Every possible reason for gun ownership addressed and countered

Here's my reply to your post:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by GrimReaper86
reply to post by IkNOwSTuff

 

You're terrified by responsible gun use? Your OP just lost the majority of it's credibility with that statement in my eyes.

edit on 17-12-2012 by GrimReaper86 because: (no reason given)

Terrified may have been a slight overstatement.
The fact that anyone feels they need a gun and the attitude of mist American gun owners... well lets just say I find both those things disturbing

reply to post by Tikitiboo
Originally posted by AwakeinNM


Abraham Lincoln:

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”



Abraham Lincoln died in 1865, in case you haven't noticed, we don't live in those times anymore, when exactly do u plan to come into 21st century like the majority of the world?




I feel that I must encourage you to take a step back and reread what you wrote. Do you really have no understanding at all as to why this quote could be important? Historical quotes exist and are repeated for several reasons:
To remind us to not let history repeat itself. They also serve as positive affirmations of who we are and who we can be and must always strive to be. and lastly this paticular one is special it serves as a reminder that we the people will lose our freedom when we give up our constitution.

It's not about gun rights only it's about our rights as Americans, please stop trying to take my rights away.

I have said it before it another post and ill say it again please go read 1984 by George Orwell, people like you and need a reality check.

Originally posted by Tikitiboo

Originally posted by AwakeinNM


Abraham Lincoln:

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

Abraham Lincoln died in 1865, in case you haven't noticed, we don't live in those times anymore, when exactly do u plan to come into 21st century like the majority of the world?

www.bbc.co.uk...

You're right, we don't live in those times any more. Back then the currency was controlled by the government, not the private banks. There was no united nations and no IMF.

The majority of the world now lives under some degree of socialism or a dictatorship. Regimes who impose their will on the people hard enough that they will take it but not so hard that they'll tap out. This includes the UK, France - Look what France is doing now that is causing anyone with money to flee.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take my constitution over your socialist dictatorships any day. I am prepared to defend the constitution as well, as are MANY other people on ATS and in the US, including police and military troops.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


I find your blind faith in government disturbing. You seem to be under the impression that we live in a world where there are no bad people. That people never break into occupied houses armed. That governments have never killed people by the thousands - millions.

You think evil exists in some faraway land or in some time in the distant past.

I have seen evil up close and personal. I assure you it is real. You can't argue or rationalize with it. All you can do is be prepared to defend yourself from it.

I would love to live in a world without guns, any guns, anywhere. I would love to live in a world where people care more about people than they do about making profits at their expense. Where the people in government care only about helping people live happier healthier lives, in freedom and peace. Heck even better, a world where government is not even needed.

But that is not reality is it?

Why don't you come back down to reality.

If you wake up to the sound of the window by your door being broken what are you going to do?

Get a knife from the kitchen? Will you have to pass the intruder to get that knife?

Call the police (because they have the guns you don't) and hope they get there really fast?

Say your prayers?

Beg and plead to be left alone?

Seriously what would you do?

I know what I'm going to do ...

Tell my gf to call the police while I get my gun out of the closet in my bedroom (already loaded) and prepare to defend us.

I like my plan much better.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


www.ncpa.org... Crime has actually gone up in Australlia since their ban. The onlly people who turn in their guns are the people who follow the laws. Criminals are not going to follow the laws and will still have their unregistered guns to use on the unarmed law abiding citizens.

I think you are leaving out a crucial element. Our population is way too medicated and a lot of these prescriptions have a lot of bad stuff in them. I think we should look at the harmful effects Ritalin, anti-deppresants and these sort of drugs we are overloading the society with.

There are other ways to stop these things from happening. With technology the way it is, there are ways to make guns only operable to the owner of the gun. I'm sure gun companies don't want to persue this though because they are making tons of money by making them cheap for the average person to buy.

I just think more people need to have safes that use only thumbprints of the gun owner will work. That way kids can't get to them, and you can still open them fast enough and have them loaded in the case of a burglary.

