GUN DEBATE

The arguement that criminals will have guns whether they're banned or not is a retarded one. Yes, hardcore criminals will have guns whether or not they're banned but hardcore criminals don't commit petty housebreaks and burglary, they stick to more profitable stuff like smuggling and bank robberies and generally in those lines of criminality you tend to come up against armed guards or the Navy, who generally have much bigger guns than you.

If guns are illegal than your average burglar isn't going to have one. Sure, if you disturb them you might still get a kicking but you'll probably survive that. If he's packing heat and you come down waving a shooter around, the chances of someone ending up dead are exponentially higher. Also, I'd love to see some statistic on just how often someone breaks into someone else's house while they're in in America. Do you guys have fucking shit burgalrs or what? The one thing English housebreakers avoid all else is going into a house when somebody's at home. How many crimes have actually ever been averted because a homeowner had a gun? I'd suggest that the figure is pretty damn close to zero. Also, if someone is in your house with a gun, isn't getting out your own gun just gonna make them more likely to shoot you? Correct me if I'm wrong but most criminals would rather face a burglary conviction than a murder charge, they're breaking in to your house to steal shit, not kill people. Do you guys not have insurance over there? Are your possesions really so important that you want to risk a shoot out in your own home to defend them?

The whole "self-defense" thing is basically bullshit and I think that deep down you all know it. Americans want to own guns out of some machismo, penis substitute need. I AM MAN, I HAVE BIG GUN TO SHOOT BAD GUYZ IN MY HOUSE. It's the same sort of thing that drives blokes to have fights outside kebab shops after the pub over here, only people rarely get killed in friendly punch-ups. That gun and knife crime is on the rise over here is merely a symptom of kids these days being a bunch of pussies who don't know how to fight properly and the chances of getting shot by someone breaking into your house are still basically nil in this country.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

Based on what exactly?

It's a loaded argument - you know it's purely anecdotal and there's no reliable way to compile statistics on it, so you have every bit as much chance of being dead wrong as you are of right.

You can sit here and offer your asinine arguments of Americans merely wanting guns out of some kind of vanity, but I reject that argument out of hand. The most fundamental of individual rights is the right to property - not only to just own it, but to be able to defend it, even with deadly force if the need arises. You don't have to agree with it - hell, I don't want you to, but don't you dare sit there and try to say that I'm a pussy because I value the right to defend myself and my property with a firearm.

I'm not calling you a pussy for it, I'm calling you an idiot for it. If you get burgled and the person is retarded enough to do it while you're at home and they happen to have brought a gun with them, if you do as they say, you'll lose a bunch of stuff and at worst, get a smack in the face. After a short period of having no stuff, the insurance company pay out and you get brand new stuff, normally better than you had in the first place given that only fucking idiots insure their stuff for what it's actually worth.

If instead you pull out your own gun, there's a distinct possibility that either you or the guy might end up firing. Let's face it, if someone's desperate enough for money to rob a house when someone's home they're possibly desperate enough to actually use the gun they're carrying. Now if you're lucky, nobody gets shot and the dude gets away with whatever he grabbed before you disturbed him. There's a possiblity you'll hit him meaning you have a dead dude in your house and blood all over your stuff, do insurance companies pay out for damage done to furniture by you blowing someone's brains out all over it? I honestly don't know, that kinda thing doesn't happen here. If you're really unlucky though either he shoots you first or he misses and hits a member of your family, the cops get called, he panics, takes a hostage, the whole thing escalates and everyone ends up dead.

I know that's an extreme situation but surely it just makes more sense to run the very slim risk of confronting someone in your home and losing all your stuff which you can easily replace and keep your health in the process against the same risk of meeting someone in your house only with an added risk of you or your family ending up dead in the process?

For me that's a no-brainer. I honestly don't believe that anyone I found in my house would be there to hurt people, they just want to steal stuff and I think that introducing your own gun into the situation is going to increase the risk of someone getting hurt, not decrease it.

Sure, protect your stuff but at the end of the day, it's only stuff and you can get that back really, really easily. I just can't imagine a situation where having a gun at home is in anyway helpful or a good idea for self defence purposes.

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That's true. The right to remain stupid is one that Americans hold dear.

