Some thoughts on guns in the USA ...

[Highlander]

I have seen a statistic showing that innocent people -- armed with a gun -- successfully defend themselves against attackers & home invaders to the tune of 27,000 times a day in the USA. Many of those people -- and their loved ones -- would be dead if not for the gun they used to protect themselves, either by shooting the intruder or just by the show of force that they are armed and the criminal runs away.

Those who worship the concept of gun control are way off the rails. And against the U.S. Constitution. Criminals do not care about gun laws -- they buy them on the street, the black market, etc., wherever they can obtain them. Criminals, by their very nature, do not abide by the law and it is silly to think they will simply stop their criminal activity if guns are outlawed.

All one needs to do is take a look at Chicago, where the strictest gun laws in the nation exist. Chicago also has the HIGHEST crime rate -- using guns -- in the USA. So much for the anti-gun laws. Conversely, in the few locations in the USA where gun ownership is MANDATORY, the violent crime rate almost disappears. Because the criminals know that there are no easy victims there.

All gun laws do is take protection away from innocent, law abiding people -- who are the potential targets of those who do not care about laws.

 

[psalms 91]

I have seen a statistic showing that innocent people -- armed with a gun -- successfully defend themselves against attackers & home invaders to the tune of 27,000 times a day in the USA. Many of those people -- and their loved ones -- would be dead if not for the gun they used to protect themselves, either by shooting the intruder or just by the show of force that they are armed and the criminal runs away.

Those who worship the concept of gun control are way off the rails. And against the U.S. Constitution. Criminals do not care about gun laws -- they buy them on the street, the black market, etc., wherever they can obtain them. Criminals, by their very nature, do not abide by the law and it is silly to think they will simply stop their criminal activity if guns are outlawed.

All one needs to do is take a look at Chicago, where the strictest gun laws in the nation exist. Chicago also has the HIGHEST crime rate -- using guns -- in the USA. So much for the anti-gun laws. Conversely, in the few locations in the USA where gun ownership is MANDATORY, the violent crime rate almost disappears. Because the criminals know that there are no easy victims there.

All gun laws do is take protection away from innocent, law abiding people -- who are the potential targets of those who do not care about laws.

Exactly right

 

[MoreCoffee]

Perhaps we should ban cars since in the wrong hands they cause death and damage, what say you? Same reasoning for banning guns

Cars are useful for many things most of those things involve driving them. Sometimes driving a car results in an accident. Some accidents cause deaths. Some wicked people sometimes use a car to hurt or kill others but cars are very poorly suited for killing. Guns on the other hand were designed to kill things. Guns are sometimes used by wicked people to kill other people illegally. Because guns are designed to kill they do it very efficiently. Guns can work for self defence and they can work for illegal killing. If you have a gun for self defence then your attacker can also have a gun. Easy gun ownership may not work for self defence if the attackers can have guns too. And since attackers take the initiative in an attack they are likely to use their gun first. The mass killing in Florida is an example of an attacker with guns who used them first. He killed 49 and wounded more then 50. Laws for easy gun ownership in Florida made it easy for him to get the guns he used to kill 49 and wound more than 50. Those gun laws that made it easy for him to get guns legally did not make it safe for the 49 people he killed and the more than 50 he wounded. The math is easy. If it was difficult to get guns he may not have been able to get the guns he used to kill 49 and wound more than 50. The math is easy.

 

[psalms 91]

The math might be easy but the methods available are limitless, if not a gun then a bomb which could have killed even more. If they want to kill they will find a way, guns make it easier for people to protect themselves

 

[tango]

There have always been differences in physical strength between humans beings. Long before guns existed these differences existed. Guns do not remove them.

Of course guns don't remove differences, they just give the physically weaker members of society a sporting chance if the stronger members choose to attack them.

Giving a "right to own a gun" does not protect anybody a gun must be in possession and in the hands of the weaker person to achieve the kind of protection you've mentioned. Owning a gun costs money, so if the aim is to protect and guns are the means of protecting then only those who own a gun benefit. They need to buy one, be given one, or obtain one in some other (possibly illegal) way.

Also very true, but you don't have to pay a lot of money to acquire a gun. A friend of mine is selling one for a little under $200. OK, it's a .22 caliber so not going to have the same kind of stopping power as a .45 but still enough to shift the balance of power in your everyday dark alley encounter.

