I am so tired of hearing people protest about gun ownership in America.

Originally posted by MikeNice81
reply to post by rusethorcain

 

The Constitution doesn't protect a murderers right to own a gun.
However, the NRA does.

Under federal law supported by the National Rifle Association, the use of a firearm in a violent or drug-trafficking crime is punishable by a mandatory prison sentence of up to 20 years. A second conviction, if the firearm is a machine gun or is equipped with a silencer, brings life imprisonment without release. Violating firearms laws should lead to very real punishment for violent criminals, but the laws first must be enforced.

Source

The NRA Supported the National Firearms Act of 1934 that placed many new restrictions on gun ownership and the Federal Firearms Bill of 1938 that added more restrictions. They actually supported the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the NICS Modernization act just two years ago. Do a little research before you tell lies that weaken your credibility.

Oooooh...The firearms act of 1934...not exactly au currant.

Why not deal in practical reality instead of falling for meaningless pomp and ceremony?

Certainly even a nice guy like you must recognize these are all reactionary and purely symbolic gestures by the NRA meant to quiet victims groups and pacify detractors but do absolutely nothing to lessen incidence of murder by firearms? This is a horrific number that grows yearly thanks to the NRA fighting more useful action and more reasonable gun control with all their might and influence. Death is the end result. You can spin it however you want. The result is murder...compliments of the good old boys of the NRA.


Are you accostomed to folks obeying your directives even when you are unarmed?
Do your own research before you rely on empty useless, in name only sysmbolism for your credibility and facts.

reply to post by rusethorcain


The murder rate and rate of violent crime in America has fallen since 1991. Maybe you should start researching and stop spewing talking points. A quick look here shows a steady decline in the murder rate since 2000. I found the link in thirty seconds.

The NRA's actual recomendations for the law in 1968 were deemed too restrictive by congress. Many of the things they wanted were thrown out because they put unnecessary burdens on the purchaser and manufacturer. It had nothing to do with "queiting victims."

Really go out and do some real research. America has seen a decrease in the violent crime rate since 1991. Yet the number of guns in private hands has increased. The NRA has also consistently backed gun regulations that restrict the ability of criminals and minors from getting guns. They have also backed strict enforcement of gun laws. They even lobbied congress to apropriate 2.3 million dollars to expand Operation Exile to Atlanta, New Jersey and several other high crime areas.

Go out and do some research you keep making assertions with no basis in reality.

reply to post by MikeNice81


I can find other numbers

One of the top 10 causes of death in the US ...
Second leading product death
www.chron.com...

Those two factors - the NRA and pro-Second Amendment voters - have guided the gun control debate for the past 16 years, ever since Congress enacted the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993, which mandates a background check for most firearms purchases. The law took its name from James Brady, the White House press secretary wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.t

In the aftermath of the 1994 electoral debacle, which cost Democrats both houses of Congress, national Democratic candidates consciously shied away from action on gun control. The 1994 assault weapons ban, which outlawed 19 types of military-style assault weapons as well as large-capacity gun magazines, was allowed to expire in 2004 by a Republican Congress, despite being supported by President George W. Bush. The House didn't even conduct a vote; Senate backers of the law could muster only ten votes. Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has earned a 100 percent score and an "A+" grade from the NRA, and John Cornyn, who receives an "A" from the NRA, both voted against extending the Brady provisions.

www.washingtontimes.com...
library.med.utah.edu...
www.nyagv.org...
bryanpolice.wordpress.com... -second-year-in-a-row/
more children and teens are killed by gunfire than cancer
suicide is directly related to gun ownership www.gun-control-network.org...

What are you protecting? Besides death...I mean really.
Do you seriously think you are protecting us all from impending government takeover by promoting gun ownership? If our government wanted to "get" us there are other ways...much easier ways.

Face it, we all NEED the guns to protect us...not from the government but from all the crazies and criminals that own guns.
We are attempting to phase out the neighborhood Police force and assume the role as private citizens.
Welcome to Dodge.

reply to post by rusethorcain


So the fact that more cops were killed negates the FBI findings how? The fact that the CDC does not put gun shot wounds or murder in their top ten reasons for death is changed how?

2007 CDC Data


FBI Preliminary numbers 2010

Murder higher in the North East. Murder 7.1% lower for the country as a whole compared to 2009.

ETA:
If you investigate the FBI statistics you will see that the national murder rate has fallen from 24,703 in 1991 to 15,241 in 2009. That is a decrease of over 9,000 murdrs per year.

You can easily find the info for yourself at the UCR Data Tool website.

reply to post by rusethorcain


You editted and added after my last post so I want to address somethings in your post. I'll start with the stuff from the gun control network.

They say that America leads the world in gun deaths. I love how they leave out all of the "non developed nations." If you look at over all murder rate America is actually 49th behind many countrys with much stricter gun control regulations. Brazil limits hand gun sells to the police force. It has a murder rate 400% higher than America. Venezuela has a very strict gun policy. Their murder rate is about 1000% higher than the United States of America. source

This isn't just my opinion. The study, Violence, Guns and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis, by Jeffery A. Miron, Department of Economics, Boston University, released in 2001 found that countries with stricter gun control laws had higher rates of murder. Murder is what really counts in these comparisons. Murder is the non negligent taking of another person's life.

