14 Killed in Binghamton NY rampage

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Man fears Obama's gun control plans; shoots three cops:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090404/...burgh_shooting

From the article...

Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

A lot more going on that someone just being worried that Obama will ban guns. Which he won't. Not an overall ban at least.

Unless he wants a nationwide riot on his hands.

[pepper24]

The whole gun mentality in the US makes me glad that I live in Canada. I own a few guns but only use them for hunting. The whole 2nd amendment in the US is a complete joke.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Azure

By "gun control", you should mean attempting to keep firearms out of criminal hands (through background checks) and educating users

Yeah, background checks do wonders, just ask the family's of the 32 kids killed at Virginia Tech. Cho passed those checks with flying colors.

The only "gun control" i and many others wish for is no guns at all. and I could give a sh!t if Grandpaw Jones has to turn in his prized German Luger he stole from a dead soldier 65 years ago and i could care less if someone looses their $500.00 .357 either.

I get it, your a gun avacate
Get this, I'm not

[T@T]

Originally Posted by pepper24

The whole gun mentality in the US makes me glad that I live in Canada. I own a few guns but only use them for hunting. The whole 2nd amendment in the US is a complete joke.

As each day passes and more guns are smuggled into Canada I suspect you wont be so glad in the near future.

These were seized in Calgary yesterday.


Police dogs led officers to a silver GMC Safari van, belonging to one of the arrested men, in a parking lot. Hinse said an assault rifle was in plain view on one of the seats.
A further search of the vehicle revealed five sets of body armour, as well as two sawed-off shotguns, a 9-mm handgun and a .40-calibre handgun. All of the weapons were loaded, police said.
Investigators also found an extra change of clothes that they referred to as a "kill kit."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/sto...ly-nguyen.html

[SebC]

Gun control has very little to do with career criminals. It's so that the kid who got picked on in school or the guy who just got fired can't just grab a gun and go when they snap. You won't stop premeditated murders, but you might prevent the spontaneous ones. The whole mob boss thing is a bit of a red herring.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by T@T

Yeah, background checks do wonders, just ask the family's of the 32 kids killed at Virginia Tech. Cho passed those checks with flying colors.

Then make the background checks more stingy.

The only "gun control" i and many others wish for is no guns at all. and I could give a sh!t if Grandpaw Jones has to turn in his prized German Luger he stole from a dead soldier 65 years ago and i could care less if someone looses their $500.00 .357 either.

I get it, your a gun avacate
Get this, I'm not

Yeah, I get it.

You just want to ban guns because you don't like them. Or because you're deluded enough to actually believe that criminals are suddenly going to change their ways, obey the law, and turn in their guns.

Even if you do ban guns.....you will never get rid of gun violence amongst criminals. All you would do is take away a bunch of legally owned firearms that law-abiding citizens own, 99.75% of which are never used in a crime.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by T@T

As each day passes and more guns are smuggled into Canada I suspect you wont be so glad in the near future.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/sto...ly-nguyen.html

Article says absolutely nothing about the guns coming in from the US.

Either way, the only way to get THOSE guns off the streets is with the cops doing exactly what they did there.

We don't live in a 'minority report' world where cops can magically find every single illegal firearm and take them off the streets.

You might want a utopia, but you're never going to live in one.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by SebC

Gun control has very little to do with career criminals. It's so that the kid who got picked on in school or the guy who just got fired can't just grab a gun and go when they snap. You won't stop premeditated murders, but you might prevent the spontaneous ones. The whole mob boss thing is a bit of a red herring.

And its up to the parents to be responsible about the guns they own and lock them up.

The Canadian Firearms Safety Course has a section on that.....and how important it is to prevent rash suicide attempts. You're never going to stop the guy who has planned out a way to kill himself, but you can stop someone who is pissed off, drunk, or something else from killing himself.

By locking the guns up.

Common sense.

I mean, its the same with with Advil. Some kid gets picked on at school, gets all depressed, comes home, and there is a bottle of Advil in the bathroom mirror. Just as easy to take that then it is to shoot himself in the head with dads handgun.

Ban Advil? Or lock Advil up?

[Azure]

Not too mention that you already have a few cases in the US where weapons/explosives are being seized, and there is no known manufacturer.

Meaning that someone on the black market is starting to make their own stuff.

You can't control that.

[T@T]

And in other news, a father in Tacoma snaps and shoots his 5 kids to death

[CaptainCrunch]

I'm not here to preach or lecture.

But banning guns will only create a bigger underground market for illegal fire arms. Its the same argument that people believe that legalizing drugs will end drug crimes. The one factor that people leave out of these ideals is profit.

