Guns

Yeah, true, but they aren't due to assault weapons bans that we have to keep things in check. This statement is extremely misleading. In New York City it's illegal for a private citizen to own a gun, right? They've got a horrible crime rate. Thus, this counterexample disproves your false generalization that allowing private citizens to own guns is the reason this stuff (Virginia Tech, etc.) happens. Begging the question. No, of course they didn't! Hate to say it, but people have been killing people millenia before the muzzle loader. In HUGE numbers.Are you saying that, without legal access to guns, VT wouldn't have happened? That's quite a hypothetical feat, considering that people with criminal intent don't care to obey the law.After you're done admitting that you have no solid bases for your statements, please explain what you suppose we do about this gun issue you're fabricating?1)Do we ban them altogether, despite the fact that it won't take them out of the hands of criminals? (hint: take a look at what happened when they banned alchohol)2)Since it is undeniable that criminals will always traffic firearms despite the laws, how do households defend themselves against criminals who have firearms, and know that the homeowners don't?3)Yes or no, do you believe that guns cause people to kill eachother. Please answer the question 'yes or no' directly before providing a more detailed response.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

You're right, the tone's a little condescending. I will do my very best to play nice on this one.To explicate my schema, I am very strongly in favor of the second amendment, and from my perspective the inevitable consequences of removing it (or tacking one more restriction on) would make VT look like a drop in the bucket within weeks.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

Okay, did I say I agree with everything the NRA or the republican party does? Still doesn't make guns the reason people get killed in cold blood. That I'll have to look up, because the source I listened to on that is questionable. I don't think many presidents could go on a bare-handed rampage successfully. If by head of state you mean people who can get more people? Pfft, try every violent group of people in history (let's think about the huns, the romans, the vikings... the list goes on, and it's downright slaughter/genocide, not just a few people.) When did I say that? I said what I said; it won't undo the underground trafficing. How is this not an effective arguement? You want to tie our hands so that big timers can pick us off when we try to defend our homes? I guarantee you more than 32 people would die over the course of this slow and tragic bloodbath that I think you're proposing. No, I believe that they would be accidently stabbed; if a kid's not taught that playing with weapons is wrong, who's to say the kid won't pick up a knife?If we're talking 'accident' like kids playing with guns, then the gun owners need to 1.keep it out of the kids reach and 2.teach their kids gun safety and its importance. Not one of these things changes the facts that guns themselves don't kill people, they just make it easier for crazies and possibly kids that need help/ need to be taught better by their parents.Gun safety won't protect us from lousy parents who don't teach their kids that weapons aren't toys. Course not. She'd go after him with a knife, axe, or whatever else is lying around the house. That'd be an even messier way to go, too. You can only shoot as many bullets as you've got; you can make somebody suffer a lot more easily with a blade... not what I'd want a psycho ex girlfriend trying to get at me with. Okay... but you're acknowledging that it does happen, right? Do you think that, in all time, the death toll from this has been less than 32? Come on, now.You know why it's less? Because nobody wants to invade a home and get in a shootout! Too much evidence of a struggle, harder to win in court if the criminal does... wonder if we could find a statistic on this?As for accidents, if people are adhering to gun safety it wouldn't happen. That's due to human error, not guns. Okay, probably none. I believe you have a question to answer, too. Yes or no?

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

No, I didn't say that. What I meant by "removing the second amendment or adding another restriction to it' would make VT look like a drop in the bucket within weeks" was what I just mentioned: people would wait for the confiscations, and clean house (no pun intended) across the country, a little here and there, a lot in the major cities. The death toll would be in the hundreds across the nation pretty quickly. Why? Because I feel the need to defend myself against very real threats? Because I'd be willing to teach my children that playing with guns is wrong? Because I don't try to ban everything that people abuse?What IS your solution to this gun problem, anyway? Please be specific and actually answer the question unlike last time.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

Okay, so you're suggesting better background checks before owning a gun? I'm fine with that; innocent people have nothing to hide. You want background checks? Great. But don't you dare say that the guns themselves need to be taken away from private citizens. What do I say to the families? I don't know, but I would say we need to figure ways to reach out to people like Cho before they do things like this, because all the bans in the world won't prevent people from losing it one way or another.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

What does that mean to me? It means we should, within reason, get our guns. I do not oppose background checks and screenings, along with waiting periods of 6 months while all of that goes down. That's not much of an infringement, really. And besides, it could prevent another VT, in theory.and 'arms' means weapons, so if we say no to people who want guns for legitimate problems we find in their background, who's to say they can't buy an axe from Home Depot, or Swords Online?Putting restrictions on which guns are allowed to the public is an iffy subject... in California, we have 8-gauges and handguns above .357s banned. I don't see the point; you can kill someone with a .22. Now if we're talking AKs, Mortarts, or hand grenades? They're not practical defense weapons(granted neither are huge handguns), and so I believe (although it isn't in the constitution) that careful, careful restrictions should be placed on impractical defense weapons.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