Suicides skew the results in an unrealistic way. Most suicides are planned and not spontaneous. They come at the end of stretches of depression, medical issues, and similar circumstances. If some one wants to commit suicide they are going to do it. If all they have is a razor and a warm bath, that is the way they will go.

John Lott, professor of law at Yale School of Law, released a study in 2000. The study followed the fifteen states that passed safe storage laws. Laws that made it a requirement to lock away guns so that kids couldn't get hurt. His finding was, "The problem is, you see no decrease in either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides when such laws are enacted, but you do see an increase in crime rates." In other words the same number of kids took their own life. Even though the access to firearms was limited they still found ways to end their lives. So, adding suicides to the "gun death" statistics is a ploy to dishonestly skew results for their argument.

The gun control network says, "Homicide rates tend to be related to firearm ownership levels. Everything else being equal, a reduction in the percentage of households owning firearms should occasion a drop in the homicide rate".

Well interestingly the study, "state-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership" released by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2006 disagrees. Let us go beyond the studies done by Harvard academics. As I posted proof of earlier the murder rate in America has dropped by around 9,000 deaths. Yet at the same time America has relaxed laws on concealed carry, has done away with waiting periods in many places, and let the Clinton AWB lapse. Gun ownership has increased steadily. Yet, the murder rate keeps dropping. Violent crime as a whole has decreased again from 2009 to 2010 in all but one portion of the country.

In the North East the rate of robbery, violent crime, murder, and rape continues to increase. What is the main difference between the North East and most of the country? They continue to pass stricter gun laws. Philly, New York City, Boston, Camden New Jersey, and Baltimore all have extremely strict gun laws. Yet they are considered some of the most dangerous citys in the country. They all also have a rising crime rate.

Now lets look at England. The Gun Control Network is proud that england took "more than 162,000" hand guns from the citizens. As I have posted elsewhere in this thread the violent crime rate is now 300% higher than it was in 1997. That is according to the British Home Office. They are responsible for compiling the nations statistics on crime. So, I would call them reputable.

The Gun Control Network mentions that thousands of Scottish citizens handed in their guns. According to the article, Scotland Tops List of World's Most Violent Countries, that ran in The Times on September 19, 2005, the UN declared Scotland the most violent country in the "developed" world. They had a physical assault rate more than 250% higher than the USA. It seems that gun control helped make them all much much safer.

I am going to move on from the Gun Control Network's obviously iffy assertions. Before I do though I want to mention one little thing that I found interesting. Since the Gun Control Network uses a lot of 1990s information, I thought I would go a little old school. In 1993 Dr. David Lawrence the CEO of Kaiser Permanente (At the time one of the nations largest insurance companies) released a study that was startling. The study said that 400,000 people a year died from medical mistakes. That is roughly the same as three loaded 747s going down everyday. It was 286 times the rate of accidental gun deaths that year.


Now on to assault weapons. Do you even know what an "assault weapon" is? I ask this over and over because most people don't. An assault weapon is a weapon used against fortified enemy positions. You know things like missles and mortars and grenades. Those are actually assault weapons, or they were. What happened was that a bunch of gun ban advocates figured out they were losing the fight to ban handguns. They thought if they could find a boogie man in the gun world they could build support for a ban. So, they targeted "military rifles" (they were semi automatic rifles based on military designs but incapable of full automatic fire) and called them "assault weapons." The approach was the adaptation of what Nelson T. Shields, the chairman of Handgun Control Inc said in the New Yorker magazine in 1976.

His Quote

We'll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily - given the political realities - very modest. We'll have to start working again to strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and again. Our ultimate goal, total control of handguns, is going to take time. The first problem is to slow down production and sales. Next is to get registration. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a few exceptions) totally illegal.

That poposition proved to be unpopular. So, they took his advice to start modest and build. They went after "assault weapons." Assault weapons were used in about 1.4% of crimes involving firearms, and 0.25% of violent firearm crimes, according to a study by Gary Kleck and Aldine Transaction that studied gun crime in 48 major metro areas from 1980 through 1994. However, they looked a lot like the rifles in war movies so they were easy targets. It didn't matter that functionally they were the same as any other hunting rifle.

It also didn't matter that S.C. Helsley, Assistant Director DOJ Investigation and Enforcement Branch, California said, “I surveyed the firearms used in violent crimes...assault-type firearms were the least of our worries,” in 1988. The proponets also ignord the fact that in 1994, as they were voting to "ban assault weapons," the FBI's Unified Criminal Report said that you were 11 times more likely to be beaten to death than killed with an "assault weapon."

The "assault weapon ban" was a joke. Both the NRA and The Violence Policy Center (anti-gun) agreed that it was a law that effected cosmetics and nothing of substance. Which according to Josh Sugarman of the New Right Watch (now with the Violence Policy Center) was the point. In the paper Assault Weapons and Accesories in America Josh wrote, "The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

A Washington Post editorial from September 15, 1994 said "Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.”

