(December 15, 2012 at 12:46 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: The fact is that everything I've suggested is that guns don't kill people; Americans do. Even though countries like Switzerland have alarmingly high gun possession rates, they seem to have far fewer murders with guns than we do; in fact, in 2006 the entire Swiss nation had a total of 34 gun-related homicides. The US? 12,632. Hell, in my home state of Illinois alone there were 625. Hell, in Chicago there were 373.Probably the Swiss actually know how to use their guns and respect them for what they are. Different lifestyles necessitate the need for different things, in practise guns don't have a place in our cities. That's not to say they can't be used in war, in hunting and in sport - but that's a far cry short of carrying them in society and public use. Something like 80-90 yanks a year die in hunting accidents. That just goes to show that even with their indended use the yanks don't know how to use the guns properly!
You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that Americans are being subjected to something like sick-building syndrome, except that it's the entire country, which causes us to be violent instead of sick.
(December 15, 2012 at 7:47 pm)TaraJo Wrote: The government also has tanks and nuclear weapons. Should we have those, too?Yes and some of those things are filled with asbestos - even though we aren't allowed to use asbestos generally in society. Just because something should be used in a certain context or "has to be used" for a certain purpose doesn't mean we should be allowed free reign to use them whenever and for whatever we want. The same I think applies to drug use (/pharmaceuticals), and is why we don't allow just anyone to purchase specific meds with no prescription - we want to make sure that potentially dangerous things are being used correctly, or at least do the best that we can.
