How many “criminals” go on shooting sprees? Probably none. Criminals mostly use guns for things like intimidation during robberies.
It’s the loons who can legally buy guns that go on shooting sprees as you well know.
Nurgen (#177884)
11 years ago
Pretty short gap on this repost… it’s even a crap quality image. Good job.
ChTyUaT (#)
11 years ago
You cant stop it. Gun culture is so engrained in your culture that no matter what you do some people are going to get shot and die.
Have fun ‘Murica
Grendel (#)
11 years ago
Exactly.
Guns don’t kill people.
Guns in the hands of people kill people.
Easy solution.
Separate the guns and the people.
It’s the mix that kills people.
Hmmm… if guns don’t kill people and only guns in the hands of people kill people, and also the hands of people without guns in them kill people… shouldn’t we separate the hands from the people in order to be safe?
Sure, harder to use your iPhone with just two stumps, but “if it saves just *one* life, it’s totally worth it”, right?
It’s amazing how people just don’t get the mentality of those who go on a shooting spree. To begin with, no one has ever gotten away with doing it. Every single one of them either commits suicide at the end or gets shot or ends up spending the rest of their life in jail.
And every single one of them knows this before they start. A shooting spree is little more than a variation of “Suicide by cop” where the person wants to end their life but they want to take a whole bunch of people to hell with them.
Taking guns away won’t stop these. They’ll just use knives, axes, explosives, poison, even bows and arrows. The main reason the shooters prefer guns is that THEY ASSUME EVERYONE ELSE HAS A GUN, and you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
Taking guns away will only make axe murdering sprees much easier and much more common.
Good gravy this is dumb logic. Do you know how much harder it is to kill someone with all the things you mentioned? That’s why guns were invented – it’s easier to kill shit with them than an axe.
And no one is talking about “Taking” guns. They are talking about making them harder to access. Like when you put bleach on the top shelf so your baby sister won’t mix herself a funny tummy coctail.
Killing someone with an axe or a sword or a pointy stick or a rock or bare hands is harder, sure. However, any study of history shows that killing people works very well even without guns.
Guns are actually preferable specifically because they make killing easier: They enable the small, the weak and the disabled to fight effectively against a larger, stronger and more fighting-experienced attacker.
And of course people are talking about total gun bans – when they slip up and accidentally say what they really think. It’s only logical (from their POV), too: Making guns harder to access is supposedly good, so what could be better than to make them totally inaccessible?
Dragging out the strawman again, are we? The comment wasn’t about total gun bans, but you want to twist it into that because you think that’s an easier argument to win.
But then the original post was a strawman as well, career criminals don’t do killing sprees, mentally ill and desperate people do. Registration and background checks can keep some of those from getting weapons, and alert police that they’re trying to obtain them.
ok. First of all, background checks are mandatory for every new purchased firearm in the United States. Period. Quit bullshitting.
An individual may sell his private property to another individual without the government interfering. That is how it works in the United States.
That being said, I have seen multiple articles in the Main Stream Media that indicate that people who have purchased a number of firearms outside of their normal purchasing pattern have been investigated and arrested for various violations of Federal law. Additionally, purchasing a firearm for sale to another person is indeed called a straw purchase and is indeed illegal. So what you are saying is that the man who is risking ten years in jail for a straw purchase will be deterred by having to fill out an additional form besides the 4473 that all new purchases require? This is the point. You cannot come up with a simple and usable method for preventing illegal access to weapons. You keep acting as if your suggestions and the crap the Democrats are trying to pass are somehow stunningly brilliant but damn.
An insane or desperate person would just break the window out of a cop car at the donut shop or get a fake id. Or arrange a straw purchase. And the bushwa about alerting the police that they’re trying to obtain them relies on the police taking action. 70,000 firearm sales were declined in 2011 for ineligibility and only 43 were actually arrested much less prosecuted for the 10 year penalty for attempting to obtain a firearm illegally. So somehow the magic database will be something that the Feds and local police will pay attention to?
I remember when the UK implemented tough laws against knife possession.
A few years later:
murder by knife was down. Oddly, murder by being kicked to death was significantly higher.
Lessons learned:
Knife control did work.
People with a mind to murder… still going to do it.
I CAN imagine that it is much harder for a psychopath to walk into a movie theater or school, armed with really good boots, and kick 20 people to death… so there would be some kind of gain.
Knives boots or sporks, the murder rate in the UK is a fraction of what it is in the US because they give the police the tools they need to deal with it before it happens.
Wrong. If the murder rate is lower independently of the tool used, it’s not a success story of gun control. It just means there is a lower prevalence of violent crime in general, i.e. a cultural difference.
Fewer heists of shopkeepers in rural areas because there are more shops in urban areas, or because there are more potential robbers in urban areas? Or because of a cultural difference?
ep (#)
11 years ago
Maybe we should outlaw people – at least people who post this shit.
Plenty of Firearm Fellating boards elsewhere, Zippy. How’s about you fuck off in their general direction.
Nurgen (#177884)
11 years ago
“Shooting sprees” represent such a TINY problem that it’s ridiculous to get all up in arms about it when one happens. Yeah the deaths from these things are lower than the deaths from lightning strikes, and are utterly dwarfed by a hundred other things that the media doesn’t get all excited over. 10+ kids have been drowning in pools every week for DECADES in the U.S, but if 10 kids get shot at once it’s suddenly a cause to look at changing laws? WTF is that about?
