DC Gun Ban

[SeVeR]

Oh i got a good one. You're on a plane that's been hijacked by terrorists, and they're about to fly it into a building, what do you do? Legalise cannibis and get everyone high... "Awwh sorry man, i been getting way too stressed about this whole Jihad thing, lets fly to Jamaica man."

[sil]

what about this:

 

you're in the middle east surrounded by 10,000 terrorists who are going to rape your daughter... legalize personal nuclear weapons!

 

close enough?

 

I always find the notion of "ban all guns" to be a ridiculous idea. I mean, what do you really expect from that? A police force to go through every square inch of land, every building with metal detectors to look for guns? It is laughable. What about hunters? Or those who use them for sport? What about all the jobs of those who design, build, repair, and train others in the use of (those seminars sure ain't cheep!)?

 

On the other hand, I find stricter gun laws to be perfectly viable and acceptable approach. Also, I find incentives (moneeyyy) for those turning in guns another fine approach to remove them from houses that really don't need or want them.

 

Anecdot, my favorite teacher is former military, and has been saved from a mugging and high jack of his car (if not more) from a man with a knife. All he did was point to the gun in his holster on his hip and the guy ran off. No lives lost.

[Bak]

jeez, they made 2000 of those nuclear rifles...

[Aileron]

That thing isn't nearly as ridiculous as the Soviet farming plan to irradiate crops, but yeah, it was the 50s.

 

Look, all I was trying to do was counter Lynx' constant "let them do it" philosophy. The notion is an absurd piece of philosophical theory, except even the most bookish of philosophers have proven it wrong by now. The biggest problem is that when you let criminals hold their own lives as hostages, you give them a free p!@#$%^&* and become an enabler, and that's only the first of a very long list of flaws. It doesn't mean shoot to kill muggers on sight, but you can scare them off, capture them (what ever did happen to the concept of 'citizens arrest' anyway?), to wound them, all of which better alternatives than letting him go on a crime spree.

 

 

But, two men with knives isn't absurd at all. Being in a neighborhood where no one would respond to a call for help is also not absurd. I will admit that getting yourself and a family cornered in such an area would require some mistakes to be made.

 

 

Though that last part is a problem with our thinking. The thought process is that the family is being irresponsible for going into a bad area. Okay, maybe that's true on the individual level, but what about the societal level? Why should certain neighborhoods be written off and effectively become forbidden areas for free people to travel? Doing so only creates a base of operations for criminals to multiply.

 

 

 

I don't think incentives for turning in guns is a good idea though. The incentives should be towards proper security of the weapons as they are stored, because in the hands of a responsible owner, a weapon is a positive force. I'd say a heavy safe, bolted to the floor, with some sort of biometric scanner lock, would be perfect. Criminals couldn't get access to the weapons, and in an emergency the owner could still retrieve the weapon quickly. That's what should be given the incentive.

[Bak]

but you can scare them off, capture them (what ever did happen to the concept of 'citizens arrest' anyway?), to wound them

Yeah good point. There are other non-lethal weapons that would do that, though. Like if you had a BB gun, people aren't going to come running at you; it might not even be possible if you start shooting. Pepper spray is a good one too, or even tasers. All those are fine crime deterrents, and, true, they won't work if the criminal has a gun to your face, but you aren't going to pull your gun out in that situation either since you might get shot.

[Aileron]

No one is going to fear a weapon which is non-lethal. There actually needs to be real, drastic consequences for intimidation to be effective.

[NBVegita]

It's "treat others as you want to be treated" not "treat others as they would treat you"... big difference because with the first one you're nice to everyone, with the second one you're nice to the nice people and an !@#$%^&*hole to the !@#$%^&*holes.

 

If I degrade low enough in society to have the drive to rob someone's personal property I would be more than willing to allow them to shoot me.

 

Also just because you shoot someone doesn't mean you're aiming to kill them.

 

the original story I was responding to was that a stranger is merely on your property and you wouldn't "think twice" about shooting at him. You could make a case for defending yourself if he's in your house har!@#$%^&*ing your family with clear malintent.

 

If a stranger, whom obviously has some form of malicious intent, is on my property where my fiance lives (kids too someday) you bet your !@#$%^&* I'm not going to think twice about shooting him.

 

It's not legal guns that do most of the murders, it's the illegal ones. Which I've stated before that I'm all for strict gun control and regulations, just as long as i'm allowed, as an upstanding citizen, to own means of protection. The other problem with the other "means of protection" you mentioned is that they're all close range means. And short of the taser, if you are not trained in the use of those forms of protection the weapon can be turned on you.

 

Also the situation that Ail is describing is not outlandish. Bad things happen to good people.

 

This is a huge "what if" and it is just something I want people to think about as it's all specculation, but imagine if 50% of the student body was carrying weapons the day of the VT shooting? I know there is no proof that lives could have been saved, but just think about it.

