If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…

On January 26 2013 16:00 Finganforn wrote:
Well it feels like I see more news stories about random madmen using guns to commit school shootings than stories about good civilians using guns to defend themselves. And I'd think there'd be people with political agendas pushing those heroic stories of "this 39-year old mother of five defended herself and her children from a house invader" but they still seem to rarely happen. This is just me basing it on the frequncy of media coverage though, I don't know any actual numbers.

The whole "armed citizens are safer citizens" sounds a lot like the whole nuclear weapons deterrent and "Mutual assured destruction". There's a certain logic to it but it seems fundamentally wrong to me, enabling more violence to prevent violence? Why stop at guns then, what about giving nuclear missiles to every person in the world?

It's true that gun laws will be ignored by hardcore criminals, but it can make it more difficult for madmen and more "casual" criminals from aquiring them. If someone is desperate enough to carry guns in a gun controlled society, they probably are career criminals and know to use them good enough that a random civilian wont be able to defend themselves anyway.

But there's also the matter of accessability. As the OP says, "Criminals have gotten access to guns, and that is a genie that isn't going back into the bottle." I would argue that gun control is a bad idea in a society where all the criminals and potential criminals already have abundant access to guns, and a much better idea in a society where guns are still rare and harder to come by.

On January 27 2013 03:45 xwoGworwaTsx wrote:
Every American has the constitutional right to carry and bear arms!
It is the criminals that must be caught and punished, not the gun owners in general

On January 27 2013 03:52 AdamBanks wrote:


Putting more guns into a population increases the likelihood of members of that population being shot. If you fail to understand this concept..well....your just not that good at concepts.

In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, noted that the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence.

Professor Simon Chapman, former co-convenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, complained that his words "will henceforth be cited by every gun-lusting lobby group throughout the world in their perverse efforts to stall reforms that could save thousands of lives".

Weatherburn responded, "The fact is that the introduction of those laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide. They may have reduced the risk of mass shootings but we cannot be sure because no one has done the rigorous statistical work required to verify this possibility. It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice."

In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker (a former state president of the SSAA(SA)) and Dr Samara McPhedran (Women in Shooting and Hunting) found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide

On January 27 2013 05:54 white_horse wrote:
^I can site another article saying the exact opposite. Having many guns in society doesn't necessarily increase gun violence per se, the problem is that more guns means that the probability that the wrong people will get their hands on a gun increases. How can the NRA argue against the sandy hook shooting where an otherwise law-abiding woman had several guns in her house was unable to secure her legally-owned guns responsibly enough that her son was able to get the guns and go on a shooting rampage? Isn't it common sense that there should be some kind of legislation that restricts people from buying guns if they live with a mental person? Or better laws to identify and tag mental people?

The NRA is absolutist. When has being absolute ever done good?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/

"Unable" is an inappropriate word choice. She may have failed to do so, but I'm certain she was "able".

Also, the USA kind of has laws against guilt by association. What's next, not letting people with children own guns, since children can't own a gun legally? People who associate with ex-cons? People who live in bad neighborhoods?

On January 27 2013 08:30 white_horse wrote:


You're just flailing with semantics. You know what I'm talking about. I don't care if she had memorized the NRA's gun safety booklet from A to Z. The point is she failed to secure her guns when there was a guy with issues living in the same house as she. This shooting could have been prevented.

Why are gun proponents unable to think in any other way than the absolute?

Just because the senate, for example, passes a bill that bans people who live with mental people from having guns doesn't mean that they are now working to pass a new bill where people with children would be barred from having guns.

I suppose you think that's going to lead the senate to pass a bill that bans guns from with people with dogs? And finally the senate passes a billl that bans gun from every american...Just because the government decides to, for example, limit the height of a roller-coaster to a maximum of 500 feet for safety reasons doesn't mean that the government is going to eventually limit the height of the roller-coaster to 10 feet for "safety" reasons. It doesn't make sense. And it's exactly the way you and other gun proponents think. Reasonable gun control bills is not an encroachment to the 2nd amendment nor is it an attempt to.

Also, the idea that people who live with psychos should be banned from having guns is not unreasonable. The risk is incredibly high. At the very least, people in this situation who wish to have a gun should be required to attend a rigorous class on gun safety before they can get their gun permit, which is something that should apply to all gun owners anyway.

On January 27 2013 08:30 white_horse wrote:


You're just flailing with semantics. You know what I'm talking about. I don't care if she had memorized the NRA's gun safety booklet from A to Z. The point is she failed to secure her guns when there was a guy with issues living in the same house as she. This shooting could have been prevented.



Why are gun proponents unable to think in any other way than the absolute? Just because the senate, for example, passes a bill that bans people who live with mental people from having guns doesn't mean that they are now working to pass a new bill where people with children would be barred from having guns. I suppose you think that's going to lead the senate to pass a bill that bans guns from with people with dogs? And finally the senate passes a billl that bans gun from every american...Just because the government decides to, for example, limit the height of a roller-coaster to a maximum of 500 feet for safety reasons doesn't mean that the government is going to eventually limit the height of the roller-coaster to 10 feet for "safety" reasons. It doesn't make sense. And it's exactly the way you and other gun proponents think. Reasonable gun control bills is not an encroachment to the 2nd amendment nor is it an attempt to.

Also, the idea that people who live with psychos should be banned from having guns is not unreasonable. The risk is incredibly high. At the very least, people in this situation who wish to have a gun should be required to attend a rigorous class on gun safety before they can get their gun permit, which is something that should apply to all gun owners anyway.

Also, the idea that people who live with psychos should be banned from having guns is not unreasonable. The risk is incredibly high. At the very least, people in this situation who wish to have a gun should be required to attend a rigorous class on gun safety before they can get their gun permit, which is something that should apply to all gun owners anyway.

On January 27 2013 21:20 KAB00000000M wrote:
Good work. I still believe that carrying guns prevent more than they hurt.
I wish we had more of these graphs and statistics. So much easier to see the results than speculating about it.

On January 27 2013 21:20 KAB00000000M wrote:
Good work. I still believe that carrying guns prevent more than they hurt.
I wish we had more of these graphs and statistics. So much easier to see the results than speculating about it.

On January 27 2013 21:36 naastyOne wrote:

Well, you can check out the site i cited, it has plenty of great statistics.

A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 162,000 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[12]

* Based on survey data from the U.S. Department of Justice, roughly 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States during 2008. These include simple/aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders.[13] [14] [15] Of these, about 436,000 or 8% were committed by offenders visibly armed with a gun.[16]

* Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,[17] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.[18]

* A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 3.5% of households had members who had used a gun "for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 1,029,615 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[19]

* A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]

* A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]

• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"
• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]


Aperently, guns usage for self-defence is an order of magnitude bigger, than gun usage in murder.

On January 28 2013 06:33 feanor1 wrote:
The President makes some rather insightful comments about gun control in the United States
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-gun-control-advocates-listen-more-060727333--politics.html

On January 28 2013 13:07 feanor1 wrote:

While true the firearms that the second amendment were referring to were nothing like the handguns and rifles of today, pretending that the people who wrote the second amendment planned for the increase in firepower is also dishonest.