The King of Nothing (#47939)
11 years ago
By this logic, why make laws? Criminals don’t follow them. Let’s get rid of all traffic laws like speeding and stopping at red lights. Since criminals don’t follow them, we don’t need them.
We have laws so we can punish people AFTER they did something wrong, not before. If you speed, you get a ticket. Gun control is preventing you from buying / driving a car because you *MIGHT* speed if you had one.
Laws are not supposed to be preventive. They may be deterring (as in “I better not speed lest I get a ticket”), but once someone has decided to run you over (vehicular manslaughter at minimum), the prospect of a speeding ticket is totally negligible.
Exactly the point. Make certain attachments and guns illegal. People will be deterred from obtaining those guns/parts because they don’t want to go to jail. Deterring people from breaking the law is preventative. Nice contradiction you made.
But I guess we should just do nothing and hope it goes away instead of trying something that may or may not work.
What? I just said that deterrence WON’T work. None of these mass murderers, not a single one, expected to get away with it. They either committed suicide, were killed on the scene or were arrested and confessed. In the latter case, they’re looking at a death penalty or life in prison. How could a few “possession of illegal weapons” charges slapped on top possibly make that worse?
And how do you think making “certain attachments” illegal would help? How would not having “barrel shrouds” and “shoulder things that go up” stop or even slow down a mass murderer?
I guess if something doesn’t work, we should just use more of it until it works, right?
You never said deterrents don’t work until the second comment. You just said laws aren’t meant to prevent, but then said they deter which is preventing. The idea isn’t to punish them more after they mass murder, it is to make it harder to obtain the means to do so. How will they go on a shooting spree with no guns? The guns may still exist, but being harder to get might help.
Certain attachments, like suppressors and fully automatic parts, can severely change things. It is easier to spray into a crowd when you don’t have to think about pulling the trigger constantly or reload as often.
No. That’s the definition of insanity. They are trying new things and no one will come up with an alternative. They just say no. We can read the future and know they will not work, but are not going to come up with any other ideas. If you think we have tried this already, then why can you get a gun by just submitting for a permit, then buying one? They are trying new things.
First, you conflate prevention and deterrence. Prevention means you can’t, deterrence means that you could, but won’t. There’s a difference.
Second, deterrence only works if you have something to lose. That’s why, in states with “three strikes” laws, felons become much more violent after their second strike. They know they’ll get an automatic life sentence for their next serious crime, so they might as well go full hog.
Mass shooters have no intention of getting away with it, so deterrence doesn’t work; and prevention disarms victims more than criminals.
In what world does prevention mean it can’t? I do preventive maintenance on my car to prevent, not deter, it from breaking. It can still do so.
Seriously, pay attention. You forgot what you said once already. Now your completely missing what I said. I want to see if you figure it out, but I lack that amount of patience.
“The idea isn’t to punish them more after they mass murder, it is to make it harder to obtain the means to do so. How will they go on a shooting spree with no guns? The guns may still exist, but being harder to get might help.” (actual quote from before)
I already said it is not to punish them after they mass murder. That would not be preventing, deterring, whatever word you want to use. It is to make the weapon harder to obtain. Said murderer wouldn’t be able to shoot up someplace if you couldn’t get the gun. Whether he would’ve gotten it legally or stolen from someone who had. He can’t buy/steal a gun that isn’t there for him to do so. Preventing him from going on a shooting spree by deterring him/victim of robbery from having a gun for said shooting spree.
Well, it is certainly a lot harder for me to get black tar heroine since I can’t just walk into a store and buy some. The penalty for getting caught prevent me from having the balls to try to get some.
By your logic, making murder illegal has had no effect and might as well be legal because it doesn’t prevent or deter at all since all laws fail at doing so. Same goes for robbery, assault, breaking and entering, vandalism, grand theft auto, etc.
I guess we should just do absolutely nothing since you seem to know the future and know nothing will work and guns make everything better. You seem to have missed every time I mentioned they are trying to make it harder to obtain guns. Just like all the other laws they know it will still happen, but hopefully less of it. Just like smart people know world peace is impossible, but doesn’t mean we should just give up on trying to make things better.
What are your suggestions to help this? Do you even have any? Because if you do, it would be gun laws which you’re so opposed to.
Again. Your first comment didn’t say preventing or deterring don’t work. No matter how much you argue that, it won’t be true.
Sigh. Yes, laws can make it harder to buy weapons and heroin, in the sense that you can’t buy them at your local Kwik-E-Mart. But as every attempted prohibition shows, if people really want to, they can still get it. Junkies have very little trouble getting heroin and criminals have very little trouble getting guns.
So, yes, you can keep guns out of the hands of people who are NOT CRIMINALS. You can disarm the people who would NOT use them to commit crimes, but COULD have used them to defend themselves from the people who DO want to commit crimes and WILL still have access to guns). Congratulations, you actually made it WORSE. But at least we did SOMETHING, right? We couldn’t do NOTHING!
