Who needs guns for anything, anyway?

Great Debates
81

There are plenty of other developed countries- Canada and New Zealand, for example- where it’s not especially hard to legally obtain a firearm. Even in places like Australia and the UK and South Africa, which have stricter licensing requirements and gun laws, it’s still quite possible for an average person to legally obtain a firearm. Those countries don’t experience significant numbers of firearm-related deaths.

It’s a cultural and social issue- the problem isn’t firearms in the US. If you made every gun in the US magically vanish, and any gun imported into the country similarly vanish the moment it crossed the border, you’d still have a high homicide rate because of the various social issues in the US- but people would be using knives, baseball bats, bows & arrows, pointy sticks, and other things to kill others instead of a firearm.

82

I’m going to respond as politely to this statement as I possibly can, because if I respond the way I want to, even in the pit, I’m quite sure I’d get banned.

You should not, at any point, assume that anyone here can or cannot comprehend anything. Especially a topic as sensitive as losing a loved one in a violent manner. You owe everyone here a heartfelt apology for your crass and asinine statement.

Then don’t ban the object people are using to kill people, that’s an entirely ineffective way to deal with the problem.

Deal with the problem by dealing with the problem. Guns don’t cause crimes. Switzerland has the highest gun:home ratio in Europe, and one of the lowest crime rates.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the gun:home ratio, and everything to do with the economic situation. Crime goes up when there’s money in it.
You still fail to address the fact that banning guns doesn’t lower crime rates, it only removes guns from law abiding citizens. If you want to stem crime, invest the money in a way that will effectively lower crime rates – drug rehabilitation, community reclaimation, youth programs, etc.

83

LOL! “Up” is a realtive term, amigo. Did you look at the raw numbers? Your link says ~3,600 gun crimes in the UK, compared to well over 500,000 in the US in a nearby year, and off the top of my head I think our population is only about triple theirs. Not quite a difference of two thousand percent . . .

Yeah, I heard the UK is just flooded with them.

84

No, no I definitely do not. Perhaps if you lost a loved one you should stop and rethink your stance on exploding iron penises.

85

Actually, our population is roughly 308,000,000 while England’s (as of '08) was 51,000,000 and the UK as a whole’s (as of 2010) is 62,000,000.

All of your numbers are wrong.
And, the fact that banning firearms doesn’t make firearm crime go down doesn’t effect your will for them to be banned? Their crime went up 40%. Apply that same statistic to the USA, if you feel that I’m somehow unfairly comparing the two.

Your point, that guns were hard to make, has been shown to be crap. Have you anything other than a snarky statement?

86

The problem in the UK is also ammunition availability. You can’t get ammunition from just anywhere like you can in the US. And the UK has a significant knife crime problem, too.

87

Oh, my bad, a thousand percent, instead of two thousand.

And show me a .9mm with a clip that random hicks can mass produce in their garages, not pop guns that shoot one round, into your own hand as often as not.

88

Most Zip guns are .22 calibre. And the Australian War Memorial in Canberra has several examples of sub-machine guns of the type you describe on display (all made in various African & Middle Eastern countries), whilst page 349 of my copy of Weapon: A Visual History of Arms & Armour (Consultant Editor Richard Holmes, produced in association with the Royal Armouries Museum, Dorling-Kindersley publications, 2008) shows an IRA-manufactured improvised Sub-machine gun that used Sterling SMG mags.

Also, I direct your attention to Khyber Pass Copies.

89

ZZZZzzzzz. The Khyber Pass is not Peoria, Illinois.

And the argument that we ought’ta keep mass producing guns because people will make their own anyway is insane. Could the average guy build a radio? Yes, in fact. Would they, if radios were no longer produced? Someone would, sure, but no, the average guy would not.

90

That’s what they said about Marijuana, Heroine and Narcotics in general.

Now, it’s easier for a high school student to get narcotics than it is for him to get alcohol.

91

No, the guy in Illinois has access to far better tools, equipment, and raw materials than the guys in the Khyber Pass.

Point is, if Pashtun villagers can make functioning copies of Webley revolvers, Lee-Enfield rifles, and AK-47s using old railway lines and wrecked car parts, then the guy in Anytown USA can also do it- but using better stuff.

No, but they could still buy them from the people who were still making them.

Admit it, you’re wrong here.

92

Like I said . . . my retarded cousin makes a living growing pot. I know maybe 3 people who could build a gun, and only 1 of them might actually do it. And I know a lot of people.

93

No, it’s just such a preposterous notion I’m having trouble taking it seriously enough to put a lot of effort into arguing against it.

People would make guns here and there, yeah, but we’re not at war. We’re not under attack. People aren’t scared enough to make nearly enough guns to replace what’s out there now. Not nearly.

94

There are legitimate needs for guns.

