"Gun town U.S.A." Not a murder in 25 years!!!

On this one I have to ask; fear of what? Also do you have any examples of a healthy society you can show me or are you just talking about some ideal society that doesn't exist?

Dealing with the symptoms of societal problems? As an individual there is not much one can to do to fix societal problems, other than trying to not be part of them, on the other hand an individual can be prepared to save one's own family if those societal problems come into one's home.

 

i think we are just supposed to call 911 and wait for the police to arrive to save us from the home invaders,rapists or whoever else kicks our door in in the middle of the night.you know those "symptoms of societal problems" that occur everywhere,even in the UK.(besides the gun violence that still takes place there, i believe there were 277 knife murders and over 22 thousand knife incidents in the UK in 2008.although they believe the number of incidents is much higher as they believe many go unreported )

thats great in theory,except last time i called 911 it took the police 2 hours and 33 minutes to get here.im pretty sure that someone armed with a knife (one of those "symptoms of societal breakdown") could make dinner out of me in that time frame without the use of a firearm...

yes,thats the reality of living in rural america.

that being said,my guns are for hunting first,home protection second but should a situation like that happen (not that i am worried it will ) i am sure as hell glad i have a firearm rather than a kitchen knife to defend myself with..

seems to me this is more stereotyping gun owners in america than anything else.

i can only speak as one who has lived in america his whole life,one who has been around people who have owned guns their whole lives. i mean im not someone from the UK on the outside looking in making opinions based on news stories,im just a typical american gun owner but i really dont know ANYONE that owns a firearm primarily for self defense or out of fear of whats happened to society..

granted i dont live in a city so people there may have different reasons for owning firearms but in rural america (where MOST gun owners in america live ) the primary reasons for owning firearms are,deer,rabbits,squirrels,varmits and sport shooting (targets and skeet ). not "fear" of our fellow man..

but like i said,im not someone in another country making assumptions from what i read, im just a typical american gun owner. so what do i know about why people own firearms?? obviously not as much as someone in another country.

to me the bottom line is guns and gun crime are not a symptom nor cause of societal breakdown,take the guns away and the violence will still run rampant. one needs to look no further than the UK to see that.

nor would it seem to me to be a answer to those problems.as i said,i know of noone who owns a weapon primarily for self defense.

so how does one collectively address the "symptoms of societal breakdown"?obviously banning guns has not solved the problem in the UK so im not sure why one would assume that is the answer here?

take the guns away one will use a knife,take the knives away one will use a bat,take the bats away one will use a rock.

when you folks in the UK figure out how to deal with your own "symptoms of societal breakdown" you be sure and let us americans know and im sure we will follow in your footsteps,but as long as you have the violence in your society that you do,i dont see where you can act as if this problem only exists in america and insinuate that banning guns will solve it.
because the fact of the matter is,your own crime statistics prove otherwise.

Murder rate increasing amid epidemic of knife and gun crime ...


Ministers 'covered up' gun crime - Times Online

 

it's a bit of a chicken or the egg argument, really. it's pretty easy to get a gun illegally, but getting one legally is much more difficult. people who have no business legally owning a gun get one quickly and often. that's not fear, that's personal experience. most cases, people will never use their "personal protection" gun. but it's already too late to stop gun ownership illegally. so you get your own legally. it just sorta circles around and around. in the meantime one does what one can to improve the world where one can, i suppose. gun ownership does not preclude concern over societal issues, but it is a reaction to them in a practical sense. it's kinda like clearing the brush away from around your home before fire season.

 

hippiehillbilly :cheers2:
mamaKCita :cheers2:

 

i dunno,like i said,i dont know anyone who went out and bought a gun primarily as a reaction to whats happening in society,but again ive spent my whole life in rural america so perhaps that is the case for many in the cities.

however i can see your point,if the criminals are armed,why shouldnt you as a law abiding citizen have the right to be better armed??

 

i've been in a gunless home most of my life. i've also been in a home three times when it's been broken into. i have to say, after a while, you kinda get a bit paranoid and move to the country. and when you move to the country, you have a whole world of opportunities for hunting and shooting for pleasure. and it is a pleasure. that doesn't mean i have lost empathy, concern and motivation for bettering the world in places where people don't have it so nice. it means i'm tired of looking over my shoulder, never going out alone and keeping my head down.

 

Thank you, hippiehillbilly thank you…again exactly my point

Just look at the words– save us from - invaders – rapists – kicking the door in – armed with a knife – make a dinner out of you – defend yourself - that’s the reality of America – .

Not that any of these images are meant to promote fear or a sense of threat are they – it’s just the reality of America that rapists armed with knives could at any moment invade your home by kicking down the door and without a gun they’d soon make a dinner of you.

It’s an advert to sell guns using fear

Oh yes there is all that stuff about hunting rabbits and the fun you can have hitting targets but that’s not so dramatic or likely to sell the product than that rapists waiting in the wings ready to carve you up.

Some pro-gunners claim they are not about promoting fear or using it to sell guns but thats not how the argument is invariably framed.

 

again,twist my words to make them say what you want them to say,whatever,as i said,i find your whole arguement hypocritical.

 

covered

I can see this is thread is going to go nowhere except in circles, the thing is that too many pro-gunners are just not willing to have a debate, it the same thing again just repeat the same old guff over and over and over and over and over and over…….

 

yep you do have a habit of doing that,in all the threads here.

thats just another reason i have boycotted this forum.

and on that note i will again tap out of this forum .

have a nice day..

 

well, yeah, it really is. it inevitably does. one can't argue both gun ownership rights AND the breakdown of society. they're seperate topics, i think, only loosely attached in the american psyche. perhaps that's wrong, but it seems as if it ends up being two seperate mindsets banging their heads on opposite sides of a brick wall.

