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

On July 21 2012 14:27 Romantic wrote:
Banning guns will work about as well as banning drugs.

On July 21 2012 15:55 NKexquisite wrote:
Yes. Criminals will have them whether they are legal or not. 2nd Amendment!

On July 21 2012 14:09 white_horse wrote:
Americans supporting such lax gun laws as we currently have (and making gun laws even looser than they already are, which is insane), should look at other countries' gun laws before beating your chests and talking about 2nd amendment rights and the right to protect yourself from armed attackers.

First of all, how the fuck can you justify having not just one shooting gun but two or three more in a darkened, smoke-filled room? A few weeks of training doesn't make you a crackshot with a gun as you all think you are as you starting making "what if" and "could have" ideas that you would have been the hero to take down the shooter. Wake up from your dream. More guns going off would have killed more innocent people.

There are countries around the world where guns are totally restricted to the public save the military and police. How can that ever be a bad idea? It won't ever work in the states, but how is this approach wrong? If I know nobody in the room could ever possibly have a gun, doesn't that make society that much safer? If I'm a police officer in south korea, I don't have to worry about meeting someone armed with an ak-47 while I only have a glock. Going beyond the argument for self-defense, the core fact that guns are in the hands in the public is the reason why mass shootings happen in the first place.

On July 21 2012 15:45 Suende wrote:
I wish we had less guns in the US. Its stupidly dangerous. What does it help us do that less than lethal weapons can't do? maybe everyone gets bean bag guns now that sounds better. Can still hurt someone else enough to make them think twice but dont have to worry about some moron being a bad shot and hitting the wrong person. Its often scary to even get in an arguement with people because they might just decide to shoot you. Also it seems most of the kind of assholes who SHOULDNT have guns are the ones who end up with them.

On July 21 2012 16:33 igotmyown wrote:
Are people sure that the US founding fathers implemented the second amendment for criminal home invasion scenarios?

It seemed much more to institutionalize their efforts to organize and fight the British. I personally doubt that in modern times it would be particularly effective to fight the government, so it seems pretty archaic.

On the other hand, if say the Burmese had access to firearms a few years ago, things might have gone differently. And possibly some of the Arab spring countries, although those might have turned out much worse.

Finally, I hate this civilians are safer with guns or without type debates. There's probably some absolute truth for an answer, but for some reason it becomes an opinion based argument. What's the point of even arguing, it's either true or it's not, someone just do a metastudy, get the final answer, and end the argument once and for all.

On July 21 2012 16:26 Sp4cem4nSpiff wrote:



The Problem with guns being "totally restricted to the public save the military and police" is that the government then has a monopoly on the use of force. Authoritarian governments are much more dangerous than "guns in the hands of the public". The government can take away your rights, freedom or life and you are unable to do anything to stop it.

The number of people killed by governments around the world and throughout history is horrendous!http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP1.HTM The best example is the genocide of the Jews during the Holocaust. Unarmed Jews were rounded up and slaughtered by the nazi government. In places like the Warsaw ghetto even a small number of poorly armed Jews were able to hold of the premier military power of the time for a considerable amount of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising The point being people are much more likely to be killed by the government than by law-abiding citizens owning guns.


People deserve to have the ability to defend themselves. They cannot rely on the government to protect them. As demonstrated in Aurora, Colorado, Even when the police respond extremely quickly (1min-1min 1/2) it was too late. These events simply happen to fast for the police too be able to stop them. I'd rather have a gun in my hand than the police on the phone!

On July 21 2012 15:56 BlackPanther wrote:


There is a big difference between drugs and guns. Drugs are relativly easy to produce and distribute. Guns, on the other hand, require lots of parts and manufacturing if they are to be effective at all. No one makes guns illegally, they only distribute them illegally. In Australia after the the Port Arthur massacre in '96, the government put major gun control ordinances into place, destroying 100s of thousands of weapons. Gun crimes have dropped dramatically since then.

On July 21 2012 16:52 DropTester wrote:


If the government really wants to take advantage of their 'monopoly on the use of force' then they can do so and it won't make much of a difference whether you have a gun or not. As mentioned by others, the government has so many others things at their disposal so if the 'government ever decides to kill you', they will be able to.

Do you really think that you would have carried a gun with you to the theater at that time? If everyone carried a gun to the theater or carried a gun everywhere with them to be 'safe' you would have the complete opposite of it. The lack of training by the general public, not to mention to accessibility of guns will make petty criminals ever more prevalent.

