Personally, I think it’s a piece of crap but it looks cool and inspires a great mental image.
Kalashnikov, here’s the real reason why your mandatory course is a bad idea. The actual number of accidents that occur by children finding firearms and using them is extremely small. Yes, the media makes a big deal out of it and Ann Landers mentions every such incident, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a major problem. If we need a public school course to deal with a very minor safety risk like that, then logically we would need new school courses to deal with any number of other risks.
And I’m still waiting for proof that children who are “deliberately kept ignorant” about guns pose more danger than those who aren’t.
Spoofe:
Australia always had strong gun laws. There were beefed up even further in the late 90s. There cannot be an “expected reduction” in crime consequent upon that, because guns typically aren’t used in crime in Australia. Armed robbery, relative to other countries with lax gun laws, is infrequent.
[quote]
In almost every gun debate, the Big 3 (Australia, Canada, and/or England) are pointed to for comparison. The comparison works on some levels, but doesn’t work on others (economic and social climate, the fact that neither of those three ever had a major gun culture, etc.)
/quote]
This is true, only in so far as it relates to gun culture. Economically and socially you’d be hard pressed to find another country that didn’t line up with those countries - except Japan, perhaps, which any event has no gun culture due to its strict gun laws.
Please see the post by kalashnikov near the top of this thread:
Tedster says: “make it mandatory for every law abiding citizen to own at least one handgun and a rifle or shotgun.”
kalashnikov replies: “That seems to have worked in Kennesaw, Georgia. And in Switzerland”
I agree with you that the Switzerland example seems to show that private gun ownership does not necessarily equate with high crime. But conversely, one can’t say that private gun ownership necessarily lowers the crime rate either. Which is the point I was trying to make.
Sewalk…
Well, I meant Steyr guns in general, and the bullpup design in particular.
http://www.remtek.com/arms/steyr/index.htm
Dave Stewart…
Exactly my point (well, sorta). New gun laws in and of themselves won’t solve anything… especially if there’s not a problem to solve in the first place (the vast majority of Australia’s crimes do not involve guns at all).
I didn’t think Japan had ANY culture at all. 
Not to be down on Switzerland, but perhaps the low gun related crime there comes from the fact that EVERY able bodied male in the country is either on active duty in the Army, or part of the active reserves. Everyone serves a term in the Army, and all have to go in for training and what have you periodically until retirement age. This is much like the draft in the US, but it takes everyone. I am not saying that this is a bad idea, just that it might be difficult to copy.
Now. What might cause the Swiss system to produce lower rates of gun related deaths? Well, everyone who has been in the Army (which is just about every male in the country) has had a thorough training in weapons safety, handling, and usage. The training is periodically refreshed, also. The Swiss also take the matter very seriously. I seem to remember a quote from a Swiss General who was asked about the Swiss Army’s capability if the country were invaded. He was asked something along the lines of “The Swiss Army has X thousand soldiers on active duty. What would you do if you were invaded by three times X thousand enemy soldiers.” The General answered “Each of my men would fire three times and go home.”
Still and all, though, it comes down to education. Education, education, education. But then again, doesn’t everything.
As for the suicide aspects of gun related deaths, I think there needs to be more public awareness of the causes, signs, and treatment of depression in general. A friend of my wife killed herself last year. She took a table and a rope out in the woods, climbed up on the table, tied the rope to a tree, and hung herself. Since she had been in psychotherapy for depression on and off for a couple of years, I would put the responsibility on ineffective treatment. She was not on any medicaments for her depression - her doctors were doing work therapy and psychoanalysis with her. The talk it out crap didn’t cut it, and the work therapy backfired on them because she was having problems with the people she had to work with, and also made a couple of mistakes (ordinary dropped something and made a mess type of things) which got her into more trouble with her coworkers.
The best way to reduce gun related deaths by suicide is to reduce the incidence of suicide in general. A suicidal person will kill himself with or without a gun.
Actually, this goes for a lot of murders, too. How many times this year have I read about people knifed, beat, hammered, axed, etc to death? Quite often here in Germany where the gun control laws are pretty strict. There have also been a considerable number of cases of registered gun owners snapping and wiping out their families, too.
Might not the type of weapons also have some bearing? Presumably we are mostly talking rifles here. Not that I have any experience in such things but I would guess that they would be pretty clumsy holding up a liquor store.
That may be true (I don’t think that it is), but it doesn’t matter. There appears to be a good deal of evidence that eliminating private ownership of guns does not lower crime. So even if crime doesn’t go up, that means an armed populace is AT WORST no more crime-ridden than an unarmed one. That in turn means that the nominal reason #1 for gun control is out the window. It’s always supposedly to prevent crime, but when new measures and bans are enacted, crime is not reduced, and in many cases it increases.