I figured that as the case had been decided by the courts, the amount of input GFF members could offer as to the constitutional right to own a gun would be pretty limited and this would be a hell of a short thread without some people discussing the wider issues of gun ownership. Do you not worry though that legislation in your country is so tightly bound by the often vague wording of a twohundred year old document with no room for the application of common sense? I mean, I know it's your right to own a gun but what would it take for people to start accepting that maybe in the context of modern society, had the constitution been written now they probably wouldn't have put that bit in and as such, clinging to that as the sole arguement against banning firearms is pretty dumb?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by LZ

I don't even know how you reached the conclusion that pulling a gun out will make an intruder more likely to shoot at you. The common idea is that pulling a gun out will make someone shit themselves and leave because they don't want to die. Have they run psychological tests or something? Are there stats that show that most people will respond violently to a gun? If not then well that's just something you made up, and not really more valid than the philosophy of guns as a deterrent.

My point there was that to burgle someone's house while they're at home suggests a certain level of desperation in the first place. If the burglar doesn't have a gun themselves, they're going to run away when they realise you're there. Unless you're tiny and timid, a gun isn't really going to help your cause any. If they have got a gun and you pull yours, do you really think that someone who has broken in to your house, knowing that you're in there is going to walk away just because you pulled a gun? I'd suggest that they're far more likely to call your bluff or just shoot you.

Unless I'm very wrong and violent house breaking is far more common in the US than it is here (Which it may well be, I admit that), I just don't see the situation where you're in your house at the same time as a burglar and your very presemce isn't enough to scare them off happening so often you need a lethal weapon to protect yourself. I'm simply stating that in my opinion, people getting all pissy because they can't keep guns at home are misguided as in my opinion I can't ever see a time when it'd be beneficial. It is my opinion that from a practical point of view, a gun is not a useful or cost effective way of protecting your property and that maintaining a constitutional right to own weapons that can kill people very easily with little or no skill or personal involvement on the basis of needing them to protect your property is silly as the social costs outweigh the individual benefits. I might not be able to kill someone who's sneaking around my house stealing my stuff without getting within arms reach, sure, but kids round here don't have to go through metal detectors on their way into school and the schools don't need early warning systems to let everyone know when a crazed gunman is on a shooting spree because when kids here get all emo and pissed off with life, their parents don't have a load of guns lying around the house.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm willing to be proved wrong but I'm fairly sure the instances of people getting killed by fire extinguishers going off accidentally or kids using their parent's fire extinguishers to massacre their school mates are pretty few and far between. What I'm suggesting is that the risks of someone getting unintentionally killed by a gun you keep loaded in your bedside cabinet outweigh the benefits of keeping a loaded firearm in your bedside cabinet in case some crazed maniac bursts into your house at such a time as you happen to be upstairs in reach of your gun.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Meth

Pang... so based on some unreferenced hypothetical statistical data that you have yet to present, is it your argument that the legislature should abandon the idea that citizens just might be able to engage in safe practice with dangerous tools on the basis of idiot-proofing life for all the "nutty people" who are accident prone?

If that's genuinely your opinion, I assume you're against the international community trying to stop Iran building nuclear enrichment plants? Why shouldn't they be allowed to produce nuclear power when it's only the crazy people in power who'd want to make atomic bombs with the leftovers after all.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

also at least we have a constitution booya

We're currently in the process of having one nobody wants forced on us. Thank God for the Irish voting against it.

I agree that crime in the US is far diferent and more hardcore than it is here. I just don't think owning a gun is a really practical way to stop it is all. If you own a gun, you're not going to carry it around the house are you? It'll be stashed somewhere, most likely near the bed. In order to be able to use your gun to stave off wouldbe home invaders, you need to be in your bedroom when they home invade. This would suggest that it's likely to be night time which again would suggest that you'll be tired, whereas they'l be wide awake and buzzing off their crime spree. You're coming downstairs, not knowing where in the house the crims are, they're hiding downstairs (Unless you're some kind of stealth ninja, everyone makes some noise getting out of bed and if you're a ninja you don't need a gun) knowing exactly where you're coming from. If they're going to run, they'll do so before you appear, gun or no gun. If they're gonna kill you, they're gonna kill you or disarm you long before you get a shot off.

Having a gun to defend yourself at home doesn't save you from a ganster's stray bullets in a drive-by, it doesn't stop people breaking into your house when you're out (Which is when the vast majority of burglarys happen) and I'd suggest, using the example I just made, that they achieve fuck all when it comes to getting people out of your house when you're there.

Yes, I can see how they might provide peace of mind to paranoid fucks who've not thought it through properly living in lawless townships but I chalenge anyone to give a reasonable, realistic, theoretical situation where having a gun at home in America will in any way help you prevent loss of property or injury.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by LZ

The '75 Gun Ban didn't seem to have much of an effect.