On July 21 2012 16:42 Esk23 wrote:


The Founding Fathers created the 2nd Amendment for the purpose of self defense, so in a way yes. If someone in the government can have guns it makes absolutely 0 sense that the citizens can't. The government's purpose is to serve and represent the people, the people are the ones who are supposed to be in charge but that's really been slipping away over the years.

On July 21 2012 17:00 Romantic wrote:


This graph seems to show it was decreasing before then

+ Show Spoiler +

Gun homicides as a percent of total homicides in Australia.

I don't really care about gun crime, anyway. I would care about unlawful homicides.

On July 21 2012 17:08 NotSupporting wrote:


The 2nd Amendment was created in self defence - from the British Empire. When America was founded it was still under threat from the British who at any point could come back to retake their lost colonies. It was therefore a good idea to give everyone the right to own a gun, if everyone had access to a gun then they would be ready to defend their new country at any point, the right to form militias had the same purpose.

Also, the 2nd Amendment is severely outdated. Think about what kind of weapons they were referring too back then, it was a gunpowder gun with the capability to be fired once and then had to be reloaded, when this right were given to the people there were no automatic machine-guns capable of killing hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. If some psycho would go crazy with a gun back then he could take down one person if he got lucky.

On July 21 2012 17:08 NotSupporting wrote:


The 2nd Amendment was created in self defence - from the British Empire. When America was founded it was still under threat from the British who at any point could come back to retake their lost colonies. It was therefore a good idea to give everyone the right to own a gun, if everyone had access to a gun then they would be ready to defend their new country at any point, the right to form militias had the same purpose.

Also, the 2nd Amendment is severely outdated. Think about what kind of weapons they were referring too back then, it was a gunpowder gun with the capability to be fired once and then had to be reloaded, when this right were given to the people there were no automatic machine-guns capable of killing hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. If some psycho would go crazy with a gun back then he could take down one person if he got lucky.

On July 21 2012 16:42 Esk23 wrote:


The Founding Fathers created the 2nd Amendment for the purpose of self defense, so in a way yes. If someone in the government can have guns it makes absolutely 0 sense that the citizens can't. The government's purpose is to serve and represent the people, the people are the ones who are supposed to be in charge but that's really been slipping away over the years.

As a result of this resistance, the British government began efforts to disarm the colonists to prevent war.[58] To achieve this result, Parliament banned all exports of muskets and ammunition to the colonies.[59] To further Parliament's aim, General Thomas Gage, the commander in chief of the British Army and the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, planned to prevent war by removing from Yankee hands the means of violent resistance.[60] According to Gage's plan, the Red Coats were to disarm New England by a series of small, secret "surgical operations."[61] However, according to Fisher, one major drawback existed in Gage's plan; the people of New England were jealous of their liberties, particularly their right to keep and bear arms.[62]

Hence, the Minutemen were more than willing to contend with the British Army as it marched to Lexington and Concord in an attempt to disarm the rebellious patriots.[63] Despite their resulting debacle in this operation, General Gage and the British Army soon succeeded in disarming the individual citizens of Boston,[64] and this in turn helped to persuade the rest of the colonies to enter the war. On July 6, 1775, in its Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, the Continental Congress specifically mentioned the disarmament of the citizens of Boston as one of the reasons to take up arms against the British.[65]

On July 21 2012 17:22 white_horse wrote:


^this, when NRA nutjobs wave the constitution in front of your face. An armed citizenry to prevent the government from infringing your rights? I call bullshit. The US government can do whatever they want with the american populace (even if its obviously not going to happen) with their tanks, weapons, helicopters, etc etc. Do people seriously believe that a portion of the citizenry armed with handguns and rifles will be able to fight the most powerful military in the world? And even before we go into this stupid debate, the very idea that the US government would do something to cause regular people to go up in arms is really farfetched and very extreme.

Keep your dumb mouth shut if you think that an armed moviegoer could have stopped the colorado shooter. They wouldn't have. And who the hell would bring a gun to a movie theater? Since you never know when a shooter could appear, I guess you gotta bring your gun everywhere, right? The mall? Your workplace? Public swimming pool? It's paranoia and absolutism from the hard right and gun supporters. Gun control laws are lax enough, don't need to make it worse.