Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

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Xris
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Xris »

Spiral Out wrote: (Nested quote removed.)


That's interesting. Where did you get those numbers? What is your source?

I have statistics that say that a total of 561 children were killed by gunfire from 2006 to 2010 according to the FBI, and that in 2007 alone 245 children were killed by drunk drivers according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In the same 5 years that the 561 children were killed by gunfire, it would be approximately 1225 children killed by drunk drivers if we use that figure as an average.

Therefore, alcohol and cars are more dangerous than firearms.

So then if you are using statistics as the foundation for your argument for banning guns then you would also have to argue to ban alcohol and motor vehicles in order to maintain the validity of your logic.

The guns are to the criminals as the vehicles are to the drunks.


(Nested quote removed.)


That is completely irrelevant to your own argument that appeals only to statistics. The guns are no more dangerous to anyone when not in the hands of a criminal any more than a car is dangerous when not in the hands of a driver, or worse, a drunk driver.

If you don't blame the cars for the deaths of innocent children by the drunk drivers then you cannot blame the guns for the deaths of innocent children by violent people either.


(Nested quote removed.)


My argument is that your argument is utterly invalid.
Do you want to form an opinion on guns by the statistics available or not? I do not blame the guns themselves but the stupidity that your country does not accept they require stricter controls. I am not that naive to believe Americans could live without them.How can you say my argument is invalid when every day scores of American children are being seriously wounded or killed for your freedom to carry arms? For every thief killed a thousand innocent Americans are killed. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... r/2073259/
Mcdoodle
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Mcdoodle »

There is a gulf in understanding between Americans and Europeans about guns which is very hard to bridge.

As a Brit, I find these polemics in favour of gun ownership baffling, but I quite see that in terms of the history of the USA, what's normal to many Americans seems abnormal to me.

A lot more Americans die by firearms than Europeans do: there's a crowd-sourced effort at some statistics about that on Wkikipedia which for some reason I'm not allowed to quote, but here's a Washington Post chart about gun-related murders which is equally graphic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor ... d-country/ - Thus in the US in a given year (stats unreliable but in the right ballpark) 10.2 people die by firearms, for every 100 000 population, whereas in the UK 0.25 per 100 000 do. This is really quite a difference. The Post article says 'Americans are 20 times as likely to be killed by a gun than is someone from another developed country.'

When you're in the UK, those statistics, as exemplified by news anecdotes, makes a person like me peer across the Atlantic and think, maybe if they had gun control more like ours, there'd be less such deaths. But of course, we also have different mores. And Americans feel very strongly about all this, as exemplified by the ferocity of the rhetoric on this thread. It would be rare, for instance, to meet a Briton who believed that people had some sort of right to own a gun except for a very specific public safety or sporting purpose, which would involve considerable checks on their background and history.
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Quotidian
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Quotidian »

I - an Australian- have participated in this thread and several others on the Forum about gun rights.

I do think Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association - which incidentally spent more than $260 million lobbying in 2010 - is clinically paranoic. In Wayne's World, there are terrorists and psychopaths everywhere, and the only hope is 'good guys with guns' who are going to 'stop them in their tracks'. This overlooks the fact that legitimate self-defence shootings amount to less than 5% of the total gun deaths in the USA.
In 2010, across the nation there were only 230 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the FBI. That same year, there were 8,275 criminal gun homicides. Using these numbers, in 2010, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 36 criminal homicides. This ratio does not take into account the thousands of lives ended in gun suicides (19,392) or unintentional shootings (606) that year.
Source

So what's Wayne's solution? More guns!
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Spiral Out
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Spiral Out »

Quotidian wrote:So what's Wayne's solution? More guns!
It's easy to sit back thousands of miles away and pick apart the problems of another country. It's another thing to offer ideas for a real solution.

So then what's your solution? Gun control? What does that mean exactly? And please be precise and detailed.
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Quotidian
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Quotidian »

I have immediate family in the USA and travel there regularly.

I would have hoped that the bills proposed in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre might have passed. They didn't. There used to be a ban on military-style assault rifles. It lapsed. In my view, the bad guys are winning.

There's an opinion piece in today's New York Times asking the question, is the NRA Un-American:
Stanley Fish wrote:The more militant members of the N.R.A. and most of its leaders may be un-American.

By “militant” I don’t mean those who wish to protect recreational shooting and hunting; nor do I mean those who, like Justice Antonin Scalia, believe that there is a constitutional right to defend one’s home and family with firearms. These are respectable positions (although I am deeply unpersuaded by the second). I mean those who read the Second Amendment as proclaiming the right of citizens to resist the tyranny of their own government, that is, of the government that issued and ratified the Constitution in the first place.

