Well, I don’t live in Gary, I live in Bloomington, and there is about one murder per year here, if that. Compare that to the rates of murder (and forcible rape, and robbery) in a city like New York. Even if it is the “safest city,” it’s still not as safe as one where there are guns in many homes and concealed carry permit holders everywhere.
Gary is a city that suffered tremendous post-industrial economic collapse. Of course there’s going to be a lot of crime.
If that city was in California or any other state that’s gun-unfriendly, I suspect it would be exactly the same way. At least in Gary I can protect myself if I want to. People in DC only recently got that option.
Sufficiently tortured data can be made to confess to anything. In any case, this thread is not about concealed handguns (I should never have brought it up in the first place.) It’s about “assault weapons.”
Anyway, look at some of the responses in that thread. You got owned. Aeschines (fellow Hoosier - go Big Red!) tore your argument to pieces.
Yeah, I’m getting tired of hearing that shopworn expression on the SDMB. Every single Democrat I know IRL is still just as strongly anti-gun as they’ve ever been, maybe moreso, and the only real reaction they’ve had to Heller is “it doesn’t mean anything” and “Obama will get it overturned as soon as he appoints just one Justice - count on it.” Regardless of the likelihood of that, I don’t think Democrats will ever give up on the gun boogeyman (just as Republicans will never give up on the “war on drugs” boogeyman).
My guess is that the “Democrats are not focused on guns” rhetoric is one designed to make independents feel “safer” about possibly voting for Obama. Repeat it enough and it might get a million votes, who knows?
Presumably it might be expected that said security are going to be well trained, both gun-wise and in not being trigger-happy? It might be argued that it isn’t guns that are the problem, per se, but people who think simply owning a gun is enough to protect themselves. I don’t believe you can generalise to the extent of “They don’t want you to have efficient guns, purely because they don’t think you need it to protect yourself” - you could probably make a fair hypocrisy charge against some, specific politicians, but no, it’s hypocrisy on behalf of “any Democratic politician” who’s against them.
The fact that the pro-gun side sticks to such preposterous arguments indicates the weakness of their positions. Eating, drinking, cell phones, and such all have legitimate purposes; deaths resulting from them are unfortunate but can’t be avoided. Guns have no purpose but to allow one person to kill or threaten another. (Outside of hunting.) Deaths from guns can be easily avoided by outlawing guns and enforcing the ban, as happens in New Zealand and many other countries.
I expect it to cause a significant drop in crime, just as the last one did. I acknowledge that we won’t be safe to walk outside at night in most cities until guns are totally banned. It’s an act of courage because very few politicians are willing to make even that small step in the right direction. Most politicians prefer to kiss up to the gun lobby while allowing tens of thousands of innocent Americans to be killed by gun violence.
I’d like to see someone effectively conceal an “assault weapon”.
The fact remains that these guns are not the ones being used in the vast majority of crimes. I’ve always felt that the gov’t should not ban anything unless they have a compelling reason to do so. That is not the case here.
Since the facts show that more guns lead to more murders, those who want to restrict semi-automatic handguns are helping keep the high-risk people safe. It’s those who support guns rights who are making them at higher risk. Politicians personally are in vastly different circumstances, so the comparison between the two is nonsensical.
Well, that is just . . . I don’t even know how to start with that. Irrational might be a good jumping-off point, but it’s such a gross understatement that I don’t know that it carries the right impact.
See, and here I think defending my home, property, and family is a more legitimate purpose than talking on the phone while driving (something everyone got along just fine without until 10 years ago anyway), though I don’t think either should be banned.
As if your desire to abolish part of the Bill of Rights and sweep the country in a mass confiscation of private property didn’t illustrate your ignorance of American culture and history enough, this just underscores it and puts little stars around it.
Gary is poor, is pro-gun, and has high crime rates. The high crime rates result entirely from poverty, and have nothing to do with guns. New York is mostly poor, is anti-gun, and has low crime rates. The low crimes rates do not result from poverty, and they would be even lower if New York were pro-gun.
Basically whenever you see a statistic you like, you say that it results from gun policy. When you see a statistic you don’t like, you say that it tells us nothing about gun policy and instead results from economics.
By resorting to such intellectual dishonesty, you’re admitting that the facts are against you.
Can you explain why it’s irrational to pursue a policy that has produced low crime in countless other countries. Is low crime itself an irrational goal?
I know enough about American culture and history to know that the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, can be amended.
I don’t know, I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert on global gun-control laws per country. I did a little reading though and you seem to be wrong about New Zealand having a gun ban. Wikipedia says they have ~1.1 million guns and ~4.2 million citizens. That doesn’t sound banned to me.
I know that guns were important enough to the founding fathers that they ensured (or apparently just tried to ensure :rolleyes: ) the right to own them in the Bill of Rights. I know that returning soldiers brought their guns home from the Civil War, at which point a lot of people agree that taking everyone’s guns became effectively impossible, or at least impractical without another war. I know that the right to bear arms is deeply entrenched in our national conscience and good, honest people will fight you to defend their constitutional right to do so. I know you’ve ignored the parts of my posts that were inconvenient to your arguments.
