Big time gun owner here. I agree with you completely. I don’t care if you guys want guns or not. Your country, your rues.
That being said, I really don’t care for the attitudes from abroad about the US regarding guns that have been “learned” from our pathetic entertainment industry.
I should add that I just really don’t understand how you can want guns to be generally available and can be happy with them being around, but that’s part of the whole deal over how ingrained our respective views are within our cultures and corporate psyches.
Oh, I do? Where would that be?
A passage in one of our sacred texts appears to endorse the belief that guns prevent tyranny.* Since tyranny is bad, it stands to reason that guns must be good. Logically, then, the more guns around, the better.
You’re looking at the matter from the perspective of a gun atheist. Of course you don’t really believe that; deep down, everyone really understands the power of Guns. If the British appear to deny this truth, it’s only because you refuse to allow Guns into your heart out of foolish pride. But in the end, even the infidel will learn to embrace Guns. There are no atheists in foxholes.**
*Technically it specifies that well-regulated state militias prevent tyranny, as opposed to federally maintained armies. But that’s a whole other kettle of wax. I suspect it never even occurred to the Founding Fathers that the separate states would just keep the guns around and give up on the whole ‘militia’ thing.
**That’s why your military veterans MUST enjoy having guns around, you see? Surely they must; how could they not? They use guns, and guns are good. MORE GUNS ARE EVEN BETTER.
Look, I know the various US states have different hunting regulations, but it strikes me as hand-waving to be saying “Oh, we can hunt freely. Those hunting regulations about when we can hunt and what we can hunt with don’t count.”
I think there’s actually less hunting regulation in the UK, Australia, and NZ- but there are also fewer places to shoot and it’s a lot harder to get a gun.
I suppose the answer to the OP as to the second question would be “If it could happen in the U.S., it would require a change in how the entire nation at large views guns.”, which seems unlikely. I think you’re safe from this particular approach, AT.
It’s not hand waving it is managing good conservation with the hunting pressure of society. Many have stated that in the UK, there are very few places to hunt. Can one just drive out of town in England an hour and hunt for pheasants or grouse along the gravel roadways and crops or does one need to go to a “preserve” or a private club? We have game coming out of our ears especially because of the fact that the seasons are managed to supply the most game and insure the next years harvest as well. Look, if you get to the states, forget about Arizona and make your way to Iowa during the fall. I’ll get you on deer, upland game or waterfowl. Bing $75.00 USD for a weekend out of state license and a few bucks more for a stamp or two.
If I wanted to pay for it, I could join one of the local hunt clubs and hunt any number of grouse, chukkar, pheasnt or quail, regardless of the season, and without any bag limits or need for a license. Lets make sure we are comparing apples to apples.
Brits please understand that even in barbaric America Argent Towers is thought of as a gun nut. He does not speak for most Americans. He is very strident and wants more guns nearly everywhere. Some of us disagree with him. I wish we could get rid of guns except for those who want to hunt. They make us less safe.
Brits,please understand that gonzomax bleats only for himself.
Yeah, what he said…
Isn’t having someone breaking into your home or place of business, threatening or performing acts of violence, and taking your hard-earned money and possessions “more than a little barbaric”? I’m not clear on what you think robbery is, but it’s not a well-mannered criminal walking up and saying, “Excuse me, sir, but can I have fifty quid, if you please?” Back when I worked in the restaurant business, we had some petty schmuck yoking our waitresses in the parking lot after close. It wasn’t enough for him to just take a wallet or purse; he broke the nose of one of them, and pretty brutally injured another, despite the fact that they could only put up nominal resistance and that he was armed and they weren’t. Consequently, I didn’t feel all that ‘barbaric’ about breaking his arm when he decided to step up a notch and attack teenage cooks rather than waitresses. (Kicking him in the face was probably a bit uncalled for, but I did tell him to stay on the ground.) If ‘stuff ain’t work killing people over’ then that sentiment should also apply to those people who would threaten the use of force in order to take said ‘stuff’.
All that being said, there is certainly a subculture of gun enthusiasm, bordering sometimes on fanaticism, about firearms in the US. I attribute this in part to vast differences in how the political establishments of Europe and especially the UK have traditionally viewed armed populace versus that of the US. For the traditional monarchical reigns that controlled most European nations through the 1840s, an armed population was a liability (in the case of unrest and insurrection) and as such, there is a long institution against the possession of firearms for defensive purposes, limited at most to small, lightweight weapons that are not comparable to military weaponry. Even after the French revolutions and the Revolutions of 1848, the succeeding powers generally restricted or limited gun ownership along similar lines and for similar reasons. On the other hand, the United States was essentially founded by a bunch of ‘gun nuts’ and other libertarian-esque flakes who championed the rights of the individual over that of the state, often to an extreme of principle. The expanding borders of the United States during the 19th century were also largely dependent upon an armed population that could defend itself from aggressors, intruders, and resisting natives without timely help from the government or Army. In contrast, most European nations of the period had more or less established borders which were modified by negotiation and intermarriage; armed border conflicts run by partisans were undesirable from the standpoint of all major parties involved, as evidenced by the continuing mess that was and is the Balkan nations. And of course the major nations of Asia with their imperial traditions are highly opposed to armed populations for obvious reasons.
