Gun Control

[Ryazania]

Every time a tragedy takes place, people immediately become emotional, irrational, and begin to blame gun laws and the guns themselves as the scapegoat. They claim that if only guns were harder to attain legally, then less gun violence would take place. This isn't an entirely unreasonable conclusion, but it is entirely misguided and entirely FALSE when the facts are considered. In fact, history proves that gun control does NOT work, and has actually made gun violence worse once it has been implemented, as I will prove later.

Also, people think that school shootings and such are an exclusively American phenomena, and that this is only due to our relatively lax gun laws, but this is entirely untrue. People only think this way because they focus all of their attention on the US, ignore other variables such as race, geography, the SHOOTER etc.. and just blame it on the gun.

People also constantly ignore that many similar tragedies have taken place in countries where gun laws are much stricter than our own. Yet these events have never garnered as much attention as the Columbine shooting, and will certainly be all but forgotten after the recent massacre. People all over the world focus all of their attention on the US, overemphasize what takes place in our country, and ignore their own problems, and their own similar tragedies. This causes the ignorance towards our gun laws. Most notable tragedies are:

- The École Polytechnique Massacre in 1989 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in which 14 people were killed, plus the shooter.

- The Dunblane Massacre in Scotland in 1996 in which 17 people were shot and killed.

- The Erfert Shooting in Germany in 2002 in which 18 people were shot and killed.

Now, these crimes were committed with simple semi-automatic weapons firing pistol rounds, (and in the case with the Montreal shooting, a civilian model semi-automatic rifle). These type of semi-automatic pistol caliber firearm is what was used in the recent VT shooting, and is what has received the demonization by the gun-control advocates.

These types of weapons are legal everywhere, and are still entirely legal in Canada and Germany.

But the UK got caught up in a liberal frenzy and overreacted, and made a gigantic legal blunder .

After the aforementioned Dunblane Massacre in Scotland in which 18 were killed, the UK legislature voted decisively and banned all legal ownership of handguns in their country in 1997. This irrational law actually caused UK handgun crime to GO WAY UP.

UK handgun violence continued to go up exponentially. Then in 2003 (6 years into the ban) they had TWICE the amount of handgun crimes than they did in 1997 before the ban was enforced!!!

Think about that... by banning handguns, they actually entirely defeated the entire motive for doing so in the first place! By banning handguns, they made gun violence worse. By disarming law abiding citizens, they did nothing to address the actual source of crime, which is the group of people who ILLEGALLY attain handguns and who will not obey gun laws. Committing this major legal blunder only resulted in emboldened criminals who could prey upon citizens knowing that their prey were unarmed.

Now, certainly this simple fact will be ignored by the liberals in the US and elsewhere that will call for changes in US gun laws. Or perhaps if they are actually aware of what happened in the UK, they might pretend that the US might have better success than the UK did if similar gun control is implemented.

But the history and the current reality of our own country shows that this will not work here either.

Take a look here. Compare the murder rate/violence rate in US states, and then consider their respective gun laws:

#1 District of Columbia (Washington D.C mind you) : 3.597 per 10,000 people

Washington D.C. (which is a federal district, not a state) had the tightest gun control laws in the entire country, until just last month, all handguns and concealed carry of any weapons was entirely illegal. Yet it has the HIGHEST murder rate.

#16 Texas : 0.597 per 10,000 people

Texas has very, very lax gun laws as I'm sure you're aware. It has about 1/6th the murder rate as Washington D.C and is at number 16.

#33 Washington (the STATE) : 0.302 per 10,000 people

Washington State, has a much lower murder rate. This state's gun laws are similar to those of Texas. The are a blue (Democrat majority) state, but wthey still have a gigantic gun lobby and moderate Democrats who opposed a bill that would have enforced California-style gun laws, numerous times.

Then you look at the state with the LOWEST murder rate:

#51 Maine: 0.136 per 10,000 people

It's #51 (among 50 states and 1 federal district), it has the lowest murder rate in our entire country, yet Maine has been continually criticized for it's lax gun laws by delusional liberals. Maine has probably THE LEAST AMOUNT OF GUN CONTROL in our entire country. Maine has NO permits or licenses required for any firearm, and no waiting lists, yet it has the LOWEST MURDER RATE IN THE COUNTRY.

Don't you see that? The tighter the gun control, the higher the murder rate. Counterintuitive? Not really, because when law-abiding citizens are disarmed, criminals who don't obey the laws in the first place have free reign. They have defenseless citizens to prey upon. All gun control does is make it so that the only people with guns are the criminals.

