1. There will always be a supply of guns. Do you think criminals are going from Chicago to Indiana, buying a gun, going through a background check, waiting out the wait period, going back to Indiana and picking it up to rob a bank? Or is it more likely theuy are purchased from an illegal market like drugs?
2. If we just punished people for their original crime, I think that would probably be enough. Parole/criminalizing (SP?) drugs is the problem with sentances that are too short.
thinker wrote:
The military, SWAT, and police are also made up of the general public. If things got bad enough a successful revolt could be carried out in the US. Your argument was exactly what they were saying about the American Revolution against the mighty British.
Sorry but I don't buy your reply. The military, SWAT and the police are not the general public. This is why their right to bear arms is never questioned. I see the military et al as a branch of the government - as in the people that you claim we need guns to protect us from.
If your argument is that the military should be allowed to have weapons so that if GWB does something we don't like, we can overthrough him using military power, that is a totally different argument from your original position that the public needs to allowed to protect itself from the state and its machinery.
As for Iraq and Vietnam, I think we are on a bit of a different scale there. Think Waco Texas instead - not a very effective resistance. Sure we could have some kind of IRA-type conflict that lingers on and on, but that certainly has not been very effective either.
After reading through the majority of posts, I offer a couple of observations:
1. Local gun restrictions are doomed to failure. Why? Because as long as there is free-flow in surrounding areas you have no control. Further, even if the ban was at the federal level, the impact on crime would not be felt for a very long time simply because there are so many guns already out there.
2. There are a lot of paranoid people out there. I am amazed at the self-deception I see. On the one hand we have folks saying that "no one can be trusted" and that guns are needed for self defense. This is, of course, nothing more than vigilante "justice" couched in some crazed notion of personal rights. Further, the thought that a bunch of unorganized citizens with small arms could bring down a coup involving the US military is laughable. Just look at the numbers.
3. Assuming the pro-gun claims are true, do you really want to live in and support a society where individuals have to rely on gun ownership in order to keep common criminals at bay and the government under control? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, that might indicate a larger societal problem, and that just throwing more people behind bars is not the answer (we already have the highest incarceration rate of any indistrialized country on the planet)?
4. It has been my personal experience that some gun owners are very nice people. OTOH some are completely inconsiderate and downright dangerous loons who should never have been allowed to own any weapon more dangerous than a dessert spoon. Thus the NRA should not be fighting for all gun owners, but for ownership by responsible individuals.
5. Check out the statistics on gun related deaths. Although the idea of being shot by some unknown assailant draws a very stark picture, it is far from the norm.
I agree with the gun ban. It's great to get guns off the street. I mean look at how well alchohol was taken off the streets during prohibition.
If you go back and read what was posted you would see that I wrote "If things got bad enough..." which I would say would have to be very, very bad before the American public would take action, it would be much worse than "if GWB does something we don't like". I see the possibility of revolt as being a deterent to the government over stepping it's bounds. I'm not sure what the difference is between that and the "public protecting itself from the state and its machinery" The first step in removing this deterent is to disarm the public.
Again, the scale would be dependent on the situation. A small group of wackos would end up like Waco. A large scale revolt would be very different. It would take the support of the general public so the revolt could intersperse within citizens, like Iraq and Vietnam. Waco was a segregated population which was easy to "control". This would be greatly dependent on the motivation. There would have to be a very steep "tipping point".
Asked Jeeves wrote:
This is stupid. Everyone knows guns don't kill people, criminals do. A much more effective law would be to ban criminals.
More people are killed by their own legal gun than criminals. People wouldn't be able to "accidentally" shoot their children.
I'm not anti-gun, just playing devil's advocate. I'm still working this out for myself.
Charlton Heston As Moses wrote:
See if you can follow the logic. A person who plans on committing a crime with a gun isn't really concerned about a law against guns. The person who pays because of this law is the decent, law abiding citizen who can no longer protect himself from that lawbreaker. Do you expect criminals to turn in their hand guns now since they realize they're breaking the law?! How stupid.
Well, then, ANYONE who has a gun is a criminal, and should be prosecuted as such.
john mccain wrote:
1. both DC and Chicago are cities that are surrounded by states where guns are readily available. and since the police aren't doing any border checks at the edges of the city, there is a free flow of guns into these cities. so the gun laws themselves don't have a direct effect on gun violence.
Just an aside, but Britain recently moved to ban KNIVES over a certain length. Yeah, Americans are so stupid.
Ask the people of Australia how well their gun ban has worked in reducing crime.
Oh, and guns are smuggled into countries all the time and that's one way criminals can get them despite laws.
I am truly thankful that we have the 2nd Amendment. By the way, I believe that kids who hunt are FAR less likely to become criminals than the general population. Forgot where I heard the statistic, but I'm sure you could google it. Goes to show that gun ownership isn't the same as a criminal disposition.
x (formerly .) wrote:
Asked Jeeves wrote:This is stupid. Everyone knows guns don't kill people, criminals do. A much more effective law would be to ban criminals.