So it is no wonder that the United States has a more liberal view of firearms. This is probably exacerbated by the amount of violence displayed in American media; many people who are not experienced or responsible gun owners have gallingly inaccurate information about how firearms work and how they should be handled. While such media might be watched around the world, it is almost a uniquely American product matched in measure only by Hong Kong cinema.
Personally I’m knowledgeable about firearms due to my background and training, but uninterested in them as a general enthusiasm or expectation of need. To me, a firearm is a tool (albeit one that requires careful and experienced handling, just like a circular saw or oxy-ace torch) and one that I hope never to have a need for (I don’t especially enjoy hunting and I try to avoid situations where armed defense is likely to be necessary). What I find most offensive about gun control and advocates therefore isn’t their principled opposition to firearms per se (which I think is largely misguided, but not entirely unreasonable) but how almost completely arbitrary the restrictions end up being, and how much of it is purely political photo-opping for ‘doing something about crime’ rather than actually digging in and tackling the difficult socioeconomic problems that result in people becoming criminals. As already noted upthread, attempts to make illegal existing firearms that are lawfully owned by private citizens of good reputation does little to diminish the pool of firearms used for criminal purposes and has the ultimate effect of making private citizens more vulnerable to crime rather than disarming criminals.
To address the o.p.'s issue, the Second Amendment, regardless of how one twists and tortures the language, or insists that, unlike every other Amendment in the Bill of Rights, it does not apply to individuals, is a major stumbling block for complete prohibition of private firearms ownership. I doubt any realistic composition of the Supreme Court would not strike down a law which attempted mass prohibition of firearms; hence, the move to grind away at specific classes of weapons, even if such classifications are essentially arbitrary (semi-automatic “assault weapons” versus hunting and sporting rifles of identical or more powerful chamberings). The honest thing for gun prohibitionists to do is campaign for an Amendment which removes the previous Amendment from play, an action that would have sufficient opposition to prevent it from becoming reality.
Do guns make us ‘less safe’? Meh. Vastly more people die from car accidents, injuries around the home, medical malpractice and incorrect pharmaceutical dosage, obesity and smoking related illnesses, et cetera than from firearms. If your overall goal is to reduce unnecessary or premature death there are many other avenues that would provide greater results.
Stranger
The latter, pretty much. Drive out of town for an hour, and you’re probably going to end up in the nearest big city. Pick your location, however, and you might find a well-managed grouse moor. Expect to pay big money to go shooting on one of these. Every scrap of land in this country has very clear ownership, a result of fighting over it for thousands of years, and freely roaming across fields is not something generally accepted.
That said, if you can find a friendly farmer, he might be happy for you to deplenish the stock of (edible) birds busy eating his crop. All you need to actually fire legal weapons is the permission of the landowner, but you’d better make a good assessment of where stray shots might go, and informing the local police of your plans will stop time being wasted all round when Mrs Trellis calls them with a report of gunshots being heard.
Where, pray tell, were the police in this situation? A guy repeatedly comes back to your restaurant to assault and rob people, and YOU have to resort to dealing with the problem yourself - through physical brutality, no less? What is this, the Wild Wild West?
I thought that if someone is being attacked and robbed, all they need to do is say “POLICE!” and a friendly, well-armed constable will instantaneously appear right there, to save the day.
It is hand-waving, I’m afraid. You don’t get to claim you’re incredibly free to do whatever you want and then ignore all the laws and regulations restricting when and how you can do whatever you want, even if they are for an ostensibly valid purpose.
Many- most, in fact- people in the UK and Australia feel that strict gun laws serve a valid purpose. I disagree with them, of course, but in this country trying to change anyone’s mind on the issue is flogging a dead horse, alas.
They actually did make a concerted effort to patrol the area after the second mugging. However, they could hardly park in the lot and wait over a two or three hour period while the staff filtered out (kitchen closes first, then the servers leave, then the bar and management.) Thuggo and his partner (who ran off) were clearly just waiting around until patrol cars left and then laid in wait. This was, by the way, in an urban area with a police station less than a mile away.
What was more disturbing was that the perpetrator in question had several overlapping open bench warrants for a variety of violent offenses; he’d actually been released from custody while open warrants were still pending on him. (Nobody could explain how that happened.) The cops thought it was pretty funny that the guy ended up so mangled, and even more so when he got some ambulance chaser to write a letter threatening to sue me for disabling his client and rendering him unable to conduct business or seek employment.
Color me mostly unconcerned about the ability of violent predators to conduct “business”.
Stranger
Argent Towers, in a thread about why you think guns are good and should be more freely available it probably isn’t wise to cite murderous nutcases in Northern Ireland as supporting guns. Folk like that give guns a bad name hereabouts!
Please quote for me where anybody claimed in this thread that hunting in the US is utterly unrestricted. Perhaps I read carelessly, but I don’t remember anybody claiming that. Therefore, nobody is handwaving by trying to explain hunting regulations to you.
I sleep well at night because I know that I’ve invested well and looked after my family and that it’s extremely unlikely that my psychotic neighbour owns a firearm.
How about you guys?
It was a joke which seems to have been taken literally.
In case you were interested, it is illegal to hunt anything with a semi-automatic rifle in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In Ohio, it is illegal to use a rifle to hunt deer. You have to use a shotgun (plugged to three rounds) but it is perfectly legal to use a semi-automatic shotgun to hunt deer. Go figger…