On what basis could you say that? If guns had not been at his house he might well have still obtained them. If guns had been completely illegal he might still have obtained them. If guns had been unobtainable he might simply have used something else.
Scenario 1. I'm mad as hell about something and feel tha I have to kill as many people as I can, right now. There are two hand guns and a pile of ammunition upstairs in my mother's drawer. I take the guns and kill a load of children.
Scenario 2. I'm mad as hell about something and want to kill as many people as I can right now. There are no guns in the house and I have no idea how to get one. I spend a few hours/days trying to get a gun and some ammunition. I fail because guns are not freely available in this society and anyway, I'm not so mad anymore - the mania has passed.
Of course anyone truly and irrevocably set on killing a lot of people will eventually find a way of doing some damage somehow, but without simple and immediate access to both a gun and a lot of bullets, it's not an easy thing to achieve.
It's impossible to argue that less gun would not mean less death by guns - impossible.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
Yes, it's really simple. So simple that most countries have done it - the USA isn't a special case of anything except its own inability to look outside itself.
Or, alternatively, declare it too hard, do absolutely nothing but wring your hands, then repeat this thread in 6 months time.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
NO IT IS NOT SIMPLE. You are talking about changing the LAW
I have asked before and not been answered; is this LAW made by a God and therefore immutable? Have I missed something?
No, all you need is the political will to do it. Well this is your best chance - you have a president that can't be re-elected, now's his time if he has the political balls.
Imagine that, a US President that brought in Health Care and Gun Control. He'd finally be worthy of that Peace Prize.
(And for you right wing nutters, he gave you the head of Mr Osaman bin Laden.)
Plus he's black.
Slam dunk, start carving the mountain.
Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
Other countries have simply preserved a pre-existing low rate of gun ownership by a series of restrictive laws. But no country has ever peacefully reduced its rate of gun ownership from US levels to Canada levels, and its not clear that there's any way to do so except by people voluntarily deciding they want to own less guns.
Oh, I see what you mean now. You mean that no other country called the USA has done it. Well that is, of course, true.
Pfnrrrr
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
Show me even a single example where a country has peacefully legislated their way from 80 guns per 100 citizens down to 16 guns per 100, the ownership rate of Connecticut which we will stipulate is the least we'd have to do.
You mean that no country that looks exactly like the USA has done it.
Of course you could wait until there are 100 guns per one hundred people and even more deaths.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
The Supreme Court has interpreted our constitution in such a way that strong gun laws such as the ones which existed in the District of Columbia and Illinois will be struck down as unconstitutional. There is simply no realistic political path to adopting laws here that match those in the UK.
Your constitution can of course be changed if there is a political will in the country to do so.
I suppose the lack of political will can only be because the majority of Americans want to keep their guns. If that's true then, sadly, you all have to live with the consequences.
In the UK, after Dunblane, the majority view was 'get rid of the guns as fast as you can, we don't want them here anymore'. We find it hard/impossible to understand any other position.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
Apparently, the 'right to bear arms' clause was a straight copy of the English Bill of Rights of a hundred years earlier - but with the bit about being subject to law removed. Sounds like someone cocked up.......
You also had to be a Protestant too.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
You guys talk about guns like they're Pokemon cards - this ones cooler than that one - or like attributes of weapons in a RPG game - 8" at 300 yards, this many rounds per magazine.....
From this side of the Atlantic it seems like you've forgotten that you're talking about extremely dangerous weapons designed specifically to kill a many people quickly. You've got too used to them, got too comfortable with them - you've normalised them. You're left arguing trivia and can't see how utterly crazy it all is.
Edited by Tangle, : Spelling....
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
And from this other side, it seems like you've forgotten that your home is supposed to be a castle, a place of safety and refuge, not a shopping center ("centre" I guess you'd say) where people are free to force their way in and help themselves to whatever they want, including your life.
I mean, that's what seems crazy to me - meek surrender to the "new normal" of vastly elevated burglary rates and hooliganism displayed in the UK.
And the last set of lies you guys swallowed about the UK involved chimney sweeps, butlers and bowler hats.
Try harder.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
Haha, the Daily Mail is the toilet paper equivalent of Fox News. We call it the Daily Wail over here - its job is to tell its readers that we're all going to hell in a hand cart and to do it they publish garbage like that.
But let's have a look.
So all firearm offences - that's includes any offence with a firearm including owning a firearm without a licence, not keeping a shotgun properly locked up, imitation firearms (about 20%) etc - was less that 10,000 in 2009.
Still it's a worrying trend. Why the increase? Well, in a bit of the article from the Daily Wail that you didn't paste and highlight (I wonder why?) they say:
The figures follow a warning by Mr Grayling that U.S.-style gang culture has reached some parts of the UK. In August, he made a controversial speech warning that a collapse of 'civilised life' had allowed a brutal drug and gun crime culture - like that of the U.S. TV show The Wire - to flourish in Britain. The hit TV series tracks the nightmare of gangs and organised crime in inner city West Baltimore and the futile efforts of police to deal with them.
Starting roughly in 2004 there was a spate of me-too youth gang crime in some of the poorer estates in two of our cities - notably Manchester and Nottingham..
Despite our efforts, the USA is exporting its gun culture - you must be very proud.
Luckily, our youth don't find it as easy to get and use guns - gun related murder in the UK runs at around 50 per year and has been falling year on year for the last 10 years.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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