I just feel you are anti gun and I probably wasted my time even explaining my 2 cents on the issue, but I am sure others have opinions like mine and would rather be able to have a gun and not need it ever, than not have a gun and watch some crazy guy come in and do something horrible to my family with a gun in his hand since he doesn't care about silly laws written from the real tyrants.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


"Let me start by saying yes I hate guns and No Im not American."

Then shut-up and never touch a gun. I have guns and I have never shot anyone. So what if the military has tanks. Its the PRINCIPLE. If they EVER send a squad or team of men to try and take my guns, then I will definitely take at least a few of them with me. I too know military maneuvers. Don't start trouble with me, and there won't be any trouble.

you forgot one, i hope its not posted yet, cant make myself reading every post after 1-2 pages the letters seem to jump up and down

and i believe in case of some form of alien invasion, the most likely heroes are the ones in numbers, and thats us, the ppl, ok i live in holland and i dont have a gun, but i would gladly be anyones neigbour in america wshtf

reply to post by MikeNice81

The other shooting was a direct result of a person trying to make a political statement. It shows that you make blanket statements without doing complete research.

Ok so 1 out of how many shooting sprees had a proven and definate political motivation, can you name in others in recent American history.
My blanket staement was correct as I was refering to the school, mall and cinema shootings. If Im not mistaken 17 in total plus the killing at the political rally which despite its setting was not believed to be politically motivated VS 1 in an immigration office.

Not a compelling argument for your side

Actually if you click on the heading "Homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 pop" you will see that the US is truly number 28 based on per capita. It is not gun deaths per gun owner.

Every other source I can find apart from that one has the US listed at 12 when using per capita stats

But yes I was wrong, that does state that it is just per capita (see I can admit when wrong )

OK just dug a little deeper, it appears the US is much higher on other lists as they dont include places like Trinidad and Tobago and other tiny nations.
Not sure that this really helps your side other than to point out something of little significance within my argument and maybe turn around and say "see you were wrong on that so everything must be wrong"
Whichever way you look at it the rate of gun deaths in the USA is ridiculous and disgusting. Once again why do culturally similar nations not have a rate or figure anywhere even close to urs?

Check out this link that shows industrialised nations

Link

Im very curious to hear your thoughts on these figures

You do understand that is how many surveys are conducted. Many academic studies use phone surveys. How about some citations showing that phone surveys are not acceptable for research purposes

In Australia I helped alot of call centres start up, over 30 in fact and about 9 of those did surveys and market research.
I can tell you that the data you get from phone surveys is useless for any practical purpose and is only good when you need raw data. Its the only effective way that most companies can get a decent sample size for research, thats true but to say its accurate is most definitely not true.

We actually did a survey and some research on people who respond to phone surveys, I can assure you that it is not a good cross section of society. It was done by of one of the biggest market research companies in the world and was basically done to show the effectiveness of phone surveys so that they could justify the high cost.
We had data from people who responded to roughly 90 surveys over a 6 year period, just over 80,000 contacts.
Even though we had all the info we asked personal details along the lines of age, race, income etc etc and also why they did they survey and how honest they were when they did.
Amazingly we found 37% of respondents lied about simple things like their age in at least one of the surveys (possibly both). 47% of respondents were retired and a further 31% were long term unemployed, basically it told us what common sense would tell anyone, people with something better to do wont do phone surveys.
I cant remember the exact figure but something like 85% said they did the survey coz they had nothing better to do, 6% because they had an interest in what the survey was on and the rest said they werent sure why.

Now heres the kicker, 36% admitted to either exaggerating, downplaying or just plain lying in their repsonses to the original survey. The reasons they lied were spread pretty evenly between, not sure, it isnt anyone elses business and ITS WHAT I THOUGHT THE QUESTIONER WANTED TO HEAR!!!!