So to all the misguided liberals; Are you really honest about your desire to reduce gun crime and violence? Or are you just really against guns first and foremost? Are you against the gun itself, do you hate the inanimate object, or do you hate the person who actually uses it illegally?

Because... it seems that if you REALLY want gun crime tp be reduced, you should be PRO-GUN! You should be AGAINST gun-control if you look at the facts instead of allowing your irrational emotional response to a tragedy to dictate your views.

Conclusion:

GUN CONTROL IS NOT THE ANSWER. IT WILL ONLY MAKE THINGS WORSE.

[Solnath]

Enforcable gun-control would work. As it is now, it doesn't. However, the rate of crimes committed is not only linked to gun laws or to any single aspect of society for that matter.

[Talmann]

*Talmann tears hair out in frustration

You people just can't listen to facts! If and when said "Enforceable gun-control" is implemented, organized crime will change accordingly. You are dealing with humans, a constantly-changing variable, that will continue to do what they've always done. The policy that you would like to "enforce" would only work in a small, isolated community, not in a country as big as the US (or even the UK).

[Myroria]

1. I'm proud to live in Maine, where dumbass liberals can't take away my right to bear arms.

2. Gun beats person. That's obvious, and gun control will never get rid of all weapons out in the black market. However, it's also obvious that "Gun may or may not beat person with gun". Would you rather have a chance to die or die, period?

[Delfos]

as i said in other topic, the shooter must be led to justice, either if i die or not. if i kill the guy with the gun, im the shooter, and i will have to accept iv murdered someone.

i wouldnt point that gun control made it worse in UK, the law isnt as enforced as it is in most of other european countries, what happened in UK was a escalate of violence, involving guns or not, either terrorist or not. And you gotta see that the circumstances are different, there was even an incident in a school in Russia that you didnt listed, if was done by a criminal, not a young kid from school. The apparent reasons are totally different. Plus Columbine was more terrible imo than this last one, 2 guys having all that guns entering a school like that. This last one, if im not mistaken, it began at the campus, and it could have been much softer if the Police had close the place.

Plus lets not compare the numbers about crimes with guns there. :p

[Myroria]

It's not murder if you're defending yourself against a guy who wants to shoot you.

[Delfos]

no it isnt, but killing him is. i would knock him down with a baseball bat, maybe even break his skull, something awful, but i wouldnt kill him. everyone has the right to live, even Saddam and Hitler.

If i had a gun, i would probably shoot him...means kill him. Do you see the difference? If i'v a gun i most likely kill him, if i dont i have to knock him out, i dont have to kill him. If we had guns for all, the dead by shooting would rise drastically, to the point as it is in USA. Glad we dont have guns for all. Even if it's more difficult to control the guns in the black market, its much more difficult to buy one, plus it isnt legal. You'll get a warning from the police, or else you get jailed.

[tak]

There are few, if any, of such shooting case in East Asia, simply because almost nobody can obtain guns here! Without the means to kill, even gang fights are considered "violent crimes" here. A really serious case here would be seizing armfire from the police and using it to kill 3 over 5 years! Why should we even have guns then?

[Myroria]

Well, since certain liberals would rather ignore a good argument and give their "guns are bad" argument over and over, let's provide more examples, getting past the United States:

South Africa

South Africa has the highest murder rate in the world, with a height of 51.39 people out of every 100,000 murdered. Coincidentally enough, that height was achieved in 2000, the same year the government cracked down on weapons and made everyone re-register their firearms, even if they had already been registered. Past that date, it reached a low of 47.53/100,000 people murdered, which obviously isn't a big difference. Now, let's look at...

Pakistan

Oh, that's right. Pakistan. They have the lowest murder rate in the entire world, with 0.05/100,000. Not only that, there are more people in Pakistan than South Africa. It's only natural for one to think that with a higher population, comes more homicides. WRONG. As I'm sure many of you know, Pakistan is a hugely Muslim country, and most Muslim countries do not have tight gun laws.

Mexico

Mexico is ranked 12th in the world in homicide rate, with a peak at 14.11/100,000 and the most recent at 13.04/100,000. Sure enough, a search of "Gun politics in Mexico" yields:

The United Mexican States or Mexico (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos or México) has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. It is in many ways similar to the United Kingdom, except with much more severe prison terms for even the smallest gun law violations.

And Hitler deserves to live?!?! HE KILLED 6 MILLION PEOPLE. WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR YOU TO REALISE THAT PLACES HIS LIFE ABOVE THEIRS?!

