Gun Control

[Jazzy]

We use firearms for self-defense in preference to less effective tools. The need for effective, capable equipment is not unique to self-defense. For example, no one uses 1986 vintage computers and few people drive 1968 cars. No one claims that access to modern computers should be restricted to deter hackers or that prohibiting new car models would reduce the number of deliberate hit-and-run accidents.

People who wish you defenseless often claim that effective defensive rifles and shotguns have no legitimate sporting use. Would they consider defense of your family from an attack to be un-sporting? Remind them that the concept of a sporting use comes from their spiritual forebears, the Nazis. Those thugs determined that trying to stay out of a concentration camp was not a legitimate use of arms, while hunting women and children for sport was.



The current, all-inclusive catch phrase is assault weapon. These days it is used to describe any gun that the thugs in office wish to ban. For instance, in California, even Olympic style target pistols are classified as assault weapons.



Yet the states which have the most onerous and restrictive laws, all make exceptions for police and military use. They claim that most models of guns are unsafe to the users...unless the users are police officers. Many politicians have bodyguards armed with the guns prohibited to the rest of us.

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[Fatal Dawn]

For the record, I am not anti-guns. I would consider myself strongly against concealed carry, though.



Also I am not trying to make any presumptions about gun owners. I do, however, feel that there are some misconceptions about the reality of gun use.

People who wish you defenseless often claim that effective defensive rifles and shotguns have no legitimate sporting use. Would they consider defense of your family from an attack to be un-sporting?

Of course guns can be used for sport, I haven't heard anyone denying that. But denying their primary, intended purpose to be lethal is greatly diminishing. What seems to be greatly detracting is this exaggerated ideal that their use in potentially thwarting crime outweighs the looming risks that guns can propagate.

Boys who owned guns for protection were significantly and substantially more likely to be involved in delinquent behavior than either those who did not own guns or those who owned guns for sport. For example, 70 percent of protection owners carried their guns, whereas only 11.1 percent of sport owners did so, and only 3.2 percent of those who did not own a gun had carried a gun in the past 6 months.



In other words, a protection owner was six times more likely than a sport owner to carry a gun. Further, protection owners were eight times more likely than sport owners to commit a gun crime, 3.5 times more likely to commit a street crime, nearly five times more likely to be in a gang, and 4.5 times more likely to sell drugs—all statistically significant differences.



From The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention(OJJDP) Youth Development Series

https://www.ncjrs.go...jjdp/188992.pdf

Even after many of the firearm victimization reports were excluded, the data show that more survey respondents report having been threatened or intimidated with a gun than having used a gun for self protection. Most judges rated the reported self-defense gun uses as probably illegal in most cases, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and carry the gun and that the respondent had described the event honestly.



Guns are used to threaten and intimidate more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported selfdefense gun uses may be illegal and against the interests of society.



From The Department of Health Policy and Management Harvard School of Public Health

http://www.ncbi.nlm....wjm17400396.pdf

Also, case households more commonly contained an illicit-drug user, a person with prior arrests, or someone who had been hit or hurt in a fight in the home. After controlling for these characteristics, we found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.



Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.



From The New England Journal of Medicine

http://www.nejm.org/...199310073291506

 

[Bluezone777]

The problem I have with gun control is it doesn't aim to solve the problems they claim it will solve.



The problem has never been the fact that someone has a gun but the desire to kill people with it. If we aim to work at the reasons that someone is driven to kill then we will actually work to reverse the trend of people killing each other. If you just take away their gun then they will just find something else to do it. People were killing each other long before guns even existed so I don't think it will be half as hard as some think it would be if we went back to killing each other without them. The reason why the second amendment exists was to ensure the people would be able to protect themselves not from foreign threats but from their own government so it could not become a dictatorship. It's rather hard to be an effective dictator if the people are all armed with guns.



Also if you were in an area that was suffering from a major catastrophe such as the aftermath of hurricane Katrina then that gun might be the only thing you have to protect yourself when the police are no longer able to function properly.

 

[DrLeftover]

When it comes down to it. You, as an adult, are responsible for the safety and security of yourself and your family.



If you choose to give that up and say the police will take care of me that is your choice.



And it is not the same one I made.



And I'm OK with that.



I do take exception, however, to those that wish to make that decision for me.

 

[Jazzy]

I'm a gun owner and I own guns for the sole purpose of protecting myself, my home and my animals. We do not have a police department where I live. If you have an emergency where someone is breaking into your home, you dial 911. That call then goes out to the State Police. By the time a State Trooper arrives, I would be dead if that was the intent of the intruder. I also have coyotes right outside my door at times. They growl, show teeth and approach. I NEVER leave my house without my hand gun. The bottom line is, if I feel my life is in danger then I have no problem shooting and killing that danger. It's a kill or be killed world and I'm ready for it.

 

[Temerit]

[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][background=rgb(250, 246, 237)]If we aim to work at the reasons that someone is driven to kill then we will actually work to reverse the trend of people killing each other.

[/background]



[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][background=rgb(250, 246, 237)]Yes exactly!! And you know what this means? We need a society with greater equality.[/background]

 

[Temerit]

Smooth.... even supreme court justice Scalia, one of the most conservative justices in history has said that the 2nd amendment allows room for regulation on guns.