Yes, but when it comes to “handgun ownership” it’s a completely different story.
It is extremely difficult in Canada for private individuals to own handguns.
Considering that the overwhelming majority of gun-related deaths in the US are due to handguns, that’s obviously a pretty significant difference.
As Clothahump patiently explained, the obvious way to reduce Canada’s already lower incidence of gun violence to zero is to introduce lots and lots and lots more handguns for everyone, everywhere, at all times. And I bet more beer would help too, if that’s even possible.
Actually, most of the gun related deaths in the USA are suicides. However, it is true that of the 10000 or so homicides caused by guns, somewhere between 60-80% involve handguns, varying by year and definitions. Anti-gun dudes routinely include the 15000-20000 suicides as “gun violence’ but IMHO, suicide is not a crime, but a right.
What is amazing here is the level of ignorance by the anti-gunners. Not only are they ignorant, but they are willfully ignorant, and what is most amazing- proud of their ignorance. “All I know is that guns are eviiiiil!!!”.
It’s similar to the Fundie arguments about evolution. “All I know is what’s in the Bible, and I ain’t descended from no monkey!”
cough
This is a preposterous statement. I assure you that whatever might have been true in 1815, Canadians culturally far, far closer to the United States than to the UK.
The USA feels a lot like Canada to me. England, though, was a foreign country.
If you believe society’s obligation to facilitate something as frivolous as gun collecting and hunting, is equivalent to its obligation to reduce easy access to weapons that allow killings like the one you had yesterday, your priorities are messed up.
And no, your points on hunting being essential to control wildlife populations are not convincing. Ecosystems balance themselves just fine without human involvement. And in the rare case that human involvement is essential, I’m positive our ingenuity will come up with ways to kill animals that do not require widespread dissemination of guns.
As for not being aware of the court ruling on police, I freely admit that I do not know about it. But why do you consider that to be static and unchanging? If society decides that part of its obligations are to reduce gun violence by reducing guns, it must also decide part of its obligations are to try and fill what legitimate gaps this causes.
On the smoking issue, I have no clue why you’re having difficulty understanding my position. People smoke. This is bad for them and imposes certain costs on society. Society does try and increase the cost to the smokers through taxes, but allows them to smoke. howver, smoking is also bad for people around them. This is why, in much of the developed (and now even developing) world, smoking in public places is BANNED.
If you think that there isn’t already a government monopoly on force, you’re kidding yourself. All guns allow you to do is make things worse.
And I stand by what I said. The only situation in which the best response is to whip out a gun is in a B-movie.
Even the MOST charitable interpretation I can come up with for that is anecdotal evidence. And if you can’t see that article is propaganda, there isn’t much sense in continuing to talk to you, and I will not.
Get theft insurance, call the cops, lock themselves into the bedroom. And if they must have guns, I expect there are guns available that cannot be concealed or reloaded quickly - long barreled shotguns, old style rifles. Allow those.
You realise you’re not making the case for gun ownership any stronger here?
Are you claiming the only way to deal with this problem is the way it is being dealt with currently?
Can you cite for me how many people were killed by wildlife in the US? And how much wildlife was killed in self defence?
While it may have sounded like I am an advocate of a total ban, I’m not really. Guns that fulfill certain criteria which makes gun violence ‘excludable’ at least to some extent are ok in my book. If the guns are large and difficult to conceal. If they’re difficult to reload quickly. If they’re difficult to obtain and keep, and not allowed in public spaces - say - outside your home.
Well, do you feel your gun lust in someway, even of only infinitesimally so, contributes to such massacres as is the topic du jour?
If so, the answer is obvious. If not, stand fast, idio… solider.
You remind me of western communists in the '20s and '30s. When some of them visited the Soviet Union to see the Worker’s Utopia for themselves and came back with horror stories of repression, starvation, mass arrests and executions, the stay at homes accused them of having turned traitor and slandering the revolution.
Third opinion wanted: is the article I linked to “propaganda” or not?
First off, the OP says he is in favor of sensible restrictions on guns, so he probably agrees with you and this is unnecessary. Second, the commentary about gun lust is well poisoning. And third, you’re not allowed to insult other posters in this forum (and that’s an insult even if you pretending to trail off and substitute a different word). Don’t do this again.
Oops, confused this with another thread.
The graph on this page shows homicides in the US by race. Black people commit murder at a rate that is 700% higher than white people.
You keep Comparing Canada to the United States as if they are similar culturally. They are not. Canada did not allow slavery. The United States did. The consequences created a disenfranchised subculture which has had a consistently higher rate of murder.
And you keep stating that people are killed by guns. Guns do not murder people. They are a convenient tool for accomplishing the act of murder but are not the cause. They are inanimate objects and can be easily substituted by the use of a knife or for that matter, a ball point pen in the eye.
Baseball bats? Try tasers. They allow a small unfit person to defend themselves from a large fit person. As does pepper spray. Nonlethal self defense is the way to go.
We call that disenfranchised culture “Aboriginals.” The murder rate in ten times higher than the rest of the population.
The problem is that nonlethal self defense methods often don’t work. That’s why the police don’t rely solely on them (although they do use them when they can). Alas, the Star Trek “phaser on stun” hasn’t been invented yet.
and the worst POS handgun has a range that far outstrips pepper spray or a taser.
IMHO, the debate comes down to this- Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?:
“Regardless of whether it’s a violation of the rights of lawful gun owners or not, guns must be restricted because the harm that a single madman can do with one is simply intolerable.”
Those who agree take the position that the solution is restricting firearms. Those who disagree take the position that the solution is more people able to defend themselves against an armed criminal or madman.
I disagree because the problem is not the tool used to kill people and it’s ineffectual to remove the tool in question. This has been demonstrated over and over again in places with the most restrictive gun laws.
I’m not a gun advocate per se nor do I own a gun.
Yes we should have these conversations as long as we are looking for methods in addition to gun control to curb the violence. I am not a gun lover nor do I own a gun, but I think we need to be very careful when we start talking about curbing constitutionally granted rights.
Seems that violence doesn't come from the gun but from unstable, frighteningly demonic minds. But what can you expect? Americans seem to enjoy violence. The most popular movies are always rife with killing, war, and horrendous crash. Not to mention diabolical plots to wipe out humanity. Americans are the first to turn to thoughts of war when we think we have been wronged. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.
What we need to do is to take stock of ourselves and our values and to start to teach and act with civility. Until we change and to teach ourselves that each and everyone of us has the right to exist with dignity, we will undoubtedly continue to kill each other - regardless of restrictive guns laws.
We need to take positive steps to monitor those in our society who are struggling with life. We need to ensure that professional care is at hand and that taking advantage of it is not a negative stigma. We need to care about each other and to teach our children the same.Agreed that the anomalously high rate of all violence in America needs looking at, badly.
It’s worth noting in these kinds of discussions that a sufficiently skilled metalsmith (say, on the level of a vo-tech shop class) can make a relatively reliable full-auto submachine gun pretty easily. Fixed-ping gas blowback submachine guns are frighteningly easy to manufacture, and will become officially trivial the minute we can do 3-d printing with anything other than plastic.
It’s also worth noting the success rate of our national attempts thus far at keeping drugs and undocumented immigrants out, and wondering how that might apply to firearms coming from the same locations.
So my position in the debate is much closer to “trying to ban firearms to prevent massacres is a fool’s game.”