Go ahead, find yourself a home invader or convenience store robber or any other violent criminal. Ask them what they think about gun control. They will tell you that they’re in favor of it. Because *they* will still get guns. Even if they (somehow) can’t, so what? They’ll just choose victims that can’t resist them physically. Because that is their advantage. The victim cannot choose their attacker, but the attacker can choose the victim. And they always, ALWAYS, choose victims they think are low-risk. My suggestion is to a) allow people to make it very hard to guess who is a low-risk victim and who isn’t; and b) to allow the law-abiding to have the tools to fight back against the criminals.
All that sounds fine and dandy, but your assuming that every citizen with a gun will see the criminal coming and pull his gun first. If the criminal uses his weapon and surprises his victim, which he most likely will, said victims gun becomes inconsequential.
Some criminals are against gun control too because of the pain in the ass it will create for them getting and keeping guns without getting caught.
I, a law abiding citizen with a job where I have to worry about getting robbed pretty much everyday, am for gun control. I carry around cash from places. Some of them in very rough areas. I sometimes worry about my safety, but I have absolutely no desire to carry a gun. I would feel no safer and I know that if someone want to rob me they will just come up behind where my gun would be useless. It would also cause them to consider making a preemptive strike to ensure I can’t use. Tell me more about how it’ll help law abiding citizens.
I never said that having a gun will make you invincible. One thing is certain, though: Being defenseless makes no one safer.
You choose to be as helpless as possible and put yourself at the mercy of men who, as you yourself have said, would kill you over the contents of your pockets. Fine. It’s your life. But don’t demand of ME to do the same. I’d rather have the tools to fight back. Then I can still choose not to, if the situation warrants it.
Even though stats have shown that the safest and cheapest way to handle being held up is to just hand them your wallet. I am not defenseless without a gun. I am not some sissy girl that only feels big and tall with a gun. I can handle myself. Not having a gun in absolutely no way shape or form in this universe makes me defenseless.
The money in my wallet, not at risk at my job, and the money on my should for my job and not worth risking my life or injuries if someone pulls a gun on me whether I have a gun or not. The chances of them shooting me would increase if I had a gun and even more so if I was dumb enough to make a move for it after the have one pointed at me. The only way a gun will help is if I pull it first.
I guess I could try to shoot him as he runs away which would probably result in killing him or innocent bystanders (high possibility). I prefer not having bloodshed over a few measly bucks.
I’m Chuck Norris huh? Since I said hand over the money instead of fighting. Which yes, my mother could do the same thing and be better off than fighting back and probably getting shot.
Again you missed the point.
If Sally Nutjob is planning to kill her husband, purchasing a firearm that Diane Fienstein doesn’t like will NOT be on her list of things to worry about. The penalty for murder is much higher than the penalty that Diane Feinstein came up with for the devices that cause her to puddle in her pumps.
If Korinthian decides to steal all of the balloon animals at the circus he knows that is illegal so him sneaking into the circus in the first place is not going to even register.
The problem you antigun people miss completely is that you know absolutely nothing about firearms and have not clue one as to what would logically make a difference in a firefight or what is just a cosmetic addition. You will ban something that you think is scary but might actually be a safety feature. You pass laws based on total and complete ignorance of how legal gun owners use their weapons and in the process you keep Granny Goldstein from being able to get her pistol worked on to fix the malfunction she has been having. So when Jimmy the Granny Raper climbs in her window she has to just let him sodomize her to death. Thanks liberals for showing you care!
I replied precisely to you statement not missing you 2 points.
This paragraph makes no sense with the issue. Your example is her like not liking the legal thing when obviously that wasn’t what you were shooting for.
If the circus didn’t have balloon animals because they were illegal, Korinthian wouldn’t have any balloon animals at all to steal.
I am actually not a liberal. My guess is you don’t know what a liberal actually is and spew it at anyone that differs in political views from you. I also am not antigun. I don’t believe guns are the savior of everything and believe that there is a problem. I believe a solution may result in limiting access to firearms. It may work. It may not. I want to make some sort of attempt instead of just going, “Mmmmm, not going to work as an insta-fix so give up.”
How many Granny Goldstein’s own guns and would know how to use them? Or would even know he’s coming unless he was complete jackasses making too much noise. If he got to that gun first it wouldn’t have helped her. If he has a gun and sees her reaching for one…well you can probably guess what he’ll do. I will assume you’ll say she’ll stop him to help your cause so…he’ll shoot her. She is also waaaay more likely to shoot a loved one than an intruder. (has been proven by facts)
I don’t much like guns. I don’t like violence either. In fact I am a bit of a tree hugging hippy but even I can see its a sad world where the only people who have guns are the feds.
How many people have died at the hands of governments compared to the hands of citizens?
Oh, good question! Let’s say… the governments who have argued that guns don’t belong into the hands of regular people and that the government should have a monopoly on the use of force.
Or take a country like Somalia, no government so no gun control, you can own any gun and as many as you want – must be the safest place in the world, right?
No, but appearantly people seem to think that owning guns makes you safe.
But seriously: How do guns protect you if your government is really out to get you – and not like Obama wants to make you unemployed. How does your handgun protect you if your government decides to start, let’s say, an ethnic cleansing?
You want to defend yourself from criminals invading your home. Please, feel free to feel the need of owning a handgun. But if your government really wants to do you in, it will – no matter what you got in your nightstand.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that owning guns makes you safe. But lots of people realize that having a gun makes you safer than being defenseless. And I *am* a lot more worried about home invasions than ethnic cleansings, actually.
