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

Bah! Ban knives in the U.K., then tell me about murder rates in the United States. Like I believe you said, this is a useless
discussion. Ban guns, people kill with knives. Then ban knives and they kill with rattail combs, sharpened sticks, stiletto heels, bare hands, ligatures, piano wire, poison... the list is endless.

With the number of guns that we have in the U.S. we should have by your thinking eliminated ourselves already. There are more sane and responsible people here than you give credit for. I am beginning to think that your vehemence stems from jealousy. What do you think I can do about it? Petition Harry Reid.

BTW, adjusted for per 100K is bullshit and you know it.

My serious question to you is, living over there: Why do you care how many guns Americans have?

We have guns because we want them. We hunt with them, we use them for personal protection, we target shoot with them. Most Americans do not have an idea that they want to kill another human being with them. If you lived over here, maybe your argument would have more merit, but telling us we shouldn't have them because people over there were too weak-willed to keep them is no basis for an argument why we should not have them. BTW, I have read articles from over there and in Australia and there are plenty of folks who are sorry they ever gave up their firearms. If you don't want one, don't go through the aggravation of getting one. I won't sneer at you, look down on your or tell you you are wrong for not having one. It is your choice.

I think I will go looking for a Heckler and Koch Semi-Automatic soon. I am feeling oppressed.

OK.

You started the fucking thread, for crying out loud. It's no good beginning a debate and throwing your toys out of the pram when it doesn't go your way.

Saying we can't have our say because we dont live there is an argument completely without merit, especially on a UK forum.

I'm sure we can all say whatever we want, but the point is nobody's going to have their mind changed. We've been here before!

I know. But I didn't throw any toys out of the pram (don't use a pram) because I like my toys! They're mine! Mine!

Just like my guns. Our guns. We like them and we will keep them. As has been said, it is kind of ingrained in us to have them. I don't expect you lot to understand why it is important to us, but I am not going to change your minds. I'll continue to discuss it, but all of the quotes about killing with guns won't change much. It is not that I disagree that in some cases it makes it easier to kill somebody, or perhaps more convenient; it also may speak to a premeditated nature or conscious effort on one's part to go get the gun.

We can argue all day long on the wording on the Second Amendment as well, but the fact remains that IF someone had a strong Constitutional argument to eliminate guns, they'd have done it. The Democrats (typically anti-gun) could have attempted it the same way they ramrodded obamacare through. But they didn't because if they did that they'd have a huge, protracted fight on their hands.

The thread title is gun laws. I have already stated that if we in the U.S. would follow and enforce the gun laws we already have, we would be much better off. Gun control is not the same as gun elimination and [some of] you folks seem to think they are one in the same.

I apologise to you if I came across snippy in my last post to you.

I may be lucky in that I live a LONG way from a lot of the UK and city life, but I don't know of anyone who has had an encounter like you describe

And, there really isn't the hunting aspect here either, at most you'd be talking about rabbits, though usually it would more about pest control than food

In short what I originally said was...

I may be misinterpreting what you've said but you seem to put across that only bystanders are innocent, rather than the person being aimed at. I generally believe /anyone/ being shot is innocent, no one should be shot. The only time it is maybe acceptable is if they've shot at the police, maybe, but I'm not sure about my views on this. I tend to believe killing someone is bad, irrelevant of what they have done.


I think your knives argument is pretty pointless. It's impossible to compare knife crime to gun crime. Saying people will always want to kill people is fine, but guns make it far too easy.
I would 100% prefer someone to try and kill me with a knife rather than a gun. The act of stabbing someone is so much more involved, it takes a totally different mindset to get up close to someone and stab them. There are less people capable of those actions than there are people who would be able to pull the trigger.

Pointless. Knife. <\bringing the tone down>