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

[orogenicman]

Guns violence is a symptom of the real problem. You don't treat cancer with cough syrup.

False argument. There are countless examples of where you treat the symptom in medicine rather than the cause. Also, just because you can treat the cause, doesn't mean you shouldn't treat the symptom.

Finally, and I respect your right to post these things and talk about these things, using an incident like this and trying to tack it onto the NRA instead of the man who was really, truly responsible for it is... I'm not going to say it's wrong, but it's a real kick in the teeth to the people suffering right now. Using horrible tragedies as a soapbox for political agendas is deplorable to me. That soapbox is made of still warm bodies of the innocent. I'm more worried about the families than about the fucking NRA, which did not personally put a gun in his hand, switch off a person's empathy and convince him to hurt people. This is my opinion and only that.

By chance I was having a chat today with a friend of mine who owns several rifles and uses them for hunting/sport/competition. His guns are stored securely (well beyond the minimum requirements in Australia), a thief would need to break into 4 separate safes (5-8mm thick steel doors) in order to be able to use the guns, his main concern of course is that his kids can't possibly get their hands on the firearms. He was on the Australian council - he doesn't think too fondly of the NRA at all. As he puts it nobody needs semiautomatics, and as I pointed out if you have a semiautomatic you can usually modify it to fire on fully automatic - he then pointed out that's because most semiautomatics are modelled off the automatic version. He has the same view on handguns as he does on semiautomatics.

The UK takes the extreme view on this - they don't allow police officers to carry guns while on regular duties. And in Australia you can see why - as soon as tasers were rolled out in NSW, police tasered an unarmed young student to death! The taser companies claim that tasers are non-fatal and have never killed anybody anywhere!

In the USA you have civilians that carry guns for "self defence" (the same reason we allow certain security guards and police officers here to carry them). It's pathetic that you allow people - who have no interest in hunting, and no interest in target shooting, and often don't know how to operate them, owning firearms. Worse still, you don't require the same level of security over them as we do. Sure, I'll admit that storing rifles in the minimum required containers is easily broken in to - but the point isn't to make it impossible for them to be taken, the point is to keep them locked away from children, and out of sight in the case of burglaries.

If the yanks decided to prohibit civilians from owning automatics, semiautomatics and handguns, they would be effectively addressing the problem. It's not a complete solution in itself, but it's a start. You do not need those weapons in general use in society.

Allowing anyone to own them is effectively like allowing anyone to own and use vehicles of any size (trucks, etc) without licences. There's a reason why you need a license to drive, and there's a reason why you need a license to own firearms. Those licenses don't automatically entitle you to drive any vehicle or own any type of gun.

It is worse than that. It is like allowing people to own a ticking time bomb and then to telling them that everything will be okay as long as they never let the clock wind down.