Banning guns

1. guns are a problem because people use them to shoot each other. if they weren't there, they wouldnt be able to shoot each other
2. somethings legal if its not illegal. who cares if they were legal? they're not anymore and we have low levels of gun crime
3. violent crime has risen in the UK, due to many reasons, including increased availability of knives, and others like breakdown in family values and so forth. not due to anything related to the issue of guns

but from the UK there is a fact. that if you make guns illegal, you will have less gun crime. do you want gun crime?

 

1. and if there were no knives there would be no knife crime. If there were no hammers, clubs and other blunt objects there would be no beating deaths. There are many things that "can" be used in illegal ways that most people use peacefully without malice every day.

how can guns be used peacefully without malice? mentioning these things is of no value to discussion on the effect of banning guns

2. Many argue that a contributing factor is the fact that criminals now know they will not be confronted by an armed victim during the commission of thier crime. Thus they have one less deterrent

and being able to hold people at gunpoint is a deterrent? furthermore, the vast majority of violent crime is in the street, where people would be unlikely to carry guns all the time anyway

3. With over 20,000 gun laws on the books, if they were strictly inforced there would be LESS gun crime without taking the right away from the law abiding citizen that owns guns and has never used them in any illegal way. Guns are not only used in criminal activities, in fact they are used by ordinary citizens in the US every year between 60,000 and 2.5 Million times a year to defend against crime.
Do you want these 60,000 + people to now become crim victims every year?

in 2000 there was 80 000 non-fatal shootings in the US. add to this the number of fatal ones, hold ups etc, and you see that more crimes are committed bu gun users than are stopped by those using them

 

most gun crimes are commited by illegal firearms. Baning guns takes them from people who use them in a law abiding way. I hunt and own guns, i have all my life. Trying to ban them is fucking ignorant.

Tobacco kills alot more people a yr, are responsible for who can count how many hospital related visits for various coughs, colds. Studies show people who smoke miss more work and are generally more unhealthy on average than a non smoker. It is responsible for hundrads of thousands of deaths a yr, but you want to ban guns?

Your argument to ban guns sounds like the arguments to ban marijuana. Mostly propaganda and it doesnt hold water. If you dont like the freedom to own a firearm, dont live in the united states.

Outlawing guns means only outlaws will have guns. Them and the govt, the biggest outlaw of them all. Is that what you want?

 

Thanx salmon...I posted that to lighten up this thread...cuz this issue has been beat to death...and all it does is just piss people off...I am glad at least one person saw the humor in the reality of my post

 

1. Hunting (unless you consider harvesting food for one self violent), self protection, target/competition shooting, historical collections.
The point of mentioning these things goes to the one point as to why you and others want guns banned, firearm homicide. This being the only reason you allow the minority actions of some effect the whole. If this reasoning is applied to the things I mentioned they should ALL be banned

hunting-im vegetarian, i dont believe in killing animals for food
competition shooting- keep the guns locked away in vaults or summat at a club, fair enough
historical collections- again they can be pretty securely locked away. i dont see why you'd want to collect them but thats just me
self protection- why the obsession with self-protection. in the UK we dont need guns to protect ourselves. you know how many homes here get robbed with people inside. basically none.

2. If you own a gun and a criminal realizes this is the potiential situation, yes its a deterrent. He would know that if he breaks into your home there is the possibility that you might point a loaded weapon at his head while you are calling 911 instead of hiding in the closet while he carries off all your belongings. This is indeed a deterrent

sorry i was unclear before. i meant that if the criminals could hold you at gunpoint first, you arent going to be able to go get your gun anyway. but like i said, in the uk we dont have hardly any house robberies with people in side anyway

3.Please produce a source for these figures. Non -fatal shootings include what exactly? Criminal vs criminal? Gang vs Gang? Police Vs Bad guy? Little old lady vs the criminal breaking in the back door? How many of these unsubstantiated 80,000 were defensive uses?
The 60,000 defensive uses per year is the lowest estimate of all studies. This number is even admitted by the Brady Campaign, the biggest most enthusiastic gun ban group of the all. From there they go up to the highest estimate of 2,500,000 times per year.
So again I ask what do you tell these people? Sorry you will just have to become a victim because to many gang members kill each other and some people do not know how to handle guns and accidently shoot the postman?

just because gangs kill each other, it doesnt mean that their lives dont count. the point is, in the UK we dont need guns to protect ourselves. do you want everyone carrying guns around with them?

 

firstly people dont need guns at all. in the uk we dont have one, and you dont hear many old men saying that they miss them. if you wanna go round hunting then thats something else i think you should think about.

ban tobacco as well, fine by me, i dont smoke, i dont want cancer. as of july, smoking will be banned in public the whole of the uk, as it has been in many other countries. good plan.

yeah only outlaws do have guns in the UK. but 99% of the time they only shoot other outlaws anyway, rather than school shootins, holdups etc

 

yeah there is gun crime in the UK. do you know where they get the guns from? places where guns arent banned. you notice where the 2nd biggest source of the guns used by british criminals is? the USA. if guns were banned everywhere, far less would be available. dont make anymore, have amnesties n things every so often, there would be less and less about.

 

interesting. but it didnt really say anything knew. the article even admitted that in some countries, guns are banned justifiably, so he's saying you don't always need guns.

if you take the self-defence line, then it would be fair enough if most people carried guns around like he did in case of attack. doesnt that worry you? doesnt it worry you that he was prepared to shoot a guy for $35? it doesnt balance. and when he threatened the kids nicking his hubcabs, what if they'd have ignored his threats? would he have shot them too?

 

It is currently legal to walk around the great state of VA w/ a handgun in plain sight. As well it should be.

 

There was a tune out by reggae band Morgan Heritage which talked about guns in the ghetto and basically what it inferred is that the system or powers that be more or less put the guns in the ghetto as a means of controlling it.

Here in the UK we don't have a right to bear arms written into a constitution. However, gun crime seems to be on the up and up.

Do I think we should get rid of them? Well if we mange to develop immunisation programmes to protect the general public from disease which causes death and misery, why the hell do we still have guns?

My youngest boy was at a Christmas party and the parents had to take a gift for the Big Red Man to give out. One kid got a gun.....that just about says it all; so much for the season of good will, peace on earth etc!

 

the people who are doing the killing are the people with guns in their hands

 

The real people doing the killing are the arms/gun manufacturers. And they are getting rich through scare tactics.

 

I don't even know why there is all the discussion about crime going on. The right to bear arms is about keeping the Government from becoming a police state. It gives people the ability to protect itself from their own government. Unarmed masses are much easier to control. Don't give your government even more power over you, keep your guns.

 

so if you dont lyk some domestic policy you're gonna go shoot someone. this is the most stupid reason for allowing guns i've heard. the US government will never be allowed to get into a police state

 

no, cos i have better things to do than search the Internet to search for proof of what every person in Britain knows. if you really want to find out, google it. gun ownership is highest in certain areas of london, lozells/aston/handsworth in birmingham, nottingham and bradford. highest gun crime rate was nottingham, 2nd bradford etc. (remember kids, statistics arent are normally manipulated by whoever produces them)

 

It has nothing to do with individuals not liking domestic policy. It has to do with the peoples right to fight back against the Government. An unarmed group of people are much easier to control. Ask the US if they wish the Iraqi citizens were disarmed. If the government over steps its bounds then the people can fight back and it presents a deterent to the Government to do so in the first place. That is what it is all about.

 

in iraq the rival groups would just shoot each other until one group one and oppressed the other. thats not good

 

or if neither had guns then nobody would shoot anyone