I don't think anyone wants the police to not have guns.

I don't want police to have guns, then I will be more powerful than them! OOOOah ah ah!!!

Uh....what makes you think it works in Europe? Organized crime can most definitely get their hands on whatever they want. People in Europe still have the means to easily end other people's lives, but they choose not to. So there isn't such a need to protect oneself. It's not the lack of guns, it's lack of a motive. They're culture just isn't as violent.

Also, they have a bit less freedom than we do, especially if you consider places like London with damn near more cameras than people. Maybe it's not so much gun control as the quasi-Orwellian monitoring system.

 There is a small town in Texas where everyone carries a gun.  Crime is zero.  While this is actually a kind of trick (the town is so small that everyone knows everyone else), it has been shown that in a society or group where everyone is armed, there is far less crime and violence.  It's hard to work up the courage to infringe upon someone when you could be facing any number of armed people.  I think of Senator Gabrielle Richards and if even 3 or 4 people around her had a gun the idiot would now be dead and she would be ok.

I do strongly believe in training before and during ownership of firearms, something that doesn't even seem to be being considered in the US.

 I also dislike that if you shoot someone in self defense of yourself or others, you can be prosecuted, even when the person you shot was committing a crime.  Ridiculous!  When you commit a crime you place yourself outside the law and shouldn't have recourse to it.  Same with convicted criminals filing lawsuits, but I digress....

I have to wonder how many gun related crimes would not happen if more people carried guns?

It need  not be everyone.  People who think guns are icky can opt not to have one if that is how they feel.  However, if one person in five was packing at any given moment, that might tend to give at least some criminals pause to consider if pointing guns at people was such a good idea.

As far as gun free zone go, I think that mostly schools are at the top of that list.  That and as I recall, most of the mass murders in the past twenty years have been on school grounds.

Further, my last employers was mandated by the commissioner of mental health to be a gun free zone.  That was done in the wake of a mass murder in a state office building by an employee.  So, we have a work place mass murder and the answer is to remove the possibility of stopping the dude before things get worse.  Right, that will certainly help.

Really, consider the Virginia Tech mass murder.  If there had been a good number of armed people there, how many more people would be alive today?

So what do we do in our current situation? The guns are already out there. Lets say we put a complete ban on any and every fire arm there is. Who will be the ones the actually follow these laws? Probably the only ones who are currently using guns responsibly. Criminals laugh in the face of gun control laws. 

Now everyone can go ahead and call me a racist, but look at the type of people you have in Japan compared to the types of people in this country. Especially in my home town which happens to be way south. Ive done a couple of deployments out in Japan and they are the most respectable race of people I have ever met. Even the ones that don't like the "round eye" can still show common respect to me. I'll just leave this one alone now. 

Why don't you compare a country like China or North Korea to the US as well. Citizens have no guns. The governments have free reign to do as they wish. 

Be the reality is that we live in a nasty cruel world full of rapist, murderers, pedo's, etc. The police can not be everywhere at once. So why should I not have the right to defend myself and my family to the best of my ability. I want every advantage I can possibly have over some a-hole meaning us harm. Its just fantasy believing banning guns will solve this counties violence problems with the types of people living here. 

Besides even if we did get rid of all the guns we would probably just have more stabbings. 

Are you really that blinded? Just take a nice long night time walk around your typical neighborhood in New England and then come down south and stroll through the friendly neighborhoods of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Dallas. You have a lot less of the sub human types up there buddy. 

 Fact- Guns are out there, criminals have them. 

Fact- There are people in this world that will do you or your loved ones harmed for a number of reasons

Fact- The police (who carry guns, and actually get to practice shooting a lot less than you think) can not be everywhere at once.

Now who feels they have the right to tell me that I can not defend myself to the best of my ability against such people?

I do believe that a citizen who carries should have to undergo a through training process and demonstrate a superb ability to handle a weapon in a stressful situation. 

 

In turn, I will more or less agree with you but with key modification.

 

First, if you stay in touch with the gun owning community, you will hear plenty of stories wher simply displaying a gun has caused a criminal to back down. Sure, criminals are stupid but they are generally not so stupid as to not know that they might end up dead in such a case.

 

Second, in your bank robbery example, that heavily depends on the situation. Let's say that I am just trying to deposit my paycheck when some idiot hand the teller a note that says he has a gun. Well, I would not even know what is going on. However, the teller has various ways of triggering a silent alarm from a foot switch to removing the last bill from the cash drawer (and probably others).

