Thoughts on US gun laws.

[stconquest]

Well generally in England, or indeed the whole of the UK, they wait until you've left your house to burgle you. It doesn't matter how tooled up you are if you're not there.

 

Actually our very strict gun laws does a pretty good job of keeping guns out of the hand of criminals. And if they do get their hands on one it's a big deal using it because replacements are hard to come buy for all but the best connected. Admitted not sharing a land border with a country in which guns are freely available helps.

 

I'm also a little confused by Americans assertion that they need guns to protect themselves from their own government. Why the hell would the US Government launch an attack on it own citizens? There is some serious paranoia going on. What are you afraid they are going to make you do if you don't have guns? 

 

Toronto is a city of 3M, there are about 100 reported murders per year.  We have very strict gun laws.

 

...maybe it is the cold weather that deters violence  :rolleyes:

[michaelk12]

I'm also a little confused by Americans assertion that they need guns to protect themselves from their own government. Why the hell would the US Government launch an attack on it own citizens? There is some serious paranoia going on. What are you afraid they are going to make you do if you don't have guns? 

It's not that we're expecting an totalitarian coup any day. It's a deterrent. Countries don't have nuclear weapons because we plan to use them tomorrow, it's to scare anyone from trying in the first place. But look at any tyrannical regime around the world, from Nazi Germany, to North Korea, to China. Do you think it's a coincidence that those countries don't allow guns? Bad things happen when one group has a monopoly on force.

[Guest Generallee]

[Guest trucker2]

Well generally in England, or indeed the whole of the UK, they wait until you've left your house to burgle you. It doesn't matter how tooled up you are if you're not there.

 

Actually our very strict gun laws does a pretty good job of keeping guns out of the hand of criminals. And if they do get their hands on one it's a big deal using it because replacements are hard to come buy for all but the best connected. Admitted not sharing a land border with a country in which guns are freely available helps

 

Actually England had lower crime befor the gun ban. Check the stats. Also you had William Wilberforce while we had Lee and Grant. England hasn't been violent since "rountop" was a slur.

[Hawkster16]

I just thought that I would try to clear up some of the fallacies that I have found in this thread by giving some statistics and state my own opinion on the US gun laws even though this thread is getting a bit old.

 

 

Stats:

 

In Europe, the countries with the least gun ownership tend to have higher murder rates while countries with the most gun ownership tend to have the lowest murder rates.

 

Also, countries in Europe in which handgun ownership by civilians is banned have higher murder rates than their neighboring countries that allow handgun ownership by civilians.

 

 

These statistics came from this Harvard study done by Don B. Kates (LL. B) and Gary Mauser (Ph.D). I strongly encourage anyone that is interested in the effects of gun control and gun ownership to read the entire study.

 

 

My Opinion:

 

In my opinion, the US gun laws are alright how they are, and I don't think that gun ownership in the US should be limited any further that it has been already. I understand how people that haven't grown up around firearms or learned about gun safety from an early age can't understand why people need guns, but as a person that has grown up around guns, I think that the right to own a firearm shouldn't be infringed upon by the federal government any further than it already has.

 

 

Think about it like this: Compare gun control laws to the Patriot Act (which is something that I think we can agree upon is bad). Both take away the liberty of the citizens with gun control laws taking away the right to own a firearm and the Patriot act taking away the right to privacy. As Snowden said, we shouldn't give up our liberties just because we don't need them now, but we must keep them in case we need them later. I think that these two things (Patriot Act and gun control laws) are very similar and both infringe upon the liberty of the American people more than we should allow.

 

 

Even though most of us consider the Patriot Act as not increasing the safety of the American people, some people think it would increase safety. While I think that gun control laws decrease the safety of the American people, some people think those laws would increase safety. Even for the people that think these two things would increase the safety of the American people, think about what Benjamin Franklin said:

 

"Those that would give up a little liberty to purchase a little security deserve neither and will lose both."

[Admire]

That its completely up to americans.....I have learned that there are no intelligent debate to be had on this topic.