Therefore, the benefits of gun control are not sufficient to justify violating Citizens’ rights, regardless of whether it is currently chic to acknoledge those rights. Especially ones that are enumerated specifically in the Constitution.
Funny, the pro-gun control argument seems to be that my right to keep and bear arms violates the public’s right not to be killed, thus justifying the public’s violating MY rights and disarming me.
How is one argument different from the other? I personally would like to see everyone educated on guns, if for no other reason than to demystify them. We live in a prohibitionary society. Everything that we don’t like gets banned. Sadly, the people doing the banning are the ones who hate and fear guns, and most often know very little about them. I’m sure cars look really scary to somebody who has never seen one. Does that mean they should be banned?
Then you might have considered a different title for this thread.
Also, it seems to me that a mandatory gun class would just glorify guns to children. Especially a live demonstartion with a reactive dummy and tracers would entice them to try it at home.
How so? The kids whose houses don’t have guns wont have easy access to them.
On a seperate note, Chris Rock had an interesting idea for how to reduce accidental shootings. Make bullets cost like $500 each. There’d be no waste if you had to take two jobs to afford the murder you want to commit.
Assuming one can set aside the increase or decrease in criminal activities, you are ignoring the injuries or deaths that can happen through accidental discharge of weapons. If one wants to justify the usefulness of guns in today’s society, that must be taken into account: do the benefits of gun ownership outweight the harm that can occur through improper usage? Imperfect analogy: Deadly poisons can be useful in some circumstances, but their sale is controlled.
Here we go into the argument “should gun ownership be a fundamental right?” Coming from a western european perspective, I probably have a different opinion of what a fundamental right should be. When reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I see no explicit mention of weapons. I fully realize that the founders of the USA decided to include that right in the constitution of this country, but as far as I know this is a right that is not mentioned in the constitution of any other of the western european countries that have societies similar to the USA. Not trying to debate whether it should be a fundamental right, I am mentioning this only to explain how the existence of such a “fundamental right” might not seem self-evident to many europeans, in the same way that the european insistence on a “fundamental right to life” that would exclude the death penalty would seem misguided to many citizens of the USA.
I think someone mentioned with respect to Switzerland, but it seems to me that the intentional use of firemarms in violent crime is best prevented by economic prosperity. No, I don’t have anything to back that up, sorry.
I would be interested in knowing how many folks are killed each by firearms, how many accidently and how many “on purpose”. I just have no idea what the scope of this is.
But I have no need to justify their usefulness. You are forgetting that it is the responsibility of one who wants to ban or regulate possession of guns to justify HIS actions, not the other way around. Which leads nicely into…
Then, from my perspective at least, it’s fortunate that I’m not a citizen of Amnesty International (exactly what weight of law do they carry?) or any western European states. I am a citizen and resident of the United States, so I concern myself chiefly with the laws and protections afforded such. And when I read the Constitution for the United States of America, I do see an explicit mention of weapons and the right of the people to bear them. One of the presumptions of this country is that people (you and I) have the right to keep arms, and to bear them. As a result of this presumption, the Second Amendment declares the government’s lack of power to infringe upon those rights. In order to change that, a Constitutional Amendment is required, which is no trivial matter. The bottom line is that I don’t need to justify my desire to own a gun, to speak my mind, or to refuse a police officer entry into my home without a warrant. The government needs to present an overwhelming case of need to contravene my rights. The onus is in your court, not mine.
I (sort of) can understand your viewpoint, even though I disagree strongly. But I am not a citizen of Earth. I’m a citizen of a nation which, though crappy in many ways, protects my individual rights to a degree unmatched in the majority of the world. You yourself said that you were surprised that no notification of the local government was needed to move or travel. The Constitution protects and guarantees many more rights than those, many of which were written specifically in redress of offenses committed against the colonies by major western European powers (see Amendment 3).
So what’s my point? Sorry, I don’t mean to ramble so much. The point is that I don’t need to justify a fundamental right before I exercise it. You need to justify to me why I should not exercise it. You need my permission to override my rights, not I yours to exercise them.
I hope you understand that I’m not attacking you, and that I mean no offense. I just don’t at all agree with your position.
Joe_Cool: I realize what the US constitution guarantees as a right. I also realize that legislators in the USA are not bound by the customs and laws in other parts of the world (thought I strongly argue that freedoms should not be abrogated without sufficient reason, as you say.) But considering the ownership of weapons as a “fundamental right” is a point of view that’s particular to the USA as far as I know (at least amongst “first world” countries), and not generally accepted by the international view on human rights, as I demonstrated by posting the link to the UDHR. I am trying to present the point of view of a european, who sees many rights that he deems being much more important (e.g. the right to life in the case of the death penalty) being neglected in this country, and who is not convinced that one item mentioned in the USA constitution is, in fact, truly a “fundamental right” vs. a particular law adopted by this one country.