So, please excuse me if I don't lament the ending of the Assault Weapons Ban. A law that banned nothing but accesories and cosmetics. Now the Brady Campaign will tell you that the ban had a significant effect on crime bases on trace data. However, when asked by Torsten Ove for the article “Assault Weapon Ban’s Effectiveness Debated,” the ATF said it can not vouch for the validity of that claim. In fact the ATF has said time and again that, "nott all firearms used in crimes are traced and not all firearms traced are used in crime. Firearms selected for tracing aren't chosen for purposes of determining which types, makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes. The firearms selected don't constitute a random sample and should not be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or any subset of that universe."

What am I trying to protect? My wife and kid. I have used my rifle to protect the well being of my family and my disabled neighbor. As a child my father used his revolver to disuade a man threatening to kill my mother and myself with a 6" knife. He has also used it, in much older age and with more physical limitations, to turn away a pair of criminals trying to rob him in his own front yard. In none of those cases did anyone get shot. However, the gun turned the tide when life and safety was in danger.

There are wolves that will willingly prey on the good people of society. As long as they are out there I must play the role of the sheep dog to protect my family. The SCOTUS has allready said that the police owe no person protection. Their obligation is to a community as a whole. That is why I take responsibility for the safety of my family. I would hate to see my child die from violence. It would be like living in hell every day. However, if my child died because I failed to take proper measures to keep her safe, life would be worthless. That is why I own a gun and why I keep it safely stored.

I am not under the illusion that the general population could stand against the US Army. I have studied history. I understand that North Vietnam was able to fight so well because China and Russia were funding the communist. I also understand that Iran and other countries have supplied men, material, and money to fight the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I have no Rambo fantasies. I wish to live solely in peace. That does not mean I will not prepare for those criminals that may deny me that right.






ETA: I did not post the British home office figures for crime in 1997 versus 2009 as I said in the post. That inormation was actually in another thread. I will post it here to clarify.

According to the British Home Office violent crime has increased despite banning guns. If you look at the reported number of "violent acts against the person" the number was 492 per 100,000 people in 1997. In 2009-20010 the number was 1,574 per 100,000 people. That is more than a 300% increase in the 13 years following the banning and confiscation of guns.
Source

Thankfully, you will not to worry about it for too much longer.
Stricter, safer and more reasonable gun laws are on the horizon. It is about time.

reply to post by MikeNice81


I mentioned in another post...whatever the NRA is paying you, it isn't enough.

And isn't it about time your alma mater changed their name? Rifles? Puleeze.

You are a real boon to the weapons industry but like you say yourself...odds are better you will be beaten to death and the criminals will take your gun and sell it or use it in another crime.

Nothing like a registered stolen gun to commit a crime with. They are the best.

A few more cops were killed last night...the gun control laws are a coming. Hope this doesn't put your nose out of joint or anything.

If I were having a bad day,say,feeling a tad rude and abusive.

I would probably keep it to myself,if I KNEW that people could respond with deadly force in response to my ill behavior.

An armed society tends to be a polite society believe it or not.

You must look to the past,to realize the problems of the present.

People tend to be less defensive and abusive,when they KNOW they have the option to defend themselves.

Controlling the peoples ability to defend themselves,makes them more defensive and insecure.

Who could possibly want people to feel insecure and defensive?.

reply to post by rusethorcain


So because I post fact after fact from credible sources including the FBI and the CDC I am a paid shill? You do understand that attacking the person instead of the argument is actually a rhetorical and logical fallacy. In other words it is where people hide when they can not fully support their argumnet.

I am not even a member of the NRA, much less a paid employee.

like you say yourself...odds are better you will be beaten to death and the criminals will take your gun and sell it or use it in another crime.

Then you completely lie about what I said and add your own twisted logic. I'm sorry you haven't grown up enough to face facts or debate in an adult manner. Go find some facts that havent been proven false by numerous studies. Find something that the gun control industry hasn't contradicted with their own words. Then we might be able to talk again. In the mean time good bye and good riddance.

reply to post by MikeNice81


A. You did say that and B. I am not attacking you babe...everybody has to make a buck.
I just find many of you gun lovers (defending firepower with skewed statistics) are OFTEN shills (your word and I like it!) for the very powerful NRA. This isn't a bad thing all by itself. If you can live with all this innocent death abounding in our society..I suppose the rest of us will just have to appease your "right to own an arsenal."

PS I have gun. It is stored properly and isn't for hunting either. Most gun owners want reasonable restrictions put in place. It is only the whack job far right looney tunes who don't. Not saying those shoes fit you. Only you know that.

reply to post by rusethorcain

The proponets also ignord the fact that in 1994, as they were voting to "ban assault weapons," the FBI's Unified Criminal Report said that you were 11 times more likely to be beaten to death than killed with an "assault weapon."

That is the actual quote that you have taken and twisted. Like I said earlier you fail to support your assertions and hide behind fallacies. Now you result to troll like tactics.

All I ask is that you show one piece of evidence that tighter control works better, that can not be refuted easily by multiple sources. You can not do it so you result to trolling. This discussion is officially over.