Another thing to keep in mind, World Eater, is that there are places (Switzerland comes to mind) where this kind of weaponry is all over the place.
They don’t have much trouble with it, at least as far as I’m aware.
Wrong. People kill people every year. No firearm has ever killed a person without someone causing it to discharge.
I don’t have to provide a clear and pressing need to own an AK-47. I own it because I like it, I wanted it, I had the money, I paid for it, and now it’s mine. If you think it should be banned and taken away from me, you will have to demonstrate that there is a clear and compelling interest for the government to do so.
However, due to the extremely low rate of deaths caused by people shooting people, you’d be hard pressed to actually provide that proof before you could provide proof that tobacco, alcohol and McDonald’s should be banned. After all, nobody needs tobacco, alcohol or McDonald’s, and all three of those lead to more deaths every year than shootings do.
Jolly ol’ England has banned private ownership of firearms. Jolly ol’ England recently had a35% rise in gun crimes. Banning doesn’t work for some stuff, plain and simple. Look at the attempts to ban alcohol, narcotics, etc. People want, people get.
And since I am not going to go shoot up a school any time soon, I see no point in taking away my firearms.
I’ve hunted with a semi-automatic weapon before. Completely legal, and I would have completely missed even worse had I been using a non-semi-automatic gun.
How far would you take your ban? Why is a semi-auto shotgun more dangerous than a pump action? The firing rate is similar for both. Do you think people should only have muzzle loading black powder guns?
Can I keep my air cannon? I can shoot things a lot heavier than a bullet with it, with nearly a mile range.
Point of order, catsix, several people are shot by their pets every year.
Is a semi automatic rifle really neccessary to deal with them? Seriously.
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I’m not advocating banning cars. I feel the negatives of these weapons far outweight the benefits of owning them. I don’t think thats such an unreasonable point of view.
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Because your son went nuts because he couldn’t get laid, so he stole your gun and blew away a bunch of people. I didn’t buy one, yet I’m still affected by the ability to legally own one.
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So the law was pretty toothless, is that what you are saying?
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Perhaps, but they don’t seem to be as much of a problem.
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To me it’s not important how many laws they are violating, because 10 laws or 50 laws won’t stop them. My main concern is to be able to deny people a means to kill or wound many people in a very short amount of time. IMO these sort of weapons provide that capabilty more so then other weapons.
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This has nothing to do with it.
Ah, so said Brutus. But wait, you have the potential to become a criminal, since their are many people in jail today who didn’t set out to become one (they were law-abiding) until they pulled the trigger and killed somebody. 
As Dave Barry likes to say, don’t laugh, I am not making this up. (This has been offered in a counter arguement in GD and here, before)
The problem, my dear Mr. Eater, is that you are asking gun owners to justify owning their guns… when, in actuality, it should be those who wish to ban them that need to justify their desire to ban.
Look at the percentages: Less than one-tenth of one percent of guns are used to kill people. That’s enough to demand a ban? That’s just nutty.
Don’t get extremist on the other side. I’m sure somewhere, at some time, someone has been killed by pure accident; a gun overheating and firing or some other scenario.
Just some info for World Eater on how often “assault weapons” are used in crimes.
From here
Assault weapons are not the weapons of choice among drug dealers, gang members or criminals in general. Assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.20%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes.
Do you even know what a semi-auto is?
Let me state that I am not delusional in thinking banning these things will make everything peachy. There are many steps that need to be taken in addressing this problem, from education to reviewing the current effectiveness of the gun laws. Crime will never be eradicated, and people will always be killing each other one way or another, so lets leave that out of this.
Spoofe, according to this website, 28,000 people were killed to gun violence.
(yes it’s an anti-gun site, but those numbers seem about right)
About 10,000 to homicides and 16,000 to suicides.
Now lets move into fantasy world here. Eliminate all guns, and that’s 26,000 deaths avoided.
</fantasy world>
Now we know know that ain’t going to happen, because there are more ways to do both without a gun. The problem I have, or I should say the way I look at it is, a gun is the easiest way to kill someone (I suppose a machete and a sleeping victim might be easier but I digress…), and for a person to commit suicide. I feel the absence of guns would make these things harder to accomplish, which in turn would result in lower deaths. I’m well aware that guns will always be obtained illegally, I just feel that a 19 year old buying an AK47 at a national chain store isn’t quite right.
I’ve never owned a gun, I live in NYC, and a ban on any type of gun couldn’t affect me any less, so living without a gun is not a big deal to me. I realize that is not the case for everyone, and don’t assume I think otherwise.
The cite provided identified the fact that there were a “record” 97 murders attributed to firearms over the previous 12 months. A BBC report indicates that according the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998, firearms were used in 68% of murders in America, compared to 7% in England and Wales. There were 16,914 murders in the United States in 1998, according to the FBI “Uniform Crime Reports.”
You probably shouldn’t use that cite to back up your position, since it actually refutes it.
You want to ban handguns?
You’ve got a lot of balls preemptively complaining about someone else possibly “spinning” this, while that’s exactly what you’re doing yourself.