The reason this view may be un-American is that it sets itself against one of the cornerstones of democracy — the orderly transfer of power. A transfer of power is orderly when it is effected by procedural rules that are indifferent to the partisan, ideological affiliations of either the party exiting power or the party taking power. A transfer is disorderly when it is effected by rebellion, invasion, military coup or any other use of force.
More here.
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Grotto19
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Grotto19 »

My thoughts on gun control may seem peculiar as I am both for and against gun control. However I wished to share them as I think some of these issues may not have been addressed.

#1 A great many criminals in America have firearms, and a good portion of those have particularly dangerous ones (concealable or full auto). As long as this remains true Americans have more reason than “safer” nations to desire potent weaponry for defense.

#2 Not every restriction is a bad thing. If you absolutely cannot wait a few weeks to get your gun, or think you have a right to one despite being insane, you’re probably exactly the type of person who should not have one.

#3 Assault weapons are extremely dangerous and can facilitate the deaths of dozens. These should probably not be in the hands of civilians period. The fun of owning and firing them does not in this case trump the need for general safety and security.

In general I am appealing to common sense. American criminals have guns so stripping the civilians of them is frightening. We can not know the impact of criminals being assured that the victims will be unarmed but we can be pretty confident it would not be a positive effect.

Not every American should be able to own a firearm however, and your weapons should be tracked from “the cradle to the grave”. If you are unwilling to prove you can handle a weapon (background checks and training) then you should not have one, just like a driver’s license. And tracking your weapon just as we do automobile registrations. When you buy it gets registered, when you sell it that needs to be registered as well. These restrictions are perfectly reasonable.

Assault weapons however should be largely unavailable. Just as the vehicle example above it might be a lot of fun for me to own a rocket car, but also very dangerous to myself and others. And even if I was responsible with my rocket car, with enough of them in circulation someone would screw up and end up killing dozens of people. It is just too dangerous to justify in the name of entertainment.
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Spiral Out
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Spiral Out »

Quotidian wrote:I would have hoped that the bills proposed in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre might have passed. They didn't. There used to be a ban on military-style assault rifles. It lapsed. In my view, the bad guys are winning.
As usual, the people who speak out the most vociferously against anything are invariably devoid of any ideas to solve the problem they revile. There seem to be plenty of opinions offered, but no solutions. And we all know what opinions are like.

I offered an initial idea for a solution earlier in this thread in post #82. At least I'm making an effort to reason out some compromise.
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Quotidian
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Quotidian »

Come off it. What difference are 'my ideas' going to make? This is a philosophy forum. The thing which I object to is the blatant disregard of reason. The gun lobby always advocates 'more guns'. In fact it is demonstrably, empirically true that "more guns = more gun deaths'. So OF COURSE I advocate gun control: background checks, restrictions on the types of guns available, and many other things which have got Buckley's chance of happening. So I just join this thread to voice this opinion from time to time.

I did read your solution in #82. Hey, I agree with it. But in the current climate, there is no solution. The NRA is wining the argument.
'For there are many here among us who think that life is but a joke' ~ Dylan
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Grecorivera5150
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Grecorivera5150 »

People should be aloud to have guns because if they where not the would not be able to defend themselves and their families in the coming war. If losing in a struggle is a forgone conclusion then to struggle is not a viable option if you wish to survive. You are not even in a position to compromise.
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Ascendant606
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Ascendant606 »

Grotto19 wrote:My thoughts on gun control may seem peculiar as I am both for and against gun control. However I wished to share them as I think some of these issues may not have been addressed.

#1 A great many criminals in America have firearms, and a good portion of those have particularly dangerous ones (concealable or full auto). As long as this remains true Americans have more reason than “safer” nations to desire potent weaponry for defense.

#2 Not every restriction is a bad thing. If you absolutely cannot wait a few weeks to get your gun, or think you have a right to one despite being insane, you’re probably exactly the type of person who should not have one.

#3 Assault weapons are extremely dangerous and can facilitate the deaths of dozens. These should probably not be in the hands of civilians period. The fun of owning and firing them does not in this case trump the need for general safety and security.

In general I am appealing to common sense. American criminals have guns so stripping the civilians of them is frightening. We can not know the impact of criminals being assured that the victims will be unarmed but we can be pretty confident it would not be a positive effect.

Not every American should be able to own a firearm however, and your weapons should be tracked from “the cradle to the grave”. If you are unwilling to prove you can handle a weapon (background checks and training) then you should not have one, just like a driver’s license. And tracking your weapon just as we do automobile registrations. When you buy it gets registered, when you sell it that needs to be registered as well. These restrictions are perfectly reasonable.

