Should Guns be Banned in the US?

Ranger - I believe everyone has the responsibility is to refrain from killing sentient beings. Self-defence doesn't necessitate intentional killing. On the contrary, intentional killing in self-defence implies retribution. There are many ways to incapacitate someone, martial arts for example. I try to discover why guns are necessary but fail.

I have never encountered anyone who deserved to be labelled 'invading thug', though perhaps that is part of the world I live in. If you think there are such people around, it seems like what needs to be addressed is not security but why there are those people in the first place, and what we can do about changing that.

 

Saying that before we save the house from burning to the ground we need to find out why the flames are so hungry and what else we can persuade them to eat.
Martial arts are fine and in fact that is my practice. My belief is that if you kill someone in the process of defending youself you have failed in your practice. However I have 55 years of practice and in fact my old sparing pard is recognised by Bejing as one of the top five in the world in his style.
The thing is most folks out there have not had even twenty years of practice and have only enough skill and knowledge to get themselves killed trying to defend themselves barehanded and yet I can not begrudge them the right to survive.

 

What good would a gun ban do in the USA?

All it would do is give prosecutors one more charge for criminals; something like "illegal firearm possession".

Criminals do not care if guns are legal or not. Robbing banks is illegal, yet it still happens. Banning guns will not stop criminals from using firearms to perpetrate crimes. Banning guns just makes law-abiding citizens less safe.

jmo

 

so hunting is not the killing of living beings?

 

My bad, I misread. I thought you wrote people.

I actually enjoy hunting though. I have no qualms about killing "living beings".

 

Hi all, interesting perspectives here.I was once (like some ppl on here),against guns.but I,ve changed my stance on that.I,ve lived on the streets & the road.some parts of the. Us are very uncivilized.& we would have a right to defend ourselves even if we didn't have what's left of our constitution.the real question should be,how visibly armed should the average american now become?

 

That is actually one of the reasons I don,t. Live on the streets as much as I used becuz. One can,t defend oneself there.cops tend to frown upon armed street people.& by that I mean weapons can,t be built up without a "base" of operations.& this quite often must either be secret or legitimate.as in private land.I,m not sure how large a cache one can have in a legal functioning vehicle.

 

A visible weapon is a two edged sword so to speak. It can be a deterent or a provocation/excuse to take you out. It all depends on the situation and also your demeanor and behavior.

 

mao, stalin, hitler, and.....janet reno? lol

 

you can ban guns from your own home thanks much, but dont tell me what to do in mine.

and i'm sorry, but i think the bill of rights it is a dang good document. you might not be a fan of free speech and due process but i am

 

LOL

This is hilarious, virtually every pro-gunner post backs up what I’ve been saying all along and the funny thing is, the really funny thing is, that they don’t even seem to know it.

It is classic cartoon ostrich with its head in the sand.

You really should see yourselves; you couldn’t get your collective feet further into your mouths than this.

I could just cut and paste previous replies verbatim; I mean it’s like shooting fish in a barrel (Joke intended).

 

Logan, Deranged and others

Read posts 304-305 – The US constitution has been violated many times, many, many times, and do you know what - virtually every time the pro-gun element of society has basically backed the violations. So the constitution defence doesn’t work.

Posted in this thread many times

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.

For example 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/s...&postcount=217

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My theory is that there is a general attitude among many Americans that accepts threat of violence, intimidation and suppression as legitimate means of societal control and this mindset gets in the way of them actually working toward solutions to their social and political problems.

This is because that attitude colours the way they think about and view the world from personal interaction to how they see other countries.

They can come to see the world as threatening, they can feel intimidated and fear that they are or could be the victim of criminal or political suppression.

This attitude can lead to a near paranoid outlook were everything and everyone is seen as a potential threat that is just waiting to attack or repress them. This taints the way they see the government, how criminality can be dealt with, how they see their fellow citizens, differing social classes, differing ethnic groups, and even differing political philosophies or ideas.

Within the framework of such a worldview guns seem attractive as a means of ‘equalising’ the individual against what they perceive as threats, it makes them feel that they are also ‘powerful’ and intimidating and that they too, if needs be, can deal with, in other words suppress the threatening.

The problem is that such attitudes can build up an irrational barrier between reality and myth, between what they see as prudent and sensible and what actually is prudent and sensible

 

Logan

Here is a reply I gave to Mad who put forward a similar argument (this thread Post 255)

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?
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I’ll ask again – what do you think are the root causes of crime?

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My theory is that there is a general attitude among many Americans that accepts threat of violence, intimidation and suppression as legitimate means of societal control and this mindset gets in the way of them actually working toward solutions to their social and political problems.

This is because that attitude colours the way they think about and view the world from personal interaction to how they see other countries.

