Explain that.

Well, Ant asked you to debate gun control away from the constitution and all you did was say "I can't ignore either because history tends to repeat" and posted a quote.

The quote itself is meaningless because we all give up liberty for safety by virtue of simply having government and laws.

I disagree.

I don't consider government, laws and liberty to be mutually exclusive terms.
 

I also would ask you to define what you mean by "gun control". I support gun control for private citizens, not gun elimination for private citizens. Huge diference. I won't comment on gun elimination because I do not support it.

Folks here can choose to own a gun or not. I choose to own one and have taken the appropriate steps to ensure it is used safely and legally. I do not hold nor do I have any immediate plans to get a Permit to Carry. I am allowed to carry a weapon openly, but this would make local law enforcement and other civilians nervous. You Tube has plenty of those "Open Carry" videos which I consider to be taunting police and a challenge. It is an irrational display of someone trying to prove a point of bust a policeman's balls.

Let me ask you this:

If I give up my gun(s) does that mean I no longer have the ability to kill?

But, I am not going to debate whether gun control is necessary because I believe it is necessary; I don't support gun elimination.

By gun control, you apparently mean gun elimination. Is part of the reason you think Americans should not own guns because you cannot? Or do you not understand why someone would want to own a gun? Have you ever owned, fired or handles a gun, rifle or other projectile delivering weapon? Not trying to get your goat, these are serious questions.

BTW, I did post answers away from the Constitution on why I feel it necessary to retain the right to own a gun or guns.

 

I think Ant's question is: why should that in particular be a right.

The constitution is not set in stone nor is it a religious text. It's not inherently correct it is (or should be) a living document that is interpreted and revised by the supreme court and congress.

The second amendment says (this is the version ratified by the states, I realise the version passed by congress has commas in different places):
 
I know there's a lot of argument about this but to my mind that quite clearly conditions gun ownership on belonging to a militia. At the very least it links the two, gun ownership being intended to protect a state's right to secede should the federal government become tyrannical. Not for fun or to compensate for a small penis nor even for personal protection.

And, to be fair, now that the federal government has aircraft carriers, fighter jets, apache helicopters, drones, guided missiles and ICBMs I don't really fancy your chances going up against that with a few AR-15s and pistols.

The right is archaic and needs either revising (to give the states Apaches and ICBMs) or removing.

Howfuckingever...

I, of course, realise that much of the territory which makes up your nation was won and protected with firearms. And that your country was established in a violent revolution against a tyrannical government which, had firearms not been widely available, would've been far less likely.

I understand that guns are hugely symbolically important in your culture and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

And the resentment caused by the sneering, snobbish way anti-gun people look down on pro-gun people probably does more for the pro-gun lobby than any of the constitutional or practical arguments.

Howdoublefuckingever...

To me (and I imagine many in other countries where guns laws are tighter) a gun is just a weapon for killing things, and I have no idea why you'd want to own such a thing , I find the idea quite abhorrent. Like if I wanted the right to stamp on puppies heads. Why? Because some men thought it'd be a good idea 200 years ago. Killing things is bad. Guns are for killing things. Why the fuck would I want one?

These differences are deeply ingrained in our cultures, we're so diverged that we're barely even talking about the same thing, really. Which makes discussions like this all but pointless.







 

iOS 8 safari just crashed on me again :-/ 2nd attempt

In the case of the U.S. the cats out of the bag already, criminalising gun ownership wouldn't work and would hand the criminals a huge advantage, and criminalise the rest who would refuse to give up their weapons, the best you can hope for is as you say reduction in ownership by properly imposing sensible controls on ownership including psych Evals regularly (every two years seems sensible to me).

We did actually allow private gun ownership over here which was legislated away during the 80's after dunblaine etc.

I have handled and fired weapons just pistols and shotguns, in the presence of my father at a gun range a long time ago. And a crossbow and longbow elsewhere, I cant say I miss them I always felt uncomfortable handling them,

I would also like to know a reason for allowing gun ownership other than we always have, or because this document written a age ago says I can.

I can think of quite a few perfectly good reasons not to own a gun, but precious few as a reason to own one, the only argument I can come up with is "because at some point The owner may feel the need to kill someone else" which makes me deeply uncomfortable handing that person a weapon.

Given the trajectory of democratic capitalism, an envitable societal crash is going to happen, and competition for resources (food clothing personal liberty) may remove this choice from all of us < tongue in cheek>;

Well, not to be cheeky or answer a question with a question, but why shouldn't it be a right? Historically has always been and we have been fine with it. Murders and killings will still happen with or without guns. Knives are also used for killing, so we also outlaw those under Knife Control?

Now, having said that. "Because that is the way we have always done it" is probably one of the most abhorrent expressions and "reasons" I have ever heard. More on this later.