It's very difficult for me to be patient when you're taking parts of the quote that are, on their own, argueable without the rest of the quote in context. Please show more integrity than this from now on, and answer the question, yes or no as I have complied to yours after you dodged mine the first time. Little Timmy is actually more likely to cut himself than anyone else, but either case does happen. If a child (or anyone) is dumb enough to play with a gun, then in the absence of a gun they'll play with the deadliest thing available, in the stupidest way available.I remember in highschool when this drunk idiot thought it'd be fun to bring out and show everyone his switchblade while hosting a party(I didn't attend this one, just heard it from a friend who did). slashed some kid down his arm by 'accident'. Yeah, and I'll bet most of those lousy parents have a background that might hint at bad parenthood(or, at least might give us that impression in regard to safety seeing as their record shows that they suck at life). Now that I think about it, a 3-6 month background check prior to buying a gun's a great idea. If all you're suggesting is this, then we can agree on that much. Still doesn't mean we should be stupid enough to disarm ourselves completely. In this same example, the housewife is clearly insane; she needs psychological treatment. If these needs are met, this scenario won't even unfold. Neither will the next one which is more likely to happen.A criminal breaks into the house of a sane housewife while the husband's gone. She's not very strong, while the invader is. She goes after him with a knife because there are no guns; he disarms her with little injury and then beats the crap out of her, then sodomizes her, and kills her before he helps himself to the TV to score whatever drug he's after. In this instance, she would've been damn better off if a 12-gauge was still legal for a citizen to bear. Don't you dare tell me this situation would/has never happen. here's where you dishonestly and (as far as I can see) deliberately misquoted me so you could strawman your way out of this arguement To which you replied: In reality, this is what you said and the context in which my response was dealt: I was saying that, in the course of history in America, the number of innocent people who were killed by somebody breaking in with a gun was higher than 32. If we take guns away from private citizens who obey the law, this number will probably rise because there would be NO WAY for us to defend ourselves in this scenario whereas if we weild guns of our own, we've got a fighting chance.You misquoted me, and babbled about accidental shootings. This has nothing to do with the specific that you 'edited'. Please be honest in this debate from now on. With that in mind, don't you have a yes or no question to answer? Either-or fallacy. Some criminals are afraid of it, some aren't. You don't need to be a criminal psychologist to know that not all criminals think alike. The prospect of a shootout scares some away from homes that they think/know have guns in them. Others will break in no matter what, sometimes with a gun. That said, we will want a gun of our own in the instance that this does happen. Please don't misquote this response. No, but there's certainly a chance that people can get hurt other ways anyway. And 'error' is a light statement in terms of mishandling firearms; how about we do a better job of keeping people in line with gun safety? For that matter, lots of people get killed by drunk drivers; friend of a friend got killed about a month and a half ago by said scenario. Would banning alchohol and automobiles be a positive measure to protect the innocent? No, I'm not. Hyperbolic strawman syndrome. I'm saying that the fair chance that a household has a gun for home defense will keep a good number of potential robbers away from said household, and allow the home owners to defend themselves adequately from invaders who may or may not have a firearm of their own.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

I second what Quetzal said--that kind of clarity makes debating a pleasure rather than a chore. Although I don't believe this way either .

To a lesser extent, perhaps, I agree. To what degree do we 'dumb down' the caliber of firearms that people can use? I'm not too opposed to doing so, as long as you don't say that we take away shotguns and handguns. Granted, in this instance, not as many. But the damage count could've still been high if he did it at night, where only a few people were around, and in different places as he did. So I guess that sucks for the now defenseless housewife when a homocidal maniac breaks into her house and is about to break the lock to her bedroom? Unless you'll say that a two-hour seminar on self defense can stop a much stronger, faster, more agressive, and more experienced fighter from kicking the crap out of her? This is my field here; the response to such a proposition is no. And even if she's tough, nothing stopping a criminal from bringing a gun and just shooting her.Yeah, guns make killing easier. But you take them from private citizens, and I assure you the number of instances like I described above will far outnumber 32 in no time (not even counting, of course, incidents like this that happen regardless.)

