Knickoftime wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:[
Guns are an equalizer. You got psychos out there.

Understand I am responding to YOU using the word "equalizer".

Now you may mean they give you a sense of security (which I assume has never actually been tested), but that's not 'equalization', that's personalization.

Licensed, privately owned guns do NOTHING statistically significant to prevent crime, violent or otherwise. There is no 'equal' about it. Both legal and illegal firearms are responsible for infinitely more crimes than they prevent.

Statistically, it isn't even a discussion.

Problem is, like almost everything else in society, the belief in gun ownership is exactly that, a belief-system, and like all others it's impervious to facts and data and the logical conclusions they lead to.

They don't 'equalize' anything, quite literally and very much the opposite of that.

Now whether that factors into your opinion, or whether you just repeated a talking point that you'll ignore being refuted, is the question, not only to you but all others who mistakenly believe you're safer (when it's the exact opposite, by a landslide) with firearms being available in the manner they are.

You don't bring a knife to gun fight. Criminals have guns therefore I will have one.

Hopefully, I never have to use it.

It's interesting how deeply rooted guns are in your country's "culture"/"DNA".

Ideally, guns should have no place in any society. As you point out, the places/countries that come closest to that "utopia" of not having guns, their murder rate lessens significantly.

If 65-70% of all the murders in the US are by firearms/guns, then why wouldn't anyone want them legislated to the point that they're impossible to acquire or you would only be able to acquire yourself a specific type of gun for hunting, with a set of lawful requirements to the gun that needs to be adhered to.

Also, I still can't see how the Second Amendment is relevant to modern society anno 2012. But I guess that's part of your culture.

I don't want to offend anyone, but let's abstractly say that a statistic was made of the demographic variations in the groups Pro Guns and Anti Guns. Which group would be made up of mostly educated people and which wouldn't? I know it's banal thinking, but I honestly believe that the majority of educated people would be against guns being a given right/legal to (almost) everyone.

AnubisADL wrote:You don't bring a knife to gun fight. Criminals have guns therefore I will have one.

Hopefully, I never have to use it.

Hopefully, but statistically speaking. Having a gun in hour home makes you FAR less safe. It significantly raises the probability of members of household being shot, without ANY correlating increase in your likeliness to use a gun in your own defense.

As I say, i can understand and have empathy for the libertarian view, that our freedoms should be protected, damn the consequences. But, gun proponents SHOULD be able to intellectually acknowledge that the idea owning a gun makes you safer when it's the exact opposite, and that more permissive gun laws increase violent crime and do NOTHING to increase the likelihood a gun owner will stop a violent crime.

Its the holding onto myths about the effect of guns in your culture that's part of the problem.

I don't have the answer to the debate. I do know that one side refusing to acknowledge fact and pretending falsehoods are true doesn't help.

Why can't the technology so that only the registered gun owner fire the weapon be put in place?

Knickoftime wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:You don't bring a knife to gun fight. Criminals have guns therefore I will have one.

Hopefully, I never have to use it.

Hopefully, but statistically speaking. Having a gun in hour home makes you FAR less safe. It significantly raises the probability of members of household being shot, without ANY correlating increase in your likeliness to use a gun in your own defense.

As I say, i can understand and have empathy for the libertarian view, that our freedoms should be protected, damn the consequences. But, gun proponents SHOULD be able to intellectually acknowledge that the idea owning a gun makes you safer when it's the exact opposite, and that more permissive gun laws increase violent crime and do NOTHING to increase the likelihood a gun owner will stop a violent crime.

Its the holding onto myths about the effect of guns in your culture that's part of the problem.

I don't have the answer to the debate. I do know that one side refusing to acknowledge fact and pretending falsehoods are true doesn't help.

arkrud wrote:Guns are not killing people. Other people do.

Absolutely correct. But to suggest gun culture doesn't promote a violent culture is burying your head in the sand.

If nothing else, one place to begin would be pragmatic measures to try to make it harder for mentally ill people to be such efficient killing machines.

Knickoftime wrote:

Gymkata wrote:Britain, a bastion of tight gun control, is no peace-abiding utopia. Source.

It is not. No place.

But I'd suggest you read the entire article you're citing.

I did. Regardless of how crimes are reported, my point is that Britain locks their guns down and violence has not subsided.

Regardless, this is a moot point. The Supreme Court's Heller decision is pretty unwavering on the 2nd amendment. It will take a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw guns and that will never, ever happen. This is stuff that is uniquely ingrained into our republic's DNA. I'm not a gun owner by the way.