 

Mama

My point is that pro-gunners are more interested in promoting guns (usually through fear tactics) than trying to understand the attitudes and mentality that seems to be attached to many pro-gunners.

And as I’ve said many pro-gunners seem to see guns as a way of dealing with the symptoms of societal problems on an individual level and so they become unattached or uninterested in the causes of those problems.

Notice how many seem to shrug at such problems and say something along the lines of ‘that just the way it is’ or ‘they can’t do much about it’. And because ‘that’s the way it is’ the only thing they can do is put their trust in guns rather than wondering why ‘that’s the way it is’.

It seems to me that the way guns are promoted by the gun lobby is about distraction and detachment, distraction from wider societal problems and detachment by sowing fear and the futility of change.

Anyway, I’ve been here before and I know from experience there is little desire for introspection among the pro-gunners. For example I show clearly the fear mongering in hippiehillbilly’s post and he still can’t see it, and I don’t think other pro-gunners would either it’s ‘just how it is’ and ‘you can’t do much about it’ except to get a gun.

 

you know, i've never been in a car wreck, but i still have car insurance. preparation for the worst isn't an acceptance of it, an expectation of it, or ignorance of what you have to do to avoid it. i think that's one of the reasons why people can't ever have the same argument about guns at the same time. you're arguing one thing, pro-gunners are arguing something entirely different. try seperating the two issues more completely.

 

What reality of America? This is reality everywhere, and considering Britain and western Europe as a whole generally has a much higher petty crime and burglary rate then the US maybe the guns are doing something. Or rape, Australia and Canada have much higher rape rate then the US does
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita
By assualts, the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are all just about tied, and for total crime reported, Britain actually beats the United States
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

It's not about fear, it's about individualism, we believe we have the right to take action into our own hands here when the time calls for it.

I again go back to this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm
and how it sums it up at the end:

What American here ever really feels unsafe? Even at 3am in the middle of a dark city you've never been to?

 

Most Americans/US citizens feel safe. Thing is until their kids get caught up into it, they'll never wake up. They are too busy trying to make ends meet, and that's exactly what those in power want. Drop your guard, and they will own all us while we worry aobout what gift our president sent the prime minister of Britain. I frankly don't care about that...I care about what our President and legislature turn over to foreign governments under the guise of a global economy. I want to be able to ask questions about that! I demand to withhold that from private councils and boards.

I don't remember voting on the Security Prosperity Partnership with Mexico and Canada. Frankly right now I don't want my grandkids going to Mexico on Spring Break. I don't even want them going up to Canada right now.

Until my representatives in Congress admit they've heard of it and have passed legislation concerning it...I am happy to stay right here and keep my kids and grandkids home as well.

And my family doesn't feed their kids on big pharma drugs to keep them pliable. But we do own guns.

 

Balbus

First of all, Why do you feel it necessary to yell at us by increasing your font size?

Next, taking words totally out of context does not prove anything, except maybe that you have a very weak argument and need to do it to bolster it up.

Next, you make generalities about how many pro-gunners seem to see guns as a way of dealing with the symptoms of societal problems on an individual level and so they become unattached or uninterested in the causes of those problems but you show no facts or figures to back up such statements and so the statements are meaningless.

Next, you totally avoided the question about if banning guns in the UK has not stopped gun violence in the UK and has not solved any of the societal problems in the UK, why do you think that doing so in the US will work any better here than it does there?

Now as for me before you start jumping to conclusions about me, I’ve never owned a gun, unless you want to count the BB gun I owned as a preteen. So I have no vested interest in gun ownership one way or another.

But I would like to say this: the 2nd amendment is not talking about hunting and in fact is quite paranoid and fear mongering as you put it. The Founding Fathers were fearful of any and all governments, including the one that they were establishing. They had seen how one of the first moves any subjugator makes is to disarm the people and to prevent that there is the 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms, not for hunting but to be armed to the teeth to prevent subjugation.

So that means that if people are fearful and owning a gun makes them feel safer, that’s okay and if they want to use their guns for hunting or defending themselves or both, that’s ok and if they don’t want to deal with societal problems, that’s ok; It’s a free country, at least for the time being.

Freedom of the people was more important to the Founding Fathers than anything else. In fact one of them said: They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

PS If you want to talk about societal problems, other than gun control, we can do so but we should probably move to another thread to do so.

 

in addition, using fear tactics to up gun ownership isn't really all that effective or necessary, since it wouldn't really take much to make me own a gun. simply because i'm not afraid of guns, nor have i ever had an abhorrence of them. fear tactics primarily make me lock all my doors and windows and make sure my phone is nearby.

at any rate, it's too late for gun laws and restrictions to do anything here. that's like shutting the barn doors when your cattle is halfway across texas. short of armed military going house to house and taking all the guns, which would just plain cause warfare, the cat's outta the bag and it's not going to go back in.

 

To be honest, Fear is one of the reasons I don't own a gun.

What with Gun registration, the authorities know who has a gun and don’t need to go door to door but just take the list and take the guns from those on the list.

If it comes down to that, I just don’t want to be on any lists, let alone that one, and you know when they come for the guns, they’ll be ready to kill or imprison anyone who resists.

Since they won’t be looking for me at that time, I’m going to use that time to head for the hills. :leaving:

 

But realistically it never will come down to that otherwise it will be known as civil war part II

 

I'm over 60 and I've never before seen times like this. If things keep going the way they are, it looks like we're in for some really bad times. If that happens it's not going to be like the 30s, people then still had a sense of community but now most people are thinking everyone for themselves and so if it all collapses that could mean a lot of violence and martial law.