Topic: Assault weapon bans - page 43. (Read 36627 times)

Do you think they have the right to make up their own minds, or don't you? It's a yes or no question. And what do you hope to accomplish by banning guns in areas against their will?

If a culture wants guns, then that culture has failed itself. Have you noticed that the same people who want guns also want their government to not tax them, and not provide social nets, thus creating desperate situations, and crime?

Guns with no people?  Sounds like a drone.
Lots of gun control advocates hating on those.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/crime/archives/2013/01/5-face-federal-charges-in-drone-protest.html
Most of the guns with no people are still government guns not private ones.

Though some private drones apparently do get shot down by police (even if armed with only a camera filming a protest).
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/24/turkish-protest-drone-shot-down.

Please answer the questions, don't try to tap-dance around them.

Funny how if you look at the cultures that like guns, you'll find the most gun deaths. Funny how that works. Therefore, what you're saying is: cultures which don't want guns banned want to live in a culture where there are a lot of gun deaths.

The only logical answer is every evil act up to and including genocide. He just refuses to admit that he is upholding the beliefs of every genocidal monster who first needed to disarm his victims, which is why he's on my ignore list. Banning guns (the most effective tool for self-defense) from only innocents' hands has proven endlessly to create criminals' utopias, bloodbaths at the times and places of criminals' exclusive choosing.

So what do you hope to accomplish by banning guns in areas where the population doesn't want them to be banned? Don't you think they have the right to make up their own minds?

Another NRA meme with no merit. Tell me, can you cite one example where gun control advocates called for a banning of guns from a society where no people existed? If you can, then that might lend some credence to your repetition of that pointless slogan. Instead, you'll discover that gun control advocates seek a reduction in the possession of guns by people, which is a condition, not an object. Possession is a condition in which people possess guns, which implies a relationship between two things - a person, and a gun, which in combination, can be deadly.

Please, stop with the meaningless sayings.

More wannabe Authoritarian Controller perversions of the Liberal Progressive Type.

For three periods of two or three years each I pretty routinely (and legally) carried a gun.  It had to do with work and handling/carrying fair amounts of money.  When a reasonable need to carry ceased, I stopped it.  They are heavy and bulky. 

Sorry but I can't relate this kind of real world experience with your fantasies.  "Wishing they  could carry".

Has it occurred to you there may be REASONS?

FirstAscent, where did you get those statistics?

This is madness!

We innocents will stop wishing to carry guns when all criminals lay down all their weapons (which includes everything, even fists and feet) and stop murdering, raping, maiming, and otherwise victimizing disarmed and defenseless gun control victims. And not just innocents in the U.S. either, 86% of UK respondents as well (source: Daily Telegraph). Not that fundamental human rights can be rightfully voted infringed out of existence by a "majority", either.

Insidious prick.

Meaning the US should focus on making people stop wishing they could carry guns, instead of trying to forcefully prevent them from doing so. All that does is create distractions, especially in a time when anyone can 3D print guns at home.

Finally, something that makes sense from you!  Guns don't kill people, people do. 

M

Note the statement Rampion made: "Nobody in Switzerland wishes to carry a gun..."

It would help if people in the U.S. stopped wishing to carry guns...

^^^^^  That, Rampion, is my point and understanding of the matter entirely, which I completely agree with.

Switzerland requires almost every citizen to learn to use a gun, and requires that 10% of the households to have an assault rifle at home (provided by the state) and (always sealed) ammo, as that's their citizens military duty, because in switzerland there is no professional army at all, switzerland's army is the Swiss militia.

Superficially this may seem similar to the "US militia" and the second amendment, but it is not similar at all. Switzerland has a "peace culture" in its dna, is the prototypical neutral country that never takes part in any conflict, in all its history never entered in armed conflict despite all the wars that happened close by (the biggest example is 2nd world war). Obviously US is quite the opposite, while in Switzerland learning how to use a gun is an unfortunate event that is the price you have to pay for being a "peace"  country, and therefore not even having an army, for americans guns are some sort of ill "freedom tool" that is loved and celebrated by a big part of its population. For the prototypical switzerland citizen real freedom resides in not sending your neighbour to slaughter, they abhor violence, while the prototypical American sees violence as some unavoidable evil you need to master to be free.

And there you have the difference between an imperialistic country, and one that it's not.

Plus, nobody in Switzerland wishes to be able to carry a gun, and thus nobody is allowed to carry one loaded except for very specific exceptions (reservist en route to its unit or security workers).

The real difference is not in the policy but the culture. That piece of paper called American constitution wrote in a very specific context that some americans adore like Christians the bible may be part of the problem.

The Australia experiment might show something as it controls for "people and culture", over the last 15 years.

Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.
...
"Gun violence" went down, but "violent crime" went up more.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323777204578195470446855466.html

If I put a gun in one room, and no guns in the other, step out, and close the door, the number of crimes in that room will be the same: 0. I didn't know that Switzerland had strict gun regulations for instance, and always believed that Switzerland has few, even requiring almost everyone to have a gun. The main variable, though, is people, and whatever that involves. Sure, guns make it easier to kill from a distance, but they also make it easier to stop others from killing. And that's why I was hoping that there was some set of data to compare things to, where the culture isn't much of a variable. Obviously the culture in USA is total shit in some places, especially compared to Europe, and in Japan it's even more respectful of others than in Europe. I wouldn't be surprised that, if we were to give a gun to every single person in Japan, their murder and crime rate would still be lower than in places in US where guns are totally banned. Likewise, how can you tell is banning guns is due to cultural reaction to mitigate violence, or if it's cultural agreement that is simply an extension of an already non-violent culture?

Things are complicated. But maybe, just maybe, you could let go of your insistence that guns are great for a moment, and realize that maybe the numbers are telling you something.

Thanks for the info. All that tells me, though, is that things are much more complicated.
I wish there was some comparable set of data/countries/regions where cultures were the same, and guns were the only difference. I thought maybe Canada and US (both have similar gun restrictions, but vastly different crime rates), but even that isn't very adequate.