Blob Mckenzie wrote:LOL @ dbr absolutely mopping the floor with ukcanuck.
Dude is the Dana Murzyn of the board.
Since you're so interested...
Oh btw I liked Murzyn, he was stand up...
dbr wrote:
Hey this is some super sound reasoning. Why not just stop having laws, since it doesn't seem to stop criminals from breaking them?
That's a slight exaggeration don't you think? How do you go from the sound logic that restricting legal weapons to prevent illegal ones being used in crimes won't work to well let's have no laws then?
What exactly is wrong with that?
Oh I don't know, what's wrong with stripping rights guaranteed in the constitution? Perhaps freedom of speech will be next?
Maybe then the next time some "responsible" gun owner and innocent civilian has a kid that wants to ventilate a local elementary school he'll have to do more than go rooting around in mommy's closet to get what he needs.
Does leaving firearms around for children to harm themselves and others sound responsible to you? It sure doesn't to me. obviously, there needs to be responsibility attached to every right.
Making it harder to kill people is a good thing, even if a given change doesn't fix everything in and of itself.
only if the solution doesn't create more problems than it tries to solve, like starting or continuing a watering down of what it means to be free.
Funny you bring up the prohibition, most studies show that alcohol consumption fell (although certainly not to zero) during that time.
Lets argue about the validity of "studies" of acts done in secrecy...
It was against the law to consume alcohol, where did the data collectors get their stats?
Additionally, even if booze consumption dropped, organized crime certainly got a shot in the arm over prohibition...what makes you think the same wouldn't happen with guns?
I wonder how many lives would be saved by a comparable (30%) drop in gun ownership.. especially if that drop was comprised of the deadliest weapons or the weapons owned by the most menacing demographic or the least responsibly kept weapons?
Do you also think a 30 percent drop in computer availability would help in the reduction of teenagers commuting suicide over Facebook too?
London Met story....
The point of that story was that if the UK is a safer society because it prohibits guns, why does its police force operate like an elite special forces, theoretically the criminals here only have knives?
Well if the "criminal class" was solely responsible for gun deaths in the United States, or if illegally acquired firearms were the sole cause of gun deaths, you might have a leg to stand on.
The Washington Post looked at 500+ deaths of police officers between 2000 and 2010 and legally acquired guns were the leading cause - 107 of the 341 murder weapons they had been able to track. Another 46 were legally purchased weapons obtained from their rightful owner. Another 77 were stolen (presumably many of these were originally legally obtained as well). So you're looking at a random sample of deaths and of the ones in which the murder weapon could be traced probably the majority goes back to a legal purchase.
If you take a look at a slightly more biased source, the "Violence Policy Center" looked at 59 'high profile' shootings between 1980 and 2001 and found that in 62% of handgun shootings 71% of long gun shootings the murder weapons were legally obtained. They looked at school shootings between 1997 and 2001 and found that in eight of ten the weapons were obtained from family members or friends, and in one of the two remaining cases the kid had previously been given a pistol by his father, he used it to kill both his parents and two classmates. In 14 workplace shootings since 1986 11 were committed with legally acquired weapons.
And you're telling me that restricting the type of weapons sold, or regulating who can legally own guns, or regulating how they can be stored.. none of that is going to cut down on the number of gun deaths in the US? You can talk about fucking Al Capone all you want but Adam Lanza got his guns from his mother's closet.
The fact is that there are "the bad guys" out there just like on tv, illegally acquiring guns for the purpose committing crimes and so on. There are also thousands of idiots out there who, in a moment or two of anger or panic or just stupidity, end someone's life because it was as easy as going into their closet or night stand or glove box or because they didn't have their safety on or.. blah blah blah.
To all of the above...what do you suppose committing murder or shooting an innocent bystander or leaving your firearms for innocent children to blow away their little buddies makes one????
That's right that would make you a criminal who doesn't respect the law. Who doesn't respect the rights they are born with.
And who should be held accountable for his actions...
as an aside, those stats where it says legally obtainable or acquired guns...do they bother to point out the difference between a gun that can be legally acquired and a legally acquirable gun with its numbers filed off...a slight difference don't you think?