singled out and regulated. Rifles are a non-entity in the American gun control debate because they're a miniscule percent of crime weapons. Handguns are 77% of murders.

The ease of murder is a significant factor contributing to the spread of murder, actually. It is psychologically easier to do when you are technically armed for easy murder. It is psychologically harder otherwise. So by making killing harder, you also make it less attractive.

[Ritterin Sophia]

In a population filled with a large percent of idiot electorate with an oligarchic power that doesn't give two shits about it's people you have to take the options you can push through, not the ones you HOPE will some day come to pass. This is number one.

You just made the counterargument against yourself. 33% of the population as a bare minimum is a big voting bloc, you won't be able to get what you want if they don't budge and they aren't. You have a better chance of getting healthcare to pass than restrictive gun laws anymore, the problem is the the 'liberals' have allowed the conservatives to define gun rights as a wholly left-right divide, where in actuality the left could use it as a bargaining position to argue for ending the War on Drugs and for comprehensive social programs to help keep the poor from becoming so disenfranchised that they feel crime is the only option.

[K. A. Pital]

In a population filled with a large percent of idiot electorate with an oligarchic power that doesn't give two shits about it's people you have to take the options you can push through, not the ones you HOPE will some day come to pass. This is number one.

You just made the counterargument against yourself.

My argument actually would extend even further (and none of you Americans here would like it) - America would not be able to pass neither restrictive gun control laws (or ones that'd be anywhere near efficient), neither any efficient laws to combat poverty and disenfranchisment. So our discussion is like that of two prisoners whose menu is hardly extravagant, on whether apples or oranges are the healthier fruit. Mark my word - the US will neither see any efficient gun control, nor efficient poverty alleviation.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Ironically I'm watching the ABC interview of Mrs Gifford's husband, according to him she owns a Glock of her own and supports the right of the people to defend themselves. Should be interesting to see what she has to say after this ordeal.

[Thanas]

Seriously? You're going to have that as a factor? They want to kill someone, they'll do it with their bare-hands if needs be.

The guy in that attack had 3 targets, he killed 2, that's a 66% kill ratio, the other guy got away with massive wounds and it took emergency surgery to save him. If there had been more people there, he'd likely have gone for them to. Killing only 2 was because he had so few targets, not because he wasn't carrying a gun.

The point is that it is way easier to kill someone with a gun than in close combat.

Really, how? I think you actually meant 'Might' there. And again, how do you get them all back? There's a lot of guns out there and getting them out of private hands will take up a lot of police manpower, legal bureaucracy and money. It's just not going to happen. My analogy above was understating the situation by quite some margin.

Yes, might. But you got to dry up the supply somewhere.

Yes because all of those came about so swiftly, easily and universally with no problems whatsoever.

Did I claim any of the three?

Gay MArriage is still not sorted out and that's with an active lobbying group. SLavery took a civil war to sort out and then still took time, with segregation following.

As I said, it would take an incredible psyche changing event to make them all hand them over.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gun control, but right now, the US is a lost cause.

I don't believe that. I believe that there is potential for change - it is not as if the vast majority of US citizens are gun owners, for one, indicating that it is really easy to live without one and not get mugged/robbed/killed/whatever. The self defence argument is not going to fly as most Americans do not constantly live under threat. So what we have here is a minority with a stake in it and a majority that is not affected either way.

Did anybody in the seventies think Gay troops could serve openly? Heck, even in the nineties it was considered impossible. US society is one of the most dynamic there is, with mood changes by the decade.

You left out the part where Germany actually provides comprehensive subsidies to it's population and sufficient pay and unemployment programs to ensure it's populace have the healthcare they need and aren't forced to crime just to survive. America does not.

So? Are the majority of gunowners under constant threat to get mugged/killed/whatever? If you want to argue the self-defence argument, consider that gunowners can also easily turn into criminals, their weapons are regularly stolen etc. What evidence is there that guns are a net positive for society?

[

Well for one, the less time you spend on trying to get the government to provide for the welfare of it's people, the less people

And what great social programs are there currently that provide comprehensive mental health care?

Universal Health Care which most of the Western world has, but America doesn't and the people with mental health issues can't get a job to afford the care that they need to become healthy members of society and so they can't get a job because they're unstable, it's an endless cycle.

I'd say that universal healthcare just failed spectacularly in the United States. And if people are unstable, then there is even less reason to make it easy to own a gun.