 

NOTE: It is legal for students to carry guns on all public college campuses in Utah, with the correct permits. They have NEVER had a school shooting (that has been reported in "modern" times)

[Aileron]

It's "treat others as you want to be treated" not "treat others as they would treat you"... big difference because with the first one you're nice to everyone, with the second one you're nice to the nice people and an !@#$%^&*hole to the !@#$%^&*holes.

 

If I degrade low enough in society to have the drive to rob someone's personal property I would be more than willing to allow them to shoot me.

 

ditto for me.

[Bak]

If 50% of the stuendent body at VT had guns, then more people would die because people would break up with their gf and be pissed and do something stupid.

[NBVegita]

So you're saying that students in Utah are more mature and stable than students from Virginia?

[Aileron]

Bak, do you attempt to murder ex girlfriends to the point where the only thing stopping you is lack of access to a gun? No. Neither does anyone else. Nobody flies off the handle that much except the mentally unstable.

 

 

You know, if I recall, all of the perpetrators of the school shootings from Colombine to VT, with exception to the Amish School House in Lancaster, were atheists. Since we have a correlation between atheists and school shooters, maybe we should outlaw atheism! Oh right, that would be against the Bill of Rights. Do you know what is also in the Bill of Rights, right after the paragraph which forbids outlawing religion? There's another paragraph which says you can't outlaw guns.

 

 

I will say that Washington DC is an interesting place. The crime is so bad that the honest citizens who are NOT criminals go immediately home after work, lock the doors, and don't come out until the next day. Meanwhile criminals get free reign of the city all night. Its the only city in history that makes prisoners out of their citizens but lets the criminals reign free. The only thing they need is to take the last shadow of a doubt away from citizen possibly having a gun in their homes so the criminals can do home invasion at will.

[Bak]

So you're saying that students in Utah are more mature and stable than students from Virginia?

Aha, good point. But I don't think that 50% of the Utah students carry around guns.

 

Bak, do you attempt to murder ex girlfriends to the point where the only thing stopping you is lack of access to a gun? No. Neither does anyone else.

What kind of reasoning is that? I don't go around doing a lot of things that some people do, for example going on shooting rampages. The law recognizes a difference between premeditated murder and manslaughter because people do kill others in fits of rage. If I don't have a gun handy I can't easily kill someone when I become really angry.

 

we have a correlation between atheists and school shooters, maybe we should outlaw atheism!

Atheists make up 15% of the US population and 0.2% of the prison population; maybe we should outlaw religion . But seriously, I know it's in the cons!@#$%^&*ution. We're debating whether it should remain there, in its present form (I think?).

 

It's a strange situation because I know that honest citizens aren't going to misuse their guns and it's fine for 99.9% of the people. It's just there's no 100% way of telling an honest citizen apart from a potential criminal (possibly years after he gets a gun). We try to do things like prevent mentally unstable people and criminals from getting firearms, but there are still people who appear perfectly normal and end up committing gun crimes.

[NBVegita]

If I don't have a gun handy I can't easily kill someone when I become really angry.

 

I think that was his point.

 

I agree Bak that there is no 100% way to protect the citizens from guns. But come to think of it there is no way to protect citizens 100% from anything.

 

Case in point heart disease kills over 500,000 Americans a year. Does that mean we should ban all foods high in colesterol because of the people who abuse it's consumption? I know that heart disease only hurts yourself, whilst with a gun you can hurt other people, but in the act of protecting the citizens couldn't a point be made for that also? I mean you could really make a point for the government to ban just about anything in our lives today because it is not 100% safe for the citizens to do. !@#$%^&* there are almost 4 times the number of car accident deaths than gun deaths (60% of which are suicides) in america each year, should we ban all cars and or force all people to move to public transportation/walking to get around?

 

No you would not want to do that because it would be an inconvenience to you. Banning guns doesn't inconvenience you, so you don't mind banning them. I feel that is a problem with most of America today. You don't think about your neighbors rights. I feel that is also a huge issue with anti-abortionist in this country.

 

The problem I have is that we have dozens of statistics on all of the lives that guns take and not a single one on how many lives are saved by a gun.

 

Do we punish 99.9% of the people because of the acts of the .1%, who by most accounts would still have access to the firearms?

[»D1st0rt]

If 50% of the stuendent body at VT had guns, then more people would die because people would break up with their gf and be pissed and do something stupid.

First of all 50% wouldn't have guns because you have to be at least 21. I'm not sure how it works for out of state people either. If permitted on campus, I'd say 1 in 5 people who could concealed carry actually doing it would be a very aggressive estimate for our student body. The kind of people that have concealed carry permits are not the kind of people that do that sort of thing anyway. Most of those would be the students here who are from Southwestern Virginia and have been around guns their entire life. As an aside, I would be surprised if more than like 2% of the student body was emo.

