Shoot a camera, not a gun

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daveleo said:
People who commit mass murder don't really care if they are captured or not. Most of them use registered firearms and many of them take their own lives after killing.
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You're correct, but they are how many, compared to all murders per year? What would happen if they do have only knives or sticks?
 
NeeZee said:
What a nice example of taking the law into one's own hands - that's what guns are for ultimately... I mean, yeah, the man was probably insane, I'll grant you that, however, he was obviously unarmed in that situation and threatening or even beating does not justify killing - my guess is your cousin would have gone to jail in most civilized countries, and, if you ask me, rightly so.
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You're making big assumptions here. Imagine yourself asleep and suddenly finding a man twice your size beating you against the wall and saying he's going to kill you and you family if you don't give him $500. How do you know whether he's armed or not? Do you think it's a joke? Are you willing to risk the lives of your family? No a civilized country allows a person to defend ones self and his family. My cousin had no charges because in a hearing witnesses came forward to testify that the man had been going around town telling people he was going to kill my cousin and his family.
 
Roger Hicks said:
It's at least as much a problem of untreated mental illness and a sick society (the two are of course related) as of gun ownership. Frontman is almost certainly right in all he says, but most especially that with 200,000,000 guns in circulation in the USA, there's not a lot you can do. Yes, there are some things you can do -- make it harder to buy ammunition, for example -- but it's a culture, not the availability of guns. Also, in a very big country there are going to be more massacres than in a small one.

I own guns; I have never pointed a gun at anyone, except toy guns when I was a child; I enjoy target shooting; if I could be bothered, I'd probably get a hunting license. But then, I was trained to use guns in the Cadet Force at school: I didn't pick up all that I know from Hollywood, music, or partially-informed phobics.

The OP is absolutely right that the idea of 'protection' from carrying a gun is 99.9% empty fantasy from firearms apologists with no idea of what thy are doing, and I suspect that the vast majority even those among those who do know how to handle guns would be useless in such a crisis too, so it might be 99.999999%. But I'll never find out for myself because I don't go around tooled up: my guns are at home or on the range. THAT'S the dangerous part: large numbers of guns in everyday social situations.

Cheers,

R.
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I could hardly agree more. I too am a gun owner, but, like Roger, my guns only come out of their lock boxes to go to the range. I like guns and, considering my profession, I am required to know how to use them. However, this does not mean that it should not be difficult to attain them. I find that the following Op Ed does a good job of outlining possible (albeit improbable) solutions: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html
 
NaChase said:
I could hardly agree more. I too am a gun owner, but, like Roger, my guns only come out of their lock boxes to go to the range. I like guns and, considering my profession, I am required to know how to use them. However, this does not mean that it should not be difficult to attain them. I find that the following Op Ed does a good job of outlining possible (albeit improbable) solutions: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html
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Yup, it is a good, sensible article.

There are even pro-NRA senators who are now agreeing there are no rational reasons to support semi automatic rifles and large capacity magazines. The Australian legislation was focused on the more high-risk configurations, and that seems to have worked.
 
sanmich said:
the question is what type of weapon the occasional psychopath will find in his mommy's kitchen: a knife or an automatic rifle...
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Certainly, but can any law really take all firearms out of the hands of people who really want to get them? If you could truly take every firearm out of circulation, I'd support that, but that is not going to happen. What would happen is that everyone who "kind of" wanted a gun would not get one, everyone who "really wanted" one, would.

And anyway, if someone really wants to kill children, I'd imagine a knife could be very effective.
 
As a point of fact;

... in the UK deaths by gunshot amount to around 2 per week, 100 per annum and have been like that for the last ten years. Our population is approaching 60 million.

Despite the UK's tighter gun laws we have not yet had a spate of multiple pocket-knife killings.

We did have a nutter attack a school with a sword, but a teacher was able to defend many of her pupils ... admittedly at great personal cost and the need for great bravery.
 
nope, that guy is not correct, on anything. once again, under his plan, law-abiding citizens would feel the heat, not criminals. washington, d.c., has the toughest firearms in the nation or thereabouts, yet it is a murder capital. same for detroit. it is VERY difficult to legally obtain a firearm there; not so on the street.
what would you have the federal gov't do? search every home and building in the country for firearms, confiscate them, and make everyone who wants a firearm to re-apply? problem is this: no law enforcement agency in this country would take on that job, nor would the military. and law-abiding gun owners would hide their firearms, thus becoming criminals for ownership of a particular object.
and that effort to microchip ammo: absurd. just another attempt to disarm law-abiding citizens through sky-high ammo prices. would not slow a criminal for a nanosecond.
 
