40 Reasons to Support Gun Control

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Bowling for colombine might be a reason not to own a gun... but is it really? I mean, If I wanted to kill some people, a gun would not be my first choice anyway. a bomb, now thats the way to do it, since a bomb's only intent is to destroy. I like bombs.

Farinheit 911 is a reason to own a gun. You are deluding yourself if you think that our government is unfalible. and it is ignorance to give complete and utter trust in such failible system. The safeguards of our system are only there if people know of them.

I will systematically cause the entire education system to fall, restrict your access to means of defence, and inpsire a legion of govenmentally contracted individuals to take over your cities. All under the guise that it is "good for us all", which I will have fed to you for years. I will progessively utilize every oppressive situations to my advantage, even creating a few of my own to constantly keep the "alert level" at my acceptable level (orange is a nice color). Only the most vigilant will notice, and the cool part is that I won't have to do anything because the general understanding of the mob that I have created, is that they are luny. it will be their tradition, they shall follow unquestioning, not knowing any better.

I'll be the first one to rule you all the moment you lapse into ignorance... especially if you don't have anything to defend yourself with.

you really think you can defend yourself against the might of the us army and air force with a gun?

seems to me mosts peoples reasons for owning firearms are based on safeguarding their own "freedoms" rather than some weighty ideal like democracy and the freedom of others

I agree with you. If a person owns a gun I think it violates another person's rights to live with as little fear as possible. It frightens me to think that my neighbours may have firearms. Technically they have a right to have them, but it violates the freedom of others. I think if something violates the freedom of others, it should be illegal.

You could if you could own an automatic weapon among other things. Unfortunately, the _National Firearms Act_ of 1934 banned them. That there was enough to subserviate the American citizen to his government. Before that Act was passed, it was perfectly legal for a private citizen to own automatic weapons, fully armed tanks, and high explosives. I guess America was in a state of chaos before that Act was passed and bombs were going off all over.

EDIT: This is an oversimplification. The _National Firearms Act_ didn't ban them; it was before that, any American could own any weapons without registering them or being worried about breaking the law (at least at the federal level). I had misread a paragraph in this Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_US

"While the technology of firearm known to the Founding Fathers was primitive by comparison to today's weapons, individuals at that time were free to own a greater amount of destructive force than today. At the time of the nation's founding, individuals were free to own any weapon known, including cannons, field pieces and even fully-armed warships of the day. In fact, up until the National Firearms Act of 1934, there was no Federal law against ordinary Americans' owning any weapons available anywhere, including anything the US military used, such as tanks, artillery, bombs and even high-explosives. No licenses and no registration were required."

Last edited by cornince on 23 Feb 2005, 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You have a right to live with as little fear as possible? Where does the Constitution say that? That means I can't cut food near you (because I could easily stab you from that position)? That means I can't play baseball with you (because I could slug one into your face at 100 mph+)? That means I can't handle your food (because I could easily poison it)? Why should guns be any different?

Remember the situation in America before the _National Firearms Act_ was passed, chaotic.

I Never said the Constitution said that. You may recall a document called the Declaration of Independence. It states we have a right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. I don't know about you, but when I live in fear, I am not happy. I feel that owning a firearm is in violation of another person's right to happiness.

Also you addressed the issue of knives and baseball bats posing the same threat as guns. The difference is that knives and baseball bats have another purpose. Knives are for cuttign food etc. and baseball bats are for playing baseball. I do understand that people who live on farms or people who like to hunt should have the opportunity to have a rifle. I still don't like guns but I don't have a problem with those people owning them.

I have one question for you, cornince: What is the purpose, besides shooting people, of a handgun?

Okay well, being unhappy about decisions made by another person isn't enough to legitimately force that person to stop. Unless that person is harming, threatening, or harassing you, then I don't think you would have much of a case to deprive him of, say, gun ownership. A group of people, even the majority, being apprehensive about a person doing something is not sufficient justification to outlaw it.

One purpose of owning a handgun is for self-defense. I understand that is the main purpose. Still, why should we have to justify our ownership of something to a political authority? If a person doesn't harm, threaten, or harass (unduly) anybody, then he should be allowed to see to his own needs and wants. We make decisions based on our own needs and wants, and sometimes self-defense is included in that. It isn't state knows best, it's we each know best.

