-D- wrote:
Dude, I totally agree you'd have to be sick in the head to solve problems with guns, no one here is advocating that...but I still can't comprehend how forcing Jimmy Smith legal gun enthusiast to give up his hobby is going to prevent a criminal from killing/robbing with an illegally obtained firearm, especially when the statisitcs say thaaaaat's who is committing the (gun related) crimes.
And of course the fact that there are millions of legal weapons has nooooooooooo influence on the presence of
illegal arms at alllllllll. Be serious. As I said, people kill people, and if you are crazy enough in the head you will get your gun. It does make it a lot more difficult, and that is what I am after.
The scary thing is that your society accepts these tragic casualties in exchange for the right to carry arms and, to an outsider, look utterly moronic, naive, and stupid with them.
That's simply not the case. You're viewing "the weapon" as the root cause of these types of incidents, whereas I have to ask WTF is wrong with the parents of these children (and the the school officials) for not recognizing and preventing these tragedies beforehand. Nobody here is wearing gun ownership as some sick badge of honor "in spite" of what happened, that's absolutely beyond ludicrous. In this situation, the gun, and the psychological deficit, are really separate considerations.
Thank you for proving my point: looking utterly stupid and moronic
to the outsider. You continue to see it as two separate problems simply because that is the background you grew up in. You have learned to live with it, and that is the scary bit. Understandably, you of course want to solve the problem by 'recognizing and preventing these tragedies beforehand', but outlawing guns for civillians does not make it to the options list. Gun ownership is
far from normal over here where I live, and if you have a permit to own a gun, you can rest assured our national security agency did a very thorough background check on you. Gun clubs are routinely checked for members with Bad Ideas, much to the chagrin of the 'normal' members. My society makes a point of showing that owning a gun is
not normal and viewed upon with suspicion.
I want to stress the fact that had I grown up in the US, my view would very likely have been different; mellowed at the very least.
(BTW -- There are several notable incidents where mentally derranged individuals used intruments other than firearms to injure/kill people, so I don't see how "but what if there was no gun" is a valid argument.)
However morbid, imagine you want to repeat what happened. You have the choice of a) a semi-automatic rifle; b) a revolver; c) lots of loose electrical things and household chemicals with perhaps a few kilos you stole from school plus a lot of wood and metal; d) incendiaries; e) a large truck; f) knives and other stabbing weapons. Add other means if you see fit, this list is by no means exhaustive. In my opinion, options a) and b) are by far the easiest: they are readily obtainable, have a high 'success' ratio and do not require much planning to put into action. f) is even easier, but is very messy, and is likely to get you captured. A mob can overcome a knife-carrying lunatic, they are likely to be dead when faced with a gun-carrying one. I am not saying it is easy to disarm someone with a knife, and if that person is trained, you are likely to sustain severe, if not mortal injuries. But your chances of survival are
so much better it hurts.
As far as "looking" moronic, I'm willing to bet many would consider toying around with old amigas equally naive and ridiculous, everyone should be entitled to their hobby of choice so long as it doesn't infringe upon the welfare and safety of others. And the interesting thing is, as many gun conventions as I've been to, there are usually far more Australians, Europeans, and South Africans present than Americans...which is kinda funny considering what some of you are saying.
Puh-lease. Noone is comparing guns to Amigas, that is a conclusion of your own invention. And perhaps the reason there are so much non-Americans is because in other countries there are very little gun conventions, so they
have to go elsewhere---and since there are so many shops and conventions in the US, people don't need to go to a convention in the first place. I will retract my statement if proven wrong by data, but for now, I consider yours to be quite shaky.
As I see it, legislating away legal firearms ownership would be the exact same as a group of goose-stepping "state officials" deciding that squares and circles should be contraband, simply becasue "they" don't prefer them...therefore nobody else has any legitimate use for them either. It's entirely wacky, in a Stalinist-era Russia way...and doesn't make any sense.
You see? You are so familiar with guns you can't even think about abandoning them for reasons other than 'they want to make us'.
That is precisely the bit that scares me. Guns serve no useful purpose except to injure or kill, whether in defense or attack. People do not carry guns to illustrate the principles of supersonic flight, the behaviour of metals under moderately extreme conditions, or the equivalence in human or animal anatomy.
Let me put it this way: you say you have been to several conventions, and I trust that means that you own firearms.
Why do you have them, and
why should I trust you not to do anything funny with them?
