The Latest American Gun Thing

"In the U.S." being key there. It seems to be an issue quite specific to the U.S.

Just wanted to chime in, the only real reason there'd be for allowing larger weapons (compared to pistols and such) is that since they are well.. large it's very hard to conceal them, this means you can't go sneak an assault rifle into an area easily and pull off some illegal action. It's much easier to mug someone with a pistol than a AR because you can hide it and whip it out at any time.

It shows that U.S cops have killed more than the number of U.S soldiers that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan from about 2003-2010. Don't you think that's pretty fucked up?

I agree that gun relate deaths, by cops or otherwise, in the US is insanely high. But the link you made between that and gun control is a quirk specific to the US. Cops in Aus are just seen as regular people, and in general have a very good reputation.

I know a radically ignorant person that mentions guns are only used for shooting living things and stuff that looks like living things.

I'm pretty on the fence about all this. I can see and understand the arguments of both sides, it's just really hard for me- personally to make a decision on which I believe is more... correct?

I can give very little nice input though, I lived on military bases most of my life. (Going to move to the air for base right outside pearl harbour this winter ) I lived on an British one for four years and never really heard about any sort of shootings on the news at all, and I lived in this area where nobody owned guns (including on base), the only people with guns were MPs and the Gate guards. Now that I've moved to America I've been staying in a little town thing and I hear about shootings quite often to my dismay... Obviously the easy access to guns makes it easy for something to happen, but I do understand the argument "If everyone has a gun then no one will use it for violence as everyone'd have a gun" but it just seems a little silly if everyone had a gun yet not even have the reason to ever use it. We might as well all just... Not have guns at that point.

But like I said, I dunno, I'm both for and against.

Hm, okay there's some gun ownership law here after all. I've been lied to most of my life, it seems.

After looking all over the RCMP's website, you have to take a firearms safety course and a restricted firearms safety course (passing a test for both) in order to gain a license that allows ownership of restricted guns.

However, I've never heard of this test and I don't know of anyone who has. So it's either regulated to the point that it isn't advertised anywhere, or just not present in my province (seems to be the former.)

Also, unlike the states, there's an 18+ law tacked onto it, so we aren't giving children guns like a bunch of madmen.

And our crime rate is still lower, so I guess it's just the people you give guns not the guns themselves.

So, fine, gun ownership doesn't cause crime, barbaric civilians do. Glad we sorted that out.

Owning a gun is still stupid though.

Btw; one point that needs to be made is that there's a difference between the debate on whether gun control should be effected and to what extent, and the debate on how to do this.

For example, saying that guns should be banned isn't saying that overnight, all guns become illegal. Anyone who thinks that would work is naive. Any changes to gun laws will by necessity be a long-term process. It wont be easy if it does happen, and doing it wrong can of course be very dangerous.

(This isn't in response to a particular post, just a general observation that arguing for or against gun control doesn't imply a particular method to enact it)

From my experience about arguing for or against "stricter" gun laws (Such as outright banning guns) is that is it's something that won't happen overnight, nor will it be as easy as saying, "BAM! I'M BARRACK OBAMA AND GUNS ARE ILLEGAL NOW!"

Many years ago people in the United States of America were given the right to carry armed weaponry, this obviously meant that weapons became easily available, but namely to Militias (That's from my understanding at least.) Obviously this is a bit less relevant in modern days as Militias don't really exist in the USA from what I'm aware. It was also something set up in a country that was relatively new and still a bit over the place in terms of law.

As the years went on and the USA settled down to become something closer to what it is today, and people became more civilized due to advancements in the economy, technology, and a whole butt-load of other things, guns remained easily available.

Fast-forward to today, the USA is now one of the most developed countries in the world, and it has much stricter gun laws; however guns are still much easier to obtain legally and illegally compared to other countries that don't permit guns simply because there's so much more of them.
But why do people want to have guns? Some like it for sport, some like it to shine up and brag about, while many more just prefer to have a feeling of safety.

This doesn't mean however that everyone is fit to actually use a gun. A lot of controversy surrounds it in terms of who's allowed to do what with guns and who isn't (See: George Zimmerman gunning down African American youths and getting away with it while if George Zimmerman wasn't white, he would have been in jail; or sat quite comfortably in the zappy chair.)