Assault weapons however should be largely unavailable. Just as the vehicle example above it might be a lot of fun for me to own a rocket car, but also very dangerous to myself and others. And even if I was responsible with my rocket car, with enough of them in circulation someone would screw up and end up killing dozens of people. It is just too dangerous to justify in the name of entertainment.
I second that motion
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Quotidian
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Quotidian »

Not every American should be able to own a firearm however, and your weapons should be tracked from “the cradle to the grave”. If you are unwilling to prove you can handle a weapon (background checks and training) then you should not have one, just like a driver’s license. And tracking your weapon just as we do automobile registrations. When you buy it gets registered, when you sell it that needs to be registered as well. These restrictions are perfectly reasonable.
I agree with that also.
'For there are many here among us who think that life is but a joke' ~ Dylan
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Jholl2703
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Jholl2703 »

Guns are a worst case scenario. Or, at least, that is what they should be. I would first like to address your point that if the criminal and the house owner both do not have guns, then there is a less likely chance it will lead to death. That is of course true, but the problem with that is in the reality of life. Most of time, if someone is coming into your house and is aware or even unaware that they are home, They will bring a firearm along with them. We cannot sugarcoat reality and say if we both don't have guns no one will get hurt. This is true, but this is hardly ever the case. We have to live in the real world.

You also mentioned that criminals are aware that we own guns and still break into houses, so giving everyone guns would not make the difference. That is a false statement. Yes people still own guns, but only 36% of the population of the United States. Lets say that number were to double, reaching 72% gun ownership per household. I would say that criminals would then think twice about breaking into someone's house. Criminals are in support of gun control, because then they would be the only ones that have them. With gun control we are simply taking the guns out of the hands of the people that need them for self defense. Yes, the argument could also be made that an guns in the home leads to an unsafe home. This is true if proper precautions are not taken to make sure the home is safe. That does not necessarily mean keeping the gun unloaded and locked up in a safe, but there are plenty of other places guns can be kept to prevent accident, people are just uninterested in preparing for accidents that have a very small chance of happening, though still might. Evidence of this is people driving cars and going on trips with no spare tire, jack, or tire iron, or walking around with no case on your phone.
Steve3007
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Steve3007 »

If you listen to the footage of the most recent (at the time of writing this) mass shooting in the US, you can hear that the speed at which that automatic weapon fires makes it unsurprising that one man on the 32nd floor of a hotel can kill and injure so many people so quickly. And since it was night time, I would imagine that he barely had to think of those people as people at all.

Here's Spiral Out's proposed solution to the problem of gun violence from earlier in this topic. He was concerned that other people weren't proposing solutions and were ignoring his:
Create a complete national registry of all weapons that would detail all of the necessary information of the ownership of those weapons from the specifics of the weapon itself such as mfg, model & serial #s, origin of sale, etc., to the specifics of the owner such as name, DOB, address, legal history, medical records, etc., IN COMBINATION WITH an amendment to the constitution which specifically states that such information can never be used against the weapon owner in any manner and that it will be kept to the highest level of privacy which is only accessible to the one governmental agency who legally and specifically presides over weapons ownership procedures, and that these weapons shall never be forcefully repossessed in any circumstance (other than from those who have been deemed unfit to own such weapons by reasonable and agreed upon standards as accepted by majority vote of the population of legal US citizens) from any legal US citizen who owns such weapons and who owns said weapons as a private individual citizen, and also to include a clause that states that the amendment is to survive any change in the governmental status such as with any reorganization of the federal government into a "North American Union" with Canada and Mexico.

**For those who qualify to own guns based on the accepted standards, there would be no restrictions as to the number or type of guns owned.**




Any thoughts?
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Atreyu
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Atreyu »

Spiral Out's solution seems too complicated and bureaucratic for me to endorse, but I'm not strongly opposed to it. Imo, however, it wouldn't work. People would still be able to get guns outside of the "system".

The only real solution, which is not possible in the short run (it would take millenia) and therefore isn't really much of a "solution" at all, would be for Mankind has a whole to evolve to the point where no one would ever commit such crimes against each other.

As long as Mankind is what it is, there is no solution, and not only guns, but our technology in general, is bound to continue to be used against us, and in ever more disastrous ways....
Steve3007
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Re: Should People Be Allowed to Own Guns?

Post by Steve3007 »

According to statistics shown here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081

up until the 1970s a majority of Americans supported a ban on handguns. But that has dramatically changed, and now a very large majority oppose such a ban. That's interesting. Any thoughts as to why that might be? The perceived threat of terrorism since 9/11 perhaps?
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