See, DrNick? their “practical” objections don’t stand up to scrutiny; it’s purely symbolic.
Please continue to misrepresent gunowners. It does your side so much good.
My name is Jeff, I am college educated, and a far cry from your gun totin’ charicature. I am a gun owner.
Yep, guess what, JX, there’s an exception to every “rule.” And this proves exactly what?
Regulating gun ownership might keep a few guns out of a few hands, but really, reducing gun ownership doesn’t seem to reduce gun crimes. I’m thinking of DC, which, IIRC bans handguns altogether, but I’m reminded daily that they are still there.
I think that gun crimes could be reduced by removing the incentive for them. Legalizing drugs would alleviate a significant amount of gun crime, as ** Neurotik ** posted.
I think also that crimes perpetrated with a gun should be punished to (nearly) the point of cruel and unusual, i.e., get caught with an unlicensed gun, you get jail time, automatically. If you commit a crime with a gun, you get double the jail term of crime. Neither of these actions affects legal gun owners or their rights as such.
Well, if someone could show me that restricting gun ownership would SIGNIFICANTLY reduce violent crime, I could go for it. However, gun control or lack thereof seems to have no SIGNIFICANT effect on crime one way or 'tother.
Comments like this from seemingly intelligent people make me laugh. Whats a good hunting rifle? Whats a good outlaw rifle?
You sir have no clue. Please provide a few cites. I will do the same and this thread can go on and on displaying both of our ability to be close minded.
I am replying only with the hope that someone “across the pond” can see a true picture of law abiding gun ownership rather than the charicature provided by Lissner et al.
As far as safety goes, guns are tightly regulated. As far as licensing goes- cars are *not * licensed. At least in CA, you may own hundreds of cars without licensing a single one of them- nor are there any restrictions at all upon buying or owning a car. True- in order to drive said car upon the public highway requires that both you & the car be licensed.
“I am replying only with the hope that someone “across the pond” can see a true picture of law abiding gun ownership rather than the charicature provided by Lissner et al.”
The bullshit you are pronouncing as the gospel needs to be kept in check. thats it. There are actually milions of “exceptions to the rule” as you like to call us. Very few gun owners fit your bubba stereotype.
JX, if laws regulating prescription drugs were suddenly abolished, and you could buy any kind of currently controlled substance over the counter, I have no doubt that responsible, “educated” people such as yourself would only buy the drugs you needed and you would always follow the label directions. This would be entirely irrelevant to the fact that many, many others would used those substances to harm themselves and others.
So your self-appraisal, while certainly highlights the potential “positive” aspect of gun ownership, does nothing whatsoever to address the 30,000 deaths a year. Which, I take it, you’re perfectly willing to live with?
That’s illogical. That implies that MY owning a gun, even if I don’t murder someone with it, splatters red goo because others who own guns use them to kill. Kind of “collective” guilt of gun ownership. If I drive my car responsibly, I’m still to blame for the drunk who runs people down.
That would only be true if eliminating my gun would eliminate theirs. That’s illogical too, as most homicides occur from guns which are already ILLEGAL for the person to use. It is ILLEGAL for felons to have funs NOW. So why not enforce that law? Why take guns from people who use them responsibly?
In London they did “the right thing” and banned guns. Now street crime and break-ins have exploded. Where I live, in gun country, break-ins are rare. Now why do you think that is? It’s b/c most people have guns and breaking into someone’s house could get you killed. Guns thus prevent crime without ever firing a shot. Liberals, ignorant of the “sentinal effect”, look at the situation and say “see? those guns are useless…crime is low and they aren’t needed. They’re almost never used in home invasions!”. Brilliant.
As for the constitution…slavery…blah blah…we changed the constitution to outlaw slavery. That’s called an AMENDMENT. If you want to overturn the second amendment, fine, no problem, go ahead. But that’s what would be needed to ban guns.
As for the “well established militia”, there have been arguments abou this, but basically the bill of rights is about protecting people from Gov’t. Now how would having the gov’t regulate the people’s “militia” make any sense in that regard? A militia was considered to be every able bodied male at the time.
The point is that the framers wanted all citizens to have the right to bear arms. “The right of the people” and all that.
All handguns ARE illegal currently in DC. They have already done the ban you are wishing for. Guess what: People are still murdered there! With guns at that!
Oh, and I would love to hear your definition of a “legitimate” hunting rifle.
The fact that “legitimate” or “standard” or whatever hasn’t been defined yet is hardly the point; the legal definition of what is and what is not “legitimate” will be a product of the process if it ever gets headed in the right direction.
And we all know that every single in gun in DC was manufactured and acquired within the city limits. :rolleyes:
First off, my appraisal is the typical gun owner, not a potentially typical gun owner. The overwhelming majority or gunowners are just like me, decent law abiding people. They all isslustrate the postitive aspect of gun ownership everyday.
