GUN DEBATE

Perhaps you kids need to stop worrying about your 4 year old grabbing a handgun that's bigger than his arm and more about how natural selection will help him pull the trigger.

Originally Posted by Shin

If they have got a gun and you pull yours, do you really think that someone who has broken in to your house, knowing that you're in there is going to walk away just because you pulled a gun?

Actually, yeah. Like you said earlier, they are (generally) looking to steal things and leave, not shoot people. I think that if a burglar comes in with a gun, he's the one who's bluffing, not the homeowner. Alternately, if they have a gun, then they present a clear danger and I think you should be able to shoot them outright and not have to try to "scare them away."

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I just don't see the situation where you're in your house at the same time as a burglar and your very presemce isn't enough to scare them off happening so often you need a lethal weapon to protect yourself. It is my opinion that from a practical point of view, a gun is not a useful or cost effective way of protecting your property and that maintaining a constitutional right to own weapons that can kill people very easily with little or no skill or personal involvement on the basis of needing them to protect your property is silly as the social costs outweigh the individual benefits. I might not be able to kill someone who's sneaking around my house stealing my stuff without getting within arms reach, sure, but kids round here don't have to go through metal detectors on their way into school and the schools don't need early warning systems to let everyone know when a crazed gunman is on a shooting spree because when kids here get all emo and pissed off with life, their parents don't have a load of guns lying around the house.

I agree that some people have no real use for firearms, and all they really want is to own some big damn guns. But it really isn't up to anyone other than the homeowner if guns are practical, because there are certain locations where it really IS practical. My mom, who lived in a seedy town while growing up, told me recently about how she and her mom would have been robbed and murdered by a group of vandals if her older sister hadn't pointed the firearm my grandmother owned. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, and my mom didn't grow up in America, but believe it or not there are similar towns around here where owning a gun is simply smart.

The social costs you listed are probably better attributed to a lack of respect for guns rather than their abundance. If a parent owns a gun, it is pretty fucking important to teach their kids not to fuck around with it. And if a kid just flips his shit one day and is going to go on a crime spree, taking guns away probably won't stop him from causing harm to others (remember the recent Tokyo thing? though I agree that there would be less harm done). I think it's more important in those cases to try to spot a troubled person before he does anything, which is admittedly difficult in some cases, but it shouldn't be if the parents are on their A-game.

edit: the vandals in my mom's story were armed, btw

Originally Posted by Encephalon

Perhaps you kids need to stop worrying about your 4 year old grabbing a handgun that's bigger than his arm and more about how natural selection will help him pull the trigger.

I agree to an extent. While I am with you that any kid dumb enough to swallow a bullet from a revolver is probably not worthy of being on this planet, it's still not something anybody wants to deal with, especially when the chances of your kid finding the gun are far better than the chances of someone breaking in and warranting being shot.

Originally Posted by Shin

What I'm suggesting is that the risks of someone getting unintentionally killed by a gun you keep loaded in your bedside cabinet outweigh the benefits of keeping a loaded firearm in your bedside cabinet in case some crazed maniac bursts into your house at such a time as you happen to be upstairs in reach of your gun.

Under the same argument one could argue that the convenience of the automobile does not outweigh the risk of accident that may be fatal. The issue is, "should citizens be trusted to keep dangerous tools in their homes?" Based on the SC decision, they figure citizens should have personal preference when it comes to the ownership of such tools. And, of course, with that ownership comes personal responsibility.

They lifted a ban...they didn't make gun ownership mandatory.

The problem with the "it's a personal preference" argument is that people who "prefer" to have an object in their home that is statistically more likely to blow their hand off than to do them any good are kind of nutty — and obviously we don't want nutty people to have guns so it's a bit open-and-shut.

Originally Posted by Meth

Under the same argument one could argue that the convenience of the automobile does not outweigh the risk of accident that may be fatal. The issue is, "should citizens be trusted to keep dangerous tools in their homes?" Based on the SC decision, they figure citizens should have personal preference when it comes to the ownership of such tools. And, of course, with that ownership comes personal responsibility.

They lifted a ban...they didn't make gun ownership mandatory.

Cars aren't weapons, therefore the argument is moot. By that rationale, why bother having silverware in the house?

Pang... so based on some unreferenced hypothetical statistical data that you have yet to present, is it your argument that the legislature should abandon the idea that citizens just might be able to engage in safe practice with dangerous tools on the basis of idiot-proofing life for all the "nutty people" who are accident prone?

Originally Posted by sprouticus

Are you kidding? When do you ever NEED a gun?

Cougar killing my livestock.

Nobody needs a gun in the same way that nobody needs a power drill. If I felt like my life was in danger, though, I'd feel much more certain of myself if I had a gun and not a baseball bat. This is especially true for women.

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I'm willing to be proved wrong but I'm fairly sure the instances of people getting killed by fire extinguishers going off accidentally or kids using their parent's fire extinguishers to massacre their school mates are pretty few and far between. What I'm suggesting is that the risks of someone getting unintentionally killed by a gun you keep loaded in your bedside cabinet outweigh the benefits of keeping a loaded firearm in your bedside cabinet in case some crazed maniac bursts into your house at such a time as you happen to be upstairs in reach of your gun.

Problem is nobody cares, because gun accidents don't occur enough to be significant.

It's also nice that you're such a criminal expert but criminal culture isn't the same in the US. You're right, the average home invader won't be carrying a gun because that could suggest intent to kill, but some of them do and even the ones that don't have assaulted residents. The problem is that nobody is omnipresent and when somebody invades your residence you have no clue concerning their intent. Many of us would rather possess piece of mind instead of taking the extreme risks involved in confronting an invader physically. In a lot of ways a shotgun is the best weapon for home defense because the sound of the action will scare off just about anybody before you even have to confront them.

