Poll: 2/3 of American voters would defy gun laws

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You don’t have relatively free access to firearms in Canada. We just barely do in the US and I’m being generous about that today. I probably won’t be that generous the next time it crosses my mind. You all have to jump through more hoops to access a more limited selection.
We do have to jump through hoops for a more limited selection than we should have.
I’m not going to deep dive gun laws in the US or Canada here. What I will tell you is that it’s not a matter of just running into a store and buying a machine-gun here in the US.
See my statement about "culture below.




A government that has a gun control agenda (and it goes way back before Barack) is one not to be so trusting of to say the least. More so when they are running covert smuggling operations across the Mexican border.




Funny how firearm related deaths are always the one’s screeched about the loudest.


A lot of obsessing over culture.....see below.


It wouldn't matter unless you have a vote here. Maybe, in effect, not even then depending on the current trend….



It’s irrelevant anyway. It would be like comparing apples to oranges.




Good for Toronto but I still don’t want to live there.



Here it is:
Culture changes in its own sweet time. It cannot be made to change on command because there would be too many differences of opinion on what it should change to or even if it should change at all. We’re some hard headed little f*ckers down here and I wouldn't want to see that change.


What a relief!
I was so worried.


Can’t I be a liar and a fool both at the same time?


Doesn’t work that way and you’ve even seen it here on WP time and time again. They’ve made their minds up that an inanimate object and/or the average citizen that owns them is the problem. They always have and always will because that is their hard wiring.
The only thing I’ve found to change them is for something to happen to them or theirs that wakes them up to reality. I’ve seen it happen before.


Again, too much Hollywood for you. The impulsive reaching for a gun thingy is almost ultra-rare given the population size and makeup in addition to the national mood right now......
......says the boy who lied about the German pirates.

Inner-city and segregated suburbs and their gangs, yo (who'd have a much lower standard of living). They tried fixing it buy increasing firearm laws in these places, but the murders just kept on happening. Keeping said people in jail for much longer after a certain number of offenses seems to have helped some, but then you have full prisons (pluses and minuses to that).

I read that 75% of murders with a firearm in the US are gang related. That's insane if it's accurate.

Most of the members here would be in countries and states with similar levels of overall crime; there'd be plenty of states in the US with massive rates of firearms ownership that would have a similar homicide rate per 100,000 as the UK, Oz and Canada.

The aforementioned lower standards of living and segregation in the poor suburbs and cities seems like a pretty good reason for why there's a big difference (I mean, just look at Switzerland).

bipartisanship is dead and buried, it went out with button shoes. america is strictly a winner-take-all society and the winners are going to bloody-mindedly insist that it remain that way come hell or high water. you best fortify your own side against the depradations of the red-staters. secession looks better all the time.

I have an idea that will satisfy everyone:

Use rational thinking and examine all the evidence. Pay someone to do it (someone who isn't biased). Get them to come to a conclusion.

Obama has put the CDC ("center of disease control") on it for the US folks. Last time, they didn't find that proposed firearms laws would have much of any effect (IIRC. It was a some time ago that I read it).

Let's see what they come up with this time.

Emotions don't have a say in this.

Maybe try to be serious about the situation for a change?
The mention of gun control as a solution while at the table with people actually being serious about the situation will likely cause them to walk off and for good reason.

Raptor. I'm not suggesting we work together to solve gun violence. I don't think we CAN work together to solve that. But we still have a lot of things we do want to solve. and so I think we can work together to figure out how to move forward as a country, or countries.

Is there a way we can both get what we want. People on the left want the ability to control their environment: industrial regulation, gun control etc. People on the right want individual freedom above all else. These two things can't work in harmony. Our current system is pretty winner take all, and that means that almost half the country will be miserable with what the other slightly more than half is doing.

So, as someone on the side that appears to be losing, the heavily armed mad as hell side, do you have any ideas that we could all agree on that would bring about a resolution to our conflict and that we could all live with.

I am not comparing Canada with the United States, but Canada with other OECD countries. I apologize for failing to be clear on that. Based on 2007 numbers, we rank 13th (of 178) globally for number of firearms owned per 100 residents (30.8). Still only a third of your level (88.8), but then again, no one even comes close to your number. But your point isn't relevant to mine. You're talking about regulation, I'm talking about culture.

Yes, the government has a gun control agenda. But before we can agree that it is misguided, we have to understand the intent behind it. Government's primary responsibility is the safety and well being of its citizens. Firearms violence and the potential for it imposes large costs on government, not only in program spending, but in economic losses that results from people dying while they are still in their economically productive years. From my perspective, that is an entirely proper place for the government to be looking for policy solutions. It touches on issues which are foursquare within government's responsibility. But, I also take the view that gun control is a misguided approach--especially in your country.

It looks to me like you're engaging in confirmation bias. You're paying attention to the rhetoric around firearms, because that's your particular political interest. But how much time is spent trying to raise money for cancer? How many people were running around with "Livestrong" bracelets before the demise of the cult of Lance? How much money is spent daily on the latest weight loss craze in an effort to combat obesity? You think firearms deaths are screeched about the loudest, but I suggest to you that is because curing cancer, tackling obesity and combatting cardiovascular disease are relatively non-controversial. Even when we get into small controversies, such as preventing accidents, they are little more than tempests in a teapot. Look at the culture war that took place in and around the gay community in the 1980's, and you will see something not so very different from what you are participating in now.