Cars are dangerous as well, in fact going outside you can have a fatal accident, in fact you can die just getting out of bed, oh wait cancel that you can die just laying in your bed. At what point do you decide the chance of an accident is too much.

False analogy as handguns provide no positive benefit except a somewhat nebulous and not-backed up safety increase. A car on the other hand is necessary to live and earn a living. A private handgun is not unless you are a criminal.

According to the Florida State University's National Self Defense Survey in 1994, there is a defensive gun use every 13 seconds. According to that there have been an estimated 2.5 million defensive uses of a firearm since Jan 1st. I'd like to see your evidence that criminals are suicidal.

2.5 million defensive uses does say nothing on its own. How is defensive use defined, what are the effects of it, what positive benefits there are etc.

BTW - even under strict German gun laws you'd be allowed to own a firearm if you can show a legitimate need for self defense.

No, they don't count, because none of those nations are comparable in any form or fashion to the US, the US is by far larger than the European states and has far more firearms owners per capita and far more firearms in total.

a) What is your data proving that Firearm ownership is higher in the USA today than it was in European countries after WWI, when gun laws were introduced?
b) How does this in any way relate to the possible success and failure of gun laws?

EDIT:
BTW, how many people have been accidentally shot for carrying a gun or reacting in a manner that has been described as being threatening?

[TC Pilot]

I don't believe that. I believe that there is potential for change - it is not as if the vast majority of US citizens are gun owners, for one, indicating that it is really easy to live without one and not get mugged/robbed/killed/whatever. The self defence argument is not going to fly as most Americans do not constantly live under threat. So what we have here is a minority with a stake in it and a majority that is not affected either way.

This is basically the crux of the problem. In the past, more than half of people favored stricter gun control. This never materialized into actual reform because of the fact it wasn't an issue they cared enough about to vote people into office for, whereas the pro-gun lobby will vote in droves to elect pro-gun politicians.

[Alyeska]

There is also the issue of trust. Several well known Pro-Gun Control groups have a stated policy of attempting to completely ban guns. So people who might be inclined to support an idea are distancing themselves because of the organizations proposing it. The Brady Group has lost a lot of credibility with their actions.

Also on the issue of trust is how the government treats gun owners. New York City put forward a gun registry. They promised the registry fees would be reasonable. And they promised that the registry would never be used to confiscate guns. Almost immediately the registration fees were increased by an incredible mark up. And then when New York City started passing stricter gun control laws while passing ex post facto laws to get around the "Grand Father" clause, they used the registration lists and started going door to door asking for the where abouts of the guns.

Gun owners have very little trust of the Pro-gun control lobby in the United States after stunts such as these.

[Ritterin Sophia]

So? Are the majority of gunowners under constant threat to get mugged/killed/whatever? If you want to argue the self-defence argument, consider that gunowners can also easily turn into criminals, their weapons are regularly stolen etc. What evidence is there that guns are a net positive for society?

That's not my job, you're the one arguing we need to ban them.

I'd say that universal healthcare just failed spectacularly in the United States. And if people are unstable, then there is even less reason to make it easy to own a gun.

That's an idiotic thing to say since it's not been tried.

False analogy as handguns provide no positive benefit except a somewhat nebulous and not-backed up safety increase. A car on the other hand is necessary to live and earn a living. A private handgun is not unless you are a criminal.

Fair enough, what about baseball bats or lawn darts?

2.5 million defensive uses does say nothing on its own. How is defensive use defined, what are the effects of it, what positive benefits there are etc.

A defensive handgun use is defined as the use of a handgun to deter or stop a violent crime and it's pretty straightforward, according to the National Self Defense Survey they found that a person's life was saved every 1.3 minute by a privately owned firearm.

BTW - even under strict German gun laws you'd be allowed to own a firearm if you can show a legitimate need for self defense.

BTW- 3/4 of the time an attacker is a random person you don't know, so proving a need when you aren't capable of identifying the threat until you're being attacked is a horrible idea. And at least a quarter of defensive handgun uses are when you aren't at home.

a) What is your data proving that Firearm ownership is higher in the USA today than it was in European countries after WWI, when gun laws were introduced?

You're the one arguing they're comparable, not me.

b) How does this in any way relate to the possible success and failure of gun laws?

Because differences in scale matter.

BTW, how many people have been accidentally shot for carrying a gun or reacting in a manner that has been described as being threatening?