My personal point of view: Do I think that in the current political climate in the USA, it would be possible to overturn the second amendment? No. Am I actively campaigning to overturn that amendment? No. But: do I think that overturning the second amendment would be a violation of what I consider to be the inalienable freedoms to which a human being has a birthright? Also no.
Finally: Is there sufficient justification to restrict ownership of weapons in this country? That’s where I’m on the fence, since I’m not really educated enough on the issue to form an opinion, and it’s not something that I really feel strongly enough about to research. However, my general opinion is that guns are dangerous objects, and the ownership of one has many more disadvantages than benefits, so I don’t own one. And I would be happier knowing that my neighbour did not own a gun.
Minor correction: in Switzerland, one does not need to notify the local government if one is travelling; only when one changes primary residences.
P.P.S. Joe_Cool, you don’t have to fear that you’re offending me by stating your opinion. I’ve heard worse than that in Great Debates!
Obviously this is just a translation, and while it doesn’t overtly mention a right to arms, it definitely implies it. At any rate, the U.S. is not unique in that matter.
I’m sorry to report that we disagree here as well. I think the U.S. at least would benefit greatly from a swifter, more liberal application of the death penalty.
I suspect this may be related to the fact that you and I have had the good fortune to grow up in environments where self-defense has not been a vital need. I further suspect that many people in places like China, Bosnia, Kosovo, Egypt, etc. would take issue with your claim that arming and defending oneself is not a basic human right. I found part of my information here. Feel free to browse the site for further abuses of human rights that can be enacted only by those nations that do not respect the citizen’s right to arm and defend himself.
Why should this be funny, considering that I’ve never advocated the abolition of private ownership of firearms?
Once again promoting the idea that there’s a massive movement to eliminate private ownership, which there isn’t. I haven’t seen any laws passed that ban people (other than kids and convicted felons) from owning guns. So who exactly are “the people doing the banning”. And what do you mean by “everything that we don’t like gets banned”? Everything that who doesn’t like? Does “we” mean the majority? Most people in the United States don’t use tobacco, but it hasn’t been banned.
As to your whole argument about guns being useful is battling government oppression, which exact rights have been defended so well here in the USA. We have harsher treatment of prisoners and longer sentences for almost all criminals than other wealthy industrial democracies. We have stricter drug laws. And we have the death penalty, which is a violation of human rights regardless of whether or not any one person supports it. Obviously, Americans with their guns have not been too successful at battling government tyranny, not in the present and not in the past. Needless to say, you love dragging up China and other such countries with completly different political and economic systems. However, the comparison to wealthy democracies, is however, a much more valid one.
Arnold Winkelried:
I’ve also had a bit of a notion for a while that possibly the ethnic and religious composition of any given society may have something to do with it, as well as economic stability.
IIRC, Switzerland is composed of ethnic Germans (or Germanic-stock), French and Italians. While there are significant cultural differences between these ethnic groups, they have had several centuries of homogenization, with several unifying events to place the concept of “Switzerland first” over allegiance to homeland ethnic ties, whereas the U.S.A. has not, at least since WW II.
Qwertyasdfg:
uhm…McVeigh didn’t shoot anybody.
See my reply to mangeorge, below. The method of training would certainly have a bit of a determinative impact on the percieved “coolness” factor of firearms among impressionable youth. Which is why any training methodology I might propose would include emphasis on the human factor of firearms violence. By trying to invoke some sort of “empathy” factor, the point that real people wind up really hurt, or worse, by misguided or criminal use of firearms, I would be trying to drive home the gravity and necessity of informed (safe) handling of firearms.
Not to be a better shot, or be “cool”, but just to be a safe person, should one encounter a firearm in a person’s home.
Dave Stewart:
Then what was the point? To pass sweeping laws based upon an anomolous event?
A down-under fella named amrussel and I went round-and-round in this thread concerning Australia’s crime stats. Given your low level of violent crime in general, and firearm aggravated crime in particular, even a difference of a few gun crimes a year can have a significant impact on your statistics without it being indicative of anything at all.
Interestingly enough, both Japan and Norway have little, if any private gun ownership, and yet have suicide rates equal to and greater than the U.S.'s, respectively.
While the suicide aspect of gun availability hasn’t been raised thus far in the debate, I find it telling, as several pro-control groups here in the U.S. routinely tout suicide stats right alongside crime stats as one of their reasons for enhanced control.
In the arena of international comparisons between various contry’s gun control laws, that little tidbit gets conveniently overlooked.
