Summations Only

Except that this would do nothing for shootings where a legally owned firearm is taken by an unauthorized individual for a rampage, like is the case in most school shootings. Accountability does nothing for murder-suicides, either. It's a good idea, but it would require a lot of bureaucracy for little reward.And ammunition of some types can be made at home, much more easily than the firearms can.And many "single-shot" firearms are modified autos or semi-autos, and a skilled individual can modify them back to their more military design.

Nobody who buys a gun needs to run a background on the seller, that's stupid. And an individual can sell a gun without having to run a background check anywhere, not just at a gun show. That's because it's impossible for individuals to run the background check. Regardless, though, it's still illegal for any individual to sell a gun to a felon, background check or not.So there's really no "gun show loophole." The "loophole" is that we don't demand that individuals do something that it is illegal for them to do - run background checks on other private citizens without the other person's permission. Yes - an incentive for the manufacture and possession of guns.Imagine if the US government started a massive, no-limit, no-questions "cocaine buyback program." Remember, Pablo Escobar doesn't care whether his cocaine goes up your nose or down the toilet, he just cares that your money goes into his pocket. Or someone's money. Don't you think, at that point, the largest industry in about six Central American nations would be smuggling cocaine into the US in order to sell it to the US government? Why do you believe that "banned" is a synonym for "impossible"? Sale and distribution of cocaine is banned, as well. Is it therefore impossible to buy cocaine in the US? Isn't it, in fact, the case that the reason cocaine distribution and sale persists to the degree it does is because of the US demand for cocaine? Most of us liberals accurate perceive the drug problem as a demand-based problem - sales exist to meet demand, and the way you get less traffic, less distribution, less importation, and less sales is to reduce demand.I think most of us rightly understand that where there is demand, supply will move to service the demand. So your solution is to create an infinite market demand for guns? And that'll result in less guns? How does that make any sense? Sure. That's exactly how it used to be for marijuana - nobody cared enough to search door-to-door, but if you smoked a joint in public they nabbed you. If there was some pot in your apartment when they served a noise complaint, they nabbed you. Was it enough for the drug enforcement interests?No, of course not. All the marijuana they weren't finding was proof that they needed new powers to find it, and since we'd already agreed that marijuana was bad, and what is bad should not be allowed, they got them. Now the police can serve a "no-knock warrant" - that is, they can break into your house in the middle of the night - on the basis of a dog's reaction to your yard, your car, or your person. Or on the basis of a "tip" from a CI on the police payroll. So when will it have been reduced enough? If it's a matter of life or death, isn't complete disarmament worth the same kinds of tactics we've already established are appropriate for drugs? Maybe you disagree but won't that be the argument? If it's ok to serve a no-knock warrant to find pot, why isn't it ok to serve one to find guns? Aren't guns more dangerous than pot?

It's an argument against the need for gun control, I guess; it's an argument to focus our limited energies where they will do the most good and the least harm. We can't fix all problems. Better to focus on the low-hanging fruit, and work our way up. When the roads are safe, isn't that the time to solve the problem of incredibly rare school shootings?\

Sure.Because you're irrationally afraid of guns.

Again...this is a discussion thread. You're presenting an argument to not bother debating the issue, which is different from debating how we can improve firearms legislation.If you think the topic is unimportant...well, feel free to not bother debating it. Feel free to start a thread on how to make the roads safer.

I'm rationally afraid of irrational idiots with ready access to guns. Weird isn't it? Perhaps I should see someone about it.The rest of the world looks at you and can't understand your lack of obvious action - I could see it in Obama's eyes - he knows that he can't and won't do anything and that he's got another 4 years where there will be another two, 3 or 4 of these and he won't do anything because he can't.And the gun lobby maniacs will carry on their fantasy arguments. People's beliefs are truly weird.

Irrational? At the very least, isn't it widely known that the USA has a abnormally high rate of death by firearm to say, the Netherlands. At the very least, it's far from making things more save then more restricted countries. And in my book, only cold hard reason should have a influence on gun lawmaking. Emotion shouldn't have a place in this, especially if you take various human instincts into acount.I might look for it tomorrow, but is there any well-checked study of instances where civillian guns actually managed to prove useful? Everyone is always using this argument, but when does the ''positive'' side of the right to own a firearm get put into real practice?Edited by Kairyu, : No reason given.

So ....where were all the gun owners who have all these guns "for protection" when a fucking shit load of KIDS were gunned down in school? Why did none of you protect them with your guns? Legal guns are for protection, right?Oh, that's right, because they aren't for protecting anyone other than yourself when someone tries to harm you. Fuck everyone else.I simply cannot wrap my head around this shit. High School? Maybe because High School kids are prone to making fun of people. But a god damn class room full of 5 to 10 year olds? Get fucked. I have TWO boys in that exact age range and I cannot even fathom what I would do if I was in ANY of those parents' shoes in Connecticut right now. I cannot even guarantee I wouldn't take my own life if I lost my kids to some idiot fucking retard who didn't take his crazy pills today and stole daddy's guns to go kill his mom and her students.Yea, more fucking GUN FREEDOM FOR 'MURICA! Shoot your neighbor up! Shoot your dog up! Shoot your neighbors dog up! Fuck, SHOOT EACH OTHER UP! Just make sure not to forget to shoot up the neighbors kids!'MURICA! FUCK YEA! CHEESEBURGERS AND GUNS AND BEER AND BASEBALL AND GUNZ AND TRUCKS AND WAR!Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

