Ah come on, don't get this thread closed too.
Printable View
Ah come on, don't get this thread closed too.
Ah come on, don't get this thread closed too.
Giving up rights that you then proceed to say can't be given up isn't really much of a sacrifice. You really think that there is no chance that giving up guns wouldn't remotely reduce the odds of school massacres? I pity your country. :no:
Americans killing each other doesn't upset me in the slightest. I'm not a fan of the accent and there's nothing Americans do that others can't. Kill yourselves however you want :thumbsup:
In America I doubt a ban would be affective. I'm sure I said somewhere about guns being an American solution as well as a problem, and about the "frontier spirit"... Oh, it was this thread...
Some people treat recurrent alcoholics thinking that somehow they'll change them eventually. Others realise that they are so addicted to it they'll never give up their own brand of death. Most doctors eventually reach the second camp.
~:smoking:
OH NO THEY'RE CORRUPTING THE KING'S ENGLISH THEY ARE SUBHUMAN.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
Queen's English...
~:smoking:
No guns were used on September 11th, 2001 in any of the hijackings. None were used in 1995 at Oklahoma City. Heck, Charles Manson and his gang didn't use guns. I guess the answer is in addition to guns, we need to ban boxcutters, lawn fertilizer and kitchen knives?
So, having an airbag in your car is because you're 'scared' and not because you simply want to prepare for what might happen?Quote:
Originally Posted by doc_bean
You know, it seems to me that all these anti-gunners have to acknowledge, deep in their minds, that a good person with training could have stopped this. But they don't want to have to deal with that truth, so they pour out all sorts of accusations and innuendos against people who might carry guns for protection. These usually make no sense and our based off ignorant assumptions by people who don't use or carry firearms.
CR
Can you use a gun to open boxes, fertilize your lawn, or chop celery?Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
Just a question, without expressing any ordeal whatsoever, it's merely out of curiosity:
How to buy a gun in the USA? Do you need to have a certain age? Do you have to show any ID? Do you have to take tests (psychological tests, physical tests)? Is there a waiting period, I mean, you go in, express your intention to buy a gun, choose the gun and then you have to wait for a certain period, so that the shopkeeper can get you checked (does the guy has a "violent past", criminal record, is he under some kind of treatment etc etc...) or do you go in, show the ID, buy the gun and go out within 15 minutes?
So basically, my question is: how easy is it to get a gun in the USA, legally? Are there procedures and if so, are they complicated and what do they involve? Is there a big difference between the several states? Please, enlighten this ignorant European.
No, but you don't really NEED to open boxes, fertilize your lawn or chop celery, you just want to. Why should your selfish desires mean that I have to life in an unsafe world? Just get the government to do those things for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Goofball
I don't know anyone who'll list 'has an airbag' as a criterium for picking a car.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
I'll acknowledge it if it makes you happy :2thumbsup:Quote:
You know, it seems to me that all these anti-gunners have to acknowledge, deep in their minds, that a good person with training could have stopped this.
Now, will you acknowledge that if the shooter didn't have a gun (legal or illegal) he would have probably killed a lot less people ?
Having just bought a gun myself, I think I can help.Quote:
Originally Posted by AndresTheCunning
There are basically two classes of firearms : machine guns (those that can shoot full auto, along with some shotguns that cause certain legislators to wet their panties) and others. Others are broken up into long guns (rifles and shotguns) and pistols. Rifles may be similar to their full-auto counterparts, but they can only fire semi-automatic.
In most states to buy a long gun you must be 18+ and need only go to a store that sells them (this store is licensed by the Feds and can get closed down for sloppy business practices). You can look and feel various guns. After choosing one, you inform the owner, and they bring out paperwork for you to sign. You fill out various boxes with your names, age, driver's license, physical characteristics, and state that you have not broken any law that would prevent you from owning a gun, that you live in the US legally, that you aren't a fugitive from justice, haven't been committed to a mental institution, etc.
The owner takes this info and does a quick background check with the FBI (takes less than five minutes). If you pass, you can buy the gun and carry it out with you. If not, the owner might delay you until the cops arrive.
For pistols, you have to be 21 to buy one from a store, and some states have waiting periods (usually less than a week).
If I wanted to spend the money, I could go and buy a semi auto AR-15 and have it today.
This holds true for most states.
