Should Guns be Banned in the US?

What the argument often descends to is an either/or – either pro-gun or anti-gun, either gun control or not gun control.

To me the question is why do you want a gun?

If it’s for hunting, well fine, but even in the UK you can have a gun for that and we have rather tight controls on guns.

But if it’s for self defence I’d ask what are you afraid of, I live in London and have lived in areas of that city are on paper places with high crime rates, but I’ve never felt threatened enough to think that I needed a gun.

For 2008 the number of gun related deaths in London was 17 the population of London is around 7,000,000 so the chances of being killed by a gun in the city are about over 400,000 to 1 and since most of the killings were criminal on criminal, if you’re not a criminal your chance would be even greater.

The thing is that in the main the criminals with guns are involved with drugs and are used in relation to it.

So wouldn’t the best means of cutting down gun crime be by changing the laws related to drugs away from probation and toward regulation?

*

Alternatively they might be more likely to get the gun out and shot first for fear the other might ‘get the draw on them’.

It just depends on your point of view, I mean think of it this way in relation to the US gun homicides.

Lets say the US in 2001 was around 250 million and that there was some 10,000 gun related homicides

So if we halved the population there would be half the deaths

125m = 5000

62.5m = 2500 (roughly the UK population so if we were like the US we would have over two thousand deaths)

31.2 = 1250

15.6= 625

7.8 = 313

3.9 = 157

1.9 = 78

So the population of the USA would have to drop to below 2 million people to get it to only have 70ish gun related deaths.

In 1994 the US had 14.24 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people, compared that to the 0.41 per 100,000 for England and Wales in the same year.

So rather than gun ownership somehow holding them back from starting anything they seem to be actually going for it.

 

i live in methville, and i don't need a gun

[i need a lighter]

:sunny:

 

It's not about the crack head. It's about the revolution. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the poor will rise up

 

Mad

This I believe is a reference to the famous Kleck and Gertz study but when looked at many have had doubts about its veracity.

http://www.bmsg.org/pdfs/myths.pdf

 

Mad

The problem is that most of what you raise actually seems to back up my thesis.

- My thesis is that the problem with many American attitudes towards guns is that they seem to see them as a way of dealing with or as a means of ignoring many of the social problems within their society (they seem too often to concentrate on dealing with symptoms rather than causes). It also seems to me to have led to a belief that threat and suppression is the best means of dealing with socio-economic problems. -

This indicates that rather than dealing with the cause (which you seem to identify with drugs) a course of action – gun ownership – is put forward to deal with the symptoms as a means of suppressing the social problem.

*

But guns or no guns crime rates are usually lower in low density areas (rural and suburban) and areas with populations that are economically more comfortable and with high levels of employment.

British Crime Survey and police recorded crime 2009/10

The mindset of many Americas sees gun ownership as the major reason and ignores the possibility that it might be more to do with socio-economic factors.

*

This indicates that rather than dealing with the problem (which identify as bad policing) a course of action – gun ownership – is put forward to deal with the symptoms of not creating a better policing system which is likely to have a greater impact on crime rates.

*

As to the quotes about DGU’s and home invasions the thing is that my immediate reaction to them is – this is terrible, what is wrong with a society where that is happening and why are people putting up with such a shitty situation?

But many pro-gunners reaction is – see, you should be worried, you are under threat, you need a gun!

And it does seem to me that many things put forward by pro-gunners seems aimed at just that at frightening people by highlighting the threat and seeming to say that nothing can be done about the causes so the only solution is getting a gun.

But wouldn’t it be better to try and lessen or remove the threat? I mean if people were not frightened they wouldn’t feel they needed a gun for protection.

*

 

I am so against guns. I just don't think the government has any right to decide who should have them.

 

Sam

So you think anyone should be able to have them, criminals, drug addicts, psychopaths….

I have nothing against the law-abiding and the responsible having guns the problem is that not everyone that legally buys a gun is law-abiding or responsible, or they might be when they buy it but later on stop been.

 

Well, I feel free to ignore social problems & pathologies but I do not feel the need for a firearm.

Mad: The Ciy of Camden, NJ. just laid off 160 Police personel

 

Well I can say I'm very surprised at the results of the poll so far. It does show we have many differing opinions on this issue for sure. Thanks Skip for posting..DD

 

Hence why I also posted the low figure from the non partisan CDC

You seem to be agreeing with me in my huge post from 15 pages back that socio-economic factors are the cause of crime. Which is true. So the question is why do you want to take away people's right to arm themselves? More restrictive gun laws don't correlate to less crime, less restrictive gun laws don't correlate to less crime, so why are guns even being debated.

If someone wants to own a gun let them, it's their right as a human being, if they don't, then it's their right not to have a gun in their house too.

