Blame the shooter, not the gun

reply to post by phroziac


Yep.

But really, the main culprit is as always handguns.

reply to post by TerribleTeam2


1. I never said anything about Australians.

2. You keep harping on Americans as if you understand the culture here as it pertains to firearms.

3. Your need to attack those who disagree with YOUR assumptions is very telling of your unwillingness to at least feign understanding.

reply to post by Starchildren


Yes, because if we were to lose our guns...there would be many, many more occurances like the one in Aurora every year. There would be the families with no defense of the intruder. Such was the case a few weeks ago when a teenage boy shot an intruder who had kicked their front door in. He was babysitting his younger siblings. What would have happened to those children if it were not for the firearm? The police wouldn't have made it in time. The children would have not been able to fight off the attacker.

reply to post by CosmicCitizen


Absolutely true. I wrote a paper on this in college. Switzerland's gun-related crime rate is virtually zero! They do require every homeowner to keep a military style rifle and ammunition in their homes for personal defense.

reply to post by lambs to lions


BS. The US has the highest gun murder rate AND the most guns per capita.

So every single country with a lower gun homicide rate has fewer guns.

www.nationmaster.com...

reply to post by phroziac


Yes when will you really need it

reply to post by lambs to lions


Switzerland has much lower drug usage rates, almost no poverty and half as many guns.

reply to post by muse7


You are really getting good at ignoring facts, or moulding them to fit your argument.

The facts are:

- All homeowners in Switzerland have access to a military rifle.

- There is almost no crime rate (gun related crime stats are not even kept!)

- Switzerland has a population of roughly six million

- There is an estimated two million firearms publicly owned!

reply to post by lambs to lions


Yes, but Switzerland and the US are completely different.

Switzerland has almost no poverty. Switzerland has a very homogeneous population. And Switzerland has half as many guns, per capita.

America can never be as wealthy, per capita, as Switzerland, or as homogeneous. I'd happily take you up on takng away half of America's guns though, to make it like Switzerland...

reply to post by phroziac


Great point! I always say that if I could only choose one of my firearms for self-defense or survival in general it would be my 12 ga pump.

Originally posted by projectvxn
reply to post by TerribleTeam2

 

1. I never said anything about Australians.

2. You keep harping on Americans as if you understand the culture here as it pertains to firearms.

3. Your need to attack those who disagree with YOUR assumptions is very telling of your unwillingness to at least feign understanding.

1. Fair call.

2. I'm not harping on about anything. If you look at ANY of the threads on here relating to guns, the vast majority of Americans that frequent these boards usually respond with "You can take my guns from my cold dead hands!!!!" or something similar to that. So from what I can gather from the information gleaned from these boards, and from the vast majority of Americans I have met in the real world, outside Internet Land, is that they, yourself included, would only give up their firearms if it came to the end of the world, or if force was used to remove said firearms. I'll happily apologise if proven wrong. Just going of what I have seen and heard.

3. Not sure if you know any Australians outside these boards here, but let me give you some information about us - we have a VERY sarcastic sense of humour. If you honestly thought that was an attack on you, or your character, then you need to take a step back and look at what I said from a different angle, or at least realise that some of the things I have said have been in a sarcastic attempt at humour. May have worked, may not have. Not everyone has the same sense of humour, and finds the same things funny.

In all seriousness though, answer me this - At the end of the day, is it ABSOLUTELY necessary for a Civilian to own an Automatic/Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle, regardless of the calibre of the rifle? As many people have said on here, even a .357 Magnum will make someone have a bad day, even with body armour on.

And think of this, too. To all the people saying "well even if one person in the cinema was armed, they would have been able to stop the gunman from shooting/killing so many people" - how many people, outside of the Military/Police Forces, have the ability, the critical thinking, and the plain old rational thinking, to take down an armed gunman in a crowded cinema, ESPECIALLY if the reports are true that he threw smoke and stun/concussion grenades into the room? Not very many at all. Hell, there are even some in the Military and Police Forces that freeze up when the shooting starts. The point I'm trying to make (just so it's clear to everyone), is that if there was someone other than the Gunman in the Cinema that was armed, there is a fairly good chance that things could have gotten uglier VERY quickly if a firefight broke out, especially in a crowded cinema with smoke going everywhere, making visibility less than ideal.

Gun control would never work anyway. If gun control passed, the only people who wouldn't have a gun would be the citizens who abide by the laws. After gun control passes, you would have a country full of criminals who don't care about the law WITH guns....and citizens who abide by the law, defenseless, with no way to protect themselves from the criminals or the corrupt government that we have before us now. If our gov't treats us the way they do now and we have guns....what would they do if we didn't have guns? It is the government that the "right to bear arms" was created for. So we could protect ourselves against the government from such laws as the Patriot Act 2 has put in place...warrant-less searches, the dissolving of the Posse Comitatus Act etc. as now the military can kick in your door and do what they want....just like before 1776. This is why the forefathers gave us the right for guns...for our own protection from the government who will NOT protect us, indeed...try to harm you and your family. Criminals will not obey these gun control laws and every citizen had better realize that or one day you might find someone in your house raping your wife and children and find that the criminal has a different meaning for what gun control is.

