Gun "control" - to protect or disarm the citizens?

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Well, just three shots, changing the world. You think of a spectacle like 9/11 that changed the world, and the hijackers used two planes. Three shots is understated by comparison, and it killed only one person (at first, until Jack Ruby and Oswald had a howdy-doo), yet it shook the world.

Both events succeeded (in a manner) in what they were intended to be done because they destroyed a symbol. One cannot comprehend the amount of lives lost in the hours of 9/11, just as one cannot comprehend the millions-strong killings of the Holocaust, hence the need for a symbol. JFK and 9/11 was an attack on American identity. The Holocaust was the systematic destruction of Jewish identity, amongst other minorities (Gypsies, homosexuals, etc). Gallipoli, as you and I both know, Bazza, has become a symbol of Australian cameraderie in adversity, no matter how many lives were lost in Winnie Chruchill's misguided campaign (he wasn't PM then, but he had formulated the plan).

A "legend", so to speak, can take no shots, as little as one or three, or may need millions more wizzing above someone's head before it becomes that. It can come from planes crashing deliberately into American structures (and I'm talking about TWO days of infamy here), or from public figures dying before their time (it is happening as we speak, with Steve Irwin).

A .38 Special, fired from a typical 6" barrel, is doing about an 8" spiral at 100 yards and has lost about 1/3 of its muzzle velocity. Not accurate, not powerful.

Last edited by DirtDawg on 03 Oct 2006, 7:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Figures, but I wanted to ask.

litigious, would you look at some stats?
have you seen how many people die of gunviolence in america?
have you any idea how much effort is put in suicide prevention? and then you just give people guns?????
have you any idea how many people would still live if guns were illegal?

shut the f**k up with your BS. and lay off the insulting over nothing.

i hate sheepmentality. but banning guns has nothing to do with corrupt politics (despite the fact that its corrupt as hell) nor does it have to do with sheepmentality. governments and lawenforcments have abused millions of prerogatives, but never have i heard of guns being abused this way.


ow and, i hate you

I think you will find that the rate of suicide is quite stable. If you look at countries (like Australia) that has had severe gun restrictions, the rate of suicide has increased as gun ownership decreases. OK it would probably increase anyway. Gun suicides decrease with less guns, but people find other ways. Suicide overall does not change.

Likewise violent crime does not decrease. I heard the Chief Constable of Scotland Yard once say a bad guy with an iron bar is more dangerouse than one with a gun. The first thing the guy with an iron bar will do is hit you with it, to show he means business. Someone with a gun doesn't have to shoot you first.

Look at the murder rate between Switzerland (high legal gun ownership) and Russia (low legal gun ownership). What does that tell you about guns being the cause of murder?

Thank you.

Quartermass (also Hypermind)
I am prepared to hear and consider logical and reasoned arguments for the control of firearms. But remarks like "one an english school teacher shot at his students on a cross country run..." are just dribble not worth reading.

Show me cause and effect.

Are you so scared of things you don't know about or is your mind so closed you will not consider arguments why gun control does not achieve its stated purpose (I think generally there is an unstated purpose behind it).

This is really getting tiresome and if you are just going to be a smart-arse then I wil stop watching this thread.

I suspect from the lack of participation of others, they have already clicked on "stop watching this thread".

And why are you calling me "Hypermind"? And spelling "Quatermass" Quartermass? You're probably old enough to know of Quatermass! Or at least hear your parents talk of it.

And what would you suggest as an alternative to gun control? Maybe I am closed minded, but I try to care about human life. I don't know why I should bother though, with all the sh***y things happening in the world. People have never listened to my opinions on any subject, so tell me a good reason why I should listen. I don't mean you, Bazza, you're at least decent, but anyone else, tell me why I should even listen to that garbage you call verbal discourse?

Hmm?

Sorry about misspelling - I had never heard of Quatermass. Ever read Voyage of the Space Beagle?


Guns are potentially dangerous, so should have some control (like alchohol and tobacco need some control). But what is the control trying to achieve? If controls are not effective, I do not believe in restricting people for no worthwhile purpose. Just because someone executes several school girls with a gun is no reason to take guns off everyone. What if school girls were executed with a crowbar? Would you support banning crowbars? Where is the logic?