I can't find any statistics for that, the only thing close is a news article about an off-duty police officer being shot by other police having mistaken him for an assailant.

it is not as if the vast majority of US citizens are gun owners

How do you figure? 33% is a bare minimum figure, since we don't require registration.

Also on the matter of more firearms crimes being committed simply because there are more guns. Statistics beg to differ.

[Dark Hellion]

That's not my job, you're the one arguing we need to ban them.

Not to steal Thanas thunder but this is such a disingenuous argument I really can't pass up wanting to rip into it. A gun is quite literally a tool designed specifically to kill things. The burden of proof is on you to prove that guns are a positive in society because their primary and intended function is of a category that is generally antithetic to societies nature (namely preservation of its members).

This is actually what I always hate about seeing these so called "debates". Even if both sides start with arguments some asshole has to come in and take cheap shots to score rhetorical points instead of actually trying to discuss the very real and deep underlying ethical and philosophical principles present. The fact that both sides are guilty of doing this and that once this is done it turns into a pissing match of who can use the most emotionally evocative (and usually content devoid) soundbite means nothing is done to further discussion.

I will provide a more complex post in a bit but before then I don't want anyone to start making strawmen of my position so I'll do it for them. I will say I like guns; I think they are cool and I think they have a very legitimate purpose as part of society. That being said I have also lived in America for 25 years and can pretty safely say that I wouldn't trust the majority of Americans to paint my house yet alone carry around a gun. The thing is that the debate has to come down to something with more substance than "I have an absolute right to bear arms!" vs. "Guns kill people!" but sadly the rhetoric of both sides tends to lead to this asinine caricature.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Not to steal Thanas thunder but this is such a disingenuous argument I really can't pass up wanting to rip into it.

Feel free.

A gun is quite literally a tool designed specifically to kill things.

So's a club, but we use it to play games as well, maybe we should ban baseball bats and gold clubs as well.

The burden of proof is on you to prove that guns are a positive in society because their primary and intended function is of a category that is generally antithetic to societies nature (namely preservation of its members).

So you have evidence that most guns are used for violent crime rather than hunting and shooting? By all means, show it.

[Dark Hellion]

I am going to reference back a few pages: in an oblique way Ryan's moronic ramblings about rights did touch on a key point that seems to always get lost in the clusterfuck. Hear me out.

People, especially Americans, often have this rather perverse view of rights as things that possess some kind of almost pseudo-platonic substance. But, if you were to say send a rover to Mars no matter how many rocks you turned over you are never going to find "freedom of speech" or "freedom of religion." This is because rights are an abstract concept designed to further society not a physical law of the universe. While the rights that are generally called universal and inalienable are based upon sound logical and philosophical grounds when removed from the context of society they are basically meaningless. I am going to use a quote from Alyeska as illustration:

Its a ballance[sic] between rights and safety. Always has been. Restricting the rights of millions to save a few lives? Is it worth it? My honest answer to this particular case is, no, its not worth it.

I will admit to snipping Alyeska's caveat from the end because I wanted to discuss this form of rhetoric. I have seen Alyeska debate for years online so I know that there is more underlying his position than just this quote. But I think this quote also shows the pervasiveness of non-critical analysis that has taken over gun rights debates. As just a blanket statement, without a societal goal, this quote becomes largely meaningless or even worse blatantly false. Outside of society rights are hard pressed to have any inherent value. So at best rights vs. lives become equal, assuming the rather nihilistic position that human lives are also inherently worthless.

Now one can see from this foundation alone that we can quickly approach tyranny because it is very easy to make arguments that preserving life is always more important than some nebulous and abstract concept of rights. Of course anyone with intelligence can also see that there is more nuance and complexity than just a simple balance between rights and life. But this is were the problem comes in; a hell of a lot of people don't really like to think complex and nuanced thoughts or to really utilize their intelligence. So it is very easy to paint a picture that once there is any impingement of your right to do "such and such" that Nazis are going to start kicking down your door.

Framing the argument purely in terms of rights versus safety is just fundamentally a bad way to go about it but has become the norm because it is easy to construct talking points that the audience doesn't actually have to think about. But I would hope that on this board we could expect more. Especially because the road of simply going "rights vs. safety" without further thought can lead to some hideous conclusions (I found the example I was going to use so morally repugnant that I deleted it). This is why we must ask what goal our proposed right is supposed to fill for society. It is almost trivially easy to show how freedom of expression benefits society and we have empirical evidence that supports this.