 

Well, this is where Constitutional interpretation becomes difficult. If there is a ruling on this, being that there are two versions (and the arugument that because of this the 2nd should be thrown out for procedural errors), there then would be a lot of problems and not just with guns. At that point, we would have to revisit every bit of contradictory language in our entire government to see if it would be valid in view of throwing out the Second Amendment due to ambiguous and confusing language. I just don't think it can be done.

How so, you ask? Well we had a decision by the Supreme Court that was based on a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists that supports the notion of "separation of church and state" yet that does not appear anywhere in the Constitution/Bill of Rights. So great importance was ascribed to Jefferson's "opinion" as it was interpreted. In this case then, the same equal weight given should be given to Jefferson's statement which can only be interpreted as being
the correct one Since being ratified by 3/4 of the states and authenticated by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

But first:
 

Now:
 

We are not a democracy.

Then:

 

So actually, it is not a Federal issue then, it should go to the States or to the people for a vote on how we handle guns. I am not sure we are ever going to do that though.
 

Me neither. But then again, my hope is that by keeping my munitions; however small they be or however few in number, that the Federal government or whatever rogue entity might try to threaten the People's existence, they would think twice about going up against a possible 100 million people with small arms. It is almost silly to think about in those terms anyway.
Quote: 

In your NSHO, but I disagree. There is no evidence that suggests that fewer guns lowers the crime rate, rather to the contrary.



I searched for "fewer guns fewer murders" and saw the above. The facts do not seem to bear this out. Our murder rates have been in decline since 2007, despite a large number of individuals owning guns.
 

…[Message Truncated] View full message.

Prescient observations. You sound a lot like my English cousin who lives in Ireland regarding guns.

I should think you a bit odd if you were extremely comfortable around guns. I feel a bit odd about them myself, actually. Respect I guess for what they can do, the consequences of misuse, deliberate or accidental.

A lot of guys like to shoot at targets, clay pigeons; some of them like to hunt. Some are collectors, some actually do buy guns either because they think their wife doesn't love them or their cock is too small (thanks, Sigmund).

Some people have guns because they have to carry a lot of money and fear being robbed. Most jewelers here have guns to protect their stores. Some folks have been attacked in the past and bought the gun for protection in the future. I know personally of a lady who was accosted by two strange men in a public park who asked her to go off with them in the woods in a menacing manner, whereupon she pulled out her pistol and asked them which way they wanted her to go. They fled.

She didn't kill either one of them, didn't have to.
  Natural argument from one who was likely conditioned to think that way. We have been conversely conditioned that owning a gun is our right as an American citizen as long as we follow the relevant laws and are not criminals. Do you think I actually feel the need to kill someone sometime in the future?

I'll struggle to reply to all your points, but out of interest where would the US be on that chart?

I think the deaths to ownership ratio isn't really so descriptive. It is most definitely down to cultural reasons.

I really believe that citizens of the US generally feel more threatened in every day situations so are more likely to use the guns they happen to possess, probably even more so around people of a non-white ethnic background.

Whilst I realise this would be totally impossible due to the vast amount of guns in circulation, do you believe if gun ownership levels (and available guns) in the US were the same as in the UK there would be substantially less innocent people killed each year?

To me it really is simple, the more access that there is to guns the more innocent people that die. The chart you posted may show there isn't a huge trend but ignore the rest of the world. The US is completely culturally different with regards to guns, if you removed all the guns, less people would die. Is this not a good thing?

Do you believe innocent deaths, school shootings etc are a necessary evil if you want to exercise your right to bear arms?

Right? How the article writer excluded that baffles the hell out of me. I mean, he could have used colours for clarity.  :-S

Quote: 

I honestly don't know. I was under the impression that private citizens couldn't have guns there. I would wonder what the innocent killing rate is for people cleaning their guns and the dolt left it loaded and it kills someone or himself. There are hunting accidents of course, drive-by shootings where "background" people are killed, but of course that is done with what I would consider to be criminal possession. I suppose easily accidental deaths from mishandling, children or curious folks would certainly go down, but I'd suspect more killings are intentional with intentional, also criminal targets. Innocents get caught in the crossfire in some police shootings as well, but I don't know how common it is - likely not very.

I definitely see guns as a deterrent to crime in some areas. I really don't think a criminal is going to go into a neighborhood where it is known a percentage of homeowners have (or are suspected to have) a gun or guns for personal protection.
 

This is often what the "gun control" (control, meaning removal) zealots would have folks believe, but the facts as cited in the article and from other sources do not bear this out. The criminal element will still have and continue to get guns, possibly even from the police who would have rounded them up en masse during "buyback programs". They don't all get destroyed due to corruption or greed. I actually don't so much mind criminals killing each other rather than innocent people. When it spills over into bystanders it is definitely a problem.
 