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

Real quick, about the slash incident, who knows. If he shot him on the arm about where he cut him, the damage would've been about the same.Anyway, Okay, that's a legitimate point. However, that statistic was convientely vague.1.Let's say these were 'the guy just snapped' incidents. Do you think they'd have much trouble killing a smaller, slower opponent with a knife? Their bare hands? A shot from a gun's louder than the voice of God; either way somebody's gonna hear it next door.2.No doubt there were a few incidents where this was a break-in situation. Okay, then that just shows the average american should train with handguns and/or other weapons more often, to the point where even the average housewife can effectively defend herself against a gun, with a gun. Again, criminals will always have guns.Women, and men as well, have been murdered in big numbers forever. Guess what? I bet the vast majority of those women couldn't have successfully dispatched someone in self defense without that gun. That said, the gun was the only saving grace. Without guns, the stat might read more like 0 to 302.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

I love the way you throw statistics at me instead of acknowledging that there's nothing you can say to undermine the specific points I made, nator. Really wish you and nuggin wouldn't resort to creationist tactics like this.Let's take a look at the somewhat vague stats here:” Nearly one-third of all women murdered in the United States in recent years were murdered by a current or former intimate partner. In 2000, 1,247 women, more than three a day, were killed
by their intimate partners.ii
” Of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds of were killed by their intimate partners.iiiSo it sounds to me like it was somebody already in the house, using the most convenient method. Sadly, we've already covered this-- he's almost always a larger, faster specimen who could take her out without a gun with VERY little risk of mortal injury. Gunshots are loud as hell, so either way people will probably call the cops on him. If he used a silencer, that's illegal. That further proves that criminals will always have stuff we're not supposed to."” Access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than five times more
than in instances where there are no weapons, according to a recent study. In addition, abusers
who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners.iv"Either-or FALLACY. There are weapons EVERYWHERE, even in the abscence of guns: Shoes, chairs, silverwear, letter openers, belts, metal combs, blow driers, pencils, printer, PS2, hammer, screwdriver, drill&bits, heavy bicycle helmet, heavy lamp, loose mattress spring, hookah, broomsticks, plungers, pillows, staplers (that was just my own hole-in-the-wall off campus living; just think what's in a real house. For the record, I don't personally use the hookah.)OH, and for that last one? Clearly there's something wrong with people who would abuse their spouses in the first place. Let's work on the problem of crazy people a little more actively before we take away the power for the sane to defend themselves.Since you're on a roll with stats in general (albiet misleading ones), look up the percentage of homeowners with guns that happen upon such misfortunes? Sounds like we're taking steps in the right direction, but we still need some work. Oh, and how many of those 2,800 actually committed crimes after purchasing said guns? If this was such a problem, that would've been listed too.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

Okay, so they'd already be close enough to stab or beat them to death, anyway. As I've said with scraff, a faster and stronger specimen would be able to kill a smaller, weaker, and slower opponent without much hassle, especially if they can catch them off guard. This doesn't do anything but prove my point, because, as I've shown with the example, a knife or a bat is probably not going to be enough for the fragile victim here.So let's work on the psychiatric approach instead of banning things so that there won't be exceptions to the abuse victims.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

