Why should law abiding gun owners be punished for the actions of some?
Because the actions of some are leading to violent murders and accidental deaths at an alarming rate.
Yes, law abiding gun owners would unfairly lose their rights if stricter gun control/bans were implemented. However I believe that is worth it in return for fewer innocent lives being taken by guns.
This is a defense? If you remove the people who accidentally died by gunfire, it looks better? 1/3 of gun deaths were homicides, what were the rest? Surely they must all be homicides because guns are only a problem when someone is purposely going to kill someone, and even then, they are the solution as well. 2/3 of people killed by guns were done so accidentally, but still must have been gangs or something right? Somehow?
Oh but car deaths! Those things that almost everyone has an uses for getting around? Those things that we come in contact with everyday that we license and test people to drive, that must be registered for the express purpose that we know who owns it if it's stolen or used in a crime? Those things that are a constant hazard, that we walk in front of, ride around, and are controlled by potentially unreliable light systems or faulty onboard computers? The fact that gun-related deaths are even close (let alone above) car deaths is completely ridiculous. Car deaths SHOULD be well above the gun death rate.
One should remove the vehicle fatalities that were "murders" and compare the % change to the % change with gun murders. I assume it will be different orders of magnitude.
%change? Dude. They only teach the Lord's math in the deep south.
"If you have 300 bullets that travel at 700 fps with a fire rate of 10 bullets/second, how many minorities can you take down *cough* defend yourself from *cough* before you run out of ammo?"
So what's the solution here? Let's apply the same argument. Ban alcohol. Sure, it's going to impact a significant amount of responsible consumers of alcohol but in return, fewer innocent lives are being taken by drunk drivers.
Do you think the tradeoff is worth it?
Probably because we have laws designed to prevent drinking and driving and we keep seeing a reduction in the prevalence of drunk-driving with every successive generation, indicating these laws are effective. And actually the trade-off is deaths due to drunk-driving vs. deaths due to drunk-driving + the violence associated with prohibition.
A firearm is a tool as well and just like all tools, a subset of the population will misuse that tool. If you look at the 2013 numbers, vehicle fatalities were 10.345/100,000; firearm fatalities were 10.64/100,000. Almost identical. It goes down even further to 3.55/100,000 if you only count homicide.
Firearms have plenty of legal, recognized purposes. Hunting, target shooting, competition, self defense (yes, even in Canada) and collecting. All legal and all uses that occur more frequently than misuse.
Like all tools though firearms have have their costs measured against their benefit to society, and guns, like fishing rods or pogo sticks, have no benefit at all to 97 percent of society, if you could take away every gun in Canada outside of the remote north it would have no effect what so ever.
Cars, while responsible for massively more deaths, are also absolutely indispensable to everyone in Canada, they deliver all our food, they enable us to live in the suburbs.
Without cars Canada would cease to function at all, where as only a handful of Canadians would even notice if every gun disappeared.
all this gun discussion is well and good but misses a key question. What makes people decide, with alarming frequency in U.S. particularly, that killing a bunch of innocent people is a good way to address their grievances against women, blacks, employers, etc.?
If I recall correctly, on the same day as the Newtown massacre, there was a guy in...I think Japan? He went through a school and stabbed a bunch of people.
No one died.
There are crazy people, there are evil people, there are hateful people all over the globe. But in the US people have really easy access to firearms and it makes it way too easy for those kinds of people to injure and kill others.
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Originally Posted by Quincy Egg
Tell that to Chicago or New York.
Until Chicago or New York have a massive wall surrounding them, and police guarding all roads in and out of the cities at all times, a city-wide gun ban means absolutely nothing.
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Originally Posted by Quincy Egg
If you remove homicides from gangs, America is at the same level as Belgium as far as gun related homicides are concerned.
America doesn't have a gun problem, it has a gang problem.
What about all of the accidental gun deaths? What about the toddlers who kill themselves or their siblings or friends accidentally?
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Originally Posted by Quincy Egg
Why should law abiding gun owners be punished for the actions of some?
Why should I have to pay for car insurance because there are crappy drivers?
