Fun Facts about gun control

highway80west · 03-14-2008, 10:15 AM

Well, if the ATF can manipulate the court system, what about the NRA? How does the NRA feel when people like Julie Alban has to live the rest of her life in a wheelchair?

I am glad that Ms. Alban had the courage to become an ADA and speak out on gun control.

hot dragon · 03-18-2008, 11:51 PM

can i correct some misconceptions?

i am from australia.

australia has ALWAYS had very tough gun control laws restricting who can have a gun, what sort of gun, how it must be kept, how much ammunition one can have, some of the tightest gun control laws in the world.

a few years ago they were made even tighter, specifically to remove any kind of semiautomatic weapon and handguns, which were essentially banned completely.

the crime rate DID NOT CHANGE.

anyone who says it did is either misinformed or deliberately decieving you.

from my position outside the US of A, your gun laws are insane. your homicide rate is higher, domestic murder rate higher, suicide rate higher, accidental shooting rate higher, why do you tolerate it?

CrazyFlamingos · 03-19-2008, 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hot dragon

can i correct some misconceptions?

i am from australia.

australia has ALWAYS had very tough gun control laws restricting who can have a gun, what sort of gun, how it must be kept, how much ammunition one can have, some of the tightest gun control laws in the world.

a few years ago they were made even tighter, specifically to remove any kind of semiautomatic weapon and handguns, which were essentially banned completely.

the crime rate DID NOT CHANGE.

anyone who says it did is either misinformed or deliberately decieving you.

from my position outside the US of A, your gun laws are insane. your homicide rate is higher, domestic murder rate higher, suicide rate higher, accidental shooting rate higher, why do you tolerate it?

Specifically what about our gun laws is it that you find insane?

hot dragon · 03-19-2008, 08:00 PM

insane to have a society where you have a constitutional right to bear arms. but not a right to live in a society where people are not carrying guns everywhere.

where you have access to weapons and ammunition that should be the domain of the military and access to guns that are readily concealed

where you can obtain a gun of whatever kind you like without any reason other than you want it.

where you have no restriction on the ammount of guns one can have.

i suspect that the biggest issue is not the laws regarding gun ownership, but the culture that demands it as a right.

if you had laws that restricted rather than enshrine guns, you might have a culture that views them as dangerous rather than neccesary.

CrazyFlamingos · 03-19-2008, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hot dragon

insane to have a society where you have a constitutional right to bear arms. but not a right to live in a society where people are not carrying guns everywhere.

where you have access to weapons and ammunition that should be the domain of the military and access to guns that are readily concealed

where you can obtain a gun of whatever kind you like without any reason other than you want it.

where you have no restriction on the ammount of guns one can have.

i suspect that the biggest issue is not the laws regarding gun ownership, but the culture that demands it as a right.

if you had laws that restricted rather than enshrine guns, you might have a culture that views them as dangerous rather than necessary.

Thank you for clarifying that. From your previous post, I really wasn't sure from your previous post which side you were coming down on.

We do have some restrictions on gun ownership here, you know. They are not strict enough nor are they consistent from state to state. Nor are the Federal laws consistently enforced.

Katczinsky · 03-19-2008, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by garysher

Toxic what about Iraq?

They have never had any form of gun control and most households own guns. Yet Saddam was able to oppress the entire country for 30+ years?

What about Chile under Pinochet - Chile has no gun controls.

How about Rwanda, or Zimbabwe under Mugabe?

How come your boys down at the NRA meet didn't put any of these examples in their handbook?

Or Nazi Germany??

The Nazis abolished most gun control laws that were imposed under the Weimar government to the extent that they were probably more relaxed than today's American gun laws. The "had-the-populace-been-armed" argument is rubbish. The relaxed gun laws didn't prevent the holocaust.

And the Soviet Union did indeed have pretty stringent gun laws, especially after Stalin's coup of the revolution. However, people were still permitted to own rifles.