We also don't have the same kind of gangster element. Street gangs operate actively in people's neighborhoods, so accidental killings from stray bullets aren't uncommon. The emphasis on being hard also means that a lot of people become victimized when gang members try to prove themselves. This is especially true for Mexico and along the Mexican border, since Hispanic gangs and cartels have had to be hideously brutal to carve out a place for themselves. A guy was just recently assassinated by 6 men hired by a drug cartel, some of which were active members of the Mexican army. That's obviously a one in a million case, but it's indicative of how far these people are willing to go.

As for how many crimes are averted by an armed citizen, that's unquantifiable. An averted crime isn't newsworthy, and many go unreported. The same is also true of gun control and bans. Causal links between policy and resulting crime rates are difficult to prove if at all, and in cases where a link can be established (like DC assuming Mush is right) crime has also rebounded and in many cases become much worse (again, like DC). So once again it comes back to piece of mind.

There's also protection from THE GUBMINT, which is actually a terrible interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. No amount of firepower is going to protect an individual from the state, despite how many communes and mountain men think they will. Firearms support revolution, and it's impossible to engage in asymmetric warfare without firearms. Private ownership of firearms can protect the free state, assuming that people are willing to defend it.

also at least we have a constitution booya

Originally Posted by Meth

Pang... so based on some unreferenced hypothetical statistical data that you have yet to present, is it your argument that the legislature should abandon the idea that citizens just might be able to engage in safe practice with dangerous tools on the basis of idiot-proofing life for all the "nutty people" who are accident prone?

If that's genuinely your opinion, I assume you're against the international community trying to stop Iran building nuclear enrichment plants? Why shouldn't they be allowed to produce nuclear power when it's only the crazy people in power who'd want to make atomic bombs with the leftovers after all.

Plus guns are fun as fuck, stop trying to take away our fun you fags.

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If that's genuinely your opinion, I assume you're against the international community trying to stop Iran building nuclear enrichment plants? Why shouldn't they be allowed to produce nuclear power when it's only the crazy people in power who'd want to make atomic bombs with the leftovers after all.

Also pre-empting this for me, I do support Iran's nuclear power program.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

also at least we have a constitution booya

We're currently in the process of having one nobody wants forced on us. Thank God for the Irish voting against it.

I agree that crime in the US is far diferent and more hardcore than it is here. I just don't think owning a gun is a really practical way to stop it is all. If you own a gun, you're not going to carry it around the house are you? It'll be stashed somewhere, most likely near the bed. In order to be able to use your gun to stave off wouldbe home invaders, you need to be in your bedroom when they home invade. This would suggest that it's likely to be night time which again would suggest that you'll be tired, whereas they'l be wide awake and buzzing off their crime spree. You're coming downstairs, not knowing where in the house the crims are, they're hiding downstairs (Unless you're some kind of stealth ninja, everyone makes some noise getting out of bed and if you're a ninja you don't need a gun) knowing exactly where you're coming from. If they're going to run, they'll do so before you appear, gun or no gun. If they're gonna kill you, they're gonna kill you or disarm you long before you get a shot off.

Having a gun to defend yourself at home doesn't save you from a ganster's stray bullets in a drive-by, it doesn't stop people breaking into your house when you're out (Which is when the vast majority of burglarys happen) and I'd suggest, using the example I just made, that they achieve fuck all when it comes to getting people out of your house when you're there.

Yes, I can see how they might provide peace of mind to paranoid fucks who've not thought it through properly living in lawless townships but I chalenge anyone to give a reasonable, realistic, theoretical situation where having a gun at home in America will in any way help you prevent loss of property or injury.

District of Columbia Crime Rates 1960 - 2006

here are some statistics

they might be helpful

Additional Spam:
The '75 Gun Ban didn't seem to have much of an effect. Burglaries went down around 1990, 15 years after the gun ban, so I doubt that you could establish a strong link between those two things

Originally Posted by LZ

The '75 Gun Ban didn't seem to have much of an effect.

Except for the number of violent crimes, burlaries and murders falling for the next three years, unless I'm reading the chart wrong.

Originally Posted by Shin

Yes, I can see how they might provide peace of mind to paranoid fucks who've not thought it through properly living in lawless townships but I chalenge anyone to give a reasonable, realistic, theoretical situation where having a gun at home in America will in any way help you prevent loss of property or injury.

Ence just did. From personal experience.

You're right, gun possession isn't going to stop crime, that's not the point. The point is that a gun will still provide a modicum of protection, especially if you have a security system which activates on a break-in. Conjecturing on how things can go wrong for the home invader and the victim is ultimately pointless because all cases can occur.

The point about accidental killings that I didn't get across is that yes, criminals will still have guns, and yes homicide and accidental death will still be a significant problem with strict gun control or gun bans.

Originally Posted by Shin

Except for the number of violent crimes, burlaries and murders falling for the next three years, unless I'm reading the chart wrong.

They fell, but not by very much at all and they came back up. So, not much of an effect.

Originally Posted by Shin

Except for the number of violent crimes, burlaries and murders falling for the next three years, unless I'm reading the chart wrong.

You are.
I would hardly consider a slight three-year dip proof that gun bans are a lasting solution.

Don't mess with Paine.

Since the Constitution is mostly a agreement between the States and the Federal Government. (To form a more perfect Union) The Bill of Rights does not give legal rights to the People. Nor is it suppose to. Rather it's meant to recognize the natural rights of the People. Which is why the US Constitution is considered a social contract. Gun ownership being one of those natural rights.

Tom Paine on why the Bill of Rights doesn't give you any legal rights.