Someone said earlier in this thread that this isn't a binary thing and I think that is something that gets lost in the adversity of these arguments. There is neither a singular correct position nor is there a position of special privilege. All sides (because there are more than two possible despite insinuations) need to have a firm grounding for their position.

As for my position; there is a large body of evidence that shows that in the hands of responsible owners guns are just as safe as many other tools we would never think of restricting and can serve both self-defense and recreation positions. There is also a large amount of extremely damning evidence that shows that in the hands of irresponsible owners guns are a very real threat to the lives and safety of a community. There is also evidence that suggests that in a destabilized community guns can serve to further decline by making available an easy and effective means of intimidating or killing members who would otherwise be beneficial. This is why my position has been for many years that guns are a privilege but not an absolute right. I think that the ability to own and utilize a gun should require stringent licensing and testing that proves that one is responsible and repeats frequently and regularly to ensure that one remains responsible. But I also think that as long as this proof can be met that there should be little restriction on the ownership of guns. I don't think there is any reason to fear guns (at the end of the day they are just a hunk of engineered stuff) but there is plenty of reason to show them a healthy amount of respect (because they are a hunk of stuff that can put damn big holes in you).

Sadly, in America you are not going to see any real progress in any direction of the gun debate until shit gets so bad it won't really matter. Just like so many other important subjects very few people of real power want to challenge their audience to think when they can instead throw out cheap talking points. Because apparently thinking is hard. On that note a final consideration, how in a country as large as America can access to transportation be considered only a privilege but the ability to buy an AR-15 is an unassailable right? I'm not the only one who can see problems with that am I?

Late addition:

So's a club, but we use it to play games as well, maybe we should ban baseball bats and gold clubs as well.

First, you should try not to strawman my position because no where did I state I wanted to ban anything. But nice try at dodging the point as well. A baseball bat is designed to hit a baseball and engineered to that task. A golf club the same. They can both be used as a club but so can a chair or a six-year old relative. Even for as much damage as she can do I don't think anyone can argue that my cousin is actually a weapon. But a gun can shoot things and well... I guess it makes an ok paperweight. The fact that the gun is a weapon that was engineered for a specific purpose is not an indictment against it, it is just a statement of function. The question is whether a tool of that function has a place in society. If you want to claim it does you should be able to make an argument for it (its pretty easy).

So you have evidence that most guns are used for violent crime rather than hunting and shooting? By all means, show it.

Hey look another strawman and again trying to dodge the point. I am seeing a pattern. For a fun little analogy: the vast majority of nuclear weapons have been detonated in isolated locations. Why shouldn't we let every country have them since clearly statistics show that nukes are pretty safe? Yah, the flaws in that argument are pretty easy to see. The potential for abuse is actually relevant despite protestations otherwise. Scale is important of course, guns don't kill hundreds of thousands, in fact guns have trouble reaching double digits. And yes most guns are used for recreation. But this still doesn't mean you can ignore that a gun doesn't fulfill any civilian necessity that cannot be fulfilled with a less dangerous alternative. So again, there is actually a burden on you to make an argument that the dangers of guns are at least matched by the positives they bring to society.

I don't think that guns should be banned and I don't think the rights of responsible citizens to own guns should be impeded. But I think that the a priori assumption that guns are a right is lazy and instills a poor mindset. The right to bear arms should be built off of more fundamental principles not simply used as an axiomatic hammer. I think the thing you'll see is that building it actually makes you appreciate and respect your rights more while at the same time gives these rights the gravitas to see that perhaps there is a care to be taken in claiming them as absolutes.

[Todeswind]

I'm all for allowing people to own firearms, even sidearms but I question the wisdom in allowing the average private citizen to own anything more potent than a semi-automatic pistol or rifle, at least without a stringent psychological test, background test and registry process. I appreciate the right to bear arms but the constitution cannot realistically be interpreted as saying that the mentally infirm or criminal ought to be permitted weapons, nor does it seem to indicate that the government cannot know who owns weapons.