Slight difference, the example given was distracted driving, and I assume that the point was that eating, drinking, and talking on cell phones while driving contribute to unnecessary deaths that can be avoided.
Meant to add: Wallachia had a low crime rate under Vlad the Impaler but I wouldn’t want to live there. Sometimes you have to consider the bigger picture instead of focusing so strongly on the goal that you miss what it would take to get there and maintain it.
We should all listen very carefully to ITR Champion here because he’s showing the true colors of the Democratic Party’s ambitions, complete with his cute little Obama location. Believe me, I move around in a lot of different social circles, including liberals, and his beliefs - including the desire for a wholesale confiscation of guns from American citizens and a complete erasure of the Second Amendment from our constitution - are astonishingly common in living-room conversation among left-wingers. Make no mistake about it.
[raises hand] Um . . . I’m a liberal, not really invested in the whole gun control thing, but I like knowing stuff. I know the difference between a revolver and an semi-automatic handgun. I think I know the difference between semi-automatic and automatic.
What’s the difference between a magazine and a clip? (Is it that clips go in handguns and magazines go in rifles?)
What’s the difference between semi-automatic and automatic? (Is it that automatic allows rapid-fire until you run out of bullets?)
Why do many guns just look “scary”? (Is it the macho thing? Like some bikers like Harley Davidsons because they’re so “cool” and other bikers sneer at them?)
Why is heavily regulating “sniper rifles” a joke? (Uh . . . 'cause anything that is a “rifle” could be used to snipe?)
Well, if one were adamantly opposed to gun ownership, wouldn’t that be the honest and logical approach?
Again, I’m a liberal. I’m not a big fan of guns, but the right to bear arms is in the Constitution, so I respect it as a Constitutionally protected right. Trying to circumvent that right with a net of laws that slowly closes off access to firearms is dishonest but a time-honored tradition (just ask the Pro-Lifer/Anti-Choicers).
Suggesting an Amendment that repealed the 2nd Amendment would bring the fight out into the public arena.
I also think it would lose by a landslide, but as a small-d democrat, I’m okay with that.
IIRC, a magazine is the part of a gun which stores the bullets (which may be seperated to reload), while a clip is a container you store bullets in to make them easier to load into a gun.
An automatic will continue to fire as long as you hold down the trigger. A semi-automatic loads the next bullet when you pull the trigger, but doesn’t fire it.
A magazine is that rectangular metal thing that contains the cartridges that go into the firearm - some of them are detachable, like on an AK-47, and some of them are integral to the rifle, like on an SKS or most hunting rifles. A clip is a thin metal frame that contains several cartridges, that you use to get those cartridges into a magazine, like on a Garand. Wikipedia article here.
A semi automatic firearm chambers a new round with each pull of the trigger (unless the magazine is empty.) There are a few different mechanisms that it does this, like gas operation or recoil operation. You can look it up on Wikipedia to know more. An automatic firearm (or more properly a select-fire firearm) will continue to fire as long as your finger is on that trigger, if it’s on full auto mode. Some can also fire three round bursts.
Many guns look “scary” because they’re used by bad guys and terrorists in movies a lot, and they’re more associated with the military than with civilian uses (like hunting.) But it is only a superficial aesthetic difference.
Heavily regulating “sniper rifles” is a joke because as I have said before, a sniper rifle is the same thing as a hunting rifle for all intents and purposes. The best sniper in Vietnam, Carlos Hathcock, used a Winchester Model 70 which is a very common hunting rifle and can be found in peoples’ homes all over the country. It has a plain wood stock and there’s nothing scary about it at all. It’s a hunting rifle. In the hands of a military operator, it becomes a people-hunting rifle.
News to me. Been on the conservative wing of the extreme left quite a long time, know oodles and oodles of leftys, from raving Maoists to tea-sipping socialists, yet it seems you know me and mine better than I! How very odd, don’t you think? Or don’t you?
We have bigger fish to fry, and, as a matter of fact, so do you. So howzabout a deal? No more restrictions than those which already apply, and you promise to find something else to worry about. Anything, really, we’re just sick of hearing about this. How about vivisection? Oldy but goldy. Or the gold standard. Whatever. Don’t worry about what we think about you, we’re not thinking about you.
Honestly Argent, I am a center left kind of guy and have been in many lefty living rooms. Never, not once, have I heard any one, any one advocate for wholesale weapon confiscation in any living room I’ve been in. A lot of people who do just knee jerk assume things about weapons based on plain old ignorance, but then that’s par for the course with almost any discussion about anything.
I’ve also been convinced that the most important thing is to execute the laws we got better and that the so called assault weapon bans in indeed foolish at least as it was.
This is not the secret agenda issue for Lefties. And I’ve sworn I won’t tell you what they really are.