[JDS]

killing is bad, cant you see that?

 

 

whats the point of having guns knowing that killing is bad, if killing is bad and guns are a means of killing then why have them?

 

american> i need to defend myself in case someone tries to hurt me, wheres my gun?! , lol and lets go deer hunting with a p90 or an AK

 

canadian> lol? why would anyone want to rob me, and if they do w/e !@#$%^&* happens im probly not going to shoot them so i dont think il carry a gun.

 

 

interesting...

[NBVegita]

guns are a means of killing

 

!@#$%^&* lots of things are a means of killing.

 

Cars kill more people in a year than guns do, why not outlaw them too?

 

And killing is not always bad.

 

You eat because things are being killed.

 

If my mother had killed one man, it would have saved the lives of 4 other innocent people.

 

It's nice to try to live in candyland...but then you have to wake up and realize that the world, humans foremost, are not two dimentional.

 

And just incase you didn't know, guns are the only reason that you have ANY FREEDOM, in which ever country you live in.

[Suicide_Run]

I think gun bans is a silly idea. Guns dont kill people, people kill people.

 

Banning guns would only mean people who want to kill people will have guns cause then the only way they will get them is by illegal means.

 

Btw I think Bak makes a perfect point about He cant kill someone if he becomes really angry if there isnt a gun around. I think angry is one of the problems cause people react on emotions and angry seem to cause people not to be able to think clearly. Which then makes them do stupid stuff like shoot people for getting into an argument.

 

Im not sure if DC requires you to have a gun license/law and to register your gun but Canada does. Its a better solution than banning guns out right.

[JDS]

i cant understand, what makes a man.. hate another man help me understand

[Aileron]

Veg, just ignore JDS...he's so stupid I'm actually astonished that he knows what a p90 is. You wouldn't want to hunt dear with an SMG anyway. They don't have a long enough effective range.

 

 

Well, if we are debating why it should be there, I think it is best to quote the rationale in the Bill of Rights - it is necessary for "the security of the free state". 'free state' means any democratic government.

 

The biggest threat to democratic governments is when anti-democratic people are elected into office and government consolidates power away from the masses. Generally, democracies face virtually no actual threat from foreign tyrannies, as by structure tyrannical countries just cannot allocate people towards jobs effectively, and cannot maintain moral of their forces over the long term. Nearly every democracy in history fell not from outside invaders but from internal forces, and the Founding Fathers knew that.

 

In a democracy, power must rest with the people. While voting power is what is used, that power must be backed by something physical. The most popular statement is that firearms represent power to overthrow government. However, it also provides different kinds of power. It provides power to secure one's home from criminals should police fail, and power to enact mob justice should the justice system repeatedly fail. While I won't argue that revolutions and vigilante justice can lead to ugly things, the threat of those things is necessary for government to be kept in line.

 

DC is failing those two things. Really, the citizens of DC need firearms to take back their city.

 

I will admit that lack of weapons in the populace can lead to security, but only in a top-down government. In feudal Europe when swords were expensive, and feudal Japan where metal blades were regulated, Knights and Samurai could secure their territory from criminals, but also they needed to search homes at will, restrict travel, and took their own council as to whom was a criminal. However, democracy is a bottom up government. It relies on the people deciding their own destiny.

 

The problem with DC is simple: The government is democratic and can't take the reigns of destiny, and the people are lazy and won't take them for themselves. You can't have a no-gun, no-citizens arrest, no-report any crimes, no-cooperate with police, populace with a government with a free government and expect crime to be handled.

 

And that is where the danger to democracy lies. Because people can vote out democracy if they decide the task of securing themselves is too difficult, and it becomes more difficult if the right to bear arms is infringed too much.

[NBVegita]

That was well said Ail.

[JDS]

i would actualy agree, im sorry aileron:(

[SeVeR]

Aileron:

most popular statement is that firearms represent power to overthrow government.

This paranoia that the government will enslave you is proposterous and typical of conservative Americans. These are the sorts of people who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for underground bomb shelters. I will ask the same question i ask everyone who comes out with it: Do you think the police and the army will let this happen?

 

You see, conservative Americans happen to think the army and police are mindless drones who will follow the orders of the next Hitler should he come to government. They're not real people, they're fascists, obviously. They won't object to a massacre of the blacks or the Jews, and they won't object to the enslavement of the populace. No, they aren't the sons and daughters of people like you and me, they're grown by the government to do their bidding, which is to be our enemy. Get real!

 

It provides power to secure one's home from criminals should police fail, and power to enact mob justice should the justice system repeatedly fail. While I won't argue that revolutions and vigilante justice can lead to ugly things, the threat of those things is necessary for government to be kept in line.

 

DC is failing those two things. Really, the citizens of DC need firearms to take back their city.