But to answer your question: In the U.S., there’s an average of 1 police officer per 400 citizens. Let’s say only a quarter of them have or know how to use a firearm. I’m not saying that the good guys would necessarily win. But it would be VERY nasty. Hopefully, the government (or at least, the policemen who don’t immediately drop their badges when given these orders) would think twice about trying such a thing. Hopefully, we’ll never find out.
Let’s hope! Of course, the risk of something like a big scale ethnic cleansing in the US is about nil.
Still, the question was how many people have died at the hands of governments and I still claim that a handgun does [b]not[/b] protect you from your government if it decides to exercise a misuse of it’s powers on you.
Contrary to popular conspiracy theories, the US is not on the brink of turning into a police state. But neither is Germany and here the government [b]does[/b] have the monopoly on the use of force. Crime rates are not exploding, the vast majority of citizens feels safe and the misuse of force by the police is not higher than in other countries in Europe.
But if you take a look at non-democratic countries with governments who give a flying fuck about human rights and whatever constitution they may have…let’s say: Afghanistan before 2001 or Francist Spain. In such a country, the government or government-like institution will get you if it wants you. So it doesn’t so really depend on gun laws (did Afghanistan under the Taliban even have any form of gun regulation?).
My point is that if your government is not even trying to disarm you, *chances are* that you have little to fear from your government. The worst (and most) genocides were committed by governments who enforced tight gun control.
To be honest, apart from Nazi Germany, I don’t know anything about the gun regulations of the countries on that list. And in Germany, gun regulations weren’t that tight.
Gun regulations were and are pretty tight in Germany. You had/have to be on a very short list of people who are given the privilege to own any kind of gun, even for hunting or competitive shooting. Soviet Union and China? Ultra-tight. I don’t think they even *had* a permit system. And so on. If some of those countries did not have tight gun control, it’s most likely because they needn’t bother with it – with the population being dirt poor and unable to afford basic necessities, you don’t have to worry about them buying guns in relevant quantities.
Well, I know how the german system works, I live in Germany and I am a sport shooter; yes, the german gun law is super-tight.
But the Nazis had loosened the gun regulations, you could freely buy and own rifles (there was a slight control mechanism on pistols), as long as you weren’t, for example, a Jew. They were (for obvious reasons) forbidden to own, buy or sell weapons and ammunition. Also the party organizations were literally flooded with firearms and trained to use them (also for obvious reasons).
Which pretty much proves my point. A government with ill intent towards its people (or a specific group of them) enforces tight gun control, even if it’s only aimed at the targeted group. That’s not to say that every government with tight gun control is necessarily evil, but gun control is both an indicator and a prerequisite.
Think about it. If I thought it *important* not only that you be unarmed, but that I be armed; if I, for some reason, thought it *important* that I can use force against you, but not you against me – should you trust me? I’m not saying that you necessarily cannot trust me. But should you?
I’d be much more inclined to trust in the good will of a man who is himself armed, but does not object to me being armed as well.
I trust my government and it’s executives, as long as they stick to the laws and the constitution. So far, they do; so I put my trust in them and trust them to use their monopoly on the use of force accordingly (I don’t know if “wisely” would be the appropriate term).
I can fully comprehend your point of view, but we just have pretty different mindsets on that matter.
Every once in a while there are certain incidents which make me glad that the law abiding citizens who participated did not have firearms.
And yes, even here in Germany, a person determined enough could acquire an illegal firearm, our latest domestic terrorist cell proves that. But if a criminal is determined enough, he will get you, even if you are armed.
Generally, the American government’s body count is far greater outside the borders of its country. Far greater.
This has been true since 1865.
The rest of the world wonders if perhaps less dependence on extreme violence within its borders might reduce the violence it perpetrates in other countries.
The rest of the world cries out in anguish when they are being invaded or some third world nutjob has bombed their airport. Then the REST OF THE WORLD steps back and says “Hey Uncle Sam…You remember the UN thingie? Well it would be inconvenient for US to handle this so how about you step up and kick their ass for us?”
By that logic we should remove all laws “because criminals don’t follow laws”, let’s just get rid of all the laws because only law-abiding citizens follow them anyway. What a fucking stupid arguement.
Arguably the highest leap for a straw man argument I have seen since I used to troll the women’s studies groups on the chat board at U of Iowa in the early nineties.
Although what you are saying has merit. The United States needs to get rid of about seventy percent of the laws on the books. There is too much crap that is no longer applicable and also there is a need to get rid of duplicate laws. There are so very many duplications of laws against killing someone. There are so many duplications of laws against sexual assault. There are so many duplications of laws against theft. The system needs a cleanup. The system does NOT need some liberal hand wringing pantywaists to create a whole new slew of laws because the liberals don’t want to take responsibility for the truly shitty policies concerning the mentally ill or other issues that are the root cause of violence in this society.
This is the definitive word on gun control. This man has worked on every facet of the gun dilemma except for gunsmithing. Read the entire thing if you have the testicles.
How many “criminals” go on shooting sprees? Probably none. Criminals mostly use guns for things like intimidation during robberies.
It’s the loons who can legally buy guns that go on shooting sprees as you well know.
Pretty short gap on this repost… it’s even a crap quality image. Good job.
You cant stop it. Gun culture is so engrained in your culture that no matter what you do some people are going to get shot and die.
Have fun ‘Murica
Exactly.
Guns don’t kill people.