In some, however, you are restricted from many guns, or you have to have a 'Firearms Owner ID card' or you have to get a temporary permit from the state to buy certain guns. These states (New Jersey, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, etc.) are in the minority. Some have really stupid laws - New Jersey bans tube fed .22 rifles (which the state court said are 'dangerous offensive weapons' because they hold 15 .22 bullets and not 9).
Buying machine guns requires a whole lot of money (thousands per gun) and time (half a year plus to get licensed) and paperwork.
EDIT:
If he had no other weapon, yes. But he could have gotten several containers of gasoline and possibly killed even more. Given his mental state, I don't think not being able to get a gun would have stopped him from trying to hurt people.Quote:
Now, will you acknowledge that if the shooter didn't have a gun (legal or illegal) he would have probably killed a lot less people ?
Also, here's a link to a story about the 1966 Austin massacre - were people were saved by citizens shooting back at the attacker:
http://www.memoryarchive.org/en/Univ...6,_Buck_Wroten
Crazed Rabbit
Timothy McVeigh killed more people, a lot more, with no gun. Nothing but lawn fertilizer and a rented truck. Should we ban those as well?Quote:
Originally Posted by doc_bean
Thank you CR :bow:
Hi doc, of course you're correct, he would have had to resort to bombs or low-tech weapons. Whether he would have killed more or fewer people is unknowable.Quote:
Originally Posted by doc_bean
It's not a realistic question in the U.S.A., though. We've had the right to bear arms for hundreds of years, and taking them out of circulation would not be practical. Whether you like it or not, we have to go forward accepting that guns are a part of our culture. Even if some politician wanted to commit political suicide by ramming through a total ban on firearms, there are so many extant that such a ban would be meaningless. All you would do is make a lot of hunters very, very grumpy.
For what it's worth, the shooter had already been put into psychiatric care, and was known to be a danger. Hindsight is lovely, isn't it?
Poor argument, Don.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
My point was that there are many things in life that offer danger as well as utility.
My view is that handguns (I'm pretty much okay with long guns, as long as they don't fire 600 rounds per minute) do not offer sufficient utility to offset the danger they present by simply being available to the average joe. In essence, I don't believe there is a net benefit to society for handguns to be owned privately. Whereas with lawn fertilizer, boxcutters, and kitchen knives (to use your examples), I believe there is a net benefit.
I understand that you and CR disagree with me on that. Your opinion is that there is a net benefit to society in private handgun ownership. And that's what the whole gun control argument really comes down to. Unfortunately for both sides, there really is no way to accurately quantify that net benefit or deficit to prove either point of view.
Exactly. That guy at the olympics wounded 100+ people with a pipe bomb. If Cho didn't have a gun and wanted to kill people he could have made 4 or 5 and chucked them into the cafeteria.
Most of the gun deaths in the US are suicides and a lot of the others and from gang wars as a result of the war on drugs.
To be honest, the difference is probably linked to the gun culture. You live in a society were guns are (percived?) to be needed, while we are not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
This tragedy would probably been stopped earlier, at the cost of generally more gun incidents on campuses around the US, with guns being legal on campus.
But possibly with the percivence of the guns. I'm not sure how common it is, but guns seems to be much, much more commonly seen as the last defence between me and the evils in the world in the US, than in the rest of the western world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
Granted it's not a causation, but a side-effect of the causation.
I'm more interested in why the "lone and depressed student revenging on the world by going down in guns and blazing glory on campus"-syndrome is much more common in the US compared to the rest of the world. While easy access to guns makes it easier and bloodier, it's not the cause of it.
I know a German case outside the US, but that's it.
I was just trying to make the point that guns make killing easy, sure you do a lot of damage otherwise, but guns are convient for killing. Would he have bothered making a bomb ? There's a reason less people are killed by bombs than by guns (outside the middle east at least)Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
EDIT: I'd like to add that I'm radically anti-gun, but I think the pro-gun side is tends to be a little too extreme and sometimes seems to defy simply logic. I also don't think gun culture is necessarily related to the availability of guns, others have mentioned Canada, but in Europe too it is/used to be pretty easy to get a gun, much easier than most people realize at least. Maybe not automatics (seriously, for hunting ? for self defense ? who needs those ?) but at least hunting rifles.
Rory, Americans killing each other does upset me and quite a bit too. Don't let your frustration about gun toting maniacs unaccustomed to the loftiness of received pronunciation get the better of you.