How well does gun ownership work in practise as a means of self protection. Florida in the USA has laws that make it easy to obtain a gun but the shooter in the night club managed to kill 49 and wound over 50 more despite the ease with which one may get a gun for self protection. The argument that guns work as effective self protection in the places where obtaining them is easy does not appear to be true.

As you said, if people aren't carrying their guns they aren't much use for self-defense. I may be wrong on this but I read one report that suggested the nightclub was a designated gun free zone. That aside, the key thing is having the choice. I personally feel no need to carry a gun when I'm walking around town but my wife feels more comfortable if I have one when hiking alone in the woods. Not for people encounters, on the rare occasions I encounter other people in the woods the encounter is entirely amicable, but in case I were to encounter a bear/coyote/cougar etc. As one hiking buddy of mine put it, if you come across an angry bear you won't stop it with a stick.

The truth is that against a gun in the hands of one who wants to do you harm there are very few defences that work.

Also very true, but at least a gun in my hands gives me a sporting chance. And even if you could take guns away from the bad people they'll just use bricks, sticks, baseball bats, knives etc. Frankly if I'm going to be set upon by a guy (or a group of people) who are intent on harming me I'd rather take a bullet to the head and be done with it than be beaten to a pulp by a dozen guys with baseball bats. And if I face the possibility of a dozen guys with baseball bats then I'd rather have a gun on my hip to give me a fighting chance.

It is true that only some people who own guns make use of them for wicked purposes and even then they probably only use them for wicked purposes occasionally. Yet societies that with high gun ownership will have higher gun crime incidents than those same societies would if there were fewer guns or no guns in them. The math is simple.

True, and we could say the same about drinking and driving. If we reduce the number of people driving we reduce the number of people drinking and driving. Of course we could stop drunk driving completely by banning the private motor vehicle completely. It's the same kind of reasoning.

 

[tango]

Cars are useful for many things most of those things involve driving them. Sometimes driving a car results in an accident. Some accidents cause deaths. Some wicked people sometimes use a car to hurt or kill others but cars are very poorly suited for killing. Guns on the other hand were designed to kill things. Guns are sometimes used by wicked people to kill other people illegally. Because guns are designed to kill they do it very efficiently. Guns can work for self defence and they can work for illegal killing. If you have a gun for self defence then your attacker can also have a gun. Easy gun ownership may not work for self defence if the attackers can have guns too. And since attackers take the initiative in an attack they are likely to use their gun first. The mass killing in Florida is an example of an attacker with guns who used them first. He killed 49 and wounded more then 50. Laws for easy gun ownership in Florida made it easy for him to get the guns he used to kill 49 and wound more than 50. Those gun laws that made it easy for him to get guns legally did not make it safe for the 49 people he killed and the more than 50 he wounded. The math is easy. If it was difficult to get guns he may not have been able to get the guns he used to kill 49 and wound more than 50. The math is easy.

Fire can work for good or ill too. We might light a fire to warm ourselves up at night; we might light a fire to burn down our enemy's house. The crucial thing is that if someone is minded to harm others they will find a way. In a theoretical world, if we could take guns off the streets and be sure that even the bad guys didn't have any more guns and didn't have any means to get hold of any more guns, it wouldn't stop the killing. The bad guys would just burn places down with people inside, they'd use pipe bombs or petrol bombs or fertiliser bombs or some such. When the IRA was attacking the UK mainland they generally didn't use guns, they left a credible threat of an explosive device (and sometimes actually left the device) and blew stuff up.

For anyone so inclined it really isn't all that hard to get hold of chemicals that mix in all sorts of nasty ways, and if you're the kind of radical who is not only willing to die in the process but actively seeking martyrdom for your cause you don't even have to worry about being caught up in it yourself.

The problem here is the hatred, the gun is merely the tool the person harboring the hatred selected to achieve his goal. Would things have been much better if he had gone to the nightclub wielding a meat cleaver and a machete?

 

[psalms 91]

Yup, guns are not the problem, I wish a couple people in the club would have had them

 

[tango]

Yup, guns are not the problem, I wish a couple people in the club would have had them

In fairness if you've got a guy in a crowded club shooting indiscriminately it's not necessarily as simple as the solution being a good guy with a gun. The bad guy doesn't care who he hits, he just wants to kill and injure as many as possible. The good guy needs to get a clear line of sight at one specific individual and make a clean kill.

Of course having a couple of patrons with guns means you're more likely to stop the bad guy earlier, it's just not as simple as "bad guy opens fire, good guy shoots bad guy, the end".