Guns in the hands of people kill people.
Easy solution.
Separate the guns and the people.
It’s the mix that kills people.
Hmmm… if guns don’t kill people and only guns in the hands of people kill people, and also the hands of people without guns in them kill people… shouldn’t we separate the hands from the people in order to be safe?
Sure, harder to use your iPhone with just two stumps, but “if it saves just *one* life, it’s totally worth it”, right?
If he won’t reply, consider him stumped.
It’s amazing how people just don’t get the mentality of those who go on a shooting spree. To begin with, no one has ever gotten away with doing it. Every single one of them either commits suicide at the end or gets shot or ends up spending the rest of their life in jail.
And every single one of them knows this before they start. A shooting spree is little more than a variation of “Suicide by cop” where the person wants to end their life but they want to take a whole bunch of people to hell with them.
Taking guns away won’t stop these. They’ll just use knives, axes, explosives, poison, even bows and arrows. The main reason the shooters prefer guns is that THEY ASSUME EVERYONE ELSE HAS A GUN, and you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
Taking guns away will only make axe murdering sprees much easier and much more common.
Good gravy this is dumb logic. Do you know how much harder it is to kill someone with all the things you mentioned? That’s why guns were invented – it’s easier to kill shit with them than an axe.
And no one is talking about “Taking” guns. They are talking about making them harder to access. Like when you put bleach on the top shelf so your baby sister won’t mix herself a funny tummy coctail.
Killing someone with an axe or a sword or a pointy stick or a rock or bare hands is harder, sure. However, any study of history shows that killing people works very well even without guns.
Guns are actually preferable specifically because they make killing easier: They enable the small, the weak and the disabled to fight effectively against a larger, stronger and more fighting-experienced attacker.
And of course people are talking about total gun bans – when they slip up and accidentally say what they really think. It’s only logical (from their POV), too: Making guns harder to access is supposedly good, so what could be better than to make them totally inaccessible?
Dragging out the strawman again, are we? The comment wasn’t about total gun bans, but you want to twist it into that because you think that’s an easier argument to win.
But then the original post was a strawman as well, career criminals don’t do killing sprees, mentally ill and desperate people do. Registration and background checks can keep some of those from getting weapons, and alert police that they’re trying to obtain them.
ok. First of all, background checks are mandatory for every new purchased firearm in the United States. Period. Quit bullshitting.
An individual may sell his private property to another individual without the government interfering. That is how it works in the United States.
That being said, I have seen multiple articles in the Main Stream Media that indicate that people who have purchased a number of firearms outside of their normal purchasing pattern have been investigated and arrested for various violations of Federal law. Additionally, purchasing a firearm for sale to another person is indeed called a straw purchase and is indeed illegal. So what you are saying is that the man who is risking ten years in jail for a straw purchase will be deterred by having to fill out an additional form besides the 4473 that all new purchases require? This is the point. You cannot come up with a simple and usable method for preventing illegal access to weapons. You keep acting as if your suggestions and the crap the Democrats are trying to pass are somehow stunningly brilliant but damn.
An insane or desperate person would just break the window out of a cop car at the donut shop or get a fake id. Or arrange a straw purchase. And the bushwa about alerting the police that they’re trying to obtain them relies on the police taking action. 70,000 firearm sales were declined in 2011 for ineligibility and only 43 were actually arrested much less prosecuted for the 10 year penalty for attempting to obtain a firearm illegally. So somehow the magic database will be something that the Feds and local police will pay attention to?
That is such a specious load of drivel, and betrays so little knowledge of the facts, I wonder how you button your clothes.
www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/3-reasons-its-time-to-stop-taking-nra-seriously/
I remember when the UK implemented tough laws against knife possession.
A few years later:
murder by knife was down. Oddly, murder by being kicked to death was significantly higher.
Lessons learned:
Knife control did work.
People with a mind to murder… still going to do it.
I CAN imagine that it is much harder for a psychopath to walk into a movie theater or school, armed with really good boots, and kick 20 people to death… so there would be some kind of gain.
Thank you for conceding the last point. Just because we can’t stop violence doesn’t mean that we need to make weapons more accessible.
Knives boots or sporks, the murder rate in the UK is a fraction of what it is in the US because they give the police the tools they need to deal with it before it happens.
Wrong. If the murder rate is lower independently of the tool used, it’s not a success story of gun control. It just means there is a lower prevalence of violent crime in general, i.e. a cultural difference.
Logic FAIL.
Fewer heists of shopkeepers in rural areas because there are more shops in urban areas, or because there are more potential robbers in urban areas? Or because of a cultural difference?
Maybe we should outlaw people – at least people who post this shit.
Plenty of Firearm Fellating boards elsewhere, Zippy. How’s about you fuck off in their general direction.
“Shooting sprees” represent such a TINY problem that it’s ridiculous to get all up in arms about it when one happens. Yeah the deaths from these things are lower than the deaths from lightning strikes, and are utterly dwarfed by a hundred other things that the media doesn’t get all excited over. 10+ kids have been drowning in pools every week for DECADES in the U.S, but if 10 kids get shot at once it’s suddenly a cause to look at changing laws? WTF is that about?
By this logic, why make laws? Criminals don’t follow them. Let’s get rid of all traffic laws like speeding and stopping at red lights. Since criminals don’t follow them, we don’t need them.