As a conclusion to the survey they were asked several of the questions they were in the previous survey, as I mentioned these people came from over 90 different surveys, some were on things like Gambling, Domestic violence, drinking, public transport and other things for gov agencies and others for products coffee, toilet paper, toothpaste etc etc
Most phone surveys are about 20-30 questions and from each survey we selected either 4 or 5 questions whos answer was unlikely to have changed.
Only 44% of answers matched the last response
Our conclusion was that phone surveys are useless, needless to say that report wasnt released LOL

Companies, organisations and government agencies dont have the resources or know how to do these surveys so its outsourced, in most cases they are told what they want the data to show and questions are loaded so that they get it ( I wrote several myself). Staff are also aware of this and tend to give people cues on how to answer.
Im not saying this is the case with your data but it shows why Im skeptical.

@OP: you will never understand why you need a gun until you need the gun. That's not universal, that's directed solely at YOU. I've met many like you, and its the same with all of them... you cannot understand what you have no experience in. You can theorize and form partial understanding and ideals but until you have walked in their shoes you cannot tell them how it should be done.

... also I hope you never need the gun, though if you do I wish you the best of luck.

Heres one you cannot address or counter:

If I give you my guns right now, can you promise me that when I leave my house noone else will have a gun and use it against me? Not a chance.

Thats the only reason I wont give up mine.

Many people don't report a crime if it isn't completed. One of the main reasons is that the police can't really do much in most cases. Unless you have an identification or hard evidence that can be followed up on the chances of catching a criminal are small. Many people feel that it isn't worth the headache or time when there is little chance of resolution. Other reasons could include, not wanting to risk retribution, not wanting to implicate a family member, or any number of other things.

reply to post by MikeNice81


So your telling me of these alledged 5500 rapes and 11,000 attempted murders that happen daily not even a tiny portion are reported to the police yet they sit down and go over it with a phone survey operator.
Cmon dude you dont actually genuinely believe those figures are anywhere near accurate do you? I mean even before I let you know how phone surveys work you must have known those figures were fudged

Chinese police destroyed 113 illegal gun factories and shops in a three-month crackdown in 2006. Police seized 2,445 tons of explosives, 4.81 million detonators and 117,000 guns.40 40 China Radio International Online, September 7, 2006.

What about in the US? If made in China they still need to be imported

It wasn't to help my argument. It was to show that your source had intentionally slanted how they present information to attack FFL dealers. That is a common thing with the BATFE. They directed FFL dealers in border states to allow known gun smugglers to buy guns. Then when news of a Border Agent's murder came out they tried to blame the FFLs that they ordered to allow the purchases. That was the beginning of the Fast and Furious scandal. The BATFE was also forced to back track on several statements they made in front of congress regarding American guns found in Mexico and straw purchases. The BATFE has engaged in a companion of systematic deception for years to justify budget expansions and increased investigative powers. IT got so bad that current and former ATF agents opened up their own forum to discuss the issues.

Ok so where do all the illegal guns come from? unless you tell me they were never sold or held legally in the US it seems that it supports my argument that legal guns turn into illegal ones very easily.

As for the gun ban in the UK not doing anything, it was put into effect after the Dunblain massacre to prevent any further massacres, since no further massacres have taken place I would say its a success.
True the murder by gun rate didnt drop but it didnt rise either. It seems like Americans think that if guns were illegal all of a sudden all hell would brake loose, this is not the case.
As stated many times guns were never a big issue in the UK to begin with

Originally posted by MisterMaster
Heres one you cannot address or counter:

If I give you my guns right now, can you promise me that when I leave my house noone else will have a gun and use it against me? Not a chance.

Thats the only reason I wont give up mine.

I heard Rush say that the other day when I was in my car at lunch time. lol He was at some elite party and said that to one of the establisment types going on about gun control.

reply to post by seeker1963


Actually it has been fully addressed. Talk about a weak response because someone can't come up with a half decent counter argument.

And the gun nuts starred you.

These forums have started making me more pro-gun control, with all the idiot responses I see.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


Pretty sad you have to remind others that you are intelligent in your header. Ego much?

reply to post by MikeNice81

It did not curb gun violence though. Gun violence actually went up. So, at best they stopped aberrant behavior, but increased victimization of innocent people. I'm sorry, but that doesn't equal a success. That equals making people feel warm and fuzzy. All it did was spread the suffering out.