Yes I can live with the 30,000 deaths a year. As difficult as that may seem for you to accept, that’s the way it is with me. Those poor souls who feel that suicide is their only way out are not my responsibility as a gun owner. I may be responsible slightly as a member of society for not seeing the “signs” of their tendencies, but I am not responsible for choices they make simply because I have a few guns in the closet.
[anecdote] My cousin killed himself by driving off a bridge. He was pretty f’ed the head, but as a car owner, I am not responsbile for his death. As family member however, I may share some guilt in that regard.[/anecdote]
In the same light, we live in a violent society. People have been killing each other for thousands of years. Unless I facillitate the means of ones murder by handing a gun to the shooter, I am no more to blame for the murders caused by guns than you are lissner.
so the suicides you can live with. what about the murders and the accidents?
And you are faciliting these occurrences, by helping to make the weapon available in the first place.
So, you want all guns except the “legitimate” ones banned. However, you won’t discuss which ones are “legitimate”.
If it’s so simple, as you say, why can’t you spell it out for us?
What guns are useless to hunters but very useful to outlaws?
This standard, this legal definition, who will define it?
I hope it’s someone who knows more about this subject than you.
Nice strawman.
The government wasn’t able to stop the flow of booze during prohibition. The government isn’t able to stop the flow of drugs now.
The government may be able to take away the guns of law abiding owners because they would cooperate. However, the illegal gun owners in the US are already criminals. There is absolutely no reason to believe they will start obeying the law if all guns are banned everywhere. There are more guns than people in this country. You can’t just pass a law, snap your fingers and have them all vanish.
Just like the drunk driving deaths you are facilitating by owning a car, lissener. :rolleyes:
Sense this does not make.
I mentioned the murders:
“In the same light, we live in a violent society. People have been killing each other for thousands of years. Unless I facillitate the means of ones murder by handing a gun to the shooter, I am no more to blame for the murders caused by guns than you are lissner.”
I am not making weapons available to anyone. Do you assume that through some magical piece of legslation, all guns would disappear, and through the lack of my support for that legislation I am to blame for society’s ills?
Or is it that I as a gun owner somehow create a market for criminals to thrive in?
So, it’ll be a complicated process, therefore undoable.
The only legitimate argument you make is comparing gun control to prohibition. And of course it will be impossible to remove all concealable (my vague definition of non-legitimate) guns from circulation, but the fewer guns are out there, the fewer their unintended victims will be. That’s the simple part; do the math.
And by the way, insisting that the fact that I, personally, don’t have a foolproof, finalized implementation plan to offer right here and now is the strawman in this argument. WAY lame, dude.
First of, I suppose it’s obligatory to post this link to a thread with this topic on this message board: What does “the right to bear arms” really mean?
I dunno. Is this really what gun control advocates want:
More cars than drivers in U.S., study says
General Information About Driver Licenses: “The minimum driving age in Georgia is 16 years old.”
It seems like cars are more regulated than guns, and everyone always points out that “driving is a privilege, not a right”, yet as a practical matter:
[ul]
[li]Cars are ubiquitous.[/li][li]We let teenagers routinely operate them in public.[/li][li]Driver’s licenses are in practice “shall issue”–there is a training requirement (most but not all states which issue licenses to carry handguns in public require some training; driver’s ed requirements seem to vary a good bit from state to state, and are probably much laxer in the USA than in some countries) but if you pass a reasonably objective test for being a responsible automobile operator, you get the license. No one is ever asked to “justify their need for a car” to any government official.[/li][li]There is universal reciprocity for driver’s licenses throughout the U.S.–if you have a license from one state, you can be assured that you can drive from Maine to San Diego (although of course you must obey the traffic laws of whatever locality you happen to be in). Even if your state has laxer testing rules, your driver’s license is still good coast-to-coast.[/li][li]Even convicted felons can own them. (OK, kind of a silly point; you can lose your driver’s license for really bad driving.)[/li][/ul]
No one objects to registries and databases of driver’s license holders that would make gun owners apoplectic–and of course, driving a car is a privilege, not a right, whereas gun ownership is widely defended as a right protected by the Constitution–yet it also seems to me that a major difference is that only a tiny minority in this country would seriously advocate banning cars. Even banning SUV’s would be pretty radical. Whereas in gun control debates, even “reasonable gun control” pretty frequently seems to morph into something very, very restrictive.
Way lame is blaming me for the deaths of ANYONE. It was mentioned that 99% or so of all guns are not used for illegal purposes. Therefore fewer guns would mean undue persecution on regular folks with little impact on crime.
This argument has been done to death on SDMB. By now the players on each side have been identified. You cannot blame gunowners as the problem, identify that there is no easy solution and then sit back and call strawman on those that you cannot debate with.
Lissner, you and I are as closed minded as it comes. You will not change my mind, nor will I change yours. I will however refute every nonsensical claim you make contrary to fact, and I will attack every charicature you make of gun owners. No have no idea what you are talking about other than your hate for and fear of guns and gunowners.
I’m willing to call this one a draw, I’ll even give you the last word unless you piss me off again. 