Besides, Americans don't need your cynicism, they need your love. ~;p
Thanks for that link. And yes, I do believe that if more guns would've been carried by students on monday there would've been less deaths at VT. I'm fairly sure of it indeed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
But. One in 10000 americans gets killed by firearms each year. At Virginia Tech, 'population' 30000, this would mean 3 deaths per year. So the benefits of there having been guns on monday would've been offset already within a decade. And that is where this 'self-defense' pro-gun argument goes wrong. All things considered, guns cost innocent lives, even if they save some at some instances. It's the net benefit to society debate again, but we won't agree on the numbers.
Eh, not really as convenient as a container of gasoline you chuck into a crowded room.
CR
Well, close, but CR and I would argue that there is a benefit to the individual to have the right to bear arms. In so far as said individual has done nothing to forfeit that right, the society has no right to strip them of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Goofball
It all stems from the "Does society answer to the individual" or "vice-versa" view of society. As somebody who holds the former to be valid, I frequently get told "well, you don't 'need' to protect yourself". Well, sure. I don't need my own house, but I'm not ready to turn that over to society yet either. Society doesn't gain any value from my right to ownership of personal property. But that doesn't automatically grant society the authority to strip individuals the right to own private property.
My point wasn't as poor as you seem to think. If our rights are based on our ability to either 1) prove an irreplacable need for said item or act or 2) our ability to argue the positive benefit for society that our 'right' holds, a lot of 'rights' you hold dear are going to go right out the window.
And again, I'm actually not trying to make 2nd Ammendment arguments today. This isn't about my right to own a gun today. I'm taking a pragmatist view and saying prove to me that taking them away will make me any safer? It's my belief that given the way America currently is, it will make me much less safer, overall.
Can you conceal a container of gasoline large enough to immolate 30 people in your underwear?Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
This is rather interesting. I never looked at it this way. Are you arguing that there is a net benefit to society in banning guns, yet there is a personal benefit to allowing them? And that your individual rights should not be infringed upon in this respect, regardless of any net benefit to society?Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
And even if you're not, let's for the sake of argument assume that there is a net benefit to society in banning guns, yet there is a personal benefit to allowing them. Would yours, or anybody else's position change?
There's some interesting Game Theory in this.
Just to support your point. The 2nd amendment is unnecessary and even undesirable in Britain, we prefer the state to organise things so we don't have to worry about everyday safety. However, America is not Britain. Even if the 2nd amendment is ditched altogether, the social conditions may not translate into the general security which our gun laws allow us. The "gun nuts" may actually be right in American conditions, just as the "wimps" may be right in our conditions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
Well, by that reasoning everyone has the right to bear nuclear arms.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
The rest of your argument was pretty sound.
Well, not to play too clever by half, it all depends on what defintion of society you use. If we mean us, the collective population, then no. Society actually has an interest in favoring it's law abiding citizens, and allowing them to protect themselves from it's deviants. But if you define society as the government or other ruling party, then yes, absolutely. In order to rule it's people more effectively, the government derives two benefits from a disarmed populus: 1) the people are totally dependent on the government for their very lives 2) there is no hope of rebellion, as the government is armed while the larger body politic is not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat
The Tutsis had a very vested interest in seeing the Hutuus disarmed. Does that mean the individual Hutuu was selfish for not complying with the rules the Tutsis enacted?
But yes, to answer your basic question, in so far as my individual rights do not impede the rights of any other individual, unless society can prove categorically that they need to restrict my rights, they have no authority to do so. It is this school of legal thought that my nation's laws were supposedly founded on, but we're really only paid lip service to it, and not even very well recently.
it has precedent, lone and depressed student see's this on tv and thinks, look at all the news coverage and attention that kid gets, i want it too... it gets more coverage in the US than anywhere else, because it happened in the USQuote:
Originally Posted by Ironside
America has got a more pro-gun culture than elsewhere, and that means that they are more liely to know how to shoot a gun, and feel less "uncomfortable" using them.
American society perhaps contributes to this by alienating individuals, but that is'nt unique to the US...
--> i dont think the legalisation of guns is really relevant to this anyway, if someone really wants to do such a thing, then they would have little trouble getting the guns illegally...
:2thumbsup:
I think that it is better to have a record of gun purchases, then ban guns and then have one pop up, and you didn't know it was there.
You could carry alot of things in your pockets (or jeans).
The man could have locked the dorm doors with chains, tossed in some gasoline in the bottom floor, then flicked in a match. That would immolate at least a hundred+ if it was early morning (1-4)
What do you guys think about stricter requirements for owning a gun, say psychological testing that would have disqualified Cho?