Interestingly enough, a recent U.N. Survey (profiled on The O’Reilly Factor here in the U.S.) of standard-of-living factors worldwide ranked Norway as the No. 1 country in the world in which to live.
mangeorge:
I understand and respect your position, but maybe you should consider it this way: Given that the rate of firearm ownership in the U.S. approaches 50%, is it altogether unreasonable to suppose that some of your (real or hypothetical) children’s friend’s parents might have a firearm in their home?
That your kid’s friend’s parents may or may not be as careful as you might like in the storage and security of their firearms? That your kids, visiting their friend’s homes after school, might not gain unsupervised access to a firearm?
In this scenario, wouldn’t you want your kids to have at least the rudimentary knowledge and training to know that a gun is not “a cool toy” to be played with? To not point the barrel in the wrong direction (like at each other) on a dare?
In the various educational proposals brought forth here, I don’t think anyone has been advocating training kids to join the NRA’s Junior Rifle Marksmanship Teams. What we’re concerned with is reducing even further the already extremely low accident rate with the basic, rudimentary knowledge and training that guns, when mishandled and toyed with unwisely and ignorantly, are extremely dangerous. Terminally so.
Back to Arnold:
If crime and criminal tendencies are linked to societal factors, as I believe them to be (with general firearm availability possibly playing a role), then I also believe that firearm accidents are directly related to general firearm availability.
Given that assumption, then America is very safe indeed, with myriad other accidental causes of death coming in way ahead of firearms. Automobiles are genocidal tools compared to firearms, accidentally speaking.
Accidents (general) are the 5th leading cause of death in the U.S., and from the .pdf extract at the National Center for Health Statistics’s Emergency Dept. Visits, firearm accidents come in at #13, lumped in with drownings, suffocation and “other [unspecified] mechanisms”.
And fatal poisons are commonly available; take a walk down the houshold cleaners aisle of any supermarket or retail store.
An excellent point, one I wish more of our Euro Dopers would consider in any GCD here in Great Debates. Not to hijack this into a death penalty debate, but most Americans do believe in the “fundamental right to life” until an individual transgresses against someone else’s right in a particularly heinous manner, and full due-process is achieved.
Tretiak: the information you seek can be found here: Deaths: Preliminary Data for 1999. For comparison purposes, you can check Deaths: Final Data for 1998
You need Adobe Acrobat, which is a free downlaodable program available here. Be patient, though; .pdf extracts take some time to load.
ITR: I think you are overlooking the “incremental” approach HCI and like groups have been taking towards at least handgun bans. From where people like myself and other pro-gun advocates here on SDMB sit, the endgame of total firearms bans is readily apparent. Magazine capacity restrictions, bans upon weapons for cosmetic reasons, proposals to limit weapons by type, to limit ammunition (here’s a clue: I can get through most types of body armor with standard, rifle-caliber hunting rounds, so just about any hunting ammunition is “Cop Killing Armor Piercing” ammunition, as discussed in GQ recently in this thread) are all indicative of a lack of knowledge of firearms and ballistics on the part of pro-control types. Yet that hasn’t stopped “them” from new and bizarre proposals to limit firearms.
And many may disagree that the death penalty is, in-and-of-itself, a violation of human rights. Summary executions in the streets would be, yes. A “railroad” trial leading to a death sentence, yes. But our system of due process doesn’t, in mine and others eyes, constitute a human rights violation. But that’s not our purpose here today, in this thread.
Perhaps becuase we haven’t recently actually used firearms to combat what we percieve to be oppressive laws or policies, but instead rely upon the legislative and judicial processes to repeal laws or change policies. As of today, we still live in a representative democracy here in the U.S., so the need to combat rampant tyranny with widespread partisan violence is yet to come about (the McVeigh’s notwithstanding).
Hiya, ExTank.
I have no problem with teaching kids the dangers of firearms. It’s the emphasis on guns that I don’t see the need for.
There are many dangers which american kids face in their everyday lives, of which of which injury by gun is statistically small. Most schools already teach about the dangers of poisons, traffic, bicycle riding etc. Simply teach them about the dangers of improper gun handling, with the same level of emphasis we give to those other dangers.
There’s just not that much to learn about being careful with guns to warrant a special and seperate course in school.
Personally, I’d like to see a formal course in general safety in schools that teaches about guns, poisons bicycles, etc. And first aid and CPR. Starting at a very young age.
Guns are cool to kids. But if I had been offered a gun in trade for my bicycle at age 9-10? No way. Still wouldn’t, as a matter of fact. 
Some pro-gun folks do advocate firearm training with an eye toward recruitment. While I understand the desire for bringing people to one’s way of thinking, I don’t think it should be mandatory, and in our schools.
Peace,
mangeorge