RE: BREAKING: OREGON COLLEGE SHOOTING
October 2, 2015 at 1:29 am
(This post was last modified: October 2, 2015 at 1:30 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(October 1, 2015 at 8:52 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote:(October 1, 2015 at 8:26 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote: You might be surprised to learn that people who have no compunction about breaking a law by killing people aren't dissuaded by a law forbidding gun ownership.
It's kind of the definition of "criminal", you know.
No, it's an apt right that should have better limits.
Your first point is legitimate.
Second point, a right? Really? It's illegal to carry a gun in public here and I'm perfectly happy with that, never seen it as an infringement of my rights and I think most British people probably feel that way. Guess I'm not waking up paranoid someone is going to shoot me today. I can be comfortable in that assumption, yknow, given it's so hard to get guns here.
We don't have repeated incidents of crazy kids going into schools on a rampage, while America does. We have far lower gun crime rates than America does. We have tightly controlled gun laws, America doesn't. Not a coincidence.
You also have a different culture and society. Characterizing gun-owners as fearful is not really reflective of our society. Britain is a small country well-tamed long before the age of gunpowder; America is a trans-continental nation that was wilderness where a gun was as much a tool as a plough in its taming, which happened much more recently than the settling of Britain. It's all good and well to look down your nose, but the fact is that the backdrop renders the picture entirely different, and failing to take those differences into account is not very useful.
We certainly have a gun problem, and steps certainly must be taken. But the idea of importing a solution as if a cookie -cutter can cut the same shape is overly simplistic, to me.
This shooting didn't arise from a paranoid gun-owner. It is not a result of redneck gun culture. Pointing your finger at that makes, perhaps, for good talking points, but in the end generates more heat than light.
And yes, it is a right in America to own a gun. Look it up.