The real issue on top of it is gun laws are near useless in a country like the US. It's not the UK. There's too many guns already out there, they're everywhere, hell I've been asked if I knew anyone that wanted a pistol by a drug dealer. There are already tens of millions of illegal guns out there, someone who wants a gun to use in the commission of a crime is going to have no problem getting it and can probably get it substantially quicker through the black market route than the legal route.

Oh I know I made a thread about it, you can listen to Camden's police scanner on the internet. First time I went to go give it a listen, the moment I tuned in I hear 5 males and 3 females assaulting a cabbie who stopped at a light for his fares
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=418661&f=229

And this goody:

 

Has anyone ever heard of the Constitution? It's this document that is responsible for governing the American government. It assures the citizens that at any time the government cannot ban their access to arms or freedom to organize their own militias. And in case any of you out there are wondering why they would guarantee something like this is because they did not necessarily trust future generations of governments to govern properly and that the people may find it necessary to use these arms to rise up against the corrupt governments of the future.

Though it's a noble effort for the NRA and other gun rights advocates to stand up for hunters and sportsmen, these people are not for whom the 2nd Amendment was written. It was written so that the Federal government could never get so powerful that dissent could be crushed by brute force.

 

Actually people aren't guaranteed the right to form their own militias, the amendment specifically says for states to do so, which eventually evolved into the various state national guards.

 

Handguns ARE banned in New Jersey and in New York City.

There is an extensive permit process in place. A N.Y.C. handgun permit is a rare thing and only for the well connected.

Our problem is illegal weapons, smuggled in from elsewhere.

Here, gun control is already in place; the issue is agressive policing and potential rights voilations in the police process of on-street pat-downs.

In NYC, stop-an-Frisk confiscates loads of illegal weapons.

In times like this the conversation here turns to a death penalty as much as gun regulation.

 

Mad

Do you mean the BBC piece on page 16 because that really only seem to deal with the myths of gun ownership, individualism, and gun lobbying and I’ve covered that before. It didn’t seem to mention socio-economic factors being the main reasons for crime?

I’ve said many times that I have nothing against the law abiding and responsible owning a gun my main question is why do people want to have one and about what I see as the rather destructive attitudes that so often seem to be associated with pro-gunners.

What I’m trying to point out is that many Americans seem to think the answer is guns and so ignore or dismiss alternatives, just as you seem to below.

And it also seems to me that some use fear as a tool to try and spread gun ownership (along with the fear that there are no alternatives). I mean in every debate about gun ownership, pro-gunners will wheel out the same terrible statistics and horror stories of violence, rape and murder of a world filled with crack heads and gangbangers. And there answer to all these things virtually always comes back to having a gun.

But as you indicate below it does mean that criminals have easy access to guns and so would seem to mean that crime is more likely to involve a gun.

And if they are law abiding and responsible that is fine or are you saying that ‘the right’ to own a gun should extend to those that do not abide by the law and are clearly irresponsible?

So that is it - nothing can be done, hell it shouldn’t even be attempted, I mean there is just no point in even trying to get guns out of the hands of criminals – so since there isn’t an alternative the only way to protect yourself from that pistol totting crack addicted gangbanger that at any moment could break through your door and rape your wife and child before putting a bullet in your head is to get yourself a gun, no get two or maybe three…..

Do you see what I mean about some people seeming to see guns as the answer and ignoring the possibility of alternatives?

 

LH

Here is a short version –

The false sense of power that guns can give people also seems to appear in the idea that they are a protection against government persecution.

Over the years several pro-gun people have implied that the Jews would have been safe and the holocaust may never have happened if the Jews had just been armed.

The problem is that the German people had been taught the Jews were dangerous. So what if some of them had fired on the police that had come to take them away, do you think the German people would have seen this as a justified reaction and come to their defence or just seen it as proof the Jews were indeed dangerous and needed taking care of?

Think about US history, did the Native Americans that fought back against the treaty breaking US government get the support of the American citizenry? What if the US citizens of Japanese decent had resisted the unconstitutional internment imposed on them after Pearl Harbour and had shot at the police do you think they would have got general and popular support? What about those hauled in front of McCarthy or the un-American committees, would Americans have rallied to them if they had refused to go before such witch hunts and opened fire on those that came to take them?

Here is the long version –

Can guns save you from suppression?
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showpost.php?p=6708365&postcount=217

*

 

Here is something I posted in another gun thread -

 

Well there is obviously a reason why someone shot that bitch. Maybe if the governement was working correctly then no one would be asking stupid questions like "Should guns be outlawed in the US?"

 

Study up on metal fabrication. Build yourself a foundry in your garage or basement. Make gun powder. Make projectiles. And you're set to make your own guns.

 

But that is the question - what is ‘correctly’?

It seems to me that for many Americans a gun stands in the way of achieving the type of good governance that might bring about a society where the reasons they claim for wanting a gun could be addressed.


*

Why would you want to?

I mean with the right equipment someone could make explosives, a biological or chemical weapon, hell with the right material it’s possible to make a nuclear bomb; the question is why would you want your own nuclear bomb?