Even if you feel you need a gun to protect your home and hearth you don't need an assault rifle. A semi automatic ought to be more than enough to fight off the average burglar and in the extremely rare event that you somehow end up in a die-hard situation where your house is under assault from a well armed paramilitary group its highly unlikely that you as an average citizen would be capable of fending off that assault. In the highly unlikely event you find yourself in a "Die Hard" moment your firearm is most likely going to be used as a stalling tactic till the police arrive on scene. The people who would be capable of actually fending off an assault such as the military, police, etc. already have access to those weapons through legal trackable channels. Even the often "person defending their home against an invader" does not necessitate the use of assault weapons.

The NRA is correct that people buying guns with the intention of engaging in organized criminal acts ala terrorists or the mafia will tend to do it though untraceable channels the question is why should we make it easy for them to do so by having limited paperwork? Organized crime tends to use weapons that have been altered to be untraceable but the average whackjob on an impulse killing spree isn't the sort of person they're the NRA is referencing when they talk about criminals doing bad things. Even in the light of that the vast majority of gun related killings in the USA are either accidents or crimes of passion. In the case of the crimes of passion they probably would kill the other person anyway but it makes murderer's jobs more difficult is not a good enough reason for the limited regulation of firearms in the USA. The vast majority of killers are not affiliated with some large scale black market by which they might acquire large scale arms and even if they are making it more difficult to get weapons makes it more expensive for them to get weapons in large qualities.

And if, lord forbid, the USA should end up in a "Red Dawn" situation it's absurd to assume that the military would not try to get as many weapons to as many people as is possible or practical. There isn't a good reason for any private citizen to own an assault rifle other than for cosmetic or recreational reasons. And frankly that's not good enough of a reason.

[His Divine Shadow]

Practically nobody owns an assault rifle as you say (because of rarity/expense/restrictions) in america. When most people talk about assault rifles what they really mean are the civilian semi auto versions, that you seem to be okay with.

[Shroom Man 777]

Seems we forget that a lot of people don't live in cities. Tell me what alternative do you have for me if I'm outside in my yard and a black bear from the Monangahela National Forest happens to have strolled the four or five miles to my house from the park boundaries, eh? How about deer populations? Did you know due to the lack of natural predators that if the population of deer are not culled in my state they will literally starve to death in winter, I'm sure millions of rotting deer carcasses littered around the forest will not cause any serious problems.

In that case, yeah, I guess allowing extended magazines for Glocks to deal with bears and deer is okay.

I wonder what are the cons of instituting stringent gun-ownership regulations similar to those found in Canada or Germania?

Is it also possible to restrict the circulation of guns to the criminal elements of society, while at the same time allowing law abiding citizens to own firearms?

[His Divine Shadow]

I wonder what are the cons of instituting stringent gun-ownership regulations similar to those found in Canada or Germania?

Being impossible perhaps? What, you think it's been a great success here? Go check out the neonazi thread and figures on how little of the total of amounts of guns are actually registered over here... If we can't do it after decades...this makes the drug war look easily winnable.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Even if you feel you need a gun to protect your home and hearth you don't need an assault rifle.

Do you know how many automatic firearms there are in America? No you don't, that's rhetorical. There are <275k legally owned firearms, only half of those are in civilian hands, the rest are owned by police departments. The number is fixed, you can't import or put any more weapons on the market and all of them are registered with the BATF. Do you know how many of those 275k weapons have been used in violent crimes? All of two in the last sixty-seven years, one in 1934 and one in the late eighties by a dirty cop. Do you know what crimes have been committed the most with such a weapon? Failure to notify of a change of address, would you like to know how many times that has occurred? Less than ten.

NFA weapons are so rare and expensive as to be virtually unobtainable for your common criminal, with the price for one easily rivaling the price of a brand new car. An M16A2 is going to cost you roughly $20,000. You don't need to worry about the guy buying thousand dollar rifles, it's the guy buying a single $75 snubnose revolver or a $100 semiautomatic.

In that case, yeah, I guess allowing extended magazines for Glocks to deal with bears and deer is okay.

Volume of fire works wonders, the more rounds you can put into the bear the more likely you are to hit something vital and put it down.

Is it also possible to restrict the circulation of guns to the criminal elements of society, while at the same time allowing law abiding citizens to own firearms?

There was at one time, we could have gotten people to willingly register their weapons and then legislate that you need to buy a gun safe to secure your weapons with a couple years amnesty and possibly a subsidy. But for reasons that have already been covered, gun advocates are not going to trust any such legislation being used as they were told it would be.

[Dark Hellion]

No, sorry, but it's still a fucking club designed to hit things. You're going to have to show that the benefits of the club are worth the risk of common hoodlums walking into a walmart and buying them to assault people.