If you ban guns, the criminals will increase their profits by buying armalite knockoffs from Singapore, or surplus AK-74's from Russia, or hand guns from the states or uzi's from Israel. And they'll sell these illegal and untrackable weapons to every gang member and petty criminal that they can get their hands on. And then these sweethearts who are trying to carve out their own little drug and criminal empires for profit will shut their eye's and squeeze the triggers and kill their targets and some 16 year old girl who got caught in the cross fire or some nice old lady who happened to be walking her dog.

If someone wants a gun ban or no, they'll find a way to get them.

There's money to be made by selling illegal weapons, and if you throw up a ban, your going to have no way of tracking these weapons because they won't be going through a fire arms registry.

The only way that your going to reduce gun crime is if you take the people involved in either selling or smuggling or using these guns for crimes out of society for the protection of society.

The answer isn't to create a untrackable gun market.

At least with the semi legality of guns, you have a percentage of these weapons that are trackable and you can keep track of the owners, and you can prevent some of the dumber criminals from buying them without a back ground check.

But a ban will never work because you'll never get rid of the desire for firearms especially in a day and time when gang activity and violent crime seems to be ramping up.

[flamey_mcflame]

Three responsible and legal gun owners kill 20 people, including 3 police officers in the last two days. And, of course, the numerous others who were injured and those scarred for life. I thought only criminals with illegal arms did these things. Pathetic 2nd amendment. If our government had any courage, we would fine those gun mongers down south every time one of their guns showed up here. USA USA USA. People who have a love affair with guns should always put you on guard. Freaks.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Were you aware that women vote in the United States?

Ummm....yeah I live with one of them.

But in any case...WTF does this even mean?

[transplant99]

Three responsible and legal gun owners kill 20 people, including 3 police officers in the last two days.

These folks were certainly NOT responsible gun owners....hence they wouldnt use them in a crime. Nor do we know if the weapons they used were acquired legally or not.

Not sure what you are getting at.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by flamey_mcflame

Three responsible and legal gun owners kill 20 people, including 3 police officers in the last two days. And, of course, the numerous others who were injured and those scarred for life. I thought only criminals with illegal arms did these things. Pathetic 2nd amendment. If our government had any courage, we would fine those gun mongers down south every time one of their guns showed up here. USA USA USA. People who have a love affair with guns should always put you on guard. Freaks.

3 out of how many gun owners? Wow, you must be some kind of utopian, expecting perfection from just about everything.

How many legal and responsible car owners have killed innocent police officers and pedestrians in the past few days? I'm guessing alot more than 20 people. Well, I guess the solution is to ban all cars.

How many legal and responsible doctors have killed their patients through mis-diagnosis etc...? Probably more than 20. Let's ban doctors.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by flamey_mcflame

Three responsible and legal gun owners kill 20 people, including 3 police officers in the last two days. And, of course, the numerous others who were injured and those scarred for life. I thought only criminals with illegal arms did these things. Pathetic 2nd amendment. If our government had any courage, we would fine those gun mongers down south every time one of their guns showed up here. USA USA USA. People who have a love affair with guns should always put you on guard. Freaks.

I want to make fun of this post some more. It's probably the dumbest thing I've ever read on this message board.

What the heck does this bolded statement above mean? Do we expect the US government to essentially become totalitarian and effectively monitor the actions of every single gunowner in the United States to the level where we could hold their federal government morally and financially culpable for every gun smuggled into Canada by US criminal organizations?

Wow, you've really got a good morally superior delusion going on. Do you get drunk? I don't really drink because a) I don't think it's all that fun to lose control of your senses and b) I know that alcohol ruins and claims many lives.

That said, I don't think we should be fining bars every time some idiot stumbles out their doors and gets behind the wheel.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by peter12

3 out of how many gun owners? Wow, you must be some kind of utopian, expecting perfection from just about everything.

How many legal and responsible car owners have killed innocent police officers and pedestrians in the past few days? I'm guessing alot more than 20 people. Well, I guess the solution is to ban all cars.

How many legal and responsible doctors have killed their patients through mis-diagnosis etc...? Probably more than 20. Let's ban doctors.

Again, we go back to the pros/cons thing I mentioned before.

Clearly the benefits we get out of cars are worth the accidents.
Clearly having doctors is worth the misdiagnosis.
I, and many, many, many others are are not sold that assault rifles are worth the mass murders.

T99: RE: women voting was prohibited by the US constitution.

