Gun Control

Arnust said:
Not treating them like toys and making people go through some more hoops to get them, though?
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Come on, quoting me out of context like that isn't really fair. In the next sentence I literally say that something needs to be done. I agree with you. There should be common sense licensing and regulation.

Hassknecht said:
To decrease the violence the US would have to massively decrease poverty, increase social security, and mental and physical healthcare.
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Hassknecht said:
You can't take away the guns, so you need to stop people from wanting to hurt others. You do that by creating jobs and opportunities for everyone, by making people not feel left behind or left out, and by helping those in need.
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Is that... is that a practical and realistic solution that someone just suggested in this thread? Holy shit, thank you. This is the kind of level headed thinking we desperately need in our society.
 
Comparing stricter regulation on guns to the war on drugs is a bit non sensical. The first jist looks to make it harder for crazies to get their hands on guns but still allow people to purchase them legally as long as they go through the due process, the other is a zero tolerance, door busting doctrine that makes even the moderate use of recreational drugs akin to murdering someone in the eyes of the law.
 
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Walpknut said:
Comparing stricter regulation on guns to the war on drugs is a bit non sensical. The first jist looks to make it harder for crazies to get their hands on guns but still allow people to purchase them legally as long as they go through the due process, the other is a zero tolerance, door busting doctrine that makes even the moderate use pf recreational drugs akin to mursering someone in the eyes of the law.
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You have a point there. I think a lot of the disagreement in this thread stems simply from misunderstanding. (Unheard of!) People on the neutral or pro-gun side think of gun control as meaning "ban all guns" while people who support firearm restriction just want pragmatic registration measures. Even some of the biggest gun fanatics I know would support that. It just has to be conveyed in a more tactful way, maybe?
 
I don't doubt there are some more enthusiatic people who would call for a ban on all arms but there are extremes on all sides. Banning of all guns would be specially hard in the US due to the centuries long gun tradition and the sheer number of legally owned guns.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
Have we learned nothing from the disaster that is the "War on Drugs" ?
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So you agree all drugs should be legalized? That's pretty progressive from you. I like it!

TerminallyChill said:
Is that... is that a practical and realistic solution that someone just suggested in this thread? Holy shit, thank you. This is the kind of level headed thinking we desperately need in our society.
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Most of us here aren't stupid. We very well understand that if by some unexplained magic the US would be turned in to Switzerland, they could have their cake and eat it too. Which brings us to the issue, gun culture in the US nedlessly kills people. THe US is not the only nation with a gun culture, Switzerland has one - it is an example that's sometimes brought up by gun lovers as well. But even Switzerland has SOME regulations. And that's the point. People can't even agree with the smallest degree of regulations that would most probably prevent at least a few incidents. But the argument to that always boils down to, don't give in! Background checks today, all of our guns tomorrow! And you simply can't have a differentiated debate or any sensible discussion if everything you suggest is simply dismissed ... at the end of the day, people are going over lives to support their hobby and a whole industry is earning a fuck ton of money on it.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
Most of us here aren't stupid.
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Sorry, I wasn't trying to insult anyone's intelligence. Just meant to point out that there is more than a little idealism here and not a ton of pragmatism. This is on all sides of the debate.

Crni Vuk said:
People can't even agree with the smallest degree of regulations that would most probably prevent at least a few incidents. But the argument to that always boils down to, don't give in! Background checks today, all of our guns tomorrow!
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Like I said earlier in the thread, most gun enthusiasts that I know would agree with you on that. There are certainly fanatics out there but is anyone here actually outright saying that background checks are a bad thing?
 
IMO, it's always the pro gun people in these topics who like to frame the argument about it being a draconian ban on all guns, even if nobody even argued in favor of such a thing at all during the thread.
 
Walpknut said:
IMO, it's always the pro gun people in these topics who like to frame the argument about it being a draconian ban on all guns, even if nobody even argued in favor of such a thing at all during the thread.
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Usually what gets the gun zealots worked up is when people start talking about banning 'assault weapons'. You have to understand how much people love to jerk off about shit like that in rural areas of this country. They couldn't possibly fathom living in a world where they can't own 27 AR-15s. Even so called "moderates" (however truthful that term can be) like myself get a little uneasy hearing that because of the ambigious definition of the term 'assault weapon'. What exactly is an assault weapon? It's not like it's easy to get fully automatic machine guns here or anything. We're not totally insane. Just kind of. I think supporters of gun regulation just need to word things better so that the rednecks of America don't immediately get butthurt and think they're coming for everyone's precious shooty sticks.
 