Except for the number of violent crimes, burlaries and murders falling for the next three years, unless I'm reading the chart wrong.

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Originally Posted by LZ

They fell, but not by very much at all and they came back up. So, not much of an effect.

In the grand scheme of things, there weren't that many people in the World Trade Centre but they still increased airport security after someone flew some planes into it.

Hitting a kid at 30mph apparently kills something like 35% less kids than hitting them at 35mph. Given how rarely people actually run over kids, does that mean they ought to increase the speed limits in urban areas by 5mph so people who like driving faster can do so?

I know you can't foresee every eventuality and I know that people around the world will still get killed in all maner of unfortunate ways every day but surely, putting legislation in place that will probably save some lives and will probably not lead to a wholesale surge in armed robberies is a win-win situation. Except, as Brady said, guns are fun, even if the laws that are there only permit you to have it at home and look at it, until such time as a gang of uzi toting crack heads kicks your front door in and starts raping your daughter.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Watts

Don't mess with Paine.

Since the Constitution is mostly a agreement between the States and the Federal Government. (To form a more perfect Union) The Bill of Rights does not give legal rights to the People. Nor is it suppose to. Rather it's meant to recognize the natural rights of the People. Which is why the US Constitution is considered a social contract. Gun ownership being one of those natural rights.

Tom Paine on why the Bill of Rights doesn't give you any legal rights.



In other words, if you interpret that the bill of rights is giving us constitutional rights, a privilege is being created. Which can always be negotiated. Natural rights are non-negotiable. They do not fade in the face of oppression or disappear in the midst of tyranny. To make this issue about personal security is laughable or downright pathetic. Though I suppose the Supreme Court was just trying to dodge some legal bullets.

Tom Paine lived in Lewes, where I live, for many years. He owned a bookshop and by all accounts got drunk a lot. Hardly the sort of person you want to pay any attention to...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by LZ

You'd have a stronger point if the crime rates following the ban actually stayed down. There WAS a slight decrease in crime, but it came right back up! What I'm trying to say here is that a solution to the crime problem should at least be long-lasting, even if its effect is small. The gun ban had a small, temporary effect, so it has been demonstrated that (in D.C. at least) it isn't a viable solution.

I would focus gun control legislation more towards being able to obtain a gun (background checks, mental stability checks, etc).

Or put a massive tax on bullets and price people out of ammunition. Or even better, make selling guns illegal. Doesn't prevent your right to bear arms and I'm no expert but I don't think the constitution includes a right to sell or buy arms does it?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

It'd probably be best if everybody stopped fantasizing about what could go right or wrong. Paranoia isn't going to get us anywhere, and paranoid fantasies should not be the basis of policy.

The fact is that guns have deterred crime. Guns have also made people the target of crime. Guns can save lives and also be completely useless. The core of this debate concerns cultural values, and the political reality is that despite the majority of Americans who do not mind gun control, the few that care about it are the only ones who consider it a voting issue.

So I guess Americans just love guns FUCK YEAH


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This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Brady, although technically it would appear that you can't legally defend yourself over here, in reality, if you're attacked, no policeman is going to arrest you for fighting back and defending yourself. What they would object to though is after you've knocked the guy out, stamping on his head.

I think looking at pure crime figures is a little blinkered too. Although it's true that the blanket ban on handguns had little real effect on the violent crime figures, we've had little in the way of school massacres since Dunblaine and very few random killing rampages. The press here are jumping all over every story of a kid getting stabbed or shot but the truth is, that's only really happening in really, really shitty bits of London, Liverpool and Manchester and for all the parents anguish about their cherubic little murdered angel, you can pretty much guarantee that for a wannabe gangster to have stabbed or shot them they must have been up to something.

Yes, illegal gun culture is a growing problem here but not nearly to the extent that the press would have us all believe. As several people have said already here, you're significantly more likely to get killed by an uninsured driver than to get shot by an unlicensed gun.

Pang, owning an unlicenced gun isn't referred to in crime terms as owning an unlicensed gun, it's possesion of a lethal weapon and lands you in jail for realistically, a couple of years, whereas driving an untaxed car merely gets you banned from driving for a year or so and your car gets crushed.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

If you're that bad a shot that you need an automatic assault rifle to hit anything, perhaps you should think about getting a new hobby.

I was speaking idiomatically.