After reading this thread I'm only using Rahvin's post as my launch pad. I hope he doesn't mind.So guns are the problem? Stricter gun laws the answer?You do know about Norway where some of the most strict gun laws have been implemented. You do remember Belgium where, again, very strict gun laws are in force. And certainly you all know about China where private gun possession is a capital offense.Strict gun laws, even complete bans on guns, doesn't seem to have kept the crazies from raveging through grade schools.Can anyone anywhere show where fewer guns, fewer knives, fewer hammers and chainsaws and molotov cocktails is an effective answer to stopping crazy people?So then what is it in the USA that causes so many people to instantly blame the NRA for these acts?I know. Emotions run deep and political emotions run deerper than most. So in the end we will all fight each other spending more time and more money on solutions for/against our pet symptoms instead of addressing the disease.And, no, I have no idea how we go about finding and stopping crazy people before they act. And neither do you.Edited by AZPaul3, : spelin

yes.What's the per-capita gun death rate in Norway as compared to the US?I'll do it for you.Norway is 1.78 per 100,000 people.
The US is 9.You're making a simple error - you're suggesting that gun control on the level of Norway's is intended to eliminate gun deaths.It's not.It's intended to reduce them.Those numbers suggest that Norway is doing a better job at preventing gun-related deaths than the US is. A much better job.Crazy people will always be out there. But we can take some actions to reduce the amount of harm they're capable of doing.

I find that folks from the UK have a skewed idea of American gun culture. I remember having a nice conversation with a man who was going on holiday in the US & was telling us yanks about his intent to walk around with his gun on his hip while on vacation. How disappointed he was to find out we didn't do that here. Too many western movies, I guess. Folks in my part of California love their guns, but I'm hardly ever aware that it's dangerous or schizophrenic around here.OTOH, when traveling in Belize a few years ago, I was startled when armed men in army camo gear continually patrolled the Mayan pyramids we visited. For our own protection, of course. Then there were the guards w/ patrol dogs who guarded the beach at night near our bungalows. Scared the crap out of me one night when I snuck out for a ciggie.Guns are too enmeshed in our culture here, but I still don't worry about a random shooting happening to me or mine. Maybe I'm just apathetic, as well.

Simple answers are almost always wrong and seldom work as expected.There are some real problems in the US, a lousy health care system, almost non-existent mental health system, an increasing gap between poor and rich, dynamic changes in what jobs are available and a for shit education system, almost non-existent news distribution and education, a large percentage of the population that are totally out of touch with reality and a large percentage of the population that think only in bumper sticker sized bites.We do need change but what is needed is a whole cultural makeover.

I'd love to have a debate about how we can improve firearms legislation. At issue, here, is the definition of "improve", where you contend that so long as even a single school shooting happens, our legislation needs to be "improved."I disagree, because there's a point at which strict gun control causes deaths instead of preventing them. The way that it does that is two-fold; on one hand, focusing resources chasing diminishing returns means that we're not saving lives we could have in other areas; on the other, making it hard to use guns even for good reasons means that we're losing lives who could have been saved had they had easier access to guns.Now, the calculus of preventing three schoolchildren from being shot at the cost of one additional person dying during a robbery (for instance, or one person shot needlessly by police executing a search for an illegal firearm) is a calculus I can live with. But at some point, you're increasing the number of deaths during other crimes in exchange for a diminishing amount of schoolchildren saved. That's the stopping point, in my view - where your next legislation costs more lives than it saves - but you don't seem prepared to admit that anyone might be killed by what you propose.

I don't understand why you can't understand it, when it's been explained to you - we have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and you don't. You don't have that.That's why you can enact gun control and we can't. We have a law that says we can't. I don't know how to make it any simpler than that.

I never once contended any such thing.In fact, I've repeatedly stated that my goal is the reduction of gun violence, not the elimination of school shootings.Perhaps you should restrict yourself to debating my actual positions, rather than making up strawmen or arguing that we shouldn't worry ourselves about such a minor problem in the first place. Evidence?From gun violence statistics, it would seem that these points are likely false. I've already posted a comparison of per-capita gun deaths from the US to Norway; I can provide more, if you like. The data is freely available, and it clearly shows that countries like Japan, the UK, Norway, Sweden, and so on all have significantly fewer deaths per capita due to gun violence than the US.You have also contended repeatedly that a ban on firearms necessitates a "war on drugs" level of prohibition, which I have repeatedly deflated. Your continued insistence does not make it so - we manage to ban private ownership of hand grenades without a "war on explosives," we manage to ban lead paint without a "war on paint," and so on.Again - you seem to have nothing to debate aside from strawmen, red herrings, and bald assertions.Perhaps you should attempt to debate actual positions your opponents have actually stated, and back up your arguments with actual data as others have done. Provide evidence for this assertion.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.