TerminallyChill said:
Like I said earlier in the thread, most gun enthusiasts that I know would agree with you on that. There are certainly fanatics out there but is anyone here actually outright saying that background checks are a bad thing?
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A couple of people here made that argument that giving in to the govnerment will lead eventually to more and more regulations and in the end to the ban of weapons. But I am not going back 70 pages to find the exact quotes on this.

You can't argue that people which are very fond of the 'pro gun' debate are not very fond of the government in general, in my experience most of them prefer smaller government and less (if any) regulations at all. Of course this is a generalisation and the opinions differ. For example someone who's more conservative leaning will have a completely different opinion on anything with the military and possibily drugs, where they want 'big governent' while they want small government on everything else, like taxes, regulations etc. - how is that going to work though? I have no clue. But that's all just more or less a rought idea.

I would say without any offense that gun-nuts are always a bit paranoid.

TerminallyChill said:
Even so called "moderates" (however truthful that term can be) like myself get a little uneasy hearing that because of the ambigious definition of the term 'assault weapon'.
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Maybe, but that hasn't been really the topic of this conversation, at least not as far as I know. This topic has more or less to do with US gun culture and what effect it has.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Which brings us to the issue, gun culture in the US nedlessly kills people.
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I don't think that is the case. I think that it wouldn't matter if there was a gun available or not; in absence of a gun they would use a knife—or a spoon if they want the other person dead.

In (most) prisons, they don't allow the inmates to have guns... but the murders still happen. A prison is a good microcosm for the US with a hard gun ban; and technically even without one, as the authorities are all armed and the residents are not (but make due).

It is not a gun culture that is the problem, rather... it is the willingness to kill over a dispute—and that is a bad parenting issue.

There was a time when a child could bring a rifle to school with them, for the purpose of having it on the walk home... to hunt with.
 
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Yes, and I think it was already mentioned several times by now, that it's not meant to prevent all murder or all viollence or all crime etc. Just lowering the leathality. I mean please, do you want to tell me a spoon shares the same effectivness like a hand gun or even a rifle? If that's the case, then I am sure you could save a lot of money the next time you have to arm the United States army once they decide to invade Iraq ... again ...

Gizmo! Plz. You can do better than that ;).


Gizmojunk said:
In (most) prisons, they don't allow the inmates to have guns... but the murders still happen. A prison is a good microcosm for the US with a hard gun ban; and technically even without one, as the authorities are all armed and the residents are not (but make due).
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Now imagine those same prison inmates with assault rifles.

Actually, that would be an interesting experiment ...
 
That would only lead to an arms cutlery race, as the crazy students would simply jump to forks and from there ... it's only a small jump to cooking spoons.
 
Walpknut said:
Yes, you could totally kill 17 people in a short time if you were armed with a spoon. We always hear about those Spoon rampages in Japan, the other day a guy got into a school with a spoon and killed 20 students at spoon point.
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:roffle:

In all seriousness though, I think the point he was trying to make is that there are more ways to kill people than just with guns. Cars, planes, bombs, etc.
 
Gizmojunk said:
It is not a gun culture that is the problem, rather... it is the willingness to kill over a dispute—and that is a bad parenting issue.
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I agree. Although the gun culture makes the bad parenting a lot more dangerous.
As I said, restricting gun access won't do much. US culture would need to change, and I don't see that happening.
 
TerminallyChill said:
:roffle:

In all seriousness though, I think the point he was trying to make is that there are more ways to kill people than just with guns. Cars, planes, bombs, etc.
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Yes, and most of them are harder to aquire than guns ... a teenager getting out of a liquor store and inside a car? FUCK HIM! JAIL TIME!

But apparantly owning a tec 9 gun, depending on the state, is perfectly reasonable.
 
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