They are clubs designed to hit things. Primarily round, inanimate objects. Now a baton or similar is actually a club designed to hit people. They are actually illegal to purchase in a few states. Do you want to weigh in on this ghastly restriction upon peoples rights?

You know never mind that. I am just going to ignore the equivocation between a club and gun too, even though one requires you to be close and have sufficient musculature and brutality to inflict serious harm and the other requires a strict set of procedures to reduce the risk of self-injury. I am just going to give you that a board with a nail in it is actually just as deadly as several hundred years of military development.[/sarcasm]

This is besides the fact that a baseball bat can be used not only to mug and vandalize but to play baseball or the hundreds of baseball variants or a wide variety of other games. But admitting that a gun is actually designed first and foremost as a weapon whereas damn near anything you can lift can be a club would make you actually have to defend yourself. Apparently you actually need a gun to do that.

Seems we forget that a lot of people don't live in cities. Tell me what alternative do you have for me if I'm outside in my yard and a black bear from the Monangahela National Forest happens to have strolled the four or five miles to my house from the park boundaries, eh? How about deer populations? Did you know due to the lack of natural predators that if the population of deer are not culled in my state they will literally starve to death in winter, I'm sure millions of rotting deer carcasses littered around the forest will not cause any serious problems.

Hi, I am outliers used to generalize. And I still fail to show anything. First, I am actually willing to bet that your chances of being attacked by a bear are actually less than your chances of being accidentally shot. So if you actually cared about reducing deaths its safer to go with bears than with guns. This is ignoring the fact that there are other methods of bear repelling which may suffer from some reduced effectiveness but bears are tough motherfuckers and a gun doesn't guarantee your survival either. And of course its not like we have park rangers to deal with deer overpopulation as well. Notice I said the words civilian and necessity. It is not a civilian necessity to control deer populations.

The only danger you have put out so far is an overpopulation of red herrings.

I don't know, how about the fact that someone targeted for rape is ten times less likely for it if they have access to a firearm. Oh I forgot, there's pepperspray, that stuff that only deters undetermined attackers.

But isn't rape a societal problem just like gun crime? So doesn't gun ownership rates have nothing to do with whether or not they are targeted for rape just like gun crimes? So isn't there no real definitive connection at all between increased gun ownership and rape rates? And also on the converse side, how many rapes are there that are successful because the victim believes the attacker has a gun?

Jesus fucking christ man stop being so goddamn pathetic. I have tried to hand you two opportunities to construct a nice argument about the positive aspects of gun ownership and you keep feeding me this shit. Seriously.

Fuck, I'll do it for you. Even though the gun is designed as a weapon there is sufficient reason to believe that it can be used for something other than its original purpose. We can draw analogies to bows and archery competitions and point out the historic existence of guns clubs. However, we have to acknowledge that there is a danger. But, we can site numerous European countries that also have high gun ownership rates but have very low crime rates. This points to a non-linear correlation between gun ownership and gun crimes. Unfortunately, we have hit the snag you are trying to gloss over. While we can establish that there are legitimate recreational and self-defense uses of guns and that gun ownership does necessarily increase gun crime we have given no compelling reason why gun ownership should not be reasonably restricted. We can only say that it shouldn't be unreasonably restricted. If you want to make the case for less restriction you are going to have to provide your own argument; so try to use one that doesn't sound like a fucking joke this time.

[His Divine Shadow]

I threw this together:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid= ... OTY3&hl=en

[Todeswind]

Even if you feel you need a gun to protect your home and hearth you don't need an assault rifle.

Do you know how many automatic firearms there are in America? No you don't, that's rhetorical. There are <275k legally owned firearms, only half of those are in civilian hands, the rest are owned by police departments. The number is fixed, you can't import or put any more weapons on the market and all of them are registered with the BATF. Do you know how many of those 275k weapons have been used in violent crimes? All of two in the last sixty-seven years, one in 1934 and one in the late eighties by a dirty cop. Do you know what crimes have been committed the most with such a weapon? Failure to notify of a change of address, would you like to know how many times that has occurred? Less than ten.

NFA weapons are so rare and expensive as to be virtually unobtainable for your common criminal, with the price for one easily rivaling the price of a brand new car. An M16A2 is going to cost you roughly $20,000. You don't need to worry about the guy buying thousand dollar rifles, it's the guy buying a single $75 snubnose revolver or a $100 semiautomatic.