We have laws so we can punish people AFTER they did something wrong, not before. If you speed, you get a ticket. Gun control is preventing you from buying / driving a car because you *MIGHT* speed if you had one.
Laws are not supposed to be preventive. They may be deterring (as in “I better not speed lest I get a ticket”), but once someone has decided to run you over (vehicular manslaughter at minimum), the prospect of a speeding ticket is totally negligible.
Exactly the point. Make certain attachments and guns illegal. People will be deterred from obtaining those guns/parts because they don’t want to go to jail. Deterring people from breaking the law is preventative. Nice contradiction you made.
But I guess we should just do nothing and hope it goes away instead of trying something that may or may not work.
What? I just said that deterrence WON’T work. None of these mass murderers, not a single one, expected to get away with it. They either committed suicide, were killed on the scene or were arrested and confessed. In the latter case, they’re looking at a death penalty or life in prison. How could a few “possession of illegal weapons” charges slapped on top possibly make that worse?
And how do you think making “certain attachments” illegal would help? How would not having “barrel shrouds” and “shoulder things that go up” stop or even slow down a mass murderer?
I guess if something doesn’t work, we should just use more of it until it works, right?
You never said deterrents don’t work until the second comment. You just said laws aren’t meant to prevent, but then said they deter which is preventing. The idea isn’t to punish them more after they mass murder, it is to make it harder to obtain the means to do so. How will they go on a shooting spree with no guns? The guns may still exist, but being harder to get might help.
Certain attachments, like suppressors and fully automatic parts, can severely change things. It is easier to spray into a crowd when you don’t have to think about pulling the trigger constantly or reload as often.
No. That’s the definition of insanity. They are trying new things and no one will come up with an alternative. They just say no. We can read the future and know they will not work, but are not going to come up with any other ideas. If you think we have tried this already, then why can you get a gun by just submitting for a permit, then buying one? They are trying new things.
First, you conflate prevention and deterrence. Prevention means you can’t, deterrence means that you could, but won’t. There’s a difference.
Second, deterrence only works if you have something to lose. That’s why, in states with “three strikes” laws, felons become much more violent after their second strike. They know they’ll get an automatic life sentence for their next serious crime, so they might as well go full hog.
Mass shooters have no intention of getting away with it, so deterrence doesn’t work; and prevention disarms victims more than criminals.
In what world does prevention mean it can’t? I do preventive maintenance on my car to prevent, not deter, it from breaking. It can still do so.
Seriously, pay attention. You forgot what you said once already. Now your completely missing what I said. I want to see if you figure it out, but I lack that amount of patience.
“The idea isn’t to punish them more after they mass murder, it is to make it harder to obtain the means to do so. How will they go on a shooting spree with no guns? The guns may still exist, but being harder to get might help.” (actual quote from before)
I already said it is not to punish them after they mass murder. That would not be preventing, deterring, whatever word you want to use. It is to make the weapon harder to obtain. Said murderer wouldn’t be able to shoot up someplace if you couldn’t get the gun. Whether he would’ve gotten it legally or stolen from someone who had. He can’t buy/steal a gun that isn’t there for him to do so. Preventing him from going on a shooting spree by deterring him/victim of robbery from having a gun for said shooting spree.
I SAID that prevention won’t WORK either. Laws aren’t *meant* to prevent crime, but they often *try* and always fail.
People will ALWAYS get guns if they don’t mind breaking the law. How’d that drug prohibition work out for you?
Well, it is certainly a lot harder for me to get black tar heroine since I can’t just walk into a store and buy some. The penalty for getting caught prevent me from having the balls to try to get some.
By your logic, making murder illegal has had no effect and might as well be legal because it doesn’t prevent or deter at all since all laws fail at doing so. Same goes for robbery, assault, breaking and entering, vandalism, grand theft auto, etc.
I guess we should just do absolutely nothing since you seem to know the future and know nothing will work and guns make everything better. You seem to have missed every time I mentioned they are trying to make it harder to obtain guns. Just like all the other laws they know it will still happen, but hopefully less of it. Just like smart people know world peace is impossible, but doesn’t mean we should just give up on trying to make things better.
What are your suggestions to help this? Do you even have any? Because if you do, it would be gun laws which you’re so opposed to.
Again. Your first comment didn’t say preventing or deterring don’t work. No matter how much you argue that, it won’t be true.
Sigh. Yes, laws can make it harder to buy weapons and heroin, in the sense that you can’t buy them at your local Kwik-E-Mart. But as every attempted prohibition shows, if people really want to, they can still get it. Junkies have very little trouble getting heroin and criminals have very little trouble getting guns.
So, yes, you can keep guns out of the hands of people who are NOT CRIMINALS. You can disarm the people who would NOT use them to commit crimes, but COULD have used them to defend themselves from the people who DO want to commit crimes and WILL still have access to guns). Congratulations, you actually made it WORSE. But at least we did SOMETHING, right? We couldn’t do NOTHING!
Go ahead, find yourself a home invader or convenience store robber or any other violent criminal. Ask them what they think about gun control. They will tell you that they’re in favor of it. Because *they* will still get guns. Even if they (somehow) can’t, so what? They’ll just choose victims that can’t resist them physically. Because that is their advantage. The victim cannot choose their attacker, but the attacker can choose the victim. And they always, ALWAYS, choose victims they think are low-risk. My suggestion is to a) allow people to make it very hard to guess who is a low-risk victim and who isn’t; and b) to allow the law-abiding to have the tools to fight back against the criminals.
