Again....But it's never the guns!

[KichigaiNeko]

Just sayin

[Ryantology]

Ah, I see, so the gun bit isn't a guarantee? I bet we can guarantee that human beings are involved in 100% of homicides and suicides. It's almost as though we're trying to implicate a hammer for the crime of driving a nail.....rather than the man who swung it.

You are arguing that I'm incorrect to assert that most nails are driven by hammers because other items can potentially be used to drive nails.

[The Grand Nudger]

Most guns are fired by humans (and most nails are similarly driven by humans- albeit humans holding hammers), though potentially other trigger pullers (and nail drivers) can be leveraged. In both the analogy and the problem invoked, it isn't the tool but it's divergent use by human beings that's a major problem.

I'm not so much arguing - as stating- that your statistics fail to implicate an inanimate object for crimes or actions for which human beings are clearly accountable. When people commit crimes, it is the people that need to be held accountable, not whatever tool they happened to be holding when they did so (if they want to off themselves, im not going to bitch about the method they chose to handle that - imho, that's their own business). To suggest otherwise is to offer up a convenient scapegoat. That, I would argue.

@Aractus, some jurisdictions require exactly that, licenses, permits, and registration. The vast majority of such regulations are primarily directed at handguns (an easy case, given the prevalence of handguns in crime) but some are all-encompassing. Mass is a good example of that. The right to bear arms limits the federal governments ability to maintain lists, to mandate permits, licenses or registration, it does not limit state (or city, or county) governments ability to do so in such a strict manner.

[Aractus]

Ok, well as I understand it this kid used his mum's guns in the massacre. Can you explain to me why in America guns aren't locked away from the reach of children? The people I know who shoot keep their guns very securely so that there's no possibility of their kids getting their hands on them...

[Ryantology]

Most guns are fired by humans (and most nails are similarly driven by humans- albeit humans holding hammers), though potentially other trigger pullers (and nail drivers) can be leveraged. In both the analogy and the problem invoked, it isn't the tool but it's divergent use by human beings that's a major problem.

I'm not so much arguing - as stating- that your statistics fail to implicate an inanimate object for crimes or actions for which human beings are clearly accountable. When people commit crimes, it is the people that need to be held accountable, not whatever tool they happened to be holding when they did so (if they want to off themselves, im not going to bitch about the method they chose to handle that - imho, that's their own business). To suggest otherwise is to offer up a convenient scapegoat. That, I would argue.

When people choose to kill other people in this country, guns are the most popular choice. If we agree that a gun is a tool, we have to ask what that tool's primary purpose is. In the case of firearms, the purpose is to eject pieces of metal designed to maim or kill at a high enough velocity to maim or kill. Using a gun to kill or maim is not a divergent use; that's the point of them and they are constructed with this in mind. There are other things you can do with a gun, such as shoot targets, or disassemble the chassis and make homemade Transformers out of the loose parts, but you can practice target shooting with non-lethal weapons and you can build tiny robot figurines out of anything.

The argument from my side is that not only are guns designed to harm or kill, they are designed in such a way that it is just as easy to kill many people as it is to kill one person. When the Second Amendment was written, top-of-the-line firearms could fire one shot per minute, assuming that the shooter was skilled. Now a single person can fire dozens or hundreds of rounds per minute. It is right to blame the shooter for the violence, but a shooter is only as lethal as his weapon allows him to be. You don't get Virginia Techs and Sandy Hooks if the assailants were armed with a hammer or a knife. If your response to this is 'bombs', you can't just go to a bomb store and buy bombs. You can build one, but this takes time and knowledge. You can't decide, on the spur of the moment, to build a fertilizer bomb and blow up a federal building or construct a fistful of pipe bombs and lob them off a highway overpass if you're completely ignorant in the ways of bomb-making, so let's not let that disingenuous diversion enter the conversation. It would require a lot of planning, reading and making. If you have a gun, you can, lock, load, and become infamous in minutes.

There are examples of countries where guns are far more rare and far more restricted, and if they have a strong infrastructure and are internally-secure, gun violence in these countries is dramatically less than it is here. There is too much data to write off the correlation as mere coincidence. We need to see what they are doing and figure out how we can adapt it to ourselves. As long as we keep pretending that guns are not a problem, we're going to keep seeing thousands of people die every year because of them.