Necessary evil? I think that is a bit of a straw man.

Interesting timeline. Note the number that did not occur in the U.S.

This is for shootings only, I have not looked at school and other innocent deaths via other means. I find it interesting to note that in several cases the shooters were reported to have been ostracised and/or teased. Not an excuse for it at all, just a fact mentioned in several cases. Speaking of which, several students her in the U.S. have commited suicide because of FaceBook tauntings.
 

I see the media as tending toward sensationalising this because it sells. Interestingly, IIRC, most of our school shooters are almost exclusively white boys. Mass murderers tend to be white. White people be fucked up.

I looked up interesting statistics in the U.K.:

~ 4/10 youth killings involve knives.
~ 6 people a week are stabbed in Britain
~ There are 60 non fatal knife crimes daily, 22,000 in a year (2012)
~ In killings, 39.5% involved knives

This link supports my assertion that people kill via other means.

Take away guns, people kill with sharp instruments. Unfortunately, more fodder for the "people kill people" argument.

**Spelling




 

FYI~ private citizens can have guns here, it's not easy and is heavily regulated, but certainly not impossible, I'd think the easiest to own would be a shotgun, I certainly know quite a few who have them, but I live in quite a rural area - it's really handguns that are hardest to own.

So is it Ireland that cannot have them?

I'll continue this if folks want to, but I am not going to change anybody's mind to my way nor am to be swayed the other way.

I'd rather talk about beer.  ;-)

That people will always kill people is not in question. Given that we know people will always kill people, why make it easier by giving them guns?

There are stats here for intentional murders per country (note they're adjusted for population, they're per 100k). The USA is far from the highest but has nearly 5x the murder rate of the UK. That's not all down to gun ownership of course (though 66% of single-victim murders and 79% of multiple victim murders in the US are with firearms (67% overall)) but to say "people will kill people regardless" like it's something we can't do anything about is ridiculous.

I made a long reply to this but Teh crashed :C

I might retype it later.

Don't get me started, or I'll come over there and show you why we have guns!   :-D

I won't let it slip that I included guns with your last keyboard shipment.

Whoops!

(cheer)

I see a lot of people saying the only reason an ordinary person wants a gun is to kill someone.

Well, let me tell you a little history in my house.

When my daughter was five a drugged up guy broke into our home in the middle of the night, while we we're sleeping. I didn't have a gun. All I had was a crowbar and a small child to protect. He started down the hallway to her room and I closed on him and started whacking with all my strength. I went straight for his head, and luckily got it. The second he hit the floor I just kept hitting him.

One of my neighbors was awoken by the screaming and called the cops. The neighbor was seventy-five at the time. So he couldn't come over and help. It took the police nearly ten minutes to arrive. In which time, I got to listen to my daughter screaming for me in her bed while I was trying to keep this guy on the floor and away from her. A guy who easily had fifty pounds on me. If he'd managed to get up, I shudder to think.

During this encounter, he was less than six feet from my child. My baby! I'd like to know what all of you think he would have done to us if I hadn't been lucky enough to put him down? If I had a gun back then, he wouldn't have had any knee caps, but he also wouldn't have been able to get so close to my baby. The only thing between them was a thin bedroom door. I couldn't even get to her without stepping over him.

Another thing, a lot of my family hunts, and we eat what we hunt. There are a lot of Americans who engage in this activity to help feed their families. I know some who hunt for sport, and give the meat to the poor.

The people who shouldn't have guns are the criminals, mentally unstable, and the irresponsible and improperly trained. I agree gun control is too lax, but I don't agree with taking guns away from responsible, properly trained, honest citizens. People who may find themselves in a situation as I did, or those who actually use their guns to help feed their families. Such as responsible, legal, properly trained hunters.

Those of you who cannot have guns in your country, I do feel bad for you at times. If someone breaks into your home and you cannot escape or call for help, or help takes too long to get there, what are you going to do? Drop to your knees and beg for your life and the lives of your family?

The police don't always make it in time. Sometimes you have to take responsibility for yourself and those you love. You don't have to kill someone to protect yourself or your family, but you do have to have the tools and knowledge on how to do it, or you might as well dig a hole.

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but when I think about what he could have done to us, and how long it took for help to arrive, I'm glad I have a gun now. If something so horrible ever happens again, I can at least protect us. I'm not so young anymore. The crowbar isn't an option. If it happened now, and I didn't have a gun, I'd be dead and the police would be making an outline in my house.  :-(

I do agree that not everyone should have guns. Some are not fit and some are too irresponsible. If you do have to shoot someone to protect yourself or your loved ones, I say take out the feet or knees. When the police finally arrive to take them away, they'll be nice enough to call an ambulance for them.  ;-)

Deanna