I'm curious where you get that statistic on the gun deaths as it's outright incorrect. Police Shootings alone account for somewhere between 16-100 deaths from assault weapons (depending on the legal definition of assault weapons in the state 16 being the California definition) between 1975 and 1992 [1]. It's an admittedly low number but it's substantially higher than two. And while only "no more than .8% of homicides are perpetrated with rifles using military calibers" (admittedly not all of which are assault weapons) that still accounts for 60-100 or so murders yearly from assault weapons. Its small by comparison to the number of killing from other small arms but not insignificant enough to just ignore.

[1] Reply Brief of State of Colorado, at 13-15, Robertson v. Denver, No. 90CV603 (Denver Dist. Ct., Feb. 26, 1993)
[2]Glenn Harlan Reynolds, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms under the Tennessee Constitution", 61 Tenn. L. Rev.

[His Divine Shadow]

Now you have switched from Assault Rifles to the term Assault Weapons, they are not the same. The latter is a term made up by politicians the like to just mean black guns that look like assault rifles.

Also I would say it is insignificant enough actually.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Ghetto Edit:
According to "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995 ~53% of defensive handgun users were attacked by multiple assailants, I can't think of any reason why those without handguns wouldn't have the same.

[Todeswind]

Now you have switched from Assault Rifles to the term Assault Weapons, they are not the same. The latter is a term made up by politicians the like to just mean black guns that look like assault rifles.

Also I would say it is insignificant enough actually.

I used the term as it was used in the source material, so I suppose it's a matter of semantics really. State to state the definitions of what counts as what vary anyway so its a bit hard to pin down.

I don't entirely disagree, it is a small number. It is not, however two. As I've said I support the right for people to own small arms and rifles however from a philosophical standpoint I just don't see the logic in allowing private citizens to own assault rifles and so on. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why a private citizen would need to own them. I appreciate the need for self defense where I have an issue is that I cannot imagine a situation that anyone would get themselves in the USA where they would need an assault rifle for self defense that they could not have accomplished with a semi-automatic weapon.

[His Divine Shadow]

Now you have switched from Assault Rifles to the term Assault Weapons, they are not the same. The latter is a term made up by politicians the like to just mean black guns that look like assault rifles.

Also I would say it is insignificant enough actually.

I used the term as it was used in the source material, so I suppose it's a matter of semantics really. State to state the definitions of what counts as what vary anyway so its a bit hard to pin down.

I don't entirely disagree, it is a small number. It is not, however two. As I've said I support the right for people to own small arms and rifles however from a philosophical standpoint I just don't see the logic in allowing private citizens to own assault rifles and so on. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why a private citizen would need to own them. I appreciate the need for self defense where I have an issue is that I cannot imagine a situation that anyone would get themselves in the USA where they would need an assault rifle for self defense that they could not have accomplished with a semi-automatic weapon.

What is an assault weapon is hard to pin down because it's not really a proper term with any solid definition. Assault Rifle though, thats a properly defined term and within the limits of that definition General Schattens claims are correct.

You're really tilting windmills here, the amount of assault rifles is a very small number and in the hands of a few rich people, relatively speaking. It's practically already banned for all intents and purposes for the average man, and the pool of guns is always reducing since no new assault rifles are allowed to be put into the machine gun registry by civilians, so it's almost a defacto ban as it is.

[Aaron]

In that case, yeah, I guess allowing extended magazines for Glocks to deal with bears and deer is okay.

I wonder what are the cons of instituting stringent gun-ownership regulations similar to those found in Canada or Germania?

Is it also possible to restrict the circulation of guns to the criminal elements of society, while at the same time allowing law abiding citizens to own firearms?

It's kind of hard to pin down whether our regulations actually accomplished anything or not. Gun crime has apparently been down since before the École Polytechnique massacre, which was what prompted our current legislation. The guy did it with legally owned firearms so the current system appears to be more geared towards weeding out the wackos from having them.

Unfortunately our current system was somewhat of a disaster in that there's still 1-2 million firearms out there that where never registered, showing how hard it can be to close the barn door after the horse has left. That said, whatever it is that prompts problems with firearms in the US, we seem to lack it on a large scale. More people are killed by cars here each year and the leading cause of firearms death is suicide (some 3000 a year).

tl;dr version: its a complex issue in which easy access to firearms is only part.