[Talmann]

You have to realize that some people actually THINK before grabbing their guns. We aren't all members of gangs or hillbillies toting rifles to shoot people on sight. Lower-level America, yes, might need gun-control, but none of them will listen to "the man" because they have to defend their pride by shooting people. Myself and people I associate myself with (not to mention most all middle-tier America) would only use guns if we were in such an immediate crisis, but we would have to be able to have the gun in the first place.

Delfos- you realize in order to get a hold on the black market, the police force would have to rise drastically. and the US doesn't have that kind of funds, our Social Security cost is too high and is growing higher. And you actually assume that our police can find these hooligans and prove that there's an arms ring. I laugh at that, because, as I said, our police force is too small, and we're too worried about civil rights to search the ghetto for said rings.

[Myroria]

And you could shoot him in the foot. Knock him down, but not kill him.

Not to mention in Delfos' utopia, the police force doesn't have guns so they have to politely ask the criminals to give up, and hope they don't get shot. And, Delfos, you don't live in America. You know nothing about us. The black market here cannot be stopped. Someone can buy drugs, and the chances of them getting caught isn't too high for an experienced person. That's the black market.

[tak]

You have to realize that some people actually THINK before grabbing their guns. We aren't all members of gangs or hillbillies toting rifles to shoot people on sight. Lower-level America, yes, might need gun-control, but none of them will listen to "the man" because they have to defend their pride by shooting people. Myself and people I associate myself with (not to mention most all middle-tier America) would only use guns if we were in such an immediate crisis, but we would have to be able to have the gun in the first place.

Delfos- you realize in order to get a hold on the black market, the police force would have to rise drastically. and the US doesn't have that kind of funds, our Social Security cost is too high and is growing higher. And you actually assume that our police can find these hooligans and prove that there's an arms ring. I laugh at that, because, as I said, our police force is too small, and we're too worried about civil rights to search the ghetto for said rings.

Indeed, the enforcement is the determining factor - for instance, in Singapore and Hong Kong, it is next to impossible to own firearms, and a crackdown on even a few guns can make the headline...

[Talmann]

Yes, our black market is so huge that many kids at our schools are drug dealers, if they don't just purchase illigal drugs, even with 30+ police on the campus 24-5

[Delfos]

neva said they should hold on the black market, said if they couldnt get it legally it would be harder to get it from black market, thats what happens around here. plus i do realise people think before holding a gun, and that most of them dont intend to kill. problem is they do kill. South Africa and Pakistan and other countries around that area are nutorious accessing to guns, any gang in europe who wants really weaponary goes to Africa or Middle East to get them. In Afghanistan kids sell american mines they find in the sand, actually they are even more smart, they hide in teh bushes and see where the americans put the mines, then they go there and dig them up, smart heh? thats how they get guns, almost free, thats why theres that mortality, only prooves that higher access to guns is equal to higher mortality by guns.

With no gun to grab, there wont be killing, most probably theres more killing by the criminal side because you try to reach your own gun..it's the same thing as the 'far west' with cowboys and all, its how they show us and how we see it in USA.

in Delfos' Utopia police has guns, not firearms, electric guns, guns that paralize but they dont kill or severely damage the person. it exists already, even the american SWAT uses it. you can bark that SWAT is very professional, heres one thing i like them, they enforce the law, people must be led to justice, they rather not kill.

you are not the law, criminals must be led to justice, you are not lady justice, if someone shoots you that person must be led to justice, not to murder. (anyway i would murder someone that would kill my mother for example if he hadnt been led to justice yet, but that would make me a murderer, and i would willingly go to prison) <-thats how things are run here

Takasia says almost the same thing as i do, and they are 2 different perspectives, eastern asia and western europe.

Everyone deserves to live, even Hitler. No i dont put his life in higher estime than the 6million you yell about, altho died more russians than jews, lets not forget that. What Hitler did was wrong, but it's wrong to kill him, like they killed Saddam. If you kill him you'r no more than him, you'r a murderer, it's the same thing i say. Gadly, if what they say is true, Hitler commited suicide. I think it was a suicide like Hannibal of Cartaghe. Anyway lets not forget he was a genious, even if mad and killed all those people. Einstein was a genious too and invented the most mass killing machine that we know of, great that he aknowloged it and was ashame of it as some history books say.

[Talmann]

You don't get it! With civilians having no gun (because they do what is legal), then crime can run amuck. And with your ideal police force, all they gotta do is kill any cop they see or stay out of range. You would have us sink to that kind of anarchy? I think not.