Unregulated guns are a catastrophe!

[The Grand Nudger]

Is that not a risk an adult may willingly assume? For the record, one does not shoot to wound. One does not point a deadly weapon without the willingness to use it to kill. A disturbing number of gun owners do not understand the responsibility that comes with it.

Hey bud, you decide your own level of risk within the limits of the law. I keep my guns disassembled and locked up. If I need to defend my home I;m gonna go to town with a baseball bat. Less likely to end up in the ER shot by my own guns. I'd say that a disturbing number of gun owners couldn't hit what they pointed their gun at regardless. Now I could shoot an asshole in the foot from a good distance pretty easily, I've put a hell of alot of rounds downrange (federally subsidized hobbies for the win)..so if I was going to shoot somebody, this is just me personally, I probably wouldn't be looking to kill them (although......, my kids might put me in a mood, i haven't had my coffee...I'm constipated....whole laundry list of reasons why I might put 2 in the center and one in the top, you never know). The wind could kick up (why am I plinking this asshole from 500 meters though?), I could miss (fat chance). You can never discount the risk, agreed. I just can't imagine a situation in which I'm going to need to shoot somebody and have the opportunity to do so, personally.

A few decades ago the NRA found NRA stickers in the window were quite effective on their own.

Concealed carry states have all seen a significant reduction in street crimes like muggings after adoption.

I live in an open carry state. Of the two, I prefer the open carry. I can;t imagine why I would conceal my firearm anymore than I would conceal my kindle.

[Dragonetti]

I am an gun owner and avid target shooter. Yes, there is a risk. I protect my home with my ADT sign and the location of my neighborhood. I have them locked away in my safe, disassembled, and no ammo.

[Cinjin]

Here we go again. Yet another pointless gun thread.

<yawn>



I wonder how many people are going to be compelled by the arguments and statistics offered from both sides and end up changing their position?

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Yep, you guessed it ...

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[Minimalist]

So you are okay with 138 kids per year accidentally shooting themselves or someone else?

I'm not.

Especially when the UK can manage to get through a whole year with just 50-odd murders for everyone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cri...32069.html

There is something wrong with this fucking culture of ours. It isn't the "criminals" who are so much of a problem. It's the people who keep guns in their homes where they can escalate a domestic argument into a homicide at the drop of a hat. You see...they become "criminals" after they pull the trigger...not before. And they probably bought the gun because they listened to some asshole who told them it would keep them "safe."

[A_Nony_Mouse]

So you are okay with 138 kids per year accidentally shooting themselves or someone else?

I'm not.

Especially when the UK can manage to get through a whole year with just 50-odd murders for everyone.

Tell you what. We will send all of our drug dealers to the UK and then you can tell me about the murder rate. Despite being politically incorrect we can also ship our residents and citizens whose ancestors were not of northern European origin and watch you cope. If it could be done we might also connect Latin America directly to the UK so they can walk into the UK bringing their drugs with them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cri...32069.html

As to that decrease so also the US has experienced a decrease in the murder rate for the last two decades. No one knows why two such different countries are experiencing the same decrease at the same time.

There is something wrong with this fucking culture of ours. It isn't the "criminals" who are so much of a problem. It's the people who keep guns in their homes where they can escalate a domestic argument into a homicide at the drop of a hat. You see...they become "criminals" after they pull the trigger...not before. And they probably bought the gun because they listened to some asshole who told them it would keep them "safe."

The US is not the UK and never can be. The Indian wars ended little more than a century ago. Some American officers during WWI actually fought Indians. Many of them fought Mexican bandits. Some did not make it to Europe because they were fighting Mexican bandits.

If you want a parallel take swords from the Japanese. Their sword culture ended completely in the late 19th c. with some suicidal charges against guns making it roughly the same time ago as Indians and bandits made guns a necessity when the army was not around which was most of the time.

Further the US only got picky about immigrants in the 1920s-30s. Other than a few famous small gangs all the criminal organizations were brought to the US by immigrants. Often they came from countries which also had a gun culture like Sicily with their warring families.

Additionally the crime rate using guns compared to the hundreds of millions of guns is incredibly low. And most of that crime rate is in connection with other crimes mainly drugs. There is no hope of keeping guns from criminals as it is already illegal for them to have guns but they do.

In comparison car seat belts save more lives each year than guns take in a decade. Eliminating guns in accidental child deaths completely would be in the noise, a change less than the change from year to year. Much simpler and more effective campaigns such as what is kept unlocked under kitchen sinks would save more children's lives but other than a rare PSA you would not think anyone cares.

IF the concern is for children's lives then the effort should be applied to the greatest cause of death. And that cause has nothing to do with emotional or constitutional issues. That cause has NO ONE supporting it, no one claiming the cause should exist.

Note the IF conditioning the rest. Note it is 138 out of 80,000,000 or so. Last I looked that is more than the entire population of all of GB not just the 20/life expectancy category. Pick your age for child and redo the numbers for 330,000,000 total pop.

And as with people who choose the risk of keeping guns in the home the majority of Americans are willing to take the risks entailed with gun ownership. Laws should never be passed for emotional reasons.

Most gun owners were in favor of closing the "loophole" in background checks even though it not have prevented any of the prominent deaths in the news. The NRA leadership was against it. That is the way it is. There in an NRA election coming up soon. Perhaps the members will vote for a change in leadership policies.

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Here we go again. Yet another pointless gun thread.

<yawn>

I wonder how many people are going to be compelled by the arguments and statistics offered from both sides and end up changing their position?

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Yep, you guessed it ...

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True but keeping in practice with the rhetoric is a good exercise.

[Cinjin]

True but keeping in practice with the rhetoric is a good exercise.

Exercise futility to your hearts content.

[Brakeman]

You're more likely to wound yourself with it - then a burglar is to ever be wounded by it.

It was a joke.. I am not trying to defend my house by placing defective guns around to entice a burgler to steal them.

As for the gun, I plan on pulling the pin out and just keeping it for looks. I have other guns to shoot.

[Whateverist]

Amen! I say we exercise our 2nd amendment rights right now. Let's put on some jack boots, storm into every house and remove all the guns. Anyone who resists can be sent to the country for reprogramming. Why wait for the people with guns to exercise their 2nd amendment rights? I say we make the first move, grab the guns and then strike down the 2nd amendment while we're about it.

[cneron]

There are people I don't think should be allowed to vote. There are people I don't think should be allowed to drink. There are people I don't think should be allowed to screw. There are people I don't think should be allowed to drive cars.

Voting is legal, but you can't vote twice in the same election. Booze is legal, but you can't drink and drive. Screwing is legal, but you can't screw minors. Cars are legal, but you can't drive 120 miles an hour. There are rules governing these things, and there should be.

There are people I don't think should be allowed to own guns. Guns are legal, but there are certain rules governing them. And there should be.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

True but keeping in practice with the rhetoric is a good exercise.

Exercise futility to your hearts content.

Considering many of the positions I have advocated it is nothing new. Try the link in my sig.