[Aractus]

And not just other people, suicide as well, and accidents.

[The Grand Nudger]

@ Arac, I wouldn't know, I can't even find the keys to my own fireproof ammo safe atm...lol. People do stupid things I suppose.

@ Ryan. Mine are designed for sport shooting and hunting. Your argument levarages what you feel to be a more horrible scenario than that which was faced by a soldier or civilian in the revolutionary or civil war. Read any of their letters, I assure you they found musket exchanges as horrifying as you find semi-auto rifles. A shooter may only be as lethal as his weapon but a murderer is as lethal as his imagination. Thankfully most of the crazies and criminals we see in this country are fairly short of imaginative. Firing a weapon also takes knowledge and skill, especially if you want to fire it effectively. A person who imagines that hitting people with an assault rifle is a matter of pulling the trigger has clearly never fired an assault rifle - for example. Without skill or knowledge you may hit with the first round, but every round thereafter will likely hit the ceiling, and the rifle will jam (yes.... even an ak-47). How much skill or knowledge does it take to douse a building in gasoline and light a match? Gas station on every corner, they usually sell lighters too. Many people with guns lock, load, and become incarcerated within minutes, without successfully leveraging the use of their firearm. One of the reasons that things like tecs and uzis became popular in the 90's was because the average gangland shooter couldn't hit a fucking barn. His aim didn't get any better with the auto either. But here again we see the beginnings of a justification from crime - and how that applies to me, seeing as I have not and don't ever plan on committing a crime with a gun, is beyond me.

There are also countries with even less restrictive gun laws that also have far lower rates of gun related violence. But lets keep it close to home. DC had a gun ban for years - they also had one of the highest murder rates in the nation during that ban. But hey, theres data, so lets not write it off-

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs...online.pdf

"Of course, it may be speculated that murder rates around
the world would be higher if guns were more available. But
there is simply no evidence to support this. Like any specu‐
lation, it is not subject to conclusive disproof; but the Euro‐
pean data in Table 1 and the studies across 36 and 21 nations
already discussed show no correlation of high gun owner‐
ship nations and greater murder per capita or lower gun
ownership nations and less murder per capita.
48
To reiterate, the determinants of murder and suicide are
basic social, economic, and cultural factors, not the preva‐
lence of some form of deadly mechanism. In this connection,
recall that the American jurisdictions which have the highest
violent crime rates are precisely those with the most strin‐
gent gun controls."

It's not "mere coincidence" it's a concerted effort to wrench statistics to fit a political agenda (for all the right reasons - for some- I'm absolutely certain of that). If you want my blunt and honest opinion, it's a way for us to confront an issue indirectly without having to face the shittiest parts of it. That it's not the guns, it's us, and we just can't handle ourselves - apparently. Do we have a problem? Yes. Do we have a gun problem? No, unless you're determined to excuse the criminal and lay a hefty portion of the blame on an inanimate object for reasons not supported by evidence.

[Brian37]

Ok, well as I understand it this kid used his mum's guns in the massacre. Can you explain to me why in America guns aren't locked away from the reach of children? The people I know who shoot keep their guns very securely so that there's no possibility of their kids getting their hands on them...

Our gun culture is fucked up and immature. What drives it is MONEY and big business, nothing more. If the weapon's industry cared about public safety which they don't, then the moral thing would to be to reduce even the feeling to need one.

Other countries that allow guns have STRICTER laws, but also more economic stability, higher education rates, and lower crime rates, and better health care and vetting for those who apply for guns.

We have nothing but a fucking shooting gallery.

[The Grand Nudger]

Rossi incorporates trigger locks into every firearm it manufactures. Safeties have been an industry standard since their conception. Try again. Now, manufacturers of firearms don't actually have any responsibility to ensure your safety, and they certainly don't have any moral obligations to reduce any need you might feel. Nevertheless, they do try to offer a responsible product, because it gives them a competitive advantage in a saturated market.

[Minimalist]

Gun Safety "Instructor" Shoots Student.


Ah, yes. "Training." The old panacea for gun nuts.

http://www.sandiego6.com/story/instructo...s-20130812

LANCASTER, Ohio (AP) — Police say an instructor at a central Ohio gun safety class has accidentally shot a student.