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Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay
This is a line of thought I see many people implement in this thread. Lets apply it to something else, an activity that far more people do compared to firearm ownership.
According to MADD Canada, as of 2014 4 People are killed and 175 injured every single day.
So what's the solution here? Let's apply the same argument. Ban alcohol. Sure, it's going to impact a significant amount of responsible consumers of alcohol but in return, fewer innocent lives are being taken by drunk drivers.
Do you think the tradeoff is worth it?
Ignore the idea of a ban. It's not going to happen in the US, not for a very long time, if ever.
But let's look at alcohol. Let's look at cars. Let's look at the combination of the two.
Alcohol sales are restricted, there are laws that prevent underage people from obtaining alcohol. There are laws that prevent a bartender from serving someone who already appears intoxicated. There are laws to help prevent abuse of alcohol. Does it stop all of the problems? No, of course not. But we still have laws in place.
You can't operate a car without a license. To get that license you have to pass a test to prove that you know how to drive that vehicle. You have to register that vehicle every year. You have to carry insurance on that vehicle. There are speed limit laws, various traffic laws that prevent people from driving that vehicle in whatever manner they see fit. Does it stop all car accidents? No, of course not. But we still have those laws in place because it limits the injuries and deaths that are inherent with driving around giant hunks of metal at high rates of speed on a regular basis.
Combine the two. You cannot operate a vehicle if you've been drinking. There are strict DUI laws. If you're caught drinking and driving you can lose your license temporarily. Does it stop all drunk drivers? No, of course not. But we still have laws regulating it.
No one is saying gun regulations will stop all gun deaths. No one is saying firearm homicides will stop happening entirely. That's not how laws work in any way, in any country on earth.
But laws prevent some tragedies. Laws lower the rate of vehicle related deaths. Laws lower the rate of DUIs and drunk driving deaths.
Laws would lower the rate of gun-related homicide. Laws would lower the rate of accidental gun deaths. Laws would limit incidences like this one. How many lives need to be saved in order to make laws worthwhile? If you can enact basic, logical gun control legislation and it saves, say, 1000 lives a year in this country, is it worth it? Pretty sure the friends and family of those 1000 people would say it is indeed.
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In the United States, there are 89 guns for ever 100 people. In Canada, there are 31 for every 100. Canada experiences less than 1/4 the number of gun-related deaths per capita than the United States.
NRA wingnuts can cry all they want. Gun bans work.
And of that 1/4.. 65% of those deaths come from illegal smuggled guns from the USA.
I'd guess that people in all countries have similar impulses, they just don't have easy access to the weapons needed to do it.
Dead wrong.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
There's gotta be some truth to that, though right? It may not be completely correct but it can't possibly be dead wrong, imo.
Yeah, you are right. Hyperbole did not serve me well there.
I will just say that the politically/racially/religiously/hate charged rhetoric that permeates every aspect of American media and culture is the single biggest contributor to the insanity that is running rampant here. I believe that it is unique to my country among 1st world nations.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
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Might not be the thread for it but how phenomenal are the people of Charleston and particularly those directly effected by this? The reaction has been incredible to watch.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
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Might not be the thread for it but how phenomenal are the people of Charleston and particularly those directly effected by this? The reaction has been incredible to watch.
The United States made a choice hundreds of years ago to consider the right to firearms inherent and inalienable. There were at the time very good reasons for this choice and, while those reasons have changed over time, there are still some fairly good rational arguments why this right should remain.
There is, of course, a consequence to this choice and that consequence is 30,000 deaths a year.
The United States continues to value the right to arms above the value of 30,000 deaths, and that's a choice the United States is entitled to make. If the people of the US decide that 30,000 people are more valuable than the right to arms, then the place to start - the only avenue really - to reducing that number is a repeal of the 2nd amendment.
People who are passionate about gun control in the US should only be talking about repeal of the 2nd, no other measure makes any kind of sense, nor would it have long-term impact.
That this position is politically unpopular is absolutely true. However, simply because it's unpopular doesn't make it wrong or pointless. It is where the discussion should begin for people who care more about 30,000 lives than the right to bear arms.