All that sounds fine and dandy, but your assuming that every citizen with a gun will see the criminal coming and pull his gun first. If the criminal uses his weapon and surprises his victim, which he most likely will, said victims gun becomes inconsequential.
Some criminals are against gun control too because of the pain in the ass it will create for them getting and keeping guns without getting caught.
I, a law abiding citizen with a job where I have to worry about getting robbed pretty much everyday, am for gun control. I carry around cash from places. Some of them in very rough areas. I sometimes worry about my safety, but I have absolutely no desire to carry a gun. I would feel no safer and I know that if someone want to rob me they will just come up behind where my gun would be useless. It would also cause them to consider making a preemptive strike to ensure I can’t use. Tell me more about how it’ll help law abiding citizens.
I never said that having a gun will make you invincible. One thing is certain, though: Being defenseless makes no one safer.
You choose to be as helpless as possible and put yourself at the mercy of men who, as you yourself have said, would kill you over the contents of your pockets. Fine. It’s your life. But don’t demand of ME to do the same. I’d rather have the tools to fight back. Then I can still choose not to, if the situation warrants it.
This dude says it better than I ever could: munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/give-them-nothing/
Even though stats have shown that the safest and cheapest way to handle being held up is to just hand them your wallet. I am not defenseless without a gun. I am not some sissy girl that only feels big and tall with a gun. I can handle myself. Not having a gun in absolutely no way shape or form in this universe makes me defenseless.
The money in my wallet, not at risk at my job, and the money on my should for my job and not worth risking my life or injuries if someone pulls a gun on me whether I have a gun or not. The chances of them shooting me would increase if I had a gun and even more so if I was dumb enough to make a move for it after the have one pointed at me. The only way a gun will help is if I pull it first.
I guess I could try to shoot him as he runs away which would probably result in killing him or innocent bystanders (high possibility). I prefer not having bloodshed over a few measly bucks.
All right, fine. You’re Chuck Fucking Norris. Good for you! Tell me, is your wife Chuck Fucking Norris, too? Your mother?
I’m Chuck Norris huh? Since I said hand over the money instead of fighting. Which yes, my mother could do the same thing and be better off than fighting back and probably getting shot.
I’ll still be Chuck Norris. That’d be badass.
Again you missed the point.
If Sally Nutjob is planning to kill her husband, purchasing a firearm that Diane Fienstein doesn’t like will NOT be on her list of things to worry about. The penalty for murder is much higher than the penalty that Diane Feinstein came up with for the devices that cause her to puddle in her pumps.
If Korinthian decides to steal all of the balloon animals at the circus he knows that is illegal so him sneaking into the circus in the first place is not going to even register.
The problem you antigun people miss completely is that you know absolutely nothing about firearms and have not clue one as to what would logically make a difference in a firefight or what is just a cosmetic addition. You will ban something that you think is scary but might actually be a safety feature. You pass laws based on total and complete ignorance of how legal gun owners use their weapons and in the process you keep Granny Goldstein from being able to get her pistol worked on to fix the malfunction she has been having. So when Jimmy the Granny Raper climbs in her window she has to just let him sodomize her to death. Thanks liberals for showing you care!
I replied precisely to you statement not missing you 2 points.
This paragraph makes no sense with the issue. Your example is her like not liking the legal thing when obviously that wasn’t what you were shooting for.
If the circus didn’t have balloon animals because they were illegal, Korinthian wouldn’t have any balloon animals at all to steal.
I am actually not a liberal. My guess is you don’t know what a liberal actually is and spew it at anyone that differs in political views from you. I also am not antigun. I don’t believe guns are the savior of everything and believe that there is a problem. I believe a solution may result in limiting access to firearms. It may work. It may not. I want to make some sort of attempt instead of just going, “Mmmmm, not going to work as an insta-fix so give up.”
How many Granny Goldstein’s own guns and would know how to use them? Or would even know he’s coming unless he was complete jackasses making too much noise. If he got to that gun first it wouldn’t have helped her. If he has a gun and sees her reaching for one…well you can probably guess what he’ll do. I will assume you’ll say she’ll stop him to help your cause so…he’ll shoot her. She is also waaaay more likely to shoot a loved one than an intruder. (has been proven by facts)
I don’t much like guns. I don’t like violence either. In fact I am a bit of a tree hugging hippy but even I can see its a sad world where the only people who have guns are the feds.
How many people have died at the hands of governments compared to the hands of citizens?
Depends on which government…
Oh, good question! Let’s say… the governments who have argued that guns don’t belong into the hands of regular people and that the government should have a monopoly on the use of force.
Or take a country like Somalia, no government so no gun control, you can own any gun and as many as you want – must be the safest place in the world, right?
Ooh, that’s one NICE strawman! No one said that lack of gun control alone makes you inherently safe.
No, but appearantly people seem to think that owning guns makes you safe.
But seriously: How do guns protect you if your government is really out to get you – and not like Obama wants to make you unemployed. How does your handgun protect you if your government decides to start, let’s say, an ethnic cleansing?
