Guns

1) I do not think there is a legitimate reason for anyone other than the military to be able to own a firearm that is capable of firing off rounds in very rapid succession.2) The gun lobby has shamefully and almost always effectively fought any reasonable restriction or requirement or delay to gun ownership.3) If gun ownership is to be allowed, I think that people should have to be licensed to own one, such that they must:-be at least 21 to own a gun-undergo fingerprinting and a criminal background check-give proof of residency-successfully complete a firearms safety course and test.I also think there needs to be stricter liability laws for how people store their guns and ammunition.I also think there needs to be stricter laws with regard to child safety locks; as in, all guns sold to private citizens in the US should have them.

Look, the kid in Virginia who bought those guns was nuts.He lied on his application to get a gun because the law only required self-reporting of the fact that he had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution.It is sheer madness and, in my opinion, criminally negligent, to depend upon the honesty or mental stability of the customer when selling a weapon that is designed for no other reason than to kill people.What do you say to the people the crazy peron killed, and their families, because it was far too easy for him to get a gun."Whoops"?Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Although somewhat off-topic for this particular thread, I personally believe that fingerprinting for other than criminals (or certain types of high-security employment) is overly intrusive.

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I was "footprinted" in the hospital as an infant for identification purposes.Was that overly intrusive?

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Okay, so you're suggesting better background checks before owning a gun?

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Those, and all the other things I mentioned as well.

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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.

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Some guns should be taken away from private citizens because there is no good reason for a private citizen to have them.Alternatively, if private citizens think they need, say, certain military-style weapons, then the hoops they should have to jump through and the insurance they should be required to purchase aught to be extensive and significant.It should be difficult to get them. Very difficult.

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all the bans in the world won't prevent people from losing it one way or another.

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Sure.But if he had only had access to a knife, or a pipe wrench, or a pool cue, how many people do you think he would have been able to kill?Killing people with anything other than a gun is really quite difficult. It takes a lot of time to stab or strangle or beat someone to death compared to shooting them. It is also much more intimate and involves much more risk to the attacker. Vicims can also run away from a person holding a knife or a wrench or a pool cue.Guns allow one to kill many people effortlessly, from a distance.There's a reason this kind of thing is extremely rare in Japan and Europe.

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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'.

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The kid survived the slashing, right? Probably needed some serious stitiching-up but was otherwise fine, wasn't he?What if he had been shot in the arm at close range instead?Do you think his injuries might have been more extensive? Like shattered bones, perhaps, requiring surgery or even amputation.Why is it so hard for you to understand that guns are far more dangerous than knives?

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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.

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In 1998, for every one time a woman used a handgun to kill a stranger in self-defense, 302 women were murdered in handgun homicides. source

” 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.iii
” 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
” In 2002, 54 percent of female homicide victims were shot and killed with a gun.
” Handguns are more likely than rifles or shotguns to be used in homicides in which men kill
women. In 2002, handguns were used in 73 percent of cases where men used firearms to kill
women.v
” In homicides where males use firearms to kill women, handguns are the most commonly used
weapon, over rifles and shotguns. Seventy-three percent of all female were killed with a
handgunvi
” In 1998, for every one woman who used a handgun to kill an intimate acquaintance in selfdefense,
83 women were murdered by an intimate acquaintance using a handgun.vii
” A study of women physically abused by current or former intimate partners found a five-fold
increased risk of the partner murdering the woman when the partner owned a gun.viii
” Domestic violence misdemeanor convictions and restraining orders were the second most
common reason for denials of handgun purchase applications between 1994 and 1998.ix
” From 1998 to 2001, more than 2,800 people with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions
were able to purchase guns without being identified by the National Instant Criminal
Background Check System.x
The Facts on Guns and Domestic Violencehttp://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/Guns.pdfEdited by nator, : added link to source

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The prospect of a shootout scares some away from homes that they think/know have guns in them.

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You do know that known guns in a house are a strong inducement to burglary, don't you?Here's the abstract to one study:http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8926.html

How so?

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Why should they be allowed to register physical identification of you in some database without your consent?

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Database?You mean, a filing cabinet?They had my parent's consent, since I was a minor.

Well, do you know the reason the hospital takes prints of newborns' feet?

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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.

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Actually, the statistics do rather undermine your specific points. And it is hardly a creationist tactic to provide legitimate statistical information in order to counter a claim.

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So 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.

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Yes, but what the statistic shows is that in homes where all other things are equal BUT there are no guns, women are far less likely to be killed.Gun in house = greater liklihood of woman being killed.

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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.

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So, he shoots her dead, then people call the cops.Great. She's still dead.

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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.)

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I think that the statistic used the word "weapon" to mean "gun".How easy is it to kill someone with a shoe, compared to a gun, do you think?

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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.

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...but in the meantime, thousands of women will die, and that's OK with you.Got it.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Granted, in this instance, not as many.

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Not as many?He'd have been lucky to have killed even one or two. Even if people had been lining up to be killed by him, and offered no resistance, sheer physical exhaustion would have set in after about one or two people.You have a very strange and unrrealistic image of how easy it is to kill someone by stabbing or by blunt force compared to with a gun.

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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.

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But what would the death count have been, do you think?

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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?

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The quote of mine above was in response to you saying this in a previous message about Cho, the kid who killed all those people at VT:

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all the bans in the world won't prevent people from losing it one way or another.

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My point is that if he hadn't been able to so easily buy a gun, and instead only had access to knives, pipe wrenches, and pool cues, we wouldn't have seen over thirty murders and a suicide when he "lost it".And about the "homicidal maniac" in the woman's house?In 1998, for every one time a woman used a handgun to kill a stranger in self-defense, 302 women were murdered in handgun homicides.

So, you are rejecting the researcher's conclusion that guns in a house was a strong inducement to burglery?AbE: So where is your study that comes to a different conclusion than the one I provided?Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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difficult, yes. impossible, no.

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I never suggested that we ban all private ownership of all firearms.

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remember the idea of invasion. we may think we're immune, but we aren't. not to mention our own government which is getting more fascist by the day.

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Unless you are suggesting that all private citizens stockpile scads of military weapons, rockets, greandes, and mines, just what do you think a shotgun or two and some handguns are going to do against an invading foreign army, or the combined firepower of the US armed forces should martial law be imposed in the US? Stats on gun deaths in Japan and Stwitzerland (and other countries).Might be a slightly biased source but the stats are legit. Edited by nator, : No reason given.