You seem to be really over-estimating the amount of use “assault weapons” get in crimes. I mean, this shooting is supposed to be a case against assault weapons? Kip killed and injured many more people, with a .22! Harris and Klebold had three times the shot-to-kill ratio, using 9mm and 12-guage weapons.
And considering that there are numerous entrances that have to be guarded, and a limited number of guards, it’s not surprising that they got in. Especially if they’re students, and know all the entrances and exits, as well as where the guards are likely to be. And even if a guard had been in their way, I doubt that would have stopped them… Hell, there’s now a full police officer on full-duty at Thurston. It doesn’t matter There could have been a full SWAT team in the main office, ready to move out at the first sign of trouble, and it wouldn’t have made a difference.
You hear about this, and your first action is to rant about the weapon? “Horrible” indeed :rolleyes:
And as for the two shootings I mentioned above, guns were, actually, the better option. Imagine either of the two shootings I mentioned above if one of them had detonated one of the large bombs they had. Would have been a far higher death count, I’d bet.
I don’t mean to for the next statement to come across as rudely as it’s going to, but…
Do you even know what a “semi-automatic weapon” is?
Quick gun lesson:
A manually operated repeater is a gun where you have to ratchet a lever (in the case of a bolt action rifle) or pull back a hammer (in the case of a revolver) or pull a pump (in a shotgun) etc. There are dozens of types of actions. These tend to be accurate and powerful. Y’know how in all those Arnold films where he has a pump-action shotgun? That’s a “manually operated” shotgun.
When the trigger’s pulled, the gun fires, then the shooter reaches up and pulls back the bolt (or ratches the pump or pulls back the hammer or whatever) and then the gun is fired again.
“Semi-Automatic weapons” whcih is a scary name, but only means guns where, after the trigger is pulled, the gas or recoil from the expanding gas pushes the bolt (or hammer, or slide) back. You still have to pull the trigger each time the gun is fired. This only saves a fraction of a second.
In this case, when the trigger’s pulled, the gun fires, the bolt slides back on it’s own and the trigger has to be pulled again
On a “fully automatic weapon”, the trigger’s pulled once and held down and the gun keeps firing until it runs out of ammo or the trigger is released.
And semi-auto technology isn’t anything new or modern: it was invented in 1893 (the Borschardt).
There’s no real difference between the deadliness of a semi-auto and a manually operated repeater. In point of fact, most bolt-action rifles are more powerful and accurate (while firing only a fraction of a second slower) than semi-autos.
Suppose the shooting had been done with a Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle. If that were the case, would you be calling for them to be banned? If not, what is it about semi-autos vs bolt-actions that make them so much more deadly from your point of view?
Fenris
On preview
Sam
It would partially depend on whether or not a bolt-action rifle, for example, had a clip. Your speed will be greater if you can just work the bolt without having to completely reload.
Congratulations, World Eater, you have fallen, as so many have before you, into the mindset that it is the object, not the operator, that is at fault.
Not one word about the kids, the gang, or any of that nonsense. Nope, obviously it was the gun that was at fault. Had all the guns magically vanished last week, those kids would, instead of hacking out their version of gangland honor and vengeance, instead be dancing about the maypole and singing hymns.
Trite and overused as they are, please repeat the following until you understand the significance:
Matches do not cause arson.
Eating utensils do not cause obesity.
Cars and trucks- even the dreaded SUVs- do not cause drunk driving.
Computers do not cause internet porn or nigerian scams.
Firearms do not cause murders.
You, personally, have no use for, nor wish to own a firearm. That’s fine, more power to you. However, keep in mind the other 179,999,999 firearms in America were NOT used in a crime today.
As noted above, simply having the gun on school grounds was itself illegal, discharging a firearm inside city limits is a crime, murder and attempting murder is illegal, minors in possession of a firearm unsupervised, is- in most places- illegal… one can go on and on.
Had they not had the rifle, chances are they would have, like that gang in California, beaten him to death with sticks and pipes. Or as happened last year in New York, they’d have stabbed him to death and slit his throat.
Why assume that, without a gun handy, they would not have taken their retribution out in some other fashion? Is a stabbing somehow a more palatable death, since the perp didn’t stoop to using a gun?
Astorian and Fenris, guests this week on
WHEN GUN-GEEKS QUIBBLE 
You’re correct, of course, but I was assuming a clip, since (IIRC) the vast majority of bolt-actions have 'em.
“IMO” is not the basis to form an argument. It also doesn’t help that you obviously aren’t an authority in the area you’re speaking. IMO, you seem pretty ignorant about them.
So tell me, what makes these weapons more lethal than, say, a regular old pump action shotgun that no one really calls for the banning of?
Not that we’ll ever test it, but I can almost garuntee you that I could inflict a lot more fatalities with a common remmington 870 shotgun than you could do with any ak-47, even a real one.
Oh, and you can’t buy an ak-47 at any old walmart. You can buy rifles based on the ak-47 design and action, but certainly not an actual one. Not that I think that’s especially relevant, but I want to clear that up.