Clever. You must be really good at dodgeball. Of course not, and if the kid would've accidently slashed his jugulars deep enough, the kid would've died despit putting pressure. Futhermore, if he would've accidently Dragon Kicked the kid into a pit of spikes(everyone where I'm from has one of these in his backyard, and knows how to administer Bruce Lee's trademark finish), he would've died too.Scraff was at least practical in considering the same area of the body in her objection. This is just hyperbolic and weak (I didn't know this combination is possible). When does 'practical home defense' (isn't that the term I used?) include an M-16?! I claim the weapons we've got legalized now are just right, for the record. An M-16 for civilian use (not the .22 replica, the real deal) is ILLEGAL because it's too much. What do YOU think is adequate practical home defense, anyway? A toothpick?27 years of crazy? Let's hear some explainations. I guarantee you that anything legit that you can come up with could've been prevented by an increased awareness in society of such mental illness, versus disarmnament of our entire country.Oh, and the kid? Oi... what makes the kid crazy? Crazy parent? See above. Just crazy? Get the kid some help/get some parents that'll teach him gun safety. If they're not responsible enough to do that, then they've almost certainly done something to reflect that on their record. Did they go crazy after the gun? Again, see above.
And even if they try a rampage in the neighborhood, another neighbor who owns a gun may stop them from doing more damage, as opposed to a neighborhood full of people who don't believe in guns. No, it doesn't. Stop hyperbolizing what I say. Are you saying this break-in instance DOES NOT HAPPEN? Of course it does!And if we banned guns, this criminal uprising wouldn't be a rampage. It would be a slow, subtle, gradual annihilation of home security. Ask yourself this: How were ethics, psychology, politics, security of living, and life in general during this time? You're blaming guns themselves for the unrestrained and unattended violent intentions of human beings. How was life in ancient Aztec times even before Cortez? Horribly violent, with no guns in sight. Ask yourself the same question as above. No, I was referring to the VT shootings. Your misunderstanding here is 100% clear, and I will note it. Furthermore, considering this came off the VT topic, I'd figure that number would be fresh in your mind. Says the guy who claims that disarming this nation will somehow erase the vast majority of violence in it. This claim that you say I made was not made by me, as I wrote above. You either misunderstood me, or are pulling yet another strawman. You really hate scarecrows, don't you? Please explain to me how in the world you can get a stat on how many houses WERENT broken into? Let's try a whole heck of a lot of them; a whole heck of a lot of those probably had guns. You're asking me to somehow make a data table of events that didn't happen. No, and I should probably get those. Last I checked, the only one giving them was nator, and all of hers were quite vague and misleading. You don't have any either, pot. Don't get mad because the kettle's got better tea than you do. [qs]You are trying to push this wild theory that somehow it is safer to have a hand gun in the home because of the "crime menace" lurking out there waiting to break in and rape your women. But there's NO evidence that supports the theory. It's just regurgitated NRA crapSo you're saying not one person with an illegal firearm would even think of taking advantaged of disarmed homeowners, especially in bad neighborhoods (hint: the gangs will keep their guns. Always. Will not go away. Same with all the other freelance hoodrats.) You know why there's no evidence supporting this theory? Because we've never disarmed the whole nation, so you people living in happy-world-land will have to somehow disarm us if you want a good rise in the number of victims as badly as it seems you do. This made me laugh out loud; you're not serious are you? You really think that break-ins where robbers are strapped do not happen in real life? May I ask where you live, and where you have lived? You must realize that a statement like you just made here is naive beyond what most people might deem possible. This is yet another completely false statement. You can go to shooting ranges. You can exterminate yard rodents on large property (not saying its legal, and it is definetely oaky, but it's still a reason).Is your beef with guns in general, or just handguns? I'm starting to think the latter. Wrong. Except, maybe I shouldn't have said any 'particular' household, unless of course they have a 'beware of owner' sign. But the fact remains that there's a great chance that any given household in most places will have a gun. Let's say there's a 0% chance that the house will have a gun? Well, no worries. Hellbent on mayhem? Nah, they just want to steal some crap to get a fix. But of course if there's some fresh tang in there with nothing to protect her, why wouldn't he help himself?EDITED IN:You know what? I looked up a link or two just so you won't keep defending your nonsense arguement with the fact that I didn't crunch any numbers:Attention Required! | Cloudflare To this I ask: What do all of these people who ask this PROPOSE people do about it? Furthermore, nuggin, what do YOU say we do about it? Answer my question, for once. Every time you dodge my questions it makes your arguement appear that much weaker than it already is.http://www.csgv.org/...s/Gun%20Violence%20Fact%20Sheet%2EpdfCheck out the incredible number of suicides here. Consider this: If somebody's bent on killing themselves, slitting arteries with a knife is just as easy, if not easier, than pulling the trigger.Furthermore, the Women and Gun Violence section just spits out the same thing you did, without considering that the same could very well happen anyway without a gun. If anything it should consider that maybe the psychiatry in this country needs some work.Enforcement On Federal Gun Laws explicates just how understaffed and underfunded ATF is. With that in mind, these guys don't get enough resources to do their job, yet you expect them to get the regulating job done? How about we cough up adequate funds before we say they're not doing their job?Edited by One_Charred_Wing, : Put in some links

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

There were a lot of things that they admitted were unclear.Furthermore, the highlighted part is open to interpretation:How do they know that the gun availability didn't increase due to the crime rate, instead of the other way around? That sounds like a much more realistic situation to me; when my first neightborhood went to sh!t, the whole place went up in arms.

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

yeah? A gun is just as loud. You can cover someone's mouth while you're stabbing them; the gun is noisy no matter what. Unless you want a silencer, which, if you have it, proves my point that criminals use this stuff no matter how many bans we put on it.EDITED IN, because I'm on you like awesome on One_Charred_Wing:Oh, and we can agree that it's harder to kill someone with a knife than a gun. That means that it sucks for a woman who might try to defend herself with that knife against somebody who's an all-around better fighter with more experience? Guess she would disagree with you that guns need to be taken away.Edited by One_Charred_Wing, : Had to continue with the pwnage