Now, I personally believe in the fundamental freedom of being able to defend yourself and your family, and the ownership of guns is pretty necessary in that context. Therefore I don't think guns should be outlawed. However, even advocates for such gun rights have to recognize some of the unnecessary fallacious arguments coming from many pro-gun fanatics. It's unnecessary because I don't think they need to make such arguments in the making of their case.

Likewise, I believe in an establishment of the right to bear arms, but I don't think the second amendment does that adequately. The second amendment at best describes such a right only under the context of militias. Right-to-arms advocates need not to defend this very vague Second Amendment; instead if they really want to protect the right to arms then they should advocate a new amendment.

That being said, however, I think the establishment of rights to bear arms through legal contexts is not as important as establishing a right to personal defense. Often times the legal circumstances under which one may take the liberty of defending oneself is very unspecific under the law, and usually can be interpreted however the court wants to interpret it. So you end up getting people who are jailed because they were engaged in authentic self-defense, or even the defense of their families; and at the same time some redneck in Texas might get off for murdering someone by painting it fallaciously as self-defense.

There definitely needs to be clear-written laws about the rights to own guns and the rights to defend oneself. None of this fuzzy Second Amendment stuff.

Katczinsky · 03-19-2008, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hot dragon

insane to have a society where you have a constitutional right to bear arms. but not a right to live in a society where people are not carrying guns everywhere.

It is indeed insane to have absolutely no regulation of arms, however, I believe it is equally insane to advocate the polar opposite: complete banning of guns.

Crime rates are highly contingent upon the culture and philosophy of the gun owning population, not the types of guns themselves. This is why you get some communities that have relatively relaxed gun laws but have low crime rates (maybe Vermont, etc.), but you have some communities that have some of the most stringent of gun regulations but have high crime rates in comparison (Washington D.C.).

This is true about crime in general, and not just gun violence. Less people are killed in Windsor than across the border in Detroit for a lot more reasons than the level of gun regulation. This is a point that both sides of the debate need to understand.

fmdog44 · 03-21-2008, 09:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toxic

Gun facts:
Guns are used nearly 2.5 millioin times a year for self-defense.
In those self-defense situations the citizen will only brandish the firearm instead of firing.
In less that 8% of those attacks will the citizen be wound the attacker.
Nearly 2 million of those cases involve handguns.
Almost 10% of those cases involve women defending themselves from sexual abuse or attack.
Guns are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of law abiding citizens than to take a life.
In an estimated 300 million U.S. population, an average of 1 out of 105 people that you know will use a gun in self-defense every year.
Burglars are 3 1/2 more likely to enter a home in a gun control country like England than in the U.S.
U.S. citizens shoot twice as many criminals each year than the police do.

D.C. ,with it's hyper-restrictive gun control laws, has well over twice the violent crime of fairfax va, which has basically no gun control laws, yet over twice the population of D.C.

Right after Australia introduced gun control laws crime went up dramatically.

Excellent post! Thank you.

bfrazz1 · 03-23-2008, 11:25 PM

I had an encounter where I am sure the fact that I was armed prevented me from being a victim of violence. A car cut me off and forced me off the road. A very large man with a ZZ Top beard and a heavy southern accent got out of the other car and approached me yelling terms derogatory to Jews (calling me a "fucking Jew boy" for example) and it was obvious he wanted to pull me out of the car and beat me. I'm Sicilian by the way.

I made it obvious that I was armed by raising my 9mm, chambering a round and pointing it directly at him. I told him that if he put one fingerprint on my car that they would be scraping his brains off the pavement. He turned his booze reeking face around and high tailed it back to his car and took off, much to my relief. Guns do work to protect citizens who are threatened by criminals.

indago · 03-24-2008, 08:08 AM

bfrazz1 wrote:

Quote:

I made it obvious that I was armed by raising my 9mm, chambering a round and pointing it directly at him. I told him that if he put one fingerprint on my car that they would be scraping his brains off the pavement. He turned his booze reeking face around and high tailed it back to his car and took off, much to my relief. Guns do work to protect citizens who are threatened by criminals.

And it is these many types of incidents that do not get reported in the media where a weapon is used to thwart a criminal acivity.