DC is an awful example because the gun-crime rate was already sky-high before the gun-ban was put in place. In fact that's why it was put in place. Not being a national ban, it's no surprise it wasn't effective. Pro-gunners, who look for any excuse to justify their love of guns, will tell us the gun-ban was actually to blame! Such deceit.

 

The USA is the largest producer of guns, and their population is one of the best armed. When you say criminals have "illegal" guns, do you seriously mean to tell me they got their guns from Nicaragua or Mexico? Hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen every year from the homes of US citizens. For the year of 1994 a National Ins!@#$%^&*ute of Justice do!@#$%^&*ent states that 211,000 hand-guns and 382,000 long-guns were stolen in non-commercial thefts. (http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/165476.txt)

 

This is just one example of how the right to bear arms fails. How about straw-purchases? The purchase of a gun legally followed by an illegal sale to a criminal, does this count as an "illegal gun" because it sure as !@#$%^&* doesn't sound like it. How about crooked gun dealers/manufacturers/delivery men?

 

And that is where the danger to democracy lies. Because people can vote out democracy if they decide the task of securing themselves is too difficult, and it becomes more difficult if the right to bear arms is infringed too much.

What do you mean when you say "vote out democracy"?

 

Did we vote out democracy when we outlawed all the thousands of other things you can't do by law? Absolute freedom is absolute anarchy. Laws are there for our protection. Don't try and re-define democracy; if we democratically choose to outlaw something (like murder) then we are still a democracy when that thing is outlawed.

 

The real threat to democracy comes from people who use the right to bear arms as an excuse to say that anyone who opposes their point of view shouldn't be considered. This isn't a right like freedom of speech, since we all agree on that. This is a right like freedom to have an abortion. It is, and should be, up for debate in the arena of democracy, where majority decision rules. I think someone said 66% is needed, well that's not the majority i was thinking of.

Edited March 27, 2008 by SeVeR

[JDS]

huh.. how exactly easy is it to buy a gun in the states?...

 

 

its not like a walk in the park i hope...

[NBVegita]

No. It's rediculously difficult to purchase a hand gun, depending on the state, and very expensive.

 

Being it is illegal to sell a gun you purchased legally, to someone not licensed to own one, and every single weapon made in the United States for retail is serial numbered. If you sell your gun to someone, they murder someone with it, you are prosecuted as an accomplice. The only way to cir!@#$%^&*vent that is if you file a report that it was stolen before the murder, and if your guns keep getting stolen they will revoke your permit.

 

This paranoia that the government will enslave you is proposterous and typical of conservative Americans.

 

It's no proposterous, it's historically accurate.

 

An example that might hit home for you, if the ottoman citizens in the area of Israel were amply equiped, the British would never have been able to occupy them, thus they would still have their land and the Jews wouldn't.

 

conservative Americans happen to think the army and police are mindless drones who will follow the orders of the next Hitler should he come to government.

 

Do you really believe that we have evolved so much in the last 60 years that this would be an impossibility? The people of Germany were not mindless. They followed behind an extremely intelligent and charismatic leader, who coupled with the animosity towards Europe, was able to convince the people that he was doing what was best for all of Germany. Which all started in a way not dissimilar to Iraq, just in a much faster pace.

 

I'm all for laws, but only effective ones. It's been proven in the UK that banning all guns DOES NOT cut gun violence, infact it has increased gun violence since enacted in the UK. (I've posted links to this information in multiple topics previous to this so if you would like to see the sources just look back).

 

if we democratically choose to outlaw something (like murder) then we are still a democracy when that thing is outlawed.

 

Nice display of melodramatics.

 

It's a very simple equation. The more control you give the government, the less of a democracy we are. If you vote to take the right to vote away from the people are you still a democracy? Everytime you take power away from the people and embody the government, you are hurting democracy. Instead of banning guns, why not allow each county or city to have its own citizen militia? If there was a citizen militia in DC I bet you the crime rate would be exponentially lower.

 

Time and time again the police and government have proven that they cannot control crime in our country as it is, now you want to charge them with the sole duty of doing something they're awful at already?

 

I believe this was stated in a prior post: You've seen how effective our import laws have been at keeping illegal drugs out of the united states, do you honestly believe that they'll be able to stop the importation of guns?

[Bak]

the point isn't that there will be suddenly 0 gun crimes the day we outlaw firearms. But it will be harder to get them. Do you think more people would use drugs if they were legal? of course! we need to weigh deterrence guns provide versus lives saved from no access to firearms.

 

why not allow each county or city to have its own citizen militia

sort of like a police department?

 

 

 

It's been proven in the UK that banning all guns DOES NOT cut gun violence, infact it has increased gun violence since enacted in the UK.

that's bull!@#$%^&*, the UK changed the way they measure gun crime since they enacted the law. If you stick to one method of measurement, gun violence has clearly decreased.