 

If the gun comes out but is not used as more than a visual threat, then no, that is not the time to shoot. However, if the muzzle is raised and pointed at the teller, then it becomes time to shoot if a safe angle can be established.

 

You would still have to go to court on that one but in that case, there would be eyewitness testimony backed up by several camera angles which establish that you acted to prevent a criminal shooting. The prosecutor is still going to do as much as possible to drag that case out but in the end, it will be shown that you had good reason to waste the guy.

 

June 20 1994, a nut case shot up the hospital at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, WA.  Do you remember?  My father-in-law was volunteering for the Red Cross at the time and he was there shortly afterward as part of the local disaster response team.  He was buddies with almost everyone in town, including a local sheriff's deputy.

5 people were killed, 22 people wounded, some of whom were children.

http://fairchildhospitalshooting.com/  Written by the man who killed him.

The nut case was stationed at Fairchild and had been seeing the psychiatrists at the base hospital.  They recommended he be discharged.  And so he was.  He returned to the base walked into the hospital and opened fire.  He was shot and killed by a MP.  Bullet through the center of the forehead.  The MP in question was known as an okay shot.

What was not publicized - since it never went to trial.  The guy legally bought a MAK-90 and 80 rounds of ammunition and the magazine to hold them.  He bought them at a large local sporting goods store, called rather inelegantly, The General Store.  Huge gun counter.  The salesman asked to be moved to a different department after the shooting.  The nut case filed off the pin that made it semi-automatic and turned it into fully automatic.

The laws have changed and the nut case would not be able to buy a weapon, now, right?  Maybe.  http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/02/22/20100222guns-gilbert.html

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ILLEGAL+GUNS%3b+BLACK+MARKET+SALES+TRACED+TO+VALLEY+TRAFFICKER.%28NEWS%29-a083608327

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2008/feb/15/gun_dealer_charged_illegal_sale30723/

Shall I go on?  Please note the dates.  So people are violating the law because they just have to own these weapons.  They have needs.  Just like speeders, and drunk drivers, and pedophiles, and .....  Let's skip that argument, okay?

Yes, people kill people.  Guns are generally inert unless in the hands of someone.  And I personally don't care if you own a 30-30 or 30-06 or 12 gauge or some other hunting weapon.  If it isn't semi-automatic or fully automatic where your target has the chance to duck for cover.  (That includes deer and other game animals and birds.)  If the magazine is small.  The weapons we had around the house when I was a kid generally held less than a dozen rounds in the chamber.  If you can't hit your target with that, maybe you should be practicing more at the shooting range.  I see no need for anyone to own a weapon that was designed for rapid fire with the express intent of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible.  That isn't hunting, it is slaughter.

You need to have an automatic because the bad guys have automatics?  No, you don't.  You need skill and a good emplacement. 

Ask yourself - what weapons did the writers of the Constitution own?  Muskets?  Muzzle loaders?  And what kind of skill did it take to hit the broad side of a barn?  Literally.  And what do you think they might say if they saw a modern weapon?  Whoa, cool?  Or, oh. my. god. ??  Especially if they walked into Fairchild Hospital right after the shooting.

I am promising myself I won't look at this thread again.  I promise you I won't post again.  So there is no need to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, that your rights are being violated, that you would never shoot up a bunch of children in a hospital, that most people are law abiding and would never do anything so terrible.  That it ain't your fault there are crazy people in this world.  That it is a slippery slope - take away your assault rifles and next it will be your laser sights and 80 round magazines.  That you need it to defend yourself.  Right, like you will carry a loaded weapon into a hospital and stash it in your bed side table so you can leap out of bed and take down the next crazy fool who comes through shooting.  Sure.  Right after you come out of the anesthesia from your heart by pass surgery.  Be sure to take your cape and tights while you are at it.

 

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Well redneF, I doubt that I need to get you on board. Even so, what I am going for is how do you come up with an exact definition of a “bad gun”?

 

Really, 20 years ago, manufacturers had it that 18+1 rounds were comfortable in the hand. Then we elected the sexual predator president who declared that 10 rounds was as much as anyone could possibly need but 11 rounds was unnecessarily enormous. Mind you, if you were willing to carry in condition one then you got the extra round.

 

So why is it that if I have the federal permit for full auto, I can trivially have a Galil and that is fine but an AK is off the table for me? The only difference is that a Galil fires NATO rounds.

OK, a couple of point to make.

