There are, quite literally, 100’s of millions of guns in the US. If we count every gun death as a crime, that’s about 4 orders of magnitude difference between gun deaths and guns…so, I’d say that people are already doing a pretty good job of keeping guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them.
The Lanza case was one case where the mother apparently didn’t have the gun locked up from her son. He knew she had several and killed her in her sleep. Just a week or so ago it was on our news that a 4 year old accidently killed its 7 year old sibling, and there are more people killed for apparently little or no reason than ever before, and many are killed by guns, some stolen, some purchased by a legal buyer, and some accidently shot as in the Chaney case.
I am not against a person owning a gun, but I do believe they should be responsible for how or by whom it is used!
Good for the responsible owners. That still doesn’t mean all people should not be held responsible for who uses their weapon.
I’m not sure what you mean. There are laws pertaining to abuse already on the books. If you mean someone stealing your gun and doing harm with it, do you feel the same about someone stealing your car and doing harm with it? What about loaning a gun/car to someone who does something wrong with it?
The same goes for any number of other household hazards. How many children are poisoned by chemicals in the home, for instance, each year? How many drown in swimming pools, or fall? How many electrocuted? How many die in car accidents because they were improperly belted in? We have laws and ordinances to attempt to mitigate all of that and more, yet they still happen.
So you think we should hold Adam Lanza’s mother responsible for what her son did with her stolen guns? Lets say she survived and she was rich. Do you think she should be charged with 25 murders? Do you think those family’s should be able to sue her because her son stole her guns and killed people with them?
This sounds to me like punishing people for bad luck.
A carefully locked away gun is of minimal use for self-defense. And I’m skeptical that all those gun cabinets given as Christmas gifts are really used. When my father in law, a good man, died, his grandchildren told us where his guns were hidden away. Fortunately they are proverbial good kids, like millions of others similarly situated. If any of them had been born with a gene for the kind of impulsiveness that leads to playing with a gun, that wouldn’t have made my father in law one iota better or worse a person.
A loved one being shot with your gun (or being executed for using it in a murder!) is already a terrible punishment. Piling on such tragic bad luck with prison time is inhumane.
As for my father in law, as I said, he was a good man. I just don’t think his guns made anyone safer.
What it is- is punishing people for owning a gun. See, many anti-gun people hate and fear guns. They can’t imagine how or why you’d want one in the home. To them, it’s like an Ophidiophobe and a tank full of snakes. They can’t understand why anyone would want one of those horrible dangerous things in the house.
I don’t want to punish people for owning a gun. I’d punish a serial violator of laws forbidding sales of certain kinds of guns, although first I’d try taking away his or her license.
And so do many gun owners. Aside from hunting, fear may be the main reason people buy guns.
I can. Some have a sporting interest. But a big part is fear. I realize it’s not just fear of guns. Some gun owners are also fearful of knife attacks. And a whole lot of them seem to be fearful of Barack Obama.
There is a big difference between a person who leaves their car or gun in a place where it is easy for a person to get at it and one who locks the car or gun, makes sure no bullets are available, plus they must have insurance for their car, and an adult who would let their 5 year old child take their car and hit some one with it is held responsible.
Of course one cannot keep some things away from some one all the time who are capable of stealing or high jacking their car, but they can be as responsible as they can be. One of course can not stop all crime, but a lot could be prevented.
Years ago one very seldom heard of a teen killing anyone, there were killings but not as much as now. I admit there are more people, and more with guns; a long way from back when the gun could have to be reloaded as it was during the civil war and before that. I can’t recall any one going into a theater, shopping area, or a school, killing people they didn’t even know.
I have no solution, I wish I did. I do believe that most people were responsible years ago than they are now.
[QUOTE=monavis]
The Lanza case was one case where the mother apparently didn’t have the gun locked up from her son. He knew she had several and killed her in her sleep.
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I don’t see how requiring guns to be locked up would have helped. I would think that if you are willing to kill your mother, breaking open a lock (or simply taking the key and opening it) is not that much greater a step.
Regards,
Shodan
The incidence of accidental shootings has been steadily decreasing for decades.
The incidence of mass shootings has has a recent spike but the numbers have always been really low. Remember the term “going postal” those happened years ago.
http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2012/08/no_increase_in_mass_shootings.html
There is nothing really new going on.