If guns are limited even more or simply outright banned, it will be years before they're off the streets, but they won't ever truly be gone from the country. It's impossible to simple wipe out all the guns on a continent the size of the Americas compared to a smaller country like the UK (yet it still has gun crimes).

So really, it's at a point where you can try and remove guns from people, but no-one will feel safe any more because that same gun toting maniac from before will still have a gun and this time, you won't because you're a law abiding citizen.

There's a lot that can be said about gun laws, but one thing that is undoubtedly true is that the USA will not be able to rid itself of guns, no matter how much money is pumped in to any campaigns like that.

Please stop feeding people misinformation. Many states, mainly those with licenses have a minimum age for owning a firearm. They can go up to as high as 21, which is three years higher than the legal age of adulthood.

If you fire a firearm that isn't yours or without a license, the owner needs to be there supervising you. For example, New York City has a stipulation where you can only handle .22 LR firearms without a license.

And another addendum: You will never truly disarm America. Trying to get rid of guns is like arguing the logistics of getting rid of all automobiles. Assuming we have 200 million firearms and confiscate them at an impossible rate of one gun per minute, you're still gonna take hundreds of years to disarm us.

If the accounts of Zimmerman being pounded into concrete are correct, he did nothing wrong. Race has nothing to do with his self-defense case.

I live in New York. You can own a shotgun without a license, as well as rifles so long as the barrel has a minimum length. There are no minimum age or license requirements for long guns.

I meant New York City, lol. Let me go fix that.

murica has a fucked up culture of violence

"How can somebody else have that responsibility to protect your own life?"
Cause that somebody is a hero and much better at it than we are obviously
Not to mention that anyone relies on other parts of the society for a lot of things. Food, water, electricity. For most people these are pretty vital things, yet only very few produce them for everyone. So if you really want to be independent you should start to produce those as well. Otherwise "security" is just another thing to add to the long list of things you need the "society" we live in for.

I guess the difference between "pro" and "anti" gun people is that "pro" gun people apparently feel more secure if they walk a street, fully knowing that every single person they see around them has a deadly weapon hidden somewhere, ready to shoot at anything and anybody at any time.
"Anti" gun people prefer that nobody has such a weapon at all, so nobody in the street they walk *should* have the ability to randomly shoot them. They feel seriously frightened at the idea that everyone around them hides a means to kill within seconds.

So by that logic, saying "guns keep me safe" actually means that in a thought experiment where you have, let's say 100 people that randomly walk around on a football field it is more secure for everyone if you give every person on that football field a gun.
Anti gun people in turn argue that if you give everyone on the football field a gun all you get is a much higher chance that it'll end in a mass shooting. If you give nobody a gun there won't be a chance for any shooting.

But why am I even here, I wanted to leave this thread. *Runs away from upcoming arguments against his thought experiment*

I've lived in areas with lots of guns and not once has being shot ever entered my mind. I feel like most of the people arguing, on both sides, are way too paranoid.

I'm for guns because I'm for hunting, and target shooting, and things like that. Security, for me, is not a concern.

That flowchart is literally just the following argument. The rest is not even worth commenting on.



There's no attempt whatsoever at making this stand up to any reasoned argument (guns are the only way? What does "effectively" and "defend" mean? Since when is this a Yes/No question with no middle ground? And most importantly, why is this question so important that it supersedes and overrides all other arguments for and against gun control?), and it's not worth debating an argument that tries to simplify something to such a basic level. Furthermore, the final box, "Then why ban guns?" particularly annoys me. It's a question, not a proof, not evidence or even an argument in of itself. Its a cheap trick designed to avoid having to defend one's point of view - "I'll ask a question then leave before they can answer it; that surely makes me right".

Legitimate uses of guns always fall outside the general gun-control argument (At least, I don't know anyone saying guns should be banned outright for everyone including those who need them for specific uses). In Australia for example, you can still get permits for guns for those very reasons.

I'll just re-iterate that most of the rest of the developed world has gun control measures, and America still has a higher homicide rate.

I hope you realise that each US state has their own gun laws and many of those that do have gun control have the highest firearm homicide rate.