 

As far as your bow vs. burglar scenario: if a gun ended up pointed at you, I would expect that you would let the arrow fly before he had a chance to pull the trigger. That would be self defense. You are still going to get dragged through the court system for using lethal force and I have no problem with that.

 

On the definition of different classes of guns, I mostly don't see where you draw the lines. Possibly the point where you go full auto might be a line worth drawing. Really, do you need to put five rounds in some dude because he is dangerous? That sounds like a bit much to me.

 

On the other hand, if I was on my way to a range that allowed FA fire and I saw a pit bull chasing a small child, well, the pit bull is going down. As long as I have my paperwork in order, who the fuck cares whether I used one bullet or ten?

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

However, what I am trying to get to is the idea of what makes some guns bad where others are not?

 

I know well my state law on thew matter and it is really irrational. There are two ways that a gun can be bad. Let me work on them separately.

 

The first way is if the gun is one of fifty guns which are specifically defined as bad. However, the list has not been amended since the bill entered law around thirty years ago. So what does that tell us about all the different types of guns that are new since then? Are they automatically good because they were not bad when Reagan was president?

 

Curiously, the legislature, in their inestimable wisdom included two .22 caliber pistols on that list. Nobody knows why.

 

The second way is if a gun has three or more of a list of five totally cosmetic features. None of which has any bearing on what comes out of the business end. They are bad guns because they are scary guns.

 

Now I will disclose that I happen to be a member of the NRA. I think that guns that look cool happen to look cool. Against that, I would think that a .22 revolver pointed in my direction would be something which merits concern.

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

On the other hand, would you care to tell me what defines a carbine?

 

Gun owners know them to be generally medium sized guns but how do you define whether a gun is a long gun, a short gun or something in between?

They exercised the only option I was willing to allow them, and that was to turn and run. I would not have even entertained for one of them to turn and face me.

 

I already have a real good plan in place, for what to do in the event that I would have had to use lethal force. If you know what I mean.

A good boy scout is always prepared...

 

I think that you and I wouldn't argue too much about where to draw the line. I don't think full auto glocks are something that citizens 'must' have.

 

I agree. In that instance, the extra rounds are 'insurance'.

 

A colleague of mine took a 3 yr sabbatical to sail around the world, with his wife, and young son. He was a German immigrant who imported weapons occasionally. He showed my the firepower he had on the boat with him, as well as some of the 'booby traps' he had the boat rigged up with. He was loaded for bear. He even had an RPG!

I though he was deranged, till he explained to me about the pirates that exist on the seas, and that your only option is to 'kill, or be killed', in those scenarios. There's no radioing for the coast guard. By the time they respond, your vessel will probably be at the bottom of the ocean.

 

 

I have no doubt that the laws are completely without reason or rhyme.

I used to be part of an archery club many years ago, and IIRC there were some very specific laws concerning crossbows, but I don't remember what they were.

 

I remember a friend of mine who was a cop telling me about the various laws which knives were legal, and which weren't, and that was pretty convoluted. 

 

 

Add to that the fact that one shot may not incapacitate them. See "Stopping Power."

Also, you can file lawsuits against anyone for anything. Theoretically I could try to sue you for using the letter "e" too much (no sane lawyer would file that for me, so I would have to file it pro se), though it would either be thrown out, I could be held in contempt, and could even (theoretically) face a malicious prosecution charge if it went too far.

I would second this except the full auto part. We didn't have those back then nor did we have nukes and drones and blah blah.

Don't get me wrong I personally would love to have one of those neat turkish full auto pistols just for fun but as much as I enjoy shooting and all I can see where we might rationally want to draw a line somewhere. Can you imagine someone bent on a killing spree with a full auto shotgun for example? They are neat and I could spend a paycheck blowing something up at the range for an hour but maybe it's ..too neat and way too easy.

If a large enough percentage of the population were to revolt for whatever reason (which is what it would take to be legit anyway a majority of the population right?) something tells me full auto weapons wouldn't be necessary anyway.

Btw one of my favorite made up quotes: "You cannot invade the mainland United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

Opening up in a crowded mall with a semi auto pistol vs a full auto machine gun ..hmm.

But really if you want to get funny mcdonalds kills more people than mass murderers. I'm just pointing out potential and we are discussing guns not marriage or crack or whatever other items might kill more folks.

Beats me but it's apparently an issue.

 

I don't need to they are already banned* well enough. To have one nowdays you must fill out paperwork for the next year and a half and carry an fbi agent around in your back pocket.

So I already won this little argument by default sea!