Well, if you think the government and bureaucracy of Syria is equivalent to that of the US, you’re confused. I mean, I understand that you want the potential to exist, but it doesn’t. Any real attempt to overthrow the US government would be detected and stopped long before it gets off the ground.
If you look at facts, whatever people are calling assault weapons kill very few people annually so there is quite a bit of upset and money being spent on a relatively small problem.
In the United States in 2010 11,078 people were killed by guns. Two-thirds of those were suicides.
Annually obesity and it’s related causes kill about 300,000 people in the USA.
And a combination of alcohol, legal and illegal drugs and the results of using them kill between 75,000 to 100,00 people per annum.
My figures come from NBC Network, National Institute of Health, Center for Disease Control and a site called “The War Against Drugs, A Common Sense Approach.”
I guess if we were smart we’d listen to the First Lady. I think she’s on to something.
This is in error. That’s the number of gun homicides. Total gun deaths were 31,672.
With guns, 11,078 and 31,672 are real numbers. With obesity, the number 300,000 is a projection which varies a lot depending on how gathered. See:
Also, people who are shot tend to lose half their lives to the bullet. People whose death is hastened by obesity tend to die at more advanced ages.
And despite the impression you might get in Great Debates, the dangers of obesity get far more attention in the United States than the dangers of having a gun in the house. Dieting is a national obsession in a way that keeping guns out of homes is not.
I want fewer people to die of obesity. I want fewer people to die of being too thin. I want fewer people to drown. I want fewer people to die from falling off ladders. And I want fewer gun deaths. We can walk and chew gum at the same time here.
Quickly googling, I didn’t see figures prior to 1999, but for purposes of this post, I’ll take you word for it.
Two factors I see:
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People are more honest nowadays when it comes to suicide. Successful or failed, people are now more likely to admit it was suicide than to cover it up as an accident.
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Fewer households have guns. The best, most consistently obtained, data is from the University of Chicago General Social Survey, and they document a 30 percent decline since the 1970’s.
It was because some one had access to her guns, before she was murdered, I would guess that she bought the guns for the protection of her family and herself, It sure didn’t turn out that way, her son ( who she must have know had problems should have not been able to get at them) Now 27 people who would still be living are dead. In such a case the gun was no protection.
I never intended to prevent a person in their right mind or under age to not own a gun (or ban them) just try to keep an unauthorized person from getting at them.
Many arguments to get tangled up in here. And you know I stand with you in supporting healthy society. There is also the loss of productivity to consider. The national obsession with dieting is not a necessarily healthy approach, nor as government-driven as gun bans.
But not to go there I would say after some quick research it is very difficult to get unslanted data with all the gun hype these days. I recognize this. I also recognize the multiple hidden costs of all these choices which are nearly impossible to tease out.
You still don’t need on the dot figures to see trends.
In 2009 the state of MN spent 2.8 billion state funds treating obesity-related problems.
Same year, 4.5 billion on drug and alcohol-related problems.
In 2009 MN had 3 gun accidents, 46 gun homicides and 280 suicides.
Yes, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. But let’s get our priorities and sense of urgency in order or we fiddle while Rome burns.
Even most pro-gun advocates don’t realize the majority of gun violence is not directed outside of the home. Not a good thing, surely, but much less problematic to society in general than we are being led to believe.
Or how about focussing on only the pockets of gun violence? Do you know that it costs the state of Illinois nearly a million dollars of rehab for each living victim of gun violence in the city of Chicago? At high rates of gun violence something’s wrong there.
Worry less about old people not wanting to be a burden to their families and ending it all and more on why young people take guns into the streets and shoot each other.
I’ll go on some about this for a moment.
The problem as I see it, and as it has been presented by multiple news stories about mass gun deaths in our society, is a problem of violent youth - mainly males. Don’t most of them also have an urban background?
Perhaps if we made an effort to prevent people from obtaining guns until their brains had matured and they had had a period of time to demonstrate that they were sane, responsible citizens and then allowed them possession of firearms we would see a different picture.
By then it is hoped that they would have steady jobs and families and perhaps an investment in a safe social environment. There will always be some who fail to mature and feel a need to display some form of firepower or weapons of sorts to demonstrate their superiority.
There will also be gun collectors and history buffs. But social change is slow and I don’t see this group of people as being the problem. Nor are ranchers, farmers and members of the traditional western gun culture.
Maybe we aren’t looking closely enough at this and are painting with too broad a brush.