I think Bricker ninja’d you a few days ago. I’ll let my response to him stand.
So all the laws that have been passed over the past couple of decades relaxing the carry laws - those were all unnecessary because they’re inherent in the Second Amendment?
That’s a pretty sweeping claim.
And in general, a nation where people routinely walk the streets with lethal weapons isn’t “a nation of laws” but “every man a law unto himself.” It’s the road to barbarism, not to civilization.
No, you’re not being a good citizen. You are wasting public resources and harassing the police.
This is like standing outside a noisy strip bar in your neighborhood and calling the police everytime a car drives out of the aprking lot because the driver might be drunk, or unlicensed or being kidnapped by the passenger. Its a stupid idea, just another stupid idea in a long line of stupid ideas from the anti-gun folks.
Not where I live.
You can be charged with frivolously calling 911 where I live. They don’t have that law where you live? Well, start doing what you describe and they will make such a law and call it the “Fear Itself is an annoying asshole law of 2014”.
And neither does the law except tot he extent that you can get the second amendment changed.
This is the cliff notes version of the entire anti-gun argument. Acceptable alternaive answers include “you have a small penis” “you kill children” “you are psychotic” “you are racist”
Its spelled “amirite”
How much do the rounds cost and how effective is the taser at disabling people, deer, bears, and other pery and predators?
Yes - that is also objectionable.
To be consistent with the sentiment being expressed, the claim should read: “One purpose [of firearms] is to destroy what they are aimed at.”
Is this hypothetical device more or less effective than the product it is trying to replace? I doubt it. My answer would then be no. If there was a product that was more effective, a ban would be unnecessary because people would flock to the new, more effective device naturally without being forced. Not too many people clamoring for a musket (other than collectors) or using a horse drawn carriage to get to work.
Even still, my answer would be no. There is no reason for such a ban. Having an available alternative is not sufficient justification for banning currently available options. Being able to read one book does not mean that other books should be banned.
What else could a gun do to what its aimed at? Decorate it with holes? Come on. If you aren’t aiming at anything, then you aren’t using the gun for its designed purpose. Sure a gun can be used to conduct an orchestra also, but that isn’t its purpose so that sort of thing can’t really be considered its “purpose” for this discussion.
No, he means it. If you carry a gun against the possibility that you might need to defend yourself in public, you’re a paranoid coward. ( :rolleyes: )
No court in the United States has ever held that carrying a firearm by permit constituted depraved indifference (which is only when a death results) or even reckless endangerment (when no death occurs).
Oh, that’s simple. After Hillary replaces Scalia and Kennedy with real human beings, the Second Amendment will be restored to the meaning it had for most of America’s history.
You know, the one where the sheriff of Dodge City could have people hand their guns over to his office when they entered town.
Most people don’t shit themselves with fear at the prospect of having to leave their house without being strapped. That’s not a healthy level of fear. We don’t live in the wild west and I personally am glad we don’t. Do we really want to go back to that world, where all that matters is how fast your draw is, and how little regard you have for the lives of other humans?
I’ve lived on the south side of Chicago my whole life and I have never once left my house to enter the world and felt afraid that I was going to be attacked while I was out there. It must be really stressful and unhappy to live life constantly afraid of everyone like that.
Do you think everyone in England is more brave than you because they all leave the house every day without having a gun? How do you suppose they cope with all of that fear?
You shouldn’t leave your keyboard unattended if you’re logged in. **Bricker **might borrow it.
If you have to resort to claiming this is a strictly legal issue, not one of basic morality or basic responsibility or basic respect for the value of human life, then you’ve already told us enough about who you are, and about your own fitness to have access to deadly weapons.
Yeah, it’s always going to be the *next *Democratic President who comes for your guns, isn’t it? :rolleyes: Gotta come out and vote against 'em to keep tyranny from happening …
These people have had their strings attached so long they no longer feel the twitch when they’re yanked.
You did say “depraved indifference”, which has a specific technical legal meaning. Learn what words and phrases mean before you use them. Or better still, don’t misuse terms to lend support to emotional arguments.
A magic gun that did everything a regular gun did but was incapable of harming living beings would have no purpose. Except, I suppose, target shooting–but target shooting as a sport was invented to encourage military training and wouldn’t exist if guns couldn’t kill.
A magic knife that did everything a knife could do but couldn’t harm living beings would still cut my steak.