  1. Self-defense or defense of other people or property: Some people do use guns for these purposes. Other people have probably deterred crimes by having a gun on hand. And even if no actual crime ever occurs, some people see having a gun on hand as a reasonable preparation against the possibility, like having a smoke alarm.
  2. Hunting: It’s a legal sport and I see no reason why it should be prohibited.
  3. Recreational shooting: Some people enjoy shooting guns.

So there are needs for guns.

And there are costs for guns.

Too many people seem to only see one side of the issue. They either see guns as having only benefits with no problems or they see guns as having only problems with no benefits. And I don’t see how you can get a rational view on any issue when you refuse to see both sides of it.

95

You might have the same rate of attempted homicide, but it’s harder to successfully kill someone with a knife or a baseball bat than it is with a gun. Take Chimera’s example, for instance: He was in fear for his life because there was a crazy guy outside his window. If we lived in a world without guns, he wouldn’t have had to fear in that situation, because you can’t stab someone through a window, but you can shoot them through one. All he would have had to do was call 911, and move something heavy in front of the door while he waited for the police to show up.

96

I see both sides of the issue. I realize that we live in a gun culture and there are too many guns out there to realistically get rid of them even in the next 3 generations. I just cannot possibly see how it would be a good idea make guns legal and put them into mass production if they were invented tomorrow. They’re killing machines. Tools of death and destruction. The idea is completely sick and sociopathic to me. It is very easy to get meat into your diet without a gun. I killed a bird with a slingshot when I was 9, practically on accident. An adult human should have no problem hunting with a bow and arrow or spear after enough practice.

97

The point is that you asked for examples of a repeating handgun that could be mass-produced by a cottage industry, and I went better than that and provided examples of not only handguns, but also rifles and automatic weapons being made by people in the Khyber Pass and elsewhere, using far inferior materials and equipment to that available to pretty much anyone in the US. The Philippines has a very active “cottage gun” industry as well, FWIW.

And what did you do? Handwaved it away as ‘not counting’ because you didn’t like the answer you got and then moved the goal posts, instead of just admitting that your point had been neutralised.

98

I don’t need a reason to own guns. I like them, so I have them.

That’s it.

Also, Timothy McVeigh wanted a body count bigger than what he could achieve with firearms. Same with the airplane attacks on September 11th.

99

In my opinion it is the meaning ascribed to the possession of a gun which can make it problematic.

When I was growing up in a small farming community nearly every household had a weapon, usually loaded, in the bedroom, for heaven’s sake, or by the door. It was as common a tool as a hoe or an axe and had as much significance to most. It was a convenience for protecting livestock and family which could be harmful and needed to be used with caution and wisdom.

In the day when small towns had garbage dumps Dad and I used to spend a few hours together in the evenings sometimes shooting rats there as a service to our neighbors. And I remember long walks in the fall along the railroad tracks hunting pheasant for our Sunday dinners.

I bought into the liberal trend when I was in college and began to see guns as unneccesary and dangerous. Later when I married and had children “No child of mine. . .”

That changed for me the day I looked out the window and saw my four-year-old son holding off a pack of rabid toddlers armed with super-soakers with a twig and shouting, “Bang Bang!” Poor little beggarchild.

More seriously, as my children became teens and I read more information about how many teens were being injured or killed by foolish handling of discovered family weapons and knowing that some neighbors and friends may have weapons in their homes, I sent both of them to firearms safety classes.

Both of them are able to use a weapon safely and neither of them, in their thirties now, owns one.

And I now also own a handgun, something I never thought I would buy. That change of mind occurred to me after hearing gunshots after midnight in my changing neighborhood and the fact that my husband has a job which would call him away from home should their be any emergency in the community.

I hope that the purchase of that gun will forever be an unneccesary expense but I know how to use it and am prepared to use it to protect my property and life.

Who every thought there could be so many changes of opinion during the course of one’s life? I see it as a cultural issue and a weapon is only as dangerous as the mind of it’s holder.

100

Perhaps if I lost a loved one?

I tried to avoid hitting the head of this issue, because I thought perhaps you had some semblance of common sense. I have lost someone I cared about to senseless violence. When I was younger a very close friend of mine was abused before she was beaten and stabbed to death. She was missing for three days.

Before you condescend to anyone, much less a thread full of people about how you know so very much more than they do about loss, you should sit back and think that you are not the center of the universe and your experiences are not the only ones that people have had.

Once again, I’ll state as politely as possible; You owe everyone in this thread an apology.

And before you say something as stupid as “Yeah, but she was stabbed to death,” let me tell you that it doesn’t hurt any less, even five years later, because she died from being stabbed opposed to be shot. And I don’t hate knives for the crime, because it wasn’t the fault of a knife, I never for a moment wanted to see a knife strung up from a tree and beaten until it was unrecognizable.
Edit: As for you “exploding metal penises” comment, if you think that moronic bit of snark helps your already shattered case, I can’t see how reason would ever sway you. I’m going to avoid this thread – and probably you – from this point on. Have fun, and I hope that you don’t ever have to go through losing someone like that to learn just where the anger gets directed. It’s hell.