More people are killed by their own legal gun than criminals. People wouldn't be able to "accidentally" shoot their children.
I'm not anti-gun, just playing devil's advocate. I'm still working this out for myself.
Yea, they can just intentionally drown them and plead insanity.
SF is just passing another "window dressing" local ordinance to promote how "progressive" they are. It's a bone thrown to their core constituents to keep them casting ballots. Gavin Newsom & Co. are keeping the left appeased. If a challenge made it to SCOTUS, it would be overturned citing the Second Amendment and whether municipal governments can pass laws counter to state and federal statute.
Want a gun? Go buy it in Oakland or San Jose, get the appropriate state paperwork, and rest assured that the SFPD won't be busting down your door at midnight to seize your weapon.
unJimFiore wrote:
(absolutely nothing of consequence)
Look, it's bad enough that you can't post under your real name or a consistent name, but now you have to be so lame as to hijack someone else's name? If you have a problem with me and can't respond directly, just be a stand-up guy and send an e-mail, OK?
thinker wrote:
I see the possibility of revolt as being a deterent to the government over stepping it's bounds. I'm not sure what the difference is between that and the "public protecting itself from the state and its machinery" The first step in removing this deterent is to disarm the public.
Sorry. I know I am being a jackass because I can't let this go, but...
I take your point that an armed citizenry can (theoretically) act as a deterrent to government abuse of power. However, i really find it implausible to think that the "people" can overthrow the government machine (which includes military, police, FBI, CIA, etc.) with their TEC nines. Since there is no way that that is going to happen, this argument for allowing guns to be owned by citizens is not very convincing.
Right now the military, FBI, CIA, etc are all operating in Iraq against a very small(numbers wise) insurgency and they have their hands full. In Afghanistan the same thing and really they only have control over a small portion of the country, most of it is controlled by war lord militias.
A lot of the weapons of the insurgency are things which could be made here without many problems (IED's). In a homeland situation the fighting would be very touchy because any collateral damage could swing public support greatly, and more likely with the "rebels".
I agree it is far fetched, and I hope this never happens, but if you think about it a general public of over 300 million people with the industrial complex we have could be a very powerful force. Our military is made for head-to-head combat in open spaces, which isn't exactly ideal for these current battlefield situations.
Old and grouchy,
You're assuming that the military, police, FBI, CIA are all going to be on the side of the government. What if one or more of them branches sides with the people and others don't? You never know what's going to happen. Disputes get started over a wide variety of issues. What if a war were to break out between Republicans and Democrats? And different branches of the military led by certain generals took different sides. One of the reasons the 2nd amendment was established was because of unknown senarios playing out. The gist of it is the people have a right to arm themselves in the event of some unforseen circumstances. I'm sure King George the III never anticipated what those farmers would do against the British military. Wasn't George Washington part of the British military at one time?
whatyouyankeeboy wrote:
Take a look at the number of people who die in gun realted crimes in your country every year, we have criminals and unfortunately some of them have guns but we have hardly any gun deaths in comparison, eradicate teh guns eradicate the deaths its simple, you don't need a gun, your laws are crazy, who needs a rapid fire assault rifle in their home?
(Just to take the opposite side, for the hell of it...)
The "who needs it" rationale for banning things is often a poor one indeed.
Who needs Big Macs?
Who needs All Terrain Vehicles?
Who needs skis?
Who needs alcohol?
Use of any of them can result in injury or death, sometimes immediate, sometimes very long term. Nobody actually NEEDS any of them. Let's ban them.
(If you have no problem with any of these being banned, don't worry. Sooner or later we'll get around to the something that you DO like.)
At least a gun has a clear utilitarian purpose.
(Just to avoid confusion, this previous post was my first post in this thread. I am not "x" or "Ask Jeeves" or "unJimFiore". I have not been a party to any of it until now)
The argument may not be as convincing as 200 years ago but once you start applying today's relevance to the argument then we start to slide down the slippery slope. Who makes the determination as to what is a compelling argument?
You could end up with an assault on the First Amendment as we know it. For example, a right-wing government (or religious voters en masse) determines The Founding Fathers wanted the populace to be able to publically dissent and protest against government but did not specifically mention entertainment speech. That's a convincing point of view and the First Amendment now only applies to protest speech. Since the following are not "protests" against power, they are hearby banned: hip-hop, rock, Internet chat rooms, pornographic videos, exotic dance, any form of entertainment featuring nudity, cursing, or violence, books with lustful themes, art that does not portray shared "American" values of the time, etc. That could be a theocrat's dream - let the masses whine about politics while we evaluate and control what other speech is "moral" and therefore acceptable.
I don't wish to live in that America.
Yeah no shooting, just al-Qaeda bombings.
...wellllll....you COULD say that Gay Sex is dangerous, too, and that no one NEEDS it. That would result in howling and screaming in SF if you said such. Guns, however, are another matter. Guess it depends on what 'gun' you're making reference to?
What a time to be alive and in America.
Randy wrote:
bunch of idoits...they'll prolly get shot for this! heh
ha! i hope so.