Okay, I disagree, but I get your point. Did you know that a majority of gun deaths are accidents? So even if the person is not intentionally harassing, or threatening a person, accidents happen. The likelihood of an accident occuring due to knives is slim in comparison to gun related accidents.

Bec,

I've heard otherwise. But hey, to each her own. After all, statistics that don't agree with one's own views are just propaganda.

Gun control is just so easy to do properly - you just have a form with one question on it for the redneck types to fill in: "Do you want a gun? Y/N". Anybody who selects 'Y' is clearly just the type of person who should be prevented from having a gun at all costs.....

bullshi*, guns dont kill people, cops kill people. Try to take mine away and ill go down in a gun battle
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Just playin with ya. But seriously, gun control is a breach of American rights.
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Common sense, it would seem, breaches "American rights" quite often too.......

this country aint what it was. We were the greatest, then along came Nixon
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Actually, I take that back. This nation was never that great.
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> i get so angry when this is quoted - sorry, cornince, not at you - but at the number of times this completely and utterly duplictous, lying, deceitful, IMMORAL, fallacy

Is it a fallacy? Look at the kinds of people who've banned guns in the past. Hitler, Stalin... and some crooked politicians here in the US, not to mention the KKK and friends, who wanted to keep African-Americans disarmed, the more easily to terrorize them. Is this a record for anti-gunners to be proud of?

> where's the freedom is having to HAVE a gun to protect yourself?

The single most important reason for people to own guns is to discourage the 2AM knock. It's to give the government (national or local) some reason to fear that its agents might get hurt if they try enforcing the government's will through raw thuggery. I'd say that's a freedom worth having.

Private gun ownership, particularly the right to carry concealed (in urban settings and otherwise), has the additional benefit of reducing crime, but that is a secondary benefit, albeit a highly desirable one.

Hunting rifles and shotguns in the hands of farmers do nothing to help a dissident living in a city or suburb, who gets the 2AM knock (or his legs broken on the street) for having disagreed with someone powerful. "Someone powerful" can be the government, a local criminal strongman, or a political candidate the local criminal strongman backs.

Fear of the 2AM knock is something people in most of the US do not have to live with -- and that is a fundamental difference between the US and most of the rest of the world.

As far as the US having a higher murder rate than many other countries, consider the following:

1. Not all countries measure homicide as transparently as the US. In the US, a homicide is any time one person kills another, under any circumstances. In the UK (for instance), it's legally a homicide only if there was a conviction. If you measure in terms of the less obscurable criterion "death by violence", you find that countries like Germany have very nearly the same rate as the US.

2. Furthermore, in the UK, it's been reported that 85% of capital trials (for things like murder) are declared mistrials due to witness intimidation or jury tampering. Gee, I wonder why the witnesses and jurors in the "gun-free" UK feel so threatened? Kinda like "gun-free" New York and Chicago.

3. The Swiss, with handguns and (gasp) full-autos everywhere, have the lowest crime rates in Europe, by far (the UK has had the highest, 2 years running.) I wonder how it is that those Germans, French and Italians in Switzerland have been getting along peacefully for 700 years, while the same ethnic groups elsewhere in Europe have been at each others' throats much of the time. Could it be that the fact they are all armed in Switzerland (as in most of the US) encourages them to find more equitable ways of negotiating what they want, rather than risking the pain of trying to get it using raw force? Or is it just something in the water

4. If just one janitor at Columbine had been carrying legally, he might have been able to stop the shooters... or the shooters, knowing someone on school ground might be armed, might never have done the deed. However, thanks to US federal law, no guns are allowed on public school grounds anywhere in the country, so there's no way the janitor (or the principal, or school guard) could have been armed... very convenient for the shooters (at Columbine, and Hungerford, and Dunblane...)

I refer folks back to the original posting in this thread. Dismissing it out of hand with a flip mention of "Bowling for Columbine" displays a lack of engagement with the material.

Vits, former resident of the UK

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Some references:

http://www.a-human-right.com
http://www.voicenet.com/~pidata
http://www.guncite.com/

BTW, taking a 2-second look at a website and declaring, "I'm not looking at that, it's biased!" also constitutes a lack of engagement with the material. It is the same as judging a book by its cover, and how intellectually respectable is that?

"I'm not reading that book on evolution! It has Darwin's name on it, therefore it's biased!" -- A. Creationist