Uh, Chilly, stop and think about that for a moment. You cannot uncreate something. Quite frankly, since we humans invented guns, we’re stuck with them. The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how well the government (ANY government) tries to eliminate guns, they won’t be able to. There’s laws against drugs, but I can go down the street and buy just about anything I want (and I live in a relatively “safe” part of town). Simply passing laws and shutting down the factories where guns are produced won’t keep lunatics from getting guns if they really want them. (I’m a machinist and if I wanted, I could make a gun. It wouldn’t be easy, and I couldn’t do it overnight, but I could do it.) In fact, guns really aren’t that efficient a method of killing people. Bombs are much better. The only way to make a society totally “safe” is to so heavily regulate and monitor things that no one has any freedom, and that, IMHO is far worse than allowing people to own guns.
Thurston High School, May 21, 1998. Kip Kinkel enters the school through a back hallway and enters the cafeteria, firing a total of 51 rounds, injuring 22 students and killing 2, before he was tackled and disarmed. He had a Ruger 10/22 .22 LR rifle, a 9mm pistol, a .22 pistol, and over 500 rounds of .22 LR ammunition. He also had a 12-guage shotgun left in his parents car, which he had driven to the school.
At home, he had aproximatly a dozen IEDs (Illegal Explosive Devices; Home-made bombs) made from common, easily-obtainable ingredients, including one that would have been powerfull enough to destroy the entire home and severely damage the neighbor’s house some 100 feet away (semi-rural area). His original plan had been to leave one large explosive (Which would easily fit in a large backpack) under the bleachers at that day’s prep assembly, where about 1000 students would be sitting, in the middle of the gymnasium.
And it would be BETTER without the guns? At least this way, he was tackled after he opened fire. Hard to do that after a bomb goes off.
Or maybe it would have been better at Columbine if Harris and Klebold didn’t have access to guns. Of course, then they’d have probably had much more time to make sure the detonator for the explosive they had placed in the crowded cafeteria would work correctly. Yeah, much better.
I bow to everyone’s overwellming powerful debates against gun control. If something is hard to do, we just shouldn’t try.
Never did I argue that a) gun control would stop violence, b) the only way that people kill each other is with guns. I argued that (and I’m making this simple, and impossible to be misquoted or misunderstood) GUNS ARE BAD.
What I truely don’t understand is the knee-jerk reaction that people have to defending guns. The arguments all fall into two catergories: people would find other ways to kill one another, and it would be difficult to stop. Those aren’t arguments, as they don’t attack the premise of my statement that guns serve no real useful purpose in any sane society (maybe that’s it ‘sane’…hmmm).
You can talk about the ways that people could make bombs, but please don’t make statements that say ‘coulda been worse without the guns’. Is the argument that at least if we arm the crazy people they will only shoot at us? Nevermind the fact that someone bombing something and someone running into a building shooting are two completely different sets of psycosis. We could discuss the rational of anyone that ‘gets off shooting people’ versus ‘blowing people up’ but I won’t as it is another topic. The fact remanins is that every year thousands die from ACCIDENTAL exposure to guns, nevermind the intentional shooters.
Please someone out there come up with a logical argument against gun control. This isn’t a debate, this is people making statements that they have confused with arguments.
Anyone out there… I would love to hear any sort of rational explination that sites how the encouragement of gun use is better than the discouragement through anti-gun laws. Or even how the existance of guns has any sort of benefit to society. Post and rant if you must, but think before you do.
I don’t have any cites handy for how the encouragement of gun use is better than discouragement through anti-gun laws. This is a highly charged answer, and I suspect I could find reams of studies vigorously proving either side. I’ve read that crime drops in states that have concealed-carry laws, but, as I’ve said, there is motivation to skew the issue.
I can, however, think of several instances where the existance of guns has benefit to society:
- Procuring food-this is a classic case where guns are a benefit to society. I don’t personally like the idea of killing animals for sport, but I do approve of hunting for food.
- Military use-will anyone dispute this?
- Police use
- Self-protection-especially for women, who lose out in confrontations with men due to size, weight and strength differences.
- Sport-skeet and target shooting never looked fun to me, but I know some people enjoy them.
- Scapegoat-I don’t think this is necessarily a benefit, but I think it’s definitely a benefit to people who want easy answers to hard questions. After the Columbine shootings, when a lot of focus shifted to identifying school shooters and working on gun laws, the question I wanted answered was “Why are people motivated to kill strangers at random, and is there any way we can cut down on motivation?”
In response to the first and second questions, black trenchcoats and scary stories were suddenly the tools of Satan and there was a lot of talk about handgun control and gun-show loopholes, but my question is as yet unanswered. I suspect it never will be.
You didn’t? Sounds like it here:
But guess what? This isn’t a thread about gun control! This is a thread about zero tolerance. No one talked about guns until you brought it up. My only point was that facile solutions don’t solve complex problems. Zero tolerance is a facile solution. Banning guns is a facile solution. That’s it. I can’t take seriously someone who calims to be furthering the discussion by substituting one facile solution for another. M’kay?
I think we scared away all of the people actually interested in the real topic at hand.