But “going bang and putting holes in things from a long way away” is a purpose, isn’t it? Just not one you find sufficient. It doesn’t matter if the sport came later (which is kinda tenuous, honestly; I suspect that protohumans were playing target games with rocks about the same time as they were hitting bunnies with them). Just as your knife still cuts steak, the gun still hits targets.
Cite?
And the arrow?
That’s some strawman there.
So…what do you think about a woman who on occasion legally carries her concealed weapon because she is a double-survivor of rape and sexual assault by (incontrovertibly) larger, much stronger men who decided not to obey the law?
Mull over it a bit before answering.
I call bullshit. I think that if you legitimately considered what you know about the history of weapons, firearms, and humans, you would recognize this is obviously correct. Firearms–like bows before them–were made as killing tools, and the first sport shooters could only have been those who were practicing using the weapons for legitimate firing. Unless you seriously think that a non-soldier decided to buy his own gun because all those banging noises from the soldiers looked kinda fun? You’re calling “cite” just to complicate the issue and avoid conceding a point.
That said, here’s your cite anyway.
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/smallarms/p/englongbow.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541546/shooting
is, like the gun, a tool whose sole utility lies in its lethality.
Unlike the gun, it is less likely to let one person kill dozens, and is less likely to accidentally kill a child who stumbles across it in an unlocked drawer.
But yes, an arrow that can’t harm living things has no utility outside of a sport that wouldn’t exist if it couldn’t harm living things.
I’ve been dipping into this thread on and off, mainly through horrified fascination as the gun-carrying mindset is pretty alien to this English lad, just thought I chip in on this.
Handguns are pretty much unknown in the UK and have been for the 40+ years I’ve been conscious. The only time a UK person will see a real one is probably on foreign police or perhaps a UK airport.
We don’t live in fear of violent crime, a gun for protection?..from what? I can think of confrontations and situations that would have ended up badly had there been a ready of supply of handguns but none that would have benefited.
And I don’t buy that gun control means only the bad guys are armed and dangerous. As a standard citizen of the UK you can’t own a handgun for any reason. I assume that the criminals we have here don’t play by the rules and so remain free to obtain handguns and so fleece and kill the public at will. And yet they don’t.
Guncrime just doesn’t figure. Only about 50 people per year in total are killed by firearms (30 last year! and only 7 of them by handguns). Here are the official stats, interesting reading
So why don’t the criminals pounce on us? Why don’t criminals here get guns and use them? If the gun advocates position is that gun control tips the balance in the criminal’s favour then why do we not see those effects here? Shouldn’t there be a bloodbath?
I’d suggest that simply by having less guns overall we lower the risk for everyone. Criminals and victims alike, I’m quite comfortable with that. If someone is going to rob me I’d be happier knowing that they reckon a knife gives them the edge (ha!) rather than a gun.
Guns are extremely hard to come by for UK criminals. Hence the fact they are ‘rented’ out in criminal circles and converted antiques and eastern european starter pistols are popular.
Guns are problems in certain limited circumstance. Knives much more so. The severe penalties attached to being even indirectly involved with guns combined with the ongoing and direct interest the police take in gun provision means gun use for crime is heavily deterred.
The game just isn’t worth the candle, especially as the Duggan case shows, if the police think you have a gun they are just going to shoot you on the slightest provocation.
I’m all for our draconian gun laws as they make us collectively much safer.
In fact they need to be even tougher.
Considering the level of hoplophobia on display here, I’d say carrying a gun is the braver act.
Well apparently the liberal-progressive answer is to reform society, so men are “taught not to rape” :eek: :dubious:. And if you are attacked, you’re supposed to scream, call 911, use improvised weapons like car keys, even try to talk the attacker down- anything but use a gun. Defend yourself with a gun? Why, that’s perpetuating our violence culture! :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
The reason I asked for a cite was to point out that target shooting derives from archery, and archery in turn derives from human prehistory where it had dual utility as a weapon of warfare, human against human, and as a tool of hunting, human against sources of protein.
You have carefully conflated these uses as 'killing."
I argue that this is deliberately mucking the waters of the discussion; there is a principled difference between the killing of a human and the killing of an animal.
Right. But there is no moral onus against the killing of living things. We should be able to kill and eat living things with no suggestion that there is some grave moral wrong attached thereto.