(12-15-2012, 12:16 PM)Käse link Wrote: [ -> ][quote author=Dtrain323i link=topic=3709.msg258504#msg258504 date=1355591011]
[quote author=Käse link=topic=3709.msg258503#msg258503 date=1355590076]
[quote author=Dtrain323i link=topic=3709.msg258500#msg258500 date=1355588678]
[quote author=rumsfald link=topic=3709.msg258495#msg258495 date=1355584387]
Seabreeze, in that China story, 22 kids were stabbed, but none died. That's a bullshit comparison to 20 dead kids. I don't disagree that mentally ill people can do violent things, but those with guns are more deadly than those with knives.
Why is it ok to talk about preventing some countries from getting nuclear weapons but it's not ok to talk about preventing some people from getting guns?
Because, we gun owners learned through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s that it doesn't stop with "some people". The ultimate goal has been and always will be full disarmament. We gun owners have learned that if we give an inch, the anti-gun crowd will take a mile. It starts with "well we just need to make sure the mentally ill can't get firearms" and it ends with Diane Feinstein saying "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in" And in the end, nothing changes. The only people you stop from getting firearms are law-abiding citizens.
Connecticut is number 5 on the Brady campaign's ranking of gun law restrictiveness, New Jersey is number 2. Federal law says elementary schools are "gun-free zones". Federal laws also say that it's illegal for someone under the age of 21 to buy a handgun. Connecticut has an "assault weapons" ban. You tell me how any gun laws saved a child yesterday.
What really needs to happen is a reform of mental health. The shooter had Autism and was in the prime age for the onset of Schizophrenia. The way the system is set up is barbaric. My wife teaches children with Autism and behavioral disorders at a school geared toward them. She's had parents of children in her classroom have to go to court and give up parental rights before any help was available to their children. How fucked up is that?
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China has extremely strict gun laws. One of my relatives is a police chief and nobody is allowed to have a gun, even the police officers don't carry guns regularly like you would see in the US. They only carry batons or something similar.
So if the US were to try banning certain people from buying guns, in order to be 100% effective I think they would have to ban guns for
everyone, as you said, full disarmament. Of course this would not go over well with those that own guns but it is far too easy for someone say underage to steal their dad's gun or have a connection with someone who can get a gun for them.
It's true that "law-abiding citizens" will have to turn their guns in but is owning a gun really necessary if nobody else has one? Do you still need it for "protection" anymore?
There also needs to be an improvement to the mental healthcare system, and the healthcare system in general, but you can't say that gun laws won't help reduce fatality rates at all. If nobody had guns to shoot people with, would all those children have died?
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China's gun laws did zero to keep children safe yesterday. Just because the guns go away does not mean the violence goes away. There will still be robbers and rapists out there and the police can't protect you. Hell, the supreme court has said that they don't even has a duty to protect you. The only person who can protect you, is you. I've said it before, I've had to use a firearm to protect myself in the past. Thank God that I only had to present it and never had to fire it. But if it weren't for a gun, who knows where I would be today.
Disarmament also in the end would never be fully successful. There are something like 300 million firearms in circulation in the United States. Not every one of them are "on the books" and
a lot of people aren't going to abide by a confiscation. I know I wouldn't.
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And that is why it won't be successful. The general selfishness of people, or their paranoia, will prevent full disarmament.
I suppose one way of enforcing this would be to have more severe consequences for those found to have kept their gun when they were supposed to turn them in. Using China as an example again, an illegal possession or sale of firearms there may result in a minimum punishment of 3 years in prison, with the maximum being the death penalty. If the only consequence for owning a gun is a slap on the wrist and a monetary fine, then you'll have more people willing to rebel against the law.
There will always be violence in the world, to think otherwise is very naive. What I was saying is that restriction of gun possession for everyone will reduce the fatality rate from violent crimes. It's certainly more difficult to one-hit-kill a person with a knife than with a bullet.
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What about rape? How does a 120 pound girl defend herself against a 220 pound man? Is being raped morally superior to having guns in the world? What you propose would turn me into a criminal overnight.