 

[psalms 91]

In fairness if you've got a guy in a crowded club shooting indiscriminately it's not necessarily as simple as the solution being a good guy with a gun. The bad guy doesn't care who he hits, he just wants to kill and injure as many as possible. The good guy needs to get a clear line of sight at one specific individual and make a clean kill.

Of course having a couple of patrons with guns means you're more likely to stop the bad guy earlier, it's just not as simple as "bad guy opens fire, good guy shoots bad guy, the end".

Perhaps not but better good guy can get a gun rather than criminal has one and good guy doesnt

 

[Highlander]

Cars are useful for many things most of those things involve driving them. Sometimes driving a car results in an accident. Some accidents cause deaths. Some wicked people sometimes use a car to hurt or kill others but cars are very poorly suited for killing. Guns on the other hand were designed to kill things. Guns are sometimes used by wicked people to kill other people illegally. Because guns are designed to kill they do it very efficiently. Guns can work for self defence and they can work for illegal killing. If you have a gun for self defence then your attacker can also have a gun. Easy gun ownership may not work for self defence if the attackers can have guns too. And since attackers take the initiative in an attack they are likely to use their gun first. The mass killing in Florida is an example of an attacker with guns who used them first. He killed 49 and wounded more then 50. Laws for easy gun ownership in Florida made it easy for him to get the guns he used to kill 49 and wound more than 50. Those gun laws that made it easy for him to get guns legally did not make it safe for the 49 people he killed and the more than 50 he wounded. The math is easy. If it was difficult to get guns he may not have been able to get the guns he used to kill 49 and wound more than 50. The math is easy.

Guns were not just designed to kill things. They are also used to protect innocent people. If not guns, it would be knives or other types of projectiles. I have never seen a gun walk up to a human being, jump into their hand and make them pull the trigger. PEOPLE kill people. Guns do not.

The mass killing Florida is an example of an attacker with guns who knew that NOBODY ELSE in there had any guns. He killed 49 people and wounded more than 50. Note that HE killed and wounded -- NOT the gun. If other people there had guns, they would have been able to successfully defend themselves and save a lot of lives. But they were in a SAFE ZONE, which automatically meant they were "safe" from harm. LOL

The only thing they were really safe from was from being able to save their own lives. Laws for easy gun ownership in Florida? This may be a novel concept to you, but criminals do not care about laws. That is why they are criminals. They will obtain weapons in any way they can get them -- laws or not. This is where liberalism constantly fails -- because it always trips over common sense.

I suppose the math really IS easy if you believe that 2+2+3. But in the cold, sober, real world, the math is a lot more honest than in a dream bubble world.

It is NEVER difficult to get guns. If not at a gun dealership or a gun show, the black market provides all the guns he would have needed.

And, if you want to talk about gun laws, there is the issue of not allowing potential terrorists to have weapons. But then that would have been "profiling" him simply because he had demonstrated multiple examples of being sympathetic with ISIS and other terrorist groups. And we all know the evils of paying attention to someone who was displaying commentary that was terrorist in nature. Thus, they were required by our president (and like minded people -- you know who you are) to leave him alone.

And, since he thinks just like you do, Obama denied the FBI and CIA the right to continue investigations on him because it would have been "unfair" to him. I suppose you would have preferred that they investigate his GUN instead of him???

 

[visionary]

What do you think of the Democrat position... Guns are for politicians not citizens?

 

[psalms 91]

I think they are nuts on thta issue. Where I live I defy anyopne to try to take iour guns even the sheriff has said he will not support the federal government on thta if it ever come s to it

 

[tango]

What do you think of the Democrat position... Guns are for politicians not citizens?

It's a great example of consistency.... we'll be protected by guns but you little people can fend for yourselves.

 

[MarkFL]

It's a great example of consistency.... we'll be protected by guns but you little people can fend for yourselves.

"Let them throw knives" -- Marie Antoinette.

 

[psalms 91]

Yay for the NRA

 

[Highlander]

disciples of the lord Jesus don't require guns, so that would not be a bad thing -disciples of other leaders and schools of thought may need them.. but not disciples of the lord Jesus
uttahere:

I don't think you are qualified to proclaim that disciples of Jesus do not require guns. There are plenty of Christian police officers who, of course, DO require guns. Guns are required of Christians in the private sector also -- to protect themselves from attack by those who are NOT followers of Jesus.

A bit of common sense would not be a bad thing to practice, Alithis.