It didnt rise after the ban, it has risen recently.
As with the US most of this violence is gang on gang violence and I dont want to derail the thread but most of these criminals are immigrants or first generation Brits.
Poms themselves would argue the recent rise in crime has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with the countries immigration policy

reply to post by zedVSzardoz


Speak for yourself.

reply to post by Ghost375

If 100 million people have guns, there's no way 1 million people(and our army isn't even that big) would be able to control them all. It is a HUGE deterrent to a fascist dictatorship. It's a numbers game, and we vastly outnumber them. All the government would have to do is tell the troops they are shooting terrorists, and they would fire away, no questions asked. Soldiers are trained to be subservient and not to question their leadership.

You really think they would send troops after you when they have how many unmanned drones flying around?
A toe to toe or even guerilla war against your gov is at best a futile gesture at worst suicide.
It amazes me how having a gun makes you all feel invincible, to be fair Im starting to see the appeal, kinda sounds like it makes you feel like your on X!!!!! with the unfortunate exception of instead of being open and loving, guns seem to make you all guarded and suspicious

you mention the Egypt rebellion, but that did involve violence. You need to study history better. British withdrew from India, not because of the rebellions, but because their empire was waning. They didn't have the resources to stay in India.

The revolution in Egypt wasnt the result of violence and it didnt involve guns in any significant way. It was a peoples movement of civil disobedience not armed revolution.
100's of 1000's of people got together, said enough is enough and occupied the capital with the eyes of the world watching closely. Very similar to what people attempted with occupy wall St, I wonder how many of your fellow gun advocates who say they have them to fight the gov took part in that?

As for India, I think you need to study history better. The armed rebellions were easily put down in the end it was 1 skinny little 4 eyed vegetarian dude who beat the British, it was losing India that led to the collapse of the Empire, not the other way around.

and look at Syria....can you imagine the state of their rebellion if the rebels didn't have guns?

Im under the impression the vast majority of Syrian "rebels" arent Syrian at all

You list deaths due to gun violence...we're half the number of the third place person....and our population is MUCH bigger, about 5 times as big. That should tell you something.

Yes it tells me that for some reason being behind only Mexico, Brazil and Honduras in total gun deaths somehow makes Americans think guns are safe

Compare yourselves to industrialised nations and you are so far ahead its not funny, Switzerland comes 2nd and most of their gun deaths are suicides

But there's one argument you have not covered, one point that offsets every other point you make. Precedent

So, you can start legislating the ban against weapons - actually implementing and enforcing that, today - when there are entire counties and cities incapable of responding to crime (i.e. no money to pay the police officers)... good luck.

But precedent. Take away the guns, what is next? Assuredly something will be. We can look at TSA to get a nice long list of things that could be next...

We may not have an argument about knives, swords, scissors or box cutters. Nail clippers? Oh, and don't forget the incident in Texas where a lady's Titty-Ring, yes - you read that right, was cited as a possible terrorist weapon. So... let's say we all put our tittyrings. For a few minutes.

What else? TSA's taken exception to baby formula, juice bought at airport vendors, cupcakes, old lady's cans of tuna fish, medicine, and what might be found in an infant's or elderly person's diapers. Then there's the matter of TSA agents actually being able to rub up against your private parts to make sure you don't have anything hidden...

That is what happens when you ignore precedent - when there is no line drawn as to what a government can and cannot do. Precedent is everything. Precedent is what keeps lawmakers employed, because Law X passed, so also can Law Y, and once Law Y passes, it will be acceptable to enact Law Z... 100,000's of thousands of new laws each and every year. Beautiful.

Precedent is important. Of course you can outlaw weapons. It won't stop there. That's why when you start talking about reaching for someone's weapon - you give precedent to every BS law that follows. That's setting a precedent most of us probably do not want to live with.

Afghanistan and Iraq have proven in clear terms just how much of a PITA unhappy people armed with obsolete weapons can be. The difference in the United States is that there are more weapons owned by people with better training who are in all likelihood relatives of someone who is in the military or law enforcement.