After Port Arthur, it was seriously suggested by a psych that to help reduce rural suicides, there should be more firearms safety courses! WTF?

Please open your eyes.

Firstly, Quatermass was a trilogy of old sci-fi TV serials that preceded Doctor Who by about a decade. Professor Bernard Quatermass was the main character of these three serials.

As I have said before, guns have no other purposes other than to kill. A crowbar, because it can be used in other situations, of course cannot be banned. It is a matter of control rather than banning. As to what said method of control is, I dunno. People seem to get on my case because I advocate gun control, because it is supposedly a step forward to dictatorship, which, for the most part, is paranoid BS.

I must confess that I am pretty ignorant of gun controls here in Australia (except that air guns are illegal), and if any of these recommendations have already been put in place, don't laugh or jeer or sneer. Or I might just lose what ever tentative control I have had here.

*Live Firearms training (under regulated conditions) allowed after 15 (unless, say, in a cadet school etc).

*License allowed at 18 years old, as well as firearms possession.

*For getting a license (rather than a gun), at least a basic psych evaluation, background check and an indoctrination in what to do with a gun. Training should include knowing when not to fire, as well as obviously maintaining a gun, correct procedure, etc.

Is that at all satisfactory Bazza, or do you have any reasoned objections? I know any objections you will voice should be reasonable ones, but others may not.

Thousands of Swedes kill themselves every year, without firearms. The percentage of suicide is much greater than in America. If the law makers in Sweden won't be decent enough to try to stop people killing themselves (and they won't), they'd let the guns free for this purpose alone, so people could blow their brains out instead of throwing themselves in front of trains, hanging themselves, cutting themselves, etc, which is painful and humiliating.

It's an insult to have to take your life but an even bigger insult that you cannot do it instantly and painlessly.

All gun laws that state other than that keeping and bearing arms is a right to every citizen are made by cowards for cowards.

I feel sorry for the f***ing train drivers. I once read in the Darwin Awards that one city rail system is so bad with the suicides/accidents that a driver cannot go one year without turning someone into rail ketchup, and so they have formed a support group.

This is a serious point I would like to pose, litigious. Does anyone know whether a Beretta blowjob is any less painful and/or humiliating than many other suicides, say by pharmaceuticals or certain toxic gases (like helium)? That question is, to a degree, ludicrous, but it raises a question about so-called painless suicide.

Now that I just came to think of it, I'll have a look through my collection of forensic papers and see what I can find. People want me to present reasoned arguments, so why not?

That kind of gun laws will always make sure that the kind of people who would get a license would be just the obedient sheeps, that would never ever raise their gun to kill an oppressor or his police and military. That's why gun restrictions are made up in the first place, not to prevent people from each other but to prevent the politician swines from the peoples' rage.

And I see that you have even more stupid and cowardly gun laws in Australia than in Sweden, but I don't know wheter to laugh or cry over that.

If it succeeds, you will never be able to feel anything. The brain itself cannot feel pain, and if you shoot yourself, say, through the mouth, and the bullet makes your brain mushroom soup in 1/100 second, you may just have time to notice that you shot yourself (that it suceeded) but you will never feel pain.

Medication overdoses are nicer for the people who shall take care of what's left of you and for your relatives, but you will have to use a great amount of strong opiates to die without pain (through suffocating while unconcious) and make sure you won't survive as an idiot.

and whats wrong with that? who wants political murder anyway? they use much more clever methods to keep people from revolting then guncontroll. (swearing to the flag, which is brainwashing little children, the corrupt schoolsystem which is based on sheepening and destroying intellect etc)

revolt can occur without free acces to guns you know. also america has free right to own guns, yet they have the most corrupt government of them all.


and good job, you managed to name one country with guncontroll with more violence then one other without. i dont care. america alone statistically makes it necessary to have guncontroll. go watch bowling for columbine.
and yeah, i dont think id be the only one dead by now if owning a gun.

A good politician is most of the time a dead politician. And sadly, most Americans don't realize what great benefit it is to have free guns.

And if a child kills his bullies, I just feel sorry for him that he will be punished by the "justice" for taking his rights. All bullies belong killed or molested.