Sparrow said:
As a point of fact;

... in the UK deaths by gunshot amount to around 2 per week, 100 per annum and have been like that for the last ten years.
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Right - reading it up it seems as if changes in statistics caused a doubling of gun related incidents in the 2000's by including self-inflicted injuries with legal (air and pellet) guns.
 
sevo said:
Right - reading it up it seems as if changes in statistics caused a doubling of gun related incidents in the 2000's by including self-inflicted injuries with legal (air and pellet) guns.
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Possibly the case, I researched it a bit after that Batman movie massacre, so I'm working from memory .. in many inner city areas there is a 'west coast gang' fashion among young men, they ape what they see on TV and in that context handguns are seen as desirable
 
paulfish4570 said:
and that effort to microchip ammo: absurd. just another attempt to disarm law-abiding citizens through sky-high ammo prices. would not slow a criminal for a nanosecond.
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The issue in the US are not criminals - crime related gun use is relatively high, but only a very small part of the US incident count. Besides it is a social issue limited to particular territories and regions (abandonment of inner cities, drug prohibition) most people don't ever come in contact with, and it is not higher than in parts of Europe with similar problems.

The real problem are the law-abiding citizens (and their kin) which naturally grab their .45 when they decide to terminate a relationship, have a disagreement with their neighbour/boss/colleague, go postal, or simply hear a inexplicable sound downstairs - social killings and plain shooting accidents account for one to two magnitude more deaths and injuries than in other quite similarly heavily armed societies.
 
x-ray said:
I'm certainly glad you're not defending me or my family. We certainly differ in our opinion so let's leave it there.
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X-ray, this is a perfect example of why citizens should have the ability to defend themselves. I'll never understand the mindset of those who would rather place their lives in the hands of a criminal - essentially hoping the thug will stop the beating before they (the victim) is dead.
And hoping the police will get there in time to save you shows a total lack of understanding of police response times, particularly in large cities.

We had a case here last week where a man walked into a church and shot his wife (the organist) and then left. About 5 minutes later, he came back in to make sure she was dead, shooting her a couple more times. The police had been called, but did not arrive in time. And no one in the congregation was armed and able to save the woman's life.
 
I personally am a big believer that firearms can have a place in a mature and responsible, stable society. There are countries that own quite a few firearms per capita such as Switzerland (45 guns per 100 citizens), Finland (32 per 100), France (31) Belgium (17), etc. etc. that rarely make the news.

So owning a firearm per se is not a guarantee of murder or mayhem.

Here in Holland, you can't own a gun for self protection. Which means one is always at the mercy of people who don't care about the law. Right now, only criminals are armed. We as regular citizens can't defend ourself which should be a natural right as opposed to a law. A proportionate response is the key here. I recently had to chase off some unruly, aggressive teens by using a simple flashlight. Even though I always carry a knife and did at that time as well, it didn't occur to me to use it because the lesser force option worked just fine.

I have confidence that most people are and would be responsible gun owners.
 
I feel one of the underlying issues is the glamorization of violence in pop culture and mass media.

A tangent of the above is the proliferation of interactive video games where the participant can kill by the tens, hundreds and even thousands in the interest of garnering points. The gamers can even be "killed" yet return to play another game.

This disconnect of cause and effect has led children and adolescents (some adults, too) to exist in a fantasy world where only opponents die, and even if they are killed, there is no consequence. IMHO these games propagate a form of mental illness, or at least a detachment from reality. This societal acceptance of glamorizing violence to ever increasing extremes is the real problem.

As for outlawing firearms, my Dad had a bumper sticker in 1968 which read: "When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns". I doubt lawless criminals will participate in a gun buyback or turn-in program.
 
tbarker13 said:
X-ray, this is a perfect example of why citizens should have the ability to defend themselves. I'll never understand the mindset of those who would rather place their lives in the hands of a criminal - essentially hoping the thug will stop the beating before they (the victim) is dead.
And hoping the police will get there in time to save you shows a total lack of understanding of police response times, particularly in large cities.

We had a case here last week where a man walked into a church and shot his wife (the organist) and then left. About 5 minutes later, he came back in to make sure she was dead, shooting her a couple more times. The police had been called, but did not arrive in time. And no one in the congregation was armed and able to save the woman's life.
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It's really a question of interpretation, isn't it?
In most countries, this man (who I supposed wasn't a serial criminal) could not put his hands on a gun so easily.
 
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