On that note...a little common sense:

Originally posted by Wongbeedman
reply to post by phroziac

 

Yes when will you really need it

What the hell do you think buckshot is for? Its a deer gun. I also keep it loaded next to my bed for self defense.

reply to post by Phenomium


So tell me Phenom, what have you got planned to stop the US Government from taking the last of your remaining freedoms before they enact any Gun Restriction laws then???

This type of thinking proves the point I made earlier to Projectvxn. Cheers

reply to post by lambs to lions


WRONG. That's like saying blame the fat person and not the transfat.

I was a prosecutor and defense atty for about 25 years. If this Nation restricted guns SO many lives would have been saved. It IS the fault of ubiquitous guns in this Nation. It IS the fault of the NRA. It IS the fault of the pro-gun lobby.

Other Western Nations that restrict gun ownership just do not have these problems. The ability to buy and assauult rifle and thousands of round of ammo on the Internet is nothing short of insane.

We need HARD regulation of guns in America. Our gun culture will continue to kill us as long as we listen to the ignorant "guns don't kill people" meme. Yeah. Guns DO kill ppl.

reply to post by lambs to lions

Thank you for your comment. That proves that the presence of guns per se is not the cause of gun violence then. Rather it is a cause celeb of big government ''progressives'' and even the raison d'etre of some of the more vocal anti-gun campaigners. Notice I did not say "liberals" as I hate the abuse of the word which has come to mean left or progressive government growth rather than representing liberty of the individual.

Originally posted by FeatherofMaat
reply to post by lambs to lions

 

WRONG. That's like saying blame the fat person and not the transfat.

I was a prosecutor and defense atty for about 25 years. If this Nation restricted guns SO many lives would have been saved. It IS the fault of ubiquitous guns in this Nation. It IS the fault of the NRA. It IS the fault of the pro-gun lobby.

Other Western Nations that restrict gun ownership just do not have these problems. The ability to buy and assauult rifle and thousands of round of ammo on the Internet is nothing short of insane.

We need HARD regulation of guns in America. Our gun culture will continue to kill us as long as we listen to the ignorant "guns don't kill people" meme. Yeah. Guns DO kill ppl.

The way I see it, one of the MAJOR problems when it comes to guns, is the culture surrounding them. Here, in Australia, there are a fair amount of people that own guns. Farmers, Hunters, Sporting Shooters, and more. But you will find that they are usually just bolt action rifles, and the odd shotguns that are used at events such as trap shooting. Basically no Assault Rifles. And you will find that when someone here in Aus talks about owning guns, as if to talk themselves up because of it, they will usually be met with a chorus of "good one d*ckhead, nobody cares!!! You feel like a hardarse for owning a gun??? Does it make you tough???".

Then there is the American culture when it comes to guns, of being able to purchase Assault Rifles, Body Armour, et al, and the whole "YEAH, GUNS! AWESOME!!!! HOW COOL ARE GUNS!?!?!?" Now I'm certain I will cop more flak off people like projectvxn for going along with this supposed stereotype on here, but as I said to him earlier, all you have to do is look at the responses in some of the gun threads on here to see that there are more than a few Americans that DO act like this.

In order for anything to change, the culture surrounding what you want changed has to change. Whether it be guns, ignorance, whatever you choose, before anything can change, you have to change the way people look and think about it.

Has it been pointed out that the USA has the highest gun related injures in the developed world?

And that 8775 deaths out of 12996 murders(2010) were due to firearms? Or the fact that the USA has the most corrupt government in the devolved world and that ironically the USA causes the most tyranny around the world when the most used excuse to keep guns legal is to stop tyranny from the federal government.
How about the countries with some of the best standards of livings and arguably the best democracy's in the world, i.e iceland, guns are illegal and there doing just fine

really guns will stay legal so 'rednecks' can shoot at beer cans in there backyard

Do like the swiss everyone who can does military service and gets to keep a gun just in case.

reply to post by phroziac


Well how should i know ive never even touched a gun, i dont feel the need. Half of the problem is americans being like "yeah guns are awesome" in my country only 12 year old kids think that and grow out of it by about 13

No, I am going to blame the shooter AND the gun. You can do both. It doesn't have to be either/or.

There is absolutely no reason someone needs an automatic assault rifle and all that ammunition. Just like Jared Loughner.