Why am I obsessing over culture? Because I firmly believe that this is what lies at the root of the problem, and your discourse is only serving to reaffirm that. Whether I have a vote in these issues or not is irrelevant. I am free to comment, you are free to rebut or refute (as the case may be), and others, many of whom have votes, are free to read. The attempt to undermine my argument on that basis is a classic example of "playing the man, not the ball." It won't work, we see that six times before breakfast in my line of work.

I'm not persuaded that the comparison between Canada and the United States is irrelevant. We are very similar to each other in many ways, and each of us is able to look to the other for valuable lessons on public policy solutions. (And I firmly believe that this works both ways).

At the end of the day, I will not persuade you--and that has never been my intent or my aim. Rather, my aim has been to get your opponents to take a look at their strategic goals. I don't believe that the body politic in the United States is as hard-wired as you would like to believe. I believe that outside of the partisan political system, your body politic has a very resiliant, malleable view, which is readily adaptable. The players on the Washington stage are playing out their story, which must always engage and entertain, because that's the nature of electoral politics in the United States. But in the hearts and minds of individuals, the story is a very different one.

I think you are quite wrong about cultural change. Yes, it's slow. But I believe that it can be made to "change on command." People with a clarity of vision and purpose can work towards and accomplish cultural change. It has been done time and again in your country. Every significant cultural change runs headlong into the opposition of "hard headed little f**kers," but every successful, significant cultural change has, by definition, prevailed over that opposition. Your last remark, about, "the national mood," is the start. It's there. You see it. A "mood" is not enough to effect a paradigm shift. But ever paradigm shift has started with a mood.

Now it may be that your particular brand of "hard headed little f**kers" may prove more resiliant than other opponents to cultural change. You are certainly well financed, motivated, numerous (and well armed). But those qualities, alone, have never been enough to stop change for very long.

[Moved from News and Current Events to PPR]

I think you should start merging some of these threads

Linked here for the benefit of others who have possibly not seen it: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5195523.html#5195523

no suprise here. I heard that some owner of "assault weapons" would rather kill gun grabbers first and hand over their "assault weapons" second. I forgot the source?

I think what they'd be saying is that they'd refuse to hand them over, and if the government tried to force the taking of their property (which they haven't misused) with firearms (the irony just kills), they'd then defend themselves from that. That seems reasonable does it not? They'd die (one due versus a SWAT team? One dead dude and perhaps a couple of killed/injured officers), but it'd be an honorable death as far as I'm concerned, not so much for the SWAT team members.

Whether it's the law or not to give the government power to confiscate property at gunpoint at that time is immaterial in regards to all of law -- some laws are seen as wrong no matter if the majority agree with them. There's laws that are right by all, and there's laws that are right by only a few; the former takes precedent here.

Last edited by Dillogic on 31 Jan 2013, 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Who said they would hand them in at all?

Sigh..............
As much time and effort as live spent on these gunz-r-bad threads since mid-December
I ought to either be getting paid or at least get credit hours.

More “culture” talk.....


Right there we have a difference of opinion on role of government but I already knew we did.
The primary responsibility of government is the overall welfare of the nation as a whole, not to hold our hands and go through our toy boxes and pick out what’s too dangerous for us to have.
It’s overly optimistic (approaching naivety) but my expectation of our legislative bodies is to use some logic and discretion when drafting, proposing, and voting on laws that the rest of us have to live by.
When anyone of them openly entertains the notion that guns are the cause of anything and that the average Joe taxpayer is guilty just by having them my faith in their intentions and judgment sinks.
There are only three reasons for anyone to oppose gun rights:
1. Misinformed
2. Simpleminded.
3. Dictator or control freak issues.

Lawmakers with any of the above don’t belong in that position and for me that goes further than just gun legislation, believe it or not.


To some extent, yes. Guns are my primary aspie obsession, always have been, and I’ve said this before. Even if not for that I’d still have a few for no other reason than my own well-being. I don’t have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen because I’m into firefighting equipment or that I want a fire it’s there for my own well-being just in case.


Obesity is attributed to many more deaths than gun related incidents but I've never heard anyone seriously propose fork and spoon control which makes about as much sense as gun control to the thinking person. Then we go on to other leading causes (cars, cancer, tobacco related, etc…) and still no one gets as wrapped around the axle and nutty as with gun related deaths.


You’ll have to fill me in on that.


My discourse is pissy as it’s always been and complaining about it will only get you more.
Just ask a few of your fellow countrymen that I could mention.
At least I don’t use this forum to piss on Canada the way three of you that I can think of piss on the United States at every opportunity under the pretense of global political interests or whatever.


Uh huh………


This country is so politically polarized that it’s not funny. I don’t know how we got here because the average citizen is neither a right wing or left wing fanatic.


Yes, I’m sure you do....

Nope, forcing change of any kind on people doesn’t work. At best they’ll play the game (go along to get along) but they’ll never really accept change they think is BS.
Things will change as always but it’s unclear as to what will change and how. Find a senior citizen that clearly remembers things past 50 years, someone in their mid-sixties or older. As them if in 1963 they foresaw the world we live in now. They knew there would be technological advances and cultural change but they did not envision the world we live in now.


It won’t stop it but it’ll slow it down.
I personally have no issues with cultural change as long as it’s actually beneficial and not just feel-good fantasy BS. There’s a set of core values I have (not as stringent as you think on some issues) and I won’t deviate from it, period.

MadMonkey wrote:

I don't see how we're on the losing side.


NorthPark wrote:

Yeah, that's the general sentiment and it pretty much matches mine.

Recent polls have shown 87% of Americans favor stricter gun laws. How are you not on the losing side?