You want to defend yourself from criminals invading your home. Please, feel free to feel the need of owning a handgun. But if your government really wants to do you in, it will – no matter what you got in your nightstand.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that owning guns makes you safe. But lots of people realize that having a gun makes you safer than being defenseless. And I *am* a lot more worried about home invasions than ethnic cleansings, actually.
But to answer your question: In the U.S., there’s an average of 1 police officer per 400 citizens. Let’s say only a quarter of them have or know how to use a firearm. I’m not saying that the good guys would necessarily win. But it would be VERY nasty. Hopefully, the government (or at least, the policemen who don’t immediately drop their badges when given these orders) would think twice about trying such a thing. Hopefully, we’ll never find out.
Let’s hope! Of course, the risk of something like a big scale ethnic cleansing in the US is about nil.
Still, the question was how many people have died at the hands of governments and I still claim that a handgun does [b]not[/b] protect you from your government if it decides to exercise a misuse of it’s powers on you.
Contrary to popular conspiracy theories, the US is not on the brink of turning into a police state. But neither is Germany and here the government [b]does[/b] have the monopoly on the use of force. Crime rates are not exploding, the vast majority of citizens feels safe and the misuse of force by the police is not higher than in other countries in Europe.
But if you take a look at non-democratic countries with governments who give a flying fuck about human rights and whatever constitution they may have…let’s say: Afghanistan before 2001 or Francist Spain. In such a country, the government or government-like institution will get you if it wants you. So it doesn’t so really depend on gun laws (did Afghanistan under the Taliban even have any form of gun regulation?).
My point is that if your government is not even trying to disarm you, *chances are* that you have little to fear from your government. The worst (and most) genocides were committed by governments who enforced tight gun control.
Regarding numbers: Sources vary, of course, but > 100 million is a given. www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
To be honest, apart from Nazi Germany, I don’t know anything about the gun regulations of the countries on that list. And in Germany, gun regulations weren’t that tight.
Gun regulations were and are pretty tight in Germany. You had/have to be on a very short list of people who are given the privilege to own any kind of gun, even for hunting or competitive shooting. Soviet Union and China? Ultra-tight. I don’t think they even *had* a permit system. And so on. If some of those countries did not have tight gun control, it’s most likely because they needn’t bother with it – with the population being dirt poor and unable to afford basic necessities, you don’t have to worry about them buying guns in relevant quantities.
Well, I know how the german system works, I live in Germany and I am a sport shooter; yes, the german gun law is super-tight.
But the Nazis had loosened the gun regulations, you could freely buy and own rifles (there was a slight control mechanism on pistols), as long as you weren’t, for example, a Jew. They were (for obvious reasons) forbidden to own, buy or sell weapons and ammunition. Also the party organizations were literally flooded with firearms and trained to use them (also for obvious reasons).
Which pretty much proves my point. A government with ill intent towards its people (or a specific group of them) enforces tight gun control, even if it’s only aimed at the targeted group. That’s not to say that every government with tight gun control is necessarily evil, but gun control is both an indicator and a prerequisite.
Think about it. If I thought it *important* not only that you be unarmed, but that I be armed; if I, for some reason, thought it *important* that I can use force against you, but not you against me – should you trust me? I’m not saying that you necessarily cannot trust me. But should you?
I’d be much more inclined to trust in the good will of a man who is himself armed, but does not object to me being armed as well.
I get your point.
I trust my government and it’s executives, as long as they stick to the laws and the constitution. So far, they do; so I put my trust in them and trust them to use their monopoly on the use of force accordingly (I don’t know if “wisely” would be the appropriate term).
I can fully comprehend your point of view, but we just have pretty different mindsets on that matter.
Every once in a while there are certain incidents which make me glad that the law abiding citizens who participated did not have firearms.
And yes, even here in Germany, a person determined enough could acquire an illegal firearm, our latest domestic terrorist cell proves that. But if a criminal is determined enough, he will get you, even if you are armed.
Generally, the American government’s body count is far greater outside the borders of its country. Far greater.
This has been true since 1865.
The rest of the world wonders if perhaps less dependence on extreme violence within its borders might reduce the violence it perpetrates in other countries.
The rest of the world cries out in anguish when they are being invaded or some third world nutjob has bombed their airport. Then the REST OF THE WORLD steps back and says “Hey Uncle Sam…You remember the UN thingie? Well it would be inconvenient for US to handle this so how about you step up and kick their ass for us?”
I haven’t shot my guns in a while.
By that logic we should remove all laws “because criminals don’t follow laws”, let’s just get rid of all the laws because only law-abiding citizens follow them anyway. What a fucking stupid arguement.
Arguably the highest leap for a straw man argument I have seen since I used to troll the women’s studies groups on the chat board at U of Iowa in the early nineties.
Although what you are saying has merit. The United States needs to get rid of about seventy percent of the laws on the books. There is too much crap that is no longer applicable and also there is a need to get rid of duplicate laws. There are so very many duplications of laws against killing someone. There are so many duplications of laws against sexual assault. There are so many duplications of laws against theft. The system needs a cleanup. The system does NOT need some liberal hand wringing pantywaists to create a whole new slew of laws because the liberals don’t want to take responsibility for the truly shitty policies concerning the mentally ill or other issues that are the root cause of violence in this society.
larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
This is the definitive word on gun control. This man has worked on every facet of the gun dilemma except for gunsmithing. Read the entire thing if you have the testicles.