They can come to see the world as threatening, they can feel intimidated and fear that they are or could be the victim of criminal or political suppression.

This attitude can lead to a near paranoid outlook were everything and everyone is seen as a potential threat that is just waiting to attack or repress them. This taints the way they see the government, how criminality can be dealt with, how they see their fellow citizens, differing social classes, differing ethnic groups, and even differing political philosophies or ideas.

Within the framework of such a worldview guns seem attractive as a means of ‘equalising’ the individual against what they perceive as threats, it makes them feel that they are also ‘powerful’ and intimidating and that they too, if needs be, can deal with, in other words suppress the threatening.

The problem is that such attitudes can build up an irrational barrier between reality and myth, between what they see as prudent and sensible and what actually is prudent and sensible.

 

Deranged

OK lets put gun related homicides for the UK and US in context

UK – 73 (2001, BBC)

USA - 11,348 (2001, University of Utah)

The UK has 60 million people compared with the USA’s of 250 –280 million so lets boost the UK’s figure

60 million – 70 deaths
120 million – 140 deaths
180 million – 210 deaths
240 million – 280 deaths
300 million – 350 deaths

In fact I believe to get to the USA’s levels of gun related homicides we would need to increase the UK’s population some 160 times to 9,600 million people, the worlds population at this time is only 6,500 million

 

Farmont

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.

For example 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?

 

So is it true that an armed society is a politer society, or is it just that an armed society is a paranoid society that is just being polite out of fear?

And it begs the question, why not try and bring about a society where people are polite because they are polite not just out of fear that they might be shot?

The thing is that, maybe you already have it, maybe your society is as polite as it is and guns and gun ownership have nothing to do with it, it’s just a myth and says more about the mentality of pro-gunners than about reality?

Because I’ve been to the US (well California at least) and I’ve meet a lot of Americans from all over the states, and the thing is that they seem as polite (or not) as any other people I’ve meet and I’ve live and travelled extensively in Europe and I’d say that there is really very little difference in the range and the amount of politeness between those people and Americans, and it seems they don’t need the threat of getting shot to be polite.

So why is it that so many pro-gunners in the US think they need guns to have polite Americans?

 

Come on people – you really need to up your game or at least your arguments the ones you are putting forward are the old stall ones that didn’t stand up well to scrutiny the first time let alone the thousand and first time.

Please stop going through the pro-gun handbook of standardised replies and throw away slogans, I’ve seen them all before and have given my counter arguments.

If you can address those arguments I might be impressed but I’m sorry to say that the old and repetitious arguments you’ve but up so far are frankly pathetic.

 

lol I stopped reading there. I assume the rest of your post is full of just as many ridiculous generalizations. Correlation != causation.

 

Balbus.Lets hear your idea of the root cause of why people that believe defending themselves is not legitimate. You are condecending to say the least. Yes,I've read your marvelous post 304. The reason many of us here keep firearms for protection is because ,first=evolution is too slow. Many humans are greedy,self aggrandizing,dangerous animals that have no concern for your or my life,(I might include many politicians ).

I ,personally can see how the world and it's inhabitants could live life in a civilized ,gentle and fair basis by converting to socialism wordlwide and making sure that all living humans have suitable living conditions--access to clean water , ownership of land to grow food,access to education for ALL,the teaching of empathy and the proper place of love for ALL humans regarding the care of the earth ,each other and other sentient beings of all shapes and sizes--and the teaching should be world wide starting with the first year of school and before that ,by parents. Capitalism could be restricted to certain areas and used ,for example-to purchase so-called luxury items.

When King Kamehameha united the Hawaiian islands ,the citizens were granted pie shaped pieces of land from mauka to makai so that EVERY citizens had land on which they could thrive. Of course the missionaries and others put the kibosh on that.

All this seems an impossibility to achieve because --evolution is too slow and humans are blinded by the gimmicks and mental weakness -greed -that those in positions of power have discovered are so easy to use against us to FURTHER consolidate their postions of power and control.

So, how to make the earth a peacefull,loving and fair place for all to thrive and survive? Very,very doubtfull that it can be accomplished with no control over birth rates,no control over the extremely rich and powerfull, and the knee jerk replies from those that have "made it" in societies that have as their credo---I got mine--and if you don't have yours--tough shit.

Therefore, many are left out and resort to horrible drugs like meth to dull the pain --and to thievery and murder of those that are just trying to get by in ,for example, a system like ours that is so out of kilter relative to haves and have nots,that it's impossible to dig out of the situations in which they find themselves.

It's a sad situation that we earthlings find ourselves in ,presently. Wars-humans continuing to slaughter one another,rapes,famine,millions living in poverty while others have millions or billions of dollars.

It's wrong and it abides. You tell me how it can be ameliorated please ,from your perch on high. And who will do it?