Azure:
As for tighter gun control, homocide rates were going up and up until strict gun control legislation was passed and then it has been declining....



Major gun control bills have been tightening and tightening access to guns. C-150 in 1969, C-51 in 1977, C-17 in 1991, C-68 in 1995.... so your initial suggestion that we've seen MORE homicides is wrong, your new suggestion that it stays about the same is wrong.. would you like to change your story again?

[transplant99]

T99: RE: women voting was prohibited by the US constitution.

Not completely true...it was a state decision. There was some wording in the constitution that some states felt allowed for men only to vote...but this point is non-applicative to this debate. Also this was a human rights issue as opposed to a civil rights issue that guns fall under.

Less than 1 year ago the US Supreme Court ruled that the banning of handguns was unconstitutional in DC. This fight has been waged many times...and it keeps coming up with blanks.

Here is an excerpt...

3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment . The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

So unless the President/Congress/House and the SC all go against the wishes of the citizens....there will be no amendments to the US constitution as far as the right to bear arms.

Now i agree that there is NO neeed for assault rifles and similar weapons to be available to the average joe.

No problem with the second amendment myself tho...and i hate guns.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Azure:
As for tighter gun control, homocide rates were going up and up until strict gun control legislation was passed and then it has been declining....

Once again you're wrong.

Bill C-71 passed in 1978, and the drop off in homicide rates started to occur 4 years prior to that. Also, a similar decrease and "levelling-off" of homicides rates occurred in the US around the same time. Several researchers, including Alan Gilmour (1993 report of the Auditor General) have noted that there is no statistical evidence to support the claim that homicide rates in Canada decreased "as a result of stricter gun control laws."

From 1946 to 1965 the homicide rate was roughtly 1.1/100,000 people, that being BEFORE any gun control law was passed, and despite tougher regulation in 1969, there was a sharp increase in the homicide rate from 1966-1974, where it then started to drop off, 4 years prior to bill C-51 being passed in 1978. Violent crime also began to show a strong decrease in 1993, despite bill C-68 being passed 2 years later in 1995. Now unless you think criminals could see into the future, the drop in violent crime or homicide rates throughout the country had nothing to do with gun control laws being passed.

The average murder rate between 1970 and 1976 was 2.52, between 1977 and 1983 it rose too 2.67, despite bill C-51 being passed in 1978. Between 1984 and 1990 it was 2.41, between 1991 and 1997 it was 2.23, and yet the only changes made to legislation in 1991 were to the way FACs were handed out.

Between 1998 to 2004 it fell again too 1.82 and in 2007, it rose back up 1.98. The only legislation change made in the past 13 years was in 2006, the government said long-gun owners don't have to pay a registration fee anymore. I still believe you have to register your firearms, but there is a way to do it online for free.

Not exactly opening the floodgates to increase the murder rate once again.

would you like to change your story again?

Maybe you ought to change your story, since the rises/fall in homicides show no link to stronger anti-gun laws being passed.

Like you 'graph' so clearly points out, ever since tough 'gun control' laws have been passed in 1968, the homicide rate has risen at times, fallen at other times, but it has NOT fallen to the rate it was BEFORE the passing of the first gun control laws in 1968.

In fact, like I pointed out above, the rate prior to the first gun laws in 1968 was 1.1/100,000 people. We have yet to see that again, as the rate has NEVER fallen below 1.5/100,000. Meaning since 1969 when those STRONG anti-gun laws were passed, 400 more people have been killed per year by homicide than prior to 1969, when no gun laws were present. Some years as many as 1,500 to 2,000 MORE people have been killed, DESPITE all those strict gun laws. So, in those 40+ years your graph points out, lets say roughly 500 MORE people were killed per year in those 40 years than prior to 1964, where the homicide was MUCH lower, thats almost 20,000 MORE killed despite the STRONG gun laws.

Look at how much violent crime rate has increased since 1962, DESPITE all those tough gun laws. It is still roughly 1% higher than it was BEFORE all those tough gun laws were passed.




Clearly pointing out that tough control has nothing to do with the homicide rates. Their rise/fall has NO coorelation too gun control.

[driveway]

I understand why the 2nd amendment was placed in the US constitution in the first place, and I also understand why people feel so strongly about keeping it.

I just think that the US would be better off if it had never been.

Since it does exist, implementing strict gun control at this point is a little like closing the barn doors after all the horses have gone, it's been burned to the ground and a Wal Mart built in its place.

Personally, I prefer living in a